The Long Kill

by Reginald Hill

  It was a wig. He draped it over his fist, combing out the locks with the fingers of his other hand and trying to envisage the young profile he had glimpsed briefly as the mini overtook him. What was under the wig? What was it necessary to conceal? Brown hair? Red? Black? A crew cut perhaps, or something even closer, in the modern idiom.

  Then he saw it clearly. A gleaming razored skull with its arrogant, absurd coxcomb of bright orange spikes.

  Adam. Protean Adam, moving from glue-sniffing punk to trained operative to homosexual hero-worshipper in the brief period of their recent acquaintance. And now here he was again, Adam the watcher, Adam who knew him, and must have seen him, and whose respect and admiration might even have made him guess at Jaysmith’s next move.

  It was time to get away from the mini.

  He straightened up and gently closed the door. The click it made still seemed too loud for this still autumn air, but it didn’t matter anyway. Some instinct, which he had been refining for twenty years, told him he was not alone a long but useless second before he heard the voice, full of respect but full of urgency also.

  ‘Please put your hands on top of the car, Mr Jaysmith. And please don’t make any sudden movement, I beg of you.’

  Slowly Jaysmith put his hands on top of the mini. And slowly he turned his head.

  Chapter 19

  The young man was standing about twenty feet away. He wore a green and brown camouflage jacket with a matching hat. There were leaves on his shoulders and mud stains on his knees. He must have been lying there in some shallow fold of ground, completely unmoving, for God knows how long. It was a talent to be respected. As was the pistol he held in his hand.

  It a a Heckler and Koch P9, which meant that it delivered 9mm Parabellum bullets at a muzzle velocity of 11,180 feet per second. Jaysmith’s mind automatically recalled the technical information. It also registered that it was levelled with a very professional steadiness at the centre of his chest.

  ‘I saw you at the house,’ said Adam accusingly, touching with his free hand the field glasses which hung round his neck. ‘I saw you go out to the car twice. You went back inside the second time and then after a while, I could see the young woman was getting worried about something. She kept on looking towards the house, then she went inside and when she came out, she shook her head at the old lady. And I began to wonder. I didn’t know what it meant, but I tried to work out what you’d do if you got suspicious I was here. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the ways you do things, Mr Jaysmith. So I came down from the barn and hid.

  ‘And I was right.’

  He didn’t sound happy at his rightness. In fact there was an expression not much short of distress on his face and suddenly it struck Jaysmith that the young man was genuinely upset.

  ‘You didn’t know I was at the house till you saw me then?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said the young man with an overtone of pain. ‘I didn’t.’

  He doesn’t want to believe I’ve turned traitor, thought Jaysmith. But he can’t see any other explanation.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about it,’ said Adam.

  ‘The longer you stand there thinking, the more chance there is of someone strolling along and wondering what strange game we’re playing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Adam. But he didn’t glance nervously round.

  ‘I appreciate your problem,’ pursued Jaysmith. ‘What you would really like is to get me locked up, or tied up, or any way rendered hors de combat while you contact Jacob and let him know what’s happened and find out what you should do next. But you’re rather worried in case I jump you. Right?’

  ‘That’s about it,’ admitted Adam. ‘All I can think of is getting close enough to hit you over the head and that might be dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, it might,’ agreed Jaysmith. ‘Always keep as much distance between yourself and a target as you reasonably can.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Adam. ‘But it wasn’t quite what I meant. Dangerous for you, being hit over the head, that’s what I was trying to say.’

  Jaysmith laughed.

  ‘Well, if that’s how you feel, and I certainly don’t mean you any harm, the problem’s solved. Look, let’s just sit down and talk around things. I’m not even armed!’

  He stretched wide his arms to prove the point. Adam took a step back but still kept the HK P9 levelled. There was a noise somewhere over to their left.

  ‘Someone’s coming!’ whispered Jaysmith urgently. ‘For Christ’s sake, put that thing away!’

  The gun vanished inside the combat jacket, but the hand went with it and remained out of sight. Jaysmith walked round the car, looking at it admiringly.

