Death Takes the Low Road

by Reginald Hill

And this was precisely what the new person he now found himself to be intended doing.

  A sign loomed up telling him he was nearing Doncaster. Good, good, he thought. Another couple of hours and it would be all over. He pressed harder on the accelerator and started overtaking a long string of lorries. In the distance he could see a car approaching, but it was too far away to present any threat and the last of the lorry-drivers was cheerfully waving him by.

  Then, as though by use of trick photography, the approaching car seemed to double in size, its headlights blazed, its horn trumpeted, the lorry-driver’s arm was waving him back and the grim face which peered down at him from the cab’s height was mouthing fearful abuse.

  The oncoming car braked, the lorry braked, and the combination was just sufficient to permit him to squeeze back to his own side of the road.

  He pulled up at the next lay-by and sat in complete passivity for a quarter of an hour.

  Hate was not enough, he decided. It gave you impetus, but did not prevent gross errors of judgment. What he was going to do would offer no second chances.

  I am hungry, he told himself. I am tired. I am hurt. My hunger needs food, my fatigue rest and my sickness medicine. These are needs which clearly refuse to wait, whereas the need of my hatred which is revenge cannot harm me by waiting a little.

  He thought this put the case rather elegantly and was pleased to find he still had such powers of logical self-control.

  In Doncaster he had a large meal, booked a room at an hotel, changed the dressing on his head wound, took four aspirins and went to bed.

  The darkness which came when he turned off the light was primal. The usual gradual emergence of shapes and outlines did not take place and the darkness remained unchallenged until the early hours of the morning when his mind was split by the flash of gunfire and he woke up weeping that Caroline was dead.

  ‘This has been a balls-up from start to finish.’

  Campbell and Smithson said nothing, but Durban, who had arrived late, thought to ingratiate himself by nodding vigorous agreement. All he succeeded in doing was to concentrate on himself the full disapproval of the Old Etonian.

  ‘Gun battles, people dying, my agents losing their guns and trousers, and now I have to be in Lincoln during Goodwood.’

  He made this last sound like the most disastrous consequence of their inefficiency.

  ‘And while we’re sitting here this man Hazlitt is wandering around loose, planning to murder somebody.’

  Smithson spoke.

  ‘It’s all right, sir. We’ve taken precautions …’

  ‘Precautions! Like the precautions you took when you had him in Stromness? Understand me, I don’t want anyone killed here in Lincoln, not even if he turns out to be the head of the KGB himself. Orkney’s one thing, Lincolnshire is quite another.’

  Again Smithson spoke, soothingly, reassuringly.

  ‘It’s all under control, sir. We’ve got the situation well covered …’

  Again he was interrupted.

  ‘Covered!’ exclaimed the Old Etonian, flinging up his slim pale hands in exaggerated despair. ‘How can you cover what you don’t know? Who is it that this maniac is going to try to kill? You’ve no idea, have you? And one thing is certain in this business. It’s probably the last person on earth you would suspect. Have you any idea at all?’

  Durban nodded vigorously in agreement, then changed the movement to an equally vigorous shake. The other two looked glumly at the floor.

  A few miles away Professor James Nevis was looking uneasily at the tall bald-headed man who sat opposite him. The weariness of a long journey had deepened the lines in his face, but did not obscure the power and authority of the features.

  ‘I don’t feel you’ve conducted this business well,’ said the man, his dark grey eyes fixed accusingly on the professor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nevis. ‘But what else could I have done? I’ve suffered a great deal too.’

  ‘You undertook responsibility. I believed you could be trusted,’ said the bald man. ‘Now I have to come. You know I do not care to be here.’

  ‘Really,’ said Nevis in protest, ‘I hardly think you can blame me. It was none of my idea to start with, you recall. The way people turn out is the responsibility of those who have control of them at the formative stage and I don’t …’

  ‘Enough,’ interrupted the man. ‘I’m too tired to argue. You say you have no idea where Hazlitt is?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘He must be found. I must talk to him. Then we will decide what to do. But it must be quickly, you understand that. Once I am missed at home, questions will be asked, then hell will be let loose for us all. There’ll be no question of allotting responsibility. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Nevis glumly, staring into his empty glass. He had known it would work out badly. Poor Caroline … He reached for the whisky decanter.

