Death of a Dormouse

by Reginald Hill

  The uniformed security guard summoned by the alarm button at the foot of the manager’s chair took a bullet in the cheek and fell screaming. As though released by the sound, Trudi went diving for the protection of the solid oak desk, crashing into the side of it with such force that for a second she was sure the snap-shot Werner took at her diving body must have struck home.

  He was coming after her, leaning over the desk to fire at point-blank range. She looked up at the contorted handsome face. Then suddenly rage turned to pain as the courageous security man who had struggled to his knees launched himself at Werner’s splayed legs and more by luck than judgment delivered a swinging uppercut to his crotch.

  The doctor twisted round to club his attacker to the ground. Trudi, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, got to her feet and, grabbing at his thick grey hair, pulled back with all her might.

  And tore the top of his head off.

  He turned to face her.

  She looked in horror from the obscenely silken wig in her hand to the obscenely naked dome of Werner’s skull. He could have shot her then, but the mad rage was perceptibly dying in his face which without the wig looked nearer fifty than thirty. For a second they stared into each other’s eyes.

  Then he turned, clumsily hurdled the recumbent guard, and was gone. She heard his footsteps beating a tattoo along the tiled corridor.

  Glancing at the wig she said, ‘One up to Delilah.’

  A groan brought her back to her surroundings. The man in the manager’s chair was still conscious.

  ‘Herr Jünger, are you all right?’ cried Trudi.

  Jünger said something very obscene in German. Taking this as reassurance, she turned her attention to Dietl. He was slumped on the floor, grey-faced but still breathing, and the security man’s moans told her that he had survived the second attack. She grabbed at the phone on the desk and screamed, ‘Ambulance! Quick!’ at the astounded switchboard girl.

  And now her mind switched from the violence she had just witnessed to the possible violence to come.

  ‘Janet?’ she screamed at Jünger. ‘Is someone taking care of Janet?’

  Jünger looked at her in bewilderment.

  ‘Oh Christ! You don’t even know!’

  She ran out of the room now as if she hoped herself to pursue and apprehend Werner. There was no sign of him. Nor was the corridor full of alert policemen, just bewildered faces peering through half-opened doors.

  But surely Jünger would have someone downstairs ready to stop Werner? But it wasn’t Jünger’s operation, was it? Not here in Switzerland. He had probably used up all his influence to get agreement to his impersonation of Hussmüller, and how he was paying for that bit of vanity.

  The Swiss police had a good reputation though. They must be waiting below, ready to pick up the doctor if they saw him coming out alone.

  Then she looked at the wig dangling like a hunting trophy in her hand and realized that she had managed to give Werner the perfect disguise. Completely bald and aged fifteen years, he would only be spotted by the very sharpest of eyes.

  She went to the great plate-glass window in the corridor and peered down, seeking some evidence of a police presence below, or the kind of excitement that would go with the arrest of an armed man. But cars drifted along the street and pedestrians moved across the cobbled patio with nothing in their speed or manner to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

  And there he was, Werner, unmistakable to her alone, with his bald head gleaming against his dark grey jacket, strolling casually away from the bank, like any law-abiding citizen going about his business. Another few steps would take him on to the crowded sidewalk and then he would be able to vanish into this populous city and ring his confederate at the Rosengarten hotel with any instruction for Janet’s fate he cared to give.

  She should have rung the hotel herself and told them to block any calls to Jan’s room! Instead she had acted like a lunatic, running out into the corridor in a ludicrous doomed attempt to overtake Werner.

  It was still not too late. She was just turning away from the window when she saw a man step out from behind one of the tubes of the Spirit of Enterprise. He moved right into Werner’s path. Werner had to stop. They stood almost face to face. They seemed to be speaking, then the man began to walk away. He was wearing a nondescript trilby whose brim from Trudi’s angle made it impossible to see his face. But now her attention was back with Werner. He too had started moving again but in contrast with the other’s measured steady stride, he was staggering obliquely, his hand against his breastbone. He got as far as the silver tube of the quincuncial sculpture. Here he paused, took his hand from his chest and rested it against the tube to support himself. Then he made one more effort, pushed himself upright, held the position for perhaps three seconds, and slowly sank to the ground.