  ‘Nice little job,’ he said. ‘Though I bet it’s heavy on the petrol for its size.’

  Joining in the game, Adam said, ‘Not really. It depends how you drive, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve seen how you drive,’ said Jaysmith. ‘You passed me this afternoon, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘No,’ admitted the young man. ‘I didn’t notice. But I wasn’t looking, was I?’

  ‘No excuse!’

  The noise came again, the crackling underfoot of twigs and dry leaves, accompanied almost simultaneously by a long baa.

  ‘Christ! It’s only a sheep!’ laughed Jaysmith.

  This time the young man turned his head. The sheep peered at them through the trees as though trying to work out whether whatever it was that had brought these strange long creatures to stand in this unpromising spot might make an excursion from the surrounding pastures worthwhile. It was a comic sight and Adam laughed till he felt the knife blade at his throat.

  ‘Pull the gun out slowly,’ said Jaysmith.

  Nervously the young man began to withdraw his hand at too fast a speed. The fine-edged blade nicked his skin.

  ‘Slowly,’ said Jaysmith.

  The gun crept into view.

  ‘Drop it.’

  It fell to the brown and fibrous earth.

  ‘Now walk backwards with me. Good. Far enough. Now sit down, hands clasped beneath your bum. Excellent.’

  Adam sat in the required position and Jaysmith took four quick paces forward and scooped up the gun.

  ‘Now let’s take a walk. On your feet, but keep your hands clasped behind you. Like the Duke of Edinburgh. Now let’s get under cover, shall we?’

  He urged Adam before him into the barn. Its dark interior was musty with animal odours. A shaft of light almost church-like in its angle and effect fell through a hole in the roof. A rickety ladder led up to the hayloft.

  ‘Up we go,’ said Jaysmith. ‘And if you’re thinking, here’s my chance, just remember that a bullet up the arsehole is not only undignified, it’s extremely painful.’

  He kept a safe distance behind the other, ordering him to sit down on his hands once more before he himself emerged onto the loft floor. Then he approached the seated man whose eyes widened in fear as suddenly the Bowie knife snaked out towards his throat. With a deft flick, Jaysmith cut the strap which held the field glasses and caught them as they fell into Adam’s lap.

  He moved towards the loading window which faced south towards Naddle Foot.

  ‘I have excellent peripheral vision,’ he said. ‘Don’t stir, not even if you find you’re sitting on a rat’s nest.’

  He trained the glasses on the house.

  It was, as he knew, a very poor line of fire with the trees which bordered the garden permitting only intermittent visibility. The children were still playing in the back garden. There was no sign of Muriel Wilson or of Bryant, but he could see Anya who was clearly supervising some team game. The young voices raised in competitive excitement carried quite clearly in the still air. Anya’s face, flushed with exertion and youthful with sharing her son’s happiness, seemed almost incandescent in the golden heat of the autumn sun. He felt like an envious voyeur. Or one of those pale helpless ghosts called up out of Erebus to comfort some emissary from the world of
living men, but unable to speak till they have tasted fresh blood.

  So rapt was he that, peripheral vision or not, he might have been susceptible to a sudden attack. Instead, Adam interrupted his reverie with speech.

  ‘Mr Jaysmith, look, what are you doing in that house? Does Jacob know you’re there?’

  He still sounded puzzled and anxious, but that could be part of an act. A learner he might be, but he had already displayed some talent for the game.

  ‘Don’t muck me about, son,’ said Jaysmith wearily. ‘If Jacob knew I was there, he’d have told you, wouldn’t he? Let’s concentrate on you. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just observing,’ said Adam, convincingly ingenuous. ‘Jacob told me to keep an eye on the house, that’s all.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Running Bryant off the road, that was keeping an eye on him, was it? No, sonny. You’ve been given my job, haven’t you? Well, I shouldn’t plan a long-term career in it, if I were you.’

