Reginald Hill - Singing the Sadness

While Joe didn’t see how this entitled Willie to take ninety per cent of the credit, he did see that a lowly PI couldn’t afford to turn down any offer of goodwill from the fuzz on no matter what extortionate terms.

Now he didn’t waste time working out what combination of sound, smell and sixth or seventh sense was giving him this info, but focused on the two main issues: one, he wasn’t alone; two, he didn’t know who it was he wasn’t alone with.

He kept his breathing natural. Not as easy as it sounded. It had taken the great American gumshoe, Endo Venera, whose book Not So Private Eye had become Joe’s professional Bible, to point out that not many folk had the faintest idea what their natural breathing sounded like when asleep. ‘Only way to check if you gurgle like a baby or grunt like a hog is to use your VAT,’ said Venera.

It had taken Joe a very confused five minutes to work out that the American didn’t mean value-added tax but voice-activated tape. Such hi-tech aids weren’t in his armoury, but he managed to rig up a conventional recorder on a timer so that he got an hour’s worth of the weird noises he made in bed. Even then he had to separate the basso continuo of his cat, Whitey, from his own surprisingly high-pitched plainsong. So now he was able to avoid the giveaway error of an imitation baritone snore as he lay there, and felt the intruder moving stealthily closer.

Very close now. His mental eye was seeing a mad Welsh nationalist with a can of petrol in one hand and a lighter in the other, bent on getting rid of this potential witness to last night’s crime. It was hard, but he kept his nerve and waited. The intruder had come to a stop. So, Joe realized, had his own breathing. Dead giveaway! Showtime!

He shot upright, flung out his arms, grappled his assailant to his body in a weapon-neutralizing bearhug, rolled out of the bed and wrestled him to the floor.

Various parts of his body sent out signals. Conflicting signals. His injured shoulder, back and knee registered what-the-shoot-are-you-doing-dickhead? shafts of pain, while his face and chest acknowledged gratefully that what they were pressing down on was pleasantly soft and yielding.

Then his ears got in on the act, picking up a high-pitched shriek of shock and indignation which confirmed what his torso was telling him.

This him he’d got hold of was a her, and a well-built one at that.

Ignoring his pain, he rolled off, stood up, and pulled the curtains aside to let in a torrent of bright sunlight.

It fell on a young woman in her mid teens with long blonde hair and a surprised expression. She was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse, both of which had ridden up under the pressure of his attack. She had strong well-fleshed legs and a bosom to match.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘I mean, hey … I’m sorry.’

He bent over her and offered his hand to help her rise. It occurred to him too late that if her purpose were offensive, he was laying himself wide open to a kick in the crutch or a blade in the belly.

But all she did was take his hand and draw herself upright, saying, ‘Bloody hell, boyo, they told me you were ill.’

Joe’s aches, temporarily anaesthetized by his chivalric guilt, came flooding back, and he sat on the bed with a groan.

‘Too late playing for sympathy now,’ she said. ‘Not when you’ve indecently assaulted me already.’

She had a voice like a Welsh stream, bubbling with gently mocking laughter.

Joe said, ‘Really am sorry. Thought you were a burglar or something.’

‘So it was just self-defence, not irresistible desire. There’s disappointing. Is it your back is hurting, then?’

‘Among other places,’ admitted Joe.

‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

She came round the bed and before he could protest she had pushed his pyjama jacket up round his neck and her fingers were pressing up and down his spine, lightly at first, then probing ever deeper. He opened his mouth to cry out in pain, then realized there wasn’t any, or at least a lot less than there’d been a few seconds ago.

‘Going, is it?’ she asked. ‘That’s good. Let’s hope it goes to somebody who deserves it. Not a real hero. First time I got my hands on a real hero.’

‘You the district nurse or something?’ enquired Joe.

This produced a cascade of laughter.

‘No way! You try that wrestling trick on Gladys Two-bars and she’d snap you like a twig, hero or not.’

‘Gladys …?’

‘Two-bars. Gave her a lady’s bike when she started, but twice out and the frame buckled under the weight of her, so they had to get her a man’s, and even then she needed a double crossbar.’

Joe offered up a prayer of thanks he’d been spared that encounter and asked, ‘So who are you, then?’

‘Bron, that’s Bronwen, Williams. My da’s caretaker here at the college, and when your friends had to go off, they asked if we’d keep an eye on you. I would never have said yes if I’d known what sort of man you were going to turn out to be.’

Joe didn’t enquire what sort of man that was, but asked instead, ‘So where’ve they gone, my friends?’

‘Down into Llanffugiol, silly. Festival proper starts tomorrow and they got to register, see what’s what, more rules than a lawyers’ union these choir contests, my da says.’

‘Yes, but it’s the singing that counts,’ said Joe defensively.

‘You think so? Easy to tell you’re not from round here. Could sing like an angel and they’d disqualify you for not having wings if they felt like it. Here, lie down, will you, else I’ll be doing my own back in.’

Obediently, Joe stretched prone on the bed and next thing the girl was straddling him, her bum warm against his buttocks as she leaned her fingers deep into his back.

‘You trained for this?’ he croaked.

‘No. You complaining? Send you back to that fancy hospital if you like. But you won’t find any of those puffed-up little nurses can give you this treatment. Nothing but a bunch of skivvies, that lot, just about fit for cleaning bedpans. Chuck you out before you can hardly walk, too. ‘Spect they’ll be chucking that woman out you rescued any time now.’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe, wondering what experience of Caerlindys Hospital had given Bronwen such a jaundiced opinion of the place. ‘She looks to be in a pretty bad way.’

‘You talk to her then?’

‘Not me. Police are trying but she’s in no state.’

‘Police are useless,’ she said dismissively. She was, thought Joe, a very dismissive young woman. ‘So they don’t know who she is, then? What she was doing there?’

‘Not yet. What’s the word locally?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Back home, everyone would have a theory,’ said Joe. ‘Can’t be much different here, I shouldn’t have thought.’

‘Mind our own business round here,’ she said sharply. ‘Got enough to do looking after ourselves without wasting time on strangers.’

In the circumstances, which were that her bare thighs were gripping the bare back of a complete stranger, this seemed a questionable disclaimer, thought Joe. But he wasn’t about to raise the objection.

The massage, temporarily suspended, now resumed, with the girl sliding back and forth above him like a rower pulling on an oar, as she let her hands run in long slow strokes the whole length of his back from bum to shoulders.

‘How’s that feel?’ she asked

‘Lot better,’ said Joe, his voice now husky with more than just smoke damage.

‘Turn over and I’ll do your front then,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said explosively. ‘Front’s fine, really.’

‘You sure?’ she said, her voice husky as his own. ‘It’s all down to tension, you know, get rid of the tension and you get rid of the pain …’