The Woodcutter

by Reginald Hill

  1

  The ruts on the lonning up to Birkstane Farm were frozen hard.

  Even at low speed, the old Nissan Micra advanced like a small boat in a rough sea and Luke Hollins, its driver, winced at each plunge into a new trough. His only consolation was that if the track hadn’t been frozen, he’d have been walking through ankle-deep mud for a quarter mile. On the other hand it might have been wiser to walk. As a country vicar with four parishes to cover, he couldn’t afford serious damage to his suspension. Not in any sense. Four parishes, one stipend. The Church of England in the Year of Our Lord 2017 did not require its priests to take a vow of poverty. No need when it was a built-in condition of the job!

  In sight of the house his way was barred by a rickety old gate. He got out, forced it open a few feet and decided to walk the rest of the way. As he approached he could see signs of the attack that had brought him here. Smashed windows roughly patched with squares of cardboard, scorch marks up the barn door, and across the wall of the main house in red paint the words Fuck off peedofile!

  Was there anything he could have done to stop this? He doubted it, but he still felt guilty that he’d found reasons to put off visiting his new and controversial parishioner ever since news had run round the area two weeks earlier that, seven years after Fred had died, there was a Hadda back in Birkstane.

  No one had gone out to tie yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.

  Jimmy Frith, landlord of the Black Dog and the kind of conservative who made Torquemada look like an equal-opportunities counsellor, spoke longingly of the rack and the stake. Many of the local women whipped themselves into a frenzy of indignation. Even Hollins’ wife, a determinedly counter-traditional vicar’s spouse, made it clear that in this case she was at one with the Mothers’ Union. Hollins himself had acted disappointment, but beneath his plea for compassionate understanding he couldn’t suppress an instinctive sympathy with the scripturally endorsed view that the best treatment for paedophilia involved millstones.

  Then the previous evening at a parish council meeting he’d learned that twenty-four hours earlier a gang of young hotheads had mounted an attack against Birkstane with a view to letting Wolf Hadda know he wasn’t wanted.

  ‘Would have burnt the barn down, and not much bothered if he were in it,’ said Len Brodie, his churchwarden, father of three daughters. ‘Only that sudden hail shower put the fire out and sent them scuttling back to the Dog. Daresay you’d call that divine intervention, Vicar.’

  He wouldn’t, but he’d certainly felt it as a firm reminder that the cure of souls did not contain any opt-out clauses.

  So now he approached the vandalized house with the reluctant determination of Roland coming to the Dark Tower.

  Tentatively he tapped on the solid oak of the front door.

  There was no sound from within and he’d raised his fist to deal a firmer blow when behind him he heard a deep-throated growl.

  He spun round and found himself confronting a big man with a deeply scarred face not improved by an empty socket where his right eye should have been. His right hand was missing two fingers and his left leg looked as if it had been removed by force and stuck back on with plastic filler.

  He noticed the ruined hand because the man’s remaining fingers were wrapped around the handle of a tree-feller’s axe, and the ruined leg because the man was stark naked. Alongside the damaged leg, and presumably the source of the growl, was what looked like a wolf badly disguised as a Border Collie.

  Stepping back so quickly he collided with the door, the vicar exclaimed, ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Wolf Hadda,’ said the man. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr Christ. Thought for a moment you might be one of them yobs, come back for more.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, my name isn’t . . . I mean . . . I was just a bit surprised . . .’

  He caught a gleam of amusement in the man’s one eye, which was a relief. Mockery was fine. It came with the job. Axes were something else.

  Recovering he said, ‘I’m Luke Hollins, your vicar. I thought I’d drop by to see how you were settling in. I’m sorry about this . . . it’s youngsters who can’t hold their drink . . .’

  He gestured towards the graffiti and the broken windows.

  ‘Just letting off a bit of steam then?’ said Hadda. ‘With Jimmy Frith stoking the boiler, I’d guess. It’s still Jimmy running the Dog, is it? How he’s survived as his own best customer for forty years, God knows. It was always a high price to pay for a pint, listening to him putting the world to right. Do they still call him Jimmy Froth?’

