The Long Kill

by Reginald Hill

  Swinging the wheel hard over, he went through it with hardly any loss of speed, racing up the steep track, rounded the bend at the top and, to ensure minimum visibility from the road, sent the car grinding up the steep bank of waste which bounded the amphitheatre of the quarry till the engine stalled.

  He pulled the handbrake on and in the ensuing silence they heard the roar of the Metro’s engine as it screamed by below them along the road.

  Jacob did not speak but peered forward with mild curiosity at the ravaged face of the fell. He appeared quite unmoved by the sudden violence of Jaysmith’s driving.

  ‘Now that’s what I call a view,’ he said finally.

  It was difficult to tell if he was being ironic.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ said Jaysmith harshly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About Bryant.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Yes, I bloody well like! Bryant’s no spy, no traitor, is he?’

  ‘There is some evidence, wouldn’t you say?’ said Jacob judiciously.

  ‘Of course there’s evidence! When you decided you wanted him killed and that I should do your dirty work for you, of course you made sure there was evidence! Even you are answerable to someone!’

  ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I? And to experts too.’

  ‘Then you must have made a bloody good job of it. How far did you go, Jacob? Did you just grab at opportunity or did you actually provide the bodies too?’

  Jacob’s eyes opened a little wide in a faint parody of surprise.

  ‘You mean, did I betray my own people just to point a finger at Bryant? Come on, Jay, that’s a bit much, isn’t it? Why on earth should I do a thing like that?’

  ‘Because you’re totally unbalanced,’ said Jaysmith contemptuously. ‘I’d like to believe that it was your precious son’s death that tipped you over, but by all accounts he was such a nutter himself, he must have got it from somewhere!’

  This made contact. Jacob turned a little pale and rubbed the back of his neck as though attacked by a sudden pain. But his voice remained as controlled and unconcerned as ever as he replied.

  ‘Why do you say all this, Jay?’ he asked. ‘What do you think I have done?’

  ‘I think,’ said Jaysmith slowly, ‘that when your boy, Edward, died, you were devastated. Perhaps it was something you knew of him, or something he’d said, or something Bryant said, or perhaps it was simply good old parental pride that made you dissatisfied. Perhaps it was the hint of suicide …’

  ‘Not that,’ interrupted Jacob swiftly. ‘Not Edward. He was strong, positive; he loved the dangers of climbing, he told me that; he found them exhilarating, and he loved pushing himself to the limit; but he wouldn’t slacken the odds in that way. In the end he might have fallen to his death, that was always on the cards; but not off a piffling rock face in the Lake District; not because he’d decided not to take his injection!’

  ‘No? What did you imagine had happened then?’ demanded Jaysmith.

  ‘This is your show, isn’t it?’ replied the other. ‘You tell me what I imagined.’

  ‘I’m not sure if you imagined anything. Or perhaps you imagined everything. You must have had some idea of the kind of man he was, some idea of the kind of hell Anya had to live through. So you decided to take a closer look at her father, at Bryant. You had the home burgled, didn’t you? Your boys really turned it over. It was a happy chance that Bryant had done some courier work for the department. That gave you an excuse. Information received. Perhaps already a little evidence planted. But you found nothing except the letters from Ford’s sister. Was that the first you knew of the affair? God, they must have been discreet! And Ford was acting as an intermediary, so you sent your boys to talk to him. What were they looking for? Anything? Nothing? Something damaging to Bryant, simply because you didn’t much like Bryant? But they came up with gold. They came up with the business of the insulin capsules, didn’t they? And suddenly Bryant wasn’t just a pain in the arse, a man you didn’t like, the guardian of and father-substitute for your grandson and namesake, young Jimmy. He was a murderer! Edward’s killer! You must have wanted to kill him with your own hands then. But that’s not your way, is it, Jacob? You’ve always been a setter-on, a man of stratagem rather than a man of action. You targeted him. You put him at the end of my gun.’

  ‘And that was an error, wasn’t it?’ murmured Jacob.

  ‘You don’t deny it then? None of it?’ cried Jaysmith.

