Exit Lines

by Reginald Hill

  Dorothy Frostick, now being treated for shock in the hospital to which she had accompanied her father’s body, had become alarmed when her attempts to telephone the old man had been unanswered earlier in the evening. On arrival at the house, she had discovered him in his bath, bruised and bleeding. Unable to lift him out singlehanded, she had run outside, half hysterical, and roused the neighbours to help.

  Principal among these, Wield had ascertained on arrival, was Mrs Tracey Spillings of No. 27, next door, where she was presently attending the Inspector’s pleasure, and pursuing her own in the shape of Dallas from the sound of it.

  ‘She says the old boy was alive, just, when they got him out of the bath, but reckons he was beyond recall by the time the ambulance got here. The hospital say he was dead on arrival. Mr Longbottom’s been alerted to do the PM in the morning. I didn’t think we need bother Dr Rackfell; the duty man at the City General should be able to give us all the preliminary details. Oh, and someone either rang the Post or Sam Ruddlesdin was listening in. He turned up shortly after I did. Asked a few questions, then set off for the hospital, I think.’

  Longbottom was the Chief Pathologist at the City General, Rackfell was the police surgeon on call that night, and Ruddlesdin was the Evening Post’s chief reporter.

  ‘You’ve got everything sewn up so nicely, Sergeant, I don’t see why you needed to bother me either,’ said Pascoe rather grumpily. ‘Now there’s no one at home at No. 23, you say? Why didn’t whoever it was try there, I wonder? Well, let’s go and see your Mrs Spillings at 27 and let this lot have a bit of space to move in.’

  This lot were the forensic team and the photographer who were beginning to move methodically through the tiny house.

  ‘Incidentally, why did you bother me?’ wondered Pascoe as he led the way out of the front door, ignoring PC Hector’s vain attempt to stand straight at attention. ‘Mr Headingley busy, is he? And Mr Dalziel out of reach?’

  George Headingley was the CID Inspector on duty that night. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel would certainly have expected to be informed instantly of any murder on his patch.

  ‘I’m not sure what’s going on, sir,’ said Wield in a low voice as they walked towards No. 27. ‘Something seems to have come up at the hospital.’

  ‘Something to do with this case, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Wield. ‘What happened was, Hector buzzed in about this lot, said that the ambulance was just arriving to take Mr Deeks away. It sounded at the time as if the old fellow was still alive, so Mr Headingley said he’d go down to the hospital to see what was what and asked me to get things started down here.’

  They’d covered the few yards to 27, but Wield did not offer to knock and the two men sheltered from the driving rain as best they could in the lee of a puce-glossed doorway.

  ‘He contacted me about half an hour later, maybe more. Told me Deeks was dead and Mrs Frostick was under sedation. Then he said something had come up and it’d be best if I could get hold of you as he was going to be occupied with this other thing. I asked if he wanted me to try to get hold of Mr Dalziel too, but he said no, there was no need for that, no need at all. He was being very cagey, said he’d explain things to you later. Anyway, that’s how I came to be disturbing your evening.’

  ‘You could have told me this on the phone!’ protested Pascoe. ‘It might have made me a fraction less bad-tempered.’

  ‘Thought you’d prefer to start off with a clear mind,’ said Wield.

  He was right, of course. Anything that could make a good, solid, down-to-earth copper like George Headingley slide out from under a murder inquiry must be serious. Already Pascoe’s mind was spiralling off into the inane of speculation. He only hoped he could drag it back to earth and hold it there till he got this investigation properly under way.

  He needn’t have worried. Ballast was at hand.

  The fluorescent door was flung open, revealing a brightly lit living-room where the full volume of a television set competed vainly with a clamorous wallpaper whose main motif was the display ritual of birds of paradise in a tropical jungle. Lowering his eyes, Pascoe met the glower of a short but enormously broad woman in a nylon overall which seemed to have been glossed from the same pot as the doorway.

  ‘Are you buggers too shy to knock, or what?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t rudd that step just so’s a pair of petrified coppers could stamp their hobnails on it. Are you coming in? I haven’t got all bloody night, even if you have!’