  ‘Not to his face,’ said Hollins. ‘Can we go inside, Mr Hadda? You’re looking a bit cold. Do you always walk around naked?’

  ‘No. I was just taking my morning shower. I get my water piped from the beck behind the house, but it comes in such a slow trickle it’s quicker to step outside and wash at source. There’s a little fall I can sit under. I heard your car and after the other night . . .’

  He turned away round the side of the house, swinging the axe and burying its head in a chopping block as he passed. He did this one-handed with an ease that made Hollins glad he hadn’t done anything to provoke attack. If ever that did happen, best strategy would be to run, he decided. The man’s damaged left leg seemed to be locked at the knee, producing a laboured rolling gait. That, combined with the facial disfigurement, should have produced a totally ogreish effect but, walking behind him, Hollins found himself enjoying the play of muscles in that broad scarred back. He dropped his gaze to the tight smooth buttocks, then quickly raised it to the sky.

  Careful, boy! he admonished himself. You’re a happily married C of E parson!

  Inside, the house wasn’t much warmer than out. There was a log fire laid in the open fireplace in the kitchen.

  Hadda said, ‘Stick a match in that, will you? Sneck, lie by.’

  The dog settled down across the hearth, producing the deep growl once more as Hollins gingerly reached over him to light the fire. It caught quickly and he sat down at the old table and took in his surroundings.

  The room didn’t look as if it had changed much in the last couple of hundred years. There were ham hooks in the black ceiling beam, the small window panes had swirls and gnarls in them, and the woodwork had that bleached, weathered look you only get from long use or large expense. The rough plaster on the walls followed the swells and hollows of the granite stones from which they were constructed. Almost at ceiling height an ancient bracket clock hung from a six-inch nail driven into the crack where two stones met. Below it a shorter nail driven into the same crack supported a lettered sampler rendered illegible by an accretion of cobwebs. The room’s furniture consisted of a square oak table that looked as old as the house, a trio of kitchen chairs perhaps a couple of centuries younger, and a bum-polished rocker by the fire. The twentieth century was represented by an ancient electric oven and the twenty-first by a streamlined jug kettle standing by the sink.

  A surreal note was struck by the presence in one corner of a small deflated rubber dinghy and a foot pump.

  Hollins stared down at this for a moment then turned his attention to the sampler. Unwilling to brush aside the cobwebs, he had to peer close to make out beneath their silvery threads the Gothic lettering painstakingly sewn by some human hand.

  It was the Lord’s Prayer.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Padre,’ said Hadda drily from the inner door. ‘I think it hides a patch of damp.’

  He moves very quietly for a big lame man, thought Hollins, noting with some relief that his host was now wearing a heavy polo-neck sweater, old cords, and boots. He’d also covered his empty eye socket with a black patch and pulled on a black leather right-hand glove.

  ‘Is it fear of damp that’s making you prepare an ark?’ said Hollins, glancing at the dinghy.

  ‘What? Oh that. I used to trawl the local tarns when I was a boy. I came across it stored away with a lot of other childish stuff, thought it might be worth getting it seaworthy again in case I n
eed to go foraging for my own victuals. Talking of which, you’d like a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Hadda ran some water into the kettle, switched it on, put several spoonfuls of ground coffee into a pot jug, then sat down and studied his guest.

  Luke Hollins had grown used to being studied, usually with disbelief.

  He had a close-shaved head and an unshaved chin. He wore a bright red fleece with a full-length zip, khaki trousers that could be turned into shorts by zipping off the bottom half of the legs, and Nike trainers. His only sartorial concession to his calling was the reversed collar visible under the fleece, and even that had acquired a greenish tinge.

  ‘Lady Kira must love you,’ said Hadda.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The castle’s in your parish, isn’t it? I’m sure Sir Leon still does his Lord of the Manor thing and invites the parson up to lunch after morning service from time to time.’

