A Very Good Hater

by Reginald Hill

  It was a long street, too long, he decided, for Housman to have turned another corner. It meant he must be in one of the buildings, but short of knocking on every door, there was no way of discovering which.

  The street was called Wath Grove, though whatever trees had once flourished there must by now have been well on their way to coal. It looked as if it might once have been fashionable and perhaps the pendulum was swinging back once more. Several of the Victorian terraced houses bore signs of refurbishing, and decorators had erected their scaffolding outside a couple of others.

  Goldsmith measured the maximum distance Housman could have covered before turning off and added another twenty yards. Unless he had broken into a run he must be in one of these houses. If he had broken into a run, it could only be because he knew he was being followed and Goldsmith discounted this. An innocent man was not going to take to his heels in broad daylight in London. And Hebbel would have the behaviour of the innocent perfectly worked out.

  But it couldn’t be Hebbel. There was no chance, Goldsmith assured himself. He and Templewood were like children who have been chased by a fierce dog and see its lineaments in all animals thereafter. No, that exaggerated the position. He hadn’t given Hebbel a thought since the last reunion. In fact nowadays it was only these reunions which ever brought the man to mind. He ought to stop going, had even been thinking about it this year, but had been told it helped his political image. He wondered what being arrested for loitering would do to the image. And did he care?

  He had over an hour to occupy himself with such gloomy thoughts, and by the end of that time he was so totally immersed in his self-examination that he almost missed Housman’s reappearance. A workman on one of the sets of scaffolding dropped a brush and shouted a warning. Housman, who had just come down the steps of the house next door, ducked instinctively though he was well clear of risk, and Goldsmith, his attention drawn by the shout, saw him wave in sheepish reassurance at a face which appeared momentarily at a second-floor window.

  It was now late afternoon. Housman spent the next hour wandering round the West End stores until they closed. He made a couple of purchases that Goldsmith was close enough to see; a long double string of beads,’twenties style and very fashionable at the moment, and a bottle of perfume. Presents for the family? Goldsmith wondered. Somehow the idea that Housman might have wife and children made this whole business of shadowing him seem ludicrous and mean. He might have given it up there and then had not the memory of Housman’s afternoon visit and its most obvious interpretation discredited the family-man image.

  In any case the rest was easy, if dull. Housman returned to his hotel stayed in his room until eight, had a leisurely dinner by himself, and spent an hour in the television room. About half past nine, he was called away from the television set to take a phone call. It left him looking very pensive, and after another quick drink, he went up to his room.

  Goldsmith, thoroughly disenchanted with the life of a private detective, returned to his own hotel to find the bar had closed. Fortunately he had a bottle of scotch in his case and two or three stiff nips of this helped to drive out some of the day’s cold and disillusion. But he fell asleep, resolved that the following morning as far as he was concerned Houseman could rape the Lord Mayor and rob the Bank of England completely unobserved.

  He woke up quite early wondering what Houseman could be going to do on a Saturday in London if he didn’t go home. Another visit to Wath Grove perhaps? Or perhaps it was to be a day of work, if you wanted to be really rich or really powerful you ignored weekends. Which will I become? He wondered, thinking that this was the first Saturday in months he himself had not woken to a list of engagements. In local government, an unmarried councilor, living alone, was an obvious target when others pleaded the sanctity of familial togetherness. Not that it hadn’t worked for him as well. It had got him noticed, got him known. Got him on the short list. But that was nothing. You hung on by your fingertips and it didn’t take much agitation to shake you off.

  He groaned and began to get up. This Houseman business was a complete waste of time, he was convinced. A childish nightmare; the last ravings of a past that should have been allowed to die years earlier. But he had to do his part. He couldn’t afford to leave it to Templewood. There was a streak of wildness in the man which needed outside control. Left to himself, he was quite capable of acting on the flimsiest evidence and stirring up a public furore. His apparent willingness to let things drop on Thursday evening had clearly been a transient thing. Goldsmith wondered’ how he was getting on in Sheffield and prayed he was treading carefully.

  He went downstairs to breakfast, stopping first at the desk to inquire if there were any nearby car-hire firms they could recommend, smiling politely as the receptionist confided in him that most hire businesses were run by crooks. This morning he was determined that he was not going to be left afoot while Housman disappeared in a taxi. Nor was he going to be standing around on street corners while his man was indoors in warmth and comfort.

  This morning Housman walked.

  Goldsmith, who had already discovered the inconveniences of double-parking outside the Kirriemuir, now experienced the greater difficulties of stalking a pedestrian in a car.

  He crawled along in bottom gear for a while. Next he tried stopping till Housman got a good distance ahead, driving after him at near normal speed, and stopping once more. Both methods attracted the disapproval of other road-users, and he was heartily glad when Housman went into a large office block near Holborn.

  Parking again presented a problem, but he discovered it was possible to make a circuit of the block in under a minute which kept the odds on missing Housman very low. The man reappeared after an hour, glanced at his watch and set off walking once more in the direction of Covent Garden. His destination was a pub near Bow Street and this time Goldsmith was in luck, a parking meter bay becoming vacant just as he drew level with the pub.

