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Chapter 14

'Let not poor Nelly starve.'

Determined that any further hints of delay should be dealt with at source, Pascoe himself called on Dolly Frostick to take her to her father's house on Sunday morning.

'We've got a car. I'd have fetched her,' protested her husband as though his virility had been slighted.

'It's in the public service, why should you pay for the petrol?' said Pascoe expansively.

He would have preferred Mrs Frostick by herself but there was no way of barring her husband from getting in beside her.

At the house, he escorted the woman quickly through the living-room, kitchen and bedroom, to get her adjusted to the evidence of ransacking. Not that it was bad; there'd been no deliberate vandalization; but the police examination for traces of the intruder hadn't exactly improved matters and he knew from experience how distressing these moments could be. Dolly Frostick went pale and very quiet but seemed to be holding together well enough.

Downstairs again, he said, 'Good. Now what I'd like you to do, Mrs Frostick, is go round everywhere very carefully, telling us anything you think has gone missing, anything that's been disturbed or shifted.'

There was a banging on the front door which admitted straight from the street into the living-room.

Pascoe opened it. Tracey Spillings stood there, crowding out, without difficulty, the attendant constable. ‘Hello, Dolly,' she said. 'There's a pot of tea next door when you're done here.'

'Thanks, love,' said Mrs Frostick. 'I shan't be long.'

In the event, she was optimistic. Pascoe tried to keep the atmosphere brisk and businesslike, but he knew he was up against forces stronger than anything his own personality could conjure up. Every drawer or cupboard she opened, she was looking into memories; with every relict of her father's day-by-day existence she came across, she was hearing reproaches. Frostick against all expectation proved a godsend, comforting, directing, diverting, and by the time they had finished, Pascoe had forgiven him everything.

The list of missing items was not long. A small transistor radio, half a dozen campaign medals (Deeks's own from the Second World War and his father's from the First) and a pewter-cased pocket watch with a gold sovereign welded on its chain.

'He always said that was to be Charley's,' said Mrs Frostick in a low voice. 'That and the medals. He wanted him to have the medals.'

'He'll be able to win his own now, won't he?' said Frostick. 'Come on, love. Don't fret. Your dad always wanted Charley to join up, you know that. He knew it would mean Charley going away, but he knew it was best for the lad too. Just think, love, you'll be seeing him soon, and he'll tell you for himself.'

His effort to dilute his wife's grief by the reminder of her son's imminent return failed miserably. Mrs Frostick gave out a half-choked sob and Pascoe got in quickly, saying in his best official voice, 'Now, Mrs Frostick, think hard. Was there anything else you noticed down here, anything unusual?'

She looked around helplessly, then pointed through the open living-room door into the kitchen and the broken pane above the outside door.

'I can't think what he was doing leaving the key in that door. He never used to do that. Whenever he locked the door, he always used to put it on the kitchen table. That was one thing he was most particular about. But he was failing, I knew he was failing, mebbe if we'd paid more heed…'

She looked pleadingly at her husband but he interpreted it as reproach and said defensively. 'He wanted to be on his own, Dolly, you know that. And he might have been particular about not leaving the key in the door, but he was daft enough to keep a spare hidden in the wash-house, so where's the difference?'

'In the wash-house?' said Pascoe. 'Can you show me?'

Leaving his wife in Wield's care, Frostick led him outside and opened the wash-house door, pointing to an old-fashioned boiler.

'In there,' he said.

Pascoe lifted the lid. Among a pile of rubbish he found an old tobacco tin. In it was the spare key.

'Not clever,' said Pascoe. 'How many people do you reckon knew he kept this key here?'

'What's the odds?' asked Frostick. 'It wasn't used.'

'Precisely,' said Pascoe, very Sherlock Holmesish. 'That's the interesting thing.'

Frostick, clearly not one of nature's Watsons, looked unconvinced and said, 'Family, of course. Some of his mates, I shouldn't wonder. Her next door, certainly. She knows everything, that one.'

'Mrs Spillings? Yes. Incidentally, she was saying that Mr Deeks told her a few months back that he loaned your Charley the money to buy an engagement ring.'

'Did she? She's got a big mouth. What's it to you anyway?'

'Nothing,' assured Pascoe. 'It's just this question of money, whether there was any lying around. Did Charley get his loan in cash, I wonder, or did his grandfather have to go to the bank?'

'You mean her next door didn't know? Bloody wonders never cease! Well, I don't know either. I know nowt about it, except that it was money badly spent!'

He spoke with such vehemence that Pascoe probed further, saying, 'Charley's grandad must've liked his girl more than you did.'

'No. He thought she were rubbish.'

'Then why make the loan?'

He didn't intend to inflect loan significantly, but Frostick flared up, 'Don't you be making imputations, copper! My Charley's no sponger. Loan it was and every penny'd be to pay back, rest assured of that!'

