The Woodcutter (21 page)

A surreal note was struck by the presence in one corner of a small deflated rubber dinghy and a foot pump.

Hollins stared down at this for a moment then turned his attention to the sampler. Unwilling to brush aside the cobwebs, he had to peer close to make out beneath their silvery threads the Gothic lettering painstakingly sewn by some human hand.

It was the Lord’s Prayer.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Padre,’ said Hadda drily from the inner door. ‘I think it hides a patch of damp.’

He moves very quietly for a big lame man, thought Hollins, noting with some relief that his host was now wearing a heavy polo-neck sweater, old cords, and boots. He’d also covered his empty eye socket with a black patch and pulled on a black leather right-hand glove.

‘Is it fear of damp that’s making you prepare an ark?’ said Hollins, glancing at the dinghy.

‘What? Oh that. I used to trawl the local tarns when I was a boy. I came across it stored away with a lot of other childish stuff, thought it might be worth getting it seaworthy again in case I need to go foraging for my own victuals. Talking of which, you’d like a coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

Hadda ran some water into the kettle, switched it on, put several spoonfuls of ground coffee into a pot jug, then sat down and studied his guest.

Luke Hollins had grown used to being studied, usually with disbelief.

He had a close-shaved head and an unshaved chin. He wore a bright red fleece with a full-length zip, khaki trousers that could be turned into shorts by zipping off the bottom half of the legs, and Nike trainers. His only sartorial concession to his calling was the reversed collar visible under the fleece, and even that had acquired a greenish tinge.

‘Lady Kira must love you,’ said Hadda.

‘Sorry?’

‘The castle’s in your parish, isn’t it? I’m sure Sir Leon still does his Lord of the Manor thing and invites the parson up to lunch after morning service from time to time.’

‘Once to date,’ said Hollins. ‘I’m not holding my breath for the next invite.’

‘It’ll come. The Old Guard deals with tradition breakers by kettling them inside the tradition,’ said Hadda. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Six months,’ said Hollins, thinking, How come I’m not asking the questions?

‘As long as that? They must be desperate.’

‘The only other candidate was a woman,’ Hollins heard himself explaining.

‘Must have been a close call. So, what can you do for me, Padre?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You know, if you listen to the words that are spoken to you and ascribe to them their conventional meaning, then maybe you’ll find it unnecessary to say “Sorry?” all the time. You’ve come knocking at my door. I presume you don’t want to borrow a pound of sugar or ask for a donation to the Church Missionary Society. So, likely you’ve come to offer your services. Not literally, I hope. I don’t do prayer. So what can you do for me?’

‘I can offer a sympathetic ear . . .’ began Hollins.

‘Really? You a pervert then?’

‘Sorry . . . I mean . . . sorry?’

The kettle boiled. Hadda switched it off, waited till the water had stopped bubbling, then poured it into the jug, stirring vigorously.

‘That’s what I am, isn’t it? Therefore a sympathetic ear implies . . . sympathy. But that’s your problem. Listen, I don’t want you sneaking up on my soul from behind, so let’s get down to it and ask the big question. Do you get Tesco deliveries?’

He poured coffee into two heavy pot mugs and passed one across. No milk or sugar.

Biting back another ‘sorry?’, Hollins said, ‘Yes, I mean . . . yes, we do.’

‘Good. They won’t deliver here, say the lonning’s too rough. And even if I do a bit of fishing and so on, I’m still going to need stuff. So if I give you a list from time to time, you can add it to your order, right? Then ferry it out to Birkstane.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so . . .’ said Hollins, thinking of his wife’s probable reaction.

‘Come on! Don’t worry, I’ll pay my whack. Anyway, I thought feeding the poor came under your job description.’

‘Of course. It will be a pleasure.’

‘A pleasure, is it? Maybe I shouldn’t pay you. Right, jot your phone number down and I’ll be in touch.’

He glanced up at the bracket clock on the wall, then rose to his feet.

‘Got to leave you now,’ he said. ‘Appointment with my probation officer in Carlisle. That and reporting my movements regularly to the local fuzz in Whitehaven are the highlights of my social life. You stay and finish your coffee. Oh, and next Sunday when you get up in your pulpit you can tell those moronic parishioners of yours two things. The first is, I’m no threat to their kids, I’ve taken the cure, swallowed the medicine both literally and metaphorically, I’m fit to retake my place in society – and if they don’t believe you, they can ask Dr Ozigbo.’

