The Long Kill

by Reginald Hill

  Chapter 20

  He sat on the ground for a long time, looking at the body by his side. This was the closest he had ever been to one of his killings. He knew now why he always went for the long kill.

  At last, recognizing the stupidity of delay, he rose and lifted the body and carried it to the car. The young man was very light. His jungle hat had slipped off in the fight and the comb of orange hair, crushed flat beneath the wig, flopped pathetically over the skull, bald and as vulnerable as a baby’s.

  The boot of a mini proved to be no place to stow a body. It occurred to Jaysmith’s mind, eager for distracting rationalities, that there was even less room than might have been expected. The reason was not far to seek. As in his own car there was a false panel which removed to reveal a hidden compartment. Adam was a loyal consumer. It contained a Heckler and Koch 33K rifle, not perhaps the weapon for the long kill, but accurate and deadly over the ranges from here to the house.

  So much for Adam’s claim that he was a mere observer. Jacob did not issue weapons like this just in case his operatives fancied bagging a few pigeons. It made Jaysmith feel a little better, but not much.

  There was a map too, the same OS sheet he had received when given the job. A heavy line had been drawn from the rear garden of Naddle Foot to Adam’s observation point. There was a fainter line running from the front of the house across the valley and ending at a point on the fellside not far from where he’d built his own hide. There was some writing above it, almost indecipherable. He studied it a moment before it made sense.

  J’s line!

  He could almost hear the admiration in the young man’s voice.

  ‘You fucking idiot!’ he said out loud. ‘What did you think this was? The Wild West? Kill the fastest draw and you get his reputation? Oh you fool!’

  Finally, after taking out the spare wheel, he got the body in. He removed the bloodstained sweater he was wearing, used it to clean up his hands which were caked with drying blood, and tossed the garment into the boot with the body. His feet and the lower part of his trousers were still wet from the beck but fortunately the dark material did not show up the dampness very much. Despite the autumn sunshine, the air was chill among the trees beneath their lattice of branches and he found he was shivering.

  He did a last check round, then got into the car and sent it steadily down the track and onto the road. He drove the half-dozen miles to Keswick as fast as he could without breaking any limits and when he reached the town, he put the car into the large and crowded car park behind the main street. He realized he had no money with him. Fortunately Adam had tossed an elegant suede jacket onto the back seat and in this he found a well-filled wallet and a plentiful supply of silver. He purchased the maximum ticket from a machine and stuck it on the windscreen. Then he walked swiftly away from the car and went in search of a public phone box.

  In the booth he hesitated. Twenty minutes ago he had been determined to contact Jacob and lay his cards on the table. But twenty minutes ago Adam had been alive and well. Now the case was altered. He needed more time to think. With Adam’s death he had bought time, though he didn’t know how much.

  He looked up ‘Taxis’ in the directory and five minutes later he was on his way back to Naddle Foot. He glanced at his watch and was amazed to see that barely an hour had passed since he had left the house.

  Barely an hour for him, but a lifetime for Adam.

  He had hoped to enter the house unobserved but he was out of luck.

  ‘And where have you been, young man?’ demanded Miss Wilson.

  She was standing in the doorway of the dining room. Behind her he could see a table loaded with the kind of indelicacies which appealed to small boys. Before he could answer Anya appeared.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said indifferently. ‘Auntie, is everything ready?’

  ‘There’s enough to feed an army in there,’ retorted the old lady. ‘Bread and butter and jelly, that’d have been quite enough.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jaysmith. ‘I got … called away. What can I do to help?’

  ‘Very little now,’ retorted Anya frostily. ‘I’ve had to organize all the games, so Aunt Muriel’s had to do all the work in here. Now it’s all ready. You’ve timed your return perfectly.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Miss Wilson. ‘Never cut off your nose to spite your face. Sit him at the table and put him in charge and you’ll see he’ll earn his keep.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Anya. ‘Think you can manage that?’

  ‘I think so. I’ll just have a quick clean-up first.’

