The Siege of Reginald Hill Read online

  The Dismantler, now holding a syringe, located a vein on my opposite arm.

  Hill leant close and smiled—if such a cold and evil expression deserved to be called a smile. “Just my little insurance policy, Kyle.” His voice was so soft and self-satisfied I hardly caught the words.

  I watched as the pale blue liquid disappeared into me. Insurance policy? What was that supposed to mean? I didn’t feel anything other than the sharp sting of the needle and the pressure-pain as the stuff went in. But the Dismantler already wielded another syringe, full of grey fluid. He stuck this needle into the cannula. “Inserting prototype serum now, sir.”

  Yes, it was a prototype. How well tested was it? Perhaps it would just kill me. Please, Lord?

  A quick death wouldn’t help Hill, though. The longer I stayed conscious, the better…from that point of view. I quelled a shudder, just. Actually…I tried to move my hand… Ah. No more shuddering from me. I couldn’t really move anything. Except my eyelids and, presumably, my tongue and vocal chords.

  “The other improved thing about this serum, Kyle,” Hill told me, as though partially reading my mind, “is that it contains a highly effective mix of stimulants. You’ll remain conscious for far, far more of the process than with the old paralytic. Wonderful, hmm?”

  My stomach churned more icily than ever. Terrible news, so far as holding out went. Great news for Hill—as long as I actually could hold out—though not in the way he thought. I closed my eyes tight again and retreated as close to the Lord as I could. Let me hide myself in your robe. Let me cling to you like a frightened child. For that is all I am…

  “You said you wanted to direct the sequence, sir?” The Dismantler’s voice again.

  “Yes. Start with the skin as usual. Just legs and abdomen for now.” Hill’s voice moved as though he’d turned back to me. “I’m sure your sister has told you how pleasant these early stages are.”

  Ignore him, Kyle.

  Lord, preserve me. Lord, save your servant.

  No, remember your training, Kyle. All these disjointed prayers were no good. I needed to get settled into something familiar and repetitive. Well, that wasn’t hard.

  …Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of…

  Pain seared across my thigh, shocking pain, startling as a slap in the face, like touching an electric fence, only long and drawn out. Like nothing I’d ever suffered before. And that was just one pass of the skin peeler… Oh Lord, help me!

  …Pray for us sinners…

  Pain

  …Pray for us sinners…

  Pain

  …Pray for us sinners…

  The strokes seemed to come so rapidly I could hardly breathe; I was gasping, gasping as though the skin peeler was stripping the oxygen from the room, and I fought to ignore it all and focus on praying, praying, praying, Lord, Lord, Lord, I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours…

  Eventually I managed to pick up my rosary again. Time lost all meaning. There was only the prayer and the pain.

  At some point—realisation filtered dimly into my mind—no new pain-strokes had struck for…for… Well, they’d stopped coming. Just the fiery agony that covered my legs, burning on and on. A voice murmured in my ear: “Enjoying yourself, Kyle?”

  I’d a vague feeling I shouldn’t reply, but that was okay. The thought of mustering words was…

  I went back to praying. Who was I praying for?

  “You, go and make me a cup of tea. Yes, now.”

  Oh, for the voice. For Hill. And for me. I couldn’t help praying for me too. That I might hold firm…

  The pain-strokes began again, across my stomach, creeping up towards my ribcage. I could feel tears of pain oozing from my eyes and trickling down into my hair. Clearly my tear ducts weren’t paralysed either.

  “Anything you want to say, Kyle? Any more motivational words for your dear sister?”

  Yes, the camera…I should stop crying, I really should. It made my suffering too obvious. But I wasn’t crying, my body was. I couldn’t control it.

  “What next, sir? It’s usually the eyes…”

  My heart clenched up in instinctive dread, for all I’d been keeping my eyes firmly closed anyway.

  “No, we’ll save those for later. It will make a better film. Where is the milk, you fool? Let’s see. He does love his football, doesn’t he? Take a few muscles out of one of his knees.”

  “A few muscles? But…transplanting muscles back into knees is a really tricky business, almost impossible. Much better to just take the whole joint, intact… Oh. Right. Okay. I’ll just take a few out.”

