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Child’s Play
Reginald Hill
‘Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of crime fiction’ ObserverWhen Geraldine Lomas dies, her huge fortune is left to an animal rights organization, a fascist front and a services benevolent fund. But at her funeral a middle-aged man steps forward, claiming to be her long-lost son and rightful heir.He is later found shot dead in the police car park, leaving behind a multitude of suspects. And Superintendent Dalziel and Peter Pascoe find themselves plunged into an investigation that makes most of their previous cases look like child’s play…
REGINALD HILL
CHILD’S PLAY
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Copyright (#ulink_24919656-0ef0-5f39-9cc6-0f3c48ae5ad6)
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1987
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1987
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780586072578
EPub Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007386222
Version: 2015-06-18
For Rose and Peter
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u0850de29-d241-529e-85a8-1110cc1a6fe6)
Title Page (#u45a51711-d1c0-5e24-a636-b26ff7a3eb6d)
Copyright (#u0748b17a-6c09-5672-ac6c-01de5e0039b4)
Dedication (#u1351690e-a294-547d-b10a-1595982e198d)
Prologue (#ucae15526-9ee5-5a6d-94be-8514c6ba3475)
Chapter 1 (#u00c7a9b9-1697-582b-9140-743bd1ca8655)
SECOND ACT: Voices from the Grave (#u2a5adb64-a815-5bc1-86f7-9ff01c6723fd)
Chapter 1 (#ua8e968d3-f58a-5ac9-8656-4402d733d7e6)
Chapter 2 (#ub72231c7-99af-5292-85ad-cf5ffd4e6527)
Chapter 3 (#uce72099e-d3b0-5c0a-8926-baabae1373b7)
Chapter 4 (#uab546176-af98-5dcd-84f5-707d6f7ca26f)
Chapter 5 (#ud418b3f8-365c-5877-8448-a06dbfc44518)
Chapter 6 (#u0130a172-e001-515d-a41b-fb3612ac1e93)
Chapter 7 (#uaa2d7718-91f9-5ab6-89db-306d5fa0381b)
Chapter 8 (#ud3495cbb-d659-5825-b201-1322040b2fe8)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRD ACT: Voices from the Gallery (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 2 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
FIRST ACT: Voices from a Far Country (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 2 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_e352ceea-ba97-5fe7-b6a3-f925b7631bcf)
spoken by a member of the company
A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
Wordsworth: We are seven
Chapter 1 (#ulink_c0cb6ff9-42a1-5404-8539-e29121aa4987)
Death? Not much. Not then, not now. What is it? You here, I there: you stopping, I going on? Unimaginable! But I can imagine dying and the fear of it. The love of it too. I can imagine a corvette in heavy seas - a bathtub vessel in harbour, but let a gale come howling up the Tyrrhenian, then in the twinkling of a dog-star, its steel sides are changed to perilous cliffs and the dinghy far below bounces on the wild waters like a baby’s teething-ring.
I can hear what the wind sings! At home, a father’s anger and a mother’s tears; at school, nipping draughts and stumbling repetitions, dreadful doubts and tiny triumphs … the sum of the squares … Lars Porsena of Clusium … a spot on the nose … a place in the Eleven … how to mash a girl … arma virumque cano!
Now I seize the rope and feel its fibres burn my frozen palms. With what strange utterance the wind resounds against this metal cliff; arms and the man, it sings … you ‘orrible sprog! … move to the right in threes! … hands off cocks and on to socks! … squeeze it like a tit! … a pip on the shoulder … a place on a course … how to kill a man …
Italiam non sponte sequor!
And now at last the gaping O receives me and suddenly it is once more a dinghy and the wind is just a wind. Master of myself finally, and of these men who kneel around me, I give commands. Eyes gleam white as fish in sea-dark faces, paddles plunge deep, and my buoyant craft drives over the grasping waves towards the sounding but unseen, the undesired but never to be evaded Ausonian shore.
