REGINALD HILL
EXIT LINES
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1984

Copyright © Reginald Hill 1984

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780586072530

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007374007

Version: 2015-06-18

See how the world its veterans rewards!

Pope: Moral Essays, Epistle 2

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

‘I am just going outside and I may be some time.’

On a cold and storm-racked November night, while Peter and Ellie Pascoe were still celebrating with wine and wassail the first birthday which their daughter Rose had greeted with huge indifference, three old men, who felt far from indifferent, died.

Thomas Arthur Parrinder, 71, was aroused for the last time by a warm wetness amid the freezing rain which had been lashing his face for almost four hours. He opened one eye and saw above him, silhouetted vaguely against the dark sky, a long animal head with pricking ears, and he glimpsed also the gleam of tooth and inquisitive eye as the beast stooped down to lick at him once more. His mouth gaped and a rattle that may have been a laugh spilled out with it a single word. ‘Polly!’ No other word passed his lips, and precious little breath either, before an overworked hospital doctor pronounced him (not without some guilty relief) dead on arrival.

At just about the same time, Robert Deeks, 73, was being hooked back from a long slide to oblivion by the ringing of a distant bell. A little earlier another bell had rung for some considerable time, but that had eventually ceased. At last this new one stopped too. Then a door opened. A voice called out. Other doors. Opening and shutting. Footsteps below, hurrying, scurrying; a voice growing in volume and alarm; footsteps and voice together on the stairs, ascending. He took another lurch back to reality. He was in a bathroom, his own bathroom. To register this was quite a triumph and, thus encouraged, his mind took a further step. He was in the bath! He looked down at the russet-coloured water lapping his chest, grey and flimsy as a sodden newspaper blown against a picket fence. His mind suddenly broke through fact into feeling. It would be a shaming thing to be found in the bath, especially when he had made it so dirty. It was a special old people’s bath with a non-slip bottom and padded grips to help him ease himself in and out. He reached for the grips now, but his nerveless and swollen-knuckled fingers could find no purchase, and even if they had, he knew there was no strength left in his arms to pull himself upright. He let his arms fall. Fact and feeling were beginning to retreat at an even pace. He felt himself slipping away with them. A cry of horror from the open door inhibited the process for one last moment. Slowly he turned his head and saw his daughter in the doorway, paralysed at the shock of seeing him bathed in his own diluted blood. He opened his toothless mouth and said, ‘Charley.’ The next bell to ring was the ambulance bell but he was moving beyond recall towards a more urgent summons by then.

Philip Cater Westerman (70) felt the rain bouncing off his plastic mac and the wind trying to get under it as he mounted his bicycle and rode out of the car park of The Duke of York. At least the wind was behind him as he turned left towards The Towers. That this narrow, country thoroughfare was called Paradise Road did not strike him yet as ironical. Then he saw lights coming towards him, making nothing of the wind, ripping through the curtain of rain with arrogant ease. The car must have covered a hundred yards in the time he took to cover ten, even with the wind at his back. And in the same instant as the thought, the lights were twisting and brakes screaming in an attempt at evasion both desperate and vain. He was facing the car when he and it almost simultaneously came to a halt. He saw the two front doors burst open and two figures come running towards him, one broad and bulky, the other as tall but thinner. The image remained in his mind, surprisingly powerful, indeed almost analgesic in its strength, as he was hurried to hospital. There, the same harassed houseman who had registered the first two septuagenarians d.o.a. saw that another mile in the ambulance would almost certainly have given him three in a row. As it was, this poor devil was hardly worth preparing for surgery, but the doctor was not yet so advanced in his profession as to be quite certain he was God’s agent, and he set the wheels in motion. As if to confirm this decision, Philip Cater Westerman opened his eyes and said, ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, old chap,’ said the doctor. ‘Take it easy. Have you right in no time.’

But no time was precisely what Philip Cater Westerman knew he had.

‘Paradise,’ he said reflectively. Then he added with great indignation, ‘Paradise! Driver … fat bastard … pissed!’

And died.

In the Pascoe household, the telephone rang.

Pascoe groaned, Ellie made a face and went to answer it. Pascoe listened at the open door for a moment but when he heard Ellie greet her father, his face relaxed and he returned to his celebratory Marks and Spencer Burgundy. He grinned at his wife on her return, inviting her to share his relief that it hadn’t been the duty sergeant with the once flattering but now fearful message that yet again Mid-Yorkshire CID could not function without its favourite Detective-Inspector.

Ellie did not return his smile, so he returned her worried frown.

‘Trouble?’ he said.

‘I’m not sure. It was Dad, ringing up to wish Rose a happy birthday.’

‘So?’

‘It’s the second time. He came on the line when Mum rang this morning.’

‘He’s so proud of his granddaughter, he wants to do it twice,’ said Pascoe. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I said it was nice of him to do it twice and he seemed puzzled. Then Mum came on.’

‘And did she wish Rose happy birthday again too?’

‘No,’ said Ellie in exasperation. ‘She just said to take no notice of Dad, he’d be forgetting his own head next!’

‘Sensible woman, your mother,’ said Pascoe.

‘’Tis distance lends approval to the view,’ said Ellie ironically. ‘But she sounded worried. Dad hasn’t really been right since that bad turn he had two years ago. Mum didn’t say anything, but I can tell. Peter, I think I ought to pop down there and check things out.’

Down there was Orburn, a small market town south of Lincoln, about eighty miles away.

‘Why not?’ said Pascoe expansively. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow would suit me,’ said Ellie. ‘If that’s all right? They haven’t seen Rose for a bit. It’s been awkward for them since Dad gave up the car. I’d stay the night. It’s too far there and back in a day with the baby. Would you mind?’

Pascoe sipped his wine reflectively and said, ‘You know, if you really let yourself go and give it all you’ve got, you could easily shatter your own record for getting close to asking my permission! Now, that would be nice. But I’d need the request in writing, else who’s going to believe it?’

‘Bastard,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m merely consulting your convenience.’

‘Let’s keep Andy Dalziel out of this,’ grinned Pascoe. ‘Hadn’t you better consult your mum’s too?’

‘Yes. I’ll ring her back now,’ said Ellie, retreating through the door.

‘And this time, leave the phone off the hook,’ called Pascoe after her. ‘If I’m going to be deprived of my marital rights tomorrow, I claim double ration tonight.’

But before Ellie could reach the phone, it rang.

He heard Ellie give the number, there was a pause, then she said, ‘All right, Sergeant Wield. I’ll get him.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Pascoe. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

Chapter 2

‘See in what peace a Christian can die.’

‘Back door,’ said Wield. ‘Glass panel broken. Key in lock. Hand through. Open. Easy.’

Sergeant Wield was in fine telegraphic style. He also seemed to have been practising not moving his lips, so that the words came out of his slant and ugly face like a ritual chant through a primitive devil-mask.

Pascoe put the unkind thought aside as best he could, which was not very well. His resentment at being called out had not as yet been assuaged by explanation. Wield had been even more economic of words on the phone and when Pascoe had hinted a complaint shortly after his arrival at 25, Welfare Lane, in the middle of a Victorian terrace which even Betjeman might have hesitated to save, the Sergeant by the flicker of an eye inside the devil-mask had underlined the inhibiting presence of Constable Tony Hector.

PC Hector had been the first officer on the scene and was therefore a potential source of illuminating insights. Unfortunately he was to Pascoe the last person he would have wished first. His principal qualification for the police force seemed to be his height. He was fully six feet six inches upright, though at some stage in his growth he had reached a level of embarrassment which provoked him to shave off the six inches by curving his spine forward like a bent bow and sinking his head so far between his shoulders that he gave the impression that he was wearing a coathanger beneath his tunic. He was one of a trio of young constables whom Detective-Superintendent Dalziel had unkindly nicknamed on their arrival two months earlier Maggie’s Morons, suggesting that their recruitment into the force was more the result of Mrs Thatcher’s economic policies than a natural vocation. Twice already Pascoe had had occasion to see Hector in action and Dalziel’s judgment had still to be refuted. But Pascoe was a kindly, sympathetic man and had not altogether given up on the youth.

‘Tell me about it,’ he now invited the constable.

‘Sir?’ – with a puzzled note.

‘About what happened. Tell me what you found when you got here,’ said Pascoe slowly and distinctly to make sure he was heard above the inappropriately loud din of a television set coming from the house next door.

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Hector, producing his notebook and coughing discreetly behind his hand. ‘I came on duty at six P.M. on Friday, November …’

‘No, no,’ said Pascoe. It was, of course, Hector’s fondness for the orotund constabulary style which had driven Wield so far towards telegraphese. ‘From when you got here. And in your own words, please.’

‘These are my own words, sir,’ said Hector, brandishing his notebook with the beginnings of indignation.

‘Yes, I know. But you’re not in the witness-box. I mean, just talk to me as you’d talk to your … to your …’ Pascoe tailed away helplessly. Friends? Father? However he ended his sentence it was going to sound ridiculous.

‘Self,’ interposed Sergeant Wield. His eyes met Pascoe’s and the Inspector had to resist an urge to giggle, an urge he quelled by recollecting that a particularly unpleasant murder had occurred a few feet above his head not very long before.

The thought also made him feel guilty about his sense of grievance at being called out.

Am I getting callous, or what? he wondered.

‘Go on, son,’ he said to Hector.

‘Well, sir, when I got here, I found Mrs Frostick and a lot of other people …’

‘Hold on. Who’s Mrs Frostick?’

‘Mrs Frostick is Mr Deeks’s daughter, sir. Mr Deeks is the deceased, of this abode.’

Pascoe looked sharply at Hector, hoping to see the gleam of intelligent life in his eyes which would mean he was sending him up. But all was earnest blankness.

‘And these other people? Who were they?’

‘Neighbours mainly, I think, sir.’

‘Think? You’ve got their names and addresses, haven’t you?’

Hector’s head sank a little further between his shoulders. Perhaps it was fully retractable, like a tortoise’s.

‘Some of them, sir,’ he said. ‘It was all a bit confused. A lot of people had come rushing in when Mrs Frostick called for help …’

‘Called? You mean, literally, called?’

Again the blank yearning after understanding.

Wield said, ‘There is a telephone, as you saw, sir. But Mrs Frostick seems to have been a bit hysterical and after she found her father she ran out into the street, yelling and banging at neighbours’ doors.’

‘Neighbours’ doors? Several doors? So there would have been several neighbours? And also anyone casually strolling by who might have been attracted by the commotion?’

‘It’s a nasty night, sir,’ said Wield. ‘Not many pedestrians, I shouldn’t think.’

‘No. Well, all these people, some of whose names you have, what were they doing?’

‘Some of them were upstairs with the deceased …’

‘Was he, by then?’

‘Sir?’

‘Deceased.’

Another inch of retraction.

‘He didn’t look good, sir.’

‘The murdered man did not look good,’ murmured Pascoe, tasting the phrase with a kind of sad pleasure. ‘So, some were upstairs. Some I presume were downstairs …’

‘Yes, sir. Comforting Mrs Frostick, making her cups of tea, and that sort of thing, sir.’

‘In the living-room, was that?’

‘Mrs Frostick was in the living-room,’ said Hector, screwing up his face in search of preciseness. ‘The tea was being made in the kitchen. That’s where the oven is, so they’d have to make it there. Mr Deeks was on his bed, in his bedroom. There’s only one bedroom, at the front. The other bedroom’s the bathroom. Converted.’

Keen to spot glimmers of hope, Pascoe said with the same approval as if he’d been talking about Castle Howard, ‘You’ve got the geography of the house sorted, then.’

The head emerged a little and Hector said, ‘Yes, sir. Well, it’s just like my Auntie Sheila’s in Parish Road round the corner, except that she had a bathroom extension built out over the wash-house in the yard.’

‘An extension? Excellent!’ approved Pascoe. ‘To return to Welfare Lane, what did you do when you got here?’

‘Well, I had a look around, sir, then I went outside to call for assistance.’

‘I see. You had a look around. And what did you see? I presume you saw something?’