  ‘Once to date,’ said Hollins. ‘I’m not holding my breath for the next invite.’

  ‘It’ll come. The Old Guard deals with tradition breakers by kettling them inside the tradition,’ said Hadda. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Six months,’ said Hollins, thinking, How come I’m not asking the questions?

  ‘As long as that? They must be desperate.’

  ‘The only other candidate was a woman,’ Hollins heard himself explaining.

  ‘Must have been a close call. So, what can you do for me, Padre?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know, if you listen to the words that are spoken to you and ascribe to them their conventional meaning, then maybe you’ll find it unnecessary to say “Sorry?” all the time. You’ve come knocking at my door. I presume you don’t want to borrow a pound of sugar or ask for a donation to the Church Missionary Society. So, likely you’ve come to offer your services. Not literally, I hope. I don’t do prayer. So what can you do for me?’

  ‘I can offer a sympathetic ear . . .’ began Hollins.

  ‘Really? You a pervert then?’

  ‘Sorry . . . I mean . . . sorry?’

  The kettle boiled. Hadda switched it off, waited till the water had stopped bubbling, then poured it into the jug, stirring vigorously.

  ‘That’s what I am, isn’t it? Therefore a sympathetic ear implies . . . sympathy. But that’s your problem. Listen, I don’t want you sneaking up on my soul from behind, so let’s get down to it and ask the big question. Do you get Tesco deliveries?’

  He poured coffee into two heavy pot mugs and passed one across. No milk or sugar.

  Biting back another ‘sorry?’, Hollins said, ‘Yes, I mean . . . yes, we do.’

  ‘Good. They won’t deliver here, say the lonning’s too rough. And even if I do a bit of fishing and so on, I’m still going to need stuff. So if I give you a list from time to time, you can add it to your order, right? Then ferry it out to Birkstane.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so . . .’ said Hollins, thinking of his wife’s probable reaction.

  ‘Come on! Don’t worry, I’ll pay my whack. Anyway, I thought feeding the poor came under your job description.’

  ‘Of course. It will be a pleasure.’

  ‘A pleasure, is it? Maybe I shouldn’t pay you. Right, jot your phone number down and I’ll be in touch.’

  He glanced up at the bracket clock on the wall, then rose to his feet.

  ‘Got to leave you now,’ he said. ‘Appointment with my probation officer in Carlisle. That and reporting my movements regularly to the local fuzz in Whitehaven are the highlights of my social life. You stay and finish your coffee. Oh, and next Sunday when you get up in your pulpit you can tell those moronic parishioners of yours two things. The first is, I’m no threat to their kids, I’ve taken the cure, swallowed the medicine both literally and metaphorically, I’m fit to retake my place in society – and if they don’t believe you, they can ask Dr Ozigbo.’

  ‘Ozigbo? That sounds . . . unusual.’

  ‘Foreign, you mean?’ Hadda grinned. ‘I forgot, they still think folk from Westmorland are foreign round here. Nigerian stock, I believe, but she’s British born and bred. And educated too, better than thee and me, I daresay. Yes. Dr Ozigbo’s my psychiatric saviour. And I’m one of her great successes. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’d put me in a book by now. So tell the dickheads that. Now I’m off. If I’m late I may get detention. I’ll be in touch. Sneck!’

  Leaning heavily on a stout walking stick he limped slowly out of the door. The dog, with a promissory growl at the vicar, rose and followed.

  After a moment Hollins tipped his coffee into the sink – he was a two sugars and a dollop of cream man – and rinsed the mug in a trickle of peaty brown water. It occurred to him that this might be a good opportunity to have a poke around, but not even radical C of E priests did that.

  He went outside. The scorched barn door was open and the sound of an engine clanking to life emerged, followed shortly by an ancient Defender. As it drew up alongside him he saw that Sneck occupied the passenger seat.

  ‘That your Dinky toy?’ said Hadda through the open window, nodding towards the bright blue Micra by the gate.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Next time, leave it at the top of the lonning. You were lucky to get as close as you did. And if you want to last the winter, I’d trade it in for one of these beauties.’

