Reginald Hill: Exit lines

'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'Terrible. That bruise on his head…'

'He must have gone down a real wallop,' said Sowden. 'Cracked his head on a stone; it probably stunned him so that by the time he was conscious enough to cry for help, he'd already have been weakened so much by the cold that his voice would be too feeble to carry far.'

'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'Probably. Which hip did he break?'

'Hip. Let me think. The right one. Why?'

'He'd break it by falling on it?'

'Sorry?'

'I mean it'd be a fracture by impact rather than by stress. I'm sorry to sound so untechnical.'

'No, I take your meaning,' said Sowden. 'By impact, yes. I see. What you're saying is – '

'What I'm asking,' interrupted Pascoe, 'is whether you wouldn't expect any damage to the head incurred in the same fall that broke his hip to be on the right side also?'

'It would be more likely,' agreed Sowden. 'But the body is capable of almost infinite contortions, especially an old, poorly coordinated body out of control in a fall. As for a mugging, which I take it you're hinting at, I looked in his pockets to get his name. I got it from his pension book which had several bank notes folded inside it. And there was also a purse, I recall, with a lot of silver. No, I think you and your colleagues, Inspector, could usefully take a course in suspicious circumstances, what to follow up, what to ignore.'

Again that note of challenge. Pascoe made a note of Parrinder's name and said, 'Thank you for your help, Doctor. Now I know how busy they keep you here, so I won't hold you up any more.'

Pascoe was congratulating himself on having evaded any head-on conflict. He guessed that after Sowden had enjoyed a few hours' sleep, he would relegate the road accident to that deep-delved and well-locked chamber where doctors and policemen alike try, usually successfully, to store yesterday's horrors as they relax and prepare themselves for today's.

But this one was not yet ready for inhumation. With no great pleasure he recognized a lanky figure chatting intimately to a nurse outside the doctor's office. It was Sam Ruddlesdin, the Post reporter.

Inclination told him to keep walking by with a cheerful wave of the hand. Instinct, however, told him that Ruddlesdin would only have returned to the hospital if he had some mischief in hand, and it might be well to get a scent of it. So when Ruddlesdin greeted him with a cheerful, 'Hello, Mr Pascoe. How are you?' he stopped and said, 'As well as can be expected, in this place, at this time. What brings you here?'

'Same as you, I dare say,' said Ruddlesdin with a saturnine grin. He had a good line in saturnine grins to go with a nice line in scurrility, which made him an entertaining companion for about two and a half pints, and generally speaking his relationship with the police was finely balanced on a fulcrum of mutual need.

Pascoe said, 'You mean the Welfare Lane killing? Mr Deeks?'

'That too,' said Ruddlesdin. 'I was down there earlier, before you in fact. Talked to Sergeant Wield. He seemed to think Mr Headingley would be on the case. But when I was here earlier, I gathered from Dr Sowden that he'd just left with Superintendent Dalziel and that you were taking over. The murder specialist. Is that an official designation in Mid-Yorkshire now, Inspector?'

'It doesn't carry any extra money if it is,' said Pascoe, looking at Sowden, who returned his gaze defiantly with just a hint of guilt. 'Anyway, you've caught up with me now. Shall we talk on our way out to the car park?'

Ruddlesdin said, 'I'd certainly be glad of the chance to talk with you, Mr Pascoe, but I'd really like a quick word with Dr Sowden first.'

He looked at Sowden, who made no move to invite him into the office; then at Pascoe, who made no move to take his leave. Ruddlesdin let another saturnine grin slip down from beneath the brim of his slouch hat.

'It was really just to check again on what you thought Mr Westerman said before he died, Doctor,' he said.

'Look,' said Sowden, suddenly uneasy. 'I'm not sure I should really be talking about this with you. A patient's dying words, I mean, in a sense they're, I don't know, confidential, I suppose.'

