The Woodcutter

by Reginald Hill

  The boy and the woman look at each other and exchange smiles.

  And the man, JC, looks on and smiles benevolently too.

  3

  Winter 1991; Terry Waite freed; 264 Croats massacred at Vukovar; Freddy Mercury dies of AIDS; Michael Jackson’s Dangerous top album; the Soviet Union dissolved; Gorbachev resigns.

  And in a quiet side street in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, a man with a saintly smile relaxes in the comfortable rear seat of a Citroën CX. Through the swirling mist above the trees on the far side of a small park he can just make out the top three storeys of a six-storey apartment block. He imagines he sees a shadow moving rapidly down the side of the building, but it is soon out of sight, and in any case he is long used to the deceptions of the imagination on such a night as this. He returns his attention to Quintus Curtius’s account of the fall of Tyre, and is soon so immersed that he is taken by surprise a few minutes later when the car door opens and the boy slips inside.

  ‘Oh hello,’ he says, closing the book. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ says the boy. ‘Bit chilly on the fingers though.’

  ‘You ought to wear gloves,’ says the man, passing over a thermos flask.

  ‘Can’t feel the holds the same with gloves,’ replies the boy, drinking directly from the flask.

  The man regards him fondly and says, ‘You’re a good little wood-cutter.’

  In the front of the car a phone rings. The driver answers it, speaking in French. After a while, he turns and says, ‘He’s on his way, JC. But there’s a problem. He diverted to the Gare d’Est. He picked up a woman and a child. They think it’s his wife and daughter. They’re in the car with him.’

  Without any change of expression or tone the man says softly, ‘Parles Français, idiot!’

  But his warning is too late.

  The boy says, ‘What’s that about a wife and daughter? You said he lived by himself.’

  ‘So he does,’ reassures the man. ‘As you doubtless observed, it’s a very small flat. Also he’s estranged from his family. If it is his wife and daughter, and that’s not definite, he is almost certainly taking them to a hotel. Would you like something to eat? I have some chocolate.’

  The boy shakes his head and drinks again from the flask. His face is troubled.

  The man says quietly, ‘This is a very wicked person, I mean wicked in himself as well as a dangerous enemy of our country.’

  The boy says, ‘Yeah, I know that, you explained that. But that doesn’t mean his wife and kid are wicked, does it?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t. And we do everything in our power not to hurt the innocent; I explained that too, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ agrees the boy.

  ‘Well then.’

  They sit in silence for some minutes. The phone sounds again.

  The driver answers, listens, turns his head and says, ‘Ils sont arrivés. La femme et l’enfant aussi. Il demande, que voudraisvous?’

  The man said, ‘Diteslui, vas’y.’

  The boy’s face is screwed up as if by sheer concentration he can make sense of what’s being said. On the far side of the park the mist above the trees clears for a moment and the apartment block is visible silhouetted against a brightly starred sky.

  A light comes on in one of the uppermost chambers. At first it is an ordinary light, amber against an uncurtained window.

  And then it turns red. It is too distant for any sound to reach inside the well-insulated car, but in that moment they see the glass dissolve and smoke and debris come streaming towards them like the fingers of a reaching hand.

  Then the mist swirls back and the man says, ‘Go.’

  Back in their apartment, the boy goes to his room and the man sits by a gently hissing gas fire, encoding his report. When it is finished, he pours himself a drink and opens his History of Alexander the Great.

  Suddenly the door opens and the boy, naked except for his brief underpants, bursts into the room.

  He says in a voice so choked with emotion he can hardly get the words out, ‘You lied to me, you fucking bastard! They were still with him, both of them, it’s on the news, it’s so fucking terrible it’s on the British news. You lied! Why?’

  The man says, ‘It had to be done tonight. Tomorrow would have been too late.’

  The boy comes nearer. The man is very aware of the young muscular body so close he can feel the heat off it.

  The boy says, ‘Why did you make me do it? You said you’d never ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do. But you tricked me. Why?’

