Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Your grandad must’ve thought a lot of you, to lend you that much money, Charley,’ he said. ‘And he must have thought Andrea was all right too.’

  ‘No,’ admitted the young man miserably. ‘He only met her a couple of times, didn’t like her much at all, I could see that. When I told him I wanted to get engaged before I joined up he laughed and said I’d soon have girls all over the face of the world.’

  ‘But he still made the loan.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the young man. Then he added with a rush, ‘I never told him it was all for the ring. I let on I wanted some clothes and things so I could smarten myself up for my Army interview. At home I tried to let on it were just a cheap ring but Andrea made sure everyone knew how much it cost, so I had to tell them where I’d borrowed the money else they’d have thought I nicked it!’

  He spoke with the bitterness of misunderstood youth, but with something more too. It was a bad time he’d been through, Pascoe knew. His grandfather’s death, his broken engagement.

  He said gently, ‘Will you try to make it up with Andrea?’

  The young man thought, then said, ‘No.’

  It didn’t sound a definitive negative. The qualification when it came surprised Pascoe by its honesty and to some extent its maturity.

  ‘What I mean is, no, I’ll not be chasing after her. I mean, when I’m away from her, I think about her, but, you know, well, just like that mainly. And if she came after me, I expect I’d make it up because when we’re together, you know, by ourselves …’

  He stopped speaking but his stumbling words and now his silence were more eloquent than any literary erotica of the power of sex.

  ‘She’s an attractive girl,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘She is that. I used to slip out from the camp sometimes when she were at that hotel – it’s only a couple of miles down the road – we weren’t supposed to stay out at night, not during training, but I’d still go and she’d let me in at the back. It were daft really, I could have got into serious bother, but I knew this lad on the gate. Later, when I’d passed out, we were allowed to stay out. I’d still get back late sometimes even though it were so close. And often I’d be fair worn out on the square or at the range!’

  He spoke with a mixture of pride, bewilderment and awkwardness. He was glad, Pascoe guessed, to have someone to talk to who was sympathetic but also a stranger, and official with it. He did not doubt that Charley had indulged in his fill of sexual boasting in the company of his fellow soldiers, but that was miles away from this stumbling analysis of the strange ambiguities of body and spirit.

  ‘I’d not really thought of being married to Andrea, do you understand that?’ he continued. ‘Even when we got engaged. I mean, I couldn’t think of her as a wife, somehow, not like me mam, you know, in the house and taking care of things and all that … no, I couldn’t see that …’

  They had arrived at Welfare Lane. The police caravan had gone and there was nothing to distinguish No. 25 from its neighbours. After Charley’s visit, Pascoe could see no further reason for keeping the house sealed. Mrs Frostick would want to start the sad job of sorting out her father’s belongings. There had been no will, so the whole estate – money, goods and the house itself – would pass to her as the only child. Pascoe had no doubt that she would see Charley right, but the boy wasn’t going to get the old pocket watch that had always been promised him. Not unless the gods decided to be kind.

  He didn’t open the car door straight away but sat for a moment in case Charley wanted to unburden himself further, but the youth quickly opened the passenger door and got out, perhaps because he felt that there had been quite enough self-examination for one day, perhaps because Mrs Tracey Spillings had appeared at the kerbside and was peering through the windscreen.

  ‘Hello, Charley,’ she said. ‘You’re looking grand. It must suit you, all this open air life. I was right sorry about your grandad. He could be a miserable old devil when he wanted but he never did nobody any harm and we’ve had some good times. All these years we’ve been neighbours and I never thought it’d come to this. It’s a terrible business, Charley. I hope they get the bugger as did it, but they run rings round the police nowadays, don’t they? You’ve got the best one of the bunch here, I reckon, but that’s not saying too much. You know who was first round? Mrs Jolley’s nephew from Parish Road, that Tony Hector, looks as if he’s been washed and stretched. Then there was another, you’ve never seen such a face! When first I saw it, I thought they’d caught the killer, he looked ripe for anything! How are you, lad?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks, Mrs Spillings,’ said Charley, looking slightly shell-shocked.