  The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley was quite forgotten. Meekly Pascoe followed Sergeant Wield into the house.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Die, my dear doctor – that’s the last thing I shall do.’

  The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley had its roots in what had happened out on the Paradise Road earlier that evening; or perhaps even in what had happened during Dr John Sowden’s medical training a few years before, for Dr Sowden’s ethical attitudes had matured much more rapidly than his clinical knowledge.

  As a second year student, he was already proclaiming a doctor’s first duty was to his patient, not to some semi-religious philosophical abstraction. He found no difficulty with abortion; the mother was his patient, not the foetus. And at the other end of existence, the only difficulty he found with euthanasia was its illegality, but he would certainly not strive officiously to keep alive patients who ought to be switched off.

  These were the pragmatic points of view which deserved to be maintained by a modern young doctor. Somewhere within their clinically rigid framework, there should have been a space perfectly tailored to contain the death of Philip Cater Westerman, to whom surgery could at best have given only a couple of years of probably bedridden life. Yet in some peculiarly illogical way, even though he had done everything possible for the man, which in all truth was precious little, it was to Dr Sowden as if the thought that Westerman would be better off dead had somehow transplanted itself into action. Incredibly, he felt guilty! Another few minutes and he would have been dead on arrival like the other two. But because he had technically entered into his care for those last few minutes of life, he, Dr Sowden, prospective snapper-off of life-support systems and generous dispenser of terminal tranquillizers, felt guilty. Or responsible. Or resentful. Or something.

  Puzzled and irritated by this feeling, he went to the waiting-room where a nurse had told him that some visitors were eager for news of Mr Westerman.

  There were three men there; one fat, flushed and middle-aged, staring gloomily into space, the only sign of life being the movement of his right hand down his right sock as he attempted to scratch the sole of his foot inside his shoe; the second slightly younger and much better preserved, with a reflective self-contained expression on his sallow face and in his hand an expensive-smelling cigar whose smoke tendrils twined themselves around the no-smoking sign above his head; the third, sitting as far away from the other two as possible and looking distinctly the most nervous of the trio, was a uniformed police constable.

  Not relatives, decided the doctor; they must be from the car involved in the accident.

  Addressing a neutral point of the room, he said, ‘I’m sorry to say Mr Westerman is dead.’

  The fat man stopped scratching momentarily; his companion raised his cigar to his lips; the constable stood up.

  ‘The death will have to be reported to the coroner, of course,’ said Dr Sowden to the constable, thinking that he was keeping the coroner busy tonight. ‘If you’d like to come with me…’

  He opened the door and waited. The constable glanced across at the two men as if in search of something but nothing was said.

  He followed the doctor into the corridor.

  ‘How’d it happen?’ Sowden asked as they walked along together.

  ‘Don’t rightly know,’ said the officer vaguely. ‘He was riding a bike.’

  ‘That,’ said Sowden judiciously, ‘is surely a circumstance rather than a cause. How was the breathalyser
test?’

  It was none of his business, of course, and had the policeman merely indicated this, he would probably have felt it was no more than his own bit of pomposity deserved and let the matter drop. But when the constable said evasively, ‘I’m not sure,’ Sowden said sharply, ‘You did breathalyse them? Or rather him? The driver? That was him there, in the waiting-room, I take it?’

  The constable’s silence acquiesced.

  ‘And you don’t know if he’s been breathalysed? Good lord, if even a dying man could smell the whisky, surely you didn’t miss it? I could still smell the stuff in the waiting-room! And what’s he doing there anyway? Shouldn’t he be down at the station, helping with inquiries?’

  ‘Not up to me, sir,’ said the constable, stung to reply.

  Sowden was prevented from any further probing by the intervention of the ward clerk who drew him aside and murmured. ‘There’s a police inspector to see you, Doctor. It’s about Mr Deeks.’

  Waiting in his office was a middle-aged man with bushy eyebrows and a kind of weary affability, like a country parson at the end of a long church fête.

