REGINALD HILL
THE LONG KILL

Copyright

Harper HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Methuen 1986 under the author’s pseudonym Patrick Ruell

Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1986

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

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Source ISBN: 9780007334841

EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007389186

Version: 2015-09-17

Epigraph

I was a fell destroyer …

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds

Of undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Jaysmith was a firm advocate of the cerebral approach.

He always shot at the head.

The head he was shooting at this bright autumn morning was a noble one even when viewed through an Adjustable Ranging Telescope at 1,250 metres. An aureole of near-white hair surrounded a tanned leathery face in which the crinkles of humour seemed at least to equal the furrows of care. It was the head of an ageing man, seventy at a guess, who must surely now be reckoning that he was going to be allowed to slip naturally from life in the fullness of his years. Another minute would teach him the error of such confidence, and also the error of whatever lust for power, pleasure, or political change, had put him at the end of Jaysmith’s rifle.

Still, there were worse ways to die than suddenly, in your garden, looking across the peaceful fields of St-John’s-in-the-Vale to the swell of the eastern fells, drinking a cup of coffee and feeling the warmth of a September sun on your November skin.

The old man lit another Caporal. He was practically a chain smoker. This, thought Jaysmith, was the last link in his chain. He began to make his final checks.

He had worked out five possible lines of fire on the OS 1:25,000 sheet before leaving London. Two of them he had discarded on his first slow drive along the valley the previous Sunday. Two more had failed his strict on-the-ground examination. The last was the longest, but that didn’t bother him. He preferred the long kill, the longer the better. And with his equipment, his meticulous preparation and, above all, his accuracy, distance had never posed any difficulty. That was why he was the best.

He had till Sunday morning to make the target. It was only Thursday now, but there was no reason to delay. In fact, with the weather so perfect there was every reason to go ahead. He stretched his muscles systematically and began to quarter the ground below him with his Zeiss binoculars.

He was squatting on a lichened rock in a steep gill cutting down a rocky outcrop which his map told him was called Wanthwaite Crags. Eight hundred feet above him was the fell summit called Clough Head. Fears that the fine weather would crowd it with walkers had proved unfounded. It was clearly not a fashionable top. He had checked all possible approaches from the east, south and north before descending. The only signs of life had been the nodding head of a grazing sheep and the slow flap of a raven’s wings. Now he looked westward. A car moved slowly along the valley road. A tractor buzzed purposefully across a stubble field half a mile away. Nothing else. In any case, even in this stillness the Sionics Noise Suppressor on his M21 would scatter the sound of his shot untraceably.

He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. St John’s Beck winding through the valley below was a ribbon of glass. The trees in the garden of the house called Naddle Foot were still as a painting. The moment was perfect.

He squeezed the trigger.

The bullet missed. It passed close enough to the old man’s ear for him to flap his Caporal at a buzzing fly. Then it buried itself deep in the rich earth of the upper level of the tiered garden.

Jaysmith sat utterly still. There were many possible explanations. A gust of wind along the channel of the beck; a slight change of atmospheric pressure; an imperfection in the bullet; at this range any one of these could translate itself into several inches at journey’s end.

Yes, there were many possible explanations. But only one cause.

Gently he massaged his temples and blinked his right eye rapidly a couple of times. It focused perfectly on the M21 as he began to dismantle it with practised ease. But perfect focusing for a job he could have done in pitch blackness was not enough. There was a weakness there. He had suspected it two targets ago when he had shot the Austrian. And last time out he had been almost certain. It had been a perfect shot in the eyes of the world. Only Jaysmith knew that as he squeezed the trigger, the Chinaman had raised his teacup and bowed his head into the path of the bullet.

Two weeks ago he had paid a Harley Street optician an exorbitant fee to put a clinical label on it. It was not a condition which could be in the least detrimental to any normal activity, the man had assured him. He should have retired then, at once, without thought. But this target had already come up, unusually soon after the Chinaman, and marked ultra-urgent. Something had made him reluctant to refuse it. Loyalty to Jacob, perhaps. Or professional pride. Professional pride! Amateurish stupidity was what Jacob would call it.

He packed the sections of the dismantled rifle in the internal pouches of his specially constructed rucksack. Now he was just a fellwalker again. With athletic ease he climbed up the steep gully to the top of the crags. Here he paused and glanced back across the valley. Without the A.R.T. the house was just a dark red monopoly token set on green baize. The reprieved man in the garden was completely invisible. He didn’t even know his name. Jacob never provided more than was necessary for a target. In this case it had been a head-and-shoulders photograph of the man, the OS sheet NY 32 with the house called Naddle Foot ringed in red, and a deadline.

Plus of course an order for twenty-five thousand pounds paid into his Zurich account.

That would have to be returned. A pity; but there was plenty left for his retirement.

Retirement! At forty-three. Statistically he had just become another unit in the unemployment figures.

The thought amused him and he let out a snort of spontaneous laughter that would have surprised the few people who knew him at the middle distance which was as close as he ever permitted. But there was no one here to take notice except the grazing sheep and the indifferent raven.

His long economical stride took him swiftly across the sun-blanched grass of the shallow saddle between Clough Head and Calfhow Pike. Now he followed the tumbling path of a long beck, a strange exhilaration making him take the descent faster than was really safe, and by the time he reached the old coach road which runs from St-John’s-in-the-Vale across to the next valley of Matterdale, he was panting as much from this inexplicable excitement as the exertion. Slowing to a more sedate but still deceptively fast pace, he moved eastwards along the old coach road to where he’d left his BMW parked outside the village of Dockray.

Even at his rapid pace, and mostly downhill, it was still over an hour since he had aborted the target. Normally he preferred more rapid access to his car, but in this case his best protection after the event had been to blend into the landscape as an ordinary walker. Now there was no event to be after. For all that it was still with some relief that he dropped the rucksack into the hidden compartment beneath a false panel in the BMW’S boot. An identical rucksack containing conventional walking gear lay in the boot. These isolated country areas were full of sharp eyes. And ears too.

He had a phone call to make and he decided to make it from the nearby village instead of waiting till he got back to his hotel. Security apart, he felt eager to get it over with. It was the first admission of failure he had ever made. The best that could be said for him was that he had made his error with time to spare and he had not alerted the target. But it was not just his sense of responsibility which urged him to haste. He was suddenly afraid that if he waited till he got back to the hotel, he might put off the moment even further. And that after a bottle of wine and a good meal, he might persuade himself it had been a trick of the wind after all.

He went into the public phone box and dialled a London number. A woman’s voice answered, bright and breezy.

‘Hello there! Enid here. Jacob and I are out just now but we’ll be back soon. Leave your message after the tone and we’ll be in touch as soon as ever we can. ’Bye!’

He waited then said, ‘Jaysmith. Tell Jacob I can’t make the deal. There’ll be a refund, of course.’

He contemplated adding, ‘Less expenses,’ but dismissed the idea as a small, unnecessary meanness. Let the parting be complete and painless.

Gently he replaced the receiver and stepped out into the golden September air. He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. It tasted marvellous. For the first time in twenty years he felt totally relaxed and free.

Chapter 2

The dangers of Jaysmith’s new sense of relaxation became apparent when he entered the hotel bar for a pre-dinner drink that evening.

‘Evening, Mr Hutton. Any luck today?’ called Philip Parker, the Crag Hotel’s owner-manager, and it took Jaysmith a moment that could have been significant to a practised observer to react to the name.

Pseudonyms and cover stories might now be totally irrelevant but they could not just be shed at will. At the Crag he was William Hutton, businessman; and in conversation with Parker he had let it slip that, as well as the fellwalking, he was on the lookout for a house or cottage to purchase. It was those sharp country eyes again; he wanted an excuse to be seen anywhere, walking or driving, during his stay.

‘No,’ he said, slipping onto a bar stool and accepting the dry sherry which Parker poured him. ‘No luck at all. But I enjoyed my walk.’

‘Oh good. The weather’s marvellous, isn’t it? Excuse me.’

Parker went off to the side hatch of the bar where one of the girls from the dining room was waiting with a drinks order. Parker’s quietly efficient wife, Doris, looked after the kitchen and dining room, while he exuded bonhomie in the bar and at reception. He was a rotund, breezy man in his early fifties, a redundant sales executive who’d sunk his severance money into the small hotel five years earlier and, as he was willing to explain to anyone willing to listen, had not yet seen any cause to regret it. In fact his enthusiasm for the Lake District was so evangelical that Jaysmith had soon regretted the intended subtlety of his cover story. From the start, Parker had taken an embarrassingly close interest in his alleged house-hunting and now, the dining room order dealt with, he returned to the topic.

‘So no luck then,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Jaysmith. ‘The market seems pretty dead. In fact, with the weekend coming up, I think I’ve exhausted all the possibilities, so I’ll check out tomorrow.’

Parker looked so taken aback that Jaysmith felt constrained to add, ‘I’ll pay for tomorrow night, of course.’

He had booked in till Saturday. If he’d made his target he’d have stayed the full week in order not to excite comment, but now there was no point.

‘Oh no, it’s not that,’ said Parker, slightly indignant. ‘It’s just that I heard today that there’s likely to be just the house you’re looking for coming on the market in the next couple of days. It’s called Rigg Cottage and it’s just outside the village, up the bank on the road towards Loughrigg. It belongs to an old lady called Miss Wilson who’s finding the long haul up the hill more and more difficult. Also it’s really too big for her with the garden and all. So she’s thinking of moving down into the village. There’s an old cottage become vacant. Semi-detached and her best friend occupies the next-door cottage. Actually the vacant one belonged to Miss Craik, another old friend, who died a couple of weeks back and the family had always promised to give Miss Wilson first refusal.’

He paused for breath and Jaysmith regarded him quizzically.

‘Your channels of information must be first-rate, Mr Parker,’ he said with hint of mockery.

Parker grinned and glanced conspiratorially towards the dining room. Lowering his voice he said, ‘To tell the truth, it’s Doris who told me all this. She’s quite chummy with Mrs Blacklock, the old lady in the other semi, and she passed it on, in strict confidence, of course. Like I’m doing to you.’

‘Of course,’ said Jaysmith.

‘Which is why there’s nothing to be done till Miss Wilson makes up her mind. But when she does, if I know her, she’ll want everything settled in five minutes which is why it’s a pity you’ll not be on the spot.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Jaysmith, exuding regret as he moved fully into his William Hutton role. ‘A real pity.’

At dinner, he ordered a full bottle of Chablis instead of his usual half and settled to a mellow contemplation of the limitless joys of retirement.

O what a world of profit and delight … the words drifted into his mind and he sought their source. It wasn’t altogether apt. They were from Marlow’s Dr Faustus whose world of profit and delight had been purchased by selling his soul. Or perhaps the words were too apt. He pushed that thought away and concentrated on working out why he should know the quotation. Oriental Languages had been his subject, not English literature, but now he recalled that he’d once acted in the play at university; or rather not himself, but that incredibly, hazily distant young man whose name was now as vague as all those he had since inscribed on hotel registers in his career as Jaysmith. And he hadn’t been Faustus either. An ostler, that’s what he’d been. A grasping gull made a fool of by magic.

Shaking the memory away, he returned to the future. He could go anywhere, do anything. Tomorrow, back to his London flat. Next, the Continent. Italy to start with; a villa in Tuscany till autumn died. Then on to the Med, Greece, North Africa, always south, keeping abreast of the retreating sun.

The prospect filled him with surprisingly little enthusiasm. It was odd, like looking at a beautiful, naked and available woman without feeling excited.

‘Everything all right, Mr Hutton?’ said Parker, doing his end-of-dinner mine-host round.

‘Fine,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Sit down and have a drop of Chablis.’

‘That’s kind.’

He filled a glass for the hotel owner and emptied the remaining drops into his own. He realized with amused interest another effect of his new relaxed state. A couple of sherries and the best part of a bottle of wine had left him feeling slightly drunk.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘When you were made redundant, did you know at once what you wanted to do?’

‘Far from it, old boy,’ replied Parker, delighted to be invited to explore a favourite topic. ‘Best thing that ever happened to me, I see it now. But at the time, I was simply shattered.’

‘And you’d never thought of living up here and running a hotel?’

‘Never.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I more or less sat with my head in my hands for three or four weeks, then one morning I got up and knew what I was going to do.’

‘You knew that you were going to buy a hotel in the Lake District?’

‘Not exactly. But I knew I was never going to work for anyone but myself again. I was absolutely certain about that!’