  She studied him critically and said, ‘Yes, you look a bit, if not dishevelled, then not exactly shevelled. Where’s your sweater?’

  ‘I must have left it somewhere,’ he said. ‘I got a bit warm. I won’t be a minute.’

  He ran upstairs away from her curiosity which, while preferable to, was also more dangerous than her frostiness.

  When he descended a little while later, the boys were already gathering at the table where they were subjected to a close examination by Miss Wilson who dispatched eighty per cent of them into the kitchen to make themselves decent under the hot tap.

  ‘Here’s Jay!’ yelled a very excited Jimmy. ‘Where’ve you been, Jay? We’ve been playing with my gun and I told them you got ten out of ten and they wouldn’t believe me. You did though, didn’t you, Jay? You must be the best shot in the world!’

  They’d had a practice session with the ping pong gun after breakfast when Jaysmith discovered that up to about six yards it was fairly accurate. Jimmy had been hugely impressed.

  Jaysmith took his place at the table and soon discovered that Miss Wilson had not been exaggerating. Anya’s scheme to wear them out before tea had failed miserably. Team rivalries excited by their outdoor games continued and disputes broke out which were usually settled either by missiles above, or wrestling bouts beneath, the table. His penance was extended to the post-prandial period when Anya announced that Uncle Jay had kindly agreed to entertain them with a few tricks. In revenge, after doing a couple of coin and card tricks, he contrived a Yuri Geller-type bending of a couple of teaspoons and soon had the whole group energetically but quietly assaulting the household cutlery.

  ‘I’ll make you pay for replacements,’ said Anya.

  ‘No more than I deserve,’ he said.

  ‘What did happen to you? Stage fright?’

  ‘No. It was silly. Someone turned up out of the blue. It was business. They must have found out at Parker’s hotel that I was staying here. I didn’t want to clutter up the house with my own affairs, not today, so I suggested we drove into Keswick and sorted things out over a drink. Sorry. I should have told you I was going.’

  ‘No need. You’re your own boss. Was it OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The business.’

  She looked at him with a clear deceit-challenging gaze he found very disconcerting.

  ‘So-so,’ he said.

  ‘Not a disaster then? He just got the sweater, not the shirt off your back?’

  ‘That’s about it. No need to worry about Aunt Muriel’s money if that’s what’s bothering you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, that’s not what’s bothering me,’ she said. ‘Oh Andrew!’

  A plump red-faced boy who was a local farmer’s son was proudly displaying a trifle ladle which had clearly been bent into horseshoe shape by main force. Jaysmith slipped away and went in search of Bryant.

  He found him dozing in his study with a whisky glass by his side and an open book threatening to slip off his lap. Jaysmith picked it up and the movement woke the sleeping man.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re back. I heard you’d defected. Would you like to join me in a drink, or is it too early for you?’

  ‘I’ve just presided over the tea party,’ said Jaysmith.

  ‘Then it’s probably too late, but have one all the same.’

  Jaysmith poured himself a generous mea
sure and topped up Bryant’s glass.

  He nodded at the book he had saved from the floor. It was in Polish.

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Economic analysis,’ said Bryant. ‘More essential than interesting.’

  ‘Essential to what?’

  ‘My own book. Not that I’ll ever finish it.’

  ‘That sounds a trifle pessimistic.’

  ‘Realistic,’ laughed Bryant. ‘I set myself an impossible task, you see. There doesn’t seem much point in attempting the possible, somehow. As old age approaches you begin to understand the dangers of actually completing anything. That moment of relaxation, the inevitable anti-climax, the sense even of disappointment, these make up the nunc dimittis syndrome. Better, if you want to live long that is, to attempt the impossible.’

  ‘Which, in your case, is?’

