The Long Kill
‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelists’ The Times ‘[Reginald Hill] keeps one on the edge of one’s wits throughout a bitterly enthralling detection thriller’ Sunday TimesWhere better for a hitman to retire than in the Lake District, where the air is healthy and the scenery spectacular? And when Jaymith meets attractive young widow, Anya Wilson, he can’t believe his luck.But Jaysmith soon discovers that settling down to the quiet life is not as easy as it seems. His old employers aren’t keen to lose him, his past is always lying in wait, and when Anya introduces him to her family, Jaysmith realizes there’s no way out.He’s back in business, and it makes little difference that this time it’s to defend, not destroy. However you wrap it up, his one accessible talent is the Long Kill.
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REGINALD HILL
THE LONG KILL
Harper HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Methuen 1986 under the author’s pseudonym Patrick Ruell
Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1986
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 author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007334841
EBook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007389186 Version: 2015-09-17
I was a fell destroyer …
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.
Table of Contents
Jaysmith was a firm advocate of the cerebral approach.
He always shot at the head.
The head he was shooting at this bright autumn morning was a noble one even when viewed through an Adjustable Ranging Telescope at 1,250 metres. An aureole of near-white hair surrounded a tanned leathery face in which the crinkles of humour seemed at least to equal the furrows of care. It was the head of an ageing man, seventy at a guess, who must surely now be reckoning that he was going to be allowed to slip naturally from life in the fullness of his years. Another minute would teach him the error of such confidence, and also the error of whatever lust for power, pleasure, or political change, had put him at the end of Jaysmith’s rifle.
Still, there were worse ways to die than suddenly, in your garden, looking across the peaceful fields of St-John’s-in-the-Vale to the swell of the eastern fells, drinking a cup of coffee and feeling the warmth of a September sun on your November skin.
The old man lit another Caporal. He was practically a chain smoker. This, thought Jaysmith, was the last link in his chain. He began to make his final checks.
He had worked out five possible lines of fire on the OS 1:25,000 sheet before leaving London. Two of them he had discarded on his first slow drive along the valley the previous Sunday. Two more had failed his strict on-the-ground examination. The last was the longest, but that didn’t bother him. He preferred the long kill, the longer the better. And with his equipment, his meticulous preparation and, above all, his accuracy, distance had never posed any difficulty. That was why he was the best.
He had till Sunday morning to make the target. It was only Thursday now, but there was no reason to delay. In fact, with the weather so perfect there was every reason to go ahead. He stretched his muscles systematically and began to quarter the ground below him with his Zeiss binoculars.
He was squatting on a lichened rock in a steep gill cutting down a rocky outcrop which his map told him was called Wanthwaite Crags. Eight hundred feet above him was the fell summit called Clough Head. Fears that the fine weather would crowd it with walkers had proved unfounded. It was clearly not a fashionable top. He had checked all possible approaches from the east, south and north before descending. The only signs of life had been the nodding head of a grazing sheep and the slow flap of a raven’s wings. Now he looked westward. A car moved slowly along the valley road. A tractor buzzed purposefully across a stubble field half a mile away. Nothing else. In any case, even in this stillness the Sionics Noise Suppressor on his M21 would scatter the sound of his shot untraceably.
He drew in a long deep breath and let it out slowly. St John’s Beck winding through the valley below was a ribbon of glass. The trees in the garden of the house called Naddle Foot were still as a painting. The moment was perfect.
