Death Comes for the Fat Man (53 page)

Yours affectionately,

Kittie Bagnold

P.S. I almost forgot. You asked about the background
of the gardener. He was a Pole who came here as a
child in 1945 when his family decided that after fi ve
years under the Nazis they deserved more than a
communist future. He grew up, married a Yorkshire
girl, and they produced that remarkably dishy young
boy (yes, even in the staff room we remarked on such
things!) who caused all the trouble.

The father was called Jakub, which we turned to
Jacob, the boy Lukasz, which we turned to Luke, and
their family name was Komorowski.

Ellie sat quite still for several minutes. She thought of many things, of truth and deception, of justice and revenge, of human savagery and human rights, of principle and pragmatism, of conscience and consequence. She thought of parents and children and how you lived through them and sometimes suffered through them too. She thought of fathers and sons, of pride and hope, of hope shattered and pride deformed. She thought of fathers and daughters, of Peter and Rosie, of them both waving good-bye as they left with Tig, of Peter looking almost young and fi t enough to be the girl’s elder brother rather than her father. She thought of him lounging by the river, watching Rosie and Tig competing madly to see which of them could return home the wettest and muddiest. She thought of the troubled weeks after the Mill Street explosion, and she thought of the placid days since their visit to see Dalziel and she thought of Peter’s joy at the prospect of the fat old sod’s eventual complete recovery.

404 r e g i n a l d h i l l

The time might be out of joint but it was someone else’s turn to put it right.

Somehow the imagined world of her novel, in which her characters moved in a tangled mesh of conflicting loyalties and moral choices, was no longer a place she wanted to be just now.

She pressed Delete and went downstairs to do some ironing.

About the Author

REGINALD HILL has been widely published in both England and the United States. He received Britain’s most coveted mystery writers’ award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger, as well as the Golden Dagger for his Dalziel-Pascoe series. He lives with his wife in Cumbria, England.

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also by reginald hill

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A Pinch of Snuff

A Killing Kindness

Deadheads

Exit Lines

Child’s Play

Underworld

Bones and Silence

One Small Step

Recalled to Life

Pictures of Perfection

Asking for the Moon

The Wood Beyond

On Beulah Height

Arms and the Women

Dialogues of the Dead

Death’s Jest-Book

Good Morning, Midnight

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Blood Sympathy

Born Guilty

Killing the Lawyers

Singing the Sadness

Fell of Dark

The Long Kill

Death of a Dormouse

Dream of Darkness

The Only Game

Credits

Jacket illustrations: Window © Andrew

Sanderson/Trevillion Images Figure ©

Dave & Les Jacobs/Getty Images

Designed by Mary Austin Speaker

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEATH COMES FOR THE FAT MAN. Copyright © 2007 by Reginald Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 ebooks.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader February 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-128910-1

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• Cover Image
  
• Title Page
  
• Dedication Page
  
• Epigraph Page
  
• Contents
  
  • Part One
    
    • Chapter One: Mill Street
      
    • Chapter Two: Two Mutton Pasties and an Almond Slice
      
    • Chapter Three: Intimations
      
    • Chapter Four: Dust and Ashes
      
    • Chapter Five: The Two Geoffreys
      
    • Chapter Six: Blue Smartie
      
    • Chapter Seven: Dancing with Death
      
    • Chapter Eight: Blame
      
  • Part Two
    
    • Chapter One: A Tidy Desk
      
    • Chapter Two: Show Business
      
    • Chapter Three: Walking the Dog
      
    • Chapter Four: Dead Men Don�t Fart!
      
    • Chapter Five: Age of Wonders
      
  • Part Three
    
    • Chapter One: Lubyanka
      
    • Chapter Two: A Pale Horse
      
    • Chapter Three: Kaffee-Klatsch
      
    • Chapter Four: Burglary
      
    • Chapter Five: All the Way Home
      
    • Chapter Six: An Urban Fox
      
    • Chapter Seven: Sauron�s Eye
      
    • Chapter Eight: Now It�s Safe
      
  • Part Four
    
    • Chapter One: The Shock of Recognition
      
    • Chapter Two: Rule Five
      
    • Chapter Three: Hectoring
      
    • Chapter Four: Troy
      
    • Chapter Five: Fiddle-De-Dee
      
    • Chapter Six: Kilda
      
    • Chapter Seven: In the Mood
      
    • Chapter Eight: Without Fear or Favor
      
    • Chapter Nine: The Decisive Moment
      
    • Chapter Ten: Queen of the Fete
      
    • Chapter Eleven: Forgotten Dreams
      
    • Chapter Twelve: The Man of My Dreams
      
    • Chapter Thirteen: No Change
      
    • Chapter Fourteen: The Tangle O� the Isles
      
    • Chapter Fifteen: A Shot in the Dark
      
    • Chapter Sixteen: The Word of an Englishman
      
  • Part Five
    
    • Chapter One: A Free Lunch
      
    • Chapter Two: Promotion
      
    • Chapter Three: Melodious Twang
      
    • Chapter Four: Red Mite and Greenfly
      
    • Chapter Five: No-Name
      
    • Chapter Six: Wake-Up Call
      
    • Chapter Seven: Safe House
      
    • Chapter Eight: To the Castle
      
    • Chapter Nine: Armor
      
    • Chapter Ten: Mother Love
      
    • Chapter Eleven: A Change of Direction
      
    • Chapter Twelve: Prison
      
    • Chapter Thirteen: Girls and Boys
      
    • Chapter Fourteen: A Wee Deoch an Doris
      
    • Chapter Fifteen: A Call in the Night
      
    • Chapter Sixteen: The Full English
      
    • Chapter Seventeen: One Last Decision
      
  • Part Six
    
    • Chapter One: The Very Worst
      
    • Chapter Two: Wheel of Fire
      
    • Chapter Three: Singles
      
    • Chapter Four: Snapshots
      
    • Chapter Five: Wedding Gifts
      
    • Chapter Six: Hi-Yo, Silver!
      
    • Chapter Seven: Gatecrashers
      
    • Chapter Eight: It is Written
      
  • Part Seven
    
    • Chapter One: The End
      
    • Chapter Two: Really the End
      
  • About the Author
    
  • Also by Reginald Hill
    
  • Credits
    
  • Copyright Notice
    
  • About the Publisher