Exit Lines

‘You do that,’ said Headingley. ‘Just you be nice and noncommittal if he starts pushing. By the way, I told him I was just holding the fort, so to speak, till our murder expert could be brought off another case. Didn’t want him thinking I was more worried about my Chief than about an investigation. So better wear your deerstalker!’

The two men separated, Pascoe continuing into the depths of the hospital where he finished up kicking his heels for twenty minutes in a tiny office. The desk top was covered in papers, mostly handwritten in a scrawl which convinced him that doctors did not after all develop a specially illegible hand just for prescriptions. Sowden arrived suddenly and quietly enough to discover him trying to interpret one of the sheets.

‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘The ace detective, I presume. Trying to keep your hand in?’

Somewhat abashed, Pascoe dropped the paper back on to the desk and said, ‘Sorry, but it’s a bit like an archaeologist stumbling on the Rosetta stone. I’m Pascoe. Detective-Inspector Peter. How do you do?’

He held out his hand. After a second, Sowden shook it.

‘John Sowden,’ he said. ‘Sorry you’ve had to hang around, but things happen in convoys out there. With luck I may have two minutes before the next lot heave into view. So what can I do for you? I think I told the other chap all I could.’

Pascoe looked at him sympathetically. In his twenties with the kind of dark continental good looks that must have the nurses falling over backwards for him, he looked at the moment too tired to take advantage of such gymnastics.

‘Yes, I’ve looked at what you told Mr Headingley,’ he said. ‘There are a couple of things I’d like to ask you, though. And I’d like a look at the body for myself.’

‘Just in case I’ve missed anything?’ said Sowden.

‘Not really,’ said Pascoe. ‘But I bet if a cop tells you that your rear offside light isn’t working, you always walk round the car to have a look.’

Something vaguely related to a smile touched Sowden’s face.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll take you along and you can ask your questions as we go.’

They set off together down the corridor, the doctor’s pace a little faster than Pascoe found comfortable.

‘It’s really a matter of what might have caused these wounds on Deeks’s head and neck,’ he said.

‘At a guess I’d say that most of the contusions could have been the result of simple blows from a fist,’ said Sowden.

‘Hard enough to damage the knuckles?’ asked Pascoe.

‘What? Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Sowden. ‘Possibly. I don’t really know. This isn’t really my field, you know. You’re the murder expert, so I was told. Or was the other chap exaggerating?’

‘Very likely,’ said Pascoe. ‘And the cuts? What kind of instrument should I be telling my chaps to look out for?’

‘I don’t know. A knife.’

‘Blunt knife, sharp knife?’ prompted Pascoe. ‘Broad blade or narrow? A knife for stabbing or a knife for cutting?’

‘Something with a sharp point,’ said Sowden. ‘Yes, certainly that.’

‘And sharp on both sides of the point? Like a stiletto? Or a round-bladed point, like a long nail, or a spike?’

‘More like a stiletto except broader,’ said Sowden, becoming interested. ‘Yes, there was certainly evidence of the sharp point digging in, with the skin and flesh being severed cleanly on both sides. Here we are. See for yourself.’

The chill air of the hospital morgue touched the skin with none of the violence of the wild cold November wind outside, but Pascoe did not have to pause to consider his preference. There were three bodies as yet unparcelled for the night. Sowden glanced at the labels on their toes, his face troubled.

‘Not a good night for the old,’ he said. ‘This is your man. Robert Deeks.’

He pulled back the cover. Robert Deeks, his face a player’s mask of grief with its deep hollow cheeks and gaping toothless mouth, stared accusingly up at them. Quickly and efficiently, Sowden pointed to the location of the wounds and bruises and offered his interpretation of them.

‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe, making notes. ‘That’ll do fine till Mr Longbottom takes a look.’

He meant no slight, but tired men are easily piqued, and Sowden, covering Deeks’s face with an abrupt movement, pointed to the body on the next slab and said, ‘At least you won’t need Longbottom to tell you how this one died.’

‘No? Why’s that, Doctor?’ asked Pascoe courteously, though he had no doubt of the answer.

‘Philip Cater Westerman,’ said Sowden, drawing down the sheet. ‘Road accident. Hadn’t you heard?’

Philip Cater Westerman had contrived to pass away with an expression of amused bafflement on his face which was not altogether inappropriate.

‘Hard to keep track of all the road deaths, more’s the pity,’ evaded Pascoe. ‘And the third? What about him?’

He thought his efforts to divert the trend of the conversation were going to fail for a moment, but Sowden contented himself with a sardonic stare, then covered Westerman’s face.

‘This one? Straightforward. Poor devil died of exposure on a playing field, would you believe? You couldn’t go three hundred yards in any direction, so they tell me, without hitting houses.’

He drew back the cover and Pascoe saw Thomas Arthur Parrinder’s thin aquiline face, which might have been carved in marble except for a stain of discolouration round a patch of broken skin on the left temple. Pascoe sniffed. A non-medical smell had caught his nose. It was rum.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Drunk, was he?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Sowden. ‘The smell’s from a half bottle of rum he had in his pocket. It smashed when he fell but as far as I could see, the seal on the cap was unbroken.’

‘You’re doing our work now,’ said Pascoe drily. ‘So, what did happen?’

‘Slipped in the mud as he was taking a short cut across the recreation ground. Broke his hip, poor sod. He must have lain there for hours. It was such a nasty night, no one was out. He wasn’t very warmly clothed. Hypothermia kills hundreds of old folk indoors every winter. Expose them outdoors…’

‘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.’