The Siege of Reginald Hill

by Corinna Turner

  “I’m coming over there!”

  “Bane…”

  “I’m coming and I’m bringing the kids. They should see their uncle if he’s…if he might not make it.”

  “You’ll never get here in time, Bane. This thing’s galloping faster and faster—”

  “I’m coming. I’ll call again as soon as I can. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  He hung up. I swapped the knobbly handset for a cushion, hugging it close. The thought of him on his way—of them all on their way—soothed my aching heart slightly. But they would never be in time. Conceiving, arranging and executing a plan to safely—oh yes, above all, safely—smuggle five children across the EuroBloc onto a ship was a totally different kettle of fish than simply activating familiar deployment plans for an experienced strike team.

  But that would never stop Bane trying.

  And I didn’t really want it to.

  KYLE

  “You know, I want to ask you a question,” said Uncle Reginald at dinner time, after playing with his bread and ignoring another bowl of flavoursome African soup.

  “Go ahead.” Any excuse to put aside my straw. I just had no appetite, and pain gnawed at my chest. Not that the sly note in his voice boded all that well for the coming query. “And yes, I am a virgin, if that’s the tired old question you have in mind.”

  Hill sniggered. “Fascinating. But no. I already know you’re insane. I was thinking more about what you told me—so very confidently—about having felt your God. Tell me, has it seriously never occurred to you that these feelings are just the product of your human brain? Of your imagination and your subconscious?”

  Snug in my Lord’s presence at that very moment and all squeaky clean spiritually after the chaplain’s visit—what did the pain matter in comparison?—I merely smiled at him. “I’m quite sure my sense of God does come to me at least partly through the activity of my brain. Is not the spiritual, by definition, intangible to physical beings? Of course there must be some earthly mediation between a spiritual experience and this physical human body through which I perceive the world while alive. But I do not accept that the experience originates in my brain, even if it is impossible—by definition—to track back to the intangible source through scientific means.”

  “So you admit that you don’t have a scrap of scientific proof?”

  “Hmm, not the kind you’re thinking of. But doesn’t one more commonly measure a thing by its effects?”

  “You’re suggesting measuring God by the delusions of your crazy brain?”

  “I’m suggesting measuring God by how much he changes us, changes us in ways that make no evolutionary sense, that make us, as you mentioned earlier, even do things that run counter to our survival instincts. That’s not what you’d expect from something with its source in the natural order, is it?” Agh, all this talking made my chest feel… Never mind. Ignore it, Kyle.

  “That’s probably why it’s called insanity, you know.”

  “You keep calling me insane, Uncle Reginald, but do you really believe that? I don’t think you do. Just because we don’t agree on everything doesn’t make me insane and you’re far too clever to think so.”

  “Cheeky boy. What else am I supposed to consider someone who is prepared to die for an invisible friend and who claims to love his own murderer?”

  “You accept that you are a murderer, then?”

  “In this case? Yes. I don’t recall signing your death warrant. That would have been a bit difficult, what with us being in Africa.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “What, you really think every single person I’ve had killed in my lifetime was under legal sentence of death?”

  I sighed—then winced. When the extra surge of pain eased, I said sadly, “No, I imagine that would be too much to hope for. Do you…not feel the slightest bit sorry about the things you’ve done?”

  Hill snorted. “Sorry? Why should I? Survival of the fittest, boy, that’s what life’s about. Do you see a wolf wringing its paws after defeating its father and taking over leadership of the pack?”

  “Human beings aren’t wolves.”

  “Humans are animals. Do you dispute that?”

  “Of course humans are animals, but we are far more than that. Human beings are the only animals with an immortal soul.”

  Hill made a rude noise.

  “Why does the idea of a soul scare you so much?”

  “Scare me?” His brow darkened. “It doesn’t scare me, stupid boy! The whole concept is simply pure lunacy!”