  14

  At ten o’clock in the morning of the second day after his flight from Orkney, Hazlitt returned to Lincoln. It was less than three weeks since he had left, thinking that something could be solved by hiding himself for a while in the mountains of Skye. He had been foolish then, naive to the point of stupidity. How much more mature and rational his behaviour was now.

  The automatic fitted snugly into the jacket pocket which he had carefully enlarged the previous day. He had practised a rapid draw for a while, but decided in the end that he was no Billy the Kid and if necessary to fire through the pocket at close range would be just as efficient and accurate. Another mature and rational decision.

  The bandage round his head had been replaced by a piece of plaster covering the bullet graze on his brow. He had shaved off the garden-gnome beard which had grown during his days in the wilds. And using Durban’s cheque book he had purchased himself a new and rather better-fitting set of clothes.

  Now as he looked at himself in the mirror of the telephone box in which he stood, he saw a fair replica of his old persona. A little thinner round the cheeks perhaps. And a genuine wind-and-sun-daubed tan had replaced the old near-vinous flush. But recognisably and unremarkably Willian Blake Hazlitt, Deputy Registrar, a man with a fine future behind him.

  He heard the answering tone at the other end of the line and pressed in his money.

  A voice he did not recognise answered and for a moment he was disconcerted.

  ‘I was just ringing to find if Professor Nevis were at home,’ he said finally.

  ‘No,’ replied the voice. ‘He’s at a meeting at the university. Who’s speaking, please?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Hazlitt. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who is that?’ said the voice, suddenly becoming urgent. ‘Hello! Hello!’

  Hazlitt replaced the receiver and stood in thought for a while. He should have remembered. Wednesday. Nevis would be going to the monthly meeting of the Establishment Committee. That complicated matters. But he must move swiftly now. It had been a mistake ringing Nevis’s house. Whoever it was who answered had sounded faintly suspicious.

  He returned to his car and drove swiftly to the university. The car-park attendant came striding officiously across the tarmac at the sight of this strange car being parked into an official spot, but rearranged his features into an ingratiating smile when he recognised Hazlitt.

  Hazlitt did not return it, but strode purposefully into the main admin block, the ground floor of which comprised the registry.

  A door opened as he moved down the main corridor.

  ‘Well, Billy! Welcome back !’

  It was Tarquin Adam, looking very smooth in puce mohair.

  ‘Hello, Tarquin,’ said Hazlitt. Something was missing, he thought. Suddenly he realised what it was. Somehow Tarquin had always intimidated him. Background, manner, clothes, all these combined with the good looks of a young Greek god had made him a powerful symbol of what Hazlitt wasn’t. Now it didn’t matter. There was nothing there any more. A small thing, but it gave Hazlitt his first d
istant echo of pleasure for forty-eight hours.

  ‘Didn’t expect you back so soon,’ said Tarquin ironically. ‘Stuart will be delighted to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hazlitt, preparing to move on.

  ‘Shouldn’t disturb him now, though. Old “Ben” Nevis is in there, with him. They’re preparing some kind of little bomb for the Establishment Committee.’

  ‘The meeting hasn’t started?’

  ‘Oh no. Another fifteen minutes to go. Sholto’s with them, keeping your end up, so you needn’t worry.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Hazlitt.

  He went down the corridor till he reached his own office which he entered. Inside, another door led to the room shared by his own and the Registrar’s secretary. And from this room yet another door led into the Registrar’s own office.

  The secretary’s room was empty, he was pleased to find. Miss Plackett’s coy delight at his return was more than he could have faced just now.

  He listened at Stuart’s door for a while, then went back to his own room and picked up the phone.

  He dialled and heard the phone ring on Stuart’s desk.