The blank was shot through with agony now, the agony of not asking, ‘Like what?’ Pascoe looked at him wriggling, wished he could unhook him and throw him back, sighed and said, ‘You say you went outside to call assistance.’

‘Yes, sir. I thought reception would be better and it were a bit crowded in the house with all them people,’ complained Hector.

Pascoe gave up. It was clear that like the useless lamp-post he resembled, the young constable was not going to cast any useful light.

‘Thanks, Hector,’ he said. ‘That’ll do for now. Stop on the front door, will you, and help keep the sightseers away. Oh, and I’ll want a list of everyone you found in the house when you arrived. Heads of families will do where you didn’t have time to make a comprehensive census.’

Looking puzzled, relieved, and also slightly disappointed, Hector departed.

Wield and Pascoe exchanged glances.

‘Well, at least he was pretty quickly on the scene,’ defended Pascoe, compensating for his final sarcasm.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wield stolidly. ‘He was just in the next street when the call went out. Having a cup of tea at his auntie’s, I suspect.’

‘You’d better tell me everything, Sergeant.’

And with the look of one who had been expecting to do no less ever since he found PC Hector on the scene, Wield began.

Dorothy Frostick, now being treated for shock in the hospital to which she had accompanied her father’s body, had become alarmed when her attempts to telephone the old man had been unanswered earlier in the evening. On arrival at the house, she had discovered him in his bath, bruised and bleeding. Unable to lift him out singlehanded, she had run outside, half hysterical, and roused the neighbours to help.

Principal among these, Wield had ascertained on arrival, was Mrs Tracey Spillings of No. 27, next door, where she was presently attending the Inspector’s pleasure, and pursuing her own in the shape of Dallas from the sound of it.

‘She says the old boy was alive, just, when they got him out of the bath, but reckons he was beyond recall by the time the ambulance got here. The hospital say he was dead on arrival. Mr Longbottom’s been alerted to do the PM in the morning. I didn’t think we need bother Dr Rackfell; the duty man at the City General should be able to give us all the preliminary details. Oh, and someone either rang the Post or Sam Ruddlesdin was listening in. He turned up shortly after I did. Asked a few questions, then set off for the hospital, I think.’

Longbottom was the Chief Pathologist at the City General, Rackfell was the police surgeon on call that night, and Ruddlesdin was the Evening Post’s chief reporter.

‘You’ve got everything sewn up so nicely, Sergeant, I don’t see why you needed to bother me either,’ said Pascoe rather grumpily. ‘Now there’s no one at home at No. 23, you say? Why didn’t whoever it was try there, I wonder? Well, let’s go and see your Mrs Spillings at 27 and let this lot have a bit of space to move in.’

This lot were the forensic team and the photographer who were beginning to move methodically through the tiny house.

‘Incidentally, why did you bother me?’ wondered Pascoe as he led the way out of the front door, ignoring PC Hector’s vain attempt to stand straight at attention. ‘Mr Headingley busy, is he? And Mr Dalziel out of reach?’

George Headingley was the CID Inspector on duty that night. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel would certainly have expected to be informed instantly of any murder on his patch.

‘I’m not sure what’s going on, sir,’ said Wield in a low voice as they walked towards No. 27. ‘Something seems to have come up at the hospital.’

‘Something to do with this case, you mean?’

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Wield. ‘What happened was, Hector buzzed in about this lot, said that the ambulance was just arriving to take Mr Deeks away. It sounded at the time as if the old fellow was still alive, so Mr Headingley said he’d go down to the hospital to see what was what and asked me to get things started down here.’

They’d covered the few yards to 27, but Wield did not offer to knock and the two men sheltered from the driving rain as best they could in the lee of a puce-glossed doorway.

‘He contacted me about half an hour later, maybe more. Told me Deeks was dead and Mrs Frostick was under sedation. Then he said something had come up and it’d be best if I could get hold of you as he was going to be occupied with this other thing. I asked if he wanted me to try to get hold of Mr Dalziel too, but he said no, there was no need for that, no need at all. He was being very cagey, said he’d explain things to you later. Anyway, that’s how I came to be disturbing your evening.’

‘You could have told me this on the phone!’ protested Pascoe. ‘It might have made me a fraction less bad-tempered.’

‘Thought you’d prefer to start off with a clear mind,’ said Wield.

He was right, of course. Anything that could make a good, solid, down-to-earth copper like George Headingley slide out from under a murder inquiry must be serious. Already Pascoe’s mind was spiralling off into the inane of speculation. He only hoped he could drag it back to earth and hold it there till he got this investigation properly under way.

He needn’t have worried. Ballast was at hand.

The fluorescent door was flung open, revealing a brightly lit living-room where the full volume of a television set competed vainly with a clamorous wallpaper whose main motif was the display ritual of birds of paradise in a tropical jungle. Lowering his eyes, Pascoe met the glower of a short but enormously broad woman in a nylon overall which seemed to have been glossed from the same pot as the doorway.

‘Are you buggers too shy to knock, or what?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t rudd that step just so’s a pair of petrified coppers could stamp their hobnails on it. Are you coming in? I haven’t got all bloody night, even if you have!’

The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley was quite forgotten. Meekly Pascoe followed Sergeant Wield into the house.

Chapter 3

‘Die, my dear doctor – that’s the last thing I shall do.’

The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley had its roots in what had happened out on the Paradise Road earlier that evening; or perhaps even in what had happened during Dr John Sowden’s medical training a few years before, for Dr Sowden’s ethical attitudes had matured much more rapidly than his clinical knowledge.

As a second year student, he was already proclaiming a doctor’s first duty was to his patient, not to some semi-religious philosophical abstraction. He found no difficulty with abortion; the mother was his patient, not the foetus. And at the other end of existence, the only difficulty he found with euthanasia was its illegality, but he would certainly not strive officiously to keep alive patients who ought to be switched off.

These were the pragmatic points of view which deserved to be maintained by a modern young doctor. Somewhere within their clinically rigid framework, there should have been a space perfectly tailored to contain the death of Philip Cater Westerman, to whom surgery could at best have given only a couple of years of probably bedridden life. Yet in some peculiarly illogical way, even though he had done everything possible for the man, which in all truth was precious little, it was to Dr Sowden as if the thought that Westerman would be better off dead had somehow transplanted itself into action. Incredibly, he felt guilty! Another few minutes and he would have been dead on arrival like the other two. But because he had technically entered into his care for those last few minutes of life, he, Dr Sowden, prospective snapper-off of life-support systems and generous dispenser of terminal tranquillizers, felt guilty. Or responsible. Or resentful. Or something.

Puzzled and irritated by this feeling, he went to the waiting-room where a nurse had told him that some visitors were eager for news of Mr Westerman.

There were three men there; one fat, flushed and middle-aged, staring gloomily into space, the only sign of life being the movement of his right hand down his right sock as he attempted to scratch the sole of his foot inside his shoe; the second slightly younger and much better preserved, with a reflective self-contained expression on his sallow face and in his hand an expensive-smelling cigar whose smoke tendrils twined themselves around the no-smoking sign above his head; the third, sitting as far away from the other two as possible and looking distinctly the most nervous of the trio, was a uniformed police constable.

Not relatives, decided the doctor; they must be from the car involved in the accident.

Addressing a neutral point of the room, he said, ‘I’m sorry to say Mr Westerman is dead.’

The fat man stopped scratching momentarily; his companion raised his cigar to his lips; the constable stood up.

‘The death will have to be reported to the coroner, of course,’ said Dr Sowden to the constable, thinking that he was keeping the coroner busy tonight. ‘If you’d like to come with me…’

He opened the door and waited. The constable glanced across at the two men as if in search of something but nothing was said.

He followed the doctor into the corridor.

‘How’d it happen?’ Sowden asked as they walked along together.

‘Don’t rightly know,’ said the officer vaguely. ‘He was riding a bike.’

‘That,’ said Sowden judiciously, ‘is surely a circumstance rather than a cause. How was the breathalyser test?’

It was none of his business, of course, and had the policeman merely indicated this, he would probably have felt it was no more than his own bit of pomposity deserved and let the matter drop. But when the constable said evasively, ‘I’m not sure,’ Sowden said sharply, ‘You did breathalyse them? Or rather him? The driver? That was him there, in the waiting-room, I take it?’

The constable’s silence acquiesced.

‘And you don’t know if he’s been breathalysed? Good lord, if even a dying man could smell the whisky, surely you didn’t miss it? I could still smell the stuff in the waiting-room! And what’s he doing there anyway? Shouldn’t he be down at the station, helping with inquiries?’

‘Not up to me, sir,’ said the constable, stung to reply.

Sowden was prevented from any further probing by the intervention of the ward clerk who drew him aside and murmured. ‘There’s a police inspector to see you, Doctor. It’s about Mr Deeks.’

Waiting in his office was a middle-aged man with bushy eyebrows and a kind of weary affability, like a country parson at the end of a long church fête.

‘Headingley,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘Detective-Inspector. It’s about Deeks. Dead, I gather?’

‘Yes. Died in the ambulance.’

‘Ah. His daughter’s here too, is that right?’

‘Yes, but you can’t see her. She’s in shock. I’ve admitted her for the night. She’ll have been sedated by now.’

‘Oh. I see,’ said Headingley, looking towards the frosted panel in the door against which the police constable’s hat could be seen silhouetted. ‘Is that one of our lads out there?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sowden. ‘But nothing to do with Deeks. A road accident. A cyclist was killed. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, you might have a word with your constable. He seems a bit vague about whether the driver was breathalysed or not. And the fellow’s actually here, in the waiting-room, stinking of Scotch!’

‘I’ll look into it,’ said Headingley without enthusiasm. ‘About Deeks, cause of death?’

‘Well, I haven’t done a detailed examination of course, it’s a bit hectic tonight. But I’d be surprised if it wasn’t simple heart failure brought on by stress. He’d been beaten about the head, and there were several cuts around the throat and shoulders, nothing likely in itself to cause death, but the strain of undergoing such treatment must have been tremendous.’

‘Some nasty people about,’ said Headingley gloomily. ‘We’ll need a full scale PM, of course. Mr Longbottom’s not about, I suppose?’

‘I’ll check,’ said Sowden, picking up the phone.

‘And I’ll have a quick word with our lad out there,’ said Headingley.

It took Sowden a couple of minutes to ascertain that the pathologist was not in the hospital. He got the exchange to dial Longbottom’s home number and as it rang, he called, ‘Inspector!’

Headingley returned from his conversation with the uniformed policeman looking very pensive.

‘They’re ringing Mr Longbottom at home,’ said Sowden. ‘You take over. It’s not part of my remit to disturb consultants at this time of night.’

He smiled as he spoke, but Headingley did not respond.

The pathologist himself answered the phone and condescended to be available at 10.30 the following morning. Rather to Sowden’s admiration, Headingley responded to brusqueness with brusqueness. After he had replaced the phone he said, ‘The constable said you said something about even a dying man smelling whisky, sir.’

‘That’s right. Last words that poor devil uttered were, let me get it right, driver, fat bastard, pissed. That’s a pretty straightforward death-bed declaration, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It would seem so,’ said Headingley. ‘Look, would you mind if I used your phone again?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Er, privately, if I may.’

‘Why not?’ said Sowden. ‘They’ll be reporting me for malingering if I stay here much longer anyway.’

He left. As he walked down the corridor which led past the waiting-room, its door opened and the two men emerged. Suddenly Sowden’s absurd buried guilt feeling about Westerman’s death came surging to the surface.

‘Hold on a second,’ he called.

The men stopped and turned.

‘Yes?’ said the cigar smoker.

Sowden looked around. At the end of the corridor he saw the uniformed constable. Waving an imperious summons, he said, ‘I think the police might like a word before you go.’

The men exchanged glances.

‘Oh aye?’ said the fat one.

The constable approached.

‘Officer,’ said Sowden, ‘I just wanted to be quite sure for my own peace of mind that you had in fact administered a breathalyser test.’

The constable was nonplussed.

The fat man belched and said, ‘Who to, friend?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ said Sowden.