  ‘How strange. I think you’d really prefer it if I denied it all, wouldn’t you? Why? Because it would make you less of a tool? But that’s all you’ve ever been, Jay. At first I had hopes of you, high hopes. After Jacob, Jaysmith. A nice line of succession. But soon I saw what you were. A simple craftsman with no potential for partnership! A weapon, a hit-man, nothing more.’

  ‘Nothing more,’ echoed Jaysmith. ‘You may be right. But that didn’t entitle you to use me as a private executioner, Jacob! That didn’t entitle you to turn me into a simple murderer!’

  Jacob laughed, a metallic grating sound, as if old, long-disused cogs were being forced into movement.

  ‘There’s your weakness,’ he said. ‘All these years you’ve acted the hard emotionless executioner, but always you needed reasons. Or not even reasons, just reassurances. You had to be convinced that everyone you killed deserved his death as much as poor old Tai! Not that he deserved it all that much. He was only doing his job, wasn’t he? And that little yellow girl of yours, Nguyet, wasn’t it? She really was a communist subversive, wasn’t she? Didn’t she ever tell you that? Or did she too work out that what her naive young Englishman wanted was reassurance, not truth!’

  Jaysmith felt rage surging up from his belly to his brain. Only the sense that Jacob was deliberately provoking him in an effort to direct his own mind from his own actions and reactions enabled him to keep control.

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps I did need that reassurance about my targets. That makes it all the worse to have pointed me at Bryant.’

  ‘You fool!’ said Jacob contemptuously. ‘In your simplistic terms, half the men you’ve killed have probably been twice as innocent as Bryant! At least I condemned him for a crime; most of the others died for the sake of a policy!’

  Suddenly the rain came, lashing the windows on the breath of a wind which shook the car. Down the distant fell slopes, the summer-browned grass seemed to run in panic from the line of mist that the violent blasts were driving into the valley. Closer, the shattered quarry face met this latest assault with the indifference of old pain. Then the rain was cascading down the windscreen and the desolate world outside the car was reduced to a damp nothing.

  So, thought Jaysmith dully. Now I know. I am Faustus, after all. My soul sold for twenty years of emptiness, of ignorance, of simple misuse. No profit or delight. A simple public hangman.

  ‘Come now, Jay,’ said Jacob with something approaching glee. ‘Don’t take it to heart. Remember what Eichmann said in his glass box. You were only following orders!’

  There was no conscious reaction, just a distant cry of rage and despair in a voice he recognized as his own. Then his hands were at Jacob’s throat. The older man’s strength of resistance was surprising but it could not have sufficed, and his face was flushing a streaky purple when the door was dragged open and Davey slammed his pistol barrel hard against the side of Jaysmith’s head.

  He fell back in his seat with the tacky hotness of blood oozing down his neck and over his collar. The muzzle of Davey’s gun was boring into his jaw line. He looked up into the man’s face and to his dull surprise saw there a physical longing to squeeze the trigger.

  It was Jacob who prevented or at least prorogued this.

  Massaging his throat, he croaked, ‘You took your time, didn’t you?’

  ‘I had to turn round,’ growled Davey. ‘Shall we get on with it?’

  ‘Soon. Get in the back, will you?’

  The bearded man slipped into the back seat. Rain wa
s streaming off his bulky anorak and Jaysmith found himself thinking of the mess it would make on the upholstery. It was interesting how the mind found its escape routes from horrific reality. He should know, better than most. Bloodstains, of course, would be far worse than water.

  Gingerly he raised his hand to his head. Behind him Davey moved menacingly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Jacob, some of his old calm returning with his old voice. ‘Jay, you’re bleeding.’

  ‘Just a bit. There’s a first-aid kit in the glove compartment.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Jacob.

  Jaysmith slowly reached forward across the man in the passenger seat. With luck, Jacob’s body would screen him just long enough to get hold of Adam’s gun and blow a hole in Davey before the bearded man had time to do the same to him. With luck.

  Taking a deep breath, he opened the glove compartment door.

  He could have saved himself the anxiety. The HK P9 was gone.

  No one spoke. He took the compact first-aid box out, opened it, removed a lint pad and a small antiseptic spray, sprayed the pad, put the aerosol back in the box, and closed and replaced it as he pressed the pad to the back of his head.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to die of blood poisoning. Jacob, I’m sorry. It was stupid to lose my temper like that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be trying to humour me, would you?’ said Jacob, still gently massaging his neck.