  Inside, Housman was sitting with two other men, one about fifty, the other much younger. They were obviously old acquaintances and the conversation was lively and relaxed. After a couple of drinks they went to the lunch counter and selected generous portions of shepherd’s pie. Goldsmith followed suit.

  At half past one, the younger man left and the other two talked more confidentially for a while. Then about half an hour later they too rose and the chase was on once more.

  Outside, Goldsmith found he had a parking ticket. He had simply forgotten about the car and he felt disproportionately indignant. But his spirits rose again when he saw the two men climb into a black Mercedes (which seemed singularly free of any parking ticket) and drive away together.

  Where now? he wondered, for the first time feeling the excitement of pursuit. His mind threw up any number of exotic possibilities which did not include Highbury where Arsenal were playing Manchester United. Housman and his companion bought tickets and went into the ground. Goldsmith could whip up no enthusiasm for the encounter and suddenly it all seemed very pointless. He did not wait, but drove back to his hotel to see if Templewood had returned yet. There was no sign of him, nor any message, and he went up to his room, threw himself on the bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling for some time. Finally just when he had decided this was a futile pastime and there must be more profitable ways of employing the afternoon, he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER III

  HE SLEPT SO well that he was late for the reunion and most of the others had two or three drinks’ start on him. The noise as he entered the packed room was tremendous. The impression of overcrowding was only relative, however. Up till five years earlier, they had used the Banqueting Suite on the floor above, but finally it had begun to look like a rugby pitch in a seven-a-side match, all space and no players. Now they took one of the small reception rooms; eventually a single bedroom would probably be enough, thought Goldsmith cynically.

  He was one of the youngest there. Called up early in’44, he had completed his training and joined the regimen
t just a few weeks before D-Day. And as he and most of the rest of his platoon had been captured within hours of the first landings, his claims to have taken part in the war were to some extent fraudulent. Yet he was a minor regimental hero. Lieutenant (now Colonel) Maxwell, his platoon commander, left for dead by the Germans, had described Goldsmith’s conduct under fire in such terms that when he was liberated in 1945, he discovered he had been awarded the DCM. Templewood, the only other surviving member of the captured platoon, had found this a great source of satire. Only a year older, he sometimes talked as if he had fought on every front since 1939.

  There was no sign of him in the room now and others were claiming Goldsmith’s attention. He found himself drawn into a group which included Maxwell, a short ugly man in his mid-forties.

  ‘You well, Goldsmith? You’re late. Get him a drink somebody; get him a couple; we want no malingerers tonight!’

  He always put on a special voice and manner for these affairs, half parodying the traditional old-style army officer. But Goldsmith knew him as an astute and sensitive man. His injuries had kept him out of the fighting for the rest of the war, but he had been posted to the staff of an Intelligence Corps Field Security Section in 1945 and later became attached to the Allied War Crimes Commission.

  After Goldsmith and Templewood had been released from their confinement it was Maxwell who had sought them out to question them about Hebbel. Evidence against the SS man had already begun to accumulate from French Resistance sources, according to which he had ruthlessly and on occasion personally disposed of hostages taken in reprisal against Resistance activities. But it was the disappearance of seven members of his old platoon which particularly concerned Maxwell.

  Goldsmith and Templewood had been able to confirm the fragmented version of the French locals. They had been subjected to intensive interrogation about the Allied landings till finally, partly pour encourager les autres, partly because his unit might have to move fast and Hebbel did not want to be encumbered with prisoners, but mainly, Templewood suggested, for kicks, the killing started.

  An air attack had given them the chance to escape. There was no hope of getting back to the Allied lines, but at least they had been able to get themselves recaptured by a normal Wehrmacht unit who had shipped them back to Germany for the rest of the war.

  After the war Hebbel had disappeared without trace. At first when the reunions started in 1947, Maxwell had kept Goldsmith and Templewood abreast of the search. Their evidence had been carefully recorded and they would be two of the principal prosecution witnesses if and when the man was caught.

  But the trail had long been cold and time dulls even the sharpest memories, and it was many years now since Hebbel had been mentioned to Goldsmith by anyone other than Templewood. So it was like having his thoughts spoken aloud when suddenly under cover of a raucous outburst of laughter at some remembered privation, Maxwell said to him, ‘By the way, bit of news that might interest. Your friend Hebbel. Strange after all this time, but there may be a line.

  ‘You mean, they know where he is?’ demanded Goldsmith. What the news would mean to him, he was no longer sure.

  ‘Not exactly. No, thing was, it seems, that the Israelis crossed his trail when they were digging out Eichmann in 1960. They’re not much worried themselves, bigger fish, and Hebbel was never firmly linked with any Final Solution stuff. No, he’s one for us. But there’s a lot of mutual back-scratching goes on, you understand. So, well, Peru. That’s where the line led. Safe there, of course. At least with our methods. Someone went in to check, of course. Good to be certain.’

  ‘And did they find him?’ asked Goldsmith.