‘Ozigbo? That sounds . . . unusual.’

‘Foreign, you mean?’ Hadda grinned. ‘I forgot, they still think folk from Westmorland are foreign round here. Nigerian stock, I believe, but she’s British born and bred. And educated too, better than thee and me, I daresay. Yes. Dr Ozigbo’s my psychiatric saviour. And I’m one of her great successes. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’d put me in a book by now. So tell the dickheads that. Now I’m off. If I’m late I may get detention. I’ll be in touch. Sneck!’

Leaning heavily on a stout walking stick he limped slowly out of the door. The dog, with a promissory growl at the vicar, rose and followed.

After a moment Hollins tipped his coffee into the sink – he was a two sugars and a dollop of cream man – and rinsed the mug in a trickle of peaty brown water. It occurred to him that this might be a good opportunity to have a poke around, but not even radical C of E priests did that.

He went outside. The scorched barn door was open and the sound of an engine clanking to life emerged, followed shortly by an ancient Defender. As it drew up alongside him he saw that Sneck occupied the passenger seat.

‘That your Dinky toy?’ said Hadda through the open window, nodding towards the bright blue Micra by the gate.

‘Yes.’

‘Next time, leave it at the top of the lonning. You were lucky to get as close as you did. And if you want to last the winter, I’d trade it in for one of these beauties.’

As the Defender’s engine growled as if in appreciation of the compliment, Hollins shouted, ‘You said there were two things I should tell my congregation?’

‘Nice to see you were paying attention,’ Hadda shouted back. ‘The second is, I may be no threat to their kids, but next time Jimmy Froth sends any of his hotheads from the Dog up here, they’ll find my axe will be a threat to them. End of lesson. A-fucking-men!’

2

Davy McLucky had bought a
Glasgow Herald
to read on the train. Automatically he opened it at the classifieds to check his ad was there.

Got a problem?
GET McLUCKY!
Confidential enquiries
Security
Debt Collection

In fact he rarely did any debt collection, it required a level of hardness he didn’t aspire to, but Glaswegians hiring a PI liked to think they were getting someone hard. It was a front he’d learned to adopt from an early age.
Your blether’s aye been tae near your eyeballs,
his father had said when he came home with a tear-stained face after a hard day in the school playground.
You need to stand up for yersel’.

I don’t want you teaching wee Davy to be hard,
his mother had protested.

I’m no teaching him tae
be
hard,
said his father.
I’m teaching him tae
act
hard!

He’d learned the lesson and it had helped him survive childhood and adolescence in parts of Glasgow that somehow didn’t quite make it into the European City of Culture. And it had helped him when he moved South and joined the Met. Conditioned by the telly, his new London acquaintance, both colleagues and crooks, were ready to be impressed by a hard-talking Glaswegian. But in that unrelenting atmosphere where every day brought new tests of what you really were, his basic soft-centeredness did not go undetected, and in the end it was made clear to him that detective constable was his limit. In his mid-thirties, divorced and disillusioned, he’d decided that he’d had enough of both the Met and the metropolis and resigned from the service. Back in Glasgow, living with his mother, he had got a job with a private security firm. Then his mother had died suddenly and he found himself the owner of the small family house on the edge of Bishopbriggs. Amazed to discover how much it was worth, he sold up and used the money to start his own PI business.

GET McLUCKY!
Not a bad slogan, he thought complacently. After a sticky start, his reputation for reliable service and reasonable prices had started bringing in a steady stream of work, enough in a good season to give him scope to be a bit picky, turning down jobs he didn’t like the look of, beginning with debt collection.

So why was he travelling down to Carlisle to meet a notorious ex-con?

This was the question that had made him raise his eyes from the ads section of the
Herald
and sit staring out at the frost-bound Border landscape as he headed back towards England for the first time since he’d handed in his badge.

Hadda’s phone call had taken him by surprise.

‘You the McLucky used to work in the Met?’

‘That’s me.’

‘This is Wolf Hadda. Remember me?’

