Reginald Hill: Exit lines

'Ah, you liked that picture, did you, Inspector?' mocked Abbiss. 'Want an action re-run, is that it?'

'When was this, sir?' asked Pascoe patiently.

Perhaps it was the courtesy of the 'sir' that did it, but Abbiss began to take things seriously.

'When? I'm not sure precisely. Last week some time.'

'Last week? Not a few weeks ago?'

'Oh no. Not long before I gave her the push.’

Pascoe felt angry with himself. He had made assumptions, which as Dalziel put it, was posh for making cock-ups. The mention of a soldier had automatically made him think of Charley Frostick and he hadn't seen any reason to check on dates.

He said, 'And it was definitely a soldier?'

'Oh yes,' said Abbiss. 'Fully kitted out from beret to boots, with the minor modification that his pants were pushed down over his buttocks, the better to apply himself to little Miss Andrea who was wearing her nightie round her neck.'

'Could this have been the man, sir?' inquired Pascoe, handing over the Photofit picture.

'Maybe,' said Abbiss doubtfully. 'I mean, it doesn't really look like anybody, does it? I think he had a moustache. On the other hand if you gave me a picture of his backside, I could give you a positive identification straight away! There was a rather interesting bite-mark on his left buttock, I seem to recall.'

It conjured up for Pascoe a picture of a very unusual identity parade. But in fact he hardly had enough to go on to ask for a normal identity parade. The point was that Andrea Gregory had been putting it about a bit, and she had shown a kind of loyalty to Charley by putting it about among the large number of lonely soldiers who at any one moment were inmates of Eltervale Camp.

Just how significant did this make the print on the vinyl floor of Bob Deeks's bathroom which might have been from an Army boot? And could those stab marks on his neck and shoulders possibly have been made by a bayonet?

There was little to go on, but too much to ignore. Andrea herself was the best source of information, but he could imagine those painted lips closing to a thin red line when asked to betray herself.

'Come now, Inspector,' said Abbiss. 'Don't look so baffled. Surely there can't be all that many NCO's of the British Army with teeth marks on their left buttocks. Is it yourself you want him for, or is he a present for a friend?'

'An NCO?' said Pascoe. 'You're sure he was an NCO?'

'Oh yes. There was a stripe on his arm. Just the one, that makes him a lance-corporal, doesn't it?'

'That's right. Anything else about him? Colour of hair, build, anything at all?'

'I don't really know. Good athletic action, I'd say. Brownish hair. Like I say, I think he had a moustache. Oh, and there was one rather odd thing – those webbing belts they wear. Well, his was white.'

Into Pascoe's mind there leapt a picture of a ramrod-straight man with a mousy moustache and watchful eyes, whose friendship with Charley Frostick had perhaps led him to cover up the young man's nocturnal ramblings.

Lance Corporal Gillott of the Mid-Yorkies' regimental police.

'Thank you, sir,' he said, turning on his heel and leaving the kitchen.

There was a public phone in the hallway. He rang the station and got Seymour.

'Pick Moody up and bring him out to Paradise Hall,' he ordered. 'Don't take no for an answer.'

He rejoined Wield.

'Let me buy you a drink while we're waiting, Sergeant,' he said, leading him into the bar where Stella Abbiss was serving a customer. 'And if you're hungry, they do a nice cold game pie.'

The woman heard him and turned her big dark eyes on him with something in them which might almost have been contempt. She thinks I've been fixed! thought Pascoe. And while she might have understood passion, she reckons nothing to greed.

'You're out of luck today, Inspector,' she said in her low deep voice. 'For you, game pie is definitely off.'

Moody sat sulkily in the front seat of Pascoe's car as he drove towards Eltervale Barracks. He had not been pleased, as he put it, to be dragged away from his work, but Pascoe was in no mood to be conciliatory.

It was his intention, however, to tread carefully in his dealings with the military and not to risk provoking any of that protective closing of ranks by which army units traditionally protected their own. It was his intention to talk first with the camp CO and then to arrange for Moody to see Lance-Corporal Gillott while he himself remained unobserved.

It didn't work out quite like that.

As they approached the camp gates, a trio of men in fatigues and carrying spades came doubling out. Presumably they were a work detail of men under arrest. And escorting them was the upright, poker-faced figure of Lance-Corporal Gillott.

'That's him!' cried Moody. 'That's the man I bought the medals from.'

He wound down the window in his excitement. Gillott did a classic Ealing Comedy double-take, then with a reaction speedy enough to impress the most demanding of training instructors, he grabbed a spade off one of the prisoners and hurled it at Pascoe's car.

The windscreen crazed. Moody shrieked, Pascoe slammed on the brake and the car, though already slowing, spun on the road surface still treacherous from the previous day's sleet and snow, scattering the working party in panic.

And Gillott was away down the road, head back, knees pumping high, wisely (so he must have thought) not heading back into the trap of the camp with its high soldier-proof perimeter fence.

What he was heading towards was Seymour's car which drew in to the side of the road. Seymour made to get out, but Wield in the passenger seat restrained him. And as the sprinting corporal drew level with the car, the sergeant leaned across and flung open the driver's door. There was a fearsome impact and the door slammed shut with a violence that set the inmates' eardrums vibrating.

'Now you can get out and pick him up,' said Wield. 'Good arrest, son. It'll look well on your record. And it'll be something to impress that little Irish girl of yours with next time you go dancing. Might make her forget the pain.'

Gillott was incredibly verbose for one who had appeared so taciturn. It was stopping him talking that was difficult, but with Moody's identification and the discovery of Bob Deeks's pocket watch hidden in his locker, he saw little hope in silence. Not even his bruised ribs inhibited the flow, the main current of which was directed at washing as much blame towards Andrea Gregory as possible.

'It was her idea. She said he was an animal. She said all old people were animals. She said they were crazy, smelly and nasty. She said she'd want to be put down before she got like that. We'd been drinking. I'd been driving the sergeant-major to the station in town and I had his car. I thought: Sod going back straight away. No one'll miss me. So I gave Andrea a ring. I'd been stuffing her rotten ever since that wet boyfriend of hers went to join the battalion. We went for a drive. She brought a bottle of Scotch along from the restaurant. We stopped and had a drink and a fuck and some more drink. I said if I had enough money I'd buy myself out of the Army. She said she knew where there was a few hundred lying around for the taking. I said where? She said at Charley's grandad's. She said that when they got engaged Charley had left her outside the back of his grandad's. He went in and came out not long after with a century in cash. He bought her that flashy ring. She said she knew where the back key was kept hid. What she didn't know was where the money was hid and he wouldn't tell us. We looked everywhere. The old man just kept on looking at my uniform and saying "Charley" all the time. It got on my wick. Was there some money, eh? Was there really some money? Or was it all for nothing?'

Pascoe had come as close as he ever had to striking a prisoner at this point.