  The man for once is not smiling. He says quietly, ‘My father once said to me, when love and grim necessity meet, there is only one winner. You probably don’t understand that now any more than I did then. But you will. In the meantime all I can say is I’m very sorry. I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I promise.’

  ‘How? How can you possibly make it up to me?’ screams the boy. ‘You’ve made me a murderer. What can you do that can ever make up for that! There’s nothing! Nothing!’

  And the man says, rather sadly, like one who pronounces a sentence rather than makes a gift, ‘I shall give you your heart’s desire.’

  Book One

  Wolf and Elf

  After the hunters trapped the wolf, they put him in a cage where he lay for many years, suffering grievously, till one day a curious elf, to whom iron bars were no more obstacle than the shadows of grasses on a sunlit meadow, took pity on his plight, and asked, ‘What can I bring you that will ease your pain, Wolf?’

  And the wolf replied, ‘My foes to play with.’

  Charles Underhill (tr): Folk Tales of Scandinavia

  Wolf

  i

  Once upon a time I was living happily ever after.

  That’s right. Like in a fairy tale.

  How else to describe my life up till that bright autumn morning back in 2008?

  I was the lowly woodcutter who fell in love with a beautiful princess glimpsed dancing on the castle lawn, knew she was so far above him that even his fantasies could get his head chopped off, nonetheless when three seemingly impossible tasks were set as the price of her hand in marriage threw his cap into the ring and after many perilous adventures returned triumphant to claim his heart’s desire.

  Here began the happily ever after, the precise extent of which is nowhere defined in fairy literature. In my case it lasted fourteen years.

  During this time I acquired a fortune of several millions, a private jet, residences in Holland Park, Devon, New York, Barbados and Umbria, my lovely daughter, Ginny, and a knighthood for services to commerce.

  Over the same period my wife Imogen turned from a fragrant young princess into an elegant, sophisticated woman. She ran our social life with easy efficiency, made no demands on me that I could not afford, and always had an appropriate welcome waiting in whichever of our homes I returned to after my often extensive business trips.

  Sometimes I looked at her and found it hard to understand how I could deserve such beauty, such happiness. She was my piece of perfection, my heart’s desire, and whenever the stresses and strains of my hugely active life began to make themselves felt, I just had to think of my princess to know that, whatever fate brought me, I was the most blessed of men.

  Then on that autumn day – by one of those coincidences that only a wicked fairy can contrive, our wedding anniversary – everything changed.

  At half past six in the morning we were woken in our Holland Park house by an extended ringing of the doorbell. I got up and went to the window. My first thought when I saw the police uniforms was that some joker had sent us an anniversary stripaubade. But they didn’t look as if they were about to rip off their uniforms and burst into song, and suddenly my heart contracted at the thought that something could have happened to Ginny. She was away at school – not by my choice, but when the lowly woodcutter marries the princess, there are some ancestral customs he meekly goes along with.

  Then it occu
rred to me they’d hardly need a whole posse of plods to convey such a message.

  Nor would they bring a bunch of press photographers and a TV crew.

  Imogen was sitting up in bed by this time. Even in these fraught circumstances I was distracted by sight of her perfect breasts.

  She said, ‘Wolf, what is it?’ in her usual calm manner.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  She said, ‘Perhaps you should put some clothes on.’

  I grabbed my dressing gown and was still pulling it round my shoulders as I started down the stairs. I could hear voices below. Among them I recognized the Cockney accent of Mrs Roper, our housekeeper. She was crying out in protest and I saw why as I reached the half landing. She must have opened the front door and policemen were thrusting past her without ceremony. Jogging up the stairs towards me was a short fleshy man in a creased blue suit flanked by two uniformed constables.

  He came to a halt a couple of steps below me and said breathlessly, ‘Wolf Hadda? Sorry. Sir Wilfred Hadda. Detective Inspector Medler. I have a warrant to search these premises.’

  He reached up to hand me a sheet of paper. Below I could hear people moving, doors opening and shutting, Mrs Roper still protesting.

  I said, ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  His gaze went down to my crotch. His lips twitched. Then his eyes ran up my body and focused beyond me.