  ‘To try to explain Poland. To tell the truth, despite what I say, I thought when I started I had a chance of success. I had a good viewpoint, it seemed, a firm platform. Of, but not in, Poland. An insider looking from the outside. But I soon discovered that such a condition does not exist in nature. Also I discovered that, as in autobiography, I suspect, the material to be dealt with increases as a cube of the time spent on dealing with it. Fortunately these discoveries coincided with my realization that ripeness, far from being all, is merely the name we give to the first stage of decay.’

  Jaysmith smiled and drank his whisky and wondered how much Bryant had downed before he fell asleep.

  ‘How do you see things now?’ he asked. ‘Solidarity? All that?’

  ‘I’m still a long way from reaching Solidarity in my analysis,’ said Bryant, suddenly guarded.

  ‘But you must have thought about it. Are you a Roman Catholic, by the way?’

  Bryant shook his head.

  ‘Was. Lapsed. Or should I say prolapsed.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean, it still hurts sometimes. They sink the hooks deep and you never really get away altogether.’

  ‘Anya?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he laughed. ‘I married a good C of E girl which, as you know, covers everything from atheist to agnostic. Anya was brought up to think, not to believe. At least that was my intention. Sometimes, I regret, she does not act very logically.’

  Am I being talked at? wondered Jaysmith.

  He said, ‘I know how disorientating bereavement can be, how long the effects can last. Too long, if you let them.’

  Twenty years, he told himself bitterly. And here felt a pang of self-disgust as he thought of Adam. God knows what grief that boy’s death would cause. Parents; friends; Dave. Grief spreading out like an oil slick from a wrecked ship. And here he was, probably with the youngster’s blood still forensically traceable on his hands, talking platitudes and playing the considerate suitor.

  Bryant’s response seemed to fit his thoughts rather than his words. He barked a humourless laugh and said, ‘Is that so? Do I take it you are making, or wish to make, what in the old days was called a declaration?’

  ‘Not till I’m sure that Anya can consider it logically,’ said Jaysmith.

  It seemed a decent thing to say, a trifle pompous perhaps, but in a solid, old-fashioned kind of way and none the worse for that. Again Bryant’s response surprised him.

  ‘I hadn’t taken you for a fool, man,’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ said Jaysmith, impatient in return. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t say anything to Anya? Or that I should? Or what?’

  ‘For God’s sake, why do you insist in making this a scene out of a Victorian novel?’ demanded Bryant. ‘You’re old enough to make your own decisions! What the devil do they have to do with me?’

  ‘I thought you might have some concern for matters affecting Anya’s happiness,’ said Jaysmith, rising. ‘Thanks for the drink. I’d better get back to the celebration.’

  As he reached the door, Bryant spoke.

  ‘Mr Hutton,’ he said. ‘Let us not part on a misunderstanding. In matters of Anya’s happiness, I count it my right and my duty to take an absolute interest.’

  He spoke without undue emphasis but to Jaysmith who had had some experience in these matters the words sounded very like a threat.

  Half an hour later the first parent arrived to collect her offspring and another thirty minutes after that the last guest departed. Jaysmith went out into the garden to help Jimmy collect the scattered apparatus of play.

  ‘Enjoy your party?’ he asked the boy who had at last come close to exhausting all his vast reserves of physical and mental energy.

  ‘Yes, thanks, it was great,’ said Jimmy, yawning. ‘Have another go with my gun, Jay.’

  ‘We’d better get the clearing up done first, I think.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘All right.’

  He picked up the toy, aimed it at the bull’s-eye target about twenty feet away and hit it five times in a row pretty near the centre. It wasn’t bad shooting in the circumstances.

  Ironic applause came from the french window.

  ‘You must have a kitchen sink full of goldfish in plastic bags,’ said Anya. ‘Jay, would you mind running Aunt Muriel back to Grasmere now? She’s pretty well tuckered out, I think, and if she stays any longer, she’ll just insist on helping with the washing up.’

  ‘Which I will escape if I take her home?’ said Jaysmith. ‘It’s a deal.’

