The Siege of Reginald Hill Page 7

  She smiled at me again, but the smile wobbled. She swallowed anxiously, her green eyes remaining fixed on my face. Why so tense?

  Oh. Some of those memories coalesced, forming the answer. That.

  Steeling myself, I raised an aching, leaden yet too-light hand. Looked.

  Despite knowing what I would see, the sight hit like a fist to the stomach, a jarring, wind-ing disorientation of not-rightness.

  Half my hand was just…not there. Up to my middle finger and down to halfway across my wrist, everything was gone. Bandages swaddled my palm and wrist but couldn’t hide how much was missing.

  I dragged my left hand up…yes. The same.

  They simply looked so…odd. So…wrong.

  I flexed the three fingers on my right hand. The ache intensified slightly but not too much. Ah…a needle ran from a cannula in my left wrist to what I easily recognised from all my visits to hospitalised parishioners as a morphine machine. That’s where the non-Divine sense of well-being came from.

  My eyes returned, as though magnetised, to my hands. To what remained of them.

  How can I say Mass, now?

  A tiny noise escaped my sister, like a smothered sob. Oh. Yes, I wanted to make her feel better, didn’t I? I’d been staring at my hands for far too long.

  I turned my head back to her—moving things was getting easier with practise—and smiled again. “Look, Margo!” I wiggled all six fingers at her. “I’ve still got three fingers on each hand. Isn’t God good?” He was. And most people got through their entire lives without ever saying Mass. To have said Mass even once was an honour of…divine…proportions. So don’t whine, Kyle.

  Margo mustered a shaky smile. “Yes, Kyle, God is good.”

  The faintest of snorts from the bed opposite—if Hill had been asleep, he’d woken up when we started talking.

  “You’re…you’re alive, anyway.” Margo’s voice still trembled. “Sounds like it was quite a close-run thing.”

  I stared at the clean white ceiling as my slowly-moving brain caught up with things. Bane had come. Rescued me. Brought me to this hospital. My gaze shifted to the wide window. Sunlight spilled in, warming my bed on the left side of the window, not reaching Hill’s, over there on the right. I was still in Africa. I knew that from the singing birds and the view outside the window—the outskirts of a town with distant savannah beyond—and my dim memories of the doctors and nurses leaning over me. But…

  “How did Bane find me? How did anyone even know I was missing? I mean, so soon.”

  Margo looked relieved, as though she expected me to burst into tears and start sobbing for my missing body parts and felt I’d handed her a brief reprieve. Hmm. I peeped down towards my feet, but sheet and blanket were raised up on a frame to keep them off my skinned areas and I couldn’t see if both my big toes were present and correct. Ah well. If it only did Hill some good, I didn’t care. Well… I could bear it, anyway.

  “They found out very quickly, actually. Someone went to get you for a sick call shortly after midnight. No sign of you in the presbytery, but in the church, although the lights had been switched off and the doors closed, he found the tabernacle wide open and candles burnt down. Well, he knew you would never, ever leave the tabernacle unlocked willingly, so he dashed all around in a panic, afraid you’d been taken ill and collapsed somewhere, but nothing.

  “Despite the closed door, he then thought an animal must somehow have got in and dragged you off. So he fetched the village’s best tracker out of his bed. The tracker scoured the church and all around it and the presbytery too, and concluded that the beasts that had dragged the parish priest away were two-legged, at least two in number, and had come and gone in a very expensive, unfamiliar vehicle. At which point they got onto Eduardo as fast as they could.”

  A faint smile twisted my lips. The irony! The very sick call I’d prayed so hard to be spared had saved my life!

  Margo wound a strand of her long brown hair around her hands as she continued. “Eduardo had nothing to go on other than what the tracker could tell him—sounds like he was ripping what’s left of his hair out or would have been if he was one to get in a tizz. Bane set off for the African continent with his team, post haste—but had no idea where to go upon arrival. In fact, by the time anyone actually bothered to tell me about all this, they were still pretty clueless.”