He heard footsteps hurrying behind him and turned to see, not without relief, Inspector Headingley approaching fast.

‘I was just inquiring about the breathalyser test, Inspector,’ he said.

‘Yes. All right. Sorry, sir,’ said Headingley.

It may have been that the man was out of breath but there seemed to be in that ‘sorry, sir’ addressed to the fat man something more than mere constabulary courtesy.

‘Excuse me, but just who are you?’ said Sowden. ‘Don’t I know your face?’

The fat man looked at him speculatively.

‘Mebbe you do and mebbe you don’t,’ he said. ‘Dalziel’s the name, Detective-Superintendent Dalziel if you want the whole bloody issue. And you’re Doctor Livingstone, I presume.’

Light dawned.

‘My God! I get it now!’ said Sowden triumphantly.

‘Get what, Doctor?’

‘Why all the fuss and keep it quiet! It’s a nice little cover-up.’

‘Cover-up?’ echoed Dalziel softly. ‘Of what? By who?’

‘Of drunken driving causing death,’ said Sowden challengingly. ‘And by the police of the police.’

It was a dramatic little confrontation beginning to attract some distant notice from nurses and other personnel.

The cigar-smoking man intervened.

‘No one’s asked me who I am.’

‘All right. Let’s have your name and rank too,’ said Sowden.

‘No rank. Plain Mr Charlesworth. Arnold Charlesworth,’ said the man. ‘I’m not a policeman. I’m a bookmaker. And I’m more than happy to be breathalysed. Again.’

Sowden ignored the last word and said, ‘Why should anyone want to breathalyse you, Mr Charlesworth?’

‘It’s the law, Doctor,’ said Charlesworth in a friendly tone. ‘You see, it was me that was driving the car that killed that poor sod back there. The Superintendent here was just my passenger. And my breath test was negative.’

He puffed a wreath of cigar smoke about Sowden’s head.

‘So stuff that in your stethoscope and diagnose it,’ he said.

Chapter 4

‘Either this wallpaper goes or I do.’

Mrs Tracey Spillings was in her forties, all the way down. She had a boldly handsome, no-nonsense kind of face, but her brusque manner did not mean she was entirely bereft of empathy, for, seeing the anguish on Pascoe’s face (Pascoe’s because it took more than mere noise to limn any detectable emotion on Wield’s features), she gestured towards what looked like an empty armchair and said, or rather shouted, ‘She means no disrespect, it’s her only pleasure, switch it off and God knows what she’d be up to, ain’t that right, Mam?’

A step nearer the chair revealed that curled up in its huge chintzy arms was a wizened old lady who reminded Sergeant Wield of a picture in his illustrated H. Rider Haggard showing what happened to Ayesha after her second immersion in the Flame of Life. That this frailness should at one time have contained this vastness was a concept requiring a greater effort of lateral thinking than he was inclined to make.

Pascoe showed why he was an Inspector by shouting, ‘How do you do?’ to the old lady whose eyes never left Dallas. Nor, from the size of the stack of tapes standing next to the VCR, did it look as if they would ever need to.

Mrs Spillings jerked her head towards the inner door which led to the kitchen. Here the noise level was reduced to that of a medium-sized steel foundry, but this was compensated for by a wallpaper design of huge tropical fruit whose violence was intensified by the confined space, the 1000-watt strip lighting, and highly polished kitchen units in the puce which was clearly Mrs Spillings’s favourite colour.

Pascoe introduced himself and started to explain what he wanted, but quickly found that his explanation was neither needed or heeded. Mrs Spillings launched straight into narrative.

‘This is what happened,’ she said. ‘You’d best make notes as it’s the second time of telling and there’ll not be a third. It were an hour back, no, I tell a lie, likely more. I’d just finished the ironing when Dolly Frostick came banging on my door, screaming blue murder. I went straight out, there was others at their doors and windows, but all hanging back, not doing owt. You’ll know how backward folk can be about coming forward in your job, until they think they’re getting something for nothing and then there’s no hanging back. I said Dolly, calm yourself, lass, and tell us what’s up. And she said It’s me dad, it’s me dad! and set off shrieking again. I saw I could be here till next Sunday waiting to get any sense out of her, so I went to have a look for myself. I saw right off the house were in a mess and I said to myself, Hey up! burglars! and I picked up the poker from the grate before I went upstairs.

‘He were lying in the bathtub. The water were all bloody, so I pulled out the plug. I said, Bob, Bob, what the hell have you been up to? but he said nowt, just flickered his eyelids for a second. So I lifted him out of the bath – he were no weight at all, skin and bones, they all go like that, mine’s just the same – and I wrapped him in a towel and I took him into the bedroom and put him on the bed and covered him over.

‘There were a lot of others there by then. Where one goes, they’re quick enough to follow. Not that any on ‘em were good for owt but getting under my feet. I told Minnie Cope from 21 to put kettle on and make a pot of tea – that’s about her limit – and I went downstairs myself and rang for the ambulance and for you lot. Dolly Frostick were back in the house by then. She’d quieted down a bit, so I gave her a cup of tea with a lot of sugar. Next thing someone said the police is here, but it was only that Sheila Jolley’s nephew from Parish Road. He were always a gormless child and he’s not improved much with ageing. I told him it were a serious matter and he’d best make himself useful by getting some proper bobbies down here, so he went off out with his little wireless. Then the ambulance came and they got poor old Bob away, just.

‘I put Dolly in the ambulance with her dad and I sent Minnie Cope along for company. I’d have gone myself only I can’t be sitting around all night in a hospital waiting on some black bugger’s convenience. And I thought when you lot finally got someone with a bit of sense here, he’d likely want to know what’d been going off. So I stayed in the house till this one came. He’s no oil-painting, but at least he’s not simple like that Tony Hector. But he says I’ve got to wait and tell it all again to you, whoever you are. Well, I’ve waited, and I’ve told it and if you write it down, I’ll sign it. Right?’

She spoke dismissively and it took all of Pascoe’s courage for him to say, ‘There are just a couple of questions, Mrs Spillings.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, like, did you hear anything odd next door earlier this evening?’

Mrs Spillings looked at him in disbelief, then opened the door into the living-room, admitting a Force 10 gale of noise.

It was reply sufficient.

Mrs Spillings said, ‘I’ll let you two out the back way. That’ll be the way he got in, you’ll have worked that much out, I dare say. Me, I’ve got proper locks fitted and all, but Bob Deeks never bothered though I kept on telling him. Come on! Don’t hang about.’

She opened the back door and with considerable relief the two policemen exited from the vibrant house. They found themselves in a tiny back yard with a brick wash-house, a bird-table and some kind of evergreen in a tub. Mrs Spillings unlocked a door in the high wall at the bottom of the yard and they went out after her into a narrow lane which ran between the backs of the Welfare Lane houses on one side and those of the Parish Road houses on the other. The lane acted as a wind tunnel, sucking icy darts of rain into it horizontally at vast speed. Mrs Spillings seemed indifferent to the weather. She walked a couple of paces to the next door and gave it a push. It was a ramshackle affair and lurched creakingly on one hinge.

‘That’s how the bugger’ll have got in,’ she reaffirmed. ‘Listen. Bob Deeks were a miserable old sod, but I never found any harm in him. You lot want to get this sorted proper.’

‘We’ll get him all right,’ assured Pascoe.

‘Oh aye, you’ll likely get him,’ said the woman. ‘It’s what he gets that bothers me. Suspended sentence! I’d suspend the buggers!’

‘It’s a tenable position,’ said Pascoe, trying to re-grasp the initiative. ‘I may need to talk to you again.’

‘Any time you like, sunshine,’ came the voice drifting back along the lines of sleet. ‘Any time, as long as I’m not busy.’

Pascoe and Wield went through into the yard of No. 25 and let themselves into the house. The fingerprint man was hard at work in the kitchen.

‘Anything?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Millions,’ came the cheerful answer. ‘I reckon there’s more dabs here than there is in the North Sea.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Pascoe. ‘And thanks a lot. Sergeant, we’ll need everyone who was in the house for elimination. Get a start on it, will you? Combine it with door-to-door along the street. Anyone see or hear anything? Any strangers wandering around? Why am I telling you this? You know the drill at least as well as I do. Use Hector and anyone else you can lay your hands on. I’ll get some extra hands drafted in as soon as I can.’

‘Where will you be, sir?’ inquired Wield.

‘At the hospital,’ said Pascoe. ‘Talking to Mrs Frostick, if possible, and checking on what killed Deeks.’

He paused at the door, turning his already dripping raincoat collar up as the wind outside shrieked its joy at the prospect of having another go at him.

‘And if I find George Headingley in intensive care,’ he added bitterly, ‘it might just about justify getting me mixed up in this lot.’

Chapter 5

‘Bring me all the blotting-paper there is in the house!’

In the event, it took George Headingley only five minutes to convince Pascoe that there were worse things to be mixed up with than murder inquiries. ‘You’ve got yourself a real mess there, George,’ he said feelingly. ‘A real mess!’

‘You can say that again,’ said Headingley. ‘I’m sorry I got you called out, but I got this feeling I was going to be needed mopping up after Fat Andy, and as things are turning out, I was right.’

The two men were talking in the comfortably appointed foyer of the main modern wing of the City General Hospital. Headingley had contacted Wield a couple of minutes after Pascoe’s departure from Welfare Lane, and learning of his destination had hastened to intercept him.

‘Arnie Charlesworth! What the hell was he doing driving round with Arnie Charlesworth?’ demanded Pascoe.

‘Be careful what you say,’ objected Headingley. ‘He’s regarded as a respected member of the community.’

‘We’ve all got things we regard as respected members,’ said Pascoe, ‘but we’re in trouble if we start flashing them round in public.’

‘You know,’ said Headingley, ‘you’ve always been Andy’s golden boy, but there’s no need to start sounding like him! All right, so Charlesworth’s a bookie and a bit of a hard case, and not the kind of man we should be seen taking favours from. But he’s completely legit, and he’s a big charity man. The mayor’s parlour, the Rotary, the Masons, anywhere they make decisions and influence people, he’s welcome.’

‘All right. So it’s only suspicious sods like you and me who’ll be worried about Dalziel hobnobbing with this respectable citizen.’

‘I hope so,’ said Headingley. ‘But I’ve got a nose for trouble, Peter. It’s not the Charlesworth connection that bothers me. It’s this other thing. And it’s Sam Ruddlesdin who’s got a pretty sensitive nose himself. He rang me a little while back, asked about the Deeks killing. I told him you were on the case and would, I was sure, be only too pleased to cooperate fully with the Press. Then he said, dead casual like, Oh, by the way, this accident out on the Paradise Road, Mr Dalziel was a passenger in the car, is that right? I said I believed he was. He asked if he was OK and I said I understood so, and he said that he believed Arnie Charlesworth was driving and I said yes, and then he said, But it was in fact Mr Dalziel’s car? That shook me rigid. I’d no idea if it was or not. I’d just assumed it had been Charlesworth’s car. Well, I waffled round it, but it got me worried. And then something else began to worry me too. Listen.’

Pascoe listened. At the head of the foyer were six lifts, seemingly in constant use even at this hour. They announced their arrival with a melodic ping! The pings were pitched at slightly different levels and as Pascoe listened their interval and sequence suggested the communications code from Close Encounters. At last! he thought. An explanation of why hospitals always give the impression of being run by aliens disguised as human beings.

‘See the pay-phone over there?’ said Headingley. ‘All the time Ruddlesdin was talking I could hear those bloody pings! The bastard was here!’

‘So what?’ said Pascoe. ‘He came round here to check on Deeks. Sergeant Wield told me.’

‘Mebbe. But he must have got here not long after I’d got Mr Dalziel out of the place. Christ knows what that daft doctor said to him.’

‘But what could Sowden tell him?’ asked Pascoe. ‘That he thought the old fellow said something about the driver being pissed before he died? What’s that mean? Anyway, why should Sowden get himself involved in something so vague?’