  On the gleaming aluminium surface Trudi could see quite clearly the print of his hand in dark red already drying to russet.

  She looked back now in search of the man in the trilby. He had disappeared. No! There he was, sauntering gently towards the pavement crowded with people determinedly ignoring the mid-morning drunk slumped against the Spirit of Enterprise.

  In a moment he would step into the throng and vanish.

  But now he hesitated. Now he turned round and stood head bowed, face completely hidden, as if meditating some problematical course of action.

  And suddenly, decision! He reached up, removed his hat with a flourish, and turned his face full to the window at which she stood. It must have been impossible for him to see her at that distance behind plate glass. But he would know, if she were there, that she could see him.

  For the space of three seconds he stood. Then he replaced his hat, turned, and was absorbed into the stream of pedestrians on the pavement.

  There were people standing nervously over Dr Werner now, but Trudi did not watch them. Her eyes remained on the pavement, though she was not really seeing that either.

  She had told James Dacre she had to know everything. And now she knew.

  They found Janet huddled in her bathroom, clutching the tooth glass which she had decided was a marginally more potent weapon than the loofah.

  In her bedroom, neatly laid out on the bed, was a dead man with a bullet hole in the middle of his head. Even with this distraction, Trudi was able to identify him as Dieter, the chauffeur from the Kahlenberg Klinik.

  Janet could not throw much light on his killer. Dieter had ordered her into the bathroom and warned her to stay quiet. Some time later – she had lost track of how long – there had been a noise from the bedroom like a thick book being closed hard. Then a new voice at the bathroom door had commanded, ‘Stay in there!’ in a tone she had not cared or dared to disobey.

  There were tears on her face as she described her experience, but in the space of three large, duty-free whiskies, she passed from nervous collapse to righteous indignation.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you!’ she yelled at Trudi. ‘It was a set-up! You’d told Jünger about the bloody account and agreed to come across here in the hope that Werner would show up. And you never breathed a word!’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ retorted Trudi. ‘I tried to warn you off coming, but you’re so damn pushy! I never thought you’d get involved …’

  ‘That’s been your trouble from the start, never thinking!’

  ‘Don’t give me that! It hasn’t been my thoughtlessness that got you involved, it’s been your guilt!’

  ‘Guilt, is it? Well, let me disenchant you, girl. I don’t feel guilty, I never felt guilty. Why should I feel guilty? I was doing you a favour. I was doing him a favour. For God’s sake, looking back, I’ve spent the best part of my life doing ungrateful people favours!’

  ‘Well, do me one now!’ yelled Trudi. ‘Shut your big Welsh mouth and don’t open it again in my presence except for drink or breath, both of which it seems to me are wasted on you!’

  It was at this point that both women realized they had stopped being angry and ha
d started to enjoy the argument. Paradoxically the realization stopped them arguing but stopped them enjoying it also.

  ‘Oh Trudi, I was so scared.’

  ‘Not half as scared as I was,’ said Trudi. ‘Are you going to drink all that bottle, or do your friends get a spot?’

  They drank and exchanged stories once more, Janet paying more attention this time to Trudi’s perils and other people’s pains.

  ‘And Jünger and this man, Dietl, how bad are they?’

  ‘Jünger will be bossing people around in a week or so. With Dietl it’s more serious, but he should pull through. The guard too, though he has a fractured skull.’

  Janet shuddered. ‘Some bedside manner that Werner had. How did he know you were coming to Zürich, Trudi?’

  ‘There was a bug on my phone. The police found it when they put theirs on, but they decided to leave it there.’

  ‘And who the hell killed him, and why?’

  ‘People,’ said Trudi vaguely. ‘People who don’t like loose tongues or loose ends.’

  ‘This lot who were really behind Schiller, you mean? But they didn’t get the money, did they?’

