The Long Kill

by Reginald Hill

  A photograph of Jimmy in football kit running after a ball in the garden stood on the dressing table, and on the bedside table was another, more formally posed, of the boy standing in front of his grandfather with Bryant’s hands on his shoulders. They both looked so broodingly serious that it was impossible to look at the picture and not smile.

  Nowhere in sight was there a photograph of anyone who could have been Edward Wilson. Perhaps the memory of his death was still too poignant. Or perhaps after the initial mourning period was over she had bravely resolved not to live with the dead.

  That would be most like her, Jaysmith reassured himself as he searched swiftly through her wardrobe and chest of drawers. To his dismay and distaste he found himself tingling with pleasure as his fingers moved across the thin silkiness of her underclothes.

  This was adolescent voyeurism, he told himself angrily. He had long passed the age of such hot imaginings as were rising in his brain, as each sight and touch and smell in this room filled him with a sense of her presence.

  He closed the last door with an emphatic crash. There was nothing to his present purpose here.

  Jimmy’s room seemed even less likely to be productive but he glanced around it just the same. It was in a small boy’s most desirable state of chaos, with apparently every one of his treasured possessions within sight and reach. Hanging on the wall between the full-sized posters of a footballer and a pop star was the photograph of a man. This had to be Edward Wilson, guessed Jaysmith. It was right that he should be remembered here. A widow could not live in the past, but a boy must not be allowed to forget his father.

  He took the picture down and looked at it closely with an as yet unidentifiable emotion. It showed a burly, dark-bearded man in a heavy Norwegian sweater, whip-cord trousers and climbing boots. He was regarding the camera with arrogant impatience as if he felt this was a waste of time. There was something familiar about the face; were those perhaps Jimmy’s eyes? He decided it was not a face he liked very much and at the same moment he identified his emotion.

  I’m jealous! he told himself in amazement. Jealous of a dead man!

  He dropped the photograph onto the bed and quickly searched the room. There was, of course, nothing to find. What had he expected? he asked himself sourly. Here or anywhere else? Evidence that Bryant was a Russian agent, or a Nazi war criminal, or head of a gang of terrorists plotting to conquer the world?

  His irritation was chopped short by an unwelcome noise. He went out of the room to the landing window which overlooked the front of the house and saw a car coming up the drive. To his relief it wasn’t Bryant’s brown Rover, which, assuming the football match had run its full length, should not be back for at least an hour, but a bright orange VW Beetle. But his relief soon evaporated as the passenger door opened and the unmistakeable figure of Anya got out. She reached into the back of the car and, helped by the woman driver, began to pull out carrier bags and parcels. She and the driver chatted and laughed as she did this. Clearly the early return had nothing sinister in it and Jaysmith concentrated now on his own predicament.

  He had to get out fast, but there was the burglar alarm to consider. It was switched off. Anya would notice this as she tried to switch it off on entry. She might imagine that either she or Bryant had forgotten to switch it on as they left, but on the other hand she might remember with absolute certainty that she’d done it. At the very least it would be a source of puzzlement, and Jaysmith knew that small and innocent speculations could lead to large and dangerous ones.

  He ran swiftly downstairs and reset the alarm then retreated into the dining room as he heard Anya opening the first of the locks. It was only as the key turned in the second that he realized what an idiot he was. He could not exit through the dining room window without setting off the alarm until Anya was actually in the house and had operated the switch in the hall. The dining room overlooked the rear garden, much smaller than the formal terraces at the front where they had sat and drank their coffee two days earlier. At the back there was simply an area of plain lawn bounded by what looked like an impregnable yew hedge. Here was obviously Jimmy’s domain. A football lay on the well-worn grass and a game of swing-ball was set up, consisting of a tennis ball on a cord which rotated around a vertical metal pole sunk in the lawn.

