The Woodcutter

by Reginald Hill

  She paused as if inviting an intervention. She doesn’t sound as if she’s got Luke Hollins’s message, thought Alva. Perhaps Mr Nikitin’s English isn’t so good.

  Imogen nodded as if the intervention had been made, and went on, ‘My reasons for wanting to see him are varied, if not to say confused. But I expect that, in your line of work, you are used to that.’

  ‘I’m not used to people admitting it so readily,’ said Alva.

  ‘Perhaps that’s because I’m not talking to you as a patient,’ said Imogen with a faint smile.

  No? In what capacity do you see yourself talking to me? wondered Alva.

  Again the woman gave a little nod as if her guest had spoken.

  ‘One of the reasons I wanted to see Wolf was to check if he were a threat to me or my family,’ she said. ‘It struck me that, in his absence, perhaps I could get the answer from you.’

  The opening exchange was over, thought Alva. Now things should liven up.

  ‘Why should you think he might be a threat?’ she enquired.

  ‘He was always a very ruthless man. You of all people should be able to tell me if and how prison has changed him.’

  ‘By ruthless, are you implying he was violent?’

  Imogen considered.

  ‘Not to me, certainly. But in his drive to get what he wanted, I don’t believe he ever excluded the option of violence. And his temper had a short fuse.’

  ‘So, he’d lash out violently if provoked? And if he had time to think about something, and violence seemed the most productive way of proceeding, that’s the way he’d go? Sounds like a pretty definitive description of a violent man to me, Mrs Estover.’

  ‘Perhaps my fear is making me over-emphatic.’

  Somehow fear and this woman didn’t seem to go together. For the time being, though, it was best to go with her flow.

  ‘You still haven’t said why you feel afraid. He’s confronted what he did. He’s accepted he is solely responsible for the crimes that got him into prison. He’s taken control of his life. What do you imagine he might blame you for?’

  Imogen ran her hand down the side of her face, down her slender neck, down till it rested on her right breast. She had been sitting so still, the movement was almost a shock.

  She said, ‘Come now, Ms Ozigbo. Are you telling me he doesn’t blame me for not standing by him? For marrying Toby? For my daughter’s death?’

  My daughter, Alva noted.

  Alva said, ‘If you really fear he might be a threat to you, going to see him unaccompanied in a lonely farmhouse doesn’t strike me as the wisest move.’

  Imogen said, ‘When Wolf and I used to go climbing together, he taught me, when you’re working at a line of ascent, look for the most hazardous route, the closer to impossible the better. Then resist the temptation to try it if you can.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t get that.’

  Imogen smiled as if unsurprised.

  She said, ‘Wolf used to say that rock climbing wasn’t about getting to the top, it was about falling.’

  ‘Conquering the fear of falling, you mean?’

  Imogen shook her head impatiently.

  ‘Conquering the desire to fall,’ she said.

  Alva ran this through her mind. Was she saying that meeting her ex alone was the most attractive option because she knew it was the most dangerous?

  The psychology of rock climbing was interesting. But then so was the psychology of morris dancing.

  Hoping by silence to draw the woman into further speech, she let her gaze run round the room. Strangely, despite the obvious differences of size, comfort and decoration, it put her in mind of Hadda’s cell at Parkleigh. Apart from the painting, it contained nothing personal. No photographs, no books. Had it looked different before the tragedies of first her husband’s downfall and then their daughter’s death?

  Her gaze returned to Imogen. The woman gave no sign of wanting to say anything further. Whatever her reason for wanting this conversation, presumably it had been satisfied.

  Alva looked at her watch and said, ‘I ought to be going. Mrs Estover, all I can say in answer to your question is that if ever I feel Mr Hadda is a danger to anyone, I shall of course convey my feelings to the appropriate authority.’

  She stood up.

  Imogen said, ‘Does he blame me for Ginny’s death?’

  Well, that had certainly done the trick. The question sounded as if it had burst out of her in contrast to the control that had marked the rest of her speech.

  ‘Not as much, I gauge, as he blames himself,’ said Alva.

