Death of a Dormouse

by Reginald Hill

  ‘She’ll be there,’ promised Janet when it became clear Trudi was not about to answer.

  Ashburton retreated, his face marmoset-like with concern. Janet said, ‘Trudi, I don’t know what’s happening, but this time we’ve got to go to the police.’

  ‘No!’ said Trudi. ‘I’ve been to the police. I didn’t care for it.’

  It was a silly response to a sensible suggestion, but sense and silliness seemed to have been so mixed up in her life that she could only play it by ear, and ‘no’ to the police sounded pretty right.

  ‘You haven’t got some daft notion that Trent’s still alive and you’re protecting him, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure? That “No” lacked the punch of your new emphatic style.’

  Trudi smiled wearily.

  ‘Snarling wears you out,’ she said. ‘That’s why lions spend most of their time sleeping, I suppose.’

  ‘Is it? So now you’re a dor-lion instead of a dormouse?’

  ‘Maybe. But I’ll emphasize my belief in Trent’s death if you like. I believe it so much that I’m going to get married again, and you know I’d never dare risk bigamy.’

  ‘Trudi! You mean that chap I met, whatsisname …?’

  ‘Yes, whatsisname,’ said Trudi.

  She stood up. She felt a strong need to be away from here, to be moving towards James. What if he came back and didn’t run his answering machine but went straight to bed? She resolved to be sitting on his doorstep when he got back from Manchester.

  Janet was rising too. Gently Trudi pushed her back into her seat.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m on my own now, till I get to James, that is. That’s where I’m going now, so no need to worry. And don’t look so glum. It’s not goodbye. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘You mean you’ve forgiven me?’ said Janet, half satirical, half sincere.

  ‘Not on your life, but I’ll need to see you again to make you squirm some more, won’t I?’

  Trudi regarded her friend seriously as she spoke. Then slowly she let her tight lips relax and stretch into the broadest of grins.

  ‘Cow!’ said Janet, her face rubbery with relief. ‘Look, ring me, promise? At home. Frank and I are getting back together again, I think, even though he’s a bit tiresome with his besmirched-honour act. Whatever, I think the old sod can be relied on to pass a message. Trudi, you’ll take care?’

  ‘You can bet on it,’ said Trudi.

  She headed for the door, sailing like a bride beneath an arch of toad-faced leers.

  In the hotel foyer, the receptionist repeated the word taxi as though savouring a neologism.

  ‘I could ring,’ she said. ‘But if you walk towards the City Hall, you’ll likely pick up one a lot quicker.’

  Would the same advice have been offered if I’d been wearing my silver lamé evening gown and a tiara, wondered Trudi.

  Very probably! she answered herself. This was after all South Yorkshire.

  To her surprise, the thought was almost affectionate.

  The rain had stopped, though the air was still misty and damp. Headlights swam through it like bathyscaphes exploring the ocean bed. She waved at a couple of taxi shapes but they drifted by, occupied or preoccupied. A third was at least more positive and accelerated away at her wave, but a pair of headlights behind swung into the kerb alongside her. It was not a traditional taxi, but she was used to a mixture of London cabs and ordinary limousines with hackney licences, and had her hand on the door handle before suspicion rang a bell.

  Then it was too late. The door was open and her wrist was seized.

  Stanley Usher, a strip of plaster across his brow and an unpleasant smile across his face, said, ‘Come on in, Mrs Adamson. I’ve got someone who’s very keen to talk to you.’

  He jerked her inside as she began to scream. She felt the blow to the stomach which turned the scream into a choking gasp for breath.

  But the blow to the head which turned the hazy street lights to darkness she never felt at all.

  Part Eight

  A daimen icker in a thrave

  ’S a sma’ request:

  I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave,

  And never miss’t!

  BURNS: To a Mouse

  1

  Trudi awoke.

  Now she felt the blow which had rendered her unconscious. Her head ached and her straining eyes created sparks and shards of light in their effort to make sense of her surroundings. Finally she began to make distinctions between the internal and the external.