‘Christ knows,’ said Headingley. ‘He seemed to have managed to work up a fair head of steam for some reason. Even when Charlesworth said he was the driver, this didn’t calm him down. Not that I didn’t have some sympathy with him. Bloody Charlesworth just stood there, puffing out cigar smoke, a bit of a sneer on his face like he was saying, That’s my story. Prove different.’

‘George,’ said Pascoe quietly. ‘You don’t think there could be anything different to prove, do you?’

Headingley shook his head.

‘No. No. Not Andy, it’s not his style. Mind you, Peter, he was as drunk as I’ve seen him, no doubt about that. I always thought he was unsinkable, but by Christ he’d hit an iceberg tonight. I’ve as good as locked him in his office and I told the lads on the exchange that no calls were to be put through to him.’

‘You’re taking a risk, aren’t you?’ said Pascoe admiringly.

Headingley shook his head.

‘Not me. Soon as Ruddlesdin rang off, I got on to the DCC and put him in the picture in case the Post started after him. I’m covered, Peter. The DCC approved my action, even unto the passing of this Deeks inquiry to you. Not that I wouldn’t rather have it back and leave some other poor sod to deal with old chubby cheeks!’

‘Well, thanks for putting me in the picture,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll tread carefully with the dastardly doctor.’

‘You do that,’ said Headingley. ‘Just you be nice and noncommittal if he starts pushing. By the way, I told him I was just holding the fort, so to speak, till our murder expert could be brought off another case. Didn’t want him thinking I was more worried about my Chief than about an investigation. So better wear your deerstalker!’

The two men separated, Pascoe continuing into the depths of the hospital where he finished up kicking his heels for twenty minutes in a tiny office. The desk top was covered in papers, mostly handwritten in a scrawl which convinced him that doctors did not after all develop a specially illegible hand just for prescriptions. Sowden arrived suddenly and quietly enough to discover him trying to interpret one of the sheets.

‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘The ace detective, I presume. Trying to keep your hand in?’

Somewhat abashed, Pascoe dropped the paper back on to the desk and said, ‘Sorry, but it’s a bit like an archaeologist stumbling on the Rosetta stone. I’m Pascoe. Detective-Inspector Peter. How do you do?’

He held out his hand. After a second, Sowden shook it.

‘John Sowden,’ he said. ‘Sorry you’ve had to hang around, but things happen in convoys out there. With luck I may have two minutes before the next lot heave into view. So what can I do for you? I think I told the other chap all I could.’

Pascoe looked at him sympathetically. In his twenties with the kind of dark continental good looks that must have the nurses falling over backwards for him, he looked at the moment too tired to take advantage of such gymnastics.

‘Yes, I’ve looked at what you told Mr Headingley,’ he said. ‘There are a couple of things I’d like to ask you, though. And I’d like a look at the body for myself.’

‘Just in case I’ve missed anything?’ said Sowden.

‘Not really,’ said Pascoe. ‘But I bet if a cop tells you that your rear offside light isn’t working, you always walk round the car to have a look.’

Something vaguely related to a smile touched Sowden’s face.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll take you along and you can ask your questions as we go.’

They set off together down the corridor, the doctor’s pace a little faster than Pascoe found comfortable.

‘It’s really a matter of what might have caused these wounds on Deeks’s head and neck,’ he said.

‘At a guess I’d say that most of the contusions could have been the result of simple blows from a fist,’ said Sowden.

‘Hard enough to damage the knuckles?’ asked Pascoe.

‘What? Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Sowden. ‘Possibly. I don’t really know. This isn’t really my field, you know. You’re the murder expert, so I was told. Or was the other chap exaggerating?’

‘Very likely,’ said Pascoe. ‘And the cuts? What kind of instrument should I be telling my chaps to look out for?’

‘I don’t know. A knife.’

‘Blunt knife, sharp knife?’ prompted Pascoe. ‘Broad blade or narrow? A knife for stabbing or a knife for cutting?’

‘Something with a sharp point,’ said Sowden. ‘Yes, certainly that.’

‘And sharp on both sides of the point? Like a stiletto? Or a round-bladed point, like a long nail, or a spike?’

‘More like a stiletto except broader,’ said Sowden, becoming interested. ‘Yes, there was certainly evidence of the sharp point digging in, with the skin and flesh being severed cleanly on both sides. Here we are. See for yourself.’

The chill air of the hospital morgue touched the skin with none of the violence of the wild cold November wind outside, but Pascoe did not have to pause to consider his preference. There were three bodies as yet unparcelled for the night. Sowden glanced at the labels on their toes, his face troubled.

‘Not a good night for the old,’ he said. ‘This is your man. Robert Deeks.’

He pulled back the cover. Robert Deeks, his face a player’s mask of grief with its deep hollow cheeks and gaping toothless mouth, stared accusingly up at them. Quickly and efficiently, Sowden pointed to the location of the wounds and bruises and offered his interpretation of them.

‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe, making notes. ‘That’ll do fine till Mr Longbottom takes a look.’

He meant no slight, but tired men are easily piqued, and Sowden, covering Deeks’s face with an abrupt movement, pointed to the body on the next slab and said, ‘At least you won’t need Longbottom to tell you how this one died.’

‘No? Why’s that, Doctor?’ asked Pascoe courteously, though he had no doubt of the answer.

‘Philip Cater Westerman,’ said Sowden, drawing down the sheet. ‘Road accident. Hadn’t you heard?’

Philip Cater Westerman had contrived to pass away with an expression of amused bafflement on his face which was not altogether inappropriate.

‘Hard to keep track of all the road deaths, more’s the pity,’ evaded Pascoe. ‘And the third? What about him?’

He thought his efforts to divert the trend of the conversation were going to fail for a moment, but Sowden contented himself with a sardonic stare, then covered Westerman’s face.

‘This one? Straightforward. Poor devil died of exposure on a playing field, would you believe? You couldn’t go three hundred yards in any direction, so they tell me, without hitting houses.’

He drew back the cover and Pascoe saw Thomas Arthur Parrinder’s thin aquiline face, which might have been carved in marble except for a stain of discolouration round a patch of broken skin on the left temple. Pascoe sniffed. A non-medical smell had caught his nose. It was rum.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Drunk, was he?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Sowden. ‘The smell’s from a half bottle of rum he had in his pocket. It smashed when he fell but as far as I could see, the seal on the cap was unbroken.’

‘You’re doing our work now,’ said Pascoe drily. ‘So, what did happen?’

‘Slipped in the mud as he was taking a short cut across the recreation ground. Broke his hip, poor sod. He must have lain there for hours. It was such a nasty night, no one was out. He wasn’t very warmly clothed. Hypothermia kills hundreds of old folk indoors every winter. Expose them outdoors…’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘Terrible. That bruise on his head…’

‘He must have gone down a real wallop,’ said Sowden. ‘Cracked his head on a stone; it probably stunned him so that by the time he was conscious enough to cry for help, he’d already have been weakened so much by the cold that his voice would be too feeble to carry far.’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘Probably. Which hip did he break?’

‘Hip. Let me think. The right one. Why?’

‘He’d break it by falling on it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean it’d be a fracture by impact rather than by stress. I’m sorry to sound so untechnical.’

‘No, I take your meaning,’ said Sowden. ‘By impact, yes. I see. What you’re saying is –’

‘What I’m asking,’ interrupted Pascoe, ‘is whether you wouldn’t expect any damage to the head incurred in the same fall that broke his hip to be on the right side also?’

‘It would be more likely,’ agreed Sowden. ‘But the body is capable of almost infinite contortions, especially an old, poorly coordinated body out of control in a fall. As for a mugging, which I take it you’re hinting at, I looked in his pockets to get his name. I got it from his pension book which had several bank notes folded inside it. And there was also a purse, I recall, with a lot of silver. No, I think you and your colleagues, Inspector, could usefully take a course in suspicious circumstances, what to follow up, what to ignore.’

Again that note of challenge. Pascoe made a note of Parrinder’s name and said, ‘Thank you for your help, Doctor. Now I know how busy they keep you here, so I won’t hold you up any more.’

Pascoe was congratulating himself on having evaded any head-on conflict. He guessed that after Sowden had enjoyed a few hours’ sleep, he would relegate the road accident to that deep-delved and well-locked chamber where doctors and policemen alike try, usually successfully, to store yesterday’s horrors as they relax and prepare themselves for today’s.

But this one was not yet ready for inhumation. With no great pleasure he recognized a lanky figure chatting intimately to a nurse outside the doctor’s office. It was Sam Ruddlesdin, the Post reporter.

Inclination told him to keep walking by with a cheerful wave of the hand. Instinct, however, told him that Ruddlesdin would only have returned to the hospital if he had some mischief in hand, and it might be well to get a scent of it. So when Ruddlesdin greeted him with a cheerful, ‘Hello, Mr Pascoe. How are you?’ he stopped and said, ‘As well as can be expected, in this place, at this time. What brings you here?’

‘Same as you, I dare say,’ said Ruddlesdin with a saturnine grin. He had a good line in saturnine grins to go with a nice line in scurrility, which made him an entertaining companion for about two and a half pints, and generally speaking his relationship with the police was finely balanced on a fulcrum of mutual need.

Pascoe said, ‘You mean the Welfare Lane killing? Mr Deeks?’

‘That too,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘I was down there earlier, before you in fact. Talked to Sergeant Wield. He seemed to think Mr Headingley would be on the case. But when I was here earlier, I gathered from Dr Sowden that he’d just left with Superintendent Dalziel and that you were taking over. The murder specialist. Is that an official designation in Mid-Yorkshire now, Inspector?’

‘It doesn’t carry any extra money if it is,’ said Pascoe, looking at Sowden, who returned his gaze defiantly with just a hint of guilt. ‘Anyway, you’ve caught up with me now. Shall we talk on our way out to the car park?’

Ruddlesdin said, ‘I’d certainly be glad of the chance to talk with you, Mr Pascoe, but I’d really like a quick word with Dr Sowden first.’

He looked at Sowden, who made no move to invite him into the office; then at Pascoe, who made no move to take his leave. Ruddlesdin let another saturnine grin slip down from beneath the brim of his slouch hat.

‘It was really just to check again on what you thought Mr Westerman said before he died, Doctor,’ he said.

‘Look,’ said Sowden, suddenly uneasy. ‘I’m not sure I should really be talking about this with you. A patient’s dying words, I mean, in a sense they’re, I don’t know, confidential, I suppose.’

‘Like in confession?’ said Ruddlesdin, swapping the grin for a parody of piety. ‘Yes, I can see that. And I’m not going to quote you, Doctor. Well, probably not. But something else came up. You see, after I talked to you earlier, I did a little bit of research on the ground. Paradise Road runs past The Duke of York where Mr Westerman had been drinking, past The Towers, the old folks’ holiday home, which was where he was heading, and then past nowhere at all for another three miles till you arrive at Paradise Hall Hotel. I can’t afford their restaurant prices very often myself, but I have been there. Very nice. Excellent menu, top class clientele. Just the place for a pair of distinguished citizens to eat, I thought. And I was right! Mr Charlesworth and Mr Dalziel ate there tonight.

‘Mr Abbiss, the owner, was very discreet, but I got just a hint that Mr Dalziel had been a trifle the worse for wear when he left. Not that that signifies, as he was the passenger, of course. Only…’

Pascoe refused to be the one who said, ‘Only what?’ but Sowden was less resilient.

‘Only what?’ he said.

‘Only when I called in at The Towers just to get some background on the poor old chap who’d died, I got talking to a Mrs Warsop who is by way of being their bursar. Quite by chance it seems that she too was dining at Paradise Hall tonight. Now, she doesn’t know Mr Dalziel from Adam, but she is acquainted with Mr Charlesworth by sight. And as she was leaving the Hall, she saw them in the car park together, getting into a car. And the strange thing is, she’s quite adamant about it, that it wasn’t Mr Charlesworth, but the (I quote) fat drunk one who got into the driver’s seat and drove away!’

Chapter 6

‘I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.’

