REGINALD HILL
* * *
THE LONG KILL
Copyright
Harper
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Methuen 1986 under the author’s pseudonym Patrick Ruell
Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1986
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007334841
EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007389186
Version: 2015-09-17
Epigraph
I was a fell destroyer …
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Keep Reading
About the Author
By Reginald Hill
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Jaysmith was a firm advocate of the cerebral approach.
He always shot at the head.
The head he was shooting at this bright autumn morning was a noble one even when viewed through an Adjustable Ranging Telescope at 1,250 metres. An aureole of near-white hair surrounded a tanned leathery face in which the crinkles of humour seemed at least to equal the furrows of care. It was the head of an ageing man, seventy at a guess, who must surely now be reckoning that he was going to be allowed to slip naturally from life in the fullness of his years. Another minute would teach him the error of such confidence, and also the error of whatever lust for power, pleasure, or political change, had put him at the end of Jaysmith’s rifle.
Still, there were worse ways to die than suddenly, in your garden, looking across the peaceful fields of St-John’s-in-the-Vale to the swell of the eastern fells, drinking a cup of coffee and feeling the warmth of a September sun on your November skin.
The old man lit another Caporal. He was practically a chain smoker. This, thought Jaysmith, was the last link in his chain. He began to make his final checks.
He had worked out five possible lines of fire on the OS 1:25,000 sheet before leaving London. Two of them he had discarded on his first slow drive along the valley the previous Sunday. Two more had failed his strict on-the-ground examination. The last was the longest, but that didn’t bother him. He preferred the long kill, the longer the better. And with his equipment, his meticulous preparation and, above all, his accuracy, distance had never posed any difficulty. That was why he was the best.
He had till Sunday morning to make the target. It was only Thursday now, but there was no reason to delay. In fact, with the weather so perfect there was every reason to go ahead. He stretched his muscles systematically and began to quarter the ground below him with his Zeiss binoculars.
He was squatting on a lichened rock in a steep gill cutting down a rocky outcrop which his map told him was called Wanthwaite Crags. Eight hundred feet above him was the fell summit called Clough Head. Fears that the fine weather would crowd it with walkers had proved unfounded. It was clearly not a fashionable top. He had checked all possible approaches from the east, south and north before descending. The only signs of life had been the nodding head of a grazing sheep and the slow flap of a raven’s wings. Now he looked westward. A car moved slowly along the valley road. A tractor buzzed purposefully across a stubble field half a mile away. Nothing else. In any case, even in this stillness the Sionics Noise Suppressor on his M21 would scatter the sound of his shot untraceably.
He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. St John’s Beck winding through the valley below was a ribbon of glass. The trees in the garden of the house called Naddle Foot were still as a painting. The moment was perfect.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet missed. It passed close enough to the old man’s ear for him to flap his Caporal at a buzzing fly. Then it buried itself deep in the rich earth of the upper level of the tiered garden.
Jaysmith sat utterly still. There were many possible explanations. A gust of wind along the channel of the beck; a slight change of atmospheric pressure; an imperfection in the bullet; at this range any one of these could translate itself into several inches at journey’s end.
Yes, there were many possible explanations. But only one cause.
Gently he massaged his temples and blinked his right eye rapidly a couple of times. It focused perfectly on the M21 as he began to dismantle it with practised ease. But perfect focusing for a job he could have done in pitch blackness was not enough. There was a weakness there. He had suspected it two targets ago when he had shot the Austrian. And last time out he had been almost certain. It had been a perfect shot in the eyes of the world. Only Jaysmith knew that as he squeezed the trigger, the Chinaman had raised his teacup and bowed his head into the path of the bullet.
Two weeks ago he had paid a Harley Street optician an exorbitant fee to put a clinical label on it. It was not a condition which could be in the least detrimental to any normal activity, the man had assured him. He should have retired then, at once, without thought. But this target had already come up, unusually soon after the Chinaman, and marked ultra-urgent. Something had made him reluctant to refuse it. Loyalty to Jacob, perhaps. Or professional pride. Professional pride! Amateurish stupidity was what Jacob would call it.
