Exit lines

'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?'