Reginald Hill: Pictures of Perfection

He realizes his mistake at once. Startled, the berserker swings round and pumps off two rapid shots. The first hits the car door, but the second hits Halavant high on the side of his head, his muscles spasm, his foot rams down on the accelerator, and the car goes screaming down the hill into the village.

Not waiting to see what becomes of it, the berserker jogs up the hill and turns into the churchyard.

Here he pauses, leaning against a headstone, to check his ammunition. He is tempted to do a bit of damage to the church but ammo is running low and instinct urges him on to surprise the great bulk of villagers still at the Reckoning Feast before rumour of his activities reaches them from the village. But he does waste a shot at the Guillemard coat of arms above the arched gateway which leads from the churchyard into Green Alley and the Old Hall estate.

Now the climax is close, which is just as well since the energy which not long before had seemed set to last him for ever is now fading fast and the weapon which had seemed like a willow wand in his hands pulls at his muscles like a pig of iron.

Out of the corner of his eye he glimpses a figure and instinctively he pumps a shot at it before he realizes it is only a marble faun leering over a low stone bench. His snap shot hits home and as he watches, the leering head slowly topples off.

Now he is close enough to the Reckoning to hear its noise. Not the usual hubbub of vacuous gossip and the chomping of greedy teeth. No, now it is the throb of a passionate ’cello and an old but still piercing voice raised in rhythmic incantation.

‘Who has not seen in windy March

Flocks fleeing through the fields,

Neath arching ash and leaning larch,

With Winter on their heels,

His breath with strength to drench or parch,

More fierce because it fails?’

It is the Squire inflicting his ballad on the captive audience. It occurs to the berserker, across whose dark and stormy mind an occasional shaft of rationality shoots, that some of the listeners might, to start with, regard his interruption as a blessed relief.

But not for long.

He comes into the seated villagers from behind. He reckons he can only spare two or three shots for this lot. There’s old Ma Pottinger, always droning on about that precious school of hers. She glances his way, opens her mouth to utter the sonorous admonition which is her trademark, but it turns into a piercing shriek as he drills one into her ample bosom.

People turn to look. The Squire carries on chanting.

‘So fled the Gaels from Guillemard

As he came galloping on,

More fearsome than the pouncing pard

In leafy Lebanon

And yet his life-blood spouted hard

Beneath his habergeon.’

But the ’cellist sighs to a halt as the berserker advances like Moses through the Red Sea, apt image as he paints with blood to left and right, catching Daphne Wylmot high on her golden head and knocking old Mr Hogbin clean out of his Zimmer frame.

In the front row they rise as if to greet him, and he gives each in turn the greeting they deserve.

There’s Larry Lillingstone, the young vicar — here’s something for your sermon! Whoops. Kee Scudamore, either deliberately or trying to escape, has got in the way. Not to worry, here’s one in the cassock for you, Vicar, anyway. And who have we here? Farmer George Creed and his so holy sister whose pies are a lot tastier than her piety — there’s for you! And bossy Girlie Guillemard comes next, her teeth biting clean through the stem of her pipe as her belly blossoms redly. And now the smell of blood is hot in the evening air, and hotter still in the berserker’s mind as he leaps on to the table in full and ineffable fury. At point-blank range he pumps a shot into little Fran Harding’s ’cello which she is vainly trying to shelter behind. Then he turns to the Squire. Their eyes meet. ‘Here’s one for your ballad, Squire,’ says the berserker. And laughs as the force of the shot drives the old man’s script back into his chest, where it hangs redly, like a proclamation on a blasted tree.

Now the berserker turns to face the crowd. Or rabble rather, for they are all in retreat. Except for three. The Holy Trinity! The Three Stooges! The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

He can’t remember their names. Doesn’t matter. You don’t give pigs names, not when you’re planning to kill them.

They are moving slowly towards him. He glances down and regrets the shots wasted at non-human targets, for he sees he has only one shot left.

Not to worry. One’s enough to make a point.

But which one?

The Good? The Bad? Or the Ugly?

He makes his decision.

He raises his gun.

And he fires.

Two days before the events just described, late on a cold March afternoon buffed bright by a skittish east wind, Enscombe’s peace had been less dramatically shattered by the arrival of three motorbikes and a long-base Land Rover.

The Land Rover had the words GUNG HO! stencilled on its sides in scarlet with, above them, the image of a swooping bird of prey. The same logos appeared on the white helmets and pale blue leathers of the riders and passengers of the first two motorbikes. These were Harley Davidson Fatboys, and they and the Land Rover bumped up the cobbles of the narrow forecourt of the Wayside Café and came to a halt with a deal of exuberant revving.

The third solitary rider brought his old Triumph Thunderbird to a more decorous halt in front of the neighbouring Tell-Tale Bookshop (Rare amp; Antiquarian: Prop. E. Digweed, D.Litt.). His helmet and leathers were a dull black, unrelieved except by a star of silver studs at the breast.

The first Harley Davidson team had removed their helmets to reveal a shag of black hair, male, and a shoal of herring-bright ringlets, female, which its owner shook down over her shoulders as she stretched her arms and said, ‘Unzip me, darling. I’m dying for a pee.’

At this point the door of the café opened to reveal a statuesquely handsome woman in a blue chequered apron. She looked the new arrivals up and down and said, ‘No hippies. No bikers. In the Name of the Lord.’

The ringleted rider shrieked an incredulous laugh, and her companion said, ‘What’s the Lord got against bikers, then?’

‘God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions,’ replied the woman in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice.

The second passenger had removed her helmet to reveal a Nefertiti skull whose close-napped hair was, aptly, a billiard-table green. She lit a cigarette and said, ‘Jesus Christ!’ The café owner gave an outraged snort and took a step forward to put baize-head within reach of either the Third Commandment or a left hook, but before this could be made clear, the fourth biker, who’d been conferring with three young men climbing out of the Land Rover, whipped off his helmet with a flourish and said, ‘Dora, my sweet, it is I, Guy. And I have brought these good people to a halt within sight almost of our destination with the promise that here they would get the best apple pie this side of Paradise.’

He was in his late twenties, with curly brown hair, eyes that twinkled at will and a charming smile that couldn’t quite conceal its complacent certainty of success. His voice was vibrant with sincerity and those reverse-Pygmalion vowels which old Etonians imagine improve their street cred. He advanced as though to embrace the café owner, but she folded her arms in a counterscarp which repulsed familiarity and said, ‘I’m sorry, Master Guy. It’s got to be the same rule for all, else the law is mocked.’