  Margo’s lips tightened, as though in memory of several very bleak hours. “But finally our prayers were answered and your location just fell into our lap from heaven. Well, via a far more unsavoury source, but thank God, all the same. Eduardo, wonderful man, had actually traced the vehicle fifty kilometres or so by that point, but it was slow work and…” Her eyes flicked down me, then jumped back to my face. “…clearly there wasn’t any time to waste.”

  “What source?”

  Margo finally smiled, slightly. “Mr Hill should have been nicer to his subordinates. Or maybe she was always hoping to fund her retirement by selling him out. Anyway, dear Gladys phoned Eduardo and offered to sell your location.”

  A dim, dim memory registered. From during the worst part of it all, before I let Him in. Of Hill demanding a cup of tea. Forcing the Menace to leave the room to put the kettle on. She kept popping back in-between each stage of the tea-making process, desperate not to miss anything, and he kept sending her out again. Still punishing her, vindictive old man?

  At what point had she snapped and decided she’d rather be avenged on him than on Margo—and line her own pocket while she was at it? Or maybe she had always planned it. Maybe she figured by the time Underground forces could arrive, I’d be dead or as good as, and she’d have her revenge and her money. Tempting.

  Clearly, all that forgetting the milk and then the sugar and then the biscuits had just been an excuse to keep going out and bargaining with Eduardo. In fact, she’d even eventually popped out—voluntarily—to wash up, hadn’t she? Getting on to Eduardo, for his final decision? But…

  “Eduardo didn’t buy my location from her, surely?” The thought of that stuck in my throat.

  Margo…smirked. “He didn’t need to. Dear Gladys, being no better off for brains than she is for loyalty, didn’t do a good enough job of making her call untraceable. She just relied on typing in that number you can dial to hide your caller ID, can you believe? About as much use against Eduardo as a wet paper bag against a shark.”

  Margo smirked again. “Eduardo strung her along nicely, of course, but about thirty seconds after she first made contact, Bane had the location and was on his way. Eduardo’s tracing of the vehicle had already put Bane and his squad within striking distance, otherwise Eduardo would have sent security forces from the nearest Underground Free Town instead.”

  “Hmm. No revenge and no money. I imagine poor Major Wallis is not a happy bunny this morning. I hope someone at least gave her some painkillers for the post-nonLee headache.” Hang on… Ah, yes, Bane sent the insulin.

  Margo grinned rather less sympathetically. “And facing the foreseeable future incarcerated in the ‘touchy-feely farm’, as Georg always refers to the Underground’s prison. I’m sure she’s ecstatic. Well, you never know. Maybe they can reform her. They do good work there.” She glanced over her shoulder with a more genuine smile.

  I followed her gaze to where a well-muscled guy, about my age, with a tough-looking buzz-cut and uber-watchful eyes, stood in the doorway. Ah. Georg Friedrich, on guard, and Hill was still alive. Well, Friedrich was a disciplined VSS agent and a committed Believer, these days—and as unfailingly devoted to Margo as ever. “I don’t think the prison can claim most of the credit for his conversion,” I said softly.

  Surprise, surprise, my sister turned beet red and changed the subject. “Anyway, Bane and the squad rushed you here—well, half the squad rushed you here. The other half took the assorted underlings direct to the rehabilitation farm. Turns out this little jaunt of Hill’s was totally unofficial. The rest of the High Committee are absolutely furious with him and scrambling to
distance themselves from the utterly appalling publicity.

  “Well.” She smirked yet again. “I shouldn’t say the rest of the High Committee—he’s not Head of Internal Affairs any more, as of yesterday. There’s a warrant out for his arrest and they’re even trumpeting that they’ve frozen all his assets. Public relations damage control, you know. Personally, I think we should get a psychologist in here to examine the man; he must’ve taken leave of his senses.”

  Reminded, I managed to lift my head a fraction and look across at Hill. His head was turned away, but his eyes were open, and he was surely listening.

  “No, he’s not mad,” I told Margo. “He’s just in rather serious need of a liver—and ideally, a heart. He’s finding them hard to come by and mine are a match. I suppose revenge on you was just a bonus. They are looking after him well, aren’t they?”

  Margo gave me a strange look not unlike the one Bane had turned on me…yesterday?