Andrew Dalziel awoke to sunlight and birdsong, both of which filtered softly through grey net curtains. It was almost a month since, following his usual habit on bad mornings of hauling himself upright with the help of the hideous folk-weave drapes which were a sort of memorial to his long-fled wife, he had pulled the curtain rail right off the wall. Time had not yet effected any great healing, and now only the flimsy net and an erratic window-cleaner maintained the decencies. There was no way, however, that the net could maintain his weight, so now, belching and breaking wind, he pursued his alternative levée strategy of rolling sideways till he hit the floor, then using the bed for vertical leverage.

Upright, he had the misfortune to glimpse himself in a long wall mirror. Clad in a string vest and purple and green checked socks, it was an image to engage the unwary eye like a basilisk. He approached closer and addressed himself.

‘Some talk of Alexander,’ he said softly, ‘and some of Hercules.’

Slowly he peeled off the vest. The string had printed a pattern of pink diamonds over his torso, from broad shoulders down to broader belly. He scratched the pattern gently as a musician might run his fingers over harp strings. His head felt heavy, his tongue felt furry, his legs…it occurred to him that he couldn’t feel his legs at all.

He nodded his huge head, like a bear who sees the dogs circling and, though chained to a post, yet believes that the sport may still be his. His strength he did not doubt. Nothing was wrong with him physically that a scalding shower and an even scaldinger pot of tea had not a thousand times already set to rights. But his mind was troubled by something like the sound of a bicycle wheel whistling round in the rain.

The shower and the tea had to be negotiated with care, but they allayed the basic physical symptoms sufficiently for him to risk a small Scotch to calm the mind. And now, he told himself with the assurance of one who believed in a practical, positive and usually physical response to most of life’s problems, all he needed to complete this repair of normality was a platterful of egg, sausage, bacon, tomatoes and fried bread. Bitter experience had taught him in the years since his wife’s departure to eschew home catering. It wasn’t that a basic cuisine was beyond his grasp; it was the cleaning up afterwards that defeated him. And while a man could live with a broken curtain rail, only a beast would tolerate fat-congealed frying-pans. Fortunately the police canteen did an excellent breakfast. Gourmet cooking they might not provide, but what did that matter to a man who – for Pascoe’s benefit anyway – affected to believe that cordon bleu was a French road-block? And a slight blackening round the edge of a fry-up was to a resurrected copper what the crust on old port was to a wine connoisseur – a sign of readiness.

His ponderous jowls shaved to danger point, his few sad last grey hairs brushed to a high gloss, his heavy frame clad in an angel-white shirt and an undertaker-black suit, with knife-edge creases breaking on mirror-bright shoes, he set off at a stately though deceptively rapid pace towards the city centre.

He was, of course, carless. His reason for being carless he continued to keep carefully out of his mind. Nor did he in any way appear to register the momentary lull in noise as he entered the canteen. To Edna, the weary siren behind the counter, he said, ‘Full house, love.’

Under his approving gaze, she filled his personal willow-patterned plate till the pattern disappeared. Seizing a bottle of tomato sauce from the counter, he made for an empty table, sat down and began to eat.

It was here that George Headingley found him. He sat down on the opposite side of the table, himself a large man, but dwarfed by Dalziel, an effect intensified by something in his demeanour of the schoolboy waiting to be noticed before the headmaster’s desk.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘’Morning, George,’ said Dalziel. ‘This murder in Welfare Lane – Deeks, is it? – how’re we doing?’

‘Well, Pascoe’s handling that, sir,’ said Headingley, slightly taken aback. Of course, Dalziel had been in the station for an hour or so last night, but he hadn’t given the impression he was taking anything in.

‘So you said. What made you dig him out? Weren’t it his lassie’s birthday yesterday?’

Headingley decided that straightforward was the best route.

‘The DCC’s just come in, sir. He’d like a word if you don’t mind.’

‘Is that what he said? If I don’t mind?’ said Dalziel disbelievingly.

‘Well, not exactly,’ admitted Headingley.

‘Oh aye. Well, you go and tell him, George; you tell him…’

Dalziel paused, attempted to spear a rasher of bacon, was defeated by its adamantine crispness and had to scoop it up and crunch it whole: ‘You tell him I’ll be along right away.’

Three minutes later, his plate clean and his mouth scoured with another cup of red-hot tea, he made his way upstairs.

The Deputy Chief Constable was not a man he liked. It was Dalziel’s not inaudibly expressed view that he couldn’t solve a kiddies’ crossword puzzle and had only been promoted out of Traffic because he couldn’t master the difference between left and right. More heinously, he rarely dispensed drink and when he did it tended to be dry sherry in glasses so narrow that it was like reading a thermometer looking for the bloody stuff, which in any case Dalziel regarded as Spanish goat-piss.

‘Andy!’ said the DCC heartily. ‘Come you in. Sit you down. Look, I’m sorry, thing is this, we have got ourselves a bit of a problem.’

This recently developed speech style, modelled on that of a Tory cabinet minister being interviewed on telly, was taken by many as confirmation of rumours of the DCC’s political ambition. A desirable stepping-stone to becoming first a personality, then a candidate, was the acquisition of the office of Chief Constable when the present incumbent, Tommy Winter, retired in nine months’ time. Winter, who had never shown a great deal of enthusiasm for his right-hand man, had none the less given him a late opportunity to shine by suddenly deciding to take a large accumulation of back-leave visiting his daughter in the Bahamas. The DCC had decided the old boy was at last getting demob-happy, but now, regarding the menacing bulk of his head of CID, he began to wonder uneasily if Winter could have had some presentiment of this potentially scandalous development.

‘You’ve got a problem, you say?’ said Dalziel, leaning forward. ‘How can CID help? Something personal, is it? Someone putting the black on, eh? Photos, mebbe? You can rely on me, sir.’

The man was bloody impossible, thought the DCC wearily. Impossible. It was a small consolation that no television interviewer in the world could even approach his awfulness!

Like Headingley before him, he decided to ignore dangerous side-roads and press straight on.

‘You were involved in a car accident last night,’ he said.

‘I was in a car that was involved in an accident, that’s right,’ said Dalziel.

‘It was your car,’ said the DCC flatly. ‘So you were involved whether you were driving or not.’

‘Whether?’ said Dalziel wonderingly. ‘There’s no whether about it! I wasn’t, and that’s that!’

‘I’ve had the editor of the Post on to me,’ pursued the DCC. ‘One of his reporters has unearthed a witness who says she saw you getting into the driver’s seat of your car outside the Paradise Hall Restaurant and driving away.’

‘She?’

‘She. A lady of unimpeachable character and, as far as I know, excellent eyesight.’

‘She saw me driving away from Paradise Hall?’

‘So she alleges.’

Dalziel scratched his armpit thoughtfully.

‘Had she been drinking, mebbe?’ he said finally.

‘Not so that anyone noticed,’ said the DCC acidly. ‘Though you apparently had.’

‘That’s likely true,’ said Dalziel seriously. ‘That’ll be why I didn’t drive. Arnie Charlesworth drove. Likely you’ll know him, being a gambling man? Arnie’s not a drinker himself. Was once, now he doesn’t touch the stuff. It’ll all be in his statement. You’ve got his statement, have you, sir?’

‘Yes, Andy. I’ve got his statement.’

‘Grand!’ said Dalziel. ‘Now let’s get on to this problem of yours, shall we?’

The DCC sighed deeply and turned half-profile to Dalziel’s camera-rigid gaze.

‘Andy, what you must understand is our need to appear absolutely impartial in this. Fortunately the editor of the Post is as aware as I am of the need to foster good and mutually beneficial police, public and press relationships.’

‘You mean he doesn’t want us stopping his paper vans parking on double yellow lines,’ growled Dalziel.

‘He has behaved very responsibly by putting the information in my hands…’

‘Information? What information? I’ve told you what happened. Is someone trying to make a liar out of me?’

Ignoring the belligerent stiffening of Dalziel’s body which had the effect, noted with terror by many a criminal, of turning what seemed mere flab into solid muscle, the DCC said, ‘There’s also the matter of Dr Sowden at the City General who claims that Mr Westerman, the deceased, said something before dying which appeared to imply that he thought you were the driver of the vehicle that hit him. The testimony of Mrs Warsop, that’s the witness in the car park, and of Dr Sowden could certainly be presented in a very damaging way if the Post decided to use it. Worse, of course, it might be that one of the less scrupulous national papers would take it up.’

Dalziel stood up.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said angrily. ‘Bloody journalists – I’ve shit ‘em! Who runs the police in this country? Us or the bloody newspapers?’

Suddenly the DCC had had enough too. His tellypersona vanished like a whore’s smile at an empty wallet. He became total policeman.

‘Sit down!’ he bellowed. ‘And shut up! Now, Mr Dalziel, let me tell you something else. All that’s bothering the Press at the moment is whether a drunken police officer is trying to wriggle out of a manslaughter charge. That bothers me too, but what bothers me almost as much is what the hell you were doing consorting with Arnold Charlesworth?’

‘Why? What’s wrong with Arnie?’ asked Dalziel, slowly subsiding.

‘Has it somehow escaped your notice, you who usually manage to know what’s in my in-tray before I get near it,’ said the DCC with heavy sarcasm, ‘that Arnold Charlesworth is currently being investigated by Customs and Excise for evasion of betting tax? Just imagine what the Press will make of that when it comes out? Senior police officer entertained by crooked bookie! What the hell are you playing at, Superintendent?’

Dalziel said defiantly, ‘There’s nowt been proved against Arnie. He’s an old mate of mine. Any road, I notice you don’t ask who else was eating with us.’

‘Not the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ said the DCC, essaying wit.

‘No. Barney Kassell, Major Barney Kassell.’

‘And who the devil’s he? Something big in the Sally Army?’

‘No,’ said Dalziel. ‘He’s Sir William Pledger’s estate manager. You’ll have heard of Sir William Pledger, I expect, sir? Big mate of Mr Winter’s I gather. Major Kassell knows Mr Winter pretty well too, from arranging shooting parties and the like.’

The DCC was taken aback. William Pledger, a Harold Wilson knight who’d survived the elevation, was a powerful figure in the financial world. He’d made his reputation in the Far East in the ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, and was currently Chairman of Van Bellen International Holdings which was to date the nearest thing to efficient supranationalism to emerge out of the EEC. Pledger’s shooting parties on his Yorkshire estate were usually high-powered affairs, with guests flown in from Europe, though the local connection was not neglected, as evidenced by the Chief Constable’s frequent presence. Pledger’s estate manager would certainly be a different kettle of fish from a local bookie, no matter how rich.

Dalziel pressed home his advantage.

‘Arnie Charlesworth’s been out to Haycroft Grange, shooting, too. That’s how he knows the Major. Thought I might try it myself. Sir.’

The DCC who’d never even had a sniff of such an invitation said, ‘I’m not much in favour of blood sports myself, Andy. Anyway, this is all beside the point. A policeman’s got to be more careful than anyone else, you know that. What’s all right for the public at large may not be all right for him.’

He frowned and went on, ‘Look, you know how some people like to make mountains out of molehills. What would seem a good idea to me would be for you to keep your head down for a couple of days. You must be a bit shaken up. Have a couple of days off. You’ve got plenty of back-leave, you’ve been pushing yourself a bit hard lately, Andy.’

‘Oh. You want me to take some of my holidays then, not sick leave?’ said Dalziel mildly.

‘Holiday, sick leave, whatever you like!’ snapped the DCC. ‘Go to Acapulco, Tibet, anywhere, so long as you don’t talk to Ruddlesdin or any reporter, or anyone! Understand?’

Dalziel nodded and rose.

The DCC as if encouraged by this silence said boldly, ‘Andy, you’re quite sure you weren’t driving?’

The fat man didn’t even pause but left the room without closing the door behind him.

It was not a very positive gesture, but the best he could manage. Usually he regarded any confrontation with the DCC as a mismatch, but today had been different. The trouble was of course that the long streak of owl-shit had a secret advantage today in the shape of an old man looking up into the headlamp-bright tracers of rain with unblinking blue eyes. Dalziel could see him now if he wished, suspected he might start seeing him even if he didn’t wish. It was a ghost that was going to take some exorcising.