Jaysmith felt let down. Hoping for some sort of dramatic revelation, instead he was hearing about a conventional revolt against the boss–servant relationship.

Nevertheless the idea of taking time to adjust, of letting things ripen at their own speed, was not without its appeal. But where to let the ripening process take place? Not London, that was certain. Whatever residual pressures might remain from his old life were centred on London.

The answer was absurdly obvious but he did not reach it by any kind of open-cast logic. Instead, after a couple of soporific brandies in the bar, he heard himself saying to Parker, ‘I’ve been thinking. There’s really no desperate need for me to be off in the morning. In fact, if that old lady’s not going to make up her mind for a few days, I can easily hang on into next week, if my room’s going to be vacant, that is.’

Parker smiled with triumphant delight.

‘We’ll be glad to have you,’ he said fulsomely.

Jaysmith did not return the smile. Faintly surprised, he was still trying to work out whose voice he had just heard speaking. It wasn’t Jaysmith’s, certainly. And it hadn’t even sounded like William Hutton’s.

No, it had been both more familiar and more distant, like the voice of a dead loved one conjured up by a medium at a seance. And then it came to him that in some odd, ghostly fashion, the voice he had heard belonged to that naively hopeful, irretrievably remote young man who had once played the foolish ostler in Dr Faustus.

Chapter 3

Summer was dying like a lady this year. Leaves flushed gently from olive to ochre with no savage assault of gale to rip them down; bracken singed at the edges and heather burned purple with no landscape-blackening downpour to dampen the glow. The locals assured Jaysmith, not without nostalgic pride, that it was not always thus.

Jaysmith took their word for it. Though he had presented William Hutton as a long-time lover of the Lake District, his only real previous acquaintance had been as a small boy on a day trip to Windermere with his mother and stepfather, who had stared indifferently at the mountains and lake, explored the souvenir shops, eaten ice cream and fish and chips, and left him in the coach with a packet of crisps at each of the many pub-stops on the sixty-mile journey back to Blackburn in Lancashire.

His mother had died when he was fifteen. His stepfather, to do him credit, had supported him through the loss and the next couple of years at school till he got the exam results needed to take him to university. But first had come National Service. After basic training he had been posted to Hong Kong. He went home on embarkation leave, and the night before his departure his stepfather had told him apologetically but firmly that his stepbrother, four years his senior, was getting married and coming to live in the family home. His wife-to-be was pregnant. The strains this would put on the limited accommodation made it sensible for him to think from now on of making arrangements to look after himself.

He had never been back to Blackburn since that day.

His first taste of the East had brought balm to his pain. From the very moment its first rich warm exotic scents came drifting over the sea, he was fascinated. He had been planning to read French and German at university, but within a couple of months of reaching Hong Kong, he was writing to ask if he could transfer courses to the School of Oriental Languages. The facility with which he learned Chinese made him a highly valued member of his unit, but it was another talent which the Army spotted and nurtured that won him all those privileges and comforts a regiment bestows on those that bring it honour. He turned out to be a natural marksman capable of winning trophies at the highest level, and thus rapidly promoted to sergeant, well out of the way of any parades, fatigues or guard duties which might dull his eye.

For his part, he enjoyed his unsuspected excellence, and even let his enjoyment spill over into civilian life, becoming a prominent member of his university shooting team. But he never dreamt that this was a talent with any commercial value. It had taken fate at its most unpredictably tragic to nudge him onto that path.

And now it had taken a fractional weakening of the right eye to nudge him off it.

For the next three days he put past and future out of his mind and set out to turn his pretended intimacy with the fells into fact. A need to be fit and the demands of his job had taken him into some of the roughest terrain in the world. He was expert both practically and with maps. But hitherto his expertise had been focused on one thing only – the job in hand. Landscape to him was considered solely in terms of best approach, best hide, best line of fire, best escape. Here in the Lake District for the first time in two decades he went exploring simply in search of delight. He did not have far to seek. Eschewing guide books in his desire for personal discovery, he spent the days in long high walks, armed only with map and compass. Any feeling of condescension for this somewhat narrow area of rather lowly mountains soon disappeared. The physical demands were great; he never had to look far for the exhilaration of danger; and whether he was standing windblown on the bald head of Gable with the stark wildness of Wasdale stretching below, or descending from the gentle swell of Silver Howe in the gathering dusk towards the sun-gilt shield of Grasmere which at the end of a long day felt very like home, he was ravished by the sheer beauty of it all.

Small the Lake District might be, but three days’ exploration was scarcely enough to scratch the surface of its great variety and when Parker greeted him on Sunday evening with the excited news, ‘She’s made up her mind! Miss Wilson. She’s definitely going. I can arrange for you to see Rigg Cottage tomorrow!’ Jaysmith felt surprisingly put out.

He had what looked like a perfectly splendid walk mapped out for Monday and it was most irritating to be forced to postpone it for what was now an unnecessary piece of role-playing.

Doris Parker who was standing alongside her husband sensed his hesitation. She was a pleasant, calm, down-to-earth woman who was used to coping with her husband’s enthusiasms.

‘Don’t take any notice of Philip’s hard sell, Mr Hutton,’ she said. ‘There’s not need to look at Rigg Cottage unless and until you want to. I only heard at church tonight that Miss Wilson is definitely selling.’

‘But the whole point is for Mr Hutton to get in quick before it comes on the open market,’ protested Parker.

‘It might be worthwhile,’ conceded his wife. ‘She’ll certainly not be happy about paying an agent’s commission. But it’s up to Mr Hutton if he wants to see it, dear.’

Her broad-set grey eyes fixed speculatively on Jaysmith and he smiled at her and said, ‘Of course I’d like to, if you can arrange it. I’m really very grateful.’

Triumphantly Parker went to the telephone and returned a few minutes later with the news that eleven o’clock the following morning would suit Miss Wilson very well.

Jaysmith nodded his agreement. He’d have preferred to get the tedious business out of the way even sooner, but at least he would have the whole afternoon for the mountains. In any case, he could stay as long as he liked. The mountains weren’t going anywhere without him!

The next morning he used his unexpected post-breakfast period of non-activity to read the newspapers in detail. There was no reference to any violent death in St-John’s-in-the-Vale and there had been nothing on the local TV and radio news either. Presumably Jacob had not been able to make new arrangements before the deadline elapsed. That would not please him.

He put the thought out of his mind and drove up the winding road out of the village to keep his appointment.

Miss Wilson was curiously almost exactly as he had pictured her. Anything between seventy and ninety, she had snow-white hair and clear blue eyes in a cider-apple face. But any impression of gentle cosiness was soon dissipated. She carried her five feet three inches as straight as a guardsman, albeit with some help from a stick, and when she spoke it was in a clipped, brusque, no-nonsense tone.

‘I’d not be moving from here if it wasn’t for this leg,’ she informed him sternly, as if he had hinted suspicion of some less creditable motive. ‘Now the place is getting too big for me, the garden’s taking over, and the hill’s too steep. Not that I can’t climb it, but it takes me twice as long as it once did, and me mind’s back here already doing me jobs while me body’s still halfway up the bank, and there’s nowt so ageing as always letting your mind race on ahead of itself.’

Politely Jaysmith agreed, which seemed to surprise her, not because she anticipated disagreement but because she could see no need for a mere man to affirm that she spoke plain truth.

She proved remarkably unsentimental about Rigg Cottage and talked about it as if it were already settled that he would buy.

‘The sitting room fire smokes in an east wind,’ she said. ‘I’ve been meaning to get it fixed these thirty years. That’ll be your job now.’

She sounded almost gleeful.

It occurred to Jaysmith that this was a house whose faults could be freely pointed out because its more than compensatory attractions advertised themselves. Built of grey-green Lakeland slate, it stood foursquare to the east, as simple and appealing as a child’s drawing. The sloping garden which overlooked the lake was full of shrubs, mainly rhododendrons and azaleas whose blossom in June, Miss Wilson proudly and poetically assured him, burned like a bonfire. Now, however, the colours of autumn were beginning to glow, with Michaelmas daisies challenging the turning leaves to match their rich orange, while mountain ash and pyracantha were pearled with red berries which the blackbirds would soon devour.

It also occurred to him that if he really were looking for a house in the Lake District, this might very well be the kind of house he was looking for.

A thought stirred in his mind.

Why not?

He dismissed it instantly. It was once again the voice of that forgotten young man who played the ostler twenty-odd years ago. Jaysmith, however, knew the dangers of sentiment and impulse. It was one thing to decide on the spur of the moment to treat himself to an extra week in the Lake District, quite another to invest a large sum of money and, by implication, a large piece of his life here.

William Hutton, holiday-maker and property-seeker, would have to speak soon. Miss Wilson had shown him the outside first, as if reluctant to miss any moment of this glorious autumn morning. Now they moved indoors, and all was exactly as it should be, the right old furniture in rooms of the right dimensions, with just enough of light coming through the leaded windows and just enough of heat coming from the small fire in the huge grate.

‘Old bones need a fire almost all the year round,’ she said, seeing his glance. ‘That’s what we started with, that’s what we end with.’

Curiously he had no difficulty in understanding this enigmatic statement. Man’s move away from the beast was emblematized by a group crouching around a fire. And Jaysmith had felt the need of that fire in many a long cold hour spent in patient, motionless waiting.

The door bell rang. Miss Wilson left him and returned a moment later with another woman whom, with that tendency to instant mini-biography he had already noted in denizens of the area, she introduced as her niece, Annie Wilson, a widow, who lived out Keswick way, just back from her holidays and come for lunch.

Jaysmith was presented in similar terms with all of William Hutton’s known and assumed background and purposes spelt out. He guessed that Parker had been rigorously cross-examined.

The newcomer shook his hand. He put her age as early to mid-thirties. She had a long, narrow, not unpleasantly vulpine face, with a sallow complexion, watchful brown eyes and thin nose, slightly upturned, giving the impression that her nostrils were flared to catch the scent of danger. She was dressed in gloomy autumn colours, dark brown slacks and a russet shirt, with her long brown hair pulled back severely from her brow and held back with a casually knotted red ribbon. Her body was lean and rangy and she moved with athletic ease.

Jaysmith felt she regarded him with considerable suspicion. Its cause soon emerged.

‘You’re selling Rigg Cottage!’ she exclaimed to her aunt.

‘That’s right. I’ve talked about it often enough.’

‘I know, but it’s so sudden. Didn’t you discuss it with anyone? With pappy or Granddad Wilson?’

‘No I didn’t,’ said Miss Wilson tartly. ‘As you well know, else your father would have told you when you got back and James would have told you when you were staying with him. I’ve always made up me own mind and always will, so there’s an end to it. Now tell me about you and young Jimmy. When’s he coming to see me? I thought he might come with you today.’

Annie Wilson laughed and suddenly a decade was wiped off her face. Jaysmith watched, fascinated by the transformation.

‘He started back at school today, auntie. He’ll be round next Sunday as usual, I promise you.’

‘Just see he is,’ grumbled the old lady. ‘He could have been here yesterday if you’d got back earlier. It’s not right leaving it till the day before school starts. Too much of a rush.’

‘Granddad Wilson wanted us to stay as long as possible,’ said the young woman. ‘He doesn’t see much of Jimmy.’

‘Then he should get himself up here more often,’ retorted Miss Wilson. ‘The wedding, the christening and the funeral, that’s been about the strength of it these past few years.’

Annie Wilson’s face lost its animation and the ten years came back with whatever was causing the pain visible in the depths of her eyes.

‘Jimmy bought you a present in London,’ she said abruptly. ‘He asked me to give it to you.’

She handed over a packet in gaily coloured wrapping paper.

Miss Wilson said, ‘I’ll look at it later. I’ve got to show Mr Hutton upstairs yet.’

‘I’ll show him,’ offered the younger woman. ‘You sit down and open your present.’

For a second the old woman looked doubtful, then she agreed. Jaysmith guessed that despite her independence, she might value her niece’s opinion of him as a prospective buyer, and he guessed also that Annie Wilson wanted a chance to check him out for herself.

He played William Hutton to the best of his ability as she showed him round the bedrooms, enthusing over the view from the main bedroom window. It looked out over the valley, across the lake to Town End with the great swell of Seat Sandal looming behind.

‘Yes it’s hard to beat anywhere in the world,’ she said. ‘Have you set your heart on Grasmere, Mr Hutton, or will anywhere in the Lakes do?’

