It was a kid who called to him and beckoned. Tod rose and went towards him, but he didn’t relax. Weapons of personal destruction came in all shapes and sizes.
The boy spoke excitedly and pointed downwards. Tod let his gaze follow the pointing finger.
The high sun slid a ray of light deep between shattered concrete slabs till it bounced back off white bone. The rats and flies had pretty well finished their work here but the after-smell of decay was strong. Tod drew deep on his cigarette and looked enquiringly at the boy. In this country where the smart bombs had done their smart work, corpses were sadly too commonplace to be remarkable.
The boy pointed again impatiently. Tod peered down once more and this time saw that there was something round the corpse’s neck. A chain with some kind of amulet. The kid was jabbering away, clearly irritated at Tod’s lack of understanding. Then suddenly he seized the marine’s arm and held it up and shook it fiercely.
It took a moment for Tod to confirm he wasn’t being attacked and another to get the message.
The kid’s arm was too short to reach.
Motioning the boy to one side where he could keep an eye on him, Tod inserted his arm into the crack. He had to lie flat on the rubble before his groping fingers found the chain. He pulled. It resisted. He jerked hard. It snapped.
Slowly he withdrew his arm. A graze so close to a decomposing body could be nasty.
The boy came close, impatient to see what they’d found.
He looked puzzled when he saw what it was but Tod recognized it instantly. The bust of Washington bedded on purple and framed in gold.
A Purple Heart.
He turned it over and read the name. Amal Kafala.
Sounded Arab. Weird but not very. Any American phone book was full of weird names. Maybe this was some poor bastard taken prisoner by the gooks who ended up getting popped by his own side. Could be he was a left-over from the first Gulf War. Smelt a bit fresh for that. Or maybe the guy down there had plundered the Heart from some dead soldier.
Whatever, it wasn’t his business. First chance he got, he’d pass the medal on to the unit’s i-officer with details of where he’d found it and let the machine take it from there. Knowing the way it worked, they wouldn’t rest till they were knocking on someone’s door with the sad news. Unknown soldiers were OK for foreign monuments, but the US Army prided itself on keeping a close check on its own up to the grave and, where necessary, beyond. It was a thought at once comforting and disturbing.
He scrambled off the heap of rubble.
The kid was looking at him expectantly.
He dug into his pack and produced a choc bar and a can of cola.
“There you go, son,” he said.
The boy took them, snapped a flamboyant salute, said stumblingly, “Have a nice day!” and ran off.
“I’ll surely do my best,” called Tod after him.
Then, grinning, he made his way back towards the white suits who looked like they’d decided they were wasting their time here.
As the small convoy of vehicles drove away, they passed a shattered statue of the country’s late leader. The head was dented, the nose knocked off, but the features were still recognizable. And those eyes, which had once gazed down upon his people with such menacing benevolence, now stared sightlessly from ground level across the ruins into the desert where, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretched far away.
ALSO BY REGINALD HILL
Death’s Jest-Book
The jest is, the dead won’t lie still in the grave …
Three times DCI Pascoe has wrongly accused joker Franny Roote. This time he’s determined to leave no gravestone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad and dangerous to know.
Meanwhile, Edgar Wield rides to the rescue of a child in danger, only to find he’s got a rent-boy under his wing. In return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a priceless treasure, and soon Wield is torn between protecting the lad and doing his duty.
And over all this activity broods the huge form of DS Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, the Fat Man discovers (as many deities before him) that omniscience can be more trouble than it’s worth….
Seal Books / ISBN: 0-7704-2924-6
ALSO BY REGINALD HILL
Dialogues of the Dead
A motorist dies after plunging off a bridge … A motorcyclist is found dead after an encounter with a tree: two apparently separate tragedies. But when a beautiful, unscrupulous journalist meets an untimely end in fact, and then in fiction, Dalziel and Pascoe find themselves involved in a deadly dual of wits against an opponent known only as the Wordman, a brilliant sociopath who leaves literary clues in his wake—and who hides in plain sight.
In Dialogues of the Dead Reginald Hill returns to weave wordplay and murder into a lethal tapestry that defies being unravelled. With characteristic precision, insidious wit, and unparalleled insight into the serpentine criminal mind, Hill offers his readers his most diabolical surprise to date.
Seal Books / ISBN: 0-7704-2892-4
ALSO BY REGINALD HILL
Arms and the Women
A smartly dressed couple, looking entirely middle-class, has tried to abduct the wife of Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe. Not a woman to go gently into strange BMWs, Ellie Pascoe escapes. But the subsequent assault on a British matron close to the Pascoe home convinces Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel to look for criminals with a grudge against Peter. It’s a logical response, but dead wrong.
Soon Ellie’s past as an activist comes under scrutiny—by more than the Yorkshire coppers. Sitting before a computer in Britain’s intelligence agency is someone with chilling information about her. And sent away for safekeeping, Ellie and her daughter, shepherded by Detective Shirley Novello, will find that a decaying seacoast mansion is no refuge. It’s the eye of the storm, where the truth will finally come out … and a terrifying fight for their lives will begin.
Seal Books / ISBN: 0-7704-2847-9
Copyright © Reginald Hill 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT
Seal Books/published by arrangement with Doubleday Canada
Doubleday Canada edition published 2004
Seal Books edition published July 2005
eISBN: 978-0-385-67262-7
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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