Death Takes the Low Road Read online

  ‘Yes. You’re an oddly loyal person, Mr Hazlitt. So when you got creased by dear Cherry’s last bullet and it became apparent through your delirious babblings that you feared Miss Nevis were dead, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. As I’m sure the lady has told you, what happened was that our Mr Smithson, who had gone from the car park to collect Miss Nevis, discovered the man, Chuff, trying to kill her. He shot him and down he fell through the glass roof right on top of her, knocking her unconscious. He then bled copiously all over her before dragging himself off into the passageway where I regret to say he did not die.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Hazlitt.

  The bottle of cognac arrived and they started drinking.

  ‘But all my men planned to do,’ resumed the Old Etonian, ‘was to use your mistaken belief that Miss Nevis was dead to get the names from you. An hour or so’s tragic sorrow followed almost immediately by joyful reunion. Instead you decided to do your own dirty work. Surprising. And uncharacteristic.’

  ‘Uncharacteristic?’

  ‘Yes. After the horror you expressed at the prospect of helping Colonel Oto shuffle off this mortal coil … but circumstances alter cases, I suppose.’

  ‘May I help myself?’ asked Hazlitt, seizing the brandy bottle.

  ‘Please do. You’re very good at it, it seems.’

  ‘Thanks. All this doesn’t explain how the gun I took from one of your agents was loaded with blanks. Or don’t you trust that one with live ammunition?’

  ‘Poor Durban,’ said the Old Etonian. ‘I sometimes think we shouldn’t. No, I’m afraid you left a rather wide trail down from Scotland. It took a little time for us to get on it, but after that it was easy. The blank clip was substituted in your hotel bedroom. And a small bugging device fitted so that we could keep track of you. Even then your concern with Professor Nevis disconcerted us rather.’

  ‘I just wanted to talk to him about Caroline,’ said Hazlitt. ‘Then when I found he was in the room with those other two I wanted to get him out of the way.’

  ‘Considerate,’ said the Old Etonian approvingly. ‘Let me replenish your glass. Now, other matters. No one proposes to proceed with any charges against you. At the moment.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat,’ said Hazlitt.

  ‘I’m sorry. It is a threat, of course, but it wasn’t meant to sound like one. No, I was just wondering about your future.’

  ‘My future?’

  ‘Yes. Stewart Stuart is resigning, of course. And I’m assured the post is yours for the asking. But I wondered if you might now be more receptive to an offer of alternative, or perhaps simply additional, employment?’

  ‘Like poisoning Oto? No thanks!’

  ‘No, no. Things have changed. Oto is approved of in Westminster now, don’t you read your papers? We are protecting Oto.’

  ‘That’s nice. Look, about Stuart, what happens to him?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right, never fear. They always are. They have a choice, you know. Full co-operation and stop here in comfort. Or go to jail, move directly to jail, and hope for a quick exchange.’

  ‘And which has he opted for?’

  ‘Who knows? Perhaps you’d like a word with him. Might help you make up your mind about my offer.’

  ‘Why are you so keen to recruit me?’ asked Hazlitt, genuinely puzzled.

  ‘You have the right qualifications, Mr Hazlitt. Over these past two or three weeks you’ve proved you’re a man of fortitude, courage, ingenuity; physically fit, mentally alert, great powers of survival.’

  Hazlitt preened himself, flattered in spite of anything he could do to resist.

  ‘But your main attraction,’ added the Old Etonian, ‘is that to look at you, all this would appear completely out of the question, I mean, just impossible, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ said Stuart.

  ‘How are they treating you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m very comfortable. Very.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Don’t think too badly of me, but I’m going to cooperate. Yes. Co-operate.’

  ‘Co-operate?’

  ‘That’s it. I’m sixty-five. I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t particularly want to go to Moscow and live on a pension, even if they’d bother to exchange me. So it’s the only way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Stewart. I’m sorry I ever found out about you.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I was getting old. Careless. I’d done my party service in Whitehall. Lincoln was honourable retirement for me. And in any case I knew you were to be trusted. Not as a party member, perhaps, but as a friend. I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry I tried to …’

  ‘Not your fault. Not your fault. I told that fool Sholto not to set his thugs on you.’

  ‘I knew that couldn’t be you. In fact, I’d made up my mind to come back and talk to you when, well, when I thought Caroline got killed. Then it all changed. You seemed to merit some of the blame then. What’ll happen to Sholto?’

  Stuart began to laugh.

  ‘He’s keeping a tight mouth, it seems. Imagines he’ll be exchanged pretty quick. But once they realise I’ve cooperated, nothing he knows is worth getting him out for. Not by either side.’

  ‘Poor Sholto. It’s a dirty business.’

  ‘Most of what makes life fascinating is, don’t you think? Be careful. It can grip you unawares. May I come and see you when I’m out and about again?’

  ‘I insist on it. We’ll always welcome you.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes. I’m thinking of getting married.’

  ‘Bill, I’d like you to meet my mother.’

  ‘Hello, Bill! He looks fine to me, honey, just fine. When I found out that John was over here and not at the conference in Chicago like he said he was, well I went wild, I was so sure something dreadful must have happened, you know, I mean something dreadful!’