'You haven't answered my question,' insisted Pascoe.

'Who knows how an old man's mind works?' said Frostick. 'I never spoke to him much myself, the miserable old bugger. But we were agreed on Miss bloody Andrea, I tell you. I reckon he coughed up because Charley had just told him he was joining the Army. He'd be so overjoyed at that that he mebbe had a rush of blood to the head, decided that a few months' soldiering overseas would soon put paid to his daft romance.'

He turned away and went back into the house. Pascoe slipped the key into his pocket and followed.

In the living-room he was glad to see Mrs Frostick looking a little more relaxed. Perhaps Wield had been amusing her by pulling funny faces. But there was one more test for the woman to undergo.

'Just one thing more,' said Pascoe. 'Before you go, Mrs Frostick, I'd like you to take a look in the bathroom. I'm sorry to ask you, but we've got to be thorough.'

Earlier upstairs, she had come out of her father's bedroom and walked past the bathroom door with eyes firmly averted. Now she took a deep breath and nodded her agreement. She led the way up the narrow stairs, Frostick behind with Pascoe bringing up the rear.

The bathroom struck a strange note in this old-fashioned little house. It was a good-sized room, fully tiled in pastel blue with a seaweed motif. The bath with its non-slip bottom and rubberized support grips was in a matching blue fibreglass, neatly boxed in with dark-blue glossed hardboard.. The floor was laid with cushion vinyl and the windows curtained with heavy towelling round whose folds a pattern of tiny fishes swam.

Frostick was looking at it with pride.

'Did a lot of this myself,' he volunteered. 'Not the plumbing, of course. Cost a pretty penny. But it puts value on the house, doesn't it? People expect a bathroom these days. I don't know how you managed without one when you were a kid, Dolly.'

His wife didn't seem to be listening. Her eyes were bright with tears.

'Please, Mrs Frostick,' said Pascoe helplessly. 'Just a quick look, say if you see anything that's changed.'

'Anything that's changed?' she echoed. 'I can see that, Mr Pascoe. This used to be my room when I was a girl. My room.'

Of course, it must have been. Two up, two down; a wash-house and an outside privy; basic working-class accommodation which solidity of building and pride of possession had prevented from becoming a slum. Dolly Frostick was weeping for more than her dead father; she was mourning for her childhood.

'Come on, Dolly,' said Frostick. 'Let's get that cup of tea from her next door.'

'No, wait,' said the woman. 'On the side of the bath. Them scuffs in the paint. And on the floor. Them marks. They weren't there.'

The scuffs in the blue-gloss where the hardboard boxing met the vinyl floor were clear enough, but Pascoe had to get down on one knee to see the indentations in the intricately patterned flooring which her houseproud eye had spotted.

'Probably a copper's big flat feet,' suggested Frostick, and indeed when Pascoe rose he saw that the vinyl surface was soft enough to have received the impression of the toe of his kneeling leg.

'Maybe,' he replied. 'Thank you, Mrs Frostick. If you like to have that cup of tea now, I'll take you home in shall we say ten minutes?'

After the Frosticks had gone through the puce portals next door (behind which the sound seemed to have been turned down perhaps as a token of respect for the bereaved) Pascoe returned to the bathroom with Wield and together they examined the indentations.

'What do you think?' asked Pascoe.

'This stuff takes a print if you exert a lot of pressure,' said Wield, demonstrating with his heel. 'Then gradually lets it out. Mostly it'll have gone in a few hours.'

'So it'd need a lot of pressure to leave a mark like this. Looks to me like a boot print, wouldn't you say?'

'Hard to tell really,' said Wield. 'It's just the toes here that are really clear. Like maybe someone was standing right close to the bath and rocking forward on their toes, scuffing the paintwork here.'

He demonstrated.

'See. It could be our man, pushing the old boy under,' he said.

'Or someone trying to lift him out,' added Pascoe. 'We'll need to check everyone who was in here on Friday night. You've got Hector's list?'

Wield scratched his nose which sat on his face like a shattered boulder on a blasted heath.

'I've got Mrs Spillings's list,' he said. 'We've spoken to 'em all, of course.'

'Great. Speak again, and check on footwear. Someone should have spotted this.'

'Mebbe, sir. But the floor must've been full of impressions by the time Forensic got here. It's just that these have lasted. The print boys themselves would be kneeling down and making marks while they were dusting the bath and its surrounds.'

'Good point. Check if we've got any kinky boots on the strength. None of our lads would be wearing anything like that, would they?'

'No. It's all pussyfooting around these days,' said Wield. 'I'd better check Mrs Spillings herself, though. It wouldn't surprise me if she were into Army surplus in a big way!'

'Army surplus,' said Pascoe thoughtfully. 'There's a thought. It's not a studded boot, though. But do they still wear studded boots in the Army?'

Wield shrugged.

