Читать книгу The Woodcutter - Reginald Hill - Страница 9

Autumn 1989; the world in turmoil; the Berlin Wall crumbling; Chris Rea’s The Road to Hell top album; Western civilization watching with bated breath the chain of events that will lead to the freeing of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

In a Cumbrian forest in a glade dappled by the midday sun, a man sits slumped against a twisted rowan, his weathered face more deeply scored by the thoughts grinding through his bowed head, his eyes fixed upon but not seeing the unopened flask and sandwich box between his feet. A little way apart, a second man stands and watches, his long brown hair edged wolf-grey, his troubled face full of a compassion he knows it is vain to express, while at his back a young girl too regards the sitting man with unblinking gaze, though her expression is much harder to read. And over the wide woodland tract, so rarely free of the wind’s soughing music above, and the pizzicato of cracking twigs below, a silence falls as if trees and sky and surrounding mountains too were bating their breath for fear of intruding on grief.

Three hundred miles to the south in an East London multi-storey car park, five hoodies who probably wouldn’t bate a breath if Jesus Christ crash-landed on St Paul’s in a chariot of fire are breaking into a car.

But they’ve done it once too often, and suddenly cops spring up all around as if someone had been sowing dragon’s teeth. The hoodies scatter and run, only to find there’s no place to run to.

Except for one. He heads for a ten-foot concrete wall with a one-foot gap at the top. To the cops’ amazement, he goes up the wall like a lizard. Then, to their horror, he rolls through the gap and vanishes.

They are on the fifth level and there’s nothing beyond that gap but a sixty-foot drop to the street below.

The cops radio down to ask their waiting colleagues to go round the back of the multi-storey and pick up the corpse.

A few minutes later word comes back – no corpse at the foot of the wall, just a young hoodie who tried to run off as soon as he spotted them.

At the station he tells them he is John Smith, age eighteen, no fixed abode.

After that he shuts up and stays shut up.

They print him. He’s not in the records.

His fellow hoodies claim never to have seen him before. They also claim never to have seen each other before. One of them is so doped up he’s uncertain whether he’s ever seen himself before.

Two are clearly juveniles. A social worker is summoned to sit in on their questioning. The other two have police records. One is eighteen, the other nineteen. The duty solicitor deals with them.

John Smith’s age they’re still not sure about, and something about the youth, some intangible aura of likeability, makes them share their doubts with the duty solicitor.

He starts his interview by pointing out to Smith that as a juvenile he would be dealt with differently, probably getting a light, non-custodial sentence. Smith sticks to his story, refusing to add details about his background though his accent is clearly northern.

The solicitor guesses he’s lying about his age and name to keep his family out of the picture. Hoping to scare the boy into honesty by over-egging the adult consequences of his crime, he turns his attention to the case against him and quickly perceives it isn’t all that strong. Identification via the grainy CCTV tape in the dimly lit multi-storey is a long way this side of reasonable doubt. And could anyone really have shinned down the sheer outer wall in under a minute as the police evidence claims?

As they talk, the boy relaxes as long as no questions are asked about his origins, and the solicitor finds himself warming to his young client. On his way home he diverts to take a photo of the outer wall of the multi-storey to show just how sheer it is. Next day he shows it to the boy, who is clearly touched by this sign of concern, but becomes panicky when told he has to appear before a magistrate that same morning. The solicitor assures him this is just a committal hearing, not a trial, but warns him that as he is officially an adult of no fixed abode, he will almost certainly be remanded in custody.

This is what happens. As the boy is led away, the solicitor tells him not to worry, he will call round at the Remand Centre later in the day. But he has other work to deal with that keeps him busy well into the evening. He remembers the boy as he makes his way home and eases his guilt with the thought that a night in a Remand Centre without sight of a friendly face might be just the thing Smith needs to make him see sense.

He talks to his wife about the boy. She regards him with surprise. He is not in the habit of getting attached to the low-life criminals who form his customary clientele.

He goes to bed early, exhausted. In the small hours when his wife awakens him, whispering she thinks someone is trying to break in through the living-room window, he reckons she must be having a nightmare as their flat is on the tenth floor of a high rise.

But when they go into the living room and switch on the light, there perched on the narrow window box outside the window is the figure of a man.

Not a man. A boy. John Smith.

The solicitor tells his wife it’s OK, opens the window and lets Smith in.

You said you would come, says the boy, half tearfully, half accusingly.

How did you get out of the Centre? asks the solicitor. And how did you find me?

Through a window, says the boy. And your office address was on that card you gave me, so I got in through a skylight and rooted around till I found your home address. I tidied up after, I didn’t leave a mess.

His wife, who has been listening to this exchange with interest, lowers the bread knife she is carrying and says, I’ll make a cup of tea.

She returns with a pot of tea and a large sponge cake which Smith demolishes over the next hour. During this time she gets more out of the boy than the combined efforts of her husband and the police managed in two days.

When she’s satisfied she’s got all she can, she says, Now we’d better get you back.

The boy looks alarmed and she reassures him, My husband’s going to get you off this charge, no problem. But absconding from custody’s another matter, so you need to be back in the Remand Centre before reveille.

We can’t just knock at the door, protests her husband.

Of course not. You’ll get back in the way you came out, won’t you, ducks?

The boy nods, and half an hour later the couple sit in their car distantly watching a shadow running up the outer wall of the Remand Centre.

Nice lad, says the wife. You always did have good judgment. When you get him off you’d better bring him back home till we decide what to do with him.

Home! exclaims the solicitor. Our home?

Who else’s?

Look, I like the lad, but I wasn’t planning to adopt him!

Me neither, says his wife. But we’ve got to do something with him. Otherwise what does he do? Goes back to thieving, or ends up flogging his arsehole round King’s Cross.

So when the case is dismissed, Smith takes possession of the solicitor’s spare room.

But not for long.

The wife says, I’ve mentioned him at the Chapel. JC says he’d like to meet him.

The solicitor pulls a face and says, King’s Cross might be a better bet.

The wife says, No, you’re wrong. None of that with a kid he takes under his wing. In any case, the boy needs a job and who else can we talk to?

The meeting takes place in a pub after the lunchtime crush has thinned out. To start with the boy doesn’t say much, but under the influence of a couple of halves of lager and the man, JC’s, relaxed undemanding manner he becomes quite voluble. Voluble enough to make it clear he’s not too big on hymn-singing, collection-box rattling or any of the other activities conjured up in his mind by references to the Chapel.

The man says, I expect you’d prefer something more active and out of doors, eh? So tell me, apart from running up and down vertical walls, what else is it that you do?

The boy thinks, then replies, I can chop down trees.

JC laughs.

A woodcutter! Well, curiously at the Chapel we do have an extensive garden to tend and occasionally a nimble woodcutter might come in handy. I’ll see what I can do.

The boy and the woman look at each other and exchange smiles.

And the man, JC, looks on and smiles benevolently too.