  The old lady made only a token objection to being ferried home, and in the car she sank back with an audible sigh into the soft upholstery and said, ‘I’ve had a grand time but it’ll be good to get back to me own fireside.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Jaysmith. ‘You won’t miss it not being your own fireside too much, will you?’

  ‘When I move out, you mean? Well, I’m bound to, I expect. It’s human nature to get attached to what you’ve known a long time. But don’t you fret, I’ll be snug as a bug down in the village. Betty Craik’s cottage always had a grand fire to sit by. And it doesn’t smoke when the wind’s in the east either.’

  At Rigg Cottage he saw her into the living room just to check that all was well.

  ‘Thanks for fetching and carrying me,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Not much pleasure in lugging an old parcel like me around, I doubt!’ she said. ‘You like young Jimmy, don’t you, Mr Hutton? I mean, really like him?’

  ‘Well yes, I do,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Very much. He’s a fine boy.’

  ‘That’s good. I thought you did, but there’s no harm in being sure; and asking right out’s the only way I know of finding out right.’

  ‘Why did you want to find out right?’ enquired Jaysmith.

  She regarded him steadily with her ageless brown eyes.

  ‘It doesn’t take a blind man to see what you feel about Annie,’ she said. ‘And there’s some might think it a clever move to make much of the son to get on the right side of the mother.’

  ‘And an even cleverer one to get on the right side of the aunt too,’ smiled Jaysmith.

  ‘There you would be wasting your time,’ she said peremptorily. ‘I doubt if I’ve much influence over Annie. She’s a grand lass, but she’s not one to share things, not with me, anyway. With that father of hers, maybe. But she’s only kin to me by marriage and that makes a difference. Or it ought to. Not that I’ve ever had much success in understanding even my own flesh and blood!’

  ‘Edward, you mean?’

  ‘Edward, aye. I had the bringing up of him like I had the bringing up for a dozen years of his father before him. Strange how there can be barriers even the same blood can’t run through.’

  ‘Edward was … difficult?’

  The eyes suddenly blazed with defensive anger.

  ‘He was a good nephew to me. A son almost,’ she said angrily.

  Here was a grief he’d forgotten about, so anxious was he to understand the depth and duration of Anya’s sorrow.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that I d
on’t want to offend Anya … Annie … either, by treading too close.’

  ‘You don’t look much to me like a man frightened to act, Mr Hutton,’ said the old lady. ‘Not at all. I’ll say goodbye now. Watch how you drive though. It’s a dangerous road that.’

  That night, Jimmy tried to extend his birthday as long as possible, but sheer fatigue defeated him in the end.

  ‘Goodnight Gramp. Goodnight Jay,’ he said wearily as his mother led him from the room. Thanks a million.’

  The three adults ate a snack supper in the lounge and watched a film on television. It was a second-rate film, but no one seemed in the mood for conversation and in fact Bryant was dozing off before the end. Awoken by the swell of music which signalled the happy ending, he announced that he was ready for his bed also.

  ‘And then there were two,’ said Jaysmith, re-entering the lounge after helping Bryant up the stairs.

  ‘One soon,’ said Anya, yawning. ‘Fancy a nightcap?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She poured him his customary whisky and water without further enquiry. Such domestic assumption was both pleasant and problematical. It implied a closeness, but it also implied a role.

  ‘I’m sorry if I sounded a bit testy this afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘You had every right to.’

  ‘Not to treat you like the paid help, I didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘I hoped I was being treated like a friend who’d let you down,’ he answered.

  She had finished her whisky very quickly and looked at the glass as if surprised to find it empty. She rose and poured herself another. She seemed restless and nervy.

  She said, ‘Jimmy was asking me if we’d still be able to pay visits to Rigg Cottage after Aunt Muriel had moved out and you’d moved in.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I thought you might tolerate him for a couple of minutes a month.’

  ‘I’d be delighted. And flattered.’

  ‘Don’t be too flattered. There’s a conker tree in the garden which he considers to be his own property.’

  ‘I see. And what about you? Would you still visit the cottage also?’