  “Really?” I said reflectively. “Well, I know precisely why it scares you so much. Because if you have a soul, I’m right and you’re wrong. And if I’m right and you’re wrong, you’re not some big alpha wolf, you’re just a cruel selfish murderer who’s going to hell. Yes, if I were you, I’d be pretty terrified of having a soul, too. With good reason.”

  “Oh, are you ever going to shut up, you dribbling imbecile!” Hill grabbed a bedpan with one frail hand and hefted it in my direction. It fell short, so with a disgusted snort he turned on his side and fixed his eyes on the crimson curtains—drawn for the night—sending me to Coventry.

  The two guards who’d bounded into the room, nonLees drawn, gave me inquiring looks. I shook my head at them, smiled and wiggled my fingers in the direction of the doorway. One smirking—no doubt at Hill’s pathetic throw—the other scowling—at the fact he’d tried it at all—they withdrew.

  I eyed Uncle Reginald. No, I really had better give him some time to cool off. Still, his reaction took me aback.

  Actually, his failure to simply laugh in my face…gave me just a tiny glimmer of hope. Because somewhere inside him, however deep down, however tiny, however close to going out, there must smoulder a tiny ember of doubt. Or he wouldn’t have got angry.

  A fresh wave of determination swept me—closely followed by all too familiar worry.

  How on earth could I fan that ember to a blaze? Especially in the time left to me?

  Lord, please. Is there anything more I can do? Anything more I can offer?

  I considered the morphine machine for a moment. But if I dropped it much more, would I be up to rational conversation at all? Or was that just the devil’s whisper? No harm in trying. My heart thumping in unenthusiastic anticipation, I knocked off five more bars. What was I, twenty bars under the agreed level, now; thirty under the original? As soon as they spotted it, they were going to put it back up, no question.

  “Uncle Reginald?” I ventured.

  He ignored me.

  “Uncle Reginald, surely you don’t expect me to apologise for being honest?”

  “I don’t care what you do, so long as I don’t have to listen to any more of your inane chatter.”

  “I was only giving my opinion, was I not?”

  “Oh, just hurry up and die!” And he refused to say another word.

  Pain lay over my body like a heat haze. A whimper crawled up my throat, but just in time I choked it back. Clearly no one had spotted the morphine level yet. Opening my eyes, I looked around, trying to distract myself from the agony. Evening. No Margo. She must feel like every time she popped out to eat or use the loo I woke up, poor thing.

  Uncle Reginald now lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Maybe a neutral question…

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  No answer.

  Panic tightened my burning chest. How long would he keep this up? I had so little time.

  Lord, please. What else can I do? Is there anything else I can give? I’m begging you, if there is, let me know.

  …you won’t like it…

  I don’t have to like it. Whatever it takes, Lord. Please?

  So He told me. Showed me. Understanding entered my mind, anyway…

  I recoiled mentally, my head pushing back into the pillows.

  No! No, not that!

  …you don’t have to. Never have to…

  Please, there must be s
omething else…

  …what else is there left, dear child?…

  His message was so clear it was almost words. I had my answer. There was one more thing I could give. It was not asked of me. It was not expected of me. But it was possible for me.

  I looked across at my Uncle Reginald, who now lay staring out of the window with a petulant, angry frown creasing his brow. No, no, no, I can’t give this, I can’t!

  But the memory of what awaited that precious soul filled my mind.

  I shuddered.

  I closed my eyes.

  Yes, Lord. If it will help him, yes. Take it back. Take it all.

  The sense of many words filled me…

  …beloved…brave…child…loved…precious…beautiful…joy…

  The sense of my Lord’s presence deepened, intensified, like…like a divine hug.

  And faded.

  And

  was

  gone.

  Aaah, the aching emptiness He left behind. An agony far worse than anything my body threw at me. Tears spilled from my eyes as lonely anguish swallowed me. Four whole days—five days?—I’d nestled, snug and safe, in His presence. No longer. And even when I prayed, I would feel nothing. Not even that precious sense of cherishing I used to so often feel. Nothing.