He almost admitted that his knowledge of the area was limited to what he’d been able to garner in the past three days, but this would have sounded very strange from William Hutton, prospective resident and eager house-hunter.

‘I love it all,’ he said expansively. ‘But Grasmere best of all.’

‘And you walk, of course?’

He gestured towards the eastern heights.

‘It’s the only way to get up there, isn’t it?’

She nodded, and suddenly thirsty for more of her approval, he went on, ‘I wouldn’t like to count the happy hours and the glorious miles I’ve passed on the tops.’

Which was quite true, he told himself ironically. The reward for his boast was to make her laugh and shed those years once more.

‘You’re as keen as that, are you?’ she said, gently mocking his grandiloquence. ‘You’ll be telling me you’re Wainwright next.’

He didn’t know if he succeeded in not registering his shock. Wainwright was a cover name he’d used on the Austrian job. How the hell did this woman know …? Then it came to him that, of course, she didn’t. The name had some significance he didn’t grasp, that was all.

He smiled and said lightly, ‘Just plain William Hutton. Is this the last bedroom?’

She nodded, her face losing its rejuvenating lines of laughter and settling to the stillness of a mountain tarn, momentarily disturbed by a breeze. He wondered if she’d noticed something odd in his reaction after all. But when she opened the bedroom door and motioned him in, something about her stillness focused his attention on the room itself. It was small with a single bed and a south-facing casement window with a copper beech almost rubbing against the glass. On the walls hung several photographs of what he saw were early climbing groups, young men, often moustachioed and bearded, garlanded with ropes and wearing broad-rimmed hats and long laced-up boots, standing with the rigid insouciance required by early cameramen. The background hills were unmistakable. Even his limited acquaintance enabled him to recognize the neanderthal brow of Scafell and the broad, nippled swell of Scafell Pike. The pictures apart, there was no sense of the personality of the occupier of this room, or indeed any signs of recent occupation. But twenty years of nervous living had honed his sensitivity to atmosphere and suddenly he heard himself saying, ‘Your aunt brought up your husband, didn’t she?’

She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘Why? What has she said?’

‘Nothing,’ he assured her. ‘She said nothing. I just got the feeling that once this had been his room, that’s all.’

Now there was anger alongside the surprise and all her initial distrust was back in her eyes.

‘What are you, Mr Hutton?’ she demanded. ‘Some kind of policeman keeping his hand in on holiday?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to be offensive. I just …’

But she was walking away.

‘That’s all up here, Mr Hutton,’ she said coldly. ‘We’d better get back downstairs to my aunt. She’ll be wanting to get lunch ready. I hope you’re as quick with decisions as deductions.’

He was very angry with himself. The remark had just slipped out and Jaysmith was not accustomed to anything but complete self-control.

Miss Wilson was holding a small pot replica of Big Ben in her lap.

‘Tell Jimmy it’s very nice, dear,’ she said. ‘Now, Mr Hutton, what do you think?’

He hesitated. When he’d arrived, he’d had it all worked out. A delightful house, but not quite what I was looking for. But now this formula would cut him off from Miss Wilson and her niece for ever. That was something he discovered he didn’t want to do, at least not without a chance for further thought.

He said, ‘Would it be possible to come back this afternoon? It’s hard to take everything in at a single viewing. You can often get mistaken impressions at a single encounter, can’t you?’

He glanced at Annie Wilson as he spoke, but got nothing in return.

Miss Wilson regarded him thoughtfully, then turned to her niece.

‘Well, I daresay we can put up with you trampling round again, can’t we, Annie? But give us time to enjoy our lunch. Three o’clock, let’s say.’

‘Fine,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Three o’clock.’

The old lady showed him out, Annie Wilson having disappeared with a perfunctory farewell into the kitchen.

‘One thing,’ said Miss Wilson on the doorstep. ‘You’ve not asked me price, young man. It may be too high for you.’

He rather liked her directness. It also occurred to him that he would rather like her good opinion.

He said, ‘If you really think of me as a young man, Miss Wilson, then I’ll be happy to accept any estimate of the house’s value based on the same principle.’

A sunbeam of amusement warmed the old face. Then she closed the door. There was a little red Fiat in the drive, presumably belonging to Annie Wilson. Carefully he backed the BMW past it and drove down the hill to the Crag Hotel.

Chapter 4

Jaysmith ate a snack lunch in the hotel bar and told the openly curious Parker that he had liked Rigg Cottage, but needed a second look.

‘Quite right, old boy,’ said Parker. ‘Never rush into these things. On the other hand, don’t hang about either. There is a tide and all that.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Jaysmith, finishing his beer. ‘By the way, who is Wainwright?’

‘Wainwright? You mean the walking chappie?’

‘Probably.’

Parker was regarding him with considerable surprise.

‘How odd,’ he said.

‘Odd?’

‘That someone as keen on the Lakes as you hasn’t heard of Wainwright! He’s the author of probably the best-known series of walkers’ guides ever written. You must be pulling my leg, Mr Hutton. Every second person you meet on the fells is clutching the relevant volume of Wainwright!’

‘Of course, I know the books you mean,’ lied Jaysmith. ‘Me, I’ve always managed very well with the OS maps.’

He left the hotel a few minutes later and strolled through the sun-hazed village to a bookshop he had noticed on a corner. There he found shelves packed full of the Wainwright guide books. He bought Book Three, entitled The Central Fells, which included much of the terrain around Grasmere. A glance through it explained its popularity: detailed routes, pleasing illustrations, lively text; there was possibly something here even for the man who lived by map and compass.

It was after two-thirty. Slipping the book into his pocket, he set out to walk up the hill to Rigg Cottage. It was a good distance and a steepish incline and he found himself admiring the old lady for having stayed on so long.

At the house he was relieved to see the little Fiat still in place, but there was no sign of Annie Wilson as Miss Wilson showed him round the ground floor once again.

‘Has your niece gone?’ he asked casually.

‘No, she’s out in the garden.’

‘You mentioned a boy, Jimmy. Are there any other children?’

‘You’ve got sharp ears and a long nose, young man,’ said Miss Wilson reprovingly.

‘If I’m going to become an inhabitant, I need to adapt to local customs,’ smiled Jaysmith.

His impudence paid off.

‘No, just the one,’ said the old lady abruptly. ‘They’d been married barely seven years when Edward died. It was just before Christmas last year.’

Nine months and still grieving. Grief could last forever unless life wrenched you out of its course. And even then you could not be certain if you were really living or just escaping.

‘You look around upstairs by yourself,’ instructed Miss Wilson. ‘I don’t bother with the stairs unless I have to.’

He spotted the younger woman from the window of the room with the mountaineering pictures. She was reclining in a deck chair at the bottom of the garden with her feet up on an ornamental wall, her eyes closed against the slanting sun. He stood for a while, watching, till she shifted slightly. Suddenly fearful she might glance up and see him at this particular window, he turned away and went downstairs.

‘Well?’ said Miss Wilson. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘We haven’t talked about a price,’ delayed Jaysmith.

‘I thought you said you’d leave that to me,’ she replied, her lips crinkling. ‘Well here’s what the agent reckoned he’d advertise it for if I put it with him, which I’m going to do tomorrow if it’s not sold today.’

She mentioned a figure. It was hefty, but, from the little bit of expertise Jaysmith had had to gather to keep up his end in conversations with Phil Parker, it seemed reasonable.

Miss Wilson added, ‘But for the pleasure of not paying an agent’s fee and not having hordes of strangers and more than a few nosey local devils tramping around the place, I’d knock a thousand off that, Mr Hutton.’

He scratched his chin and whistled softly.

‘That’s very generous of you,’ he said. ‘Very generous.’

He hoped that Annie Wilson would materialize at some point to show a protective interest in her aunt. But he saw now that the old lady would not take kindly to being protected and that the niece would remain determinedly absent till negotiations were concluded.

And if the conclusion were no sale, he would be politely shown the door and his chance would have been missed.

His chance for what? He wasn’t quite sure, but Parker’s words rang in his ears … there is a tide in the affairs of men …

He said, ‘On the other hand, I rather feel that for a cash sale, no property chain to worry about, no pressure to complete, or delay when you are ready either, all this guaranteed, you might come down a little lower.’

‘How much lower did you have in mind, Mr Hutton?’

‘Oh, another couple of thousand, I’d have thought.’

She looked outraged but he also saw behind the outrage what he had already guessed at – the haggler’s spirit burning bright.

They went at it hard for another fifteen minutes.

‘I’ll need to go out and talk to Annie,’ she said at one point.

She was gone a couple of minutes only. Shortly after she returned they settled for a reduction of the agent’s price by fifteen hundred pounds.

She offered her hand. He took it. Her grip was firm and warm.

‘That’s settled then. You’ll have a drink. Come into the garden.’

He followed her out. Another deck chair had appeared alongside Annie’s.

‘It’ll be whisky to seal a bargain,’ said Miss Wilson, returning to the house. ‘Sit down.’

She went back inside. Annie opened her eyes.

‘You’ve bought it then,’ she said neutrally.

‘It is irresistible,’ he said.

‘Did you knock her down?’

‘Only as far as she had decided to go. Probably not as far as that,’ he said ruefully. ‘I think she was very gentle with me. If she’d really tried her hardest, I suspect I’d have been raising her price. She’s rather formidable, isn’t she?’

He had struck the right note. She smiled at him now and nodded.

‘When she came out to see you just now, what did she say?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘She just came out, got that deck chair you’re sitting on from the shed and set it up, then she went back inside. Why?’

‘She told me she was coming to consult with you,’ he said.

Slowly she began to laugh and he laughed with her. It felt like a long time since there had been such a moment of shared pleasure in his life.

‘You two sound very jolly, I must say,’ said Miss Wilson, returning with a tray on which stood a decanter and three glasses.

Jaysmith struggled to his feet to offer her the deck chair but she said, ‘No, I find them things too awkward for me nowadays. I’ll sit on the wall here if you’ll shift your feet.’

Obediently Annie removed her feet from the ornamental wall and her aunt sat down.

‘Take your jacket off, man, and enjoy the sun,’ exhorted the old lady.

Obedient in his turn, Jaysmith removed his jacket. As he draped it over the back of the deck chair, the Wainwright guide fell out of his pocket. Quickly he picked it up and replaced it, wondering if Annie Wilson’s expression of amusement only existed in his mind.

He stayed for half an hour, deftly fielding questions about his background. At the end of this time the younger woman said, ‘I really must be off now, Aunt Muriel. I promised I’d pick Jimmy up from school.’

‘You’ll spoil him.’

‘First day back. After this, it’s the bus and a nice healthy walk. I’ll bring him round this weekend.’

‘Make sure you do.’

Jaysmith rose too.

‘You can get in touch with me at the hotel when your solicitor’s ready,’ he told Miss Wilson.

‘You’re staying on then?’

‘A few more days.’

He was wondering how to keep contact with Annie Wilson when she said, ‘Like a lift down into the village, Mr Hutton? I can’t see your car.’

‘No. I walked up this afternoon.’

‘Spoken like a real enthusiast. Of course, if you want to walk back …’

‘No. Uphill was enough. Downhill’s often much harder.’

‘There speaks an expert.’

He folded himself into the tiny car, leaving the two women to take their farewells. A moment of panic hit him as he waited.

What am I doing? he asked himself. I’ve promised to buy a house just so that I can talk a little longer with a woman I’ve only just met who may turn out to be dull as ditchwater, or reckon that I’m even duller!

But the panic vanished like morning mist when she climbed into the driver’s seat.

They hardly spoke on the short descent into Grasmere. She dropped him at his hotel. To invite her in for tea or a drink was manifestly absurd when he knew she was going to pick up her son.

He held the car door open and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘A pleasure,’ she said, putting the car into gear.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’d like to see you again.’

‘If you’re coming to live up here, I daresay we’ll bump into each other,’ she said with a smile.

‘No. I mean sooner. What about tomorrow? Lunch, say.’

She stopped smiling and studied him closely.

‘I don’t often eat lunch,’ she said. ‘Except when I go to auntie’s. Otherwise I just grab a snack.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘So why don’t we eat our snacks together?’

She thought for a moment then nodded gravely.

‘All right. Why not? Half past twelve suit you?’

‘Fine. But where? What’s the best place round here? You’re the local. You name it.’

‘Best place?’ she echoed, letting in the clutch and beginning to move gently away. ‘Well, one of my favourites is the Lion and the Lamb. Let’s meet there, shall we? Twelve-thirty prompt. ‘Bye!’

