Bones and Silence. Reginald Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ name is Philip Keith Swain. I live at Moscow Farm, Currthwaite, Mid-Yorkshire. I am a partner in the firm of Building Contractors known as Swain and Stringer, working from the same address. I am thirty-eight years old.

      A short while ago my company was engaged by Gregory Waterson of 18 Hambleton Road to convert his loft into a draughtsman’s studio. During the course of this work, he visited my premises on several occasions. These visits brought him into contact with my wife, Gail. I saw that they had become very friendly but any suspicions I might have had that the relationship went further I put out of my mind for two reasons. The first was that I simply did not want to risk a confrontation with Gail. For some time she had been behaving in an increasingly irrational fashion, bouts of deep depression alternating with moods of almost manic liveliness. When she was down, she talked sometimes of killing herself, more specifically of blowing her head off. I wanted her to see a doctor but, being American by birth, she had always refused to have anything to do with English doctors whom she regarded as mediaeval in both equipment and attitude. She did however promise to see an American doctor as soon as she returned to the States. And this was the other reason I made no comment about Waterson. I knew Gail was going back to California in the near future.

      Early last summer her father had died. She was very close to him and I think it was from this date that her bouts of depression set in. The news that her mother’s health had gone into a rapid decline since Gail had returned to England after her father’s funeral made matters worse. I think she had blamed her mother for her father’s death and had not been careful to conceal her feelings, and now she was feeling guilty herself. These are necessarily amateur observations. All I knew for certain was that her mental state was far from stable, but everything pointed to nothing but good coming from her return to Los Angeles with the opportunity this would afford for sorting things out with her mother and also for consulting her family physician.

      She was due to leave on Sunday February 8th. I had offered to drive her down to Heathrow, but despite the mild weather, she said she was worried about bad road conditions and she would go by train. She refused my offer to accompany her, saying she knew how much work I had on my plate, and then, when I persisted, demanding angrily if I didn’t think her capable of making a simple train journey alone. At this point I desisted and in fact went to work on the Sunday morning to take advantage of the continuing good weather, and thus did not even see her out of the house. I was therefore relieved when she rang me the following day, ostensibly from Los Angeles, to say she’d arrived safely.

      I heard nothing further from her but a woman rang up a couple of times and asked to speak to her. When I told her Gail was out of the country, she made a sort of disbelieving sound and rang off. Then earlier tonight she rang again. I’m certain it was the same woman, she sounded young, with a Yorkshire accent though not very strong. She asked me if I still believed Gail was in America. I said yes, of course. And she went on to say that I was wrong and if I wanted to see Gail I ought to go round to 18 Hambleton Road. Then she rang off.

      I immediately rang Gail’s mother in LA. I got through to the housekeeper-cum-nurse that Mrs Delgado, my mother-in-law, had taken on since her illness. She said Gail had never arrived but had sent a cable to say she was stopping off to see some friends on the East Coast and would get in touch as soon as she knew when she’d definitely arrive. No one was surprised as Gail was notoriously impulsive. I made light of the matter and advised the nurse not to mention my call to Mrs Delgado as I didn’t want her to worry. But I myself was very worried and the only thing I could think of to do was go round to Hambleton Road.

      I arrived at 10.30. There were lights on but Mr Waterson took a long time to answer the door. When he saw who it was, at first he looked shocked. Then he said, ‘You know, don’t you?’ And as soon as he said that, I did.

      The odd thing was I didn’t get angry, perhaps because I got the feeling he was almost relieved to see me. He said, ‘You’d better come in.’ I said, ‘Where is she?’ He said, ‘She’s upstairs. But don’t go rushing up there. She’s in a very strange mood.’ I asked what he meant and he said she had been drinking heavily and was talking about killing herself. I said something like, ‘So she’s putting you through that hoop too? Tough luck.’ And he said, ‘You mean you’ve seen her like this before? That’s a relief. But that gun scared the shit out of me. Is it really loaded?’

      Now this mention of a gun did really upset me. I knew Gail had guns, of course, but I thought they were safely locked up at the Mid-Yorks Gun Club where she was a member. When Waterson saw my reaction, he began to look really worried again. That was an odd thing. We should have been at each other’s throats, I suppose. Instead we were, temporarily at least, united by our concern for Gail.

      We went up together. Perhaps this was a mistake, for when Gail saw us, she began laughing and she gabbled something about all the useless men in her life sticking together, and the only good one she’d ever known being dead. She was drunk and naked, sitting on the bed. She had this revolver in her hands. I asked her to give it to me. She laughed again and held it with the muzzle pressed against her chin. I told her not to be silly. It wasn’t the wisest thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else. And she just laughed higher and higher and I thought I saw her finger tightening on the trigger. And that’s when I jumped forward to grab at the gun.

      What happened then I can’t say precisely, except that the gun went off and then I was standing there holding it, and Gail was lying with her head blown to pieces across the bed, and some time after, I don’t know how long, Mr Dalziel came into the room.

      This dreadful accident has devastated my life. I loved my wife. I am sure that it was her dreadful feelings of guilt and unhappiness after her father’s death that drove her to seek solace in infidelity. And I know that despite everything, we could have worked things out.

      Signed: Philip Swain.

      ‘Well,’ said Dalziel. ‘What do you reckon to that?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Pascoe slowly. ‘It’s … odd.’

      ‘Of course it’s bloody odd. Fairy tales usually are! What he still hasn’t twigged is I saw him with the gun in his hand before I heard the shot. Once we get Mr Gregory Waterson’s version, it’ll be two to one, and then I’ll make the bugger squirm!’

      This simple scenario did little to assuage Pascoe’s sense of oddness. But he didn’t want to seem to be muddying Dalziel’s triumph so he held his peace and tried for a congratulatory smile. It lacked conviction, however, for Dalziel said, ‘You’ve not changed, have you, lad? In fact, all them weeks lying in bed playing with yourself have likely set you back. What you need is some good solid meat to get your stomach settled. I’ve got just the thing. Football hooligans.’

      He regarded Pascoe complacently and received in return a look of surprise. The big clubs in West and South Yorkshire had their share of maniac supporters, but City, Mid-Yorkshire’s only league side, rattling around the lower divisions for years, rarely attracted serious home-grown trouble.

      ‘I’ve not read about any bother,’ said Pascoe. ‘And anyway crowd control’s uniformed’s business.’

      ‘Murder isn’t,’ said Dalziel grimly. ‘Saturday before last, young lad vanished travelling back to Peterborough from a visit to his girlfriend in London. They found him next morning with a broken neck at the bottom of an embankment near Huntingdon.’

      ‘Sad, but what’s it to do with us?’

      ‘Hold your horses. City were playing in North London that day and it seems there were a lot of complaints about bevvied-up City supporters on the train the dead lad would have caught from King’s Cross.’

      ‘But you said he’d been visiting his girl, СКАЧАТЬ