  Well, maybe not nothing at all. Some far more mundane, less supernatural sense of peace and calm, perhaps. Such as Margo might feel. Such as most people might feel.

  Yes, Kyle. Most people never feel what you’ve felt, above once or twice in their life—if ever. So stop crying. Okay, you had to give it up. Just be grateful that you’ve been so exceptionally blessed for so long—and that you had something more to give.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop crying. I’d never felt so bereft, abandoned, alone, in my entire life. I knew I wasn’t alone. I was no more alone than I’d been a moment before. He was right there with me, I just couldn’t feel Him.

  But the knowledge couldn’t change how I felt, nor could it stop the tears of desolation streaming down my face. This wouldn’t do. Uncle Reginald watched me now—covert and sidelong, so as not to invite conversation, but he watched. I picked up my Office book—fumbled and dropped it before I could open it and had to pick it up again. The effort made me pant and that made me hurt.

  Finally, I had it open to evening prayer. Tuesday. Only one day out. Did I have the energy to change it?

  Actually…my eyes fell on the first psalm. Well, if Uncle Reginald wouldn’t talk, he still couldn’t help listening. Latin, but he’d understand. I propped the book up as well as I could and began to read aloud. Raising my voice didn’t feel good, but my physical discomfort was the least of my worries.

  “Hear this, all nations, pay attention all who live on earth, important people, ordinary people, rich and poor alike!”

  Uncle Reginald groaned and turned on his side, doing his best to put his back to me. I kept going.

  “…But man could never redeem himself or pay his ransom to God; it costs so much to redeem his life, it is beyond him; how then could he live on forever and never see the Pit—when all the time he sees that wise men die, that foolish and stupid perish both alike, and leave their fortunes to others.

  “Their tombs are their eternal home, their lasting residence, though they owned estates that bore their names.

  “Man when he prospers forfeits intelligence: he is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “Are you speaking to me again, then?”

  Uncle Reginald clamped his lips together.

  I took up the psalm once more. “So on they go in their self-assurance, with men to run after them when they raise their voice.

  “Like sheep to be penned in Sheol, Death will herd them to pasture and the upright will have the better of them.

  “Dawn will come and then the show they made will disappear, Sheol the home for them! But God will redeem my life from the grasp of Sheol, and will receive me.”

  “This surely counts as torture!”

  “Clearly we have very different ideas about what that word means, Uncle Reginald.”

  No response. Fine.

  “…when he dies he can take nothing with him, his glory cannot follow him down…”

  Tears still oozed onto my cheeks and the agony in my heart and soul dwarfed that of my failing body, but at least the words might help Uncle Reginald. When I’d finished the forty-ninth psalm, I flicked on, trusting in the Holy Spirit and reading whatever my eyes fell upon.

  Uncle Reginald’s occasional protests dwindled into a sullen silence and eventually he turned onto his back once again and simply glowered up at the ceiling.

  “Listen to this hymn, Uncle Reginald. It must be one of the most beautiful ever written:

  “Alone with none but Thee, my God, I journey on my way; what need I fear, when Thou art near, O King of night and day? More safe am I within Thy hand, than if a host did round me stand.”

  Oh, Margo had appeared by the bed…but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d start sobbing full out.

  “My destined time is fixed by Thee, and Death doth know his hour. Did warriors strong around me throng, they could not stay his power; no walls of stone can man defend when Thou Thy messenger dost send.”

  “Kyle?”

  I tried to smile at her just as though there weren’t little streams running down my cheeks and hurried on. “My life I yield to Thy decree and bow to Thy control. In peaceful calm, for from Thine arm no power can wrest my soul. Could earthly omens e’er appal a man that heeds the heavenly call!”

  “Kyle, are you alright?” Margo sat in the chair beside the bed and leant very close, peering at my face.

  “Fine, Margo. Just reading to Uncle Reginald.” Quickly, I ploughed on, “The child of God can fear no ill, his chosen dread no foe; we leave our fate with Thee and wait Thy bidding when to go.”