  He said, ‘Maybe you should make yourself decent, unless you fancy posing for Page Three.’

  I turned to see what he was looking at. Through the half-landing window overlooking the garden, I could see the old rowan tree I’d transplanted from Cumbria when I bought the house. It was incandescent with berries at this time of year, and I was incandescent with rage at the sight of a paparazzo clinging to its branches, pointing a camera at me. Even at this distance I could see the damage caused by his ascent.

  I turned back to Medler.

  ‘How did he get there? What are the press doing here anyway? Did you bring them?’

  ‘Now why on earth should I do that, sir?’ he said. ‘Maybe they just happened to be passing.’

  He didn’t even bother to try to sound convincing.

  He had an insinuating voice and one of those mouths which looks as if it’s holding back a knowing sneer. I’ve always had a short fuse. At six thirty in the morning, confronted by a bunch of heavy-handed plods tearing my home to pieces and a paparazzo desecrating my lovely rowan, it was very short indeed. I punched the little bastard right in his smug mouth and he went backwards down the stairs, taking one of his constables with him. The other produced his baton and whacked me on the leg. The pain was excruciating and I collapsed in a heap on the landing.

  After that things got confused. As I was half dragged, half carried out of the house, I screamed at Imogen, who’d appeared fully dressed on the stairs, ‘Ring Toby!’

  She looked very calm, very much in control. Princesses don’t panic. The thought was a comfort to me.

  Cameras clicked and journalists yelled inanities as I was thrust into a car. As it sped away, I twisted round to look back. Cops were already coming down the steps carrying loaded bin bags that they tossed into the back of a van. The house, gleaming in the morning sunlight, seemed to look down on them with disdain. Then we turned a corner and it vanished from sight.

  I did not realize – how could I? – that I was never to enter it again.

  ii

  My arrival at the police station seemed to take them by surprise. My arrest at that stage can’t have been anticipated. Once the pain in my leg subsided and my brain started functioning again, I’d worked out that I must be the subject of a Fraud Office investigation. Personal equity companies rise on the back of other companies’ failures and Woodcutter Enterprises had left a lot of unhappy people in its wake. Also the atmosphere on the markets was full of foreboding and when nerves are on edge, malicious tongues soon start wagging.

  So being banged up was my own fault. If I hadn’t lost my temper, I would probably be sitting in my own drawing room, refusing to answer any of Medler’s impertinent questions till Toby Estover, my solicitor, arrived. I would have liked to see Medler’s expression when he heard the name. Mr Itsover his colleagues call him, because that’s what the prosecution says when they hear Toby’s acting for the defence. Barristers may get the glory but there are many dodgy characters walking free because they were wise enough and rich enough to hire Toby Estover when the law came calling.

  I was treated courteously – I even thought I detected the ghost of a smile on the custody sergeant’s lips when told I’d been arrested for thumping Medler – then put in a cell. Pretty minimalist, but stick a couple of Vettriano prints on the wall and it could have passed for a standard single in a lot of boutique hotels.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I hadn’t been wearing my watch when they arrested me. In fact I hadn’t been wearing anything but my dressing gown. They’d taken that and given me an off-white cotton overall and a pair of plastic flip-flops.

  I was just wondering whether to start banging on the door and making a fuss when it opened and Toby came in. It was good to see him, in every sense. As well as having one of the smartest minds I’ve ever known, he dresses to match. Same age as me but slim and elegant. Me, I can make a Savile Row three-piece look like a boiler suit in twenty minutes; Toby would look good in army fatigues. In his Henry Poole threads and John Lobb shoes he looked smooth enough to talk Jesus off the Cross which, had he been in Jerusalem at the time, I daresay he would have done.

  I said, ‘Toby, thank God. Have you brought me some clothes?’

  He looked surprised and said, ‘No, sorry, old boy. Never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I thought Imo might have chucked a few things together.’

  ‘I think she may have other things to occupy her,’ he observed. ‘Let’s sit down and have a chat.’

  ‘Here?’ I said.

