The Siege of Reginald Hill Read online

  “Well, you didn’t shoot him, right?” Bane’s voice was utterly sober.

  “No, I never actually even drew it.”

  “Well, then. No harm done.”

  “I’m not so sure. I wanted to kill him. I feel…filthy just having the residue of that anger on my soul. I think I should go to confession.”

  “I’m sure Kyle will oblige.”

  “You know I never confess to my brother, Bane. It just feels too weird, to me.”

  “Sounds like your big bad sin wouldn’t exactly be news. And if he’s still vibrating on a higher plane the way he was last time I saw him, it could be a pretty awesome experience. But anyway. You’re in an Underground-run hospital in an Underground-governed Free Town. Somehow I don’t think it will be too hard to find another priest.”

  “I know, I know. Well…you’re sure the children are okay?”

  “Absolutely fine, Margo. Joey’s asleep in my lap, the others are round at U’s and Jane’s, playing.”

  “Okay, I’d better go. I really miss you all.”

  “I miss you even more.” He sighed wistfully—then it sounded like he smiled. “I wonder if Unicorn can pull up a security photo of Hill’s face when you reached for your weapon.”

  “I threw a bedpan at him first,” I admitted, mostly to make up for my thoughtless remark before. “Hit him, too. It was empty, though.”

  Bane laughed so hard this time that Joey gave a sleepy gurgle. “I’ll definitely get onto U about a photo!”

  “Good night, Bane. I love you.”

  “Love you too. Oh, I’m so calling U!”

  I sighed and was about to hang up when the dim pounding of feet entered my ear from the receiver along with an urgent, “Wait, Daddy!”

  “Is that Luc?”

  “Yeah… Yes, yes, you can speak to Mummy. Here…”

  The phone clearly changed hands. “Mummy?”

  “Hi, Luc. I thought you were at Aunty Jane’s?”

  “Aunty Jane told me you were on the phone, so I ran all the way home!”

  “Well, I’m very glad you did. Not that your Aunty Jane’s setting a very good example of switchboard confidentiality, there.”

  “You don’t really mind, do you?”

  “No, Luc. Just saying. Are you all okay?”

  “We’re fine. Are you coming home?”

  “Not yet, Luc. Uncle Kyle’s still quite poorly, though the doctor says he should be well on the mend soon.”

  “Oww.” A tragic sigh. “Well, I s’pose if Uncle Kyle needs you.”

  “He does, Luc. I’d be home at once if he didn’t.”

  “I know.” Luc still sounded gloomy. He needed something to do, knowing him.

  Hmm. Maybe… “Luc? Do you think you could pray for Mr Hill? Reginald Hill?”

  A short pause. “Isn’t he the man who hurt Uncle Kyle?”

  “Yes, he is. He needs a lot of prayers. He’s not in great health, either. It would make Uncle Kyle very happy if you would pray for him.”

  “Okay, Mummy.” No more hesitation. Was my son as special as I often felt, or was I just a jaded, unforgiving grown-up? That bright, precious young voice rushed on, “He must be a horrible man if he could hurt Uncle Kyle, but it would be awful if he went to hell, wouldn’t it? I’ll make sure we all pray for him. In fact, I’ll get everyone together tonight to do a rosary.”

  Oh, Bane was going to love that. “Thanks, Luc. You’re such a good boy.”

  “You can’t call me a good boy just for saying I’ll pray for someone. It’s not like I just saved a toddler from falling off the Vatican wall!”

  “You are a good boy, but you don’t know how to take a compliment,” I teased.

  “Huh.”

  “Well, I’d better go. Or are the others there, now?”

  “No, they were busy dressing Javi up as a warrior angel and s’pose they weren’t paying attention to Aunty Jane.”

  “Okay, well, give them a kiss from me.”

  “Polly won’t let me kiss her, mum! Ew!”

  “A mutual disinclination, clearly. Just give her my love, then. Daddy can kiss her.”

  “Okay, I can do that.”

  “Bye, Luc. Love you.”

  “Love you, Mummy.”

  Putting the phone down felt physically painful, as though the action yanked on my heart strings. I sighed. There were reasons why I’d enjoyed travel a lot less since becoming a mother.