'Like in confession?' said Ruddlesdin, swapping the grin for a parody of piety. 'Yes, I can see that. And I'm not going to quote you, Doctor. Well, probably not. But something else came up. You see, after I talked to you earlier, I did a little bit of research on the ground. Paradise Road runs past The Duke of York where Mr Westerman had been drinking, past The Towers, the old folks' holiday home, which was where he was heading, and then past nowhere at all for another three miles till you arrive at Paradise Hall Hotel. I can't afford their restaurant prices very often myself, but I have been there. Very nice. Excellent menu, top class clientele. Just the place for a pair of distinguished citizens to eat, I thought. And I was right! Mr Charlesworth and Mr Dalziel ate there tonight.

'Mr Abbiss, the owner, was very discreet, but I got just a hint that Mr Dalziel had been a trifle the worse for wear when he left. Not that that signifies, as he was the passenger, of course. Only…'

Pascoe refused to be the one who said, 'Only what?' but Sowden was less resilient.

'Only what?' he said.

'Only when I called in at The Towers just to get some background on the poor old chap who'd died, I got talking to a Mrs Warsop who is by way of being their bursar. Quite by chance it seems that she too was dining at Paradise Hall tonight. Now, she doesn't know Mr Dalziel from Adam, but she is acquainted with Mr Charlesworth by sight. And as she was leaving the Hall, she saw them in the car park together, getting into a car. And the strange thing is, she's quite adamant about it, that it wasn't Mr Charlesworth, but the (I quote) fat drunk one who got into the driver's seat and drove away!'

'I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies.'

Andrew Dalziel awoke to sunlight and birdsong, both of which filtered softly through grey net curtains. It was almost a month since, following his usual habit on bad mornings of hauling himself upright with the help of the hideous folk-weave drapes which were a sort of memorial to his long-fled wife, he had pulled the curtain rail right off the wall. Time had not yet effected any great healing, and now only the flimsy net and an erratic window-cleaner maintained the decencies. There was no way, however, that the net could maintain his weight, so now, belching and breaking wind, he pursued his alternative levee strategy of rolling sideways till he hit the floor, then using the bed for vertical leverage.

Upright, he had the misfortune to glimpse himself in a long wall mirror. Clad in a string vest and purple and green checked socks, it was an image to engage the unwary eye like a basilisk. He approached closer and addressed himself.

'Some talk of Alexander,' he said softly, 'and some of Hercules.'

Slowly he peeled off the vest. The string had printed a pattern of pink diamonds over his torso, from broad shoulders down to broader belly. He scratched the pattern gently as a musician might run his fingers over harp strings. His head felt heavy, his tongue felt furry, his legs… it occurred to him that he couldn't feel his legs at all. He nodded his huge head, like a bear who sees the dogs circling and, though chained to a post, yet believes that the sport may still be his. His strength he did not doubt. Nothing was wrong with him physically that a scalding shower and an even scaldinger pot of tea had not a thousand times already set to rights. But his mind was troubled by something like the sound of a bicycle wheel whistling round in the rain.

The shower and the tea had to be negotiated with care, but they allayed the basic physical symptoms sufficiently for him to risk a small Scotch to calm the mind. And now, he told himself with the assurance of one who believed in a practical, positive and usually physical response to most of life's problems, all he needed to complete this repair of normality was a platterful of egg, sausage, bacon, tomatoes and fried bread. Bitter experience had taught him in the years since his wife's departure to eschew home catering. It wasn't that a basic cuisine was beyond his grasp; it was the cleaning up afterwards that defeated him. And while a man could live with a broken curtain rail, only a beast would tolerate fat-congealed frying-pans. Fortunately the police canteen did an excellent breakfast. Gourmet cooking they might not provide, but what did that matter to a man who – for Pascoe's benefit anyway – affected to believe that cordon bleu was a French road-block? And a slight blackening round the edge of a fry-up was to a resurrected copper what the crust on old port was to a wine connoisseur – a sign of readiness.