  ‘No. Not a sign.’ Maxwell laughed, or rather made a sound which was close to a laugh in everything except humour. ‘No. But after Eichmann, they’d all bury themselves a bit deeper, eh? Let’s get another drink. Tell me about yourself. How’s the politics? See you’re trying for the big time, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Goldsmith, deciding suddenly that he was relieved. Hebbel safely in Peru took the burden of decision from his shoulders. The Nazi wasn’t going to leave his bolt-hole in a hurry and he, Goldsmith, felt no compulsion to go after him there with an assassin’s knife. Even Templewood would be daunted by such a prospect.

  ‘And just how big is the big time?’

  It was Templewood, immaculate in a dinner jacket, frilled dress shirt and regimental cummerbund.

  ‘There you are,’ said Maxwell. ‘Have a drink. Goldsmith’s to be an MP, that’s how big.’

  ‘You never told me about that, Billy,’ accused Templewood.

  ‘It’s an anticipation,’ said Goldsmith. ‘I’m just on the candidate short list, that’s all. I’m not even sure how the Colonel knows?’

  ‘Such things are noticed,’ said Maxwell mysteriously. ‘Good intelligence, that’s the thing. I like to keep a check. Excuse me now, there’s Sergeant-Major Gilbert. Owed me a pound for twenty-two years.’

  ‘Stupid sod,’ grunted Templewood as they watched him go.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘He’s still in the bloody army, isn’t he? So you’re headed for Parliament, Billy. Well, well. You’ll have to watch your step then, won’t want to risk getting your feet wet.’

  ‘It’s a long road yet,’ said Goldsmith, Maxwell’s new information permitting him to take the gibe equably. Briefly he passed it on.

  ‘Peru,’ repeated Templewood thoughtfully. That always seemed the best bet, of course.’

  ‘Do you want him badly enough to go to Peru?’ asked Goldsmith, half mocking.

  ‘Evidently you don’t. Well, if that’s the case, I’ve been wasting my time these past two days. We’d better get stuck into the booze before these sods drink the place dry.’

  The catering was informal, a buffet and a bar, to permit greater freedom of movement and opportunity of renewing old acquaintance. There would be a couple of speeches midway through the evening, but nothing more structured than that. If you had to have these things, thought Goldsmith, this was at least a bearable way to do it.

  He fought his way back from the buffet with two crowded plates while Templewood refilled their glasses.

  ‘No food for me, thanks.’

  ‘Lost your appetite?’

  ‘For this stuff, yes. They must bring it down from Catterick in bins. Anyway, I’ve got something lined up for later. A bite of supper, then a big helping of the old Eve’s pudding for afters. Half an hour of this lot’ll do me.’

  ‘I don’t know why you bother to come,’ observed Goldsmith.

  ‘Me neither.’

  Goldsmith put the plates down on a small table already overcrowded with glasses and a malodorous ash-tray. He took his drink from Templewood and sipped it reflectively.

  ‘What did you get up to then?’ asked Templewood.

  ‘Me? Oh, I nearly went to see Arsenal play, but I couldn’t face it,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It was a complete waste of time. You?’

  ‘Almost as bad. I saw a lot of Sheffield. Friend Housman is well known there. Has a lot of money; big house; belongs to the Rotary Club, Conservative Association, Masons. You name it.’

  ‘He’s not a churchwarden and a magistrate as well, is he?’ asked Goldsmith.

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Where does the money come from. Wealthy family?’

  ‘No,’ said Templewood thoughtfully. ‘No family background at all, not locally. Apart from his own immediate family, I mean. Wife and one kid. She’s local, was his secretary. I was able to get quite a lot on his business background. My company do a lot of business round there so I’ve got contacts.’

  Templewood was Sales Manager of Domicol, the country’s fourth largest manufacturers of decorators’ supplies, or so their publicity said (fourth in size but first in service). His years in the sales field had provided him with a bottomless sack of commercial travellers’ stories, all based (or so he claimed) on his own experience.

  ‘He’s a partner in J. T. Hardy’s, the devel
opment company. We’ve sold them a lot of stuff in our time, but I’ve never come across Housman. Those who know say he’s the driving force there, but likes to keep in the background.’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Goldsmith. ‘And he doesn’t exactly splash his money around when he’s in London, does he? The Kirriemuir’s all right, but it’s not the Savoy. Or even the Hilton.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just his business method. It certainly works. When Housman turned up in the early’fifties, J. T. Hardy’s was a small family building firm. He bought in, started things moving, and a few years ago they stopped being builders and became developers.’

  ‘I know the name,’ said Goldsmith. ‘They’ve used our firm sometimes to pick up people at the Leeds/Bradford airport.’

  ‘Have they?’ said Templewood without interest. ‘Must be rich for your prices.’

  They refilled their glasses and stood without speaking for a moment, listening to the ebb and flow of military nostalgia all around them.

  Goldsmith spoke reflectively.

  ‘Didn’t Maxwell once tell us that Hebbel was training as an architect before the war, prior to joining his family’s civil engineering business?’