  ‘No. They’d have liked it, of course. They’d have done a great deal to get it. I’m not really sure how much. But in the end they’ll be happy to stop Werner getting away with it. Or Ashburton, or Usher. Or Trent. I suppose there’s a sort of principle involved.’

  ‘God save me from principles like that! Well, what now?’

  ‘Back to the UK, I suppose. Sort out my pension.’

  ‘Your pension?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s all there at some merchant bank in the City. The twelve million may be filthy lucre and therefore untouchable by the morally pure like me and you. But I can’t see any reason not to claim my pension. And if you can, I’d be grateful if you kept your big mouth shut!’

  ‘Charming. And then?’

  ‘And then I’d better start looking for somewhere to live. You wouldn’t care to share a flat, would you?’

  ‘In Sheffield?’

  ‘Why not? It’s a good centre, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Sounds a nice idea,’ said Janet. ‘Long lease or short lease?’

  ‘Oh, long, I would say.’

  ‘You’ve made up your mind about James, then?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘But you said you’d wait till you had all the information.’

  ‘I think,’ said Trudi carefully, ‘that I’ve now got all the information I need, or am likely to get, to help me reach my decision.’

  Janet looked at her closely. Even all that Scotch didn’t take the edge off those sharp Celtic eyes, but Trudi met her gaze with smiling candour.

  ‘All right, girl,’ said Janet. ‘I’ll let myself be satisfied with that. For now. But I hope you’re not going to let Trent put you off men forever.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why should he?’

  ‘Because, despite the sentimental memories you seem to be developing about him, he was a Grade-A, purebred, unadulterated rat!’

  Trudi considered this.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Only I think maybe he only passed for a rat because of the company he kept. He was really more of a mouse. He’d have loved to huddle up cosy, only he kept on smelling cheese.’

  ‘You think so? Well if it pleases you, all right. Trent was the dormouse. You were just the doormat! But now he’s dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trudi. ‘And I …’

  She thought of Trent writing his lonely letter in the dark hours of the morning, saying how he envied her.

  She thought of James Dacre who had envied her too and loved her enough to save her friend and let her see the truth about himself though he did not have to.

  She thought of the future. One day the phone would ring, she was sure of that, and then she would find out if her mind was really as made up as she had assured Janet.

  But sufficient until the day …

  ‘… and I’m alive,’ said Trudi Adamson.

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  They clinked their glasses together and drank.

  If you enjoyed Death of a Dormouse, try reading:

  Click here to order The Only Game.

  About the Author

  Reginald Hill, who died in 2012, was a native of Cumbria and former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Their appearances won him numerous awards including a CWA Gold Dagger, the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. The Dalziel and Pascoe novels have also been adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series.

  By Reginald Hill

  Dalziel and Pascoe Novels

  A CLUBBABLE WOMAN

  AN ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

  RULING PASSION

  AN APRIL SHROUD

  A PINCH OF SNUFF

  A KILLING KINDNESS

  DEADHEADS

  EXIT LINES

  CHILD’S PLAY

  UNDER WORLD

  BONES AND SILENCE

  RECALLED TO LIFE

  PICTURES OF PERFECTION

  THE WOOD BEYOND

  ASKING FOR THE MOON: A DALZIEL AND PASCOE COLLECTION

  ON BEULAH HEIGHT

  ARMS AND THE WOMEN

  DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD

  DEATH’S JEST-BOOK

  GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT

  THE DEATH OF DALZIEL

  A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES

  MIDNIGHT FUGUE

  Joe Sixsmith novels

  BLOOD SYMPATHY

  BORN GUILTY

  KILLING THE LAWYERS

  SINGING THE SADNESS

  THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES

  Other

  FELL OF DARK

  THE LONG KILL

  THE COLLABORATORS

  THERE ARE NO GHOSTS IN THE SOVIET UNION

  DEATH OF A DORMOUSE

  DREAM OF DARKNESS

  THE ONLY GAME

  THE STRANGER HOUSE

  THE WOODCUTTER

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