Reginald Hill - Exit lines

The list of missing items was not long. A small transistor radio, half a dozen campaign medals (Deeks's own from the Second World War and his father's from the First) and a pewter-cased pocket watch with a gold sovereign welded on its chain.

'He always said that was to be Charley's,' said Mrs Frostick in a low voice. 'That and the medals. He wanted him to have the medals.'

'He'll be able to win his own now, won't he?' said Frostick. 'Come on, love. Don't fret. Your dad always wanted Charley to join up, you know that. He knew it would mean Charley going away, but he knew it was best for the lad too. Just think, love, you'll be seeing him soon, and he'll tell you for himself.'

His effort to dilute his wife's grief by the reminder of her son's imminent return failed miserably. Mrs Frostick gave out a half-choked sob and Pascoe got in quickly, saying in his best official voice, 'Now, Mrs Frostick, think hard. Was there anything else you noticed down here, anything unusual?'

She looked around helplessly, then pointed through the open living-room door into the kitchen and the broken pane above the outside door.

'I can't think what he was doing leaving the key in that door. He never used to do that. Whenever he locked the door, he always used to put it on the kitchen table. That was one thing he was most particular about. But he was failing, I knew he was failing, mebbe if we'd paid more heed…'

She looked pleadingly at her husband but he interpreted it as reproach and said defensively. 'He wanted to be on his own, Dolly, you know that. And he might have been particular about not leaving the key in the door, but he was daft enough to keep a spare hidden in the wash-house, so where's the difference?'

'In the wash-house?' said Pascoe. 'Can you show me?'

Leaving his wife in Wield's care, Frostick led him outside and opened the wash-house door, pointing to an old-fashioned boiler.

'In there,' he said.

Pascoe lifted the lid. Among a pile of rubbish he found an old tobacco tin. In it was the spare key.

'Not clever,' said Pascoe. 'How many people do you reckon knew he kept this key here?'

'What's the odds?' asked Frostick. 'It wasn't used.'

'Precisely,' said Pascoe, very Sherlock Holmesish. 'That's the interesting thing.'

Frostick, clearly not one of nature's Watsons, looked unconvinced and said, 'Family, of course. Some of his mates, I shouldn't wonder. Her next door, certainly. She knows everything, that one.'

'Mrs Spillings? Yes. Incidentally, she was saying that Mr Deeks told her a few months back that he loaned your Charley the money to buy an engagement ring.'

'Did she? She's got a big mouth. What's it to you anyway?'

'Nothing,' assured Pascoe. 'It's just this question of money, whether there was any lying around. Did Charley get his loan in cash, I wonder, or did his grandfather have to go to the bank?'

'You mean her next door didn't know? Bloody wonders never cease! Well, I don't know either. I know nowt about it, except that it was money badly spent!'

He spoke with such vehemence that Pascoe probed further, saying, 'Charley's grandad must've liked his girl more than you did.'

'No. He thought she were rubbish.'

'Then why make the loan?'

He didn't intend to inflect loan significantly, but Frostick flared up, 'Don't you be making imputations, copper! My Charley's no sponger. Loan it was and every penny'd be to pay back, rest assured of that!'

'You haven't answered my question,' insisted Pascoe.

'Who knows how an old man's mind works?' said Frostick. 'I never spoke to him much myself, the miserable old bugger. But we were agreed on Miss bloody Andrea, I tell you. I reckon he coughed up because Charley had just told him he was joining the Army. He'd be so overjoyed at that that he mebbe had a rush of blood to the head, decided that a few months' soldiering overseas would soon put paid to his daft romance.'

He turned away and went back into the house. Pascoe slipped the key into his pocket and followed.

In the living-room he was glad to see Mrs Frostick looking a little more relaxed. Perhaps Wield had been amusing her by pulling funny faces. But there was one more test for the woman to undergo.

'Just one thing more,' said Pascoe. 'Before you go, Mrs Frostick, I'd like you to take a look in the bathroom. I'm sorry to ask you, but we've got to be thorough.'

Earlier upstairs, she had come out of her father's bedroom and walked past the bathroom door with eyes firmly averted. Now she took a deep breath and nodded her agreement. She led the way up the narrow stairs, Frostick behind with Pascoe bringing up the rear.

The bathroom struck a strange note in this old-fashioned little house. It was a good-sized room, fully tiled in pastel blue with a seaweed motif. The bath with its non-slip bottom and rubberized support grips was in a matching blue fibreglass, neatly boxed in with dark-blue glossed hardboard.. The floor was laid with cushion vinyl and the windows curtained with heavy towelling round whose folds a pattern of tiny fishes swam.

Frostick was looking at it with pride.

'Did a lot of this myself,' he volunteered. 'Not the plumbing, of course. Cost a pretty penny. But it puts value on the house, doesn't it? People expect a bathroom these days. I don't know how you managed without one when you were a kid, Dolly.'

His wife didn't seem to be listening. Her eyes were bright with tears.

'Please, Mrs Frostick,' said Pascoe helplessly. 'Just a quick look, say if you see anything that's changed.'

'Anything that's changed?' she echoed. 'I can see that, Mr Pascoe. This used to be my room when I was a girl. My room.'

Of course, it must have been. Two up, two down; a wash-house and an outside privy; basic working-class accommodation which solidity of building and pride of possession had prevented from becoming a slum. Dolly Frostick was weeping for more than her dead father; she was mourning for her childhood.

'Come on, Dolly,' said Frostick. 'Let's get that cup of tea from her next door.'

'No, wait,' said the woman. 'On the side of the bath. Them scuffs in the paint. And on the floor. Them marks. They weren't there.'

The scuffs in the blue-gloss where the hardboard boxing met the vinyl floor were clear enough, but Pascoe had to get down on one knee to see the indentations in the intricately patterned flooring which her houseproud eye had spotted.

'Probably a copper's big flat feet,' suggested Frostick, and indeed when Pascoe rose he saw that the vinyl surface was soft enough to have received the impression of the toe of his kneeling leg.

'Maybe,' he replied. 'Thank you, Mrs Frostick. If you like to have that cup of tea now, I'll take you home in shall we say ten minutes?'

After the Frosticks had gone through the puce portals next door (behind which the sound seemed to have been turned down perhaps as a token of respect for the bereaved) Pascoe returned to the bathroom with Wield and together they examined the indentations.

'What do you think?' asked Pascoe.

'This stuff takes a print if you exert a lot of pressure,' said Wield, demonstrating with his heel. 'Then gradually lets it out. Mostly it'll have gone in a few hours.'

'So it'd need a lot of pressure to leave a mark like this. Looks to me like a boot print, wouldn't you say?'

'Hard to tell really,' said Wield. 'It's just the toes here that are really clear. Like maybe someone was standing right close to the bath and rocking forward on their toes, scuffing the paintwork here.'

He demonstrated.

'See. It could be our man, pushing the old boy under,' he said.

'Or someone trying to lift him out,' added Pascoe. 'We'll need to check everyone who was in here on Friday night. You've got Hector's list?'

Wield scratched his nose which sat on his face like a shattered boulder on a blasted heath.