Reginald Hill - The Long Kill

She stepped aside as she spoke and started to laugh at the expression on Jaysmith’s face.

‘Don’t look so dismayed,’ she said. ‘It may be nepotism, but he really is the best solicitor I know. Pappy, I’d like you to meet William J. Hutton. I shall expect my usual commission for the introduction. And I’ll see you both in not more than an hour. ‘Bye.’

She left and Jaysmith slowly advanced to take the hand proffered by the man behind the desk.

‘You’ll excuse my daughter, I hope, Mr Hutton,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s so good to see her enjoying a joke, that I can excuse her almost anything.’

‘Of course,’ said Jaysmith. ‘It’s of no consequence.’

But it was of more consequence than he had yet had time to apprehend. And he was very glad that Anya had given him some excuse for this expression of amazement, but it had nothing to do with her revelation that the solicitor was her father.

No, that was wrong. It had everything to do with it.

For the last time he had seen the creased leathery features of the man whose hand he now held had been a week earlier, framed in the usually fatal circle of his telescopic sight.

An hour later any faint doubts about the identification had been completely removed.

Jaysmith was sitting in the front garden of the red-tiled house called Naddle Foot. Alongside him, filling the bright air with the pungent smoke of a Caporal, was Steven Bryant. And by turning his head just forty-five degrees, he believed he could actually see the entry hole left in the flower bed by his aberrant bullet. He shifted his chair slightly to remove the temptation to stare and looked instead across the valley to the opposing fellside where he had patiently prepared to kill his host.

‘Another sherry?’ said Bryant in a voice roughened almost to a growl by a lifetime of chain-smoking.

Jaysmith realized he had emptied his glass unawares.

‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘One before lunch is enough.’

He studied the other man as he spoke. Distance had made him overestimate his age. The venerable halo of silver hair was belied by his shrewd brown eyes and his ease of movement. Early sixties rather than early seventies, an estimate confirmed in the office when Bryant had said, ‘To be quite honest, Mr Hutton, I’ve more or less given up practising law. There’s a book I want to write and I’ve been devoting more and more time to it over the past ten years, and when I got to sixty, three years ago, I thought, to hell with the law’s tediums! I still dabble a bit, however, so Anya has not deceived you entirely. But now that she’s played her little trick, to which I was not a party, I assure you, I would recommend you let me pass the actual job of conveyancing over to my partner, Donald Grose. He’s very able, much better tempered than I am, and to tell the truth, I don’t really fancy getting into any business dealings with old Muriel Wilson. She can be a tiresome old stick.’

Jaysmith could understand why Anya had wanted her father to look him over, if, as he suspected, that was the serious purpose behind her little trick. Beneath this friendly, apparently open approach, he was aware of a keen analytical scrutiny. There was no hint of cross-questioning, but questions were constantly being asked. He guessed that Anya valued her father’s judgement highly and did his best to impress the man. But all the time, his concentration was being distracted by his own speculations about the other. He could not be what he seemed, a simple country solicitor. Jaysmith’s expensive talents were not turned loose on such prey. But none of his own gentle probings had so far produced even the slightest clue. All he could say was that already he sensed in Bryant a strength of will that might mean ruthlessness, and a dark watchfulness that might mean guilt; but his feeling was vague and might itself be the creation of his own uncertainties.

There was one other possible clue, but this too might just be a creation of his own straining after information. From time to time his sharp linguist’s ear felt it detected just the slightest nuance of ‘foreignness’ in Bryant’s speech, vanishing as soon as suspected and probably a simple by-product of his tobacco-growl. There was nothing else to suggest non-English origins, except perhaps the name Anya, but that was just the kind of name pretentious middle-class parents might give their daughter anyway.

On the other hand, whatever else Bryant was, he gave little sign of belonging to the pretentious middle class. Beneath his smart clothes and civilized conversation, there was an earthiness and, if Jaysmith was not mistaken, a strong vein of sensuality too, untouched as yet by his age.

The probing questions had ceased as though by mutual agreement during lunch, which was a simple though delicious meal of baked trout and green salad followed by a freshly baked bramble pie, all washed down with a crisp Moselle. Bryant was industrious in topping up Jaysmith’s glass, and when it was suggested they return to the garden to drink their coffee, the accompanying brandy balloon was full enough to swim a goldfish.

Still icily sober, Jaysmith decided to let the relaxation Bryant obviously hoped for work for him.

‘Anya,’ he said mellowly as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘That’s a lovely name you chose for your daughter, Bryant.’

Glancing at him with surprise, the woman said, ‘Less buxom than Annie, certainly. We established that.’

Jaysmith smiled and she smiled back, a shared joke which momentarily excluded her father.

Bryant said abruptly, ‘It was my mother’s name. Anya Winnika.’

‘Polish?’ said Jaysmith, trying to make his interest casual. ‘Were you born in Poland then?’

Bryant did not look as if he was going to answer, but Anya, as if concerned at any hint of rudeness to their guest, said quickly, ‘Pappy was a law student in Warsaw till 1939. He got out when the Nazis invaded.’

‘And the Russians,’ interrupted Bryant harshly. ‘Don’t forget the Russians came in from the east at the same time.’

‘And your parents, did they get out with you?’

Bryant lit another Caporal from the one he was smoking.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They thought they could sit it out. Why not? How many invasions over the centuries had poor Poland had to sit out! I wasn’t any wiser than they were, just younger and more impatient. I followed the provisional government first to France then to England. I found out later that when the Nazis came, they requisitioned our family house for one of their senior officers. As for my parents, they were moved into the ghetto. My mother was Jewish, you see. Not orthodox; far from it; and she had cut herself off completely by marrying a Gentile. It took the Nazis to reunite her with her people. My father went with her of course. He was a gentle man, trusting in human nature almost to the point of foolishness. But they’d have had to shoot him to stop him accompanying mamma. The next time I saw Warsaw it was in ruins. Our house had survived but now there was a Russian general in it. It was a small change, hardly noticeable.’

‘And your parents?’

He shrugged massively.

‘Who knows? The ghetto uprising of ’43; the resistance uprising of ’44; in one or the other they died, and so many with them that nowhere in the whole of that ruined city could I find a memory or a trace of their passing. Think of that, Mr Hutton, if you can. Think of that!’

Anya put her hand on her father’s arm and Jaysmith sipped his brandy for warmth. The sun still shone, but a chill seemed to have risen in this peaceful valley.

‘You speak excellent English,’ said Jaysmith with a deliberate banality.

It worked. Bryant coughed a laugh and said, ‘And why the hell shouldn’t I? I’ve been speaking it longer than you, Hutton. I learned it first from my grandfather when I was a child. He was an Englishman, you see, sent to look after his firm’s affairs in Gdansk – Danzig, it was then – in the 1880s. He never went back. When World War One came, he took his Polish wife’s name and moved to Warsaw. And after the Second World War was over and I saw that the Russians had a stronghold on my country, and realized that my life was to be in England, well, I reversed the process and reverted to my true patronym. I really am Steven Bryant, Hutton. Or, more properly, Stefan Bryant. Much more reassuring, isn’t it, than something full of Ks and Zs?’