  She was lying on a hard mattress in a darkened room. Her wrists and ankles were bound, but this was an unnecessary refinement. In her mind she had been here many times before and knew there was no escape. One strip of light there was which could not be blinked away. It lay on the floor, seeping in beneath the door, and beyond that door on bare stone flags she could hear the sound of footsteps getting nearer.

  She lay as still as the mouse which huddles in its cornfield nest and hears the approach of the coulter, and knows what it means, but does not know how to fly.

  Nothing remained in her life, no spur to action, no prick of hope. Nothing of past, present or future touched her senses, only that crack of light beneath the door and the footsteps which were approaching it.

  She had been waiting for them all her life. They belonged to the secret police who strike with the dawn; to the cruel rapist who lurks in the shadows; to the man she had loved, come here to kill her.

  Now they were close. Now the line of light beneath the door was broken by a growing shadow.

  Now the footsteps halted.

  Slowly the door handle began to turn. Slowly the door swung open. In the threshold loomed a figure, bulky, still, menacing.

  Now it was in the room and advancing.

  Her mouth gaped wide as her desperate lungs drew in one last, long, ragged breath …

  And now she let it out in a great gale of laughter. She roared, she writhed, she almost rolled off the bed in her mirth. Even the sharp slap he gave across her cheek didn’t quell her almost entirely hysterical mirth.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘It’s just that … with the light behind you … you looked bigger somehow … I’m sorry, I don’t mean … but I thought … it’s just relief really … I thought that … and it’s only you, little you! So it’s all right.’

  ‘Well, that remains to be seen,’ said Mr Ashburton, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘But I think I understand, my dear. You thought perhaps it was Trent, come back to haunt you? Or not really dead at all? Well, it was almost like that, you know. He was such an ingenious man, your husband. Perhaps it was only fitting that in the end he should be the victim of his own ingenuity.’

  Trudi tried to struggle upright, but it proved impossible. Frowning, Mr Ashburton leaned forward to study her bonds, then undid the cords which bound her wrists.

  ‘You must forgive Usher. A man of excesses, I’m afraid. I’ll have a word with him. There, is that better?’

  It was and it wasn’t. Now she could push herself up the mattress to rest her back against the wall, which was an improvement. But at the same time the last dregs of her merriment drained away as Ashburton’s easy assumption of authority over Usher persuaded her that the little solicitor was no fit object for mirth, even hysterical.

  ‘Where am I?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you know? You’ve been here before, I think.’

  She peered past him through the open door. At first the whitewashed stone corridor which was all she could see meant nothing to her, then realization came. It was Well Cottage at Eyam.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ashburton. ‘I see you remember. An economical choice, I thought. And with all mod cons.’

  Trudi recalled the frozen body of Jünger’s brother and shuddered. She felt her hysteria returning. Something dreadful was about to happen. She’d been knocked unconscious, kidnapped, tied to a bed. She wasn’t worth a ransom to anyone, so it was herse
lf they wanted; what they imagined she knew.

  She screamed, ‘I know nothing. Nothing! I don’t want to know anything. Please, it’s all been a mistake, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not worth it … whatever you’re going to do … it’s just wasting time …’

  She threw in the last phrase as her mind tried to control her fear; it was the nearest she could get to a rational argument.

  ‘Wasting time,’ mused Ashburton. ‘We’ve plenty of that, I assure you. I’m still not sure about you, my dear, but in case you think that sounds hopeful, let me tell you what I am sure of. Either you know what I want to know and are acting your head off to conceal the knowledge. Or you really imagine you don’t know, but in fact you probably do, unawares. Either way, I’m going to get it out of you, you’d better believe me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ babbled Trudi. ‘I believe you. And you’ve got to believe me, I know nothing. Anything I do know, you’re welcome to. What is it you want, Mr Ashburton? Please, just tell me. Why are you doing this? What do you want? Who are you?’

