Exit Lines (15 page)

'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.

He collected the rest of Parrinder's possessions from the hospital security officer. A glance in the pension book told him last week's money had been collected at the head Post Office in the city centre on Friday. Good. Everything that fitted was good. He thanked Sowden for his help and would have departed, but the young doctor said, 'That other business . . .'

'Yes?'

'The road accident. Look, I don't want to cause trouble, but I'd just like to be certain that, well, everything's been done that ought to be done.'

'I think I can assure you of that,' said Pascoe gravely.

Sowden's face showed doubt as well as fatigue and Pascoe added, 'I can't say anything more than that, really I can't. I mean, either you believe me or you don't. If you don't, then all you can do is start causing trouble, as you put it. That's your prerogative. And it'll give you something to think about next time a patient complains you've stitched him up with a stethoscope inside.'

Sowden grinned.

'All right,' he said. 'But I'll keep an eye on things if you don't mind. To sweeten the pill, let me buy you a drink next time I cross-question you.'

'You know where to find me,' said Pascoe. 'If I were you, I'd get a few weeks' sleep.'

'And if I were you . . .'

'Yes?'

'. . . I think I'd be telling me to get a few weeks' sleep,' said Sowden, changing direction with a yawn. 'Good hunting.'

'Good sleeping,' said Pascoe.

In the caravan in Welfare Lane he put Parrinder's possessions down in a corner next to Hector's sackful of stones. Wield looked at the new acquisition and raised his eyebrows, producing an effect not unlike the vernal shifting of some Arctic landscape as the sun sets an ice-bound river flowing once more through a waste of snows.

Pascoe explained.

'So that's that,' said Wield. Pascoe sensed an
I-could've- told-you-so
somewhere in there and perversely replied, 'We might as well let Seymour cross the t's and dot the i's. But by himself. You won't believe this, Sergeant, but Mr Cruikshank actually objects to being deprived of Hector under false pretences.'

Wield laughed and said, 'We're all deprived of him today. It's his day off.'

'What do you imagine he does? Moonlights as a road sign perhaps!' mused Pascoe. 'Is Seymour handy?'

'Should be here any minute. What about us, sir? How long do we carry on here?'

'Tired of the gypsy life, are we?' said Pascoe. 'Not much coming in?'

The function of the caravan was to provide an on-the-spot HQ and also attract local witnesses whose energies or faith in the importance of what they had to say might not take them to the Central Police Station.

'Nothing,' said Wield.

'Give it till tonight,' said Pascoe. 'We'll maybe get somebody coming home from work who's been away over the weekend.'

'Coming home from work?' said Wield. 'Well, it won't be crowds round here, that's for sure.'

Seymour arrived. He made a face when Pascoe told him to take Parrinder's possessions and deliver them to Inspector Cruikshank, but brightened up a bit when he was given the off-licence and restaurant receipts and told to go and find out what he could about Parrinder's appearance in those establishments.

'And that doesn't mean sitting around all day sampling their wares,' said Wield, who clearly thought that this was a waste of valuable police time.

'Oh, and Seymour,' said Pascoe, scribbling on a piece of paper. 'Find out what won these races last Friday.'

Seymour took the scrap of paper and studied it carefully.

'He
can
read, can't he?' said Pascoe to Wield.

'Depends. Did you join up the letters?'

With the tired smile with which one greets the wit of superiors, Seymour said, '
Red Vanessa
by two lengths,
Usherette
by a short head. Will there be anything else, sir?'

'Seymour,' said Pascoe, 'you're a racing man!'

'I keep an eye open,' said the red-headed detective modestly.

'Not a good thing in a young CID officer,' said Wield. 'Being a racing man.'

'Temptation, you mean?' said Pascoe.

'Gambling, borrowing, debt,' said Wield.

'Bad company, dirty women, bent bookies,' said Pascoe.

'Any word on Mr Dalziel, sir?' said Seymour.

It was a good but not a wise riposte. Wield's face became Arctic once more after its false spring, and Pascoe's features assumed an expression of mild distaste which those who knew him well did not care to see.

Hastily Seymour gathered together Parrinder's possessions.

'Sir,' he said in a conciliatory tone, 'what about this?

Do you want me to give this to Mr Cruikshank too?' He indicated Hector's sack of stones.

Pascoe was sorely tempted. Cruikshank and Seymour - kill two birds with one sack, so to speak! But judgment defeated justice.

'No, leave it. Off you go now. Don't hang around.'

Relieved at getting off so lightly, Seymour made a rapid exit.