  ‘I’m trying to find the least damaging route through all this for everyone,’ snapped Jaysmith.

  ‘And what do you suggest?’

  ‘Go ahead. Kill Bryant. I know you don’t want to harm Anya and the boy. That’s why I had the time limit, wasn’t it? They were staying with you till the Sunday! So, kill Bryant, but make it look like natural causes for the girl’s sake, for your grandson’s sake.’

  This clearly took Jacob by surprise, as it was intended to.

  ‘Kill Bryant but make it look natural? You know, Jay, you almost sound like the man I once hoped you’d be! It’s well suggested, well argued. But what about you?’

  Jaysmith shrugged. It was painful. He wanted to say that his own fate didn’t matter but doubted if such altruism would impress the other.

  So he said, ‘I’ll do what I should have done in the first place. Slip quietly out of view. Of course, you might have some other ideas, but don’t forget my little bundle of billets doux.’

  Jacob relapsed into a reverie, his fingers steepled together under his chin, his monkey face, whose features Jaysmith now knew he had half recognized behind the beard in the photos of Edward Wilson, completely still. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started as the wind which had brought it now drove the clouds further east, dragging a train of light blue sky behind them. The change was almost springlike in its violence, and not much more trustworthy than spring.

  Jacob roused himself.

  ‘Looks a bit brighter now, Davey,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go on to the house. You’ll look after Mr Jaysmith, will you?’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Jacob,’ said Jaysmith in alarm. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Now you mustn’t worry,’ reassured the older man. ‘I’m just going to pay a call on my daughter-in-law and her father, what’s wrong with that? Perfectly natural, isn’t it!’

  He opened the door and stepped out of the car, then turned and stooped to address Jaysmith once more.

  ‘You got most things right,’ he said approvingly. ‘Except about yourself. I don’t like the sound of your billets doux as you call them. In fact I didn’t like the sound of them from the moment my listener heard Bryant ring his office to say that you were to have the freedom of the copying machine. So I had a word with Davey here. Show him, Davey.’

  The bearded man reached into the capacious side pocket of his waterproof and pulled out a package. It had been opened. He handed it to Jacob who looked at the address.

  ‘A bank manager in Brighton!’ he exclaimed. ‘What is it, Jay? A small account for emergencies? Please dispatch the enclosed by airmail where appropriate on the first day of October and debit my account. Signed Henry Collins. Jay, we didn’t know about this, honestly. How clever of you! In Brighton. And using your own name. I am right, aren’t I? It’s been so long. It is your own name, isn’t it? That’s the cleverness of it, hiding behind your real name. Don’t look so shocked. I know we like to think the Royal Mail is sacrosanct, but nothing is out of our reach, you know that now, don’t you, Jay? And don’t worry, by the way; Davey got both packages, didn’t you, Davey? Including the fail-safe one addressed to your bank manager in Switzerland.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said Jaysmith dully.

  ‘What I said. Go down to the house. Talk a little. Jimmy will still be at school, so we can have a really good adult talk. There’s another thing you didn’t get quite right, Jay. Yes, I was suspicious; yes, I sent a team in to go over Bryant’s house. But it wasn’t Bryant I wanted investigated; it was my precious daughter-in-law! Finding those letters and what they led to was just a stroke of luck. Bryant arranged everything, that much is clear, but she connived; she’d driven poor Edward halfway to despair with her insensitive, carping stupidity! She’s just as guilty as Bryant, more guilty in my eyes. That’s why I decided he should go first, so she could feel the pain of loss she had never felt when Edward died!’

  ‘First?’ Jaysmith seized upon the crucial word. ‘First?’

