The Siege of Reginald Hill Read online

  Hill raised an eyebrow again. “A tad judgmental there, aren’t we, Father Verrall?”

  I thought about everything he’d told me so far. “Just factual, Mr Hill.”

  Hill…cackled. “Your sister’s behaviour is perfectly explicable. You, however, make conversation with me—admittedly, conversation varying from moronic to rude—as though I am a newly discovered uncle. I cannot make you out.”

  I nodded. “Umm. Newly discovered uncle. That’s much how it feels.”

  Hill frowned, his whole face crinkling up. “Aren’t you…the slightest bit cross with me?”

  “I’m far, far too worried about you, dear uncle, to be cross.”

  Hill swore in disgust and turned his face away.

  “Which do you object to, the ‘dear’ or the ‘uncle’?”

  He glanced at me, brow creasing as though startled I’d not taken the hint and abandoned the conversation. “Both give me rather high temperature feelings, but not of the warm, fuzzy kind. I am not your ‘dear’ anything, and as you pointed out yourself, we are not even remotely related.”

  “But you are dear to me, Mr Hill, and you have only yourself to blame for that.”

  “What?”

  “If you didn’t want me to care, you shouldn’t have forced me to spend so much time with you. And in the Vatican, any older individual one cares about becomes an honorary ‘uncle’. As you must know, having spent your life studying us, the better to train your spies and anticipate our every move.”

  “I’m not having much luck anticipating you,” was Hill’s frank retort. “But then, I’m coming to the conclusion that you’re insane. Or it’s the fastest case of Stockholm Syndrome in the history of the human race. No, the torture clearly addled your mind. That happens, sometimes.”

  “It merely focussed my mind, Mr Hill. You have no idea how much it focussed it and how grateful I am for that.”

  “I give up on this conversation.” Hill turned his head away again. “You don’t make any sense, Kyle Verrall.”

  Obligingly, I stayed silent for a few minutes, passing the time comfortably by saying my confraternity prayers and then resting a while in that still discernible sense of the Lord’s presence. Please stay with me, Lord. Give me the right words to open a path for you.

  Okay, Hill was probably getting bored by now. Time to try again.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr Hill, I’m very curious about what motivates you.”

  Hill gave a long, put upon sigh, but turned his head to look at me. “Motivates me?”

  “Yes. You’ve spent your whole life fighting to get to the top and then stay there. Why? What could be worth that constant, brutal, all-consuming struggle?”

  Hill once again eyed me as though he couldn’t figure out what made me tick. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Power, Kyle. Power. And money, but only because money is power.”

  “Umm.” I tilted my head in acknowledgement. “I thought you’d say something like that. But why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why is power worth all that work?”

  “Why? Because the only security in life is through power. The only satisfaction. The only freedom.”

  I thought about that list. Security. Satisfaction. Freedom.

  “Power makes you secure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Most people have no power beyond that of their vote, yet they sleep peacefully in their beds. You, with all your power? Do you really sleep secure? I’m quite sure the thought of being attacked, politically or even physically, and pulled from your position—or your very life—is a constant worry, sapping all peace from your life. How are you better off than the almost powerless citizen?”

  Hill jerked his head impatiently. “If I am threatened, I have the power to defend myself. When peril comes to the ordinary man, it simply leaves him crushed in its wake.”

  “But your power makes you a target. Without your power, the chances of that peril coming your way would be so vastly reduced as to be scarcely worth worrying about. You cannot claim that power is security.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Well…look at me. I’ve lived safe and secure for years with ever so little in the way of worldly power.”

  Hill gave a huge snort. “You? Safe and secure? Have you looked at your hands recently?”

  “Ah, yes.” I lifted one and waved it at him. “But that just proves my point. Trouble came my way because of my sister’s power, not because of my powerlessness. Power draws more trouble than it wards off, that is my point.”

  “That is your opinion.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure that is a fact, actually. Any statistics would surely—” A movement from the doorway drew my eye—just in time to see the hem of a skirt disappearing from sight behind a guard’s knee. Margo? Margo! Oh, no, no, no!