  He spoke with deliberate scorn and was secretly amused to see the youngster flush. If his hero-worship was genuine, this was probably the best route to provoke information out of him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Just look at this! A lousy line of fire, a position open to approach by local farmers or casual strollers, your car parked next door where anyone can spot it. Not to mention the fact that you’re leaving more traces of your presence than a bull in a china shop.’

  He indicated several cigarette ends and a crushed-up lager can on the floor.

  ‘I’d have cleared up before I left,’ protested Adam in the tone of a student whose seminar paper has been unjustly attacked by his tutor. ‘But do go on. It’s very interesting.’

  He was not being sarcastic. Oh Christ, thought Jaysmith. The poor bastard really wants to become another me, God help him!

  ‘I’m not here to give you tips of the trade,’ he said wearily. ‘How on earth did you get into this business anyway?’

  ‘I got friendly with Dave three or four years ago,’ said Adam artlessly. ‘He was working for Jacob and when he wanted me to move in with him, I had to have security clearance. I knew something odd was going on, so one night in bed I asked him, and he told me, and then he got me the job so it would be safe for me to know, if you follow.’

  ‘You know,’ said Jaysmith, ‘I find it hard to believe in you, Adam. Jacob’s no fool. He’s not going to send anyone wet behind the ears out on a job like this.’

  ‘That’s rather cruel,’ protested the boy, flushing. ‘Anyway, Jacob just sent me to observe.’

  ‘Observe? Oh yes. And like I say, I suppose you were just observing when you ran Bryant off the road last Sunday?’

  Again that rather becoming flush.

  ‘Yes, that’s how it started,’ said Adam. ‘Jacob wanted Dave to come up last Saturday after he’d seen you on the Friday night, remember? But on Saturday morning Dave went down with flu – he’s very susceptible – and I was told to go instead, just to observe. I got up on Saturday night and put up at a truly awful hotel in Keswick. Everywhere decent was booked up, you see. And on Sunday I started watching. It was a really dreadful day, wasn’t it? It was so dull too, just sitting there in the drizzle, watching. I began to feel quite nostalgic for your stairs and that awful bag of glue.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ growled Jaysmith.

  ‘Well, in the afternoon, first the woman left with the child. Then Bryant appeared. I followed him. He went along the main Penrith road and then turned off through a place called Dockray and down to Patterdale village. Patterdale’s at the foot of Ullswater …’

  ‘I know where it is,’ snapped Jaysmith. ‘What did he do there?’

  ‘He went into a house.’

  ‘Whose house?’

  ‘I don’t know! He was in there a couple of hours or so. When he came out he didn’t go back the way he’d come but set out up Kirkstone Pass and down the other side into Ambleside. The visibility was absolutely dreadful. I was crawling along behind him when suddenly I got this brilliant idea. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘If you can get a cigarette out and light it without moving your hands, go ahead,’ said Jaysmith.

  Adam nodded admiringly as if he had expected no more.

  ‘I thought here was the perfect chance to get rid of Bryant with no questions asked, and do myself a bit of good in Jacob’s eyes too. So I accelerated past him and forced him through the wall. Unfortunately before I could check he was dead, I saw this other vehicle approaching, so I got out quick. I still expected him to be dead. I rang Jacob and left a message telling him what had happened. When he rang back, he was furious. He’d found out Bryant was still alive and he wasn’t happy!’

  He shook his head ruefully.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I was told to get back down to London. I said, what about the observation? and he asked me if I was going to dress up as a nurse. He can be very sarcastic. But I must admit I was happy to be back in town and Dave was much better. Then on Thursday night Jacob said Bryant was out of hospital and I was to get back up here and start observing again. The nearest place I could find a decent hotel was Windermere. And when I got up this morning I found that my petrol pump had gone kaput. Getting things done in this wilderness on a Saturday morning is almost impossible, but I managed it somehow though it took ages.’

  ‘Which was why you were carving up the traffic to get here to do your job this afternoon,’ said Jaysmith.

  ‘That’s right. But just observing. Jacob was very insistent on that. And almost the first thing I observed was you. Please, Mr Jaysmith, what are you up to?’