  ‘And your mam and dad? And that lass you’re engaged to? All all right?’

  Charley glanced at Pascoe and said, ‘Aye, they’re OK.’

  ‘Good. You’d like a cup of tea,’ asserted Mrs Spillings without fear of contradiction.

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Charley boldly. ‘But don’t let me stop you from having one, Mr Pascoe. In fact, I’d as lief have a look round the house by myself to start with.’

  Pascoe who had slid away to unlock the front door regarded the boy with mute congratulation. Such tactical skill must surely predicate a knapsack full of field-marshal’s batons.

  ‘That’s right,’ approved Mrs Spillings. ‘You come along with me, Mr Pascoe.’

  She seized his arm and Pascoe for the first time in his life knew what it must feel like to be nicked.

  But as he entered No. 27, a second and perhaps stranger phenomenon occupied all his attention.

  The house was in silence.

  Without the waves of broadcast decibels beating against it, even the wallpaper seemed almost peaceful, like a coral reef after a tropical storm.

  ‘Where …?’ began Pascoe.

  ‘Mam?’ said Mrs Spillings. ‘Aye, it is quiet. She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Pascoe sitting down heavily and feeling the usual English middle-class inadequacy in matters of commiseration.

  ‘What? No! You silly bugger!’ roared Mrs Spillings. ‘I don’t mean gone. I mean she’s gone away. She were booked down to go to The Towers this Friday, but this vacancy came up unexpected and Betty Day, the matron there, she got in touch to ask if she’d like an extra few days. I’ve known Betty Day for years, her dad was Eric Day who used to have the fish shop in Brahma Street and her mam was a Spurling out of Otley. They washed their hands of her by all accounts when she married Eric, but they changed their tune when Betty came along. She’s a grand lass – lass! she must be nearly forty now! Mam’s been going to The Towers for years, and I was right pleased when Betty took it over last year! Mrs Collins who ran it before were all right, but she was ancient herself and letting things slide. Betty’s making a world of difference. And Mam loves it there and it’s a bit of a break for me. Gives me a chance to really bottom this place!’

  There were signs everywhere of an enthusiastic November spring-clean about to be commenced.

  ‘A bit of a busman’s holiday,’ said Pascoe wryly.

  ‘Busman’s? Oh aye! I see what you mean. No, I’ve never minded cleaning, it comes easy to me. But talking of busmen, I’d better get a move on. It all happened so sudden there was half a dozen things Mam forgot to take. Nowt that she can’t do without, mind you, but they like to make a fuss! I’m sorry, lad, but can you make your own tea?’

  ‘You mean you’re going out there on the bus?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Well, I’m not walking, love!’ said Tracey Spillings cheerfully.

  Suddenly she eyed him speculatively.

  ‘Of course, if you were happening to be passing that way in that fancy motor of yours, it’d save me a trip and I could make you that tea after all.’

  Cheeky cow! thought Pascoe without any real indignation. In fact, he found himself thinking, why not? He’d been wondering intermittently what, if anything, he should do about Andrea’s insinuations concerning Mrs Warsop and her former employer. Pass them to Headingl
ey was the obvious answer, except that Headingley had been warned off the Dalziel affair and was likely to respond to any new information with an answer even more obvious.

  Now, nudged by the coincidence that Tracey Spillings’s old mam had clearly been slipped into the space vacated by Philip Westerman, Pascoe found himself unable to resist the temptation to meddle. The kind of bother Dalziel seemed to be in clearly went a lot further than just the question of his involvement in Westerman’s death.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re on. I’ll take them.’

  ‘Could you? That’d be grand! It’d really save me half a day,’ said Tracey Spillings. ‘Mind you, it’s just like a man. Do owt to get out of going into the kitchen!’

  She bustled off to make the tea. With her temporary departure, Pascoe became aware just how unfortunate Mrs Spillings Senior’s listening habits had been for poor old Bob Deeks. With no masking roar of TV soundtrack, the noises made by Charley Frostick as he moved around next door were quite clear. Tracey Spillings would surely have recognized a pattern different from her old neighbour’s usual one and just as surely, being the kind of woman she was, gone to investigate.