  “Margo?” I called frantically. “Hey, little sis, aren’t you coming in to visit me?”

  The faint footsteps paused. After a moment, Margo appeared in-between the two guards, a strained smile on her face. She’d heard me. She had. Oh rats. I didn’t mean it like…like that…not blaming her.

  “Have you been at dinner, Margo?” My voice sounded too bright, too cheerful. “Was it something nice?”

  “The Sisters kindly invited me to eat with them, and the food was certainly different.” She approached the bed, still smiling in that horrible, fixed way. “Have you had anything?”

  “No. Maybe they came while I was asleep. They’ll be back. Mr Hill, have you eaten yet?”

  Hill eyed me, then Margo. “No. I imagine they will only feed me when they feed you. So we can carry on discussing how your sister is responsible for everything that’s happened to you for a bit longer.”

  Margo’s lips compressed; her face twisted. She was trying not to cry. Oh Lord, help me… Help us…

  “Margo, ignore him. Mr Hill is tired and hungry and…well, mean. He’s talking nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?” Hill’s eyebrow rose. “I’m merely repeating what you just said, Kyle, am I not?”

  “You are twisting what I said.”

  “No, I’m really not.”

  I shot another look at Margo. “Would you please be quiet?”

  “But you keep engaging me in conversation, Father Kyle. I am merely obliging you. So do tell me more about how your sister caused the loss of so many of your body parts…”

  “Shut up,” snapped Margo.

  “Just ignore him, Margo. He’s old and sour and…well, let’s face it, rather evil…”

  “Rather hungry, too. If you really don’t want to discuss what Margaret’s policies have done to your strong young body, then perhaps you would press your call button and get us some food? There’s a good boy. We can continue our conversation later, since you clearly don’t want to discuss how you feel about your sister’s part in all this while she’s here.”

  Margo whirled towards him. “Just shut up you evil, lying—”

  “Temper, temper, little girl,” tutted Hill.

  Margo grabbed an empty bedpan from the bedside unit and hurled it at Hill. Fortunately, it was only cardboard, but it made him jerk in momentary, startled fright. When it bounced harmlessly off his chest, he relaxed, giving vent to such a mocking laugh that Margo’s hand slipped inside her waistband…

  “Margo, no!”

  Hill stopped laughing so abruptly he clearly knew what she reached for. But her hand had paused, the nonLee undrawn.

  Friedrich appeared at her shoulder, quivering with eagerness. “Would you like me to shoot him for you? How many times?”

  Margo took several deep breaths. Then took her hand away from her gun. “No, thank you, Georg. He’s just a nasty, mean-spirited, evil old man who’s going to hell. Nothing we can do to him can match the fate he’s choosing for himself. I’m a fool to let him get to me.” She waved Friedrich back to the doorway, turned the chair beside the bed so the back pointed towards Hill and sat in it, then
reached out briskly and pressed my call button. “Let’s get you some dinner, Kyle.”

  My stomach was rumbling a little, though her words had brought that deep anxiety about Hill—and her—boiling up more fiercely than ever. “That would be nice. Would you… er…do something for me?”

  She eyed me warily. “What?”

  “Pray a rosary while I eat.”

  “For what?”

  “Well…if you think through what you just said, you may see a really serious need somewhere. Right?”

  Margo’s lips thinned. But eventually her nostrils flared and she nodded. And sure enough, when some kind nurses had brought my dinner—soup and bread—she took out her rosary and set to work, breaking off only occasionally to field escaping bread or help me recapture the fat straw they’d provided for the soup. These half-hands were going to take some getting used to. Opposable thumbs were highly under-appreciated things. Still, at least with this meal, I could feed myself. More or less.