  ‘Here,’ he said firmly, sitting on the narrow bed. ‘Less chance of being overheard than in an interview room.’

  The idea that the police might try to eavesdrop on a client/lawyer conversation troubled me less than the implication that it could contain something damaging to me.

  I said, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they hear. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘It’s certainly true that by now you’re unlikely to have anything you think may be hidden,’ he said sardonically. ‘I understand they are still searching the house. But it’s your computers we need to concentrate on. Wolf, we won’t have much time so let’s cut to the chase. I’ve had a word with DI Medler . . . is it true you hit him, by the way?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said with some satisfaction. ‘You’ll probably see the picture in the tabloids. I’d like to buy the negative and have it blown up for my office wall, if you can fix that. Did Imogen tell you the media were all over the place? There must have been a tip-off from the police. I want you to chase that up vigorously, Toby. There’s been far too much of that kind of thing recently and no one’s ever called to account . . .’

  ‘Wolf, for fuck’s sake, shut up.’

  I stopped talking. Toby was normally the most courteous of men. OK, he’d heard me on one of my favourite hobby horses before, but there was an urgency in his tone that went far beyond mere exasperation. For the first time I started to feel worried.

  I said, ‘Toby, what’s going on? What are the bastards looking for? For God’s sake, I may have cut a few corners in my time, but the business is sound, believe me. Does Johnny Nutbrown know about this? I think we ought to give him a call . . .’

  Nutbrown was my closest friend and finance director at Woodcutter. He was mathematically eidetic. If Johnny and a computer calculation differed, I’d back Johnny every time.

  Toby said, ‘Johnny’s not going to be any use here. Medler’s not Fraud. He’s on what used to be called the Vice Squad. Specifically his area is paedophilia. Kiddy porn.’

  I laugh
ed in relief. I really did.

  I said, ‘In that case, the only reason I’m banged up here is because I hit the smarmy bastard. They’ve had plenty of time to realize they’ve made a huge booboo, and they’re just hoping the media will get tired and go away before I emerge. No chance! I’ll have my say if I’ve got to rent space on TV!’

  I stopped talking again, not because of anything Toby said to me but because of the way he was looking at me. Assessingly. That was the word for it. Like a man looking for reassurance and not being convinced he’d found it.

  He said, ‘From what Medler said, they feel they have enough evidence to proceed.’

  I shook my head in exasperation.

  I said, ‘But they’ll have squeezed my hard drive dry by now. What’s the problem? Some encryptions they haven’t been able to break? God, I’m happy to let them in for a quick glance at anything, so long as I’m there . . .’

  Toby said, ‘He spoke as if they’d found . . . stuff.’

  That stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘Stuff?’ I echoed. ‘You mean kiddy porn? Impossible!’

  He just looked at me for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had taken on its forensic colouring.

  ‘Wolf, I need to be clear so that I know how to proceed. You are assuring me there is nothing of this nature, no images involving paedophilia, to be found on any computer belonging to you?’

  I felt a surge of anger but quickly controlled it. A friend wouldn’t have needed to ask, but Toby was more than my friend, he was my solicitor, and that was how I had to regard him now, in the same way that he was clearly looking at me purely as a client.

  I said, ‘Nothing.’

  He said, ‘OK,’ stood up and went to the door.

  ‘So let’s go and see what DI Medler has to say,’ he said.

  So hell begins.

  iii

  I’ll say this for Medler, he didn’t mess around.

  He showed me some credit-card statements covering the past year, asked me to confirm they were mine. I said that as they had my name and a selection of my addresses on them, I supposed they must be. He asked me to check them more closely. I glanced over them, identified a couple of large items on each – hotel bills, that kind of thing – and said yes, they were definitely mine. He then drew my attention to a series of payments – mainly to an Internet company called InArcadia – and asked me if I could recall what these were for. I said I couldn’t offhand, which wasn’t surprising as I paid for just about everything in my extremely busy life by one of the vast selection of cards I’d managed to accumulate, but no doubt if I sat down with my secretary we could work out exactly what each and every payment covered.