Blood Sympathy
‘Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction’ ObserverPI can mean many things, but can it really mean a balding, middle-aged lathe operator from a high rise in Luton? Joe Sixsmith thinks it can.His Aunt Mirabelle thinks you’d have to be crazy to hire him, and Joe’s current clients certainly fit the bill. One’s confessing to the brutal murder of his whole family; another thinks she’s a witch. Next to them, the two heavies who believe Joe is hiding their illicit drugs seem almost normal.As Joe stumbles his way through bodies, gangsters and hostile police officers, he is protected by a combination of sheer luck and the help of a new lady friend. And soon it seems like he might just surpass everyone’s expectations…
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REGINALD HILL
BLOOD SYMPATHY
A Joe Sixsmith novel
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublisher 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1993
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
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007334865
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007389155 Version: 2015-07-27
CONTENTS
This book is set in a town called Luton in Bedfordshire. This should not be confused with the town called Luton in Bedfordshire, which the author has never been nearer to than the airport. Therefore any coincidence of layout, nomenclature, or character, is simply that â a coincidence.
The man came in without knocking.
He was in his mid-thirties with gingerish hair and matching freckles. He wore a chain store suit that didnât quite fit and an agitated expression that did.
He said, âI want to talk about killing my wife.â
Joe Sixsmith removed his feet from his desk. It wasnât a pose a man of his size found very comfortable and he only put them there when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Clients expected to find private eyes with their feet on their desks, and as a short, black, balding, redundant lathe-operator was likely to disappoint most of their other expectations, it seemed only fair to satisfy them in this.
On the other hand, customer satisfaction could be a liability when the customer was confessing murder.
If that was what he was doing. Could be he was merely looking for a hit-man. Time for the subtle questioning.
âPardon?â said Sixsmith.
âAnd her sister, Maria. Sheâs there too.â
âThere? Whereâs there?â
âAt the tea-table,â said the man impatiently.
âDead?â said Sixsmith, who liked things spelled out.
âOf course. Arenât you listening? Theyâre all dead.â
Sixsmith thought: All? and looked for a weapon. There was a Present-from-Paignton paperknife in the desk tidy. Casually he reached for it, felt the manâs eyes burning into his hand, and plucked out a ballpoint instead.
He said, âAll?â
He could be really subtle when he wanted.
âYes. My parents-in-law too. Mr and Mrs Tomassetti.â
âCould you spell that?â said Joe, feeling a need to justify the pen.
âTwo sâs, two tâs. My sister-in-law is Maria Rocca. Two câs. Is all this necessary?â
âBear with me,â said Joe, scribbling. The pen wasnât working so all he got were indentations, but at least it was activity which gave him space to think of something intelligent to say.
He said, âIs that it? I mean, are there any more? Dead, I mean?â
âAre you trying to be funny.â
âNo, not at all. Hey, man, Iâm just doing my job. I need the details, Mr â¦?â
The man slid his hand inside his jacket. Joe pushed his chair back till it hit the wall. The hand emerged with a card which he dropped on to the desk. Joe picked it up, then put it down again as it was easier to read out of his trembling fingers. It told him he was talking to Stephen Andover, Southern Area sales manager of Falcon Assurance with offices on Dartle Street.
Suddenly Joeâs mental darkness was lit by suspicion.
He said, âMr Andover, youâre not by any chance trying to sell me insurance?â
The light went out immediately as the manâs freckles vanished in a flush of anger and he thundered. âYouâre not taking me seriously, are you?â
âOh yes, I surely am, believe me,â reassured Joe. âI just had to be sure ⦠Listen, Mr Andover, youâve been straight with me, so the least I can do ⦠The thing is, Iâm in the business of solving crimes, not hearing confessions. You see thereâs no profit in it, not unless youâre a priest, or a cop maybe, and Iâve got to make a living, you can see that â¦â
