Reginald Hill - The roar of butterflies

Except all the guy wants to do is put me on my back for a few days, he reminded himself. Didn't push me over the balcony rail when he had the chance but pulled me back to safety. OK, he did it by grabbing my goo- lies, but as Aunt Mirabelle always says, it's the thought that counts.

Then he recalled his own subsequent analysis along the lines: PI getting a kicking, no one's fussed; PI's brains splattering over the pavement, even DS Chivers would take notice.

But PI vanishing without a trace…

He knew from experience that when someone goes missing without any immediate evidence of foul play, it takes the cops forever to take an interest.

But what was there in this affair that would make offing Joseph Gaylord Sixsmith Esquire a possible option?

"So what are you doing here, Joe?" the man asked, sounding almost friendly.

How to answer? Lying wasn't his strong suit. He didn't have the O-levels. To sound really convincing he had to tell the truth, which in this case, he concluded hopefully, might just set him free.

"Don't rightly know," he said. "Got this idea this is where you and Mr. Rowe must have come this morning after you drove off from Mrs. Tremayne's."

"And why should we do that?"

"Thought maybe it was to get rid of Steve Waring's things you'd just picked up."

"Yeah? And why would we want to pick his things up? And if we did, why would we want to get rid of them?"

What was it with all the questions? wondered Joe. Hardman didn't strike him as the conversational type. Action first, ask questions later, if at all, that was more his line. Which meant maybe the questions were someone else's line.

No prizes for guessing whose.

And if King Rat was asking the questions, Joe had an uneasy feeling that his future well-being might depend on the kind of answers he gave.

He couldn't think of a lie better than the truth, so he stuck with it.

He said, "I reckoned, maybe you paid him off or frightened him off and you didn't want anything left lying around to make people start asking, where's he gone then? So you paid him up to date at Mrs. Tremayne's and put his gear in a bag and came down here to dump it."

It was funny. It was the truth he was speaking, but somehow hearing himself say it out loud made him see how feeble it was.

Other possibilities began to swirl around in his mind. Like, what if Waring was a loose end they'd thought they'd got tied up till he'd come bumbling along? And when it looked like he was taking an interest, they wouldn't know it was only because he couldn't see anything else to take an interest in. No, they'd think he must have a reason, and suddenly they started thinking maybe they'd better tie up their loose end a bit tighter.

He quickly put the lid on such speculations.

Keep it simple, Joe, he urged himself. Play it dumb. You're a poor, over-stretched PI who don't know shoot! Which was the truth of it because you couldn't call some foolish idea slowly rolling over in the murky basin of his subconscious knowing.

But those cold eyes, focused unblinkingly on his face, felt as if they had the power to penetrate beyond the bewildered openness of his expression into those dark depths he was trying to ignore.

The wise words of his guru, Endo Venera, came into his mind.

You find yourself on the wrong end of a gun, you gotta put yourself one step ahead of the guy holding it, which means seeing where he is going and letting him think he's one step ahead of you.

No gun here, but there might as well be one. Best he could hope if Hardman tried to push him over the edge was to delay matters by grabbing hold of the guy so that if he went, they both went. But he didn't doubt that Hardman had a dozen easy moves to dislodge an overweight under-fit middling-aged PI.

But playing it dumb didn't mean you had to come on like the village idiot. If, as he thought, he was in the situation because King Rat thought he was smart, then he had to act smart, but not so smart as they were!

He said, "Hey, I was wondering, this guy in Spain I was meant to be watching, he wouldn't be Waring using another name, would he? All fits: get him out of the country, then get me out there to watch him. Kind of neat trick I can see Mr. King pulling."

Hardman stared for a moment then laughed.

"Joe, it's true what they say about you. You're a lot smarter than you look."

Was this mockery because he'd been fooled? Or was it a genuine compliment, meaning Good try, but now I'm going to kill you?

A few more seconds should tell.

Then a phone rang. Not the Hallelujah chorus but the theme from Star Wars, for God's sake!

Hardman took out a phone, glanced at the display then said, "Yeah?"

He listened, looked at Joe, said, "Yeah, that's right."

He listened again for some time, then said a third and final, "Yeah, I think so."

A final period of listening, and he said, "OK. Will do," and switched off.

"Joe," he said. "Nice talking to you. That was Mr. King. Needs me elsewhere so I've got to love you and leave you, Joe. Listen, I wanted to say, sorry about that business in your flat earlier. Mr. King was pissed at you letting him down about the Spanish job, so he asked me to go round and make it clear, and I got a bit carried away. But he's over it now. He says if I see you to tell you, no hard feelings. But he'd like his stuff back, you know, the tickets and the euros. You got them with you?"

"In the car," said Joe.

"I'll pick them up now then."

Together they walked back toward the fence. With every step Joe took away from the lock basin, Leck's Bottom assumed a different aspect and began to feel like a very good place to be alive in.

When they reached the Morris, Joe dug out the green file and handed it over.

"Thanks," said Hardman. "One thing more, Joe. Don't know what it means myself, but Mr. King says he'd heard on the grapevine that some little job you were doing out at the Royal Hoo Golf Club was going to turn out OK for your client. So all's well that ends well. Mr. King says he's really impressed by what he's heard about the way you handled things there, and he looks forward to employing your services again some time in the future. Could mean you're a made man if Mr. King puts the word around, capisce?"

Capisce? and Star Wars as his ring tone? This guy was a joke, thought Joe. But he decided to laugh later.

"Tell him I'm truly grateful," said Joe. "Truly, truly."

He didn't have to try and fake it. His gratitude was real. But it was limited to that phone call that had taken the decision away from Hardman.

Who clearly took it as going a lot further.

"Glad to have you on board again, Joe," he said. "Live well."

He walked away toward his own car, a Mazda RX-8, bright red naturally, parked twenty yards further back.

Now would have been a good time to ponder. Better still would have been to ponder in the company of Butcher, and of Beryl, and even of Merv, and see how much their disparate views overlapped with his own assessment of what all this meant.

But this was one of those dreadful times in a PI's life when time didn't permit him to spread the burden. He had to act as if he was absolutely certain, which to a man whose genuine absolute certainties often turned out to be completely wrong was not a pleasant prospect.

As the Mazda drove away, he took out his mobile.

His first call was to Directory Inquiries. He asked for the number of the Royal Hoo and a few moments later he heard Bert Symonds' voice say, "Royal Hoo Golf Club" in a tone that would have got him a butler's job anywhere.

"Bert," he said. "This is Joe Sixsmith. Listen, are the Bermuda Triangle there?"

The steward didn't pretend not to know who he meant.

"Yes, out on the terrace with everybody else. It's another scorcher."