She smiled at him, her face suddenly alive with humour and mischief, and then she was gone.

That night before dinner Jaysmith studied the Cumbrian telephone directory in the bar. There were only two Lion and Lambs listed. One was in Gosforth which a glance at his map told him was about fifteen miles to the west as the crow flew but a long drive along high, narrow winding roads as the car went. The other was in Wigton, thirty odd miles north and almost at Carlisle. Neither was what he would call local.

‘Can I help?’ enquired Parker who’d been observing his search from the bar.

‘It’s nothing really,’ said Jaysmith. ‘I just made a casual arrangement to meet a friend in a pub locally and I can’t remember its name. I thought it was the Lion and the Lamb, but I see there’s nothing nearer than Gosforth.’

‘I don’t know a pub of that name round here,’ said Parker. ‘What about you, dear?’

His wife had just come into the bar to get some drinks. She shook her head when the problem was explained and said, ‘No, there’s only one Lion and Lamb round here that I know of.’

After she’d gone, Jaysmith said casually, ‘What did she mean?’

Parker gave him the same look of surprise he’d shown at his ignorance of Wainwright.

‘Up there, of course,’ he said.

He pointed at the window. Evening was well advanced but there was still light enough in the sky to provide a foil for the massive outlines of the nearer fells. One in particular seemed to loom over the hotel.

‘Helm Crag,’ said Parker. ‘Home of Grasmere’s tutelary deities.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry, my mind was too much on pubs,’ smiled Jaysmith, not having the faintest idea what was being said to him.

Later in his bedroom he made sense of it by looking up Helm Crag in his newly purchased guide book. He found it described as possibly the best-known hill in the country because of the rock formation on the summit whose silhouette was said to resemble a lion couchant and a lamb. The Lion and the Lamb!

He cursed himself mildly. Such ignorance displayed a week ago when he was still planning the kill would have been a real error of security. It would have been too large a task for the police to interrogate every hotelier and guest house proprietor in the Lakes, but there would certainly have been media exhortations for them to report any oddities in their recent guests. Parker was just the man to volunteer his services.

But now it didn’t matter. He enjoyed the feeling of perfect relaxation once more. It didn’t matter!

Except, of course, for the fact that Annie Wilson might have been testing him.

He examined the proposition and quickly dismissed it. As a test it was pointless. He must have been the only person within fifty miles who didn’t know what the Lion and the Lamb was. Such ignorance was scarcely credible and all too easily remediable.

So, no test. Just an invitation to a picnic.

He switched off the light and his thoughts simultaneously. It was a trick of mental discipline he had developed over twenty years. Usually he could fall to sleep within a minute. Tonight for some reason it took just a little longer but the sleep when it came was as dark and undisturbed as ever.

Chapter 5

The ascent of Helm Crag was a delight; not much over a thousand feet but full of interest and beauties. He had set off in plenty of time and it was not much after noon when he reached the summit.

He removed his rucksack and laid it on the ground at the foot of the group of rocks which he presumed gave the fell its nickname. But that was not the only interesting formation; the whole of the summit ridge was strewn with shattered slabs and broken boulders among which he wandered for a while, musing on that sense of peace underpinned with menace which mountains always gave him.

When he returned to his rucksack, it was gone.

‘Over here,’ called Annie Wilson.

He looked around. She was sitting in a well-sheltered declivity looking westward. His rucksack lay at her feet with hers.

‘You move fast,’ she said approvingly. ‘I was barely five minutes behind you when you started climbing, but you must have gained ten on the way up.’

‘I never saw you,’ he said frowning.

‘Move like the old brown fox, that’s me,’ she said.

He sat down beside her. The old brown fox; he recalled his first sense, quickly modified, of a certain foxiness in her features; still, the description fitted well enough, except for the old. Dressed today in a heather-mixture shirt and dark green slacks which clung a little closer than walking trousers really ought to, she reclined among the rocks like a creature of them rather than a visitor to them. Her long black hair hung free today and there were some small green lichens in it picked up from the boulder behind her. The brown eyes in that narrow intelligent face had instantly registered his appraisal so he made no real attempt to conceal it.

‘Will I do?’ she asked.

‘You fit the occasion perfectly,’ he said. ‘And me?’

She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on his well-worn but beautifully maintained boots. Custom-made many years ago, they were a perfect fit, light and supple, with great reserves of strength, and with the lace lugs, like the lace tags themselves and all metal parts on all of his equipment, veneered a non-reflective brown.

‘You don’t stint yourself do you?’ she said touching the leather.

‘If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing best,’ he said lightly. ‘I’ve brought tongue sandwiches and a piece of salmon quiche. What about you?’

‘Apple, cheese, and a bramble pie,’ she said.

‘We complement each other perfectly. Do you mind drinking Chablis out of a cardboard cup?’

‘As long as it doesn’t come out of a cardboard box first,’ she said.

They began to eat. Conversation flowed easily, but shallowly too. She refused to let him penetrate far into her personal life, and as he was by need as well as nature reticent about his own background, he could hardly suggest a fair exchange.

‘When shall you move into Rigg Cottage?’ she asked.

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

On what happens between me and you, he thought but did not say. It was not that he was afraid to say it; simply that he was not yet ready. Her response might be indignation, but he did not think so. If it were, it would be on her aunt’s behalf, not her own. More baffling would be the simple question, ‘What do you want to happen between us?’

The truth was, he didn’t know. He was attracted to her, but this might simply be a symptom of reaction to his decision to retire. He felt relaxed, able to enjoy himself, and the first attractive woman to come along was ipso facto in the right place at the right time. He was surely too old for love at first sight. He had even begun to think he was getting a little too old for lust at first sight. Indeed, this did not feel like mere lust, though desire was moving languorously through his veins as she brushed pastry crumbs from her swelling shirt and stretched her long slim legs.

‘On business,’ he said vaguely.

‘What precisely is your business, Mr Hutton?’ she asked rather sharply, as if provoked by his vagueness.

‘To tell the truth it’s almost non-existent,’ he said. ‘I ran a little management consultancy firm, almost a one-man show, but the recession’s been too much. I’ve sold out to a competitor while there’s still something to sell out. So now, like thousands of my fellow citizens, I’m drifting into early retirement. Just a few loose ends to tie up, that’s all.’

‘None of these loose ends could affect your purchase of Rigg Cottage?’ she asked, suddenly alert.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve been making some sound investments against this day for years. The sale is secure, believe me.’

She said, ‘At the moment it’s only as secure as your handshake, isn’t it? I don’t mean to be offensive.’

‘Don’t you?’ he said, slightly piqued, a feeling he knew he had no entitlement to, since, if she had given him the brush-off yesterday, he might already have reneged on the deal. ‘It takes two to shake hands, you know. And tell me this; if someone turned up today, cash in hand, with a better offer, how would you advise your aunt to react?’

She frowned a little, then smiled.

‘Even your brief acquaintance with Aunt Muriel must have taught you she’d feel no need to ask for advice from me,’ she said.

He said, ‘They don’t by any chance let women become Jesuits nowadays, do they?’

She smiled again and turning away from him said, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with H.’

He let his gaze drift to the horizon.

‘Harrison Stickle,’ he said promptly.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Your turn.’

‘B,’ he said.

‘Bow Fell,’ she replied.

‘You know you can’t see Bow Fell from here,’ he chided. ‘The Langdales get in the way.’

‘So they do,’ she said innocently. ‘I give up then.’

‘Blea Rigg. There.’

He pointed.

‘So it is,’ she said. ‘Well done.’

‘I pass the test then?’

‘Do you? My marking scheme is, to say the least, eccentric.’

‘But it was a test?’

‘A tiny one,’ she smiled. ‘When I saw that brand-new Wainwright fall out of your pocket, I did wonder if you mightn’t be shooting a line with all that great fellwalker stuff.’

He complimented himself on having studied both his Wainwright and his OS map carefully for a good hour that morning. But perhaps it was time for a bit of truth to get himself a rest from those searching eyes.

‘You’re right to some extent, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I was trying to project a good image. To be honest, my Lakeland walking was all done when I was a mere lad. So any expertise I’ve got’s a bit dated.’

‘Those boots don’t look like they’ve been in the coal hole for twenty years. Or do you use them to garden in?’

‘No. They’ve been around a bit.’

‘Where, for instance?’

‘Oh, here and there. Alps, Andes, Pyrenees, very low down in the Himalayas, rather higher in the Harz. Yes, here and there, you could say.’

She looked at him darkly.

‘Well, that’s me put in my place, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘And finally, overcome by age, you’ve returned to these undemanding hillocks, is that it?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said easily. ‘One thing I learned early was that any hilly terrain that takes you more than half a mile off a road in uncertain weather deserves great respect.’

‘What a wise man you are, Mr Hutton. Though I’m glad to say the weather doesn’t look at all uncertain at the moment.’

‘No it doesn’t,’ he agreed looking out across the sun-gilt landscape. Was it only a week since he had greeted the forecast of a settled spell of fine autumn weather with a coldly professional gratitude that it would bring the target out into his garden and make the long kill possible? He turned his gaze onto the woman. For the moment her company was like this late reburgeoning of summer. How long it would last, how far it might take him, were not yet questions to be asked. For the moment her presence was to be enjoyed like the autumn sunshine without threat or complication.

‘What shall we do this afternoon?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I thought we might go on to Calf Crag then back to Grasmere down Far Easedale.’

She sat upright and said, ‘Whoa, Mr Hutton! Our appointment was for lunch, not a day’s outing. I’ve got things to do this afternoon. I ought to be on my way back down now.’

He must have looked disappointed for she smiled faintly and added, ‘You mustn’t take things for granted, Mr Hutton, not with me anyway. I have a tendency to the pedantic. I expect people to mean what they say and I prefer them to say what they mean. You should have been more precise in your proposal.’

‘And if I had been?’

‘Then very probably I would have come with you. It’s not every day a little Lake District mouse has the chance to scurry in the wake of a Himalayan Yeti!’

She started packing the lunch debris into her rucksack. He followed suit, saying, ‘Then let me be precise about two things. One: would you please stop calling me Mr Hutton? Two: will you spend tomorrow, or as much of it as you can, walking with me?’

‘What shall I call you?’ she said.

‘Jay,’ he said after a fractional hesitation. He should have been prepared, indeed he had thought he was. William was out of the question. Hutton he had conditioned himself to respond to, but he would probably walk right past anyone addressing him as William or Bill. His real name belonged with the old years; he might yet come full circle and touch them again but for the moment the gulf was too deep, too wide. Which left Jay, the closest familiarity he permitted those few who came close to being friends. But he didn’t like giving it to this woman, didn’t like the cold breath of his previous life it brought into their relationship. Hence the hesitation.

‘Jay? Why Jay?’

‘My middle initial,’ he said easily. ‘It was used at school to differentiate me from another William Hutton, and it stuck.’

‘All right. Jay.’ She tried it doubtfully.

‘And I’ll call you Annie if that’s all right.’

‘No!’

She was very emphatic.

‘Anya,’ she said. ‘My name’s Anya. Too outlandish for good Cumbrian folk like Aunt Muriel, but Anya’s my name.’

She spoke lightly but Jaysmith caught a hint of something deeply felt. Perhaps her husband, being presumably good Cumbrian folk too, had called her Annie and she didn’t like to hear the name on another man’s lips.

‘All right, Anya,’ he said. ‘Yes, it suits you better. Annie is too …’

‘What?’ she challenged him.

‘Buxom,’ he said.

They laughed together.

As they began the descent, Jaysmith reminded her, ‘You haven’t answered my second very specific request.’

‘I was thinking about it. To tell the truth I could do with a good walk after a week in London. But I couldn’t start till, say, ten AM and I must be down again by half past three.’

‘Five and a half hours,’ he mused. ‘Let’s say … what? Eighteen to twenty miles?’

She looked at him in horror then saw the amused twist of his lips.

‘Thank heaven you’re joking,’ she said. ‘I was wondering what kind of mountain goat I’d fallen in with! Two miles an hour is quite rapid enough for me, thank you very much. I like to be able to stop and admire the view from time to time. Perhaps I’d better pick the route.’

‘Accepted,’ he said.

‘What? No macho resistance at all?’

‘When I was a young man faced with the choice between scouting for boys or being guided by girls, I knew which side my bread was buttered on,’ he replied.

‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘That’s the impression I get of you, Jay. A man who knows which side his bread is buttered on.’

