A Very Good Hater

by Reginald Hill

  Relations. That was the simple proof. Relations who would gather at family festivals. A christening. Or a funeral. It just needed a couple of maiden aunts from Harrogate to have been present at their favourite nephew’s funeral, and that was that. Investigation over.

  ‘Are you a policeman?’

  He started, nearly dropping the photograph, and turned. It was the girl, who had come so silently into the room that she had been able to close the door behind her undetected.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not a policeman. I used to know your daddy, your father. So I thought I’d call.’

  He had little experience of talking to children and found he had put on a kind of bright bluffness, like a conscientious Santa Claus in a big store magic grot.

  ‘I’m Dora,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘William Goldsmith,’ he answered. She came forward and held out her hand. He transferred the photograph from one hand to the other and shook hands.

  ‘That was at my christening,’ said Dora gravely.

  ‘I thought it must be,’ said Goldsmith. There might be a chance here, he realized. Another few seconds might convince him once and for all that an innocent man had died.

  ‘Are these your grandparents?’ he asked.

  ‘Those are,’ said Dora, pointing at the elderly couple. ‘The others are my godparents. They should help me with my catechism, but they just send money.’

  ‘That can’t be bad,’ said Goldsmith. ‘Are they your mother’s parents.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘I think he was probably taking the picture,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He doesn’t like being photographed. Didn’t like.’

  She repeated the words slowly as if sampling the change of tense. Her self-possession was a fragile thing, realized Goldsmith. But he felt unable to stop now.

  ‘I meant, weren’t your father’s parents at your christening?’ he said gently.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Neil’s parents died in the war, Mr Goldsmith.’

  It was Mrs Housman. Silent entrances were obviously much practised in this house. She came forward from the open door and touched her daughter on the shoulder.

  ‘Run along now, darling. I want to talk with Mr Goldsmith.’

  The girl held out her hand once more.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said as Goldsmith took it. As she closed the door behind her, her mother said, ‘She’s become incredibly formal in the past week. Everything correct and polite. It’s a formal time, don’t you think, Mr Goldsmith? A time of strict traditional procedures. Dora seems to be seeking a kind of permanent shelter in them, but it won’t work for ever.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Goldsmith. This wasn’t what he had foreseen, if indeed he had foreseen anything when he got into the Land-Rover that morning. The sooner he got out of this house the better. He wanted these two females to remain two-dimensional, just snapshots seen in a hotel bedroom. But already it was too late for that.

  ‘How long had you known Neil?’ asked the woman, sitting down and motioning Goldsmith to do the same.

  ‘Not long. Oh, eighteen months, couple of years at the most,’ answered Goldsmith. He felt that it was desperately unfair. The lies he told now were the lies he would have to live with, for the next few minutes at least. Or substantiate if Vickers decided he was worth investigation. And he had no time to shape them, to weigh them, to look at their implications.

  ‘Where did you meet him?’ she asked now. ‘You’re not a local man, are you, Mr Goldsmith?’

  It was more than just a question of geography, he realized. She meant that had he been a local man in any sense, her husband would surely have mentioned him at some point.

  ‘No. Well, I am a Yorkshireman, yes, but it was in London we met.’

  There was nowhere else he could say. If they hadn’t met locally, London was the only possible place. Where else would Housman have made regular trips?

  ‘London? You didn’t see him on his last trip, did you?’

  Her voice was as calm and polite as if she were talking about a man who might at any moment walk through the door and pour himself a drink.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m not centred there, you understand.’

  The questions were fast becoming impossible. Soon he would have to start creating a mass of circumstantial detail, any part of which might trip him up. He decided to take the initiative.

  ‘I nearly didn’t come in,’ he said. ‘When I saw the police car, I thought, well, you must have enough on your plate. It’s bad enough losing someone without all the fuss of an investigation.’

  ‘I’m glad you called just the same,’ she answered. ‘The police have been no trouble, you understand; perfectly polite. But it’s their job to probe, I suppose.’