'They'll tell you at Eltervale,' he suggested. 'But if you're thinking of the grandson, I thought you said he was definitely in Germany.'

'Mebbe he left a pair of boots at home,' said Pascoe.

'You're not thinking of Frostick, are you, sir?' said Wield, faintly incredulous.

'It's always nice to keep it in the family, as Mr Dalziel would say,' replied Pascoe. 'Check everything. That's the key to success, Sergeant. Check everything.'

On the way back to Nethertown Road, he learned that Charley Frostick had been given compassionate leave and would be flying back home as soon as possible. He also learned that the Club where Frostick had been on Friday night was the local Trades and Labour, and he made a note to get confirmation of his attendance there. Not that he really felt the man was a suspect, but presumably the little house in Welfare Lane plus whatever money there was from savings and insurance would pass to Deeks's daughter. To ask Frostick outright if he owned a pair of boots was further than he cared to go, but when they reached the house, he surprised himself and probably them by accepting the woman's almost reflex invitation to step inside and have a cup of coffee.

As they got out of the car, Mrs Gregory appeared at the front door of the adjoining semi and said, 'Oh Dolly, here's Andrea come home.'

Behind her appeared a young woman, though how young Pascoe found it hard to say without the power to penetrate what seemed like an almost ceramic mask of make-up. Her hair was done in the style Pascoe thought of as 'startled', with its probably artificial honey-blondeness modulating into a certainly artificial magenta at the extremities. She was wearing a flouncy black blouse and a very short, very creased straight pink skirt, candy-striped leg-warmers and shoes straight out of the Inquisitor's instrument box. Yet despite all these aesthetic disadvantages, there was somewhere in the girl a current of vitality which leapt out and touched Pascoe as their eyes met and was just as quickly switched off as she looked away.

This, he presumed, was the Gregorys' daughter, Charley Frostick's affianced bride. Frostick was regarding her with the kind of expression he probably reserved for dogs caught crapping on his green concrete.

'Hello, Andrea,' said Mrs Frostick. 'Has your mam told you? Charley's coming home for his grandad's funeral.'

'Yeah, she said,' replied the girl in a flat, lifeless tone perhaps caused less by lack of enthusiasm than fear of cracking the mask. 'How are you, Mrs Frostick? Sorry to hear about your old dad.'

'Thank you, dear,' said Mrs Frostick.

'Have you got a moment?' said Mrs Gregory. 'I'd like a word.'

'Teeny! Teeny! Where are you, woman! I want my dinner! Where's my dinner!'

The voice came streaming out of the door behind her.

She turned and called, 'It's not time yet, Dad! Jeff! Can't you see to Dad? Jeff!'

'He'll not hear,' said the girl. 'He'll be down the garden.'

'I'm just going to make the Inspector here a cup of coffee, Mabel,' said Mrs Frostick. 'I'll pop round later, shall I?'

'Oh, all right,' said Mrs Gregory. 'That'll do. That'll be best.'

She sounded relieved as though postponing some unpleasantness. But before she could withdraw, Andrea said impatiently, 'What's up with you, Mam? Honestly, you'd think you were going to say something dreadful. It's nowt to do with you or anyone else anyway, is it? All she wants to say, Mrs Frostick, is when Charley comes home, I'm going to tell him I don't want no more waiting, I want to get married straight off.'

'Straight off, Andrea?' said Dolly Frostick. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean now, this week, while he's home, straight off.'

'But… I don't know… I mean there's the church, you'd need a licence, and I'm not sure if he's allowed to get married just like that…'

'Register office,' said the girl. 'I'm not bothering with no church, and my dad wouldn't want to cough up anyway.'

'But the Army…'

'They haven't bought him, body and soul, have they? His life's still his own,' retorted the girl with at last a flash of animation to confirm the existence of that hidden electricity Pascoe had sensed but was beginning to suspect he had mistaken. 'They've got houses over there in Germany, you know; they don't live in trees. There’s married quarters. Charley wrote about them in his letters.'

'You'd want to go back with him?' asked Mrs Frostick, amazed.

'Well, I wouldn't want to stay on here by myself,' said Andrea.

'Are you in trouble, girl? In the club?' interposed Frostick tersely.

'No, I'm bloody not!' exclaimed the girl. 'Grow up. No one gets in trouble nowadays.'

'So what's the hurry all of a sudden?' demanded Frostick. 'Charley's got his way to make. I thought you'd decided to wait till he got posted back here? At the earliest? And that'd be a sight too early to my way of thinking!'

This last comment looked set to provoke the girl into some extreme of passion, but her mother intervened.

'She's lost her job,' she said wretchedly.

'Lost her job? Now we're getting to it!' exclaimed Frostick. 'What've you been getting up to, girl?'