‘Hello, Mr Dalziel. What’s your pleasure this time?’

It was Edna, the canteen girl. For some reason his feet had brought him back to the basement while his mind wandered aimlessly in the past.

‘Full house,’ he said automatically.

‘Again?’

Of course, he’d had it once. On the other hand, it was a silly copper who quarrelled with his feet. Exorcism probably required as full a stomach as most human activities.

‘Yes, please,’ he said firmly. ‘And this time, love, see if you can’t get them rashers really crisp.’

Chapter 7

‘What does it signify?’

Peter Pascoe allowed himself to be rehearsed in the whereabouts of fridge, oven, and his clean underwear for some minutes before interrupting with, ‘And that’s a chair, and that’s a table, and there’s a door! Darling, I haven’t lived with a liberated woman these past seventy years, or whatever it is, without becoming moderately self-sufficient.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Ellie. ‘And any more of that crap and I’ll leave Rosie in your tender care while I drive off to Orburn.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Pascoe. ‘Even her muckiest nappy’s a pleasanter prospect than anything I’ve got to look forward to. Still, I suppose it’s good timing. It could’ve spoilt a weekend when you were staying at home.’

He kissed the pair of them fondly.

‘See you tomorrow night, then,’ he said. ‘Love to the old folk.’

It was nearly ten o’clock, a lateness explained though possibly not justified by the hour at which he’d finally got to bed. Pascoe assured himself that the lie-in had been necessary in the interests of his personal efficiency, but he wondered whether he’d have chanced it if he hadn’t suspected Dalziel was going to have other things on his mind that morning than checking on his staff.

His first stop was the hospital where he found that Longbottom, the pathologist, presumably eager to take advantage on the golf-course of the bright November day which had succeeded the stormy night, had already started on Robert Deeks.

A native of Yorkshire whom education had deprived of his accent but not of the directness which usually accompanied it, Longbottom summed up his findings in simple non-technical language.

‘You can try murder, but it’ll probably end as manslaughter,’ he said. ‘Injuries to the head and face caused by slapping and punching. Possibly by someone wearing a leather glove. Injuries to neck, shoulders and scalp caused by narrow-bladed double-edged knife with a sharp point. None of these injuries severe enough to be fatal of itself. But he was old and frail. I’m surprised he was still living by himself, really. Cause of death, in lay terms, shock. Oh, and there was a bit of bathwater in his lungs. He must have gone under a couple of times.’

‘Been forced under, you mean.’

‘Could be,’ said Longbottom. ‘Why not? I presume whoever knocked him about was trying to force something out of him. Certainly wasn’t self-defence. But that’s your problem, Inspector. Now, let’s see. What else do we have?’

He checked a list.

‘Road accident and a broken hip with death from exposure? No urgency there, I presume. I’ll leave them over for a rainy day.’

‘I think,’ said Pascoe hesitantly, ‘though it’s nothing to do with me directly, that an early report on the road accident would be appreciated.’

‘Oh?’ said Longbottom. ‘All right. If I must, I must.’

‘And as a matter of interest,’ pushed Pascoe, ‘the other one, I happened to see him last night. His right hip was broken, I believe, as a result of a fall. And he’s got a nasty bruise on the left side of his head which Dr Sowden seemed to think could have been caused in the same fall. I’d be interested in your opinion.’

‘Trying to get me to drop a colleague in it, Inspector?’ said Longbottom, smiling thinly. ‘Dr Sowden? Young man, rather pretty?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I know him. Good face for a doctor. Fatigue just makes it a bit more romantically haggard. Let’s have a look.’

Thinking that Longbottom’s rather frighteningly sallow and bony features perhaps explained his decision to concentrate on the dead rather than the living, Pascoe followed him to where an attendant, sensitive to his master’s wishes, had already produced Thomas Arthur Parrinder’s cadaver.

Longbottom ran his fingers along the fractured hip and studied the contusion through a magnifying-glass.

‘Thinking of assault, are you?’ he said.

‘It’s a conditioned reflex,’ said Pascoe.

‘Any special reason?’

‘No,’ admitted Pascoe. ‘As far as I know there’s no evidence of robbery or of any other person being involved.’

‘As far as you know?’ repeated Longbottom sarcastically. ‘So this is another one that’s really nothing to do with you? You must find time hanging heavy on your hands, Inspector. Or do you just want to prove Dr Sowden is fallible?’

Pascoe considered this. He didn’t think it was true, but when it came down to it, he wouldn’t be too troubled if he undermined that young man’s confidence, and it might even persuade him to greater discretion in the Westerman business.

‘If you could just tell me your opinion,’ he said.

‘No opinion without proper examination,’ said Longbottom. ‘That’s one of the few perks of working with corpses. But you might care to examine the ground where he fell and see if you can find a stone or some other solid protuberance at least two inches in diameter. Or is that someone else’s business?’

At the hospital inquiry desk, Pascoe discovered that Mrs Dolly Frostick had discharged herself an hour earlier. This was a nuisance as it meant he would have to make another diversion to see her at home.

Home, he discovered from the hospital records, was 352, Nethertown Road, a ribbon development of nineteen-thirties semis running alongside the main easterly exit route from the city. In front of the house, like a matchseller’s tray, a tiny square of green-tinged concrete was set with boxes of roses and other ornamental shrubs. This geometric artificiality contrasted strangely with the front of 352's Siamese twin, 354, where an untended lawn and flower-beds had been allowed to run riot, and summer’s profusion lay wrecked but not drowned by the storms of winter.

A small man with a thin moustache and a discontented face answered his ring.

‘Yes?’ he said aggressively.

Pascoe introduced himself with the aplomb of one used to being greeted as something between a brush-salesman and a Jehovah’s Witness.

The man was Alan Frostick and while part of his aggression sprang from a natural instinct to defend his wife, a great deal of it seemed to be chronic and indiscriminate.

‘You’ll not have caught anyone yet?’ he said as he closed the door behind Pascoe with a last glower at his concrete garden. ‘More stick, that’s what’s needed. More stick.’

Whether the extra stick was to be applied to the criminals or to the police was not clear. A door whose woodwork had been painted over with brown varnish, into which a wood grain pattern had then been combed, opened into a main sitting-room where two women sat. Mr Frostick had at least not made the little man’s common matrimonial error of biting off more than he could chew. His wife was a good inch shorter than he was, a not unhandsome woman in her forties, perhaps even a pocket Venus in her day, but now haggard with grief and fatigue. Her friend, introduced as Mrs Gregory from next door, looked to be in much the same state, though whether this was sympathetic or merely coincidental did not at first emerge.

Mrs Gregory offered to make a cup of tea. Alan Frostick sat on the sofa next to his wife and put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

‘Make it quick, will you?’ he said. ‘She’s been upset enough.’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘Of course. Mrs Frostick, could you tell me what happened last night? I believe you tried to ring your father earlier in the evening?’

‘That’s right,’ said the woman in a reassuringly firm and controlled voice. ‘About half past six. Alan had just had his tea. I always like to ring him if I haven’t been able to get round in the day.’

‘Do you go round most days?’ inquired Pascoe.

‘When I can. It’s two bus rides away, you see, so it’s not always convenient. It used to be all right a couple of times a week maybe, but for the last year or so, since he had his turn…’

‘His turn?’

‘Yes. He was ill, had to go into hospital. When he came out, he stayed with us for a bit till he was fit again. But he was never the same.’

‘But he became fit enough to go back to his own home?’

‘He wanted to,’ interrupted Frostick. ‘That’s what he was always saying. Only place for a man is his own home. He wanted to go back.’

Mrs Frostick nodded agreement.

‘That’s when we put the phone in…’

‘And the bath,’ interrupted her husband. ‘Don’t forget that bath.’

‘Yes, dear. But it was the phone that was most important. It meant I could keep in touch easily. And Mrs Spillings next door was very good at keeping an eye on him. Anyway, when he didn’t answer at first, I wasn’t bothered. He might easily have gone down the road for a paper. And even when I tried again later on and still got no reply, I wasn’t too worried. He usually has a bath on a Friday evening and he can never hear the phone in the bathroom. But by the time it got to eight o’clock, I was getting worried.’

‘You didn’t think of phoning one of the neighbours?’

‘Well, Tracey, that’s Mrs Spillings, doesn’t have the phone. In fact there’s no one in the Lane with it that I know well enough to bother. So I thought I’d best get myself round there. It was a terrible night but I was lucky with the first bus. Well, it stops just opposite and you can almost see it coming from our front window.’

‘I see. You went by bus,’ said Pascoe. There was a wooden garage beside the house and he felt sure he’d glimpsed a car through the partially opened door.

‘It’s Alan’s club night,’ explained Mrs Frostick quickly. ‘He was out with the car. I had a long wait for the next bus, though, and it was well after nine by the time I got there. I rang the bell, he always likes you to ring the bell, he’s that independent. But when he didn’t come, I let myself in with my key. I shouted out to him and had a look downstairs. When I saw what a mess things were in, I began to think something terrible must have happened, I was almost too frightened to go upstairs but I went anyway. I was still shouting though I think that now I was really shouting to warn off anyone who might be up there, if you know what I mean. I went up and up, it’s just a short stair but it seemed to go on forever somehow, and even though I thought I was ready for the worst, when I went into the bathroom and saw him lying there, I…’

The transition from control to collapse was sudden and complete. One moment the voice was firm, the narrative clear and remarkably frank in its analysis of her feelings: the next she was weeping and sobbing convulsively. Frostick patted her shoulders helplessly and glared at Pascoe as if he were to blame. Mrs Gregory returned with a tray set with teacups, which she carefully deposited on an old-fashioned sideboard before sitting next to the weeping woman on the arm of the sofa and taking her in an embrace which completely excluded Frostick.

After a while the sobs declined to an occasional soft-bursting bubble and the narrative resumed.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector. When I saw him, I just stood and shrieked. I tried to lift him out, but even though he weighed next to nothing, he was too much for me. He seemed all slippery and sort of waterlogged and I thought I was likely just to hurt him more by dragging him over the edge of the bath. Or perhaps that’s what I thought I thought later. What I remember vaguely is running down the stairs and into the street and banging on people’s doors and shrieking and shouting. I couldn’t stop. It’s funny. I had this feeling that when I stopped, that’s when it was really going to hurt, so I just went on and on. And then there was the ambulance, and getting to the hospital, and that doctor telling me he was dead, there was nothing they could do. Nothing. Just like that. Nothing. It was all over. All that living, all that worrying. I just couldn’t make any sense of it. No sense at all. It’s not how it should be, is it? It’s not how it should be!’

It was a poignant moment, suddenly and brutally interrupted by a tremendous hammering noise from the other side of the party wall and a high-pitched male alto voice calling what sounded like Teeny! Teeny! Where’s my tea?

‘Oh Dolly, I’m sorry, he must know I’m in here, I don’t know how,’ said Mrs Gregory.

Frostick leapt to his feet and banged his fist against the wall, bellowing, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ And now another voice was heard next door, a hoarse bass, rumbling powerfully but incomprehensibly beneath the alto whose cries of Teeny! only increased in pitch and volume. Then the bass exploded; there was a sharp crack; and silence…till like dimples on a smooth flowing stream there came a little run of soft sobs like a child’s comfortless crying.

‘I’d better go,’ said Mrs Gregory. ‘I’ll be back later, Dolly. I’m sorry, Alan. Goodbye, Inspector.’

She rose and left swiftly. Frostick, looking spent after his outburst, said, ‘She never mashed the tea,’ and went out, presumably to the kitchen.

Pascoe looked inquiringly at the woman on the sofa and after a while she said, ‘It’s Mabel’s father. He’s nearly eighty. He gets very confused. They’ve had to put his bed downstairs now, he’s so awkward on his pins. I don’t think he knows where he is half the time, but he always knows where Mabel is.’

‘What was he calling?’ asked Pascoe, thinking a brief diversion to her friend’s problems might have some therapeutic value. ‘It sounded like Teeny.’