‘Aye.’

‘I’d like to hire you.’

‘To do what?’

‘We’ll talk about it when we meet. Thursday next, two o’clock, the Old Station Hotel, Carlisle. I’ll pay you for your journey time and fare before we start talking, OK?’

‘Now hang about, I’d like a bit more . . .’

‘When we meet. Goodbye, Mr McLucky.’

And that had been it. He’d thought about it a lot before opting to make the trip. And he was still thinking about it as he sat with his unread newspaper on his lap, staring out at the passing landscape, oblivious to its lunar beauty under the winter sun.

He had almost two hours to spare when he arrived in Carlisle. After locating the Old Station Hotel, he went for a walk around the town to see the sights.

A mini cathedral and a low squat castle, both in red sandstone, seemed to do the job. He felt no great impulse to enter either and there was a razor-edged wind following him round the quiet streets so he headed back to the hotel and was sitting in the bar, nursing a Scotch, when Hadda limped slowly in, looking warm in a long field jacket and leaning heavily on his stick.

He came straight to the table, cleared a space to stretch out his left leg, and sat down.

‘You’re early,’ he said.

‘You too.’

‘Yes. My probation officer decided I’d been a good boy and didn’t keep me long. First things first. What do I owe you for your train ticket and associated expenses?’

He pulled out a wallet as he spoke. McLucky noted it looked well filled.

He said, ‘That’ll keep. If I don’t take your job, I’ll not take your money.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because if I don’t take your job, it will likely be because it’s something I don’t want to be associated with, so I’ll not be seen to have taken any money from you either.’

‘I like your thinking,’ said Hadda. ‘Why’d you leave the Met?’

‘Because it had nothing more to give me. And maybe I had nothing more to give it. How did you get on to me?’

‘I made enquiries. I was told you’d retired and gone back home to Glasgow. I asked myself, what do old detectives do? And I got McLucky.’

‘Fine. That’s the how. Let’s move on to the why.’

‘Hold on. My turn to ask a question, I think. You were still a DC when you left, right? Did that have anything to do with your decision?’

‘Yes and no,’ said the Scot. ‘If you’re asking whether I felt being a detective constable in some way demeaned me, the answer’s no. It was a decent enough job. If you mean, did I get pissed off seeing little gobshites with worse records and no more brains heading up the slippery pole, the answer’s yes.’

‘DI Medler, was he one of the aforementioned little gobshites?’

‘Could be,’ said McLucky, finishing his drink. ‘There’s a train back I could catch in half an hour. So maybe we could move things along?’

A waitress had brought some sandwiches for a couple on a nearby table. Hadda summoned her with a wave of his stick.

‘Another drink? And a sandwich? You can pay for your own if I ask you to smuggle me out to Thailand.’

McLucky didn’t reply and Hadda ordered anyway.

‘Taxpayers picking up the tab for this?’ wondered McLucky.

‘What makes you think I haven’t got a job?’

The PI ran his dispassionate gaze over Hadda and said, ‘Well, I canna see you doing much in the world of international finance, so what else are you qualified for?’

Hadda gave a grin that matched his sobriquet.

‘Back to basics, maybe. You don’t forget what you learned at your father’s knee.’

‘So what does that make you?’

‘A woodcutter,’ said Wolf Hadda. ‘Something you can help me with. Did Medler ever come to see me in hospital?’

The Scot nodded.

‘Aye. Not long after you woke up. Just the once.’

‘I’m glad about that,’ said Hadda. ‘I was never quite sure whether I was in or out of my mind back then. My recollection is he looked lightly grilled and he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt that looked like it had been made for some other life form.’

‘Aye. He’d gone to live in Spain after he retired, so maybe that accounts for it.’

‘I daresay. So when he retired, what was the word?’

‘Eh?’

‘Come on. I’m sure your squad was as gossipy as an all-girls marching band. What were people saying?’

McLucky thought for a moment before replying, ‘They were saying that a guy who knew all the moves must have had good reason for moving out.’

‘And what reason did he give?’

‘Health problems, stress-related.’

‘Staying in would have got him where?’

The Scot shrugged. ‘Up to commander, maybe. But walking the high wire, it only takes a fart to blow you off.’