Wield, who had recognized the names of the horses from Pascoe's account of his hospital visit, said, 'That explains why he went out, then.'

'Parrinder?'

'Yes. Racing man, makes three selections, sees two of them come up on the telly, he'd be bound to want to chase his luck and make sure he was on the last one. Poor old devil, he must have thought it was his lucky day!'

'Yes, I expect so,' said Pascoe.

It all fitted. Why then couldn't he put it to the back of his mind and concentrate on the Deeks case? Perhaps because there was nothing to concentrate on. Charley Frostick was due home tomorrow, that was the nearest thing to a development, and there seemed little way the young soldier's arrival could help.

As if catching the military trend of his thought, Wield said, 'By the way, sir, Forensic produced this sole pattern from the bathroom vinyl.'

Pascoe studied the sheet of cardboard which Wield handed him.

'Did they have any suggestions?' he asked.

'Size ten, ten and a half,' said Wield.

'Army?'

'Didn't say anything about that. No distinguishing marks, you know, cuts or anything like that. Even the pattern's a bit vague. Wouldn't chance their arm. ‘Well, if they won't, we must!' said Pascoe, eager for some kind of action. 'I'll check it out at Eltervale Camp.'

Wield, condemned to another boring stint in the caravan, said with no overt sarcasm, 'Lunch at Paradise Hall again, sir?'

'No!' said Pascoe. 'No way!'

Chapter 17

'God bless . . . God damn!'

Perhaps fortunately for Andrew Dalziel, the Deputy Chief Constable was neither a vindictive nor a naturally suspicious man. There was no denying that the Head of CID had long been a thorn in his side, if one so broad and solid could be thus described. The Superintendent had made small effort in the past to conceal his contempt for the DCC's intellect, outlook and abilities. The DCC found this a considerable but bearable irritation. He knew his own worth and he had a pretty fair idea of Dalziel's too. It was this ability to separate the Superintendent's manners from his morals that had caused him to pitch the investigation in such a low key. He found it hard to believe that Dalziel, even in panic, would attempt to duck responsibility for any action of his own. So he had set George Headingley to take a close but discreet look at things.

But now there were faint whiffs of something more corrupt than an accident cover-up coming his way. Typically, the DCC's method was to proceed with even greater discretion. Down in the Met they may have lived so long in an atmosphere of suspected corruption that it was probably suspicious for a senior police officer not to be suspected! But up here in the clearer, fresher air of Yorkshire, where the blunt honest burghers knew for certain that there was no smoke without fire, it was still possible for a man's career to be indelibly darkened by suspicion. So on Monday morning at ten o'clock he found occasion to telephone the regional office of HM Customs and Excise on a question of some necessary statistics for the Chief Constable's annual report, and when this had been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction, he made casual inquiry into the state of the investigation into alleged irregularities in the conduct of A. Charlesworth, Turf Accountant, Ltd.

The investigation had been conducted, he was told.

There would be no proceedings.

Did this mean that there had been no irregularities?

'It means,' said his informant, not without a touch of acidity, 'that there has been no evidence. Mr Charlesworth's records are so clean you'd think they'd been done only yesterday.'

This sounded like good news to the DCC till he incautiously requested complete assurance.

'You mean that Mr Charlesworth has committed no crime.'

There was a pause before the acid voice said carefully, 'I mean that Mr Charlesworth is either the single most conscientious bookmaker we have ever dealt with or that he knew we were coming.'

It emerged that the investigation had been timed to coincide with the final meet of the flat racing season, at Doncaster the weekend before last. Charlesworth's was very much a Yorkshire firm with betting shops all over the county and a large presence at all northern race meetings, so Charlesworth himself would be down at Doncaster on this day and his head office ought to have been particularly vulnerable. Instead they found things here and in all the shops raided in perfect order. Even those natural daily errors caused by human fallibility under pressure were absent. And the painstaking examination, point by decimal point, of his records which had just been concluded the previous week had produced nothing further.

'And when did Mr Charlesworth get the good news?' asked the DCC.

'Oh, he'll just get his records returned some time this week. When we don't slap him in irons, he'll know he's all right.'

'And us: have we been officially informed?'

'I don't think we'd bother unless there were some irregularities,' said the voice.

At least it wasn't a celebration dinner! thought the DCC with relief.

'Though we liaise very closely, of course,' resumed the voice as if sensing a criticism. 'CID knows what we're up to. Your Mr Dalziel insists on that.'

The DCC's heart slipped a notch.

'So we'd probably know sort of casually that the Charlesworth books were in order?'