  Although it was several hours earlier back home, I felt ready for bed. But first I really did want to find a priest. Humiliating that my eleven-year-old was more willing to forgive Hill than I was!

  KYLE

  Cheeping birds. Beeping monitors. Gentle morning rays. A breeze played on my cheeks and I drew in a deep breath, hoping to savour the cool dawn air.

  Ow.

  My chest really hurt this morning. Especially when I breathed in. The aches and pains in the rest of my body…were less. Was I healing or…I opened my eyes and peeked at the morphine machine. Yes, someone had put it back up to the dosage I’d agreed with the head doctor. After a quick look around—no Margo, no nurses—I knocked it down by another ten bars. I’d been managing with it eight bars lower yesterday, after all. Hopefully Doctor Fathiya wouldn’t find out immediately.

  But if the morphine had been turned up and my chest still hurt this much… What was going on with that? Hill hadn’t even touched my chest. It must be some side-effect of the serum.

  I looked across at Hill, but he still slept. Obvious enough why he didn’t want to be released—though it’d taken me long enough to work it out, in my less than A-one condition—but why was he so happy to stay in a room with me? My attempts at conversation usually seemed to exasperate him. Maybe he just enjoyed watching Margo hovering all sad and strained over my battered body. Likely and logical enough.

  So why did I still feel like I was missing something?

  The arrival of the hospital chaplain, Father Omwancha, middle-aged and solid—in every respect—to feed me Holy Communion in bed, put such thoughts from my mind. Followed, at an appropriate interval, by breakfast—and that barely cleared away when a whole bunch of my parishioners were crowding around, talking nineteen to the dozen and pressing a variety of bundles on me, containing everything from carrots and fresh-laid eggs to—oh so happily!—my Office book and Bible.

  I couldn’t get much of a word in edgeways but was far too tired to mind. When the nurse at last came to chase them away, I thanked them with deep and genuine gratitude, touched not only by the provision of my books, but also that they’d bothered to make a twelve-hour journey to visit me. They just laughed, assured me the distance was nothing, a mere day trip—true enough, in this vast continent, but still hard for me to grasp even after all these years—and set off home again.

  With a happy sigh, I opened my Office book, laboriously working my way past the lost days to find my place.

  I kept dozing off, but at long last I closed the book and tried to move it to the bedside unit—an attempt I quickly abandoned when it became clear that both my strength and my painful half-hands were insufficient for the task. Well, it wasn’t doing any harm on the bed.

  Right. Now I could give Hill my attention. Other than a mere, “Good morning, Uncle Reginald,”—which had provoked nothing but an explosive snort—and a few words of explanation about our breakfast dish, we’d not interacted much today.

  I looked across to find him watching me. He’d been watching me all morning. Like I was…a play that wasn’t finished yet. Or maybe he was just bored stiff.

  “And how are you feeling this morning, Uncle Reginald? I trust you are recovering after your eventful weekend.”

  Hill smiled coldly. He’d clearly decided to ignore his new title. “Oh, no need to fret your crazy young head about me, Kyle. Rather more to the point, how are you feeling this morning?”

  Since when did he care about that? I eyed him, puzzled, but simply said, “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

  Hill…s
mirked. “Got some more insane questions for me, no doubt?”

  Yes, he really was bored, wasn’t he? The Religious Sisters who ran the hospital had shown no inclination to give him books or other forms of entertainment, clearly feeling he should be left free to contemplate his misdeeds without distraction. Even annoying conversations with me began to seem preferable to more hours lying staring out at not a lot. The gap between the beds and the window ensured that such of the sleepy town’s outskirts as we could glimpse were too distant for much detail to be made out. The savannah beyond lay even further away.

  “Well, something else I am curious about. What, in your view, is the point of life?”

  Hill snorted. “Quite frankly, I’m far from convinced there is one. I suspect everything may just be one great cosmic accident. You, me, humanity, the planet, the universe. Pure, blind chance. We humans were simply unlucky enough to evolve to a level at which we could grasp that awful truth. Well, those of us who don’t prefer to believe in fairy tales.”