  Football? I’d never felt less worried about football in my life. Still, Hill was a cruel blighter, no mistake.

  How long was this stage going to take, done like this? My knee tingled in fearful anticipation, dread knotting up my insides.

  But it didn’t matter how long it took, did it? Every minute helped Hill more…

  MARGO

  Beep-beep-beep-beep…

  My alarm. Fighting sluggishly up out of sleep, I got my reaching hand tangled in the sheets, extricated it and finally managed to shut the sound off. Mumbled, “Sorry, Bane.”

  Silence.

  “Bane?” I turned my head. Huh. No Bane. Up already? Or…hmm. I had a double memory from last night, of him kissing me and telling me to go to sleep. But the second one? I’ve got to go to HQ, love; I’ll see you in the morning. Or something like that.

  Well. Hardly the first time. He got called in to work at all hours to consult on little problems occurring in far-flung corners of the world. Hopefully he was back already. I was quite capable of getting everyone up and to daily Mass more or less on time—I was!—but another pair of hands certainly did help.

  By the time I’d dressed and woken Polly, Javi, Lizzie, and Joey, and asked Luc—being the oldest and an early bird—to help Javi get ready as soon as he’d finished his rosary, it was clear that Bane was still out. Oh joy. Last night’s brief burst of energy was just a memory.

  “Polly, get out of bed,” I yelled at the wall, trying to run a brush through Joey’s wispy two-year-old hair.

  “How d’you know I’m still in bed?” came the ear-piercing reply from eight-year-old lungs. “You’re in the next room—you can’t see me!”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you?”

  I listened hopefully for the thud that would accompany Polly pouring herself out from under the covers.

  Nothing.

  O Lord, only you can get us all to Mass on time today!

  KYLE

  …Pray for us sinners…

  …Pray for us sinners…

  …Pray for us sinners…

  “That’s the third muscle out. Should I harvest the rest?”

  Only when I smelt the incongruous sweetness of breath mints did I register the coppery smell that had filled my nose for…for too long. Blood. I sensed Hill’s face close to mine. Studying me?

  “I don’t think we’ll bother just now. We don’t seem to be making much impact on dear Kyle. Not so much as a scream. Or even a groan. Ah, there you are—get me a biscuit, how many times do I have to tell you? Let us see. Take his… Yes. Take his thumb and forefinger. From both hands.”

  No! My heart felt like it shuddered in shock. No, don’t take those! Please! How will I say Mass?

  I fought to control my foolish reaction. They were going to kill me. I’d never say Mass again anyway. And my priesthood was an indelible mark embedded in my soul—no scalpel could remove it. But my insides quivered in misery, and my throat constricted with incipient sobs. I swallowed hard, fighting them back, but the next moment Hill’s finger was stroking my Adam’s apple.

  “Not quite so happy now, are we, Kyle? Well, you know how to stop it. Four little words, that’s all.”

  Why would I say four little words that would lead directly to my death and possible damnation out of fear of never being able to say Mass again? I can’t say Mass dead, let alone damned. But I kept my
mouth shut and my eyes shut too.

  “Take the joints and the corresponding bones from his hands,” Hill was instructing. “Remove it all.”

  …Pray for us sinners…

  Pains began in my left hand… Each new one began to seem less—the only mercy of the accumulation—compared to the sum of the whole. My knee, my legs, my abdomen, they were all vying for my attention. Lord, save Hill…

  …Pray for us sinners…

  “Wait…” Hill’s voice again. “Crush each bone before you draw it out. Make a thorough job of it.”

  “But then I’ll need tweezers…it’ll take ages… Right. Right. As you wish, sir.”

  Lord, help me…

  I tried to return to my rosary, but the pain that struck next was unlike anything that had come before. My body actually jerked slightly against the restraints, then flopped, twice as limply, as though its last shred of muscle strength had been spent.

  Lesser pains followed and I struggled to orientate my mind, to reach my rosary again…

  PAIN

  It hit again. No movement from my captive body, this time, but a low, thin sound came from somewhere under my chin, involuntary, unstoppable…

  “Well, a moan is something, I suppose.” The voice sounded cross, so I prayed for it some more.