  “I hope you can stop him,” Uncle Reginald said over the top of me. “I can’t and he’s been going on like that for—well, it certainly feels like hours. The crying and the recitation.”

  From the quirk of Margo’s lips, the fact that Hill wanted me silenced made her less keen to stop me, not more. She sat back in the chair with a bemused look. But I’d almost reached the end of the hymn.

  “‘Tis not from chance our comfort springs, Thou art our trust, O King of kings. Beautiful, isn’t it, Uncle Reginald? Well, perhaps you don’t think so. Do you like that hymn, Margo? What’s next…” I tried to leaf forward. “Any suggestions, Margo?”

  “Kyle, enough.” Margo drew the book from my very ungrippy hands and put it to one side. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

  “I’m just tired and in pain. Pain makes one’s eyes run, you know. Seems I can’t do anything about it right now, but I really am quite alright.”

  “Quite alright? Kyle!”

  “I am! The Lord is with me. What could possibly be wrong?”

  “Kyle!” Her anguish stabbed at my heart. “You don’t have to pretend—”

  “I’m fine, Margo. I’m the one who should be feeling sorry for you, right? You have to stay here, while I get to go and be with Him. Just who is getting the better deal here?”

  This won a tense smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “I really can’t help it that my eyes are leaking, Margo. I’m only sorry it’s upsetting you.”

  “So long as you are…alright.”

  “Never better would be physically inaccurate, but I am fine.” Not a lie, not really. I wasn’t suddenly feeling all scared and depressed about my impending end—just lonesome for God. If anything, I now longed to be in the Lord’s presence even more keenly than before. I would never feel Him again any other way.

  Darkness reigned outside. How long had I been reading to Uncle Reginald? Okay, at him.

  “What time is it, Margo?”

  “It’s almost ten, Kyle. I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I was triaging my emails. I did it absolutely as fast as I could.�
��

  “No need to apologise, Margo. The world doesn’t revolve around me and it certainly won’t be so helpful as to pause while I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

  Margo gave a pained grimace but didn’t argue with this irrefutable fact. She opened her mouth, then glanced across at Uncle Reginald—a rather measuring glance.

  “Ah, yes, he does seem to have rather good ears, for someone his age,” I told her.

  A scowl replaced the measuring look. “That’s because they’re not his. Twenty years ago he stole a set of lungs from some poor reAssignee and a year before the Abolition of Sorting he added the theft of a complete set of hearing organs.”

  Right. So Uncle Reginald seemed to have the hearing of a far younger individual because…he did.

  “Stole them, did I?” Uncle Reginald smirked across at Margo. “Well, I could say the same about what happened to my original lungs. Ruined by forced exposure to dodgy toxins when I was much lower down the pecking order.” His tone—though would-be light—sounded bitter to me. “Not that I worried about it much back then, when it promised such rapid advancement—after all, who could conceive of new organs not being freely available?”

  He directed a black look at Margo, but then he smirked again. “Such a good thing I didn’t put off the auditory transplant any longer, now isn’t it?”

  The self-congratulatory remark was clearly aimed to needle Margo, but thankfully she just shifted a little further around in her chair, ignoring him, and leant close to me.

  “Bane and the children are on their way.” She spoke very softly.

  Scarcely likely that Uncle Reginald could find someone here who would pass messages along for him and even less so, in his current state of disgrace, that they would be acted on, but I still understood why Margo kept this information from him.

  I couldn’t help frowning, though. “How long do the doctors think I have, Margo? I forgot to ask.”

  Margo swallowed. “A day. Or perhaps two. If you’re…very lucky or they manage to delay things a bit.”

  Hardly surprising, but my heart sank. So little time to help Uncle Reginald. On the other hand, not long to lie around feeling miserably lonely, either. This empty feeling chilled me to the core—in fact, it rather freaked me out.