Reginald Hill - Exit lines

'And no evidence of robbery. Pension money intact except for the few quid he'd pay for the rum. It wasn't open, you say?'

'No. The seal was intact or so the doctor said.'

'So he hadn't had a few nips. Better if he had, maybe. Could've kept the cold out a bit longer. And he did speak before he died, but didn't say anything to indicate he'd been attacked.'

'Only Polly,'' said Pascoe.

'Attacked by a woman, mebbe,' said Dalziel. 'There's plenty as'd pay for the pleasure. No, it looks to me like you've got a sackful of nowt, Peter.'

'So you'd just forget it,' said Pascoe, half-relieved.

'No. I didn't say that,' said Dalziel. 'I'd have a bloody good look at his possessions, see if there's a receipt with the rum, look at the Post Office stamp in his pension book. Mebbe I'd do it in my own time, but I'm like you, Peter. Just plain nosey! So I'd do it!'

They talked a little longer. Pascoe cautiously approached the topic of the road accident, but when Dalziel veered away from it, he didn't press. There was no hint of a specific reason for Dalziel's call and the only one which Pascoe could guess at, which was loneliness and a desire for friendly company, required a mental lese-majeste difficult even to contemplate.

Finally he left abruptly, saying vaguely he had things to do.

An hour later the phone rang. It was Dalziel.

'Just a thought,' he said. 'That old boy, Parrinder, followed the horses you said.'

'So Seymour told me.'

'I was just looking at yesterday's paper. It's got Friday's results in it. Last race at Cheltenham, won by a horse called Polly Styrene – yes, two words. Four to one. Just a thought. Thanks for the jam buttie. You'll make someone a lovely mother!'

The phone went dead and Pascoe went to bed.

The next morning when he arrived at the station, he checked when the Parrinder inquest was to be. It was later that same day, with Inspector Ernie Cruikshank looking after the police side. Pascoe, knowing the man's dislike of CID in general and himself in particular, approached him with caution.

'Bit vague, isn't it? What do you want? Adjournment for further inquiries? That'll have the Press sniffing!'

Pascoe knew this. He could see Ruddlesdin linking this with the other two deaths in a punchy piece about old people being at risk both on the street and in their homes which would have the DCC reaching for his night-stick.

'Try to make it sound very routine,' he said. 'Parrinder's things, anyone looking at them?'

It was not his intention to be anything but conciliatory, but Cruikshank was looking for criticism.

'Listen,' he said. 'If every time some poor old sod dies accidentally we sent his belongings to Forensic, they'd need a fucking warehouse! It's like a fucking Oxfam appeal down there at the best of times with all the rubbish you lot dump on them.'

'Sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I really just meant, has anyone collected them from the hospital?'

Cruikshank exploded.

'They will be collected!' he cried. 'There's no hurry to collect them because there's no one been in any hurry to claim them! You don't see any crowds of mourning fucking relatives or weeping fucking children, do you? But rest assured, they'll get collected as soon as I've got someone to spare to collect them. I'm a bit short-staffed, you see. Why? you ask. Because you lot don't seem to be able to manage without my lads, that's why. Well, that figures, Inspector Pascoe. I put up with that. I even put up with Andy Dalziel fixing for me and a couple of my lads to sit on our arses at the airport all Saturday morning waiting for the Mafia to fly in, which it didn't. But when one of my lads is down to assist you with one case, I don't expect him to be sent off to spend hours gathering old stones which have nothing whatsofuckingever to do with the said case!'

'Good,' said Pascoe, retreating. 'Fine. Look, I'll collect them, shall I, Ernie? All right? Good. Excellent. Thanks a lot.'

Half an hour later he was wandering hopefully along the corridors of the City General when he came face to face with Dr Sowden, who was looking so beautifully haggard and weary that any sharp-eyed television director would have snapped him up instantly.

'You look dreadful,' said Pascoe. 'You ought to see a doctor.'

'You look lost,' said Sowden. 'You ought to ask a policeman.'

Pascoe explained his mission and Sowden said, 'You don't give up, do you? I can feel it, you still think there was something odd about Parrinder's death.'

'Maybe. But no reflection on you, Doctor,' said Pascoe. 'Mr Longbottom didn't find anything suspicious and most of my colleagues think I'm daft.'

'An honest cop!' exclaimed Sowden. 'The city may yet not be consumed by fire. Come on, I'm just going off duty, I'll show you where you want to be.'

He stood by and watched curiously as Pascoe removed the dead man's clothes from the plastic storage bag. Carefully he went through the broken glass of the rum bottle and the sodden brown paper in which it had been re wrapped till he came across a receipt.

'A clue?' said Sowden.

'Indeed,' said Pascoe gravely. 'His pension book, money, watch and so on, where will they be?'

'Valuables they lock up,' said Sowden. 'With the dead, wreckers' laws can apply, even in hospitals.'

Pascoe smiled and removed from Parrinder's raincoat pocket a rolled-up newspaper. Soaked by the rain, it had dried almost into a papier-mache cylinder which he prised open with difficulty.

'Aha,' he said.

'Another clue?'

'In a way. Evidently before he died he looked up, saw looming over him a dog which one of my men described as being built like a horse, laughed, said Polly, and expired. Look.'

He pointed to the list of runners in the 3.55, the last race at Cheltenham. Ringed in blue ballpoint was the horse called Polly Styrene.

'Clever old you,' said Sowden.

Pascoe modestly accepted the plaudits on Dalziel's behalf. Things were beginning to make more sense. Here was a real reason for Parrinder's decision to sally forth into the wintry weather. He wanted to place a bet!

'But,' continued Sowden, 'so what?'

'It won, at four to one,' said Pascoe.

'Aha,' said Sowden. 'I think I'm with you. Where, you are wondering, are his winnings? In that bottle of rum, I would suggest. Not to mention in his stomach. He seems to have had a substantial meal not long before he died.'

'You did take a look at Mr Longbottom's findings, then,' grinned Pascoe. 'Just in case, eh? But how much did he win? I wonder how his other selections did?'

He pointed at ballpoint rings in two earlier races, round Red Vanessa in the 2.10 and Usherette in the 2.45, then he frowned.

'What's up?' asked Sowden, his doctor's eyes quick for symptoms. 'Clue run out, has it?'

'No, it's just that he didn't go out till after three that afternoon, so he would only have had time to back Polly Styrene himself.'

'Telephone? Got someone else to place his bets?' suggested Sowden.

'I don't think he was a telephone punter. And if someone had backed it for him, wouldn't they have brought him his winnings too?'

'Perhaps they didn't and he went out looking for them,' suggested Sowden, who seemed enlivened by this detective game. 'Or perhaps he had backed all these horses himself the week before, say. That's possible, isn't it?'

'I think so. Only they seem to have been marked as current selections in Friday's paper. I'll have to find out what kind of gambler he was.'

He went through the rest of the pockets, coming up with nothing except another receipt, this time from the restaurant at Starbuck's, a large department store in the city centre. The main charge was?2.95, which Pascoe remembered from a recent rare visit was the basic cost of the Shopper's Special High Tea. Various smaller items brought the total up to?4.80. This with the rum meant he'd spent?8.75, of which only five pounds had come from his recently collected pension. But how much had he had on him in the first place? Or what if he had decided to place more than his usual fifty pence on Polly Styrene, say a couple of pounds, feeling flush because he hadn't touched his pension that week? That would give him eight pounds in winnings which, come to think of it, was just about right. And he celebrates by having a good meal and buying a bottle to keep the cold out. But mocking fate, which likes its victims at their ease and happy, is lurking… End of story, Pascoe told himself determinedly, but with no inner conviction.