  ‘Do they know yet what did happen?’

  She looked directly at him. Her eyes seemed almost too big for the small-boned head.

  ‘No. I doubt if they ever will. I believe it was just an accident. Neil worked too hard. Occasionally he had dizzy spells, perhaps more frequently than he told me.’

  ‘I’m sure you are right,’ said Goldsmith. ‘Are you by yourself?’

  The question must have come out rather too bluntly. She looked at him in slight surprise.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just thought you might have someone staying with you. Your parents, perhaps. Or some of Neil’s relations.’

  ‘No. My mother came down earlier in the week, but she couldn’t stay. My father’s ill and needs looking after. They’re all the relations I’ve got in the world except for a few distant cousins. And Neil had none at all. I never knew anyone so relation-free.’

  She smiled reminiscently, the first smile Goldsmith had seen on her face. For a moment the tightness round the mouth and eyes disappeared and she looked ten years younger. Goldsmith would have liked to encourage the mood, but it was not an opportunity to be missed.

  ‘Surely he must have produced someone at your wedding?’ he asked.

  The smile died. She shook her head.

  ‘No. No one. It was a quiet affair, but there was no one at all from Neil’s side. I thought, it must be strange to have no relations.’

  She said nothing further, but lapsed into an introspective silence which did not invite interruption.

  Goldsmith glanced ostentatiously at his watch. It was time to go, he felt. His luck had held so far and though he had learned nothing, negatives in this instance were on his side.

  ‘I’m afraid I must be on my way,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘Must you? I was hoping you might have some tea with us.’

  ‘Another time perhaps,’ Goldsmith heard himself saying.

  ‘Yes. Please call again if you can,’ she answered, offering her hand in a gesture so like her daughter’s that he felt momentarily moved by the thought of the grief that might lie inside.

  But simultaneously the thought rose in his mind that this hand he held might have touched and caressed the supple body of Nikolaus Hebbel.

  ‘I should like that,’ he said. ‘There’s so much to talk about.’

  CHAPTER IX

  SUNDAY WAS WET and Goldsmith spent the morning in fitful attempts to do some paper-work. He had a standing invitation to lunch with Liz and her mother, but when Mrs Sewell rang to check at eleven o’clock, he pleaded pressure of work and offered his apologies with a minimum of courtesy. At twelve he made his way to the local pub and ate a pork-pie. As the place began to fill up, he rose and headed for the door, reluctant to be drawn into conversation with any of the new arrivals. But outside he bumped into Cyril Fell, the builder, who detained him with a hand like a fire-shovel. His intentions were far from aggressive, however.

  ‘Mr Goldsmith,’ he said gruffly, ‘sorry I bothered you the other night. It wasn’t the place, but you know how it is.’ ‘Yes,’ said Goldsmith, turning up the collar of his sheepskin jacket against the rain.
/>   ‘Mind you, I still think there’s something fishy, that I do,’ added the man emphatically.

  ‘Then you must inform the police,’ said Goldsmith.

  ‘Police? What’s them buggers got to do with it? It’s a council matter.’

  ‘What you’re suggesting is misuse of public monies and that’s a criminal matter, Mr Fell. Look, if you want to talk about this any more, come up to my cottage in half an hour.’ He pushed aside the builder’s restraining hand and made for home.

  By two o’clock, Fell still had not arrived and Goldsmith was in no mood for waiting. The rain had slackened slightly and he was tired of the confines of his house. Putting on his still damp jacket, he went out of the back door and clambered through the hedge at the bottom of his garden. The land here sloped up to a lightly wooded ridge, then fell away into a stony valley through which ran a noisy stream not yet tamed from its moorland sources. There were outcrops of rock even on this side of the ridge and the land was only useful for grazing sheep. This meant there was no need for fences or hedges, much to Goldsmith’s satisfaction. He did not count the mossy drystone wall over to his left which marked the line of the lane running up to the farm house on the other side of the valley. He wished his own cottage had been on that side too. When the stream was in spate, the ford where the lane crossed it was often impassable, and access to the farm was only possible via a long and unattractive detour.