  He listened carefully, gauging that Charley was upstairs now, probably in the bathroom. There was a distant crash, as of something falling, not too heavily, but with a strangely hollow noise.

  Pascoe rose from his chair and moved quietly out of the house. Charley had left the front door of No. 25 ajar. He went in, through the living-room and up the stairs. The bathroom door was open.

  Charley was on his hands and knees by the bath. The fibreglass panel which boxed in the end had been removed. It was probably the noise of this as it fell back against the ceramic lavatory pan that had attracted Pascoe. Charley was reaching beneath the bath. He grunted with effort, or more likely with achievement, for now he withdrew his arm.

  In his hand was a cardboard shoe-box. Still with his back to the door, he took the top off.

  Pascoe took a quiet pace forward but not quiet enough. Charley spun round in alarm and more than alarm, for there were tears on his face. The box fell out of his grip. Across the patterned vinyl floor fluttered a skein of five-pound notes.

  ‘I just wondered if it were still there,’ said Charley. ‘No one had said anything about it and I just wondered.’

  They were sitting downstairs drinking the tea which Mrs Spillings had brought round on discovering Pascoe’s departure. Her volubility did not mean she was insensitive to atmosphere and she had withdrawn without demur when Pascoe had thanked her firmly and promised he would collect the stuff for The Towers before he left.

  ‘No one would say anything about it, unless they knew,’ Pascoe pointed out reasonably. ‘Who did know, Charley?’

  ‘What’s it matter?’ asked the young man. ‘It didn’t get nicked.’

  ‘Which probably clears anyone who knew,’ offered Pascoe.

  Charley considered this.

  ‘Oh yeah. I get you,’ he said. ‘Well, no one knew, as far as I’m concerned. I never told anyone.’

  ‘And how did you know? Did your grandfather tell you?’

  It would have been easy for the young man to lie, and for a moment perhaps he considered it. But to his great credit in Pascoe’s eyes, he decided against it and said, ‘No. It was when he lent me the money for the ring. He told me to wait a bit, then he went upstairs and I heard a noise, it must’ve been the panel coming off, you’ve got to spring it and it sort of flies out, so I went half way up the stairs, just far enough to see he was all right.’

  ‘And you saw him replacing the panel, and then he came down with your money?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Charley. ‘It’ll be me mam’s money now, won’t it?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Pascoe. ‘You should have told me about the possibility of its being there before, Charley. You realize that?’

  ‘Yeah, all right. But I wasn’t going to nick it, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Pascoe believed him. The tears on the boy’s face had been provoked by the presence in the box of several envelopes containing the cash and money orders with which Charley had conscientiously paid off his debt. Such a fond relationship as this had clearly been could not have led to theft.

  ‘We’ll say you showed me where it might be hidden, all right?’ he said. ‘There’s about two hundred quid in notes, plus the money orders. Want to check?’

  Charley shook his head.

  ‘It’ll be kept safe down at the police station for the time being, but your mam will get it all, never fear. Now, is there anything else you want to tell me or show me?’

  Charley shook his head.

  ‘OK,’ said Pascoe. ‘Let’s be getting you back. Your mam can have the keys now, I think. You’ve got the front door one, haven’t you? Oh and while I think on, here’s the back door key. The one from the wash-house.’

  He dug into his pocket and produced the key he’d found in the old boiler in the wash-house.

  Charley took it and looked at it, puzzled.

  ‘This isn’t it,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t what? The back door key? Why do you say that?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s not the back door key,’ said Charley. ‘But it’s not the one Granda kept hid in the wash-house.’

  ‘No?’ said Pascoe.

  He went into the kitchen, the youth following.

  ‘What about this one?’ he said, holding up the key which had been in the lock beneath the broken window.