In the Crag Hotel, Jaysmith had been very noncommital about his encounter with Miss Wilson, partly because of his own ambivalence of feeling but also because he reckoned the old lady was entitled to be her own gossip in Grasmere. But that night Parker greeted him with a broad smile, outstretched hand and hearty congratulations on his purchase of Rigg Cottage.

‘So the news is out?’ he said.

‘Out? Trumpeted abroad, old chap! Everyone in the village knows. And they’re all dying of curiosity about you.’

Even with allowance made for Parker’s hyperbole, this news did not please Jaysmith. After a professional lifetime of not drawing attention to himself, even this very mild and local limelight was distressing. A half bottle of champagne appeared on his table at dinner with Parker’s compliments.

He said to Doris Parker who had delivered it, ‘Really, I should be paying you a commission.’

She smiled in her placid down-to-earth way and said, ‘Bring a few friends in for dinner occasionally and that will do nicely. You’d rather just have your Chablis, I suspect?’

He nodded.

She said, ‘I’ll take this off your bill,’ and went away with the champagne.

After dinner, in the bar, Parker showed a strong tendency to act as his mentor in the minutiae of Grasmere life so he escaped to the lounge and watched television for a while. The news was the usual mishmash of political piffle, royal baby rumours, sporting highlights and bloody violence. There’d been an attempt on the life of the Turkish Ambassador in Paris, a botched-up job by some idiot with a Skorpion machine-pistol leaping out from behind a potted palm and spraying the vestibule of the hotel where the Ambassador was lunching. A doorman was killed, an American tourist seriously injured, and the assassin himself cut down by a hail of security men’s bullets which also killed a lift attendant. The dead and the injured were all filmed in glorious technicolour.

Jaysmith’s disgust must have shown. The female half of an elderly couple, the only other viewers, said, ‘It’s horrifying, isn’t it? Quite, quite horrifying.’

He nodded his agreement, but did not explain that his disgust was merely at the sight of the carnage caused by amateurs. Was he himself an amateur now? No, only if he started killing people without getting paid for it and that wasn’t likely! Even then, he would still proceed in a professional way. That was what he was, a retired professional. Fully retired now. He had sent a coded telex to his Swiss bank instructing them how to pay back the last unearned fee. Jacob would not be pleased, but his displeasure would be professional not personal. He would have to find a new man to do the job, if the job still had to be done. He would not miss Jaysmith; there would be no farewell speech, no commemorative gold watch.

It was only to Jaysmith himself that his retirement was of any real moment. It was a slightly disturbing thought.

He watched the weather forecast. The Indian summer was to go on a little longer.

He said goodnight to the elderly couple and went to bed.

Chapter 6

That night he dreamt, and the dream brought him awake. It was the first broken night he had had in more years than he could remember.

He dreamt of Jacob, or rather of Jacob’s voice. Jacob’s face he could hardly recall, except for something faintly simian about it, like one of the great apes looking with weary wisdom out of its cage at the shrill fools beyond the bars who imagined they were free. It was many years since he had seen the face, but the voice was still fresh in his ears: dry, nasal, with its irritating habit of tagging interrogative phrases onto the end of statements, like little hooks to draw the hearer in.

In his dream he picked up the phone expecting to hear Enid. Over the years one young Enid had replaced another as his route through to Jacob. What became of the old Enids? he sometimes wondered, but was never tempted to ask. In his relationship with his employer as with his targets, distance suited him best. With women too. Until now.

Instead of Enid’s voice, Jacob had come instantly on the line. He spoke without emotion, without emphasis.

‘You’re Jaysmith,’ he said. ‘I invented you, didn’t I? You’re Jaysmith now and for ever, aren’t you? There’s nothing else for you. You’re Jaysmith, Jaysmith, Jaysmith …’

Suddenly with the voice still in his ear he had been back in the gill on Wanthwaite Crags. Across the valley he could see the red roof of Naddle Foot. He brought his rifle up to his eye and the terraced garden leapt into close focus. The white metal chair was there and in it a sleeping figure. He traversed the weapon and adjusted the sight till the silvery head filled the circle, quartered by the hairline cross. Now the sleeper woke and slowly raised his head. But when the face was fully turned to the sun, Jaysmith saw to his horror that it was not the old man after all, but the woman he had just met, Anya Wilson. She smiled straight at the gun, though she could not possibly see it, and his finger continued to tighten on the trigger …

With a huge effort of will he forced himself awake. If anything the waking was worse than the dreaming. It was four o’clock. He rose and poured himself a drink and sat by the window looking out into the night. It had all been a dream: that was the childhood formula which put such things right; but now fully awake he knew that this dream was true.

He was Jaysmith. He should have been back in London days ago, packing his belongings, easing himself into one of the alternative lives he had prepared over the years. Where could it end, this lunacy of pretending to buy a house and running around after this child, Annie or Anya or whatever she liked to call herself? She was at least fifteen years his junior, recently widowed and not yet emerged from that unthinkable pain. Suppose he did worm his way into her affections? It would be as bad almost as making her a target with his rifle.

His room faced east. After a while the false dawn began to push forward the great range of fells which runs from Fairfield to Helvellyn. He felt their advance, hard and menacing; it seemed that if he sat there long enough they would rumble inexorably onward to crush the hotel and the village and all its unwitting inmates. There was strength as well as terror in the thought. It confirmed his own certainties, silenced his own debates. In the morning he would rise early and pay his bill and leave, and that would be an end to Mr William Hutton and probably the beginning of a good half-century of speculation for the trivial gossips of this unimportant crease in the coat-tail of the universe.

He went back to bed, the future resolved, and slept deep.

When he awoke it was a quarter to ten.

‘Oh Christ!’ he swore, touched by a new terror in which the great threat was that she would not wait for him at their rendezvous point. So potent was this that he forewent both breakfast and shaving in his rush to get there.

She looked at him with considerable disapproval.

‘The good burghers of Grasmere will expect a much better turnout from the new inmate of Rigg Cottage,’ she said.

‘I came out in a hurry,’ he said. ‘I had a bad night.’

‘And how did the night feel, I wonder?’

He glowered at her and the mockery faded from her eyes and she murmured almost to herself, ‘Are we always so bad-tempered in the morning, I wonder?’

He got a grip of himself and smiled ruefully and said, ‘I’m sorry. As for what I’m usually like in the morning, I don’t know. It’s been a long time since there was anyone to tell me.’

‘Anyone who dared, you mean?’

‘Or cared. And really, I did have a bad night.’

He got in the car beside her. She had arranged to pick him up at the edge of the village on the road leading up to Rigg Cottage. He hadn’t queried the arrangement but just assumed that she didn’t care for a more public rendezvous under the eye of Mr Parker or her aunt’s many acquaintances.

‘What was bothering you? Not Doris Parker’s cooking, I hope?’

‘No. That’s fine. So’s she; I like her. She doesn’t come at you like dear Phil.’

She nodded. Another shared judgement to bring them closer. He’d guessed that was how she’d feel and though his opinion of the Parkers was precisely as stated, he felt a twinge of guilt at the element of calculation in what he’d said.

So when she asked, ‘What then?’ he compensated with a dash of unsolicited confession.

‘To tell the truth I woke in a cold sweat wondering what the devil I was doing buying your aunt’s house.’

He’d expected a very positive reaction to this: fear for her aunt’s sake – anger at this hint of masculine dithering – at the very least a demand for reassurance that he hadn’t changed his mind.

Instead she nodded once more and said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Oh yes. The old four AM’S. They’re dreadful, aren’t they? You seem to see everything so clearly, and it’s all black, if that’s not contradictory.’

‘You’re speaking from experience?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The four AM’S and the four PM’S too. Doesn’t everyone get them, the AM’S anyway?’

He shook his head.

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Last night was the first broken night I’ve had in years.’

Broken from within, that was. There had been plenty of early risings and sudden alarums. But he could hardly explain this to the woman who was looking at him curiously, and he found he didn’t particularly want to press her to reveal the grounds of her own despair at this moment.

‘So, where are we going?’ he asked brightly.

She responded to his change of mood, saying, ‘Well, I knew a Himalayan man wouldn’t want to waste his time on pimples, so I thought we’d do Bow Fell via the Crinkles, but to fit it into our limited time allowance I’ve decided to cheat by starting at the top of Wrynose.’

He nodded as if this made sense to him while he worked it out on his mental imprint of the relevant OS sheets. They had climbed out of Grasmere, passing Rigg Cottage en route, and now they were dropping down again. He glimpsed the blue sheet of Elterwater before they entered its tiny village and left it on the Little Langdale road. Soon they were climbing again and now they were on a steep, serpentine single-track road, with intermittent passing places, and viciously demanding on bottom gear both for ascent and descent. This was Wrynose Pass.

He said, ‘This would take us all the way across into Eskdale, right?’

‘Right. It’s the old drove road, of course. Hard Knott dropping into Eskdale’s even worse, I think.’

‘Then I’m glad we’re not going that far,’ he said firmly.

‘Oh I think you should. Halfway up the side of Hard Knott there’s a Roman Fort; perhaps you’ve been there?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s a place to go on a wild winter’s day,’ she said. ‘Almost a thousand feet up in country that’s still wild, so God knows what it was like all those centuries ago; looking out to the west towards a sea which offers only Ireland between you and the limits of habitable creation; thinking of Rome, and Tuscan wine, and the long summer sun, while the sleet blows in your face and you can hear the stones of your castle cracking in the frost during the night watches. You ought to go.’

He looked at her curiously.

‘That was … poetic,’ he said. ‘I’m not being sarcastic either. But why do you insist I ought to go?’

‘No, I don’t really,’ she answered, faintly embarrassed. ‘All I meant was, it must have taken a certain kind of man to survive all that.’

‘And you think I could be such a man?’ he said lightly. ‘Should I be flattered?’

‘I meant I would be interested in hearing you decide whether you could have been such a man,’ she said slowly. ‘As for whether you should be flattered, that depends on what you feel such a man ought to be.’

‘Or had to be,’ he said. ‘Another test?’

She laughed and said with a hint of bitterness, ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

She parked the car by the Three Shires Stone which marked the head of the pass. Their path was clear, the ground firm, the gradients easy, and they walked side by side at a good pace, in a silence which was companionable rather than introspective. The Crinkle Crags, their first destination, at first merely an undulating ridge a couple of miles in the distance, assumed a different aspect as they got near. Instead of a gentle ridge, Jaysmith saw that they did in fact consist of a series of crags, jagged broken buttresses of rock, five in all, each a distinct and separate entity. Their ascent was no more than a pleasant scramble, and moving from one to another was easy enough also. But as Jaysmith enjoyed the exhilaration of the magnificent views, he was aware that this was not a place where he would care to be if the weather closed in and visibility was measured in inches instead of miles. There were precipitous rock faces and narrow steep gullies filled with shattered boulders waiting to crack bones and rip flesh.

They sat on the third Crinkle and drank coffee and looked eastwards. The sun was high in its southern swing and the contours of the fells were picked out in light and shade.

‘My God, it’s beautiful,’ said Jaysmith, almost to his own surprise.

‘You sound as if you’d just noticed,’ laughed the woman.

‘Perhaps I have. I’m still not sure why it’s beautiful, though.’

‘Oh, all kinds of reasons. Space, airiness, sublimity. The sense it gives of something more important than mere human guilts and sorrows.’

She spoke very seriously and her features had slipped back into that ageing watchful look.

‘Oh is that all?’ he mocked. ‘Like marijuana? It’s a long way to walk for a fix.’

It worked. She laughed and lay back, hands clasped behind her head, eyes closed against the light.

‘All right. If you want a purely sensuous explanation, I think it’s something to do with the way the light shows us all the curves and hollows of the slopes. It’s like drapery. Have you never noticed how important that is in painting? As if artists knew that there was some special magic in all that cloth; gowns, dresses, cloaks, curtains, all hanging and trailing in mysterious, fascinating pleats and folds and creases.’

‘Not forgetting sheets,’ he said. ‘And blankets.’

‘That is the kind of art you like, is it?’ she said. ‘That too. And the naked human figures lying on them. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Curves and angles and hollows all washed with light.’

She spoke softly, almost dreamily. It sounded almost like an invitation and he leaned over and kissed her.

He knew at once he had been wrong. Her eyes opened wide with shock and her body stiffened as though holding back from some more violent act of repudiation.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sitting up.