‘That’s right. It’s what he called Mabel’s mother. That’s who he thinks Mabel is most of the time, when he recognizes her at all.’

‘It must be pretty awful,’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes.’ To his horror he saw that tears were forming again in her eyes. ‘It’s been like that for three years and more now. I don’t know how she stands it. It’s just about driven her Jeff mad and Andrea, that’s her daughter, up and left home earlier this year. That’s why we didn’t want Dad to stay with us, partly anyway. It was bad enough when he was convalescing after his turn. Him and Alan got on each other’s nerves and, I’ve got to be honest, it got on mine too a bit. But he seemed all right by himself after that, till just recently. He’d been getting more awkward and forgetful and we’d been talking about having him back here to live with us. I’d say it’d just be for a while till he got right again, but Alan’d say no, it’ll be forever, or at least for as long as he lives, and look at him next door, we shouldn’t kid ourselves, it might be a long, long time. So we’ve talked and talked and sometimes I’ve thought there’s no way round it but he’s got to come, and then I’ve seen Mabel, or heard the noise from next door, and I haven’t been able to face it, and that’s the truth, Inspector.

‘And now I know that maybe if I had been able to face it, he’d be here now and alive instead of…instead of…’

She stared unblinkingly at Pascoe through eyes big and bright with tears.

‘It’s not so much him being dead,’ she said. ‘That’s all there was for him, I reckon. But not like that! Not like that!’

Frostick came in with the teapot and Pascoe waited for a new outburst from him for upsetting his wife. But all the man said was, ‘You take milk?’

‘Thank you. No sugar. Mrs Frostick, I’m sorry to bother you when I can see how upset you are, but I have to ask these questions. Did your father keep any money or other valuables around the house?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the woman. ‘No valuables certainly. He never had anything that was worth very much.’

‘But money perhaps?’

‘He used to keep money,’ said Frostick, handing Pascoe his tea. ‘He liked to settle for things in cash. Never had a bank account or a cheque-book. He wasn’t badly off, either. He had a tidy pension from his work as well as the State. About seven or eight months back, Dolly came across a pile of notes he’d stuffed in an old kettle. More than a hundred pounds, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes, but I really got cross with him,’ said Mrs Frostick. ‘I made him go into town with me and I stood over him while he paid most of it into his building society account. I didn’t often lose my rag with him, but when I did, he knew better than to try and outface me.’

‘Do you think you cured him of the habit?’ asked Pascoe.

‘I doubt it,’ said Frostick. ‘He was a wilful old devil. He’d just hide the next lot somewhere that Dolly wouldn’t find it, that’s what I reckon.’

‘Well, perhaps we can check to some degree by looking at his building society pay-in book and seeing if he’s drawn much out recently,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’m afraid we’d very much like it if you could come down to the house as soon as you feel able, Mrs Frostick, and check over everything to see what, if anything, is missing.’

‘Do I have to?’ she said in a low voice.

‘There’s no one else can do it, is there?’ said Pascoe.

‘You’ll have to go some time, Dolly,’ said her husband. ‘Tomorrow morning, Inspector. That suit you?’

Pascoe would have preferred today, but looking at the woman and understanding now something of the burden of self-reproach she was carrying, he didn’t have the heart to press her.

‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Your father was still alive when you found him. Did he say anything at all that you remember?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing. Only Charley.’

‘Charley?’

‘That’s our son,’ she said. ‘He and his grandad were very close. He must have wanted to see him, or get me to tell him something.’

Her voice broke again.

Pascoe looked on her grief with genuine sympathy, but he was a policeman as well as a fellow human and the best he could do was to try and keep his policeman’s thoughts out of his voice as he said casually, ‘How old’s your son, Mrs Frostick?’

‘Eighteen,’ she said.

‘Is he at home at the moment?’

The note of casual, friendly inquiry might have lulled a doting mother but Frostick was both sensitive and aggressive.

‘No, he’s bloody well not!’ he snapped. ‘He’s in Germany, that’s where he is!’

His wife, bewildered by his aggression, said, ‘Charley’s in the Army, Inspector. He couldn’t get a job, you see, so he joined up this summer. It was all right at first, he was out at Eltervale Camp doing his training with the Mid-Yorkies, so we saw plenty of him. Then he got sent off to Germany three weeks ago. It’s not right really, he’s just a boy, and he’d just got himself engaged to Andrea, that’s Mrs Gregory’s girl next door, you’d think they’d have kept him a bit nearer home…’

‘Best reason on earth for going abroad!’ interrupted Frostick. ‘Lad of his age engaged! Stupid. And to that scheming trollop! He’s a good lad, our Charley, Inspector. He wasn’t content to sit around on his arse collecting the dole like some. He did something about it, and he’ll make a real go of things, if he’s let!’

Frostick’s voice was triumphant. Clearly the wider the gap between Charley and the toils of Andrea Gregory, the better he would be pleased.

But on the sofa Mrs Frostick was weeping quietly and steadily, not only, Pascoe guessed, for a dead father, but also for a lost son.

Chapter 8

‘Well, I have had a happy life.’

Detective-Constable Dennis Seymour and Police-Constable Tony Hector had little in common except size and a sense of grievance. Seymour was five inches shorter than Hector, but compensated with breadth of shoulder and depth of chest. Not too privately, he reckoned Hector was something of a twit and part of his grievance at being diverted from the Welfare Lane inquiry lay in having to suffer such a companion. But Sergeant Wield had been adamant. Mr Pascoe wanted this done and Seymour had better make a job of it.

Hector’s sense of grievance went deeper, partly because he felt he had a personal stake in the Welfare Lane murder, and partly because he could not altogether grasp what they were meant to be doing on the Alderman Woodhouse Recreation Ground.

‘We’re looking for a stone or a bit of hard wood, something that, if you fell and hit your head on it, would break the skin and leave a dent,’ said Seymour patiently. He had bright red hair and an underlying Celtic volatility of temper which he knew might prove a hindrance to advancement if he did not keep it firmly underlaid.

‘Couldn’t this old fellow just’ve banged his head on the ground when he fell?’ objected Hector.

‘The ground was soft, it had been raining,’ said Seymour, stamping his foot into the muddy grass which the November sun’s puny heat had not begun to dry.

‘It’s going to be a hell of a job finding something like that, just the two of us,’ grumbled Hector, looking glumly out across the broad open space which included three football pitches and a children’s play area.

‘Not finding it’s the important thing,’ said Seymour smartly. And this is where he lost Hector, to whom the easiest way of not finding something seemed to be not to look for it very hard.

Convinced at last that looking was essential, he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we had some idea of where to look before we started?’

He was right, of course, for Seymour had made the error of driving directly to the Recreation Ground instead of diverting first to talk with the man who’d discovered Mr Parrinder. He regarded Hector with new eyes, and made the discovery that being not quite so stupid as he looked increased rather than diluted the fellow’s unlikability. At least before he had been reliable.

‘You start looking,’ he said. ‘If you find anything, bag it and mark the spot. I’ll go and talk to the fellow who found him.’

The witness was called Donald Cox. He turned out to be a small, voluble, middle-aged man with worried eyes and a rather insinuating manner who lived with his wife, four children and a Great Dane in a basic semi about half a mile from the Alderman Woodhouse Recreation Ground. Or perhaps, thought Seymour, it would be more accurate to say that the Great Dane occupied the house and the Cox family fitted round it as best they could.

‘He needs his exercise, don’t you, Hammy?’ said Cox proudly. ‘Only reason I was out. He’d missed his afternoon walk, I usually take him morning, afternoon and evening, three times a day, well, I’ve got the time now, haven’t I, since they closed the works and put us all on the dole. I wish I could claim for Hammy here, you’d think they’d make an allowance, wouldn’t you, he’s like one of the family, and it was very nasty all afternoon so I thought, I’ll just wait till later, it might fair up, but it just got worse and worse. Not a night to put a dog out in, they say, but this dog’s got to go whatever the weather, if a day goes by without he’s put at least five miles on the clock, there’s no peace. He’ll run up and down the stairs till three in the morning if that’s the only way he can get his exercise, won’t you, Hammy? Round and round the recreation ground he goes, round and round, by Christ I wish I had his energy. Don’t worry, lad! He’s got a lovely nature!’

It was Hammy’s lovely nature, in fact, which was bothering Seymour as the dog attempted to demonstrate its affection by scrambling on his lap.

‘If you could just show me where you found Mr Parrinder,’ he said, trying in vain to rise.

‘Pleasure. Hammy’d love a run out, wouldn’t you, boy? You’ve brought your car, have you? Well, he likes a ride too, though you’ll have to have your windows open, can’t bear to be shut in a confined space.’

It was a chilly and chilling return journey to the recreation ground. The dog occupied the whole of the back seat with its head protruding from one window and its tail wagging out of the other. An amiable fog-horn bark into the ear of an overtaking motorcyclist nearly caused an accident.

‘It’s the white helmet,’ said Cox complacently. ‘He thinks it’s a bone.’

Between the barking and the apologetic waves at the other road-users, Seymour managed a few questions. No, there’d definitely been no one else in sight on the recreation ground. Only idiots and Great Dane owners were out on such a night. Mind you, it had been very dark. In fact, Cox would likely not have seen the prostrate man if it hadn’t been for Hammy finding him. No, the man hadn’t been calling out, looked too far gone for that, poor sod. But yes, he had said something, just as Cox arrived to see what it was Hammy was looking at.

‘And what did he say?’ inquired Seymour.

‘I’m not sure. It sounded like, mebbe, Polly,’ said Cox. ‘That’s the nearest I can get to it. Polly. And seemed to sort of laugh, though what there was for him to be laughing at, I don’t know. Delirious, I should think. But he certainly seemed to be dying happy, so you can’t knock it, can you?’

‘Did you touch him at all?’

‘I tried to lift him up, but I could see he was unconscious and his leg was sprawled out underneath him at a funny sort of angle, and I guessed he’d broken something. So I thought it best to go for help. What’s all this about, but? I thought the poor old devil had just had a fall and hurt himself. It was treacherous, the surface, what with the sleet and everything. I nearly went over a couple of times myself and Hammy’s legs were going all ways!’

‘Oh, it’s just routine,’ said Seymour.

The entrance to the recreation ground was just a wide gap in the wire-netting fence flanked with a small forest of bye-laws ranging from Official Vehicles Only to All Dogs Must Be Kept On Leash. Parking by the latter sign, and noting that either Cox couldn’t read or didn’t count Hammy as a dog, Seymour went in and looked for Hector. A schoolboy football match had started on one of the pitches and Seymour saw with mingled amusement and exasperation that Hector’s search pattern, which consisted of walking in a straight line across the whole breadth of the recreation ground, was at the moment taking him along the touch line, much to the annoyance of the proudly spectating dads. From time to time Hector bent down to pick up a stone or other substantial piece of debris which he put in a plastic sack. He then marked the spot by digging a hole with his heel. Presumably this next traverse would take him on to the pitch itself. It was a confrontation almost worth waiting for, but when Cox pointed confidently towards one of the other pitches not in use, Seymour, for the sake of the reputation of the Force rather than on humanitarian grounds, waved his arm and shouted till he caught the lanky constable’s attention and beckoned him to join them.

‘You’re certain this is where he was lying?’ he asked Cox, who was now indicating a specific square yard of ground indistinguishable from any other.

‘The very spot,’ said Cox with complete conviction. ‘Look, I walked round from the entrance and I got as far as that goalpost there, and I leaned up against it and tried to light a fag, but it wasn’t any use in that wind. Then I saw Hammy galloping towards me and suddenly he stopped and started getting interested in this sort of bundle on the ground, so I went to have a look.’

Examination of the goalpost revealed half a dozen confirmatory matchsticks at its base.

‘All right,’ said Seymour. ‘Let’s take a look.’

He turned to address his invitation to Hector and was delighted to see that Hammy, having at last found a human he could really look up to, was standing with his forelegs on Hector’s shoulders so that he could lick his new friend’s terrified face. Hector retreated, Hammy advanced, the pair spun round together in a parody of a waltz, till finally the constable’s legs slid away from under him and he crashed heavily to the ground.

