The Woodcutter. Reginald Hill

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      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.’

      ‘How? How can you possibly make it up to me?’ screams the boy. ‘You’ve made me a murderer. What can you do that can ever make up for that! There’s nothing! Nothing!’

      And the man says, rather sadly, like one who pronounces a sentence rather than makes a gift, ‘I shall give you your heart’s desire.’