‘No need,’ she replied, quickly regaining her composure. ‘It didn’t bother me. Though a respectable gent like you should be careful.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You may think you can come up here and toy with the milkmaids with impunity. But you’re very exposed. There’s a hundred places where someone could be lying this very moment, drawing a bead on us.’

His eyes flickered round in such alarm that she laughed and said, ‘Hey, I’m joking. You’re not going to turn out to be so important that you can’t afford to be photographed making a pass on a mountain, are you? A mountain pass!’

It wasn’t a very good joke but they both laughed and Jaysmith said, ‘No, I’m not that important.’

She regarded him shrewdly, as if doubting him, then said, ‘No matter. Aunt Muriel will know all about you when you exchange contracts, won’t she? Have you contacted your solicitor yet?’

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Actually, he suggests it would be simpler if I got hold of a local man. I don’t think he really believes there’s much law beyond Hampstead. I think he’s probably right, about using a local, I mean. There’ll be searches and things, won’t there? It’d certainly be more convenient. I wondered if you had any suggestions?’

‘Perhaps. But should you be asking me? In a sense, I’m an interested party.’

‘I hope so. But as your interest is to ensure that Miss Wilson’s sale goes smoothly, you’ll be careful to recommend only the best, won’t you?’

‘Are you always so logical?’ she asked.

‘Very occasionally I act on impulse. And, as you’ve just proved, it usually gets me into trouble.’

She was not to be tempted back to that topic. In a swift easy movement she rose and said, ‘Time to go. The hard bit lies ahead.’

The hard bit wasn’t all that hard, a fairly steep pull up the last five hundred feet of Bow Fell after they had descended from the Crinkles. There they ate their lunch and chatted familiarly enough, but still, despite or perhaps because of the kiss, at a level far removed from the centre of either of them. But it was interesting enough for them to linger overlong and Anya, glancing at her watch, said accusingly, ‘You’ve kept us here too long.’

‘I have?’

‘You’re the official timekeeper, aren’t you? Come on. We’ll need our running shoes.’

In fact by dint of skirting the western face of the Crinkles as much as possible, they were able to retrace their steps to Three Shires Stone nearly an hour more quickly than they had come. Jaysmith walked a little behind for much of the way, admiring the easy movement of her athletic body as she set a spanking pace. He had no difficulty in keeping up with it, but he shouldn’t have cared to try to overtake.

She dropped him in Grasmere after a descent of Wrynose he did not care to remember. When he tried to speak as he got out of the car she said crisply, ‘Sorry. I hate being late. I’ll be in touch,’ and drove off without more ado.

A brush-off? he wondered.

He didn’t think so. On the other hand, her reaction to his kiss had not been promising. Perhaps some panic button had been pressed and she was now in full retreat.

He ate his dinner with little appetite and wondered where it was all going to lead. The euphoria of his decision to retire now seemed light years away. Then it had seemed to usher in an Indian summer of careless peace; now new cares seemed to be pressing in on him from all sides.

‘Telephone call for you,’ said Doris Parker as she brought his coffee.

The words filled him with alarm. He was convinced it must be Jacob, so much so that he almost said, ‘Jaysmith here,’ when he picked up the phone. Fortunately twenty years of caution made him growl, ‘Hutton.’

‘You don’t sound happy,’ said Anya. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner.’

‘No,’ he said, curt with relief. ‘I’d finished.’

‘Good. I enjoyed our walk today.’

‘Me too. Many thanks.’

‘Were you serious about wanting me to recommend a solicitor?’ she asked.

‘Certainly.’

‘All right. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Mr Steven Bryant of Bryant & Grose will see you in his office in Keswick. Have you got a pen? I’ll give you his address.’

He noted it down with directions.

He began to thank her but she went on, ‘Afterwards, would you care to have lunch with me? I should warn you that I will be cooking it.’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,’ he said.

‘No need to be fulsome,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

He realized she hadn’t given him directions to her home after he put the receiver down. No matter. Presumably this Mr Steven Bryant would be able to do that, and if not, he was still sure that nothing could stop him finding her.

He took this certainty to bed with him and lay awake for a while, feeling his happiness lapping round his body like the warm waters of an eastern sea. When at last he slipped into sleep, he took his euphoria with him. Soon it developed form and flesh and suddenly it was Anya’s body, lean, brown and naked beneath his, and above them the sharp bright stars of the Lakeland sky.

They wrestled and rolled, locked together in an ecstasy of contact which threatened to climax in death. As they rolled, each gaining the ascendancy in turn, Jaysmith saw that the stars were wheeling too, shifting their positions and relationships, till the familiar pattern of the northern sky was quite destroyed and another pattern, richer in background, softer in glow, but just as familiar, took its place.

And he knew without needing to look that the flesh against his was no longer the lean, brown body of Anya Wilson, but had become softer, rounder, a deep honey gold. And now he wanted to look and he rose on his elbows so that he could see the delicately boned face, the huge dark eyes, the uncertain smile, at once shy and inviting. Her arms were still round his neck, but he wanted to see more and, despite her protest, he pushed himself upright, breaking her grip, and looked down on the slight but exquisitely rounded body, laughing in his turn as her hands flew to cover her peach-like breasts and the velvety darkness between her thighs.

‘I love you, Nguyet,’ he said, letting his tongue relish the strange cadence of the name which was also the Vietnamese word for moon.

Then, smiling, he added, ‘You are my moon,’ but gave the English word the tonal value which turned it into mun, which in her language meant carbuncle. It was an old joke between them and she giggled and gave the ritual reply, ‘And you are my sun,’ turning sun into the verb used to describe the decaying of teeth.

He laughed with her, then laughter left her eyes, driven thence by the cloudy onslaught of desire.

‘Come close, Harry,’ she whispered.

Gladly he stooped to her again, but found he could no longer get close. There were strong hands gripping his arms, voices shouting. He could no longer see her, there was a door between them, the door of her apartment. Despite the strength of those trying to hold him back, he burst through that door. And now he saw her again, still naked, still prostrate, but her eyes now wide with terror, blood caking her flared nostrils and more blood smudging the honey gold of her wide splayed thighs.

The room was full of soldiers who glared at him angrily. One of them, a dog-faced man in a colonel’s uniform, chattered commands. A rifle butt was driven into his kidneys while a hand dug viciously into his mop of hair and dragged him backwards screaming, ‘Nguyet! Nguyet! Nguyet!’ as he woke up.

He flung back the blankets and fell out of the bed like a drunken man. He sat on the floor feeling the cool night air trace the runnels of sweat down his naked body. Last night, Jacob. Tonight, Nguyet. Why was he once again so vulnerable after all these years? He rose and went to the window and pulled back the curtain. Above the shadowy bulk of fells was the high northern heaven, pricked with countless stars. He watched it for a long time, defying it to do its planetarium act again and rearrange its crystal spheres into the lower, richer, warmer maze of the stars above Saigon.

Nothing happened. Why should it? Once again, it was only a dream. He closed the curtain and went back to bed.

He was early for his appointment next day. Keswick was a very small town and Anya’s directions were precise. The offices of Bryant & Grose, Solicitors were on the second floor of an old house now given over entirely to business and commerce. He thought of killing time with another turn round the block but instead he went in and announced himself.

‘Mr Hutton? You’re expected,’ said the young girl in the outer office. ‘Just go right in.’

As he approached the door indicated, it opened and Anya appeared. She stopped on the threshold and smiled at his surprise.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘So you’ve decided to be early this morning? And shaven too! That’s a good sign. I was just on my way to start your lunch, but I might as well introduce you now you’re here. Step inside. I’d like you to meet your new solicitor, Mr Steven Bryant. Oh, by the way, he happens to be my father too!’

She stepped aside as she spoke and started to laugh at the expression on Jaysmith’s face.

‘Don’t look so dismayed,’ she said. ‘It may be nepotism, but he really is the best solicitor I know. Pappy, I’d like you to meet William J. Hutton. I shall expect my usual commission for the introduction. And I’ll see you both in not more than an hour. ‘Bye.’

She left and Jaysmith slowly advanced to take the hand proffered by the man behind the desk.

‘You’ll excuse my daughter, I hope, Mr Hutton,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s so good to see her enjoying a joke, that I can excuse her almost anything.’

‘Of course,’ said Jaysmith. ‘It’s of no consequence.’

But it was of more consequence than he had yet had time to apprehend. And he was very glad that Anya had given him some excuse for this expression of amazement, but it had nothing to do with her revelation that the solicitor was her father.

No, that was wrong. It had everything to do with it.

For the last time he had seen the creased leathery features of the man whose hand he now held had been a week earlier, framed in the usually fatal circle of his telescopic sight.

Chapter 7

An hour later any faint doubts about the identification had been completely removed.

Jaysmith was sitting in the front garden of the red-tiled house called Naddle Foot. Alongside him, filling the bright air with the pungent smoke of a Caporal, was Steven Bryant. And by turning his head just forty-five degrees, he believed he could actually see the entry hole left in the flower bed by his aberrant bullet. He shifted his chair slightly to remove the temptation to stare and looked instead across the valley to the opposing fellside where he had patiently prepared to kill his host.

‘Another sherry?’ said Bryant in a voice roughened almost to a growl by a lifetime of chain-smoking.

Jaysmith realized he had emptied his glass unawares.

‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘One before lunch is enough.’

He studied the other man as he spoke. Distance had made him overestimate his age. The venerable halo of silver hair was belied by his shrewd brown eyes and his ease of movement. Early sixties rather than early seventies, an estimate confirmed in the office when Bryant had said, ‘To be quite honest, Mr Hutton, I’ve more or less given up practising law. There’s a book I want to write and I’ve been devoting more and more time to it over the past ten years, and when I got to sixty, three years ago, I thought, to hell with the law’s tediums! I still dabble a bit, however, so Anya has not deceived you entirely. But now that she’s played her little trick, to which I was not a party, I assure you, I would recommend you let me pass the actual job of conveyancing over to my partner, Donald Grose. He’s very able, much better tempered than I am, and to tell the truth, I don’t really fancy getting into any business dealings with old Muriel Wilson. She can be a tiresome old stick.’

Jaysmith could understand why Anya had wanted her father to look him over, if, as he suspected, that was the serious purpose behind her little trick. Beneath this friendly, apparently open approach, he was aware of a keen analytical scrutiny. There was no hint of cross-questioning, but questions were constantly being asked. He guessed that Anya valued her father’s judgement highly and did his best to impress the man. But all the time, his concentration was being distracted by his own speculations about the other. He could not be what he seemed, a simple country solicitor. Jaysmith’s expensive talents were not turned loose on such prey. But none of his own gentle probings had so far produced even the slightest clue. All he could say was that already he sensed in Bryant a strength of will that might mean ruthlessness, and a dark watchfulness that might mean guilt; but his feeling was vague and might itself be the creation of his own uncertainties.

There was one other possible clue, but this too might just be a creation of his own straining after information. From time to time his sharp linguist’s ear felt it detected just the slightest nuance of ‘foreignness’ in Bryant’s speech, vanishing as soon as suspected and probably a simple by-product of his tobacco-growl. There was nothing else to suggest non-English origins, except perhaps the name Anya, but that was just the kind of name pretentious middle-class parents might give their daughter anyway.

On the other hand, whatever else Bryant was, he gave little sign of belonging to the pretentious middle class. Beneath his smart clothes and civilized conversation, there was an earthiness and, if Jaysmith was not mistaken, a strong vein of sensuality too, untouched as yet by his age.

The probing questions had ceased as though by mutual agreement during lunch, which was a simple though delicious meal of baked trout and green salad followed by a freshly baked bramble pie, all washed down with a crisp Moselle. Bryant was industrious in topping up Jaysmith’s glass, and when it was suggested they return to the garden to drink their coffee, the accompanying brandy balloon was full enough to swim a goldfish.

Still icily sober, Jaysmith decided to let the relaxation Bryant obviously hoped for work for him.

‘Anya,’ he said mellowly as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘That’s a lovely name you chose for your daughter, Bryant.’

Glancing at him with surprise, the woman said, ‘Less buxom than Annie, certainly. We established that.’

Jaysmith smiled and she smiled back, a shared joke which momentarily excluded her father.

Bryant said abruptly, ‘It was my mother’s name. Anya Winnika.’

‘Polish?’ said Jaysmith, trying to make his interest casual. ‘Were you born in Poland then?’

Bryant did not look as if he was going to answer, but Anya, as if concerned at any hint of rudeness to their guest, said quickly, ‘Pappy was a law student in Warsaw till 1939. He got out when the Nazis invaded.’

