A Very Good Hater

by Reginald Hill

  Now Templewood rose to go.

  ‘You didn’t eat your Cornish pasty,’ observed Goldsmith.

  ‘How do they ship them here? Round the Cape? I’ll be in touch.’

  The brief encounter left Goldsmith with a sense of disappointment which lasted all afternoon. Despite the fact that over the years his ambivalent feelings for Templewood had set into an uncertain distaste, he still looked upon him as a man of proven ingenuity, a manipulator, a fixer. Some part of his being must have hoped that Templewood would come up with quick answers, though what possible answers were worth hoping for was difficult to imagine. Instead all he had encountered was an obviously worried man whose promises that he would put his mind to the problem were as reassuring as an alcoholic’s vows of reform.

  The rest of the week passed surprisingly swiftly. The kind of life he had built for himself left little time for brooding, though the darkness that rushed into his bedroom when he switched off the light seemed to grow thicker and more final each night, and the grey reassurance of the thin-curtained window took longer to eat its way through. The small wave of journalistic interest caused by Housman’s death had faded almost instantly, and it was only by conscientiously reading every newspaper every day that he spotted that an inquest had been opened and adjourned. Presumably all the postmortem examinations had been completed by now and the body would have been released for burial. The macabre thought crept into his mind that he might attend the funeral as an easy opportunity of checking on Housman’s relations. It just needed one of his parents to be alive to put paid to any faint hope that he might actually have been Hebbel. But he pulled himself up short, horrified to find he was seriously contemplating such an intrusion. Or perhaps such a risk. Nevertheless the thought remained with him that the truth of the matter could only be uncovered in Sheffield.

  The meeting on Thursday night went well. Perhaps just because his mind was far from being strictly focused on the business in hand, he spoke fluently and made a good impression on Edmunds and Barraclough.

  Malleson and Liz were delighted and full of congratulations once they had parted company with the official party and were drinking pints of over-cooled beer in Liz’s local.

  ‘You might look a bit more pleased yourself,’ suggested Malleson.

  ‘What? Sorry, but it wasn’t exactly the United Nations, was it? A few dozen in the audience, and I knew most of them by name.’

  ‘Not the point. If there’d only been two, it would have been enough, as long as they were the right two. Another pint?’

  Malleson went up to the bar and Liz leaned across and took Goldsmith’s hands in hers.

  ‘You’ve got it made,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘When’s the selection board?’

  ‘Week after next.’

  Great. Unless Edmunds catches you in bed with his wife, you can’t miss.’

  ‘There are other candidates,’ protested Goldsmith.

  ‘Mostly make-weights. Poor old Sanderson’s so inarticulate, no one can understand him, and that little shit from LSE’s so articulate everyone hates him. Which leaves you and Wardle.’

  ‘Who is dearly beloved in Transport House.’

  ‘Exactly! A lot of good that’ll do him up here. You’re a local lad. You know how obstinate you get when you think someone’s trying to tell you what to do.’

  ‘Do I?’ said Goldsmith reflectively. ‘The little shit’s local too, isn’t he?’

  ‘In the sense that he was born here.’

  ‘What other sense is there?’

  ‘Well, if his mother had dropped him in an aeroplane, that wouldn’t make him a bloody albatross, would it?’

  Goldsmith grinned, enjoying Liz’s coarseness. But his mind was turning over memories of Housman’s passport. Born in Sunderland. A distinctive accent, completely absent from Housman’s husky voice. Not that that mattered. Voices changed, some more quickly than others. A man is little better than a dull-coloured parrot.

  What did matter was that the North-East was a fiercely tribal area. Local memories would be long and specific. It shouldn’t be difficult picking up traces of Neil Housman there.

  ‘Councillor Goldsmith?’

  He looked up, annoyed. His experience had taught him that this form of address in a public place frequently presaged unpleasantness. The speaker was a large red-faced man in a hairy suit. He looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Cyril Fell,’ he introduced himself. Goldsmith had him now. The senior partner of Fell and Fell, a small building concern who had on occasions done work for the council. The man was not drunk, but drink had polished his ruddy cheeks and brow till his face shone like a traffic light at stop.