  Despite the earlier gurgles from my stomach, I couldn’t finish it all. Tiredness hung over me, weighting my eyelids and slowing my thoughts. And I’d been asleep almost all day! Margo and I made slightly forced conversation about the children for a while—Hill, thank the Lord, had gone back to ignoring us—then Margo excused herself under what was probably, alas, the mere pretext of needing to call Bane. Lord grant she wasn’t just going off to cry her eyes out. Or maybe she needed to cry down the phone to him.

  All these years of marriage and they were still best friends. Not that they didn’t have some rotten arguments sometimes—two very strong wills in one relationship—but they were good at forgiving and making up. I knew about that more from Bane than from Margo, loyal as ever to her spouse. But Bane made a point of confessing to me when I visited, claiming that knowing he would have to bare his soul to his wife’s brother helped him to be a better husband.

  I wanted to ask her if she’d at least heard enough context to understand what I’d really meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to raise the subject. Hill might start at her again, despite his earlier near miss with her nonLee. But the mere fact she’d almost drawn on him told me how deeply he’d—or I’d?—touched a nerve.

  I stared at Hill. How far would he go for revenge? If he could provoke Margo into shooting him with her nonLee, triggering a fatal heart attack, it would utterly destroy her reputation. Little Miss Forgiveness, as some tabloids still referred to her, killing her oldest, most loudly-forgiven enemy. Her influence on the world stage would be catastrophically reduced.

  But to achieve it, he would have to sacrifice however many months—or even years—remained of his life. From the speed with which he’d shut up, he wasn’t ready to make that trade. He wanted to be alive when things ‘resolved themselves’ in the hope of somehow gaining his liberty and being able to buy a new liver on the black market. Then he could live for decades. No, Hill would not die for revenge. He was far, far too cold and calculating. And, I was beginning to suspect, far too afraid of death.

  Despite sleeping most of the day, I possibly felt more tired now than when I’d first woken. Ridiculous. It must be shock or the delayed result of all my accumulated injuries. Everything hurt. Really hurt, since taking off the extra five bars, my chest not least of all, though why that should hurt was beyond me.

  Still, despite that crushing tiredness, I really didn’t want to sleep again yet. I knocked a couple more bars off the morphine. Maybe the pain would keep me awake, while also helping Hill.

  Hill, who’d gone back to staring out of the window.

  “You’re really not a nice person, are you?” I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my voice. Considering he’d done all this to get at Margo, the way he’d treated her shouldn’t surprise me, but it still did. When had I last met someone who’d acted so cruelly?

  Indeed, he looked at me in disgust—and derision—and spoke mockingly. “Stop press, Reginald Hill is not a nice person! Stop the presses!” He—surprise, surprise—snorted. “Nice? What value is there in nice? Nice just gets you…lying in a hospital bed with only six digits waiting to… And moping over a busted knee. Should I break my heart over not being nice?”

  “If you hadn’t informed me of your need for a new one, I might wonder if you have a heart at all, Mr Hill.”

  “Boo-hoo.”

  “I know; you don’t care. Well, we established that power doesn’t really bring security, so what about satisfaction?”

  “You established.”

  “Whichever. Satisfaction. How do you even measure that? And mere ‘satisfaction’? Pretty feeble compared to ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’, let alone ‘beatific vision’. Well, I imagine you did feel satisfaction when you finally clawed your way onto the High Committee itself. Or back on, after one of your little eclipses. But did it last?”

  “Every time I reflect on the fact that I am one of the most powerful men in the world, I can assure you I feel immense satisfaction.” Hill was terse.

  “But you’re not, now. You are more thoroughly in the dog house than my sister has ever managed to send you and you put yourself there. If you go back, they’ll execute you. Your power has evaporated like a morning mist.”

  To my surprise, Hill smiled. A slow, cold, bleak smile, but a smile nonetheless. “You think I didn’t know it could end like this? An unofficial mission with unreliable muscle? How stupid do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid at all, though the reasoning behind some of your recent decisions still eludes me. Like why you didn’t just buy an organ on the black market, rather than throwing everything away like this.”