  The front door opened. He mentally rehearsed the turning off of the alarm, gave a few extra seconds for safety and undid the window catch. There was no blast of noise and he let out a long sigh. It occurred to him that he might do better to try and hide in the house and escape later, but there was no time to weigh up odds. He slid the window up. It was well oiled and made no sound. He stepped out and let the window down. Where now? Left? right? ahead? He tried to work out where Anya would make for on entering the house. To be found skulking about outside was almost as bad as being caught within. Again there was no time. He ran a few steps across the lawn, picked up one of the swing-ball rackets and sent the ball whizzing round the pole with a tremendous blow. Alternating backhand and forehand, he soon got a rapid rhythm going and managed about twenty consecutive hits before he sent the ball too high and the cord got tangled.

  ‘Bravo!’ called Anya’s voice, accompanied by half a dozen slow handclaps.

  He turned. She was at the kitchen window.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, going towards her.

  ‘Hello. What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Trespassing,’ he answered. ‘I got finished in London much quicker than I thought, so I drove up this morning. I went for a walk and thought I’d divert here to beg a cup of tea. But then I remembered you’d said you were going to some football match with Jimmy. I thought I’d stroll around the garden for a little while in case you got back. And here you are. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Feel free,’ she said. ‘Step inside. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  She unlocked the kitchen door and he entered. They smiled uneasily at each other for a moment. He had the feeling that she was not certain whether she was pleased to see him or not.

  ‘Where are Jimmy and your father?’ he asked.

  ‘In Carlisle,’ she said. ‘I decided to skip the match. With pappy to accompany him, Jimmy clearly felt that the presence of a woman might cast slurs on his masculinity. So I met a friend, we did some shopping and she ran me home.’

  ‘My good luck,’ said Jaysmith.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘I might have had to wait another couple of hours to see you.’

  She mashed the tea, her sallow face slightly flushed. As she poured it, she said, ‘Mr Hutton …’

  ‘Jay,’ he interrupted.

  ‘Jay. I hope I get this right. Look, you’re buying my aunt’s house, and that’s one thing. You also seem to be … interested in me, and that’s another thing altogether, distinct and separate. I don’t want a … confusion.’

  She put some sugar before him.

  He shook his head and said, ‘Of course not. I’m all for clarity. When you suggested your father should act as my solicitor, which of these distinct and separate things were we dealing with? My interest in Rigg Cottage or my interest in you?’

  She heaped sugar into her tea and stirred violently.

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ she started to explain, but he laughed and said, ‘No, I know it’s not. At least, I hoped it wasn’t. I hoped there was a third distinct though not necessarily separate thing. Your interest in me.’

  She stared at him blankly. It was not the blankness of incomprehension but of doubt, perhaps even of fear. He guessed what had happened. She had had nearly two whole days to get him in perspective. They had met only the previous Monday. He had exerted pressure. It was in his nature. She had responded, meeting boldness with boldness. There was in her a core of toughness which did not care to feel intimidated. But there was also caution; this was what subjecting him to her father’s scrutiny had been all about. And there was also fear. The fox is bold; the fox is wily; the fox is also keen to the scent of danger, quick
to flight. She had had two days to think about him. She had believed she had more, till the following week at least. He must have receded in her mind to manageable proportions, to a postponable problem.

  Then she had come back alone, unprepared, and there he was in her own back garden. Flight was not possible here, so fear had made her outspoken.

  She said, ‘I don’t know you, Jay. I mean …’

  ‘You mean, we only met last Monday. That’s true. And I was looking for a house long before I met you, that’s true also. You know that. My purchase of Rigg Cottage has nothing to do with you, though it’s a very charming vanity.’

  He smiled and spoke lightly to remove offence, but she regarded him sombrely and said, ‘I’ve thought a lot about that. I know you were looking for a house before we met. But, looking back, it seemed to me that you weren’t looking for – perhaps not even really looking at – Rigg Cottage till after I arrived. Is it vanity? I should like to think so.’

