Reginald Hill - The Long Kill

Harper HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Methuen 1986 under the author’s pseudonym Patrick Ruell

Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1986

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007334841

EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007389186

Version: 2015-09-17

I was a fell destroyer …

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds

Of undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Jaysmith was a firm advocate of the cerebral approach.

He always shot at the head.

The head he was shooting at this bright autumn morning was a noble one even when viewed through an Adjustable Ranging Telescope at 1,250 metres. An aureole of near-white hair surrounded a tanned leathery face in which the crinkles of humour seemed at least to equal the furrows of care. It was the head of an ageing man, seventy at a guess, who must surely now be reckoning that he was going to be allowed to slip naturally from life in the fullness of his years. Another minute would teach him the error of such confidence, and also the error of whatever lust for power, pleasure, or political change, had put him at the end of Jaysmith’s rifle.

Still, there were worse ways to die than suddenly, in your garden, looking across the peaceful fields of St-John’s-in-the-Vale to the swell of the eastern fells, drinking a cup of coffee and feeling the warmth of a September sun on your November skin.

The old man lit another Caporal. He was practically a chain smoker. This, thought Jaysmith, was the last link in his chain. He began to make his final checks.

He had worked out five possible lines of fire on the OS 1:25,000 sheet before leaving London. Two of them he had discarded on his first slow drive along the valley the previous Sunday. Two more had failed his strict on-the-ground examination. The last was the longest, but that didn’t bother him. He preferred the long kill, the longer the better. And with his equipment, his meticulous preparation and, above all, his accuracy, distance had never posed any difficulty. That was why he was the best.

He had till Sunday morning to make the target. It was only Thursday now, but there was no reason to delay. In fact, with the weather so perfect there was every reason to go ahead. He stretched his muscles systematically and began to quarter the ground below him with his Zeiss binoculars.

He was squatting on a lichened rock in a steep gill cutting down a rocky outcrop which his map told him was called Wanthwaite Crags. Eight hundred feet above him was the fell summit called Clough Head. Fears that the fine weather would crowd it with walkers had proved unfounded. It was clearly not a fashionable top. He had checked all possible approaches from the east, south and north before descending. The only signs of life had been the nodding head of a grazing sheep and the slow flap of a raven’s wings. Now he looked westward. A car moved slowly along the valley road. A tractor buzzed purposefully across a stubble field half a mile away. Nothing else. In any case, even in this stillness the Sionics Noise Suppressor on his M21 would scatter the sound of his shot untraceably.

He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. St John’s Beck winding through the valley below was a ribbon of glass. The trees in the garden of the house called Naddle Foot were still as a painting. The moment was perfect.

He squeezed the trigger.

The bullet missed. It passed close enough to the old man’s ear for him to flap his Caporal at a buzzing fly. Then it buried itself deep in the rich earth of the upper level of the tiered garden.

Jaysmith sat utterly still. There were many possible explanations. A gust of wind along the channel of the beck; a slight change of atmospheric pressure; an imperfection in the bullet; at this range any one of these could translate itself into several inches at journey’s end.

Yes, there were many possible explanations. But only one cause.

Gently he massaged his temples and blinked his right eye rapidly a couple of times. It focused perfectly on the M21 as he began to dismantle it with practised ease. But perfect focusing for a job he could have done in pitch blackness was not enough. There was a weakness there. He had suspected it two targets ago when he had shot the Austrian. And last time out he had been almost certain. It had been a perfect shot in the eyes of the world. Only Jaysmith knew that as he squeezed the trigger, the Chinaman had raised his teacup and bowed his head into the path of the bullet.

Two weeks ago he had paid a Harley Street optician an exorbitant fee to put a clinical label on it. It was not a condition which could be in the least detrimental to any normal activity, the man had assured him. He should have retired then, at once, without thought. But this target had already come up, unusually soon after the Chinaman, and marked ultra-urgent. Something had made him reluctant to refuse it. Loyalty to Jacob, perhaps. Or professional pride. Professional pride! Amateurish stupidity was what Jacob would call it.

He packed the sections of the dismantled rifle in the internal pouches of his specially constructed rucksack. Now he was just a fellwalker again. With athletic ease he climbed up the steep gully to the top of the crags. Here he paused and glanced back across the valley. Without the A.R.T. the house was just a dark red monopoly token set on green baize. The reprieved man in the garden was completely invisible. He didn’t even know his name. Jacob never provided more than was necessary for a target. In this case it had been a head-and-shoulders photograph of the man, the OS sheet NY 32 with the house called Naddle Foot ringed in red, and a deadline.