  Ashburton looked at her thoughtfully and smiled.

  ‘All right,’ he said mildly. ‘Let’s play this way for a little while. Let’s assume you may be unaware of precisely what it is you know. I’ll make sure you know everything, and after that you can’t plead ignorance, can you?’

  Suddenly Trudi had no desire to know everything. Knowledge wasn’t power, it was terror. How happy her days of drowsy ignorance now seemed. She recalled once asking Trent about his work and he had smiled and said, ‘Do you really want to know?’ And she, drinking what tasted like affection from his smile, had shaken her head and replied laughing, ‘Probably not.’ At moments like that she had felt really close to him, protected by him. How she longed for that protection now. Ashburton was pressing his hands together and preparing to speak. Now fear of what was going to happen when he stopped made her pray he might go on speaking forever.

  He said, ‘I’m a simple provincial solicitor, Mrs Adamson. I am also the UK representative of the Schiller organization. Not Schiller-Reise which for historical reasons never established its own agency in this country, but the other less public side of the business. I see you know what I mean. I will not exaggerate my own importance. For many years the UK was surprisingly impervious to our marketing campaigns. We did steady business, but compared with the Americas, Asia and even the European mainland, we really were a third-rate power.’

  ‘You mean, Britain didn’t have a drug problem,’ said Trudi.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes. Even the swinging sixties, with London as their fulcrum, saw only a relatively small rise in demand compared with the States. The English are hypocrites even in their excesses, you know; on the surface all long hair, free love and pink shirts, but with marriage, mortgages and nine-to-five still very much the framework of existence. It took the seventies to see a real change, and the eighties to confirm it. Our operation must have doubled in the last two years alone. Suddenly from being a minor post, mine became a key job. I was not surprised when it was suggested I might think about retiring. I am after all in my sixties and to be quite frank, the business was becoming a little too strenuous for me. And nor, I admit, was I very surprised when I learnt who was to be my successor.’

  ‘Trent,’ said Trudi, becoming involved despite her fear.

  ‘That’s right. I’d known him for some years, of course. He made fairly frequent liaison visits. And one of our major input points was directly under his personal control.’

  ‘Manchester Airport,’ said Trudi.

  ‘You see, you do know such a lot! Yes, he had a contact there who worked directly for him rather than for Schiller. He was very insistent on this. I believe it caused a lot of resentment, but many things your husband did caused resentment. But he, of course, was in a privileged position. I do not doubt you know the reasons for that, Mrs Adamson?’

  He raised his eyebrows in forensic invitation.

  ‘Because I am Manfred Schiller’s granddaughter,’ said Trudi.

  ‘You know that too? But you didn’t know it when you married, did you? Your husband, however, did. Oh yes, he knew.’

  His tone was admiring. Up to this point, despite everything, Trudi had been finding herself unable to see far beyond her image of the benign, faintly comic little solicitor. Now for the first time she began to feel fear.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What’s your connection with all this? I mean, how did someone like you get involved?’

  Before Ashburton could answer, there were footsteps in the corridor outside. He went to the door and Trudi heard the mutter of voices without being able to distinguish the words. Then he returned.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry. He gets impatient. But I’ve told him to take a stroll. Enjoy the night air. It’s a fine night now. The cloud’s cleared. No moon, but stars enough to spangle an ocean. Do I surprise you? Law’s a drab business and we who practise it of necessity take on its colouring, but underneath, my soul is a rainbow, Mrs Adamson. Why take up the legal profession then? My parents’ choice. They scrimped and saved to get me articled. The war seemed to change all that for me. I could see no future in the law. If you had the money, could buy yourself a partnership, live off the fat of other people’s troubles, then it could be a pleasant enough existence. But for someone like me, the penniless son of a Sheffield steel worker with no connections, it promised to be a grey, grinding existence. Then in 1945 I found myself in Vienna, attached, in a very minor capacity, to the War Crimes Commission. Ah, I see you’re ahead of me, Mrs Adamson. And you still want me to believe you a fool!’