  ‘Such as, Mrs Nevis?’

  ‘Well, you know how young people are these days, so when I heard your name mentioned I naturally imagined some long-haired way-out yippie had got my baby into trouble, you know, with drugs or politics, or sex, that kind of thing, but now I’ve met you, Bill, I can see at once how wrong I was to worry about any of those things. You don’t know how much of a relief it is to see you in the flesh, Bill, and have my fears set at rest.’

  ‘I suppose your husband has mentioned to you that Caroline and I hope to get married, Mrs Nevis.’

  ‘Married! My little baby married?’

  ‘I’m twenty-five, Mother.’

  ‘I know that, dear. I was a young bride myself, Mr Hazlitt. Well, married! This is going to take a deal of arranging when we get back, John. A deal of arranging.’

  She looked at her husband, her mind full of gowns and flowers and ministers and presents and catering and friends and relations, while her husband stared glumly at Hazlitt and thought of the young, clean-cut third- or fourth-generation American boy with a great career in plastics before him that he had desired for his daughter. James Nevis looked on with a polite smile, hoping that perhaps this news would get his garrulous sister-in-law and holier-than-thou brother back to America with great expedition, looking forward to his niece’s departure from his house, and planning to have the swimming pool filled in immediately.

  Hazlitt and Caroline looked at each other, thinking quite unthinkable things.

  Mrs Nevis returned to them.

  ‘Just think, honey. Mrs Hazlitt! That’s a fine-sounding name. Wasn’t there some famous old English writer with that name, Mr Hazlitt?’

  ‘There was indeed,’ said Hazlitt. ‘He was a journalist of revolutionary principles, who took drugs, had an unhappy marriage and abandoned his wife to go in pursuit of a servant girl who despised him. I think I’m distantly related.’

  ‘That was pretty cruel to my mother, that thing about Hazlitt,’ said Caroline reprovingly.

  ‘English humour,’ said Hazlitt. ‘She must get used to it.’

  �
��You’re condescending again,’ said Caroline warningly.

  ‘Sorry.’

  They were walking by the swimming pool in Professor Nevis’s garden. It was a glorious evening, and in the west the death of day was being directed with all the fine disregard for taste and restraint of the best Hollywood musicals.

  ‘Anyway, my mother had you pegged at first sight,’ mocked Caroline. ‘She was scared I was being ravished thrice nightly and perhaps in the lunch hour too, but the minute she saw you, she knew I was safe.’

  ‘It’s a good job she wasn’t around at Skara Brae,’ said Hazlitt smugly. ‘I heard no complaints then.’

  ‘No. You’re right, though a gentleman wouldn’t have reminded me. Yeah, I guess appearances can be deceptive.’

  ‘That seems to be the thought for the day,’ said Hazlitt, thinking of the Old Etonian. Caroline seemed to catch the edge of the thought and looked at him anxiously.

  ‘It is all over, isn’t it, Bill? All this secret-agent business, I mean.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, crossing his fingers behind his back.

  ‘It’s all so creepy. You never know who’s doing what. Poor Stewart Stuart. You’re getting his job?’

  ‘If I want it.’

  ‘What do you want, Bill?’ she asked seriously.

  He smiled affectionately at her. She was really a very serious person. That’s what had kept her going during her crazy chase all over Scotland. But you could be too serious.

  ‘Well,’ he answered. ‘It was Lackie Campbell who put me on to it.’

  Striking a pose and adopting an abominable Scots accent, he recited:

  ‘Fortune! if thou’ll but gie me still

  Hale breeks, a scone, an’ whiskey gill,

  An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will,

  Tak’ a’ the rest,

  An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill

  Directs thee best!’

  ‘Those are pretty simple needs,’ said Caroline.

  ‘I’m a pretty simple fellow.’

  In the west now the sky and horizon were flat, a simple wash of dark blue broken by lines of chimneys and trees in unshaded black. The vulgarities of the Hollywood musical sunset had gone and the cartoonist had taken over from the cameraman. It was a Tom and Jerry evening. And the cat and the mouse, Hazlitt now recognised, were really the same, interchangeable, complementary. And even though he now knew from experience that when Tom fell and shattered into a thousand pieces or Jerry had his head twisted round till his neck was like a corkscrew, they did not miraculously regain their shape and wholeness and resume pursuit and flight, he also knew that this mattered surprisingly little.

  It’s a dirty business, Stuart had said, but it can grip you unawares.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Back at my flat,’ said Hazlitt, ‘I have a bottle of Montrachet which I don’t care to leave undrunk any longer.’

  ‘Lead me to it,’ said Caroline.

  They went up the garden path together. In the west the cartoonist’s brush at last washed the far horizon out of sight and with little stabbing strokes began to open up the eyes of the stars.

  About the Author

  Reginald Charles Hill FRSL was an English crime writer and the winner of the 1995 Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 1974 by the Estate of Reginald Hill

  Cover design by Ian Koviak

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5971-8

  This edition published in 2019 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  REGINALD HILL

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