  ‘I see.’ She fixed her eyes on her visitor as though in some doubt whether to proceed or not. But suddenly Alva knew there wasn’t really any doubt. What the woman wanted to say to her was going to be said now.

  Imogen said, almost casually, ‘Then in your judgment would it make things better or worse if I told Wolf he wasn’t Ginny’s father?’

  Jesus! What’s she trying to do – use me as a messenger?

  Before she could marshal her thoughts and come up with a response, the door opened. If there’d been a tap, it was too perfunctory to be noticed.

  A woman came in, coldly beautiful with the kind of skin and bone structure that is hard to age, tall, supple, dressed in very English heather-mix tweed that didn’t hinder her from exuding a sense of something dangerously exotic.

  She said, ‘Imogen, I did not know you had company,’ not much bothering to make it sound unlike a lie.

  ‘Mother,’ said Imogen, unfazed, ‘this is Ms Ozigbo, Wolf’s therapist.’

  ‘Not a job for a woman, I shouldn’t have thought,’ said Lady Kira coldly. ‘And I suppose it’s public money that pays your fees?’

  Alva may have been fazed by Imogen’s assertion about her child’s parentage, but patrician rudeness she took in her stride.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, rising. ‘Please don’t apologize for disturbing us, I was just leaving.’

  Lady Kira looked inclined to deny even the thought of apology, but Alva had turned back to Imogen.

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Estover,’ she said. ‘It’s Dr Ozigbo, by the way. Do ring me if you’d like to talk again?’

  Imogen said, ‘I think we’re done, doctor.’

  She too rose and moved to face her red-and-orange painting.

  From the doorway, Alva said, ‘Your ex-husband seems to be fond of a painting by Winslow Homer. The Woodcutter, I think it’s called. Is there any particular reason he’s so fond of it?’

  ‘Perhaps because it shows a man faced with simple problems that can be overcome by his own strength and resources,’ said the woman, not turning round.

  ‘That’s an interesting idea,’ said Alva. ‘Your picture, by the way, what do you call it?’

  ‘Falling,’ said Imogen.

  9

  Alva closed the door behind her. It might be interesting to hear what mother and daughter had to say to each other, but the door was too heavy to make eavesdropping possible without pressing her ear to the keyhole.

  At the foot of the staircase she found Sir Leon waiting.

  ‘Got a moment, my dear?’ he said.

  Before she could reply, a door behind him opened and a smallish man, in his late thirties, handsome in a high-cheekboned, slightly toothy Slavic sort of way, came out.

  His eyes ran up and down Alva’s body with an almost insolent slowness.

  He said, ‘What a surprising county this Cumbria of yours is, Leon. I had not expected such rarities. Will you not introduce me?’

  ‘What? Oh yes. Ms Ozigbo, friend of Imogen’s. And this is Mr Nicotine who’s staying with us.’

  ‘Nik-EE-tin,’ said the man. ‘Pavel Nikitin. My friends call me Pasha. I’m pleased to meet you.’

  He looked the type who might be inclined to take her hand and suck on her fingers, so Alva, who did not care to be called a rarity like some kind of ornithological specimen, put her arms behind her and nodded. One question had been answered. Whatever reaso
n Nikitin had for not passing on Luke’s message, there was no problem with language.

  ‘If you’ll excuse us,’ said Sir Leon. ‘Something I need to show Ms Ozigbo.’

  He didn’t wait for a response but took her elbow and urged her into a small alcove and through a door into what appeared to be a Hollywood producer’s impression of an English gentleman’s study.

  ‘Foreigner,’ he said, as if that were both apology and explanation. ‘Wife’s cousin or some such thing. Pasha! Do you think he gets called that because of the Nicotine connection? Sorry, probably far too young – you, I mean. Used to be a peculiarly foul cigarette my ma smoked during the war when she couldn’t get anything else.’

  Alva smiled at him. She could understand why Wolf was so fond of the old boy. He might live in a Wodehousian world of his own, but in his forays into the real world he seemed entirely without malice which was why she felt no inclination to remind him that she was Dr Ozigbo.