  ‘Aye, that’s it. That’s the one out of the wash-house,’ said Charley.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. That’s the way I always came and went, see. Look, it’s older and muckier, isn’t it? And it’s got a number on and this one hasn’t.’

  It was true. The two keys were readily distinguishable. But did it matter? Charley had been away from home for a few weeks after all. Perhaps the old man himself had swapped the keys round.

  Yet if he hadn’t, what might it signify?

  Much, perhaps, if only he had time to sit and ponder it. Much.

  Chapter 22

  ‘If this is dying, I don’t think much of it.’

  Pascoe’s hopes of finding a small square of pondering time vanished when he was greeted at the station with news of the raid on the unlicensed betting shop.

  ‘So he did have money? A lot of money? Great!’ he declared, much to the delight of Seymour, who hoped that he was in for a large helping of undeserved credit to compensate for the great dollops of undeserved criticism which were ladled on to a detective-constable’s plate with monotonous regularity.

  But this was not to be. As Pascoe recounted his interview with Mrs Escott it became clear that he did not hold Seymour innocent of blame.

  ‘So she just lost a day,’ said Wield.

  ‘That’s right. A possibility you would expect a young detective to admit, who had just been warned that the old lady was having memory problems.’

  It had been a mistake to let on that Tempest, the warden, had made any comment on Mrs Escott’s mental decline, realized Seymour miserably.

  ‘They’re not what they used to be, young detectives,’ observed Wield.

  ‘You’ll need proper statements now, you realize that?’ Pascoe said. ‘The waitress who served him, the man in the off-licence.’

  Seymour brightened up. His attempts to blarney a date out of Bernadette had failed the previous lunch-time, but he had high hopes that a second assault might weaken resistance.

  ‘Something still puzzles me,’ said Pascoe. ‘Here’s an old lad come into a bit of money, and he’s got the spirit and the gumption to lash out on a good meal and a bottle of booze to take home. Now why, on a night like that, does he set off to walk home? Money in his pocket, he could afford a taxi! Or, if that seemed too extravagant, you’d think at the very least he’d catch a bus. A No. 17 would take him from the town centre right to those shops behind Castleton Court, wouldn’t it? And how often
do they run? Every quarter of an hour, isn’t it?’

  He looked questioningly at Wield and Seymour. Wield had the face to abide such questions; Seymour felt challenged. He had no answer, but his mind was stimulated to a suggestion offered in hope of a consolation prize.

  ‘Sir, shall I go back and see Mrs Escott again?’ he asked.

  ‘For a statement, you mean?’ said Pascoe in surprise. ‘A statement of what, for God’s sake? She can’t remember!’

  ‘No, sir,’ contradicted Seymour. ‘She remembered the wrong day but she remembered it very well. Now, she might still have seen Parrinder on the Friday, mightn’t she? Perhaps now she’s had time to puzzle it over, something might have come back to her.’

  Pascoe doubted it. His own gentle probings had produced a puzzled appreciation that the old lady might have got something wrong, but he had not felt it worth while to risk distressing her by going too hard. And now that ‘Tap’ Parrinder was definitely placed in the betting shop from 1.45 to 4.30 P.M., he couldn’t see what positive contribution any further memories of Mrs Escott could make. On the other hand, he appreciated Seymour’s eagerness to regain what he felt as lost credit.

  ‘Worth a try perhaps,’ he said. ‘But go easy, very easy. She’s old and confused. And make damn sure you’ve got all those statements first!’

  After Seymour had gone, Wield looked at Pascoe with something which might have been a smile fissuring his lips.

  ‘He’s a good lad,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Pascoe. ‘He did well to get Charlesworth to cooperate, though I expect he’s as keen as anyone to see these illicit shops closed.’

  ‘So it clears the way for his own fiddles, you mean?’ said Wield.

  ‘Perhaps, though he was looked at recently and he came out clean.’

  ‘So I believe. Did you know he was such an old chum of the Super’s?’

  Again that immediate and suggestive association! It was going to be very difficult to prevent Dalziel’s friendship and Charlesworth’s fortune from going together like fish and chips.