Singing the Sadness
‘Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace’ Sunday TimesJoe Sixsmith is going west, though only as far the Llanffugiol Choral Festival in Wales. But his plans are interrupted when they happen upon a burning house with a mysterious woman trapped inside.Joe risks life and limb to rescue the woman, only to be roped in to the investigation by the police officer in charge. Suddenly surrounded by a bevy of suspicious characters, he soon realizes that this case is much more than just arson.Aided by little more than his acute instinct for truth, Joe moves forward over the space of a single weekend to uncover crimes which have been buried for years.
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REGINALD HILL
SINGING THE SADNESS
A Joe Sixsmith novel
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1999
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
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780007334834
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007389179 Version: 2015-07-27
For POLLY without whose contribution this book would have been finished a great deal sooner
Table of Contents
The Boyling Corner Chapel Choir sped across the heart of England like a nest of singing birds and as they crossed the Welsh border there was a spontaneous outburst of âWeâll Keep a Welcome in the Hillsidesâ. Not even when the coach ground to a halt an hour or so later in a puff of smoke dark enough to hide a demon king did their spirits sink.
Not at first anyway.
âNo sweat,â assured their driver, Merv Golightly, whose broad smile and cheerful manner had been honed at the wheel of a Luton taxi. âWeâre only half an hour away and Iâll fix this in a jiffy.â
Several jiffies later, Joe Sixsmith got out and strolled round to join Merv at the open bonnet. The two of them had been workmates at Robco Engineering of Luton till the economic miracle workers of the sick eighties had told them to take up their P45s and walk. Joeâs years of working at a lathe and on a much-loved, much-regretted Morris Oxford, had left him with a high degree of mechanical expertise, but Mervâs years of driving a fork-lift truck had never taken him beyond the bang-it-with-a-spanner school of repair.
The spanner was in Mervâs hand now, the same outsize length of metal nicknamed Percy which he kept beneath his taxi seat for those situations which neither his cheerful manner nor broad smile could defuse.
âHang about, Merv,â said Joe, seeing the spanner poised menacingly. âLet the dog see the rabbit.â
It didnât take long and it wasnât a rabbit but a dead donkey.
âOil pumpâs gone,â he said. âMerv, whereâd you buy this heap of junk? At a Transport Museum boot sale?â
âHey, Iâve got all the safety certs and such, you seen them,â said Merv, hurt.
This was true. Joe had insisted on seeing them soon as he heard Merv had not only extended his personal transport service to include coach hire but had put in the lowest bid for the Boyling Corner expedition to Wales. It was Rev. Pot, pastor and choirmaster, who made the final choice, but many of the choristers, led by Joeâs Aunt Mirabelle, were convinced Joe had put in a fix.
âCan you patch it up?â asked Merv hopefully.
His hope was mirrored on the faces of Rev. Pot and others whoâd also congregated round the bonnet.
âNo way,â said Joe dolefully. âNeeds a new pump. At least. Which means it needs a garage.â
All eyes turned to the empty road ahead. There were fewer signs of life there than in Westminster on a Friday, and theyâd passed no human habitation for at least ten miles.
Then Joe, with a politicianâs timing, let a broad smile dawn on his face and said, âSo, no problem. Iâll just call up help,â and produced his mobile phone.
The effect was slightly spoilt when he couldnât get it to work till Beryl Boddington took it gently out of his hand and switched it on.
Five minutes later he was able to announce that a mechanic was on the way with the necessary part.
Aunt Mirabelle gave him a donât-think-thatâs-going-to-change-my-mind glower. She still regarded his post-lathe career in private investigation as a symptom of stress-induced brain fever which marriage to a good woman, plus regular attendance at chapel and the job centre, would soon cure. Sheâd reacted to the news that Joe had bought a mobile like a Sally Army captain catching a reformed drunk coming out of an off-licence with a brown paper parcel.