  ‘I would like to know,’ he said deliberately, ‘why Benson’s got the Greengate Infant School job.’

  ‘Because they put in the lowest tender, I imagine,’ said Goldsmith equably.

  ‘And why did they get the Thorpe House job?’ continued Fell, swaying forward till he almost touched Goldsmith.

  ‘Same reason. Look, Mr Fell, I can’t discuss council business here. Come and see me some other time, eh?’

  ‘Lowest tender! I know that. But answer me this, Councillor Goldsmith. How did Benson know what the lowest tender needed to be? That’d be useful to know, wouldn’t it? I’d like to know things like that’.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Malleson, returning from the bar with the drinks. ‘Hello, Mr Fell. How’s life? I thought I saw Mrs Fell in the corner. Are you going to join us? I’ll fetch her across, shall I?’

  ‘No, thanks. We’re on our way home,’ said Fell hastily. ‘You take heed of what I’ve said, Councillor. You’re an honest man, I reckon, but take a good look at some of your friends in the Mayor’s parlour.’

  He turned and left.

  ‘Thanks, Jeff,’ said Goldsmith.

  ‘My pleasure. I knew if I suggested fetching his wife over, he’d be off in a flash! Moaning about missing out on council contracts, was he?’

  ‘He was suggesting that someone’s pushing things towards Benson’s.’

  ‘God! If these builders had their way, anyone who didn’t accept their tenders would be shoved in the Tower of London instantly! Forget it, Bill. On second thoughts, mention it to Alf or someone, just to put yourself in the clear in case Fell goes too far one of these days. Well, sup up. Here’s to the General Election. Next spring would be my bet. And this time we’ll have the bastards out!’

  Despite the fact that none of Fell’s accusations had been directed at himself, Goldsmith found that the incident soured the evening for him. He refused Liz’s invitation to have coffee at her house and pointed the Land-Rover home with a faintly guilty sense of relief. His companions’ euphoria had been rather wearing. He was far from clear about his own reason for being involved in public life, but he would have denied either of the clichés of political motivation – the lust for power or the longing for service. In the presence of the fully committed he always felt out of place, bogus almost. He had the time, it filled a gap in his life, and he was good at it—that was as far as he was willing to go in analysing his own commitment, even to himself. He smiled at the irony of it all. The country must be full of MPs’ manqués, desperate for adoption, and here was William Goldsmith finding it rather distasteful to be on a short list.

  But then, not many of these other would-be politicians had five days earlier hurled a man to his death from a hotel window.

  That night he took three aspirins washed down with a tumblerful of scotch and went to bed, resolving to take Templewood’s advice to put Housman out of his mind and concentrate on sorting out his public career.

  Friday morning was bright and crisp and suddenly it seemed possible. He felt better than he had done all week as he entered the general office of Harewood Hire-Cars. He had been with the firm for thirteen years now, joining it when it was relatively small and doubling up as a driver and mechanic. Now he had the title Chief Mechanic, but in fact, had he wished, he could have spent all his time behind a desk acting as un
der-manager. But he clung fiercely to his right to cover himself with sump-oil or put on a peaked cap and chauffeur the firm’s customers if he so desired.

  Today he organized a ferocious attack on the paper-work that awaited him, planning to spend a couple of hours in overalls before the day was out. As therapy, it worked; London was a million miles away till suddenly halfway through the morning, Janet, the general secretary sitting at the far side of the room, put down the phone, stood up, walked over to him, waited till her presence brought his head up from the papers he was immersed in and said, ‘Cancel Housman.’

  For a second he thought he was in a dream.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Housman. This afternoon. A pick-up from the airport. J. T. Hardy’s booking. Cancelled.’

  ‘What?’ he repeated.

  ‘You’ve got the book,’ the girl said patiently. ‘They’ve just rung up to cancel. A bit late really. Shall we charge the cancellation fee? Are you all right, Mr Goldsmith?’