  ‘You met my … you met Schiller,’ said Trudi.

  ‘Indeed. Or rather, he met me. Sought me out, you might say. He was not a war criminal of the first water, you understand. He held no Party rank. No villages had been razed at his command, he did not have lampshades made of Jewish skin, nothing of that. But where his own profit and Party policy had coincided, he had been energetic and ruthless in pursuit of both. He was definitely in the frame, as our policemen are so fond of saying now. His turn would come. There were certain papers, certain affidavits, certain records … it was suggested to me that I should remove them for a consideration. I refused. I pointed out that their complete disappearance would do nothing but rouse suspicion, possibly of myself, and draw closer attention to Herr Schiller. But, I went on, for a rather larger consideration, I would perform the more subtle task of filleting the evidence against him, removing enough to have him downgraded from the profiteer category to “follower” or “non-offender”. You look shocked, Mrs Adamson. Don’t be. It was nothing. There were much bigger villains than your grandfather, men who had been active and committed members of the Gestapo, classified as mere “followers” and now actually working for the Allied intelligence services. What good to pursue one businessman whose racial attitudes and business ethics, to be honest, differed very little from many of my present clients!

  ‘I acted. It worked. I was paid with a bonus. I performed one or two more small services for Herr Schiller before I was demobbed. And, because he is a man of foresight and vision, he asked me how he might get in touch with me in England should the need ever arise. I didn’t expect ever to hear from him again, of course. I’d no idea of the extent of his interests. I came home, got my qualifications and used my newly acquired wealth to buy myself a partnership in the firm that now bears my sole name. And one day a man walked into my office with greetings from Herr Schiller and a request that I should perform him a small service. This was the first of many such requests. I won’t go into details but gradually I became Herr Schiller’s man in the UK. It was suggested at one point I might move to London. I resisted. I said, here I was known, respected. In London I would be nothing, or worse, an oddity. Besides, if you wanted to be at the centre of the United Kingdom in practical terms, then where better than Sheffield?’

  Trudi recalled the police sergeant who had spoken to her after Trent’s death. He had said Sheffield wo
uld be a good centre and she had wondered, for what?

  Now she knew.

  Ashburton resumed. ‘It was some years later that I received a request a little out of the ordinary run of things. I was asked to check on the background and provenance of a man living in the south. I was told that he was a teacher of German and that his name as you must have guessed was Shoesmith. It was suggested to me that he might have changed his name from Schumacher to Shoesmith when he applied for British citizenship. With this clue things were easy. During the war, aliens domiciled here were as well documented as major criminals. It was just a matter of knowing where to look. I was able to get chapter and verse on him from the time he left Austria, even to the maiden name of his wife. When I saw this was Schiller, I sat up and took notice. As requested, I sent my report direct to Herr Schiller in Vienna. I knew nothing of his family circumstances then, but I made it my business to find out by subtle, indirect means. I had the feeling that he would not take kindly to anyone prying into his business. I also kept a distant eye on Mr Shoesmith né Schumacher, teacher of German.

  ‘Not long after, two things happened. Were they connected, I wondered? But I couldn’t quite see how or why. And then some time after that, a new man came into my office and showed me his credentials from Herr Schiller. And in that moment, though I didn’t blink an eye, I saw all things clear. Do you know what I’m talking about, Mrs Adamson?’

  ‘No,’ said Trudi. ‘No. No. No.’

  ‘I think you do. I think you’ve known for a little while now. Not long, but long enough. The two things were, first, your father was killed; second, you got married. And the man who came to my office, the new rising star of the Schiller organization, was your husband, Trent Adamson. It was he who first spotted you, I guessed. Learning something of your background from your friend, the name Schumacher rang a bell. He was already smuggling for Schiller in a small way and he’d learned something of the man’s history. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Trent was always a great man for knowing things. Information helped a man jump the right way when the chances came and your husband was a great one for chances. He told Schiller. Schiller got me to check it out. And then …’