  “I’ve felt God, Uncle Reginald. He’s filled me, consumed me, overwhelmed me. For most of the billions of years of life on earth, His existence has been an accepted fact. It is you who believe the fairy tale—one of very recent invention indeed, conceived by those so obsessed with their own self-determination that they simply cannot stand the thought that the only path to true freedom is total surrender.”

  “Total surrender gets you where you are. Lying in a hospital bed.” Hill bit off further words and smiled smugly.

  “Yet here you are, lying in a hospital bed just the same as me.”

  Hill’s smile soured slightly. “I’ve had considerably more of life than you, foolish boy. And I haven’t wasted my life on the promise of another one. One life is all we get and it’s worth fighting for. Perhaps I wasn’t quite honest with you yesterday—I do still feel something for my children, not much, but something—but if it was them or me, I’d choose me. Every time. Because my life is the only thing of true value I have. And I will do anything, kill anyone, to keep it. There, are you going to cry again?”

  I gave him a reproving look. “I didn’t cry.”

  “Looked like you wanted to.”

  “Well, I did—want to. I do. What you just said is ghastly. What you did is awful. Everything about it is unspeakably tragic. Everything about you is unspeakably tragic.” My throat burned, just thinking about it. The things he’d done. The things he believed…

  He understood that life was precious, yet he was happy to take the lives of others. Over and over, for years. To torture and kill. His own children, his political opponents, thousands of priests, sisters, laypeople, reAssignees, not even to mention Resistance fighters and other criminals. His selfishness was of catastrophic proportions. And surely culpable? He understood the incredible value of life yet chose to kill. Not in self-defence, but merely for gain. For advantage, to gain power and comfort in life. Oh, surely, he was culpable?

  And if he carried on shutting God out, I knew exactly what would become of him. I swallowed and cleared my throat, but to no avail. I had to brush a tear from the corner of my eye.

  “Oh, you have got to be joking.”

  I stared at the blankets, trying to get a grip on myself, but the dual pains—emotional and physical—had combined to overwhelm me. Scrabbling my rosary from the bedside unit, I tried to pray, but it was so hard to ‘thumb’ the beads…

  “Kyle?”

  My sister’s concerned voice broke in on my limping prayers and I glanced up, startled, my damp cheeks heating.

  “Kyle, are you okay? What’s the matter?” She bent over the bed, staring at my wet face, gripping my wrists anxiously, either out of reluctance to touch my maimed hands or fear of hurting me by doing so.

  “I’m fine.” I freed an arm and struggled to grip the taut, too well tucked-in sheet, to press it into service as a hanky, but to no avail. I made do with wiping my cheeks on the bandages that covered what was left of my hand, instead.

  “This is way lower than yesterday.” Margo looked up from peering at the morphine machine. “No wonder you’re—”

  I caught her reaching hand. “No, no. It’s not that, Margo. Mr Hill was simply… Well, our conversation took a distressing turn, nothing more. I’m…I’m clearly feeling rather…fragile after…after everything.” Oh no, I shouldn’t have said that.

  Yep, from the glare she turned on Hill, she now blamed him. “What on earth did you say to him, you evil old—”

  “Margo. Please. He was honest, that’s no bad thing.” Okay, so I was pretty sure he’d brought things back onto the subject of his children, living and dead, in a deliberate attempt to hurt me, but still. Margo didn’t need more reasons to hate him.

  Hill eyed her coldly, no doubt trying to decide whether he could safely needle her today.

  “Don’t start on her!” I said hastily. “Or…or I won’t speak to you again for ages.”

  “That’s your notion of a threat?” But Hill gave a couple of almost convincing yawns and shut his eyes.

  Smothering a sigh of relief, I took a deep breath and tried to raise myself slightly with my hands, tired of looking up Margo’s nose—but the wave of pain from my chest so swamped the ache from my hands and elsewhere that I abandoned the effort at once and flopped against the pillows, breathing in cautious, shallow gasps.

  “Kyle!” Margo scolded. “Don’t try to move. You’re not allowed! You’ll hurt your knee! You’ll hurt everything.”

  “I’m alright,” I managed.