'Oh certainly. Mr Dalziel was very interested in the whole business from the start. In fact, now I think of it, when we were talking last week on another matter, this investigation came up and he was most sympathetic when he learned that we'd been wasting our time.'

The voice was quite triumphant as if saying
There! you knew all the time!

The DCC's heart was beginning to pick up speed in its descent.

He said, 'Of course. Mr Dalziel would have been talking with you about your airport check on Saturday morning.'

'That's right. We've got full powers, of course, but we like to make it a joint venture when it's something like this. So I'm afraid we wasted your time as well as ours on this occasion.'

The apology sounded rather like a compliment, but the DCC wasn't concerned with nuances.

He said, 'This was a routine check, was it?'

'No,' said the voice, hardly bothering to conceal its irritation now. 'It wasn't routine, as I'm sure Mr Dalziel's files will tell you. We are not so foolish as to risk irritating William Pledger just for the sake of routine, and very irritated he has been! There'd been a tip-off that the Van Bellen plane was bringing in a load of heroin.'

'Heroin?' said the DCC faintly.

'Yes,' said the voice. 'But it was clean as a whistle. Clean as a whistle.'

The tone was one of savage disappointment, inviting deep condolence, but the DCC's only response was a subdued farewell as he quietly replaced the phone and sat contemplating the new deeps into which his heart was plummeting.

That Dalziel should have been dining with Charlesworth, whose books had proved clean, and Major Kassell, whose employer's aeroplane had proved clean, was surely not so outrageous a coincidence?

He picked up his phone and dialled Dalziel's number. He whistled quietly to himself as it rang for the usual preliminary minute. But still no one replied. Suddenly he felt the beginnings of anger. Slowly its mists rose, obscuring the idea of coincidence, turning it into a shape, vague and absurd and not to be taken seriously. The phone kept on ringing. Why didn't he answer? He sat back in his chair, listening to the tinny double-noted summons and, quite forgetting that only twenty-four hours before he had been urging Dalziel to make himself scarce, he demanded angrily of the unresponsive air, 'Where, where, where has the bloody man got to?'

But, had the air miraculously responded, it would not have helped the DCC's temper one bit.

'Mr Dalziel, Andy, glad to see you. Barney said you might be turning up and I said, just the job, another English speaker, great. How's your Frog? Never mind. Mostly they speak better English than me, only they don’t
think
in English, that's where it shows. I must've met a million foreigners, it's my work, I get on well with 'em, that's my work too, but I've never met one I could make a real pal of, know what I mean? And that's because they don't
think
in English, leastways that's what I put it down to.'

Sir William Pledger was a surprise even for one of Harold Wilson's knights. Short, stout, round and red-faced with huge thick-lensed glasses that magnified his slightly pop eyes, bald except for a few long, ginger hairs which trailed over and indeed out of his jug-ears, he talked in a high-pitched rush, slowed only by his long native Oxfordshire vowel sounds and accompanied by a wild semaphore of both his upper and nether limbs, none of which fortunately was long enough to imperil more than his immediate neighbourhood.

If Dalziel, who had been met at Haycroft Grange by Barney Kassell and driven out in a Range Rover to join the party for lunch, had been self-conscious about his balding corduroy trousers and scene-of-the-crime gum-boots, he might have been put at ease by Sir William's overlarge camouflage jacket and paint-stained grey flannels tucked into a pair of old wellies, which contrasted strangely with the elegant plus-foured tweediness of everyone else.

As it was, Dalziel observed and approved the difference. The top man was the one who didn't need to give a fuck about the niceties.

An early lunch was being taken among the ruins of a building too tumbledown to be identifiable but with sections of irregular stone wall high enough to break the keen north wind. The views were spectacular, the cold collation excellent. Dalziel was introduced vaguely and generally to the six or seven shooters present, most of whom seemed to be foreign.

There was wine to be drunk, but Dalziel gratefully accepted the alternative of coffee with a shot of Scotch.

'Keeps the cold out,' said Sir William. 'Let that lot swill back the vino, mother's milk to most of them, so that's all right, Barney keeps it in bounds, don't you, Barney?'

'That's right,' said Kassell. 'I've developed an eye for that if nothing else. Too much booze and shotguns don't mix. The biggest proportion of accidents happen during the after-lunch drives.'

Kassell looked very much at home in this environment, his face healthily flushed by the boisterous wind which winnowed his hair as though to show how thick it still was. His clothing, though it lacked the evident newness of the guests', gave away nothing in terms of cut and fit.

'Do you get a lot of accidents, then?' asked Dalziel, chewing voraciously at a cold leg of something.