  Now she took in the room. You could tell a lot from rooms.

  A huge mahogany desk dominated, bedecked with silver photo frames, a pewter inkstand, and a black Bakelite dial telephone. One wall was almost filled by a huge bookcase in which Alva glimpsed bound copies of Punch and various shooting magazines as well as the transactions of the Cumbrian Archaeological Society dating back to a period itself worthy of research. The opposing wall held a locked gun case flanked by the head of a twelve-point stag and, most weird of all, that of a wolf.

  ‘Last wolf shot in Cumberland,’ said Sir Leon, following her gaze. ‘Least, that’s what the fellow she bought it from told Kira. Load of nonsense. Anyone can see it’s a Canadian timber wolf, and pretty decrepit at that. Probably died of old age in some zoo.’

  ‘Your wife has a taste for history?’ ventured Alva.

  ‘If that’s what you call it,’ said Sir Leon. ‘Did this room up herself. Used to be a perfectly decent hideaway in the old man’s day. Now look at it. I can hardly bear to come inside.’

  ‘In that case . . .?’ said Alva.

  ‘What? Oh yes. Not likely to be interrupted. I wanted to ask you, how is Wolf?’

  Her thoughts still on the mangy creature on the wall, Alva was thrown for a moment.

  ‘Mr Hadda, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, Wolf,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve thought of calling round at Birkstane, but it would just cause bother. Don’t need security cameras out here in the sticks. Kira would hear about it before I got home! So how is he?’

  ‘He was well when I saw him before Christmas,’ said Alva slowly. ‘Of course by comparison with the way you’ll remember him, he moves rather slowly. And his face is scarred . . .’

  Sir Leon was shaking his head.

  ‘Poor boy, poor boy,’ he said. ‘But in himself, his state of mind, I mean, how are things there? He was always so full of life and high spirits.’

  ‘I think, all things considered, that it’s fair to say he’s doing pretty well,’ said Alva.

  She was puzzled. This was not a kind of conversation that she could have imagined having with the father of a girl whose marriage to an undesirable had turned out even more badly than forecast.

  ‘Good, good, I’m glad to hear it. Funny thing, life, what it does to you. But you’d know all about that in your job, my dear. All those years locked up. Don’t think I could bear it myself.’

  He turned away to the window as if to hide his emotion. Alva moved forward to stand by his side.

  ‘Sir Leon, is there any message you’d like me to give to Wolf?’

  ‘Just say I was asking after him.’

  ‘I will. But if you don’t mind me saying, I’m a little puzzled why you should be. I mean, so far as I know, you were absolutely opposed to the marriage, weren’t you? You did everything you could to stop it.’

  ‘I thought I did. But it wasn’t enough. I should have tried harder.’

  ‘And circumstances proved you right, and things worked out even worse for your daughter than you could have imagined, so why –’

  ‘No, no,’ he interrupted her. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t want to stop the marriage for Imo’s sake. She’s always been perfectly capable of looking after herself. It was poor Wolf I was concerned for!’

  This was truly bewildering.

  ‘But why . . .?’

  ‘Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I love my daughter, Ms Ozigbo, but a father’s love isn’t blind. Fred Hadda was a decent man, a loyal worker and a good friend. I’d seen what it did to him when the boy vanished for all those years. That was down to what Wolf felt about Imogen. When he came back and I saw it was all going to start up again, I couldn’t stand by and let Fred’s boy destroy himself, could I? But in the end . . . Well, what’s done’s done. Better get you out of here before we get noticed.’

  He feels spied upon in his own house, thought Alva. She still wasn’t altogether clear what lay at the bottom of the old man’s attitude. There was neither the time nor was he a suitable subject for subtle psychological questioning, so she took the direct route.

  She said, ‘Sir Leon, I’m still not sure what you’re saying. Did you feel that this was a mismatch for social reasons? That Wolf would feel out of his depth by being transplanted from one class to another?’

  She had learned that, even in twenty-first century England, class still mattered. Cherchez la femme might apply in France, in England it was usually cherchez la classe!