  ‘Oh yes. She had her chance to survive. I wouldn’t willingly deprive Jimmy of a mother, you see. But after Edward’s death she refused my offer of a home and protection, and settled with her murdering father. Even then, even when I knew what the pair of them had done, I gave her another chance. I asked her again when she and the boy visited me a few weeks ago. She was adamant. She was almost insolent. I offered everything, comfort, money, the best of education for Jimmy. I’m entitled to a close involvement, don’t you agree, Jay? After what I’ve lost. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I agree,’ cried Jaysmith aghast. ‘But you won’t do anything against her now, will you? Listen, once her father’s dead, she’ll need someone to turn to. It’ll be natural for her to turn to you …’

  ‘That’s what I thought before,’ said Jacob softly. ‘If you’d done your job properly, Jay, I’d have been with her when the news arrived. I’d have seen her pain, I might have profited from her grief. But you botched the job, didn’t you? And now things have moved on. Now she’s got to know everything; what her father did; who I am; and who you are too, Jay. That’s part of it also. She’s got to suffer! Ten months in his grave, not even a year, ten little months and what’s this grieving widow doing? Fornicating with a stranger, fornicating with a hapless, rootless, middle-aged killer, the first man to push his body at her. God, she must have been desperate!’

  He opened the passenger door and got out, then stooped to address Jaysmith further.

  ‘Really desperate,’ he said softly. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she started looking at that goatish father of hers with speculative eyes. I mean, tucked away together in that nice isolated house, it wouldn’t surprise me if from time to time …’

  There was no chance of getting anywhere near the throat this time. Indeed his outstretched hands hadn’t even made contact with the tweed jacket before Davey’s gun had ploughed a new furrow along his skull and he collapsed across the passenger seat, crying out in rage and pain.

  ‘You’re useless, you know that, Jay?’ said Jacob with contempt. ‘You’re going to die, of course. Davey here will take care of that. And Bryant will die, and my daughter-in-law too. In that order. Fortunately I’ll be around to take care of Jimmy. He’ll be all right, believe me. I’ll see to that. He’ll have the best, the very best of everything. So don’t take it too badly, Jay. You’d have had to go anyway, even with none of this. A weak man in retirement gets to thinking, gets to worrying about his life. And his after-life. We don’t like deathbed confessions, Jay, so if necess
ary we anticipate the deathbed. And you were a likely candidate. I’ll tell you why. I checked up with your optician. And he confirmed that you’d been to see him about your sight. He agreed with you, of course; at his prices, he’s not going to fall out with his patients. But what he told me was that there was no physical reason whatsoever for the trouble you were having with your right eye. No reason whatever! It’s your mind that’s getting things out of focus, Jay. Just your mind. I suspect you may find something comfortable in that. If you do, then good luck to you. And goodbye, Jay. Goodbye.’

  He slammed the door and walked away, nimble for his age on the steep and shaley slope. Soon he disappeared round the turn and a moment later Jaysmith heard the Metro’s engine burst into life then slowly fade away as the car reversed down to the road.

  Davey’s gun pressed hard against his neck.

  ‘And now, sunshine,’ said the bearded man, ‘there’s only you and me.’

  Chapter 30

  Jaysmith sat up slowly and turned to face his captor. The bearded man regarded him without expression but there was nothing inexpressive about the way he held his gun. It was a SIG-Sauer P230 automatic, of combined Swiss-German manufacture, beautifully made, very accurate, and as little likely to jam as any weapon on the market. Jaysmith’s only immediate consolation was that whatever fate was planned for him probably did not involve having him found with a bullet in his brain.

  He said thickly because the taste of pain was still in his mouth, ‘What’s the plan, Davey?’

  The bearded man stared blankly at him. Jaysmith guessed that he was working out which would be more distressing to his prisoner, knowledge or ignorance.

  He opted for knowledge.

  Davey said, ‘Jacob’s going to take care of them at the house. He’ll use the Heckler Koch, the one you took from Adam. It’s plastered with your prints, isn’t it? They said you were clever, Jaysmith. That wasn’t so fucking clever. There’ll be other signs too, all adding up to you fancying a slice of the lady, the lady objecting, daddy intervening, you going beserk. You’ll be missing, natch. The mysterious third person, the stranger in the house. Crazy with guilt, you’ve driven like a lunatic up into the hills. Somewhere up there, in the mist, on a narrow twisting road, you’ll have an accident. Or perhaps it will be suicide. Either way, this thing will turn over and over, breaking your neck. Perhaps there’ll be a fire too. How’s that grab you, Mr Jaysmith?’