  ‘Headingley,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘Detective-Inspector. It’s about Deeks. Dead, I gather?’

  ‘Yes. Died in the ambulance.’

  ‘Ah. His daughter’s here too, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t see her. She’s in shock. I’ve admitted her for the night. She’ll have been sedated by now.’

  ‘Oh. I see,’ said Headingley, looking towards the frosted panel in the door against which the police constable’s hat could be seen silhouetted. ‘Is that one of our lads out there?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Sowden. ‘But nothing to do with Deeks. A road accident. A cyclist was killed. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, you might have a word with your constable. He seems a bit vague about whether the driver was breathalysed or not. And the fellow’s actually here, in the waiting-room, stinking of Scotch!’

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ said Headingley without enthusiasm. ‘About Deeks, cause of death?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t done a detailed examination of course, it’s a bit hectic tonight. But I’d be surprised if it wasn’t simple heart failure brought on by stress. He’d been beaten about the head, and there were several cuts around the throat and shoulders, nothing likely in itself to cause death, but the strain of undergoing such treatment must have been tremendous.’

  ‘Some nasty people about,’ said Headingley gloomily. ‘We’ll need a full scale PM, of course. Mr Longbottom’s not about, I suppose?’

  ‘I’ll check,’ said Sowden, picking up the phone.

  ‘And I’ll have a quick word with our lad out there,’ said Headingley.

  It took Sowden a couple of minutes to ascertain that the pathologist was not in the hospital. He got the exchange to dial Longbottom’s home number and as it rang, he called, ‘Inspector!’

  Headingley returned from his conversation with the uniformed policeman looking very pensive.

  ‘They’re ringing Mr Longbottom at home,’ said Sowden. ‘You take over. It’s not part of my remit to disturb consultants at this time of night.’

  He smiled as he spoke, but Headingley did not respond.

  The pathologist himself answered the phone and condescended to be available at 10.30 the following morning. Rather to Sowden’s admiration, Headingley responded to brusqueness with brusqueness. After he had replaced the phone he said, ‘The constable said you said something about even a dying man smelling whisky, sir.’

  ‘That’s right. Last words that poor devil uttered were, let me get it right, driver, fat bastard, pissed. That’s a pretty straightforward death-bed declaration, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ said Headingley. ‘Look, would you mind if I used your phone again?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Er, privately, if I may.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Sowden. ‘They’ll be reporting me for malingering if I stay here much longer anyway.’

  He left. As he walked down the corridor which led past the waiting-room, its door opened and the two men emerged. Suddenly Sowden’s absurd buried guilt feeling about Westerman’s death came surging to the surface.

  ‘Hold on a second,’ he called.

  The men stopped and turned.

  ‘Yes?’ said the cigar smoker.

  Sowden looked around. At the end of the corridor he saw the uniformed constable. Waving an imperious summons, he said, ‘I think the police might like a word before you go.’

  The men exchanged glances.

  ‘Oh aye?’ said the fat one.

  The constable approached.

  ‘Officer,’ said Sowden, ‘I just wanted to be quite sure for my own peace of mind that you had in fact administered a breathalyser test.’

  The constable was nonplussed.

  The fat man belched and said, ‘Who to, friend?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ said Sowden.

  He heard footsteps hurrying behind him and turned to see, not without relief, Inspector Headingley approaching fast.

  ‘I was just inquiring about the breathalyser test, Inspector,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. All right. Sorry, sir,’ said Headingley.

  It may have been that the man was out of breath but there seemed to be in that ‘sorry, sir’ addressed to the fat man something more than mere constabulary courtesy.

  ‘Excuse me, but just who are you?’ said Sowden. ‘Don’t I know your face?’

  The fat man looked at him speculatively.

  ‘Mebbe you do and mebbe you don’t,’ he said. ‘Dalziel’s the name, Detective-Superintendent Dalziel if you want the whole bloody issue. And you’re Doctor Livingstone, I presume.’

  Light dawned.