  He reached for the booking log and opened it. There it was. Mr N. Housman, 3-30, Leeds Airport. Bill J. T. Hardy’s (Sheffield) Ltd.

  He ignored the girl, got up, and went to the washroom and looked at himself in the mirror. The coincidence had shaken him visibly. Cancel Housman.

  I have, I have, he thought, bathing his face in cold water. He felt helpless, a slave of chance.

  The darkness that night was thicker and longer lasting than ever before. In the end, after a few desperate mouth-drying moments spent groping for the switch, he put the light on again.

  It was, he decided, no use waiting for Templewood to delve into Housman’s background. He had to find out for himself. His diary for the coming weekend was full of appointments but they would have to wait. He was going to Sheffield.

  He got up, switched on the landing light and returned to bed. The line of brightness beneath the door cut through the blackness of the bedroom when he turned off his bedside lamp once more and he fell to sleep, remembering his childhood.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE HOUSE WAS a substantial Edwardian villa in dark red brick caught in a net of Virginia creeper. The chimney-stacks were so tall and narrow and the steeply-angled roof was pinched so frequently into dormer windows that despite the basic solidity of the building, it sat in its lawns like a fragile ship waiting for fair winds and a favourable tide.

  The grass had that elegantly razed look which says ‘care’ or ‘wealth’, depending on the size of the garden. Greenmansion was far from a stately home, but there was more work here than an amateur enthusiast could manage, even with a motor-mower.

  Goldsmith let his gaze move slowly round the garden, relaxing his eyes in the variegated greens, punctuated from time to time with bursts of colour from late-flowering shrubs and plants. He was no horticulturalist and could identify very little other than a pair of rowan trees, beaded red among their serrated leaves.

  There was no sign of movement in the garden or house. No smoke rose from the chimneys, no one moved behind the blank glass of the windows. It was from just such a house as this that a sad little rich boy had gazed in an illustration to some long-forgotten story-book of Goldsmith’s childhood. The title still escaped him but the picture came back now with complete clarity. Housman had a daughter, he recalled. Perhaps somewhere inside she was sitting now, motionless and in silence.

  So rapt was he in his meditations that he did not notice the police car coming towards him till it was almost opposite. Its left indicator was flashing as though it were going to turn into the drive of Greenmansion, but instead it came to a halt before the gates. A tall angular man unfolded himself from the passenger seat and stood staring across the road at Goldsmith. He felt greatly tempted to start the engine and drive away but his mind told him this would be a foolish thing to do. It would look suspicious, they would check his car number and set in train a routine investigation which might lead … where might it lead? His mind raced now; they might have a description of him from the woman in Wath Grove; fingerprints even; he must have touched something in the flat. If the man in charge of the main investigation should notice a resemblance between Sandra Phillips’s description and the watcher in the Land-Rover, it would take very little probing to reach the truth of what had happened. Or at least the truth as it would seem to the police.

  He opened the door, stepped down from the Land-Rover and strode smartly across the road. The tall man watched his approach imperturbably.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Goldsmith. ‘But this is Neil Housman’s house? I wasn’t certain, then I saw you …’

  He tailed off invitingly, but the tall man offered no help. Goldsmith felt himself being pressured into a rambling, revealing course of explanation and apology. With an effort of will he resisted it and after a moment’s silence, raising his voice to a level of polite acerbity, asked, ‘Well, is it?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. May I ask who you are?’ The tall man’s voice was like his face, expressionless.

  ‘My name’s Goldsmith. And you?’

  ‘Vickers, sir, Detective-Inspector. You were a friend of Mr Housman?’

  ‘Yes. Not very close, it’s some time since I saw him. Then I read about it in the papers and, well, naturally I was shocked. I saw the address and as I was coming out this way, I thought I might call to express condolences. To tell you the truth, I was really trying to summon up courage. It’s not easy, and you never know, intruding on grief, that kind of thing.’

  I’m doing it, he thought in surprise. Rambling, explaining, over-elaborating. So much for self-control.

  ‘You know Mrs Housman, sir?’