  As the Defender’s engine growled as if in appreciation of the compliment, Hollins shouted, ‘You said there were two things I should tell my congregation?’

  ‘Nice to see you were paying attention,’ Hadda shouted back. ‘The second is, I may be no threat to their kids, but next time Jimmy Froth sends any of his hotheads from the Dog up here, they’ll find my axe will be a threat to them. End of lesson. A-fucking-men!’

  2

  Davy McLucky had bought a Glasgow Herald to read on the train. Automatically he opened it at the classifieds to check his ad was there.

  Got a problem?

  GET McLUCKY!

  Confidential enquiries

  Security

  Debt Collection

  In fact he rarely did any debt collection, it required a level of hardness he didn’t aspire to, but Glaswegians hiring a PI liked to think they were getting someone hard. It was a front he’d learned to adopt from an early age. Your blether’s aye been tae near your eyeballs, his father had said when he came home with a tear-stained face after a hard day in the school playground. You need to stand up for yersel’.

  I don’t want you teaching wee Davy to be hard, his mother had protested.

  I’m no teaching him tae be hard, said his father. I’m teaching him tae act hard!

  He’d learned the lesson and it had helped him survive childhood and adolescence in parts of Glasgow that somehow didn’t quite make it into the European City of Culture. And it had helped him when he moved South and joined the Met. Conditioned by the telly, his new London acquaintance, both colleagues and crooks, were ready to be impressed by a hard-talking Glaswegian. But in that unrelenting atmosphere where every day brought new tests of what you really were, his basic soft-centeredness did not go undetected, and in the end it was made clear to him that detective constable was his limit. In his mid-thirties, divorced and disillusioned, he’d decided that he’d had enough of both the Met and the metropolis and resigned from the service. Back in Glasgow, living with his mother, he had got a job with a private security firm. Then his mother had died suddenly and he found himself the owner of the small family house on the edge of Bishopbriggs. Amazed to discover how much it was worth, he sold up and used the money to start his own PI business.

  GET McLUCKY! Not a bad slogan, he thought complacently. After a sticky start, his reputation for reliable service and reasonable prices had started bringing in a steady stream of work, enough in a good season to give him scope to be a bit picky, turning down jobs he didn’t like the look of, beginning with debt collection.

  So why was he travelling down to Carlisle to meet a notorious
ex-con?

  This was the question that had made him raise his eyes from the ads section of the Herald and sit staring out at the frost-bound Border landscape as he headed back towards England for the first time since he’d handed in his badge.

  Hadda’s phone call had taken him by surprise.

  ‘You the McLucky used to work in the Met?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘This is Wolf Hadda. Remember me?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I’d like to hire you.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it when we meet. Thursday next, two o’clock, the Old Station Hotel, Carlisle. I’ll pay you for your journey time and fare before we start talking, OK?’

  ‘Now hang about, I’d like a bit more . . .’

  ‘When we meet. Goodbye, Mr McLucky.’

  And that had been it. He’d thought about it a lot before opting to make the trip. And he was still thinking about it as he sat with his unread newspaper on his lap, staring out at the passing landscape, oblivious to its lunar beauty under the winter sun.

  He had almost two hours to spare when he arrived in Carlisle. After locating the Old Station Hotel, he went for a walk around the town to see the sights.

  A mini cathedral and a low squat castle, both in red sandstone, seemed to do the job. He felt no great impulse to enter either and there was a razor-edged wind following him round the quiet streets so he headed back to the hotel and was sitting in the bar, nursing a Scotch, when Hadda limped slowly in, looking warm in a long field jacket and leaning heavily on his stick.

  He came straight to the table, cleared a space to stretch out his left leg, and sat down.

  ‘You’re early,’ he said.

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Yes. My probation officer decided I’d been a good boy and didn’t keep me long. First things first. What do I owe you for your train ticket and associated expenses?’

  He pulled out a wallet as he spoke. McLucky noted it looked well filled.