  She was as sharp-scented as any fox, he realized. She had sniffed out a not-quite-rightness in him, but, thank God, it wasn’t any suspicion of deception in his name and background that bothered her. It was fear of the passion which, on such short acquaintance, could cause a man to purchase a not inexpensive house in its pursuance.

  He said, ‘I want the house.’

  He meant it. He was surprised to find how much he meant it. His sincerity, and perhaps his surprise, reached her too and she looked at him as if in search of an explanation.

  He went on, ‘London’s a slum. I’ve been everywhere; up here’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to buy a house. Rigg Cottage is the house I want to buy. End of story.’

  He finished his tea and stood up.

  ‘There’s nothing else up here I want to buy,’ he said, stressing the last word slightly. ‘I’m not much for possessions. Or possessiveness.’

  ‘Are you going?’ she said.

  ‘I’d better. I haven’t checked in at the hotel yet. I arranged to keep the room on till my return, but I guess I should give the Parkers some warning that I’ll be wanting dinner.’

  He wasn’t quite certain if he meant this as a hint, but if so, it was ignored.

  ‘Use the phone here before you go if you like,’ she said. ‘Mrs Parker would probably appreciate as much advance warning as possible.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She followed him out into the hall and began to gather together her shopping. There was one long package wrapped round with toy-shop gift paper. It slipped from beneath her arm and Jaysmith caught it.

  ‘Someone’s lucky,’ he said.

  ‘What? Oh yes. It’s Jimmy’s birthday next Saturday. I thought this was a good chance to get his present and put it out of sight of prying eyes.’

  ‘What have you got him?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a gun,’ she said.

  He must have allowed something to show on his face which she read as disapproval for she said defensively, ‘It fires ping pong balls. There’s a target that gets knocked over. One of Jimmy’s friends got one and he was full of envy. He’s not a greedy child, but I can always tell when he really wants something. I was a bit doubtful, but pappy says that if you’re living in the country, you’ve got to know about guns. You can’t pretend they don’t exist. It’s better to learn to respect them. It seemed to make sense. What do you think?’

  ‘It seems to make sense to me too,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Here, you go on up. I’ll bring this.’

  Anya hesitated at the foot of the stairs and Jaysmith said with slight exasperation, ‘If you prefer, I’ll drop it here and you can come back for it. But believe me, my presence on your landing will hardly compromise your name at all.’

  She giggled unexpectedly and said, ‘Sorry. Come on.’

  In the bedroom she dropped her shopping on the bed.

  ‘There,’ she said.

  He looked around.

  ‘Nice room,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit shabby now. It needs doing out. It hasn’t been done since … since before my marriage. Six months before, to be precise.’

  ‘As close as that? You were a gayer person then, I think. I use the word properly.’

  ‘Was I?’ She frowned and looked around. ‘Yes. I suppose I was. Bright colours stopped suiting me after girlhood’s flush faded, I suppose. Not to worry. My loss was Oxfam’s gain.’

  She put the shopping away, hiding the birthday present carefully at the back of her wardrobe.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ she asked.

  ‘Along the valley a way,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Shall I give you a lift to it?’

  ‘No. These old legs will stagger a little way yet,’ he said.

  He stepped out of the bedroom and headed for the stairs. It was time to go. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that he’d left Jimmy’s bedroom door ajar as he rushed to check on the arriving car. Had it been ajar when he went into the room? Well, it was hardly something that anyone would notice.

  Then it came back to him with all the force of a remembered bêtise that he had left Edward Wilson’s photograph lying on the bed.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Is this Jimmy’s room?’

  He stepped inside without waiting for an answer and by the time Anya reached the doorway, he was standing in front of the poster-decorated wall holding the photograph in both hands.

  ‘Jimmy’s father?’ he said enquiringly.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Anya. She came into the room and took the picture from him and hung it on the wall. She was very angry, he could tell.