  Or tried. Praying was becoming so hard. Thinking was becoming hard. A fog of pain hid all, smothered all… I could barely remember who I was, or what I was doing.

  …Hill…save Hill…

  “Four little words, Kyle…”

  Kyle…that’s who I was…

  “…and the pain will go away…”

  Oh God, I wanted the pain to go away, I wanted it so much… But…God…

  “There. Is. No. God. That’s all you have to say…”

  The voice wanted me to deny God. But God was…everything… I mustn’t. I knew I mustn’t…

  PAIN

  A strangled scream wrenched from me. Lord, let me die, please…please!

  I can’t do any more for Hill, I can’t! Just take me, please! Somehow…

  But my mind cleared a little—unhelpfully—and told me that I wouldn’t die any time soon, not from losing the little things I’d lost so far. I was…hours…from death. Hours and hours.

  Despair choked me…

  PAIN

  Aaah… They hadn’t even moved to my second hand yet… Hadn’t even…all the rest…

  I can’t, Lord…I can’t…I can’t bear this…I’m not strong enough, I’m not…

  God forgive me, Hill was right. It wasn’t a question of if.

  Only when.

  MARGO

  Thank the Lord—or thanks to the Lord!—we’d all filed into our usual pew in Saint Peter’s just before the bell had rung to signal the start of Mass. With Joey in my lap and Lizzie and Polly wriggling on either side, Mass hadn’t exactly been a prayerful experience—not in the traditional understanding of the word—but at least Javi had sat quietly beside Luc, sharing his missal and following his older brother’s finger with his usual placid interest.

  Javi, our third oldest after Luc and Polly, didn’t read as well as Luc had at seven, but he was coming on. Luc was eleven now—how was that even possible?—and still an advanced reader. He’d already worked his way through the letters of Saint Pier Giorgio, several books by Saint Thomas More, along with all the major works by Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and had just started reading the Catechism. The full-length version. Bane had tried to make a bet with Jon over whether Luc would read the Summa Theologica before he was fifteen, but Jon refused to take it.

  “Lizzie, stop that…”

  But, thank goodness, with a final prayer request for a priest in Africa who’d been kidnapped, Mass was over. I offered up a hasty, distracted prayer for this unfortunate cleric—I mean, how many priests got kidnapped in Africa?—and started gathering up children. Time to march this lot home for breakfast. And if Bane didn’t show his face soon, I’d have to call Eduardo and demand my husband back! Bane was supposed to be off-duty today, and I had a full schedule.

  Leading and carrying my precious exhaustion-inducers—and trailing their ‘Uncle’ Georg, my duty bodyguard, who determinedly ignored them—I headed back towards the doorway into the rest of Vatican State. Where I met…

  “Jon! I thought you were supposed to be on your way to Kazakhstan for your conference?” The tall, russet-haired priest was the last person I expected to see that morning.

  “I don’t need to go right yet. I can take a later boat.”

  “Oh.” His eyes looked through me, as ever, and his face was pretty expressionless, but I read tension in the lines on his brow. “Everything okay?”

  “Umm. Eduardo wants you to pop down and see him, though. Uh, just you.” He waved towards the noisy horde around me.

  “Ah. Well, is it urgent? Because Bane had to go to work and it’s just me. Could you look after them for half an hour?”

  “Actually…I was going to head back down to HQ with you.” His fingers clenched around his white cane, tight and pale.

  “You were?” A faint ominous prickle—rarely experienced these days—began down the back of my spine. Jon was… much tenser than I’d originally realised, actually. Putting a good face on, but…something was far wrong.

  “Bane!” I gasped.

  “He’s fine.” His hand reached reassuringly for my arm, though I was too far away. “Quite alright. Why don’t you, uh, send the kids to…hmm…”

  “Jane?”

  Beside me, Georg Friedrich gave his head a tiny shake. Jane was on duty. “Well, Unicorn, then?” Another shake. Okay, something was far wrong indeed if Eduardo had a husband and wife on duty together. Anxiety churned leadenly in my stomach. Exactly what was going down? That involved me?