  ‘No. That’s it, you see. I never met her. Look, are you going to be very long?’

  ‘Just a couple of minutes, sir. We might as well walk up to the house together.’

  Their feet crunched in the gravel drive. Vickers took long, loping strides and Goldsmith found himself adjusting his own stride pattern in an attempt to synchronize their steps.

  ‘Was it an accident, Inspector?’ he asked suddenly. ‘What really happened?’

  ‘If we knew that,’ began Vickers, but the front door opened at that moment and he paused. Out came a girl, just the sort of young girl Goldsmith would have expected to issue from such a house in his story book. About twelve years old, she had long, thin-spun, wheat-blonde hair which fell in a tangle of light over her back and shoulders. She wore a simple black dress with lace at the cuffs and throat. Her features were regular and intelligent, and she stood by the door, watching their approach with quiet grey eyes.

  Goldsmith’s stride faltered for a moment. He recognized her from the photograph in her father’s bedroom and he recalled the string of beads Housman had bought.

  ‘Hello, Dora. Is your mother in?’ asked Vickers. His voice became genial. It was like hearing another man speaking.

  She nodded and stood aside, pushing the door open. They entered the house.

  ‘Mrs Housman!’ called Vickers.

  Ahead of them at the far end of the spacious, panelled hall, a door opened and a woman appeared.

  She too wore a simple black dress but unrelieved by any white lace. Her hair was also black, cut very short around her small, delicate head. Only her eyes had been passed down to her daughter, large and grey.

  She nodded at Vickers and glanced incuriously at Goldsmith who would have been very glad to stay quietly in the background. But the Inspector looked at him expectantly and it was impossible not to speak.

  ‘Mrs Housman,’ he said, ‘I’m William Goldsmith; your husband may have mentioned me.’

  He did not pause long enough for a positive denial but pressed on apace, feeling like an amateur actor suddenly thrust under the scrutiny of top theatre critics.

  ‘I was most distressed when I read about the … the accident. As I was in the neighbourhood, I thought I would call to say … I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s most kind. Mr Goldsmith, did you say? Please come in.’

  Her voice w
as high but pure in tone. She led them into a large drawing-room which looked out from the back of the house. The same variegated swathes of lawn ran away to a line of rose-bushes, still heavy with colour.

  ‘I don’t recollect my husband mentioning you, Mr Goldsmith. But he spoke of so many people. Had you known him long?’

  ‘Not long, I’m afraid,’ he answered lamely.

  ‘Then it’s all the kinder of you to call.’

  Goldsmith found it impossible not to glance towards Vickers to observe his reaction to the exchange. Mrs Housman must have noticed the flicker of the eyes and perhaps misinterpreted it, as now she turned to the inspector and asked, ‘How can I help you, Mr Vickers? Will it take much time?’

  ‘Hardly a moment.’

  ‘Then perhaps you won’t mind hanging on for a while, Mr Goldsmith? Please sit down. I look forward to talking with you.’

  Vickers followed her out with a last assessing glance at Goldsmith who sank into an armchair, sighing with relief at being left alone. It did not last long. He realized he was assuming that Vickers was a local man, unconnected with the London end of the investigation. But why should this be so? Perhaps already in his mind he was ticking off points of resemblance between the Phillips woman’s description and the man he had spotted so suspiciously watching the house from a parked car.

  Goldsmith stood up. Action was better than this disturbing and unproductive speculation. Now he was in the house, he might as well do what checking he could on Housman’s antecedents.

  It seemed at first as if this room was going to offer very little help. There was an elegant mahogany bureau opposite the door but it proved to be locked. A wall cabinet was open, but contained only some glasses and a bottle of sherry. But as he moved away from it, he glimpsed something on top of it, pushed back almost out of sight. He reached up and took hold of a photograph in an old silver frame, heavy enough to be genuine. The picture was of a post-christening scene. Mrs Housman was holding a baby, presumably Dora, with four adults grouped symmetrically around her, a man and a woman on either side. One couple were middle-aged, the other younger.