‘And the Russians,’ interrupted Bryant harshly. ‘Don’t forget the Russians came in from the east at the same time.’

‘And your parents, did they get out with you?’

Bryant lit another Caporal from the one he was smoking.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They thought they could sit it out. Why not? How many invasions over the centuries had poor Poland had to sit out! I wasn’t any wiser than they were, just younger and more impatient. I followed the provisional government first to France then to England. I found out later that when the Nazis came, they requisitioned our family house for one of their senior officers. As for my parents, they were moved into the ghetto. My mother was Jewish, you see. Not orthodox; far from it; and she had cut herself off completely by marrying a Gentile. It took the Nazis to reunite her with her people. My father went with her of course. He was a gentle man, trusting in human nature almost to the point of foolishness. But they’d have had to shoot him to stop him accompanying mamma. The next time I saw Warsaw it was in ruins. Our house had survived but now there was a Russian general in it. It was a small change, hardly noticeable.’

‘And your parents?’

He shrugged massively.

‘Who knows? The ghetto uprising of ’43; the resistance uprising of ’44; in one or the other they died, and so many with them that nowhere in the whole of that ruined city could I find a memory or a trace of their passing. Think of that, Mr Hutton, if you can. Think of that!’

Anya put her hand on her father’s arm and Jaysmith sipped his brandy for warmth. The sun still shone, but a chill seemed to have risen in this peaceful valley.

‘You speak excellent English,’ said Jaysmith with a deliberate banality.

It worked. Bryant coughed a laugh and said, ‘And why the hell shouldn’t I? I’ve been speaking it longer than you, Hutton. I learned it first from my grandfather when I was a child. He was an Englishman, you see, sent to look after his firm’s affairs in Gdansk – Danzig, it was then – in the 1880s. He never went back. When World War One came, he took his Polish wife’s name and moved to Warsaw. And after the Second World War was over and I saw that the Russians had a stronghold on my country, and realized that my life was to be in England, well, I reversed the process and reverted to my true patronym. I really am Steven Bryant, Hutton. Or, more properly, Stefan Bryant. Much more reassuring, isn’t it, than something full of Ks and Zs?’

‘Reassuring to whom?’

‘To solid English burghers looking for someone to do a bit of conveyancing for them,’ said Bryant. ‘But I’m sorry to have bored you with my family history. In the interests of equity, I will now keep quiet, and you must take your chance of telling us something about the Huttons and their origins.’

He smiled satirically as he spoke and he and Anya settled into near-caricatures of close attentiveness.

A trade-off! thought Jaysmith. He would much rather have relaxed and examined what Bryant had told him, looking for clues to his potentially fatal connection with Jacob.

But he needed all his mental powers now to concentrate on the lies he was about to tell. Glancing at Anya, he was filled with shame, but there seemed to be no choice. But rescue was at hand. Inside the house a voice called, ‘Mum? Gramp?’

Anya turned her head, tautening the line from chin through neck in a way which caught at Jaysmith’s breath, and called, ‘Jimmy! We’re out in the garden.’

A moment later a boy of about six ran out onto the terrace. He pulled up short when he saw Jaysmith, then resumed his approach more sedately.

‘Jimmy, this is Mr Hutton. Jay, this is my son, Jimmy.’

‘Hello,’ said the boy. He was small, with his mother’s brown eyes but much fairer both of hair and complexion. His expression at the moment was rather solemn and serious, but any suggestion of premature maturity was contradicted by a chocolate stain under his lower lip and a comprehensive graze of the right knee.

‘Hello,’ said Jaysmith.

He held out his hand. Before the boy could shake it, he turned it over to reveal that there was a fifty-pence piece in the palm. Slowly he made it move across the undulations of his knuckles and back again. Then he tossed it high in the air, caught it with his left hand and immediately offered both hands, fists clenched, to the boy who studied them with that look of calm appraisal Jaysmith knew from his mother.

‘What’s the problem, Jimmy?’ said Bryant after a while.

‘Well, I know it’s in that one,’ said the boy pointing to the left hand. ‘Only, it’s probably not, as it’s a trick, and it’ll be in that one.’

‘You’ve got to choose, Jimmy,’ said Anya. ‘That’s what the game is, choosing.’

Her eyes met Jaysmith’s for a moment.

‘All right,’ said the boy with the certainty of defeat. ‘That one.’

Slowly Jaysmith opened his left hand to show an empty palm.

‘I knew it’d be the other after all,’ said Jimmy with resignation.

Jaysmith opened his right hand. It was empty too. Then he shot his left hand forward and apparently plucked the coin from Jimmy’s ear. He handed it to the boy who took it dubiously and glanced at his mother.

‘Is it mine?’ he asked hopefully.

‘You’d better ask Mr Hutton.’

‘It’s certainly not mine,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Would you want a coin that’s been kept in someone else’s ear?’

The boy laughed joyously and thrust the coin into his pocket.

‘Thanks a million!’ he cried. ‘Mum, what’s for tea?’

‘Nothing till you’ve washed your face and I’ve put some antiseptic on that knee,’ said his mother.

She took him firmly by the hand and led him into the house.

‘Nice kid,’ said Jaysmith. ‘He looks fine.’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ said Bryant.

‘An only child without a father, it can be tough. Does he talk about him much?’

‘Not to me,’ said Bryant. ‘Children are resilient, Mr Hutton. A boy needs a man around, that’s true. Well, Jimmy’s got me, so that’s all right.’

He spoke with controlled aggression.

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Jaysmith. ‘How long has it been since his father died?’

‘Last December.’

‘What was it? Illness? Accident?’

‘Climbing accident,’ said Bryant shortly. ‘But I think my daughter’s business ought really to be discussed with my daughter, don’t you? Another drop of brandy?’

‘No thanks,’ said Jaysmith rising. ‘It’s late. If school’s out, it’s time I was going. Goodbye, Mr Bryant. Thanks for your help and your hospitality.’

He stretched out his hand. Bryant took it and gave it a perfunctory shake without rising.

‘Glad to have you with us,’ he said. ‘I hope Anya asks you again. Grose will get the conveyance under way.’

He found Anya in the kitchen bathing her son’s knee. The boy’s face was screwed up in mock agony.

‘I must be off,’ said Jaysmith. ‘It’s been a splendid day.’

‘Are you coming to Carlisle with us on Saturday?’ asked the boy.

Jaysmith raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

‘There’s a soccer match,’ said Anya gloomily. ‘He’s conned his grandfather and me into taking him as a pre-birthday treat.’

‘Birthday?’

‘That’s the following Saturday. Fortunately Carlisle United are playing down south that day, so he’ll have to make do with a party instead.’

‘Please come,’ urged the boy.

‘Well, I’d love to come to the party, if I’m asked, but I can’t make the match. I’ve got to go down to London tomorrow and I may have to stay away a couple of days.’

He thought Anya looked disappointed but it may have been wishful thinking.

‘I’ve been to London,’ said Jimmy. ‘Granddad Wilson lives there.’

‘And Mr Hutton will soon be living up here. He’s buying Great-Aunt Muriel’s house.’

The boy digested this.

‘Is Great-Aunt Muriel dead?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not! She’s just moving down into the village. Jay, if you can hang on till I finish with this monster, I’ll see you out.’

Jaysmith said, ‘I’ll use the bathroom if I may.’

He went upstairs and swiftly checked the landing windows. They were double glazed and fitted with what looked like new security locks. He had already noticed an alarm box high up under the eaves. He opened a bedroom door at random. It proved to be Anya’s. The straw handbag she’d been carrying in Keswick was tossed casually onto the bed. He opened it and was amazed at the quantity of bric-à-brac it held. After a little rummaging, he came up with a key ring which he bore off with him into the bathroom. He locked the door and sat on the edge of the bath. Ignoring the car keys, he carefully made prints of the three others in a large cake of soap. It was a process he had seen used in television thrillers but not one he’d ever had occasion to try for himself. Carefully he wrapped the soap in his handkerchief, removed all traces from the keys, flushed the toilet and unlocked the door. Swiftly he made for Anya’s bedroom but stopped dead on the threshold.

Anya was standing by the bed in the process of shaking out the contents of her handbag onto the coverlet.

‘Hello,’ she said, becoming aware of his presence. ‘Won’t be a sec. I wanted my car keys and as usual they seem to have sunk to the bottom. I keep far too much rubbish in here.’

She resumed her shaking. He stepped into the room, put his hands on her shoulders, and spun her round to face him. He drew her to him and kissed her passionately as he dropped the keys onto the bedspread. It was more successful than his attempt on the Crinkles in that she did not thrust him off but nor did she return the kiss and when he broke off she said calmly, ‘Is it the sight of a bed which brings out the brute in you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I just wanted to assure you that I’d be coming back.’

‘Why should I doubt it? After all, you are buying a house up here. Oh, there they are.’

She had turned away from him and seen the keys.

‘Am I moving too fast?’ he asked gently.

‘Not as long as the finance is in order, no,’ she said judiciously. ‘Aunt Muriel won’t want to hang about, you know.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’ve only met you three, no, four times,’ she replied passionately. ‘How on earth should I know if I know what you mean? Or care for that matter?’

She left the room and he followed her down the old creaking staircase. In the hallway he said lightly, ‘You’re well protected, I see.’

She glanced at him to see if he was being ironical, then followed his gaze to the alarm junction box on the wall behind an old-fashioned coat rack.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit of a nuisance. I keep forgetting.’

Idly he reached up and flicked the box open.

‘It looks pretty new.’

‘It is. We got burgled a couple of months ago. They didn’t take much, but they made a lot of mess and it was rather frightening, being so isolated. So pappy got a firm of security specialists in to tighten things up.’

‘Still here, Hutton? Goodbye once more.’

Bryant had come back into the house and was standing in the doorway of what looked like a study or office.

‘Mum, can I have my tea now?’ demanded Jimmy, appearing at the kitchen door.

Jaysmith looked at the three of them. They appeared as a formidable family group, each splendidly individual perhaps even to the point of willfulness, but very united too. He guessed that it was going to be hard to get one without the approval of the others.

Soon he might have to decide how much he really wanted that one.

But as he followed Anya out of the shady entrance hall into the ambered warmth of the autumn sunlight, and she turned and offered him her hand with a slightly crooked smile which mocked the formality of the gesture, he knew he had decided already.

Chapter 8

He set out for London early on Friday morning while the mists were still grazing the fellsides like the ghosts of old flocks. The pain he felt at leaving all this behind surprised him, but as he’d sat and talked to Bryant the day before, he had known he had to go. Jacob was in London, and only Jacob could tell him why Bryant had been targeted and whether the instruction was still active since the deadline. Further than that, he could not think.

The journey down had a dreamlike quality. He drove with automatic ease, his body at rest in a soundproof cocoon, with soft upholstery, even-temperatured air and gentle music from the stereo cassette. He tried to fix his thoughts on the problems ahead but they kept on drifting back to the quiet joys of the land behind him. Four hours later, when he parked his car and stepped out into the din of Central London, it was like leaving a monastery cell for an iron foundry.

Quickly he made his way to his flat on the west side of Soho. It was twenty years since he had come to live here. The sixties were just beginning to swing. Then, the district’s aura of urban picturesque with hints of Bohemian low-life had seemed a perfect match for the times; the old inhibitions were dying and the age of openness, freedom, and guiltless joy was being born. Not that Jaysmith had been very receptive to such optimism then, but now, for the first time, he was aware with more than just his eyes and ears of the squalid side-channels all that flood of high promise had been diverted into.

What had seemed Bohemian was now Babylonian; what had begun as openness was now exhibitionism; the porn merchants had worked out that there was more money in joyless guilt than guiltless joy, and the only freedom celebrated in these littered streets was the one civil liberty that civilized societies never denied their citizens – their right to seek degradation and self-destruction any which way they liked.

His flat occupied the top floor of a building which had once had a Greek restaurant at street level. Now there was an Adult Video shop. He turned into the doorway leading onto the narrow stair which ran up the side of the building. At the foot of the stairs squatted two youths with their arms round each other. One had his head shaved smooth except for a spikey orange-dyed coxcomb; the other had lank black hair and the ten o’clock shadow of an Arafat beard prickling his jowels and jaw. The Coxcomb had his face in a plastic bag, held tight around the neck. He was breathing in with pig-like snorts and when he raised his face, the glue in the bag was running like mucus round his nostrils and lips. Arafat took the bag, while he stared vacantly at Jaysmith. Neither made any attempt to move out of his way.