'Not here we don't,' said Kassell. 'But on some of the estates where they let out shooting to syndicates, you can get too many clowns and not enough ringmasters. Result is, often they shoot more dogs than birds.'

'This your first time, Andy?' said Pledger.

'That's right. I said to Barney I fancied giving it a go and he said I should try half a day to see how I liked it. It's good of you to let me come.'

'Always happy to have the law along,' said Pledger. 'Old Tommy Winter's a fair shot, as you probably know. I bet he'd rather be here than burning up on some Caribbean beach. And we usually have one or two of the boys in blue at the other end of the stick too.'

'Sorry?' said Dalziel.

'The beaters,' explained Kassell. 'Of course we can get any amount of casual labour these days, but we like to stick with what we know and can rely on. We get a lot of bobbies using their day off to earn a bit extra. I suppose it's against regulations, is it?'

He smiled faintly as he asked the question.

Dalziel said, 'If it doesn't bother Old Tommy, it don't bother me.'

'Old Tommy' was of course the Chief Constable, who was as unlikely to be addressed to his face in this fashion by Dalziel as he was to address Dalziel as 'Young Andy'.

'Well, I'd better make with the Euro-talk,' said Pledger cheerfully. 'Good shooting, Andy. Barney will keep an eye on you, I've no doubt. Shall we see you at dinner tonight?'

'I don't think so, Sir William,' said Dalziel. 'I've just come as I am.'

'Pity,' said Pledger. 'Look, if you take to it, you really ought to come again soon, but kitted out for a meal too. I mean, that's the fun of it, isn't it? Not standing around here with the wind whistling among the family jewels, but yakking about it later with your belly full and a noggin in your hand. Barney, you're the only sod who knows what's what. When would be best?'

'Next Friday would suit very well. We're usually a gun or two short on the first afternoon. This lot go back tomorrow. Next bunch arrives on Friday morning, and there's always at least one of the Euros who just wants to lie around after his flight.'

'Splendid,' said Pledger. 'Isn't de Witt coming? He's a Dutch judge, Andy, fascinated by crime. He'd love to meet an English bobby, I know. So that's fixed. Good. Always supposing you don't blow someone's head off this afternoon!'

'Thank you very much,' said Dalziel.

Pledger moved away and Kassell said with the same faint smile as before, 'You've made a hit.'

'You think so? I wouldn't know. Not much to hit by the looks of it,' said Dalziel with the amiable condescension of the large.

'Half of his success derives from no one being able to believe in him, till it's too late,' said Kassell. 'He could gobble most of this lot up for afternoon tea.'

'And judges? Does he gobble up judges too?'

'The Dutchman, you mean? Rest easy. It's just a question of a patent that's being sorted out in a civil court, that's all. Let's take a stroll, shall we? I have to talk to the beaters.'

They set off together out of the ruins. It was a fine landscape of lightly wooded moorlands rolling like the sea under the boisterous wind which trailed lines of white clouds across a huge sky.

'How was it at the airport?' asked Dalziel.

'All right,' said Kassell. 'How's your bit of bother?'

'Oh, it'll be all right,' said Dalziel. 'Especially now I've got respectable military gents speaking up for me. Thanks for telling Headingley you saw me and Arnie driving off, by the way.'

'I'd hate to see your career messed up unnecessarily,' said Kassell sincerely. 'Now, next Friday, how will it be?'

'You mean, my visit to the Grange?' asked Dalziel innocently.

'Partly. I hope it goes well. I hope our other visitors enjoy themselves too and aren't inconvenienced by any delays on arrival. This holiday of yours, will it keep you out of contact with things?'

'No,' said Dalziel. 'I'll drift in from time to time and suss out what's what. Thursday do you?'

'Fine,' said Kassell. 'Ah, here we are. The workers.'

In a fold of land, out of view of the ruin, the beaters were enjoying their lunch. Their leader approached touching his cap and saying, "Afternoon, Major.'

Dalziel strolled aside to let the consultation take its course. Strange world, he thought. This lot and the tweedy set back there would spend their day under the same sky, tramping across the same bit of ground. But it was
us
and
them;
this lot working, that lot playing; this lot at the end of the day going home with a few quid in their pockets, that lot going home with twenty times as much out of their bank balance - or someone's bank balance. What did it all signify?

Suddenly his mind was directed from long-term speculation to short-term bewilderment. There were several large stones scattered around this hollow which some of the men used as seats, some as tables. Behind one of these stones some odd life-form was crouching in a vain effort at concealment. His first thought was that someone had brought a pet orang-outang along. But then he realized that the apparently squat and shambling outline was delusory, and recognition came.