  “How are you this morning?” She carefully turned the chair around to put the back to Hill and seated herself, then turned a bright, hopeful look on me. “Doctor Fathiya thought you should be starting to feel much better. Was she right?”

  For some reason, I couldn’t help glancing at Hill—yep, watching me again. Our eyes met before he looked away quickly. “I’m, uh…still rather tired, to be honest.”

  “Aw, of course you are.” Margo fussed ineffectually with the sheet and blanket—which needed nothing doing to them—then sat back again, her nurturing energies apparently satisfied by that meagre outlet.

  I’m fine.

  I’m alright.

  I’m rather tired.

  Did I need to go to confession? I didn’t feel fine or all right. I wasn’t rather tired, I was exhausted. I felt like Saint Margaret Clitherow being crushed under her martyring load of rocks.

  I drew a cautious, deeper breath. Ow.

  Why was my chest hurting like that?

  “U’s got a team trying to isolate the serum from your blood and analyse it,” Margo was telling me cheerfully. “More as a general information gathering exercise than anything—the hospital is satisfied its effects have worn off now. But they’re making slow work of it, apparently.”

  I tried to attend to what she was saying. “Why don’t they just analyse the residue from the syringe?”

  “They couldn’t find one. There was an incinerator in one of the basement rooms; they eventually concluded the syringe was thrown in there in an attempt to keep the formula secret in the event of…well, this.”

  Did I have a vague memory of hearing the room door opening and shutting, shortly after I’d been injected? Probably. Hill was clever enough to know that recreating something from a blood sample was far more difficult than analysing the original. One of the minions must have taken the syringe out.

  No, the syringes.

  I stared at Hill. He stared back, still that smug smirk on his cruel face.

  My little insurance policy.

  Yes, and what had he said yesterday? Do you think I didn’t know how this could end?

  “Margo— Oh, sorry!” I’d interrupted her, though I’d not taken in a word she’d been saying. “Oh, well…ah, I’d quite like a word with Unicorn, actually. Do you think he could…?”

  “I’m sure he’ll come at once.” Margo smiled. “He’s been in, you know, quite a few times, but you’ve always been asleep.”

  I smiled back
, but unease curled in my belly. How much longer would my poor sister be smiling?

  Agent Jack Willmott, more commonly known to his friends as Unicorn or simply ‘U’, stood beside my bed within five minutes, his incredibly blue eyes smiling at me along with his mouth. “How are you, Father Gecko?” He used my old code name from the Liberation missions, the way a lot of mates from that time did, his very upper-class British voice warm.

  I elected to ignore the question this time. “U, I just wondered if you’d been able to work out what was in the blue syringe.”

  Unicorn’s eyes narrowed. “The blue syringe? According to everything I’ve seen or heard, the serum was grey.”

  “Yes, the serum was.” Everything he’d seen… Wait a moment, there was a video in existence of…of everything, wasn’t there? Margo mustn’t see it! Please, God, she hadn’t already! But…I couldn’t ask U to promise never to show it to her with her sitting right there. “Uh… Oh, yes, the first injection they gave me was blue. What was it?”

  U’s face went very still. “What first injection? I was aware of only one.”

  “Did you, uh…” I shot Margo a quick glance. “Did you watch the video?”

  “Of course.” U’s mouth took on an even grimmer line.

  “No, he didn’t let me watch it.” Margo spoke under her breath, clearly in reassurance to me and protest to U.

  “And the video,” went on U, “only shows one injection.”

  It did? I forced my mind back to that horrible time before Our Lord’s presence made everything wonderful. Oh. Was that when Jonas had started doing what I’d taken to be mere arty shots of the instruments, designed to torment the viewers?

  “Before they gave me the serum, they injected me with something blue. I think they were videoing the instrument trays at the time. Hill told me it was his ‘little insurance policy’. I thought the soft-soft voice was for dramatic effect, but now I’m wondering…”

  U’s lips went very tight indeed. So did his brow. I could see him adding it up in his mind. Four days, that blue stuff had been inside me, doing…who knew what. Four days in which they could have been searching for an antidote. But Hill had made jolly sure they didn’t even know about it. Had he even primed that supposedly-helpful minion—who’d clearly divulged nothing about this?