The Woodcutter - Reginald Hill

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surge of exhilaration. It must feel like this to start a marathon, I thought. All those months of training and now the moment was here to put your fitness to the test.

      My marathon lasted about a quarter of a mile, firstly because I was now far enough away from the court for a running man to attract attention and secondly because I was knackered. I still tried to keep reasonably fit but clearly the days when I could roam twenty miles across the Cumbrian fells without breaking sweat were long past.

      I was beginning to feel anything but exhilarated. My sense of self-congratulation at getting away was being replaced by serious self-doubt. What did I imagine I was going to do with my freedom? Head up to Poynters to see Imogen and Ginny? That would be the first place Medler would set his dogs to watch. Or was my plan to set about proving my innocence like they do all the time in the movies? I’d need professional help to do that and no legitimate investigator was going to risk his licence aiding and abetting a fugitive. OK, the promise of large sums of money might make one or two of them bend the rules a little, but only if they believed I still had easy access to large sums of money.

      And now I came to think about it, I didn’t even have access to small sums of money. In fact, I had absolutely nothing in my pockets except for Toby’s phone. I was an idiot. I should have made him hand over his wallet as well!

      My horizons had shrunk. Without money I wasn’t going anywhere I couldn’t reach on my own two feet. The obvious places to lay my hands on cash – home in Holland Park, my offices in the City – were out because they were so obvious.

      Well, as my Great Aunt Carrie was fond of saying, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. Probably saying that would get you stuck on the pointed end of a fatwa nowadays. But Carrie lived all her life in Cumberland where they knew a lot about the intractability of mountains and bugger all about the intractability of Islam.

      I took out Toby’s phone and rang Johnny Nutbrown on his mobile.

      When he answered I said, ‘Johnny, it’s me. Meet me in twenty minutes at the Black Widow.’

      I thought I was being clever when I said that. No reason why anybody should be listening in to Johnny, but even if they were, unless the Met was recruiting Smart Young Things, even less reason for them to know this was how habitués referred to The Victoria pub in Chelsea. Not that I was ever a Smart Young Thing, but Johnny had taken me there once and been greeted as an old chum by the swarming Dysons, i.e. vacuums so empty they don’t even contain a bag. I’d committed the place to my memory as somewhere I’d no intention of visiting again.

      Circumstances change cases. It’s being nimble on your feet that keeps you ahead of the game in business and in life.

      I soon realized that I was going to need to be exceedingly nimble on my feet if I was going to make the Widow in twenty minutes. Being chauffeured around in an S-class Merc tends to make you insensitive to distances. Might have done it if I’d started running again but neither my legs nor my need for discretion permitted that. Not that it mattered. Johnny would wait. In fact, come to think of it, he too would be hard pushed to make it through the lunchtime traffic in much under half an hour.

      I took thirty-five minutes. As I entered the crowded bar my first thought was that we were going to have to find somewhere a lot quieter to have a chat. I couldn’t see Johnny. At six feet seven, he was usually pretty easy to spot, even in a crowd, but I pushed a little further into the room just to make sure.

      No sign, but I did notice a man at the bar, not because he was tall, though he was; nor because he had the kind of face that defies you to make it smile, though he did. No, it was just that somehow he looked out of place. That is, he looked like an ordinary guy who’d just dropped in for a quick half in his lunch break. Except that this was the kind of bar that ordinary guys in search of a quick half reversed out of at speed. He was raising a bottle of Pils to his mouth. As he did so his gaze met mine for a moment and registered…something. Maybe he’d just realized how much he’d had to pay for the Pils. He drank, lowered his head, and I saw his lips move. Nowadays everyone knows what men speaking into their lapels are doing.

      I didn’t turn back to the main door. If I’d got it right, the guys he was talking to would be coming in through there pretty quickly. Instead I followed a sign reading Toilets and found myself in a deadend corridor. I peered into the Gents. Windowless. I pushed open the door of the Ladies. That looked better. A frosted-glass pane about eighteen inches square. There was a bin for the receipt of towels. I stood on it and examined the catch. It didn’t look as if it had been opened in years and the frame was firmly painted in place. I stepped down, picked up the bin and hit the glass hard. Cheap stuff, it shattered easily. Behind me I heard a door open. I swung round but it was only a woman coming out of one of the cubicles. I’ll say this for the Dysons, they don’t do swoons or hysterics.

      She said, ‘About time they aired this place out.’

      I rattled the bin around the frame to dislodge the residual shards, put the bin on the floor once more, stood on it and launched myself through the window. As I did so, I heard another door open and male voices shouting.

      I felt my trousers tear, then my leg, so my clear-up technique hadn’t been all that successful. I hit the ground awkwardly, doing something to my shoulder. I was dazed but able to see that I was in a narrow alley. One way it ran into a brick wall, the other on to a busy street. I staggered towards the street.

      Behind me, voices. Ahead, a crowded pavement. I could vanish into the crowd, I told myself. I glanced back. Two men coming very quick. I commanded my legs to move faster and the old in-your-face-abrasive technique worked.

      I erupted on to the pavement at a fair rate of knots, decided that turning left or right would slow me down, so kept on going.

      The thing about London buses is you can wait forever when you want one in a hurry, but if you don’t want one…

      I saw it coming, even saw the driver’s shocked face, almost saw the number…

      Then I saw no more.

       Elf

       i

      ‘It’s…interesting,’ said Alva Ozigbo cautiously.

      Wolf Hadda smiled. It was like a pale ray of winter sunshine momentarily touching a dark mountain. In all the months she’d been treating him, this was only the second time she’d seen his smile, but even this limited observation had hinted at its power to distract attention from the sinister sunglasses and the corrugated scars, inviting you instead to relate to the still charming man beneath.

      Charm was perhaps the most potent weapon a pederast could possess.

      But it was a weapon Hadda could hardly be conscious of possessing or surely he would have brought it out before now to reinforce his lies?

      He said, ‘I remember interesting. That’s the word they use out there to describe things they don’t understand, don’t approve of, or don’t like, without appearing ignorant, judgmental or lacking in taste.’

      She noted the intensity of out there.

      She said, ‘In here I use it to describe things I find interesting.’

      They sat and looked at each other across the narrow table for a while. At least she presumed he was looking at her; his wrap-around glasses made it difficult to be certain. She could see herself reflected in the mirrored lenses, a narrow ebon face, its colouring inherited from her Nigerian father, its bone structure from her Swedish mother. Also her hair, straight and pale as bone. Many people assumed it was a wig, worn for effect. She was dressed in black jeans and a white short-sleeved sweater that neither obscured nor drew attention to her breasts. Don’t be provocative in your dress, the Director had advised her when she started the job. But no point in over-compensating. If you turned up in a burka, they’d still mentally undress you.

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