Fanciful, you say? Romantic even? Oh, but I have still darker imaginings. Time blows like mist in a wind, parting and joining, revealing and concealing, and now the wind is a wind of autumn bearing with it not the salt spume of foreign seas but the bright decay of fallen leaves and the peppery scent of heather and the dust of limestone tors.
There is noise in it too, animal noise, a breathing, a coughing, an uneasy shuffling of feet as I pass over the dew-damp grass towards the darkling house. A window stands carelessly open … reckless I enter and the wind enters with me … slowly I move across the rooms … along corridors … up stairs … uncertain, hesitant, yet driven on by a gale in the blood stronger than any fear.
I push open a bedroom door … a nightlight shines like a corpse-light … but this dimly apprehended shape is no corpse.
Who’s there? Is there someone there? What do you want?
It is time to speak into this light which shows so little.
Mother?
Who’s there? Closer! Closer! Let me see!
And now the wind is a burning wind of the desert in my veins, and it sobs and it shrieks, and the house bristles with light, and I reach for the saving darkness as the helpless, hopeless sailor embraces the drowning sea …
SECOND ACT Voices from the Grave (#ulink_f1b2dfd1-748c-55b2-ad1e-8a6b6db01d13)
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
The unexpected death of some old lady.
Byron: Don Juan
Chapter 1 (#ulink_cb9d0080-9a2f-55b5-9b2a-cb44a85f6818)
No one who attended Gwendoline Huby’s funeral would soon forget it.
Her eighty-year-old frame was lighter by far than the ornate casket that enclosed it, but the telekinetic weight of resentment from the chief mourners was enough to make the bearers stagger on their slow path to the grave.
She was buried, of course, in the Lomas plot at St Wilfrid’s in Greendale, an interesting specimen of late Norman church with some Early English additions and a pre-Norman crypt which the vicar’s wife (in a pamphlet on sale in the porch) theorized might have been the work of Wilfrid himself. Such archaeological speculation was far from the minds of the bereaved as they processed from the dark interior to the brilliant autumn sunlight which traced out the names on the tombstones of all but the most eroded and deepest lichened dead.
The surviving relatives were few. To the left of the open grave stood the two London Lomases; to the right huddled the four Old Mill Inn Hubys. Miss Keech, successively nurse, housekeeper, companion, and finally nurse once more at Troy House, essayed a crossbench neutrality at the foot of the grave, but her self-effacing tact was vitiated by the presence at her shoulder of the man generally regarded as the chief author of their woes, Mr Eden Thackeray, senior partner of Messrs Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor and Thackeray (usually known as Messrs Thackeray etcetera), Solicitors.
‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,’ intoned the vicar.
Eden Thackeray, who had thoroughly enjoyed the greater part of his fifty-odd years, composed his face to a public sympathy with the words. Certainly if several of those present had their way, there’d be an extra dollop of misery on his plate shortly. Not that he minded. Misery to lawyers is like the bramble-bush to Brer Rabbit - a natural habitat. As the old lady’s solicitor and executor, he was confident that any attempt to challenge the will would only serve to put money in the ever-receptive coffers of Messrs Thackeray etcetera.
Nevertheless, unpleasantness at a funeral was not, how should he put it? was not pleasant. He hadn’t relished being greeted by Mr John Huby, nephew to the deceased, landlord of the Old Mill Inn and archetypal uncouth Yorkshireman, with a look of sneering accusation and the words, ‘Lawyers? I’ve shit ’em!’
It was his own fault, of course. There had been no need to reveal the terms of the will until after probate, but it had seemed a kindness to pre-empt any anticipatory extravagance on the part of John Huby by summoning little Lexie from her typewriter and explaining to her the limits of her family’s expectations. Lexie had taken it well. She had even smiled faintly when told of Gruff-of-Greendale. But all smiles had clearly stopped together when she bore the news back to the Old Mill Inn.