  ‘Yes?’ It was Sholto’s voice. He could envisage the imperious gesture with which Stuart had commanded him to answer it.

  Hazlitt deepened and thickened his own voice.

  ‘Porter’s office here, sir. Is Professor Nevis with you by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Well, sir, there’s a policeman here would like a word with him. Urgent, he says. Inspector Servis is the name.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  A pause. That should bring him. It was useful remembering the name of Caroline’s policeman like that. But the concomitant memory of Caroline drew a line of pain through his head.

  ‘Hello, Professor Nevis is on his way.’

  Hazlitt replaced the phone, drew his automatic, and shifted the safety catch to ‘off’.

  In the next room he heard a door open and close. Quickly he stepped up to the communicating door which he had left ajar.

  Through it he saw Nevis. He seemed to have aged considerably since last they met and Hazlitt felt a pang of genuine pity for the man.

  He hefted the gun in his hand. The moment had almost come.

  Then something hard dug deep into the base of his spine and behind him a quiet voice said, ‘Thank you, sir. I think I’ll have that.’

  Hazlitt turned. Behind him stood Smithson, whom he recognised as Tom (Mark I), the man in the boat visiting Coruisk.

  ‘So I was right about you,’ he said.

  ‘Very likely, sir. Now the gun.’

  But Hazlitt held on to it. In the next room, attracted by their voices, Nevis had paused at the outer door. Now he turned and stared in amazement.

  ‘Hazlitt,’ he said. ‘My God!’

  But he said no more. The outer door opened and Campbell and Durban appeared, seized his arms and like an expertly drilled music-hall chorus the three of them moved backwards into the corridor and the door closed behind, or, rather, in front of them.

  ‘There now, sir. That’s that little matter out of the way. Now the gun.’

  But Hazlitt, after a moment of utter incomprehension, was laughing.

  ‘You don’t think … Oh God! No wonder we’re …’

  Puzzled by the laughter, Smithson relaxed. Hazlitt’s gun hand came scything round, the heavy automatic caught Smithson on the point of the elbow and he shrieked in agony, dropping his own gun to the floor.

  Hazlitt turned and flung himself across the room, bursting through Stewart Stuart’s door with a violence that stunned the occupants.

  The Registrar recovered first and slowly began to rise, staring fixedly at the gun.

  ‘Hazlitt,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, I had nothing to do with them trying to kill you. Believe me. I knew you’d say nothing. It was this fool here. Sholto, tell him …!’

  But Sholto was too busy with his own thoughts to pay any heed.

  ‘I protected you,’ said Hazlitt. ‘I regarded you as a friend and I protected you. But still your thugs came after me. But it’s not that, oh no, that’s not the reason I’m going to kill you. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘What then?’ cried Stuart.

  ‘The girl. Caroline.’

  ‘Nevis’s daughter? But why …?’

  Sholto launched himself over the desk, caught his knee on the edge and fell well short. Hazlitt raised his gun. Behind him he was conscious that Smithson had recovered. In fact he seemed to be standing close by his side but was making no attempt to interfere.

  He aimed down at Sholto and pressed the trigger twice. Before the echoes of these blasts had even begun to die, the gun was pointing at Stuart’s paunch and spitting flames again. And again. And again.

  Till finally the convulsive pressure of his finger on the trigger produced only a harmless click.

  Slowly Hazlitt lowered the weapon and looked at what he had done.

  He had only seen three corpses in his life. The first had been his mother’s, peacefully lying in her coffin; the second had been Tom (Mark II)’s, bloody but decently arranged in a funeral-parlour parody; the last had been Caroline’s.

  The two men before him resembled none of these.

  There was no blood. They did not lie still. Their faces had assumed no fixity of expression.

  In fact they stood, and moved, and seemed completely uninjured. And on their faces the emotion of sheer black terror was gradually turning to one of incredulous relief.

  ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed that, sir,’ said Smithson kindly. ‘Gentlemen, please take your seats and try to smile. I’m afraid we may have attracted a little attention.’