Holding back his anger, Jaysmith stepped over them and made his way up the stairs. At his door he paused and looked back in case the glue-sniffers had ambitions to become muggers too. All was quiet. He opened his door. It had two deadlocks on it and the windows had internal steel shutters so that the flat was in complete darkness despite the smokey sunshine outside.

He flicked on the light and glanced at the strip of lightsensitive photographic paper which he always placed on the floor near the door immediately before leaving. As he watched, it turned black.

He poured himself a drink and looked round, horrified at what he saw. There was no shortage of comfort – he’d been given a good start, and the money had come pumping in, thick and regular as arterial blood, after that. But what he had constructed was a prison.

He pressed the rewind-and-play button on his answering machine. There was very little on it. Few people had his number, and fewer of those were likely to be making social calls. In fact only one message caught his attention, not really a message at all, but readable as one.

A man’s voice exclaimed Jaysmith! That was all.

He checked the timing of the call. It had come through less than an hour after he had phoned Enid to cancel his contract on Bryant.

He listened to the word again.

Jaysmith!

The word was distorted in anger, bitten off short as though there was much else to follow but the speaker had recognized the folly of committing it to an answering machine.

Despite the distortion, despite the brevity, he had no difficulty in recognizing the voice. It was Jacob, no doubt of that. That precise, rather nasal accent was unmistakable, even though the usual drily ironic inflexion had been replaced by something approaching rage. Any emotion which brought Jacob so close to breaking his own security must have been extreme indeed.

The flat had two bedrooms, or rather a bedroom and a boxroom. This last contained a small workbench with a vice and various metal working tools. The kind of repairs and modifications Jaysmith occasionally wanted to make to his equipment were not to be doled out to some jobbing craftsman. Now he carefully unwrapped the soap taken from the bathroom at Naddle Foot and set about producing keys which matched the imprints in the cake.

He worked swiftly and with tremendous concentration and ninety minutes later he was satisfied. Carefully he wrapped up the three keys with a small tungsten file for on-the-spot modification and put the resulting package into his inside pocket.

Now he relaxed and realized he was hungry, not having eaten anything since his breakfast at the Crag Hotel. The freezer held a selection of made-up meals. He selected one at random and put it in the microwave oven. It turned out to be lasagna. He ate most of it, washed down with a half bottle of his best Chablis. Suddenly he felt rather restless and looked at the telephone and thought of ringing Anya in Cumbria. It was a crazy notion, instantly dismissed. He then thought of ringing his Enid number, to let them know he was here. But that would be a mistake too. He had retired. He must not seem to have any desire to make contact. And in any case he guessed that they would know he was back by now and if they wished to contact him, eventually they’d get round to it.

He forced himself to relax, and went through to the bedroom, and lay on his bed, and waited for Jacob.

The first time he ever saw Jacob, he had been lying on his bed.

He swam out of a drug-filled sleep into a world of physical pain and then burst through that into a world of mental and emotional agony, more bitter by far, and finally opened his eyes in desperate search of a physical image to blot out the horrors in his mind.

And there was Jacob.

Just a man in a dark double-breasted suit totally unsuitable for the hot, humid climate of South-East Asia, yet there was no sign of discomfort as he sat by the bed, still as a lizard on a wall, his squashed-up face wearing its customary expression of weary puzzlement at the foolishness on display before him.

‘You’re awake, are you?’ he asked. ‘Can you move?’

He tried. The pain in his body shifted around a bit but didn’t get much worse until he tried to speak. Then he realized that the left side of his face must have been badly cut. A long strip of plaster covered perhaps a dozen stitches.

‘Where’s Nguyet?’ he managed to whisper.

The dark-suited man shrugged.

‘I should think she’s dead, wouldn’t you, Mr Collins?’

‘I saw her, she was alive …’ His voice tailed off as he recalled his last glimpse of that golden body, supine among a forest of dusty boots.

‘The civil police say she was a taxi-girl picked up under Madame Nhu’s morality laws. The secret police say she was a communist sympathizer fomenting unrest at the university. The Special Force say she was a Buddhist saboteur. They can’t all be right, can they? But they all agree that she died resisting arrest, and I’m afraid they can’t all be wrong either.’

‘It’s not true! She can’t be dead!’

His voice spiralled high, but not out of conviction. The other did not even argue.

‘And you,’ he said. ‘You’d have been dead too, wouldn’t you? If those Americans hadn’t happened to come along. What did you think you were doing?’

The tone was one of polite curiosity. He closed his eyes and let the memories come rushing back. Flung out into the street in front of Nguyet’s apartment, he had staggered half-demented with rage and terror into the nearest bar. Here he had emptied his wallet in front of the barman and demanded a gun. Saigon, under President Diem’s repressive regime, was a city where it was said you could get anything for money. The barman said nothing but removed the money and five minutes later a newspaper-wrapped package was put into his hands. It was not a bar used much by Westerners, but as he left, two Americans came in. They were attached to their Embassy’s Cultural and Educational Mission and Jaysmith’s British Council teaching contract at the university had brought them in touch. He ignored their greeting and rushed past them, tearing at the newspaper package. Alarmed by his appearance, the Americans followed.

As he arrived back at Nguyet’s apartment block, the street door opened and the dog-faced colonel and his entourage came out.

Screaming with hate he had ripped the last of the paper from the package and leapt forward brandishing the ancient revolver it contained. Thrusting the weapon into the colonel’s face, he squeezed the trigger. It fell off. A soldier smashed the useless weapon from his hand. Another drove him to the ground with a savage blow to the head. Then they were all at him with rifle butts and boots. Only the arrival of the Americans had saved him from being beaten to death in the street.

‘I was going to kill that bastard,’ he said with savage hate. ‘I still am.’

‘Are you? This is the man, I believe, isn’t it?’

A photograph was held in front of him. The dog-face of the colonel stared down at him. He nodded, unable to speak.

‘Colonel Tai. A very nasty piece of work. Directly answerable to Tran Van Khiem who, as you may know, is Madame Nhu’s brother and head of anti-subversion forces. And you’re going to kill him, are you? You’ll have to be quick, Mr Collins.’

‘What do you mean?’

The dark-suited man pointed at an envelope by the bed.

‘You’re persona non grata, Mr Collins. There’s a plane ticket in there, valid for this evening’s flight only. If you’re not on the flight, you will be arrested on a charge of attempted murder, subversion, sabotage, it hardly matters what as you’re not likely to survive arrest, are you? I should catch that plane if I were you, even if it means crawling to the airport, naked.’

The superior tone got to him at last.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded. ‘Are you official? From the Embassy? You’ve got the look of one of those smooth bastards!’

The man laughed drily, apparently genuinely amused by the comment.

‘A smooth bastard, am I? Then you’d better call me Jacob, hadn’t you, Mr Collins? And am I official? No, I’m so unofficial, I scarcely exist, do I? Come here a moment, will you?’

He went to the window. Laboriously the injured man climbed out of bed and followed. His flat was in a small block on a side street off the Boulevard Charner, one of Saigon’s main thoroughfares, choked now as nearly always during the day with cycles, motor-scooters, cars and trucks. The man who called himself Jacob pointed to the intersection.

‘At precisely six o’clock this afternoon, Colonel Tai will be going down the boulevard in his jeep. He will be held up there by a slight accident, right at that corner. How far is it? About fifty yards, would you say? An easy shot for a man who was his regimental and university rifle champion, wouldn’t you say?’

‘How the hell do you know that? Who are you?’

‘Nobody. Jacob if you like, but I prefer nobody. What do you think, Mr Collins? Could you pull a trigger? One that wouldn’t fall off this time?’

He didn’t have to think.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I could pull a trigger.’

Jacob contemplated him for a moment.

‘Yes, I think you could,’ he said softly. ‘Goodbye, Mr Collins.’

He left so abruptly that there was no time to ask further questions.

An hour later there was a gentle tap at the door.

When he opened it, there was no one there. But against the wall stood a long cardboard box with the name and trademark of a well-known brand of vacuum cleaner on it.

He took it into the flat and opened it.

It contained a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle, old, but beautifully maintained. The magazine was full.

He went to the window and looked out. Fifty yards. From this distance he could not miss. The thought of squeezing the trigger and seeing Tai’s head burst open in a shower of blood and brains filled him with such a passion of hate that he had to sit down till the weakness in his legs passed away. He had a bottle of whisky in his case, bought at Heathrow eight months earlier and still unopened.

He opened it now and drank from the bottle. It did him good. He drank again. After a while the drink calmed the wildness in him and his mind began to function again. He knew beyond all doubt he was going to kill Tai, but he now let his thoughts dwell on the mysterious Jacob. Saigon in the autumn of 1963 was awash with rumour. Self-immolation by Buddhist monks; acts of sabotage by God knows who; arrest without trial by Government forces; the sacking of the Saigon pagodas; all these had fuelled the perennial rumour of an imminent anti-Diem coup. Perhaps most significant of all was the withdrawal of American support, signalled in a variety of ways.

Tai’s assassination by a Westerner would be just another such signal. That the assassin was English, not American, would mean nothing to the native populace, but it would enable the Americans to claim total innocence. Jacob was probably paying off some debt to the CIA.

But for the full effect of the assassination to be felt it would have to be known that the killer was a Westerner. And there was only one way of advertising that.

He stood at the window and looked out to the intersection. Jacob needed no special plan. Tai would have his usual armed escort. It was only fifty yards to the apartment block’s only entrance. If he survived sixty seconds after pulling the trigger, he would be a very lucky man.

No. He corrected himself. A very unlucky man.

He didn’t mind dying if that was the price to pay for the colonel’s death. His attack at Nguyet’s apartment had been suicidal.

But he felt a sudden reluctance to die for the man called Jacob and the mysterious forces behind him.

Despite his aching body, the whisky was making him drowsy. There were still two hours to go and he dare not risk sleep. He pulled on trousers and a shirt and went down into the street.

He strolled aimlessly, ignoring the city’s crowded and varied street life which on first arrival had so fascinated him. The beggars, the girls selling flowers, the vendors of books and pictures and ornaments, the street urchins, the workmen in battered felt hats with never-ending, never-removed cigarettes in their lips, the hire-car drivers, the shoe-shine boys, none of these could interest him any more. Only once, when among the steady stream of svelte and graceful Vietnamese women passing in and out of the fashionable shops, he imagined he glimpsed Nguyet, did he show any animation. But even as he pressed forward crying her name, he knew he was wrong.

And he had been wrong even to have loved her.

He had loved his father and he had deserted him.

He had loved his mother and she had died.

He had been willing for the want of any other object to transfer his love to his stepfather, but he had rejected him.

In the Army, at university, he had been popular, active, successful, but he had not made the mistake of allowing anyone too close. When he got the chance to come to this exotic, distant place, there had been no ties at home to make him hesitate.

And here, as if the bitter rules which must guide his life in England did not apply, he had relaxed once more and taken Nguyet into the deepest and most secret places of his soul.

Now she had paid the price.

He stopped so suddenly that other pedestrians bumped into him. But these polite and gentle people showed no irritation or curiosity. He realized he was outside the Hotel de la Paix, one of the city’s many monuments to the French colonial dream. Without conscious decision, he went into the crowded lobby and made his way up the stairs to the top floor. Letting his instinct guide him, he turned left and walked to the end of the corridor. There was a bathroom here. He opened the door and went in.

It was a high airy room. A posse of cockroaches scuttled beneath the high-sided cast-iron bath at his entry. Painfully, he clambered up on the side of the bath and, disturbing another huge cockroach on the dusty windowsill, opened the high narrow window.

It gave him a crow’s-eye view straight down the boulevard. There, somewhere between three and four hundred yards away, was the intersection where the colonel’s jeep would be stopped in just over an hour’s time.

He got down off the bath and went to the door. There was a key on the inside. He removed it, went out, and locked the door behind him.

On his way back down the boulevard, he was even less conscious of his surroundings as he carefully paced out the distance. Three hundred and twenty-five yards. Back in his flat, he packed the few belongings he wanted to take with him in a small grip, slipped a small pair of field glasses he used for bird-spotting into his pocket and repacked the rifle in its box.

He arrived back at the hotel at quarter to six. Approaching one of the hire-car drivers he told him he would be leaving for the airport in about fifteen minutes and gave him the grip to look after. It was Nguyet who had taught him this lesson about most of her people. Trust given without hesitation was nearly always repaid in full.

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