  “He’s been offered all the medical care the hospital customarily provides, but he refuses to be so much as examined. He even grumbled about the standard heart monitor—though he’s had to lump it as far as that’s concerned. Doctor Fathiya put her foot down.”

  “Demanding a lawyer and his own medical team, then?”

  Margo shook her head, frowning slightly. “No.”

  “No? Is he…waiting for something?”

  Margo shrugged, still frowning. “The Lord only knows. I don’t. He just lies there and refuses to speak to anyone. Politely, anyway. There have been a few rude words. Well, cold ones.”

  I frowned, as well. Hill’s physical well-being was of intense concern to me, knowing as I did what would become of his soul if his mortal form came to its end just now, but if he wasn’t demanding health care or his liberty, then he must be waiting for something. What?

  Glancing uneasily at my sister, I thought of all the patients and nurses and doctors that must be within these walls. “How secure is this place?”

  Margo shook her head, dismissing my worry. “Eduardo sent a large contingent to the hospital itself, plus the authorities have placed heavy guard around both hospital grounds and the entire Free Town. Too tough a nut for mercenaries to crack, and for the EuroGov to break in and snatch Hill, they’d have to send a force so large it would be impossible for it to be construed as anything other than a declaration of war on the African Free States. They’re not going to do it. Right now, the only reason they’d want him back would be to kill him themselves, anyway. So I have no idea what Hill is waiting for, but I doubt it’s that.”

  But…what, then?

  “Look, Eduardo let me come here, right?” Margo saw my continued concern. “So it’s got to be secure.”

  True. My sister was the Underground’s Golden Goose and had to be protected accordingly, something she’d gradually grown resigned to as the years passed. I gave up worrying about some sort of commando invasion. “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.” Margo tensed.

  “Tuesday!” I’d been snatched on Friday evening. I’d figured I might have lost a day since my rescue, but not two.

  Her eyes darted to my hands, then jerked back to my face. “You were in a bad way from shock and that nasty serum when you arrived here. Despite the need to get you to surgery as soon as possible, they had to wait almost twenty-four hours before they could get you sufficiently stabilised. You slept a lot after the general anaesthetic, never waking properly. Some reaction with the serum? They finally got it all out of your system—or passing time did—and here you are, awake again.” She smiled—but her lips trembled.

  I looked down towards my hidden toes again, tried to wiggle them. Tried to…count. No good. Too much morphine. “How many big toes do I have, Margo?”

  Margo’s eyes were round and worried. “One. I’m sorry, Kyle…”

  “It’s not your fault. They put my skin back on, I imagine? But what’s the situation with my knee?”

  Margo’s face grew pale and even unhappier. Oh dear, maybe I shouldn’t have made it so clear I remembered everything.

  “Yes, they were able to put your own skin back on—which was really lucky, because donors for white skin of your type wouldn’t be too easy to find around here. The knee… Well, it’s…the surgeon put the muscles back in as well as she possibly could. And she says if you don’t move it while it’s healing, then there’s a good chance you’ll be able to bend it again, walk on it again. But…oh, Kyle, I’m so sorry, she says you’ll never run again. No chance at all. I’m so sorry…”

  “Why are you apologising, Margo?” I kept my voice calm and firm, though her words felt like a dull blow administered to my sternum, and a choking heaviness settled over me.

  I would never run again. Never play football again. Probably never cycle from village to village again. Not that that would matter. Since I couldn’t say Mass any more, I was finished as a parish priest.

  I struggled to push the feeling of dullness away. It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. The Lord was the only thing that mattered. Oh, that closeness I had felt… I still felt it, but nothing, nothing like as much. Was I already ceasing to surrender? Was my grief for my lost hobby a symptom of that? Finding myself alive, were those earthly bonds already knotting back into place, those doors closing inside me? How did one live in the world and yet keep everything open to Him? So easy when you were about to die, but when you had to live?

  “The Lord is in charge, Margo,” I told her, since she still stared at me in mute misery. “All will be well.”

  Another snort from Hill. Yes, Hill. My attention sharpened. Why was I lying around moping about football when I had precious work to do? Hill’s soul needed saving. What could I do, right now? What could even I offer, now?