  The outer door burst open and Durban appeared in the secretary’s room, waving a gun.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he exclaimed. ‘We heard …’

  ‘Put that thing away!’ snapped Smithson. ‘Quick!’

  Durban managed it just before Tarquin appeared at the door.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘What’s all the row? It sounded like …’

  But his voice faded away under the uninformative stares of all those present.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Stuart suddenly. ‘Just a little joke. New method of settling disputes on the Establishment Committee.’

  He managed a small laugh. Smithson took it up, and Durban.

  Puzzled, Tarquin withdrew.

  ‘I liked that,’ said Smithson approvingly to Stuart. ‘Still hoping to survive. Good. Durban, run along and tell Campbell to release Professor Nevis with some story or other. I take it we’ve made a mistake about Professor Nevis, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes. You’ve made a mistake,’ said Hazlitt.

  ‘I thought so. Quick as you like, Durban.’

  ‘Are we under arrest?’ said Sholto mildly. The relief at still being alive had not yet evaporated.

  ‘Nothing like that, sir. Not yet.’

  The outer door opened again and Nevis entered, talking to Campbell.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not go away quietly and give a lecture. I demand to know what the hell’s going on. Hazlitt, what the hell’s happening, man? Who are these people? You’ve got a great deal of explaining to do.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hazlitt dully. A terrible feeling of anticlimax had come upon him. He had come through all this for nothing. Not even the cloudy trophies of accomplished vengeance were his to contemplate in the emptiness of his life.

  ‘I tried to get in touch before,’ he said. ‘Before I … this …’

  He gestured towards Stuart and Sholto, realising he made no sense.

  ‘I just wanted to say … how sorry I was … Caroline …’

  He could say no more. Nevis looked puzzled, Campbell and Smithson embarrassed.

  ‘About Caroline? I should think you need to explain quite a lot there. But not to me, thank God, though you’ll probably wish …’

  He broke off and turned away to look into the corridor.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘
Caroline.’

  For a second Hazlitt thought he had broken down and had turned away like a British gentleman to hide his grief.

  Then a girl appeared in the doorway.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by stealing all my money and running off?’ she demanded.

  Behind her stood a tall bald-headed man, sombre-faced and regarding Hazlitt with grave distrust. Hazlitt had never seen him before.

  ‘Bill, darling,’ said the girl. ‘I’d like you to meet my father. And you might look a little more overjoyed to see me.’

  ‘Caroline,’ said Hazlitt. All at once he knew how it felt to be one of those characters who find at the end of a Shakesperian play that someone thought to be dead is alive. But they had Shakespeare to write their lines for them, whereas all he could say, his eyes fixed on Caroline as though a blink would make her disappear, was, ‘I’d like a drink.’

  15

  ‘You really have been a naughty boy, Mr Hazlitt,’ said the Old Etonian reprovingly. ‘Having said that, I must admit that the behaviour of my own men has left a great deal to be desired. What can I say or do to atone?’

  ‘You can start by changing your wine merchant,’ said Hazlitt, sniffing at the glass of sherry which he had just been given.

  ‘Is it not good?’ asked the Old Etonian anxiously.

  ‘They make this stuff in Cyprus by urinating on raisins,’ said Hazlitt. He felt little urge to accept this man’s conciliatory gestures. He very much doubted their sincerity and was doubly annoyed to find his palate being affronted as well as his intelligence.

  ‘And drop the apologetic manner,’ he went on. ‘You got what you wanted. So you can stuff your phony regrets.’

  For answer the Old Etonian went over to the telephone and dialled room service.

  ‘A bottle of Remy Martin,’ he said.

  Hazlitt nodded approvingly.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ said the Old Etonian. ‘But they didn’t act on orders, believe me. Our notion was that if we followed you around long enough, you’d either make contact with your man, or you’d get sick of being chased by those three comic-opera thugs and give us his name of your own volition.’

  ‘I doubt it.’