Reginald Hill - Exit lines

'Where the hell have you been?' snarled Wield, adding ferocity to features already stamped with all the lineaments of fear. Seymour stopped smiling and said rather sulkily, 'On that job you said Mr Pascoe wanted done.'

'That was years ago!' growled Wield. 'I want an explanation. Come on! Speak out.'

Behind him the caravan door-handle turned.

'For Christ's sake, keep your mouth shut!' urged the Sergeant.

Seymour raised his bushy red eyebrows in surprise at this conflict of instruction. Hector merely retained his usual expression of a man not certain between steps which way his knees bent.

The DCC emerged.

'And what's this?' he said. 'A street rally?'

He stepped down and found himself having to look up at Hector despite the constable's efforts at total testudinal retraction. The sight did not improve the ACC's temper.

'And what have you been doing?' he demanded. ‘Enjoying a five course lunch at The White Rose, is that it?'

'No, sir,' protested Hector, bridling at the unjustness of the accusation. 'Looking for stones, sir.'

'Stone's, is it? Not Ward's or Tetley'sl Not John Smith's or Sam's ? Only Stone's will do you, is that it?'

Not being a man much given to either wit or beer, Hector missed the point of the joke which was, in fairness, much disguised by the violence of its delivery.

'No, sir, it was for Mr Pascoe, sir,' stuttered Hector.

'Then it's not Stone's you should be after, son,' said the DCC. 'It's your Moet et Chandon, it's your fine champagne.'

And, much to Wield's relief, the DCC, recognizing a good exit line, strode away to his car under the suspicious glower of Tracey Spillings who stood, arms folded and noise-framed, in her puce doorway.

'Wait here!' ordered Wield.

He entered the caravan. Pascoe was sitting at the worktop staring fixedly at the telephone.

'All right, sir?' inquired Wield.

'Sergeant, you don't happen to know the Samaritans' number, do you?' said Pascoe. 'I think I need help.'

'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'Sir, Seymour's outside. And Hector. Just back from that job you sent them on.'

'Oh Jesus!' said Pascoe, roused by alarm. 'They didn't say anything to DCC, did they?'

'No, sir,' reassured Wield.'Nothing important. Shall I wheel 'em in?'

'No!' said Pascoe firmly. 'It's the Deeks, the whole Deeks and nothing but the Deeks from now on in. What's new?'

He listened with a growing sense of the injustice of life to Wield's assurance that nothing whatever which required his attention, much less his attendance, had occurred in the two hours since they had last talked.

'You'd think I'd been playing hookey for weeks,' he protested. 'Weeks!'

'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'What now, sir?'

'Now? Carry on with house to house, pulling in likely lads, chatting to furtive Freds in greasy mass to see if there's any whispers. But it looks like amateur night to me, Sergeant. I don't think information received's going to be much help to us on this one.'

'Not unless something's been nicked and sold,' said Wield.

'It doesn't seem likely but we won't know for certain till Mrs Frostick takes a look,' said Pascoe gloomily. This had been another point the DCC had taken him to task for. According to him, Mrs Frostick should have been brought round to the house today, in handcuffs if necessary, to check her father's belongings.

'That bastard Ruddlesdin,' he said savagely. 'I've got a mind to. ..'

'Yes, sir?' prompted Wield.

'Cancel my subscription to the Evening Post,'' concluded Pascoe. 'All right, Sergeant. Let's go through everything we've got one more time just to make sure nothing's escaped our eagle eyes.'

'Yes, sir. And Seymour, sir?'

'Oh, all right. Wheel him in. But not Hector! He'd have to unscrew in the middle like a billiard cue to fit in here!'

He listened to Seymour's report with growing relief that the DCC hadn't questioned the man further. No, there'd been no sign of a stone near the spot indicated by Mr Cox, but the recreation ground was full of kids who might easily have picked up and chucked away any lump of brick they spotted, or alternatively Mr Cox's sense of location might have been out by fifty yards, say, and PC Hector had managed to collect a bagful of stones from other areas. None of them showed any sign of skin or blood, but it had rained very hard that night. Did the Inspector want them all sent to Forensic for examination?

Pascoe postponed decision on that and listened to Seymour's expurgated adventures at Castleton Court.

'So Mrs Campbell saw him on Friday morning and Mrs Escott was with him for a good chunk of the afternoon? Now if I remember right, he had his pension book on him with about thirty quid in it. Was that right?'

'Sorry, sir, I don't know,' said Seymour guiltily. 'I did call in at the station after lunch, but they said his things were still at the hospital. Mr Cruikshank wanted to know what I wanted with them. I just waffled on, but I noticed he had a chat with Hector. Did you want me to go to the hospital?'

Pascoe thought. It was a question of demarcation. Accidental death; uniformed's affair, and the next of kin would collect clothes and personal possessions from the hospital. Any suspicion of crime and all the belongings would be with Forensic getting a good going-over. Trouble was, the suspicion of crime was his alone, and so unsupported by any evidence that he didn't feel able to throw what weight he had behind it, especially not after his recent encounter with the DCC.

He said, 'No, don't bother. I expect it's just what it seems. Parrinder feels a bit better late on Friday afternoon, decides to have a walk out, picks up his pension, treats himself to a half bottle of rum to help his cold, slips on the way home, breaks his hip and lies there till he's almost dead, poor devil.'

He still felt far from satisfied. It was the kind of dissatisfaction he would have liked to plonk down before Dalziel whose keen eye and sensitive nose could often focus straight on the source of any doubt.

'Is there anything more you'd want me to do about Parrinder then, sir?' asked Seymour.

'Not just now,' said Pascoe decisively. 'I've probably been wasting your time already. Sorry.'

Seymour had never before had a senior officer apologize to him for wasting his time, though in his own estimation occasion had not been lacking. Like a child reluctant to relinquish a golden moment, he moved away slowly and even found an excuse to pause, saying, 'Oh, by the way, sir. He said something before he died. He said, Polly.'

'Polly?'

'That's right, sir.'

'Polly. Any friends called Polly? Anyone at Castleton Court? Or a relative perhaps?'

'Not that I've discovered,' said Seymour. 'According to Cox, the fellow who found him, he seemed to be saying it to his dog.'

'Whose dog?'

'Cox's. It's a Great Dane built like a horse. It's called Hammy. It was the dog as found the old chap, evidently.'

'Hammy? A great Dane? Perhaps by the same token Polly is short for Polonius!'

The attempt at a joke seemed as far beyond Seymour as doubtless time, interests and circumstances had placed it beyond Parrinder. With a verbal pat on the shoulder for a job well done, Pascoe dismissed him and rededicated all his attention to the killer of Robert Deeks.

It was dedication singularly unrewarded and when he finally headed for home at nine P.M. all he had to show for a long hard day was a headache and a touch of nervous dyspepsia. From time to time during the day he had found himself looking forward to getting back to a warm, well-lit house with the prospect of supper and a stiff drink and Ellie's tension-dissolving acidity on the subject of police investigations and Rose's round apple-cheeked face, faintly puzzled in repose, as though she had fallen asleep pondering the purpose of existence. Then he would recall that Ellie and Rose were down at Orburn visiting her parents.