  Hmm.

  I eyed the morphine machine. Flexed the three fingers on my right hand. Could I lift my arm? It weighed an awful lot, missing digits or not, but yes. I fumbled, trying to position my middle fingertip on the button, though my brain tried to send my hand too far to the right, to position my absent forefinger there instead…

  “Kyle, what are you doing? Are you in pain?”

  “Oh…no. No, the opposite, really. I think this thing’s turned up too high.”

  “Too high? The head doctor set that up herself. You should probably leave it alone.”

  “I’ll only drop it a fraction.” While you’re sitting right there, anyway.

  I didn’t need to look at my sister to sense her scowl, but I lowered the dose by a modest three bars, then took my half-hand away and tried to look as though I had no further interest in it. Margo would pop out to the loo eventually.

  Now, Hill. What to do with Hill?

  “Can we take Hill off to his own room now?” My sister’s thoughts were running along slightly similar lines.

  “No!”

  She stared at me. “Why not? Unicorn has been over the pair of you—medically, chemically, physically, you name it—and he’s quite certain that there is no booby trap that will operate if you are separated.”

  “Uh…I never mentioned any booby trap.”

  “No, Bane said you were pretty evasive, but with you being addled with pain, Unicorn had it checked anyway. So can’t we take him away?”

  “You don’t like having him around?”

  “Kyle! Of course not.”

  “I thought you forgave him?”

  “I’ve forgiven him for the old stuff. The latest stuff is a work-in-progress. Anyway, forgiven, yes, doesn’t mean I like him. He’s a horrible man.”

  “Liking him isn’t necessary. Just loving him.”

  My sister glared. “Kyle, couldn’t you at least wait until you get the bandages off before insisting I love that man?”

  “But what if you drop dead before I get the bandages off?”

  “Patience, Kyle,” she muttered. “I’ll get to it. Just give me time, okay?”

  “It’s not healthy, Margo,” I persisted. “To wait, I mean. Can’t you love him now?”

&n
bsp; “Can you?” Margo’s fists were clenched.

  “Well…yes.”

  Margo drew in a long, deep breath that quivered slightly. “Kyle…” Abruptly she rose, bent over and kissed my cheek. “Kyle, I love you, but I’m going to the canteen for a cup of coffee. Back soon.”

  “Margo…” But she rushed from the room, taking Georg Friedrich into orbit at the doorway like a nucleus collecting a missing electron. A couple of guards I didn’t recognise remained—to protect me from Hill, no doubt.

  I stared after her, my head spinning with confusion and a vague guilt twisting my insides. What did I do, Lord?

  …gently, Kyle. Gently…

  Did I push her too hard? Was I insensitive? Maybe she was finding it very, very hard to forgive this time. Well…had she ever found it easy? Had I? It just seemed different, now.

  Now, okay, I loved Hill too much to even feel any need to forgive him, but before? Say, with Joe? With Snakey? With Bane? Oh, how I had struggled to forgive the EuroGov. To forgive Friedrich. To forgive my own brother-in-law. I’d almost lost my vocation over it. I’d got myself straightened out in the end, with plenty of help from other people, but it had been so hard. At times it had felt impossible.

  If Margo was struggling like that now, with Hill, no wonder she was peeved with me. Or maybe I’d made her feel guilty, like she was failing… Oh, no, no, no, I didn’t want to make her feel like that. She already kept apologising, and I wasn’t sure if it was the usual ‘sorry’ people give with bad news or if it was what I dreaded, that she felt some deeper responsibility for all this…

  “I hoped she might slap your smug face.” Hill’s voice broke in on my thoughts, speaking English, his native tongue. “Shame. Would have been entertaining.”

  Oh help. Even Reginald Hill could see I’d planted my big toeless foot in it. Sorry, Lord. Sorry, Margo.

  All the same, while Margo was out of the way… I raised my leaden hand again and knocked another five bars off the morphine dosage, since I could hardly feel the previous reduction, then turned my attention to Hill. The foot of his bed lay only a couple of metres from the foot of my own, yet a vast expanse of clean blue linoleum loomed between us, like an unbridgeable sea.