'Nothing! I just got fed up. Slave labour it is there. The hotel's shut down till Easter, so there's just the restaurant and they want me working in there day and night. It's just boring, that's what it is. And they're probably glad to be saving my wages, not that there's much to be saved. Stupid pair of twats. Think they're God's gift!'

This confusion of reasons did not impress Frostick, who got straight to the heart of the matter as he saw it.

'I've got it! No job, nowhere to live, so you'll have to come back here which you don't much like, do you? So you think you'll jump on our Charley's back, don't you?'

'Listen,' flared the girl. 'I can get plenty of jobs easy. I've got contacts, you get noticed in a job like mine. So mebbe I won't go with Charley. But mebbe I will too, if I want to. He'll want to. It's him that proposed to me. We're engaged, or don't you remember?'

With a courage which Pascoe could not but admire, she stood up to Frostick and waved her left hand in front of his face. Beneath that eggshell of make-up fluttered a fully formed she-hawk! On her third finger glittered what looked like a not inexpensive cluster of diamonds, reminding Pascoe of the problem of Bob Deeks's money. Frostick glared at the finger as if he'd have liked to bite it off and exclaimed, 'Yeah, engaged! It was the worst day's work he ever did. The very worst!'

Looking as if he was about to explode, Frostick turned away and marched into the house. Pascoe followed him.

'Excuse me, Mr Frostick,' he said. 'I won't stay for coffee, I'm a bit busy, but if I could just use your bathroom…'

'That bloody girl! She's a trollop, you could see it when she were still at junior school, a trollop! Did you see the state of her? I wouldn't have let any girl of mine go around like that! She'd have been out, I tell you. Out!'

'I gathered she was out,' said Pascoe undiplomatically. 'Not living at home, I mean.'

'No, not her, not with the old man in there to look after. Help her mam, that one? No way! She's a decent woman, Mabel, and she gets no help from any side. When they had to move the old lad downstairs, Andrea said that was it, she was off as soon as she could find somewhere to go. I wasn't sorry to hear it – not that she told me, like, but her mam told my Dolly – I thought she might get herself right away, out of our Charley's road. But she only goes as far as that hotel, chambermaid come waitress, that's what she is; supposed to be a classy place and they take on the likes of her…'

'Hold on,' said Pascoe, for whom this was ringing a bell. 'Which hotel was it?'

'That Paradise Hall place. Living in, that was the attraction, getting away from home; she'd not do that kind of work at home, I can't see her doing it properly away! When Charley joined up I thought, grand, at least he'll be out of the way now. I was worried she'd pester him into getting married soon as he'd finished his training, but he'd got sense enough to see that wasn't on. I never thought I'd be glad to see our lad go abroad, but I tell you I wasn't sorry. I reckoned that even if he didn't find himself someone else, she wasn't the kind to hang around without getting hold of some other mug. But now she's got herself sacked, nowhere to live except at home, and if I know Andrea, she's not the one to put up with that. So it'll be our Charley who has to suffer. Our Charley!'

Frostick had worked himself up into a fine frenzy. Pushing past Pascoe, he rushed back out of the front door, eager to rejoin the fray.

It was too good a chance to miss. Three minutes later, breathing rather hard, Pascoe had checked the Frosticks' wardrobe, the second bedroom (obviously Charley's), the spare room and the cupboard under the stairs without finding any sign of a pair of boots.

He went into the kitchen, tried the cupboard beneath the sink just on the off-chance. No luck. Outside in the back garden, which consisted of five yards of patio in pink and beige flagstones and one yard of border planted with dwarf conifers, stood a neat shed in green plastic. What implements a man with a garden like this kept in his garden shed teased the imagination, and it was in a spirit of philosophical rather than constabulary inquiry that Pascoe let himself out of the kitchen and moved across the patio.

The answer was… nothing! The hut was as empty as on the day of its erection. Its function was simply symbolic. But was it a last rude gesture at the whole idea of the suburban garden which Frostick had so manifestly triumphed over? Or was it the last piece in a jigsaw of self-delusion? Did Frostick really believe he had a garden? Or that others would believe he had one? Mystery!

Pascoe at this moment became aware he wasn't alone.

Just beyond the wire fence in the hugely neglected next-door garden, seated on an upturned grass-box almost invisible amid the grass it could never hope to contain, was a man smoking a cigarette. He was in his shirtsleeves, slightly unshaven, and with the haunted look of a fugitive. He regarded Pascoe with the still indifference of a reservation Indian. 'I was looking for the lavatory,' said Pascoe, retreating beneath that haggard gaze.

This had to be Jeff Gregory, hiding here from the family altercation which was distantly audible with the occasional scream of 'Teeny, I want my dinner!' rising above it like the melodic line above the choral patter in a Gilbert and Sullivan song.

'I'd better be on my way,' said Pascoe. 'Goodbye now.'

The man didn't speak.

Pascoe moved swiftly away.