The Woodcutter - Reginald Hill

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an ordinary light, amber against an uncurtained window.

      And then it turns red. It is too distant for any sound to reach inside the well-insulated car, but in that moment they see the glass dissolve and smoke and debris come streaming towards them like the fingers of a reaching hand.

      Then the mist swirls back and the man says, ‘Go.’

      Back in their apartment, the boy goes to his room and the man sits by a gently hissing gas fire, encoding his report. When it is finished, he pours himself a drink and opens his History of Alexander the Great.

      Suddenly the door opens and the boy, naked except for his brief underpants, bursts into the room.

      He says in a voice so choked with emotion he can hardly get the words out, ‘You lied to me, you fucking bastard! They were still with him, both of them, it’s on the news, it’s so fucking terrible it’s on the British news. You lied! Why?’

      The man says, ‘It had to be done tonight. Tomorrow would have been too late.’

      The boy comes nearer. The man is very aware of the young muscular body so close he can feel the heat off it.

      The boy says, ‘Why did you make me do it? You said you’d never ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do. But you tricked me. Why?’

      The man for once is not smiling. He says quietly, ‘My father once said to me, when love and grim necessity meet, there is only one winner. You probably don’t understand that now any more than I did then. But you will. In the meantime all I can say is I’m very sorry. I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I promise.’

      ‘How? How can you possibly make it up to me?’ screams the boy. ‘You’ve made me a murderer. What can you do that can ever make up for that! There’s nothing! Nothing!’

      And the man says, rather sadly, like one who pronounces a sentence rather than makes a gift, ‘I shall give you your heart’s desire.’

       BOOK ONE

       wolf and elf

       After the hunters trapped the wolf, they put him in a cage where he lay for many years, suffering grievously, till one day a curious elf, to whom iron bars were no more obstacle than the shadows of grasses on a sunlit meadow, took pity on his plight, and asked, ‘What can I bring you that will ease your pain, Wolf?’

       And the wolf replied, ‘My foes to play with.’

      Charles Underhill (tr): Folk Tales of Scandinavia

       Wolf

       i

      Once upon a time I was living happily ever after.

      That’s right. Like in a fairy tale.

      How else to describe my life up till that bright autumn morning back in 2008?

      I was the lowly woodcutter who fell in love with a beautiful princess glimpsed dancing on the castle lawn, knew she was so far above him that even his fantasies could get his head chopped off, nonetheless when three seemingly impossible tasks were set as the price of her hand in marriage threw his cap into the ring and after many perilous adventures returned triumphant to claim his heart’s desire.

      Here began the happily ever after, the precise extent of which is nowhere defined in fairy literature. In my case it lasted fourteen years.

      During this time I acquired a fortune of several millions, a private jet, residences in Holland Park, Devon, New York, Barbados and Umbria, my lovely daughter, Ginny, and a knighthood for services to commerce.

      Over the same period my wife Imogen turned from a fragrant young princess into an elegant, sophisticated woman. She ran our social life with easy efficiency, made no demands on me that I could not afford, and always had an appropriate welcome waiting in whichever of our homes I returned to after my often extensive business trips.

      Sometimes I looked at her and found it hard to understand how I could deserve such beauty, such happiness. She was my piece of perfection, my heart’s desire, and whenever the stresses and strains of my hugely active life began to make themselves felt, I just had to think of my princess to know that, whatever fate brought me, I was the most blessed of men.

      Then on that autumn day – by one of those coincidences that only a wicked fairy can contrive, our wedding anniversary – everything changed.

      At half past six in the morning we were woken in our Holland Park house by an extended ringing of the doorbell. I got up and went to the window. My first thought when I saw the police uniforms was that some joker had sent us an anniversary stripaubade. But they didn’t look as if they were about to rip off their uniforms and burst into song, and suddenly my heart contracted at the thought that something could have happened to Ginny. She was away at school – not by my choice, but when the lowly woodcutter marries the princess, there are some ancestral customs he meekly goes along with.

      Then it occurred to me they’d hardly need a whole posse of plods to convey such a message.

      Nor would they bring a bunch of press photographers and a TV crew.

      Imogen was sitting up in bed by this time. Even in these fraught circumstances I was distracted by sight of her perfect breasts.

      She said, ‘Wolf, what is it?’ in her usual calm manner.

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see.’

      She said, ‘Perhaps you should put some clothes on.’

      I grabbed my dressing gown and was still pulling it round my shoulders as I started down the stairs. I could hear voices below. Among them I recognized the Cockney accent of Mrs Roper, our housekeeper. She was crying out in protest and I saw why as I reached the half landing. She must have opened the front door and policemen were thrusting past her without ceremony. Jogging up the stairs towards me was a short fleshy man in a creased blue suit flanked by two uniformed constables.

      He came to a halt a couple of steps below me and said breathlessly, ‘Wolf Hadda? Sorry. Sir Wilfred Hadda. Detective Inspector Medler. I have a warrant to search these premises.’

      He reached up to hand me a sheet of paper. Below I could hear people moving, doors opening and shutting, Mrs Roper still protesting.

      I said, ‘What the hell’s going on?’

      His gaze went down to my crotch. His lips twitched. Then his eyes ran up my body and focused beyond me.

      He said, ‘Maybe you should make yourself decent, unless you fancy posing for Page Three.’

      I turned to see what he was looking at. Through the half-landing window overlooking the garden, I could see the old rowan tree I’d transplanted from Cumbria when I bought the house. It was incandescent with berries at this time of year, and I was incandescent with rage at the sight of a paparazzo clinging to its branches, pointing a camera at me. Even at this distance I could see the damage caused by his ascent.

      I turned back to Medler.

      ‘How did he get there? What are the press doing here anyway? Did you bring them?’

      ‘Now why on earth should I do that, sir?’ he said. ‘Maybe they just happened to be passing.’

      He didn’t even bother to try to sound convincing.

      He had an insinuating voice and one of those mouths which looks as if it’s holding back a knowing sneer. I’ve always had a short fuse. At six thirty in the morning, confronted by a bunch of heavy-handed plods tearing my home to pieces and a paparazzo

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