  “No one in their right mind would think I could have got to the top of a transplant list legitimately, what with my heart, and the public don’t stand for that sort of thing anymore, thanks to your sister. I’d have been finished.”

  “So you could have bought the organ and retired quietly. To another bloc if necessary. Whereas now… Well, you know once they’ve got you back on your feet—or at least into your wheelchair—you’ll be off to the rehabilitation farm, right? Light duties only, I’m sure, but that’s where you’re going, and no chance of a transplant.”

  Hill smiled sourly. “Perhaps I figured if it was retirement either way, I’d rather hit Margaret where it hurts—while I still had the power to do so.”

  I stared at him. Something still didn’t add up. I just couldn’t believe that this cold, rational man had really chosen to swap a long, comfortable, luxurious retirement in a location of his choice for a short, tedious one peeling potatoes in a convict kitchen, attending endless catechesis lessons and psychological examinations.

  There was definitely a missing piece here somewhere. But exhaustion fogged my mind. I would have to sleep soon.

  “Freedom… Yes, that leads rather nicely into the subject of freedom,” I managed. “At the absolute height of your power, Mr Hill, can you honestly tell me you were free?”

  “Of course I was.” Hill’s irritated tone made it clear he was fed up with the conversation, but I ploughed on anyway.

  “But the requirements of keeping your power—let alone the responsibilities of your job—were a prison around you. The workload. The constant machinations. You were never truly free to go where you wanted and do what you wanted and say what you wanted. Your position imprisoned you just as surely as poverty or ill health or prison bars imprison the most powerless person in the world.

  “Now your bad health and your crimes are imprisoning you as well. But like every man, woman, and child on this planet, you have always been in prison, you just subscribed to the common illusion that you were free because—at least up until now—no physical walls actually held you in. But true freedom exists only in choosing to follow God’s will. In following the path of selfless love, not selfishness. Only in that.”

  Hill yawned widely. “Goodnight, crazy boy. Have a nice sleep. I’m sure you need it by now.” With that, he turned stiffly onto his side and pulled a sheet almost up over his head.


  I wasn’t getting any further with him tonight, clearly. I turned my weary head and eyed the bedside unit, but no Office book presented itself to my gaze. Bother. Should I press the call button and ask for one?

  But why trouble them? A nurse would bustle back in here soon enough. I could simply wait a few minutes and…and…

  MARGO

  “He said it, Bane. He said it was my fault.” My voice almost choked off and I hugged the phone to my ear, curling up still more tightly in the guest room’s armchair. I’d barely managed to get myself sufficiently under control to phone Bane at all.

  “Margo, I really do find that very hard to believe. Kyle wouldn’t think like—”

  “I heard him! He said ‘Trouble came my way because of my sister’s power’.” Those words…it felt like a knife had sliced open my chest and yanked my heart out.

  “Well, that’s not the same as, ‘Margo, this was your fault,’ is it? Trouble did come his way because of your power. But it was Reginald Hill’s decision to attack you on those grounds, so it’s Hill’s fault. Not yours. And I’ve absolutely no doubt Kyle thinks so.”

  I knew that, of course. In my head. But I needed to hear Bane say it. Because a nasty sly voice kept whispering that this was all my fault. And however many times I slapped it away, called it a lying demon, it kept coming back.

  “Why did he even say that to you?” demanded Bane.

  “Well, he didn’t say it to me. He was talking to Hill. I overheard.”

  “There we are, then! I’m quite sure he didn’t mean that he blamed you. And if you insist on doubting that, then for pity’s sake just go and ask him straight out!”

  “I can’t. I can’t even talk about it. I get so upset. And not with Hill there! I get so angry! I almost drew my nonLee and shot him, Bane. I was this close!”

  Bane helpfully proceeded to laugh his head off.

  “Bane! It’s not funny! Not with his weak heart. I haven’t got that angry with anyone since…since…well, since I pointed the thing at Kyle all those years ago.”

  The reference to that brought Bane’s laughter to such an instantaneous end I wished I hadn’t mentioned it.