He packed the sections of the dismantled rifle in the internal pouches of his specially constructed rucksack. Now he was just a fellwalker again. With athletic ease he climbed up the steep gully to the top of the crags. Here he paused and glanced back across the valley. Without the A.R.T. the house was just a dark red monopoly token set on green b
aize. The reprieved man in the garden was completely invisible. He didn’t even know his name. Jacob never provided more than was necessary for a target. In this case it had been a head-and-shoulders photograph of the man, the OS sheet NY 32 with the house called Naddle Foot ringed in red, and a deadline.
Plus of course an order for twenty-five thousand pounds paid into his Zurich account.
That would have to be returned. A pity; but there was plenty left for his retirement.
Retirement! At forty-three. Statistically he had just become another unit in the unemployment figures.
The thought amused him and he let out a snort of spontaneous laughter that would have surprised the few people who knew him at the middle distance which was as close as he ever permitted. But there was no one here to take notice except the grazing sheep and the indifferent raven.
His long economical stride took him swiftly across the sun-blanched grass of the shallow saddle between Clough Head and Calfhow Pike. Now he followed the tumbling path of a long beck, a strange exhilaration making him take the descent faster than was really safe, and by the time he reached the old coach road which runs from St-John’s-in-the-Vale across to the next valley of Matterdale, he was panting as much from this inexplicable excitement as the exertion. Slowing to a more sedate but still deceptively fast pace, he moved eastwards along the old coach road to where he’d left his BMW parked outside the village of Dockray.
Even at his rapid pace, and mostly downhill, it was still over an hour since he had aborted the target. Normally he preferred more rapid access to his car, but in this case his best protection after the event had been to blend into the landscape as an ordinary walker. Now there was no event to be after. For all that it was still with some relief that he dropped the rucksack into the hidden compartment beneath a false panel in the BMW’S boot. An identical rucksack containing conventional walking gear lay in the boot. These isolated country areas were full of sharp eyes. And ears too.
He had a phone call to make and he decided to make it from the nearby village instead of waiting till he got back to his hotel. Security apart, he felt eager to get it over with. It was the first admission of failure he had ever made. The best that could be said for him was that he had made his error with time to spare and he had not alerted the target. But it was not just his sense of responsibility which urged him to haste. He was suddenly afraid that if he waited till he got back to the hotel, he might put off the moment even further. And that after a bottle of wine and a good meal, he might persuade himself it had been a trick of the wind after all.
He went into the public phone box and dialled a London number. A woman’s voice answered, bright and breezy.
‘Hello there! Enid here. Jacob and I are out just now but we’ll be back soon. Leave your message after the tone and we’ll be in touch as soon as ever we can. ’Bye!’
He waited then said, ‘Jaysmith. Tell Jacob I can’t make the deal. There’ll be a refund, of course.’
He contemplated adding, ‘Less expenses,’ but dismissed the idea as a small, unnecessary meanness. Let the parting be complete and painless.
Gently he replaced the receiver and stepped out into the golden September air. He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. It tasted marvellous. For the first time in twenty years he felt totally relaxed and free.
Chapter 2
The dangers of Jaysmith’s new sense of relaxation became apparent when he entered the hotel bar for a pre-dinner drink that evening.
‘Evening, Mr Hutton. Any luck today?’ called Philip Parker, the Crag Hotel’s owner-manager, and it took Jaysmith a moment that could have been significant to a practised observer to react to the name.
Pseudonyms and cover stories might now be totally irrelevant but they could not just be shed at will. At the Crag he was William Hutton, businessman; and in conversation with Parker he had let it slip that, as well as the fellwalking, he was on the lookout for a house or cottage to purchase. It was those sharp country eyes again; he wanted an excuse to be seen anywhere, walking or driving, during his stay.
‘No,’ he said, slipping onto a bar stool and accepting the dry sherry which Parker poured him. ‘No luck at all. But I enjoyed my walk.’
‘Oh good. The weather’s marvellous, isn’t it? Excuse me.’
Parker went off to the side hatch of the bar where one of the girls from the dining room was waiting with a drinks order. Parker’s quietly efficient wife, Doris, looked after the kitchen and dining room, while he exuded bonhomie in the bar and at reception. He was a rotund, breezy man in his early fifties, a redundant sales executive who’d sunk his severance money into the small hotel five years earlier and, as he was willing to explain to anyone willing to listen, had not yet seen any cause to regret it. In fact his enthusiasm for the Lake District was so evangelical that Jaysmith had soon regretted the intended subtlety of his cover story. From the start, Parker had taken an embarrassingly close interest in his alleged house-hunting and now, the dining room order dealt with, he returned to the topic.