  The rain came on again as he reached the trees on top of the ridge. Three of them had been blasted by lightning four or five years earlier and every strong wind brought new billets of dead timber crashing down. But they were too far from the lane to be regarded as dangerous and were allowed to remain as a natural frieze, picturesque against the summer sky and Gothic against the winter moon.

  Goldsmith sheltered against one of them and looked back towards his cottage and the road. A white Volkswagen Beetle made its way slowly along, its distinctive roof just visible above the hedge. It disappeared behind the cottage but did not emerge on the other side. Goldsmith watched for five minutes before he saw it reappear and return the way it had come. Someone had called on him. Goldsmith did not recognize the car, nor did he feel interested enough even to speculate.

  Turning his back, he leaned against the carbonized trunk of the tree and stared down into the valley till the damp penetrated to his skin and the warmth of the cottage became attractive again.

  The following morning he telephoned the firm and told them he had caught a chill and would not be going in that day. In retribution, he began to sneeze as he drove north shortly afterwards, but he ignored the symptoms and by mid-morning the Land-Rover was edging its way through the cold and windy streets of Sunderland.

  He had been uncertain how best to go about obtaining the details he would need to check on Neil Housman’s background and had prepared a variety of (to him) implausible-sounding cover stories, but his request for a copy of the birth-certificate was received without comment at the Registrar’s office.

  He went into a café, ordered a cup of tea, and examined his new information with interest. At least Neil Housman existed. Or had existed.

  Neil Housman. Born November 11th 1918. Father, Andrew Housman, shop-keeper, of 99, Byron Lane, Sunderland. Mother, Enid Housman, housewife.

  He finished his tea and went in search of a stationery shop where he bought a street map of the town. There was only one Byron Lane and after two or three false starts, he finally reached it, only to find himself looking at two rows of houses which clearly had been built since the end of the war.

  A postman was walking along the pavement and Goldsmith leaned out of the Land-Rover window and called to him.

  ‘It’s the old Byron Lane you’re wanting,’ said the man after listening to Goldsmith’s question. ‘That was here all right, but it’s been knocked down these ten years or more.’

  ‘Where did the people who lived there go?’ asked Goldsmith.

  ‘Now you’re asking,’ replied the postman. ‘All over, I reckon.’

  ‘Not to these homes then?’

  How could they?’ said the man scornfully. ‘They didn’t just build these places overnight, man. It’d be a year or more between getting the people out and these houses being ready to live in.’

  After a final assurance that there was no one in this or any of the neighbouring streets called Housman, the postman strode away, leaving Goldsmith feeling absurdly dejected. He was discovering that once you commit yourself to a line of detective work, the actual deductive process can become more important than the reasons for embarking upon it.

  Leaving the Land-Rover, he walked the length of the street wondering what his next move should be. On an impulse, he marched up the path of No. 99 and rang the bell. A small, faded woman came to the door. Her answers were as dusty as her appearance.

  No, she knew nothing about previous inhabitants of the street. No, she knew no one in the street who might help. No, she knew nobody called Housman.

  Eventually he gave up and returned to his vehicle. He was ready to abandon the chase and leave these ugly streets behind. Not even the not-too-distant tang of the sea could combat the depressive effect this place was having on him. But as he switched on he heard a voice calling and, looking round, he saw the faded woman waving to him from her garden gate. Slowly he drove alongside her and halted, not switching off the engine.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  I just remembered,’ she said. ‘My old dad used to say he was calling in at Housman’s when he was going to that little shop in Arundel Street. It’s not Housman’s really but Billington’s, something like that. Still, he always used to say Housman’s.’

  ‘Did he? Is Arundel Street far? Could I speak to your father perhaps.’