  ‘My God! I get it now!’ said Sowden triumphantly.

  ‘Get what, Doctor?’

  ‘Why all the fuss and keep it quiet! It’s a nice little cover-up.’

  ‘Cover-up?’ echoed Dalziel softly. ‘Of what? By who?’

  ‘Of drunken driving causing death,’ said Sowden challengingly. ‘And by the police of the police.’

  It was a dramatic little confrontation beginning to attract some distant notice from nurses and other personnel.

  The cigar-smoking man intervened.

  ‘No one’s asked me who I am.’

  ‘All right. Let’s have your name and rank too,’ said Sowden.

  ‘No rank. Plain Mr Charlesworth. Arnold Charlesworth,’ said the man. ‘I’m not a policeman. I’m a bookmaker. And I’m more than happy to be breathalysed. Again.’

  Sowden ignored the last word and said, ‘Why should anyone want to breathalyse you, Mr Charlesworth?’

  ‘It’s the law, Doctor,’ said Charlesworth in a friendly tone. ‘You see, it was me that was driving the car that killed that poor sod back there. The Superintendent here was just my passenger. And my breath test was negative.’

  He puffed a wreath of cigar smoke about Sowden’s head.

  ‘So stuff that in your stethoscope and diagnose it,’ he said.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Either this wallpaper goes or I do.’

  Mrs Tracey Spillings was in her forties, all the way down. She had a boldly handsome, no-nonsense kind of face, but her brusque manner did not mean she was entirely bereft of empathy, for, seeing the anguish on Pascoe’s face (Pascoe’s because it took more than mere noise to limn any detectable emotion on Wield’s features), she gestured towards what looked like an empty armchair and said, or rather shouted, ‘She means no disrespect, it’s her only pleasure, switch it off and God knows what she’d be up to, ain’t that right, Mam?’

  A step nearer the chair revealed that curled up in its huge chintzy arms was a wizened old lady who reminded Sergeant Wield of a picture in his illustrated H. Rider Haggard showing what happened to Ayesha after her second immersion in the Flame of Life. That this frailness should at one time have contained this vastness was a concept requiring a greater effort
of lateral thinking than he was inclined to make.

  Pascoe showed why he was an Inspector by shouting, ‘How do you do?’ to the old lady whose eyes never left Dallas. Nor, from the size of the stack of tapes standing next to the VCR, did it look as if they would ever need to.

  Mrs Spillings jerked her head towards the inner door which led to the kitchen. Here the noise level was reduced to that of a medium-sized steel foundry, but this was compensated for by a wallpaper design of huge tropical fruit whose violence was intensified by the confined space, the 1000-watt strip lighting, and highly polished kitchen units in the puce which was clearly Mrs Spillings’s favourite colour.

  Pascoe introduced himself and started to explain what he wanted, but quickly found that his explanation was neither needed or heeded. Mrs Spillings launched straight into narrative.

  ‘This is what happened,’ she said. ‘You’d best make notes as it’s the second time of telling and there’ll not be a third. It were an hour back, no, I tell a lie, likely more. I’d just finished the ironing when Dolly Frostick came banging on my door, screaming blue murder. I went straight out, there was others at their doors and windows, but all hanging back, not doing owt. You’ll know how backward folk can be about coming forward in your job, until they think they’re getting something for nothing and then there’s no hanging back. I said Dolly, calm yourself, lass, and tell us what’s up. And she said It’s me dad, it’s me dad! and set off shrieking again. I saw I could be here till next Sunday waiting to get any sense out of her, so I went to have a look for myself. I saw right off the house were in a mess and I said to myself, Hey up! burglars! and I picked up the poker from the grate before I went upstairs.

  ‘He were lying in the bathtub. The water were all bloody, so I pulled out the plug. I said, Bob, Bob, what the hell have you been up to? but he said nowt, just flickered his eyelids for a second. So I lifted him out of the bath – he were no weight at all, skin and bones, they all go like that, mine’s just the same – and I wrapped him in a towel and I took him into the bedroom and put him on the bed and covered him over.