Reginald Hill: Exit lines

'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's 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 for ever 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.