  ‘What? No, of course not,’ he replied, a touch indignantly. ‘Used to be the case if you didn’t go to the right school, you were always playing catch-up. Maybe there’s still a bit of that around, but a chap like Wolf, he’d catch most of them up and be whizzing by in no time at all. In fact, that’s what he did, wasn’t it? No, this was personal. Imogen wasn’t right for him. He was always going to get hurt.’

  ‘And Imogen?’

  ‘Imo? I love my daughter, Ms Ozigbo. Funny thing, though. In forty years I’ve never seen her cry. Not even as a baby. Funny.’

  If true, this was pretty amazing. Though it might just be a physiological oddity.

  She asked, ‘And did you say anything about this to Wolf directly?’

  ‘No point. He wasn’t going to take any notice, was he? When the blood’s bubbling along a boy’s veins, first thing that goes is his hearing, eh?’

  He turned her away from the window and for the first time she saw the photos in the silver frames. Lady Kira featured prominently. She obviously believed that family photos on the desk were as intrinsic a part of the traditional gent’s study as hunting trophies on the wall.

  In one of the photos she stood looking down possessively at a pretty girl leaning forward to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. The girl had such a look of Imogen, it had to be her daughter, thought Alva.

  She picked up the photo and said gently, ‘It must have been a terrible shock to you, losing your granddaughter.’

  Immediately she wished she hadn’t spoken. The old man’s face, indeed his whole body, seemed to shrivel up as if in a desperate attempt to contain an emotion that might rip him apart if he let it out. Here was a man born into wealth and privilege, with all the attendant comforts and opportunities tossed into his cradle. Yet Alva felt she was looking at the kind of pain and despair you usually glimpsed on your TV screen after some momentous life-shattering natural disaster.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said wretchedly. ‘It’s just that she looks so lovely in the photo.’

  ‘What photo?’ said Leon, taking refuge from his grief in irritation. ‘Got no photo of Ginny here. Couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘But this one here,’ said Alva, holding up the frame. ‘Isn’t that her?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course not. That’s Imo.’

  ‘Imogen? Your daughter?’ said Alva incredulously, trying to count the candles.

  ‘That’s right. Fourteenth birthday. Fourteen going on forty, isn’t that what they say about young girls today, eh?’

  Fou
rteen! Imo’s age when she and Hadda first met.

  There was only one thing wrong. She’d discounted the possibility that this might be Imo because this girl bore no resemblance whatsoever to her mental image of the skinny pre-pubertal creature who’d allegedly offered herself to Hadda on Pillar Rock. This was a healthy young teenager whose scoop-neck top revealed as she bent forward to blow out the candles a pair of very well-developed breasts.

  There are times when even a psychiatrist can receive too much information.

  Despite Sir Leon’s obviously growing eagerness to get her out of the study and off the premises, she stood transfixed, staring at the photo.

  She needed to talk further with the old man, she needed to talk again to Imogen, above all she needed to confront Hadda.

  But in what order and in what manner she ought to do these things wasn’t clear.

  Then her phone rang. Sir Leon grimaced at the sound. She took it out and glanced at the display. It was Elvira.

  Checking up on my putative date, she guessed. Well, she can leave a message!

  Sir Leon now took a firm grip on the situation and her elbow, and a minute later she was outside the house with the door closing in her face.

  She still hadn’t got her thoughts in order. Not to ask Imogen more questions while she was here seemed a missed opportunity. Perhaps she should go back into the house and press for answers. But when she glanced back at the house to its general air of unwelcomingness were added the sight of Lady Kira’s face peering down from an upper window and Mr Nikitin’s from a lower.

  She got into her car and let what she had learned scroll across her mind, trying to assess its significance and turn it into usable data.

  The main items were:

  One: Imogen said Ginny wasn’t Hadda’s child. True or false?

  Two: Leon said he had objected to the marriage for Hadda’s sake, not for his daughter’s, and class had nothing to do with it. Almost certainly true, she judged.

  Three: at fourteen, Imogen was a mature girl with a well-developed bosom. Definitely true!