  She said in a quietly controlled voice, ‘Jimmy, like most small boys, has a highly developed sense of his right to privacy. I try to respect it.’

  Was this the real reason for her anger? he wondered. Or was it his sacrilegious temerity in daring to touch the holy image?

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barged in, should I? Privacy wasn’t something I knew the meaning of as a child, I’m afraid, though God knows I could have done with it. I suppose it made me insensitive.’

  It was merely an attempt to appease her anger, but it emerged with a convincing bitterness. He thought, every time I try to deceive this woman, I find myself telling her the truth by accident!

  She slipped out of her anger like a model from a silk gown and said, ‘I’ve no right to lecture you. It was the other way round with me. I suppose it made me oversensitive to invasion.’

  ‘But this is Jimmy’s room,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have barged in.’

  ‘Oh, even if he knew you were in here, you could probably buy his forgiveness with a bag of allsorts. He’s crazy for licorice.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  As they went down the stairs he said, ‘Sorry if it’s painful, but Jimmy’s father … the face looked somehow familiar.’

  ‘Did it?’ She was a pace behind him so he could not see her expression. ‘He was in the papers occasionally. He was a climber, quite well known some years ago. And when he died, it made a nice little story.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Famous mountaineer, Alpine expert, Himalayan expeditionist, falls off hundred-foot cliff in Cumbria and breaks his back; wouldn’t you say that was a nice little story?’ she asked. ‘You probably saw the pictures.’

  He stopped and turned and looked up at her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘It was,’ she said. ‘Terrible. You haven’t made your phone call to Mrs Parker, don’t forget. Could you see yourself out?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  As he dialled the number, she went back up the stairs. He thought she went into Jimmy’s room, but he couldn’t be sure and when he called goodbye there was no reply. He almost went back upstairs to check she was all right, but he didn’t. And as he walked away from the house, he knew he had been afraid he would find her crying.

  Chapter 11

  He awoke on Sunday to find the weathe
r had broken. Heavy clouds sat sullenly on the tops and by the time he had finished his breakfast, grey vapours had slipped insidiously down the fell slopes and the valley was blind with a thin drenching rain.

  It was not a day for the long kill. And a damned uncomfortable one for the short kill too, he assured himself. Bryant should be safe enough today, even if whatever committee or computer made up Jacob’s mind still had him pricked down for elimination.

  He was no nearer any decision on the best course of action. He had studied the letters the previous evening, but had made little progress beyond confirming that on the surface at least they were billets doux. This in itself might be reason enough for their method of delivery. Clandestine did not automatically mean subversive; a Polish woman writing to a lover abroad might well resent the risk that her most private thoughts would be subjected to the defiling eye of a censor. Or perhaps it was simply that Ota, whoever she was, did not wholly trust the Polish postal system.

  He found himself in an uncharacteristic state of uncertainty. He would have liked a long walk on the high fells to try to clear his mind but in these conditions it was out of the question. He felt an almost irresistible urge to pick up the phone and ring Anya. His mind was filled with an almost comically sentimental picture of the two of them sitting together on a deep soft sofa toasting muffins at a huge log fire while the rain beat at the windows. Where this image came from he did not know. It certainly did not belong to his past. Wet Sunday afternoons in his childhood had been endless wastes of utter boredom. His mother, though long lapsed from her Methodist upbringing, retained sufficient atavistic religiosity to ban nearly all Sunday recreation, and even when he enjoyed the freedom of university life, these remembered glooms still sombred his Sabbaths.

  The old boredom was lying ahead now. He knew he couldn’t ring Anya, not after yesterday’s encounter. Their relationship had developed with rapid promise in his eyes, but to her, after the first quick movement, speed was clearly a threat. Any hint of pressure might send her flying into the forest. Again the dark side of his mind slipped in the thought that the simple solution might be to step aside till Jacob rearranged Bryant’s targeting, then step forward to comfort a grief which did not commemorate a rival.