  She laughed, like light shining through a threadbare curtain.

  ‘You’ll have to go a lot farther than Arundel Street. He passed on seven years ago. Take the first left, then keep on down to the traffic lights, then right. Billingham’s, is it?’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Goldsmith.

  She was right first time. J. S. Billington said the sign above the door. The shop sold newspapers, sweets, basic groceries. It was set in a terrace of houses much older than the new Byron Lane and Goldsmith began to feel hopeful. The birth certificate had said that Housman senior was a shopkeeper.

  He went in and the discordant jangle of the old-fashioned bell was like the splintering of time as he stepped out of the supermarket age.

  A man in his fifties came out of the shadowy rear section of the shop. He had a thin inquiring face and wore a grey cap, set jauntily on one side of his head.

  Goldsmith bought a bar of chocolate, hesitating over his choice. He had the feeling that the man recognized his hesitation for the play-acting it was, and certainly when Goldsmith finally said, ‘This place used to belong to the Housmans, didn’t it?’ his nod seemed as much an act of self-congratulation as of acquiescence.

  ‘When did they leave?’ Goldsmith asked next.

  ‘Let me see. The year the war ended,’ answered the man, setting his head on one side so that the cap was almost perpendicular.

  ‘Are ‘they still living locally?’

  ‘Well, they’re local, I suppose you could say. Just round the corner. St Columba’s.’

  These people seemed to be easily amused by death, thought Goldsmith.

  ‘There was a boy, wasn’t there?’ he said.

  ‘I think there was. Yes, I think they mentioned him. He would still be in the Army, I suppose, when I bought the place. I never went myself. Had a bad back.’

  He sounded regretful rather than apologetic.

  ‘Didn’t he come for the funeral?’

  The man laughed. Death again, thought Goldsmith.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps there was enough dead where he was. Anyway, I never saw him, then or after.’

  ‘Did the Housmans live above the shop?’

  ‘Where else would they live?’

  ‘I thought the
y once lived in Byron Lane.’

  The man whistled.

  ‘You’re going a long way back. They moved from there before the war.’

  ‘And where did they go from here?’

  ‘I told you. St Columba’s. Oh, they had some idea of taking a place on the coast Seaham way. But they both went like that. A road accident. God knows where he got the petrol! He was just sixty, I reckon; she was a bit younger.’

  He shook his head as though at some avoidable human frailty.

  Goldsmith picked up his chocolate and turned to go. This looked like another dead end. But his mind was beginning to be attuned to the special demands of detection now, and at the door he stopped and asked, ‘When you bought the place, you’d need a solicitor, I suppose. Do you remember who the Housmans’ solicitor was?’

  Oh yes. I remember that. Same as mine, one man did both jobs, money for breathing that was.’

  ‘He wouldn’t still be breathing, would he?’

  The man did not miss the irony, but was neither offended nor amused by it.

  ‘Simpson,’ he said. ‘Blackstone Road. He’ll have the silver paper off your chocolate if you don’t watch him.’

  Five minutes in Simpson’s company made Goldsmith begin to accept the truth of Billington’s assessment. Simpson was ancient, his skin leathery as a tortoise’s neck, but the eyes were bright and missed nothing. There was a young partner who it appeared did all the work. Theoretically Simpson himself had retired, Goldsmith gathered, but the lure of other people’s problems was strong.

  ‘All I do is listen, Mr Maxwell. That’s all. No paperwork, can’t stand paper-work, never could. Now I don’t have to.’

  He laughed, his face folding into creases so deep that it seemed each spasm of amusement might break through the skin to the sharp bones beneath.

  ‘Now, Mr Maxwell,’ he said finally. ‘Now, Mr Maxwell. You were saying?’

  There was something mocking in his repetition of the name. Goldsmith had decided at the last moment it was foolish to reveal his identity unnecessarily and Maxwell had once again been the first name to come to mind. It was a habit he would have to break.