‘That’s one way of looking for this stone,’ agreed Seymour. ‘But what I think Mr Pascoe had in mind was using our eyes.’

He began systematically to search the area round the spot indicated by Cox, spiralling further and further out. From time to time he spotted a stone, but none that looked of a possible size or to have any signs of recent contact with broken skin. Still, it had been raining hard overnight and the microscope might see something he couldn’t, so he popped each stone into a plastic bag and charted its position conscientiously. Finally he decided he’d gone far enough and returned to where Cox was standing by the goalpost smoking a cigarette, watching his dog make playful assaults on Hector’s legs.

‘Thanks for your cooperation, sir,’ he said to Cox. ‘Would you mind if I left you to find your own way home? I’m going across the ground, see, to where Mr Parrinder lives, out the other way. That’s why he’d be walking this way, it must have been a regular short cut for him.’

‘Braver man than me,’ grunted Cox. ‘I wouldn’t come this way in the dark, not without Hammy. No, you get on, Officer. Hammy needs all the exercise he can get. We’ll walk back in a moment, though he’ll be sorry to part company with your mate here!’

It didn’t look as if the parting would be equally sorrowful on both sides. But Seymour, not without malice, said, ‘No need for that just yet, sir. Constable Hector, would you cast around a bit longer, see if there’s anything else you can find. I’ll pick you up on my way back. Goodbye, Mr Cox. ‘Bye, Hammy.’

He strode away jauntily. Perhaps after all there might be more in this for him than wandering up and down Welfare Lane doing house-to-house inquiries. The word was old Dalziel was having a spot of bother. Tough on the old sod, but it had only been a matter of time before his behaviour caught up with him. With Dalziel edged out, there could be a nice bit of upgrading all round, and who was better equipped to be a sergeant than Detective-Constable Dennis Seymour?

He flung his arms wide in a spontaneous gesture of self-congratulation, and Hammy, who had come running after him reluctant to lose even one of his new friends, mistook the gesture for invitation and drove himself upwards, bringing his huge forepaws down against Seymour’s shoulders and sending the amazed detective-constable crashing full length on the muddy ground.

Chapter 9

‘Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.’

Welfare Lane when Pascoe arrived at noon was remarkably free of sightseers even for what was basically a pretty unfashionable murder. Indeed, apart from a couple of shopping-laden women trudging along the pavement, the only person in sight was the constable outside No. 25.

The reason soon became clear. As he parked his car behind the police caravan outside Deeks’s house, the puce portal of No. 27 burst open and Mrs Tracey Spillings swept out on a wave of Dallas.

‘All right, sunshine!’ she bellowed. ‘On your way! Oh, it’s only you.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’m sorry, did you want this parking spot …?’

‘What’d I do with a parking spot?’ she demanded, adding with a significant glance up and down the street and an increase in voice projection which Pavarotti would have envied, ‘Not that there’s not plenty round here as drives in limousines to draw their dole.’

‘Is that so?’ said Pascoe, thinking that anything short of a chariot of fire would scarcely be a fit vehicle for Mrs Spillings. ‘Then why did you…’

‘I’m not having folk hanging round here gawking,’ she said fiercely. ‘Sick, some people are, and with nothing better to do. He’s worse than useless–’ indicating the uniformed constable who studied the rooftops opposite, perhaps in the hope of snipers – ‘but I’ve sent ‘em packing, no bother.’

No, thought Pascoe. He didn’t imagine there had been any bother!

‘I’d like to have a word if I may,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could…’

He hesitated, glancing at the almost visible din emanating from the Spillings household.

‘We’ll go in your caravan,’ said Mrs Spillings. ‘You’ll not be able to hear yourself think in here. She’s been bad this morning. Worse she gets, louder she likes it. She reckons when she can’t hear no more, she’ll be dead. Mam, I’ll just be five minutes!’

The last sentence ripped like a torpedo through the oncoming waves of sound. Pulling the puce door to, Mrs Spillings set out towards the caravan which dipped alarmingly as she placed a surprisingly small and rather delicately shaped foot on the step.

Inside, Sergeant Wield was working his way through a sheaf of statements and reports. His rugged face expressed no surprise at the sight of the woman.

‘Door to door,’ he said to Pascoe. ‘Nothing. You had any luck, sir?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Pascoe. ‘Mrs Spillings, you knew Mr Deeks well, did you?’

‘Pretty well. We moved into 27 when I got wed twenty-five years ago. Dolly Deeks got married from that house two years later. Her mam died four or five years back and the old man had been on his own since then. So you could say I knew him pretty well.’

‘Did you ever know him to keep a lot of money in his house?’

She thought for a moment then said, ‘Aye. Once. I recall Dolly getting right upset because she found a lot lying around. She’s a quiet soul, Dolly, but she really gave him what for that day!’

‘Yes, she told me about it,’ said Pascoe.

‘She’s all right, is she? Out of that hospital? That’s no place for a well woman. Not much use for a sick ‘un either, from all accounts.’

‘Yes. She’s at home. She’ll be coming here tomorrow. To get back to the money, did he still keep any in the house? More important perhaps, did he have any reputation locally for keeping large sums about the place?’

She saw what he meant at once.

‘No, he weren’t thought of as the local miser or owt like that. Though there’s no accounting for the daft ideas some buggers get into their heads! As for still keeping money in the house, I don’t know. I recollect him telling me he’d loaned young Charley – that’s his grandson – the money to buy that lass of his an engagement ring, but whether it were cash he had or whether he had to draw it out special, I don’t know.’

‘But he discussed his finances with you?’ said Pascoe.

Tracey Spillings laughed and said, ‘Not old Bob. He were very close! But this were different. Charley’s the apple of his eye, but he would never sub him after he left school. If you can’t live on your dole money, he’d say, get a job. He paid no heed to all this unemployment. There’s always jobs for them as wants them, he said. They’re always after likely lads in the Forces, or even the police.’

Pascoe ignored the implied order of merit and said, ‘It doesn’t sound as if he’d have been very happy to dish out money so Charley could get engaged, then?’

‘Normally, he wouldn’t. Specially as he didn’t much like the lass. But Charley timed it nicely, I gather. Told his grandad he’d signed on with the Mid-Yorkies, and then touched him straight after. That’s how I got to know about the money. Old Bob mentioned the loan when he was telling me about Charley joining up. He were that pleased, even though he knew how much he’d miss the lad.’

‘And the lad himself. He was fond of his grandad too?’ said Pascoe. ‘He’ll be upset to hear what’s happened.’

‘Oh aye. He liked the old boy and I’ve no doubt he’ll be upset,’ said Mrs Spillings. ‘But you know how it is with young ‘uns. You never get back what you give.’

‘Your mother seems to be getting a pretty good bargain,’ smiled Pascoe.

‘You reckon? There’s times I could gladly kill her. That’s not a right way to feel about your own mam, is it?’

Slightly taken aback by this frank admission, Pascoe found he had no reply. But Wield, without looking up from his records, said, ‘I dare say when you were a squawking baby in the middle of the night, there were times she could gladly have killed you, Mrs Spillings.’

The woman considered this, then a wide grin opened up her face, letting out a lively, pretty, perhaps even slim young girl for a moment.

‘Mebbe you’re right there, sunshine,’ she said. ‘Mebbe it does even out in the end! I’d best get back and see to her. If ever you feel like a cup of tea, don’t knock, I’ll not hear you. Just come on in.’

She left.

Pascoe said, ‘Interesting woman.’

‘Interesting, aye,’ said Wield. ‘What was all that about Charley?’

Pascoe explained, adding thoughtfully, ‘But I’ll maybe just give them a ring at Eltervale Camp just to make sure he’s gone.’

‘You’re getting cynical, sir,’ observed Wield. ‘By the way, Mr Headingley rang. Said he’d be having a bit of lunch at The Duke of York if you’re interested.’

‘What’s he think I’m on, my holidays?’ snorted Pascoe. ‘I haven’t time to drive all that way out just to socialize.’

‘Didn’t get that impression, sir,’ said Wield neutrally. ‘Thought he might be after having a chat about Mr Dalziel’s spot of bother. Not that he said owt, you understand.’

There were no secrets in a police station, thought Pascoe. He also thought that he really ought to stay as far away as he could get from this Dalziel business, but did not much like the feeling accompanying the thought.

‘Did you want to speak to the Army now?’ said Wield, reaching for the phone. Before he could touch it, it rang. The Sergeant picked it up and listened.

‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Half an hour unless he’s held up. Right.’

He replaced the receiver and said, ‘That was Ruddlesdin. He was hanging around earlier. Mrs Spillings spotted him. He tried to interview her.’

He smiled at the memory.

‘How the hell does he come to be ringing us here?’ wondered Pascoe. ‘Oh, and is that me you’re expecting in half an hour?’

‘That’s right,’ said Wield. ‘He’s keen to talk to you. He’s on his way and he’ll see you here at twelve-thirty. Unless you’re held up.’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe slowly. ‘You know Sergeant, perhaps I should call in at Eltervale Camp rather than ring them. The Army tends to be a bit protective about its own.’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Wield. ‘Face to face is best. And you’d have to go quite near The Duke of York, wouldn’t you? To reach the camp, I mean.’

‘So I would. Good. You’ll know where to get me, then.’

‘Unless Sammy Ruddlesdin asks, I will,’ grinned Wield.

‘Sergeant, you’re a darling man. By the way, did you send Seymour and Hector off to the recreation ground?’

‘Aye,’ said Wield. ‘And I’ve heard nothing since. Hector’s likely got lost, and Seymour will have found himself a bird to chat up. What’s it all about, sir?’

He sounded disapproving and Pascoe said airily, ‘Could be something or nothing, Sergeant. See you later!’

As he left, Wield shook his head sadly. Something or nothing! He much admired Pascoe, but there was no getting away from it, sometimes the young inspector did get his head full of daft notions.

Though in this case, Wield, who was a man of considerable sensitivity beneath his harsh and rugged exterior, wondered how much Pascoe’s present ‘hunch’ wasn’t just a mental space-filler, delaying him from admitting just how upset he really was by Dalziel’s spot of bother.

The Sergeant’s stomach rumbled. No Duke of York for him, but he had been relying on Seymour’s return so that he could slip away for a quick snack. Where was the man? Chatting up a bird, he’d suggested to Pascoe. Wield’s inner sensitivity did not extend to forgiving DC’s who kept him from his food while they chatted up birds.

He chewed on the end of his pen and planned reprisal.

The Sergeant’s suspicions about Seymour were to some extent justified, but not in every particular. Women delayed him, but only in the way of duty.

Castleton Court, where the late Thomas Arthur Parrinder had lived, was a block of local authority retirement flats, in no way an old people’s home, though there was on the site a widower in his early sixties who had undertaken the job of warden, which meant for the most part channelling complaints to the Housing Office and responding to the flashing lights and sounding bells which meant a tenant was in trouble.

The warden was called Tempest, a thick-set ex-miner who took his new duties as seriously as he’d taken his old. His cheerful face was shadowed as he let Seymour into Parrinder’s flat.

‘He were a good lad, Tap. That was what everyone called him, from his initials I suppose, though some says it was because when he was down on his luck with the hosses, he’d be tapping anyone he could for a bob or two. Well, I never knew it; a good lad, spry and lively and right independent. Mebbe a bit too much. Makes a change from them as is never off your back, but there’s a happy medium.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Seymour.

‘Well, look at this,’ said the Warden. ‘See these alarm switches on the wall in every room? They set off the light and the bell outside the door. See how they’ve got cords reaching down to the floor? Idea is, if anyone has a fall, he can still pull the switch, right? Well, look at this.’

He opened the bathroom door.

‘See. There’s the switch, but where’s the cord? They take ‘em off! Afraid they might pull it by accident instead of the light cord, see, and I might come rushing in and find them in the bath or on the pot. It’s daft, really, but that’s folk for you.’

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