Reginald Hill - The Woodcutter

His wife, who has been listening to this exchange with interest, lowers the bread knife she is carrying and says, I’ll make a cup of tea.

She returns with a pot of tea and a large sponge cake which Smith demolishes over the next hour. During this time she gets more out of the boy than the combined efforts of her husband and the police managed in two days.

When she’s satisfied she’s got all she can, she says, Now we’d better get you back.

The boy looks alarmed and she reassures him, My husband’s going to get you off this charge, no problem. But absconding from custody’s another matter, so you need to be back in the Remand Centre before reveille.

We can’t just knock at the door , protests her husband.

Of course not. You’ll get back in the way you came out, won’t you, ducks?

The boy nods, and half an hour later the couple sit in their car distantly watching a shadow running up the outer wall of the Remand Centre.

Nice lad , says the wife. You always did have good judgment. When you get him off you’d better bring him back home till we decide what to do with him.

Home! exclaims the solicitor. Our home?

Who else’s?

Look, I like the lad, but I wasn’t planning to adopt him!

Me neither , says his wife. But we’ve got to do something with him. Otherwise what does he do? Goes back to thieving, or ends up flogging his arsehole round King’s Cross.

So when the case is dismissed, Smith takes possession of the solicitor’s spare room.

But not for long.

The wife says, I’ve mentioned him at the Chapel. JC says he’d like to meet him.

The solicitor pulls a face and says, King’s Cross might be a better bet.

The wife says, No, you’re wrong. None of that with a kid he takes under his wing. In any case, the boy needs a job and who else can we talk to?

The meeting takes place in a pub after the lunchtime crush has thinned out. To start with the boy doesn’t say much, but under the influence of a couple of halves of lager and the man, JC’s, relaxed undemanding manner he becomes quite voluble. Voluble enough to make it clear he’s not too big on hymn-singing, collection-box rattling or any of the other activities conjured up in his mind by references to the Chapel.

The man says, I expect you’d prefer something more active and out of doors, eh? So tell me, apart from running up and down vertical walls, what else is it that you do?

The boy thinks, then replies, I can chop down trees.

JC laughs.

A woodcutter! Well, curiously at the Chapel we do have an extensive garden to tend and occasionally a nimble woodcutter might come in handy. I’ll see what I can do.

The boy and the woman look at each other and exchange smiles.

And the man, JC, looks on and smiles benevolently too.

Winter 1991;Terry Waite freed; 264 Croats massacred at Vukovar; Freddy Mercury dies of AIDS; Michael Jackson’s Dangerous top album; the Soviet Union dissolved; Gorbachev resigns.

And in a quiet side street in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, a man with a saintly smile relaxes in the comfortable rear seat of a Citroën CX. Through the swirling mist above the trees on the far side of a small park he can just make out the top three storeys of a six-storey apartment block. He imagines he sees a shadow moving rapidly down the side of the building, but it is soon out of sight, and in any case he is long used to the deceptions of the imagination on such a night as this. He returns his attention to Quintus Curtius’s account of the fall of Tyre, and is soon so immersed that he is taken by surprise a few minutes later when the car door opens and the boy slips inside.

‘Oh hello,’ he says, closing the book. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Piece of cake,’ says the boy. ‘Bit chilly on the fingers though.’

‘You ought to wear gloves,’ says the man, passing over a thermos flask.

‘Can’t feel the holds the same with gloves,’ replies the boy, drinking directly from the flask.

The man regards him fondly and says, ‘You’re a good little woodcutter.’

In the front of the car a phone rings. The driver answers it, speaking in French. After a while, he turns and says, ‘He’s on his way, JC. But there’s a problem. He diverted to the Gare d’Est. He picked up a woman and a child. They think it’s his wife and daughter. They’re in the car with him.’

Without any change of expression or tone the man says softly, ‘Parles Français, idiot!’

But his warning is too late.

The boy says, ‘What’s that about a wife and daughter? You said he lived by himself.’

‘So he does,’ reassures the man. ‘As you doubtless observed, it’s a very small flat. Also he’s estranged from his family. If it is his wife and daughter, and that’s not definite, he is almost certainly taking them to a hotel. Would you like something to eat? I have some chocolate.’

The boy shakes his head and drinks again from the flask. His face is troubled.

The man says quietly, ‘This is a very wicked person, I mean wicked in himself as well as a dangerous enemy of our country.’

The boy says, ‘Yeah, I know that, you explained that. But that doesn’t mean his wife and kid are wicked, does it?’

‘Of course it doesn’t. And we do everything in our power not to hurt the innocent; I explained that too, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ agrees the boy.

‘Well then.’

They sit in silence for some minutes. The phone sounds again.

The driver answers, listens, turns his head and says, ‘ Ils sont arrivés. La femme et l’enfant aussi. Il demande, que voudrais-vous? ’

The man said, ‘ Dites-lui, vas’y. ’

The boy’s face is screwed up as if by sheer concentration he can make sense of what’s being said. On the far side of the park the mist above the trees clears for a moment and the apartment block is visible silhouetted against a brightly starred sky.

A light comes on in one of the uppermost chambers. At first it is an ordinary light, amber against an uncurtained window.

And then it turns red. It is too distant for any sound to reach inside the well-insulated car, but in that moment they see the glass dissolve and smoke and debris come streaming towards them like the fingers of a reaching hand.

Then the mist swirls back and the man says, ‘Go.’

Back in their apartment, the boy goes to his room and the man sits by a gently hissing gas fire, encoding his report. When it is finished, he pours himself a drink and opens his History of Alexander the Great.

Suddenly the door opens and the boy, naked except for his brief underpants, bursts into the room.

He says in a voice so choked with emotion he can hardly get the words out, ‘You lied to me, you fucking bastard! They were still with him, both of them, it’s on the news, it’s so fucking terrible it’s on the British news. You lied! Why?’

The man says, ‘It had to be done tonight. Tomorrow would have been too late.’

The boy comes nearer. The man is very aware of the young muscular body so close he can feel the heat off it.

The boy says, ‘Why did you make me do it? You said you’d never ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do. But you tricked me. Why?’

The man for once is not smiling. He says quietly, ‘My father once said to me, when love and grim necessity meet, there is only one winner. You probably don’t understand that now any more than I did then. But you will. In the meantime all I can say is I’m very sorry. I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I promise.’