Reginald Hill: Singing the Sadness

The others crowded round him.

It wasn’t his charisma that attracted them, it was his phone.

‘Better ring for help,’ said Beryl.

He pulled out the mobile. Someone said, ‘You see that?’ and pointed.

On the side of a small outbuilding someone had sprayed the words, ENGLISH GO HOME!

‘This the welcome they keep in the hillside?’ said Merv.

Joe stabbed 999.

‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘Not getting anything.’

‘Wouldn’t say that,’ said Merv. ‘Best service I’ve ever seen.’

A car had come up behind the bus at speed and a uniformed police sergeant got out and came running to join them. Had a look of that Welsh movie actor who kept on getting married to Liz Taylor, thought Joe. The voice too.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he demanded.

Merv, never one to miss the chance of sending up a copper, said, ‘Could be a millennium bonfire, got the dates wrong.’

The cop ignored him. His face expressed a strange mixture of anger and bafflement. Might look like Richard Burton but he was far from word perfect in his role, which was to take charge of the situation, thought Joe. He punched 999 once more.

Beryl said, ‘Joe, have you forgotten to switch on again?’

Now the cop found his lines.

‘Leave this to me,’ he snapped. ‘And move back, will you? Now!’

He ran back to his car, presumably to call up help.

Joe examined his phone. Beryl was right. Again. He smiled sheepishly at her. He didn’t mind being wrong. You got used to it. And it was nice that now he could relax and enjoy the fire without feeling he had to do anything about it.

Then Beryl screamed, ‘Joe, there’s someone in there!’

And looking up along the line indicated by her pointing finger, Joe saw the black outline of a human figure against the dark-red glow in one of the upstairs windows.

If Beryl hadn’t prefaced her cry with Joe! he might not have done it.

And if he’d taken thought, he certainly wouldn’t have done it, not because thought would have brought self-interest into play and there was a presumably fully paid-up public servant in calling distance, but simply because for Joe problem-solving by the cerebral route usually involved a paper and pencil and two pints of Guinness.

But pausing only to thrust the phone into Beryl’s hand, he’d set off running around the back of the house before he’d had time to work out by reason alone that just because the front of the house was an inferno didn’t mean the back was burning fiercely too.

It wasn’t. Not yet. At least not upstairs, though the flicker of the flames was clearly visible through the ground-floor windows. Meaning it was pointless going in at that level.

Against the rear wall stood a lean-to wash house with a sloping roof angling up to a first-floor window. There was a large aluminium water butt under the wash house downspout. With difficulty Joe clambered on it and used it as a step up on to the roof.

Here he paused. Through the chill night air he could feel draughts of heat drifting from the house. Must be hot as hell in there. He looked down into the water butt. From the black mirror of the water’s surface, cold-eyed stars stared back at him.

Again, no thought. Just a deep breath, then he crouched down and slid off the roof.

Spring might be bursting out all over but winter was still lurking here. He shot out like a missile from a nuclear sub and found himself back on top of the lean-to with no recollection of how he’d got there.

Dripping water from every orifice, he knelt on the slates, looking up at the first-floor window. A taller man could easily have reached the sill by stretching out his arm, but Joe wasn’t a taller man. In fact, he was a good inch shorter than Beryl Boddington, and when she wore her nurse’s cap, he felt a good foot shorter. But uniforms generally had that effect on him.

He tried to scramble up the roof. It was like being a squirrel in a wheel. The slates started sliding under his knees so that he had to scramble even faster just to stay on the spot. Much more of this and he was going to be back in the water butt. He flung himself forward, caught at the lip of the sill with the tips of his fingers, and got just enough purchase to draw himself up.

The window was open, which was good. It was also very small, which was bad. For while no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, any man by taking the Great British Breakfast and lunching regularly on cheeseburgers with double chips can add a couple to his girth.

There was a moment when he thought he was stuck and he tried to reconcile himself to the prospect of having his head toasted crisp while his legs kicked wildly in the chilly air. Far from composing himself, the notion made him struggle so violently, he erupted through the window like a cork from a bottle and found himself lying on a rug in a small but nicely furnished bedroom.

He felt beneath the rug. The floorboards felt warm but still well this side of combustion. The closed door was not so promising. It felt definitely hot to the touch and he’d seen enough disaster movies to know that opening it could be like throwing a canful of paraffin on to a bonfire.

But having got so far, he couldn’t just retreat. Could he?

He looked up for inspiration.

And found himself looking at a small trap door in the ceiling.

Fortunately, like most old farmhouses this one had been built for sixteenth-century dwarves, and standing on a chest of drawers elevated him right to the low ceiling.

The trap was a tight fit. As he pushed up with all his strength, it occurred to him that if the flames had got into the attic via the front bedrooms, this too could produce the can of paraffin effect.

Then all at once it gave way and he was standing with his head in the roof space, and it wasn’t being burnt off.

But there was smoke up here. It caught at his throat and made him cough in a manner which would have had Rev. Pot glaring. In the Rev.’s eyes, all ailments which affected the larynx were self-induced and totally undeserving of sympathy.

He ducked his head back into the bedroom, pulled off his sodden jacket and draped it over his head. Then he took a deep breath of air and dragged himself through the narrow gap into the attic.

It was unboarded so he had to lie flat across a couple of beams till his eyesight adjusted. Something scuttled over his outstretched arm. Mouse, or maybe a rat, getting the message there was trouble on the way and looking for an exit. He hoped it made it.

He rose to his feet and tore a couple of slates out of the roof. Air might feed fire but it also fed humans and anyway it was good to take a last look at the starry sky. He edited out last, took a deep breath and started moving forward.

Lack of height was now an advantage. If he’d been built like Arnie Schwarzenegger he’d have been bent double. On the other hand, he guessed the poor devil trapped in the fire would probably have preferred even a contorted Arnie.

Where he was moving to he didn’t know. What he needed was a plan. Break through the ceiling below him was an option. He considered it. Probably go up like a Roman Candle as the fire funnelled through the hole, and in any case it only made sense if he had some idea where the trapped man was situated.

Which, he realized, he might have.

There was a water tank up ahead. Not very big, looked like the header tank for a shower, and the water in it was bubbling like the shower was switched on. Meaning maybe the trapped man had sought refuge here from the flames.

He checked the fall of the pipes. Chances were they went straight down into the shower room. He touched the plasterboard around them. Still cool.