  The penny dropped, leaden and ice-cold. “Kyle!”

  They hadn’t said an African priest, but…a priest in Africa.

  Jon’s lip twisted slightly. No denial this time, but he gave his head a tiny, warning tilt towards the children.

  “What about Uncle Kyle?” Luc was already demanding. Sensing the tension.

  “Nothing, Luc. Take your brothers and sisters up to Aunty Calla and ask her to give you some breakfast, would you?”

  “Mummy! I can’t just knock on Aunty Calla’s door and demand she feed us!”

  The children stared up at us. Polly’s face mirrored Luc’s anxiety, Javi looked curious, Lizzie just smiled at the thought of breakfast with Aunty Calla, while Joey went right on sucking his thumb.

  “You don’t have to demand, just go along and ask if it’s alright if you play there for a little while and when she asks if you’ve had breakfast… No, no, just tell her Uncle Georg sent you for breakfast, okay? Go on…”

  Their Uncle Georg gave the tiniest nod. Luc’s notion of good manners satisfied by this, he took Joey from me and herded the other three away. But he shot an unhappy look back over his shoulder.

  “It’s Kyle, isn’t it?” I turned to Jon as soon as they were out of earshot. “Who took him? Where is he?”

  Jon spread his hands helplessly. “I think for once they’re rather clueless down in HQ, I’m afraid. Eduardo certainly had no idea this was in the air.”

  I grabbed his arm and towed him with me, heading off at a near-run. “Why didn’t Bane wake me?”

  “What, having you worried and tired would help in some way?”

  Hitting priests was a big no-no, however old a friend they might be, so I didn’t slap him. I just towed him even faster.

  KYLE

  My left hand was a burning mess of agony. My breathing was noisy, so noisy, gasping, wheezing whoops too closely related to sobs. Utter despair enveloped me. What was the point bearing any more of this? Hill was done for. And so was I. Because I couldn’t hold out until the end. I simply couldn’t…

  “You can’t hold out, Kyle…” The devil whispered in my ear… “You can’t hold out, so why not give in now. Make it easy for yourself. Let the pain go…”

&
nbsp; Why not? How had I ever thought I could be strong enough? Frail, sinful me?

  “There is no shame in accepting the inevitable. No one could hold out, Kyle. No one.”

  No one… Certainly not me…

  The hands touched my right thumb. I screamed and tried to buck against the restraints, but barely twitched. My breathing came fast, faster, too fast, it was about to begin again, that terrible, terrible pain, that desecration of my consecrated hands, that destruction, that agony…

  “No one could hold out. Let go, Kyle. Just say the words. You don’t have to mean them…”

  No one…

  No one?

  That…wasn’t true. Was it? Someone had suffered a death as bad as this…worse. And held resolute to the end. To save me. Frail, sinful me.

  I couldn’t hold firm. I wasn’t strong enough.

  But He was.

  Lord, I am yours. I am yours.

  I surrendered. I dropped barriers I’d not known I had, I opened doors I hadn’t known I kept closed, I yielded parts of me I’d not realised I held back. I gave every fibre and cell and particle and thought and memory to Him.

  He filled me. He enveloped every fibre and cell and particle and thought and memory with Himself. He’d wanted to do this since…forever. But He needed me to let Him in.

  Pure joy permeated my entire body, expanded my mind. I’d never felt such peace, such love, such awe…yet even as I relaxed in His embrace, I knew this for a mere pinprick, a mere fraction, of what I would feel when I entered His presence face-to-face. Such a longing gripped my swelling heart that again I struggled to breathe.

  Or perhaps that was the pain. The Dismantler worked on my right hand now. I could still feel it, all that pain piled upon pain, but it just didn’t seem to…matter. If the only way to keep this awareness of my Lord was to endure ten times this agony, I’d have accepted unhesitatingly.

  I floated on a sea of Love, drowned in it, deliriously. Why had I shut Him out so much for so long? What a fool… I laughed at myself, and it came from my half-paralysed throat as a rattling cackle.