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 author’s 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 – 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 didn’t quite fit and an agitated expression that did.
He said, ‘I want to talk about killing my wife.’
Joe Sixsmith removed his feet from his desk. It wasn’t 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.
‘Pardon?’ said Sixsmith.
‘And her sister, Maria. She’s there too.’
‘There? Where’s there?’
‘At the tea-table,’ said the man impatiently.
‘Dead?’ said Sixsmith, who liked things spelled out.
‘Of course. Aren’t you listening? They’re all dead.’