  Jaysmith almost smiled at the note of pleading.

  ‘That’s for Jacob’s ears alone,’ he said. ‘But if it’s any comfort to you, I’m not in the employ of an enemy power or anything like that. I mean no one any harm. Now let’s go and find a telephone, shall we? I think the time has come for me and Jacob to talk.’

  He could see no alternative. It had to happen sometime. His only real hope had been that Bryant was no longer targeted, but that was clearly a vain hope now, and eventually more efficient operatives than Adam would be despatched to complete the job. He would have liked a little more time to see if he could find out anything more, but his encounter with Adam had brought things to a head. He could hardly hold the boy captive for any significant length of time. He had neither the means nor indeed the inclination. This was between Jacob and himself. He had no desire to complicate matters further by using violence against any of Jacob’s operatives unless absolutely forced to it.

  ‘Now that we’ve established that neither of us wants to harm the other, please may I have a cigarette?’ said Adam.

  ‘So you can harm yourself?’ said Jaysmith. ‘I’ve been doing you a favour. But go ahead.’

  Adam smiled and slowly produced a gold cigarette case and matching lighter. He really was an extremely attractive young man, thought Jaysmith. It must have been a great disappointment to a lot of impressionable girls to discover his lack of interest in them.

  Jaysmith went down the ladder first and waited for the boy to follow. Outside the barn he tucked the HK P9 into his waistband under his shirt. He judged the danger of conflict was now past, but he was still careful to maintain a safe distance between them.

  As Adam reached the golden mini, he took a last drag at his cigarette and flicked it away. It landed in some dry bracken.

  ‘Whoops, sorry,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t set the place on fire, must I?’

  And he stooped to retrieve the glowing butt.

  This totally natural hiatus in his progress brought Jaysmith close up behind. Again he had a split second’s foreknowledge of what was going to happen, too little to forestall it, but enough to slightly alleviate its effect.

  As Adam, half-crouched, swung his elbow back into Jaysmith’s crutch, the older man was already flinching away. It meant he took the blow in the groin rather than in the testicles. The
result was agony, but not total immobilization, and through the pain he could still feel amazement at the youngster’s decision to attack. He fell heavily on his side and tried to roll away from the follow-up, but Adam was young and lithe and hit him with his full body weight while his hands attempted to gouge the eyes.

  The boy was serious, thought Jaysmith, shaking his head violently to keep the grasping fingers out of his eye-sockets. One strayed into his mouth and he sank his teeth into it with all the strength of his jaw. Adam shrieked as the teeth met bone and drove his other fist hard against Jaysmith’s neck. He gasped and the finger slipped from his mouth, leaving the taste of blood behind. He managed to roll over onto his left side and grasp the gun in his waistband. Adam rose up slightly and struck at his wrist, numbing it halfway up to the elbow. The gun was halfway loose, and now the young man grabbed for it and pulled it free. Jaysmith sought his intention in his face. All he could see there was death. Given a few moments to reflect, to discuss, to consider, the youth might well see reason. But those few moments were not in Jaysmith’s gift.

  Adam pulled himself up so that he was kneeling astride Jaysmith and could get a clear shot at his head. Rolling onto his back, Jaysmith lifted his useless right hand to cover his face.

  ‘No!’ he cried. It came out like a plea for mercy. An older adversary might have known that men like Jaysmith did not ask for mercy, might have recognized that it was merely a stratagem of delay. But Adam was a young man and for a moment he hesitated. Perhaps the moment would have stretched long enough for reason to assert itself. Perhaps not. And it was not Jaysmith’s sole risk to take. His left hand found the haft of his Bowie knife and as Adam teetered on the edge of decision, the pre-emptive blade sliced up through his belly, beneath his rib-cage and into the madly working muscle of his uncertain heart. For the few seconds that life continued his face twisted into a mask of almost comic betrayal, or revelation, of death, and the ruptured heart’s final spasm jetted sufficient blood over Jaysmith’s hand and along his arm to make articulate a whole battlefield of spirits.