‘So no luck then,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Jaysmith. ‘The market seems pretty dead. In fact, with the weekend coming up, I think I’ve exhausted all the possibilities, so I’ll check out tomorrow.’
Parker looked so taken aback that Jaysmith felt constrained to add, ‘I’ll pay for tomorrow night, of course.’
He had booked in till Saturday. If he’d made his target he’d have stayed the full week in order not to excite comment, but now there was no point.
‘Oh no, it’s not that,’ said Parker, slightly indignant. ‘It’s just that I heard today that there’s likely to be just the house you’re looking for coming on the market in the next couple of days. It’s called Rigg Cottage and it’s just outside the village, up the bank on the road towards Loughrigg. It belongs to an old lady called Miss Wilson who’s finding the long haul up the hill more and more difficult. Also it’s really too big for her with the garden and all. So she’s thinking of moving down into the village. There’s an old cottage become vacant. Semi-detached and her best friend occupies the next-door cottage. Actually the vacant one belonged to Miss Craik, another old friend, who died a couple of weeks back and the family had always promised to give Miss Wilson first refusal.’
He paused for breath and Jaysmith regarded him quizzically.
‘Your channels of information must be first-rate, Mr Parker,’ he said with hint of mockery.
Parker grinned and glanced conspiratorially towards the dining room. Lowering his voice he said, ‘To tell the truth, it’s Doris who told me all this. She’s quite chummy with Mrs Blacklock, the old lady in the other semi, and she passed it on, in strict confidence, of course. Like I’m doing to you.’
‘Of course,’ said Jaysmith.
‘Which is why there’s nothing to be done till Miss Wilson makes up her mind. But when she does, if I know her, she’ll want everything settled in five minutes which is why it’s a pity you’ll not be on the spot.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Jaysmith, exuding regret as he moved fully into his William Hutton role. ‘A real pity.’
At dinner, he ordered a full bottle of Chablis instead of his usual half and settled to a mellow contemplation of the limitless joys of retirement.
O what a world of profit and delight … the words drifted into his mind and he sought their source. It wasn’t altogether apt. They were from Marlow’s Dr Faustus whose world of profit and delight had been purchased by selling his soul. Or perhaps the words were too apt. He pushed that thought away and concentrated on working out why he should know the quotation. Oriental Languages had been his subject, not English literature, but now he recalled that he’d once acted in the play at university; or rather not himself, but that incredibly, hazily distant young man whose name was now as vague as all those he had since inscribed on hotel registers in his career as Jaysmith. And he hadn’t been Faustus either. An ostler, that’s what he’d been. A grasping gull made a fool of by magic.
Shaking the memory away, he returned to the future. He could go anywhere, do anything. Tomorrow, back to his London flat. Next, the Continent. Italy to start with; a villa in Tuscany till autumn died. Then on to the Med, Greece, North Africa, always south, keeping abreast of the retreating sun.
The prospect filled him with surprisingly little enthusiasm. It was odd, like looking at a beautiful, naked and available woman without feeling excited.
‘Everything all right, Mr Hutton?’ said Parker, doing his end-of-dinner mine-host round.
‘Fine,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Sit down and have a drop of Chablis.’
‘That’s kind.’
He filled a glass for the hotel owner and emptied the remaining drops into his own. He realized with amused interest another effect of his new relaxed state. A couple of sherries and the best part of a bottle of wine had left him feeling slightly drunk.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘When you were made redundant, did you know at once what you wanted to do?’
‘Far from it, old boy,’ replied Parker, delighted to be invited to explore a favourite topic. ‘Best thing that ever happened to me, I see it now. But at the time, I was simply shattered.’
‘And you’d never thought of living up here and running a hotel?’
‘Never.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I more or less sat with my head in my hands for three or four weeks, then one morning I got up and knew what I was going to do.’
‘You knew that you were going to buy a hotel in the Lake District?’
‘Not exactly. But I knew I was never going to work for anyone but myself again. I was absolutely certain about that!’
Jaysmith felt let down. Hoping for some sort of dramatic revelation, instead he was hearing about a conventional revolt against the boss–servant relationship.
The Long Kill Page 1
