'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
