Free Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill Page A

companion, who looked almost as shocked as Mazraani.
    “Wake up, Arch!” snapped Andre.
    The man called de St. Agnan gave a twitch, then reached into his pocket, took out a leaden cosh, and swung it against Mazraani’s neck with tremendous force. He gave a choking groan and sank to his knees.
    “There, that wasn’t difficult, was it?” said Andre. “And unless my nose has got stuffed up, you’ve not even crapped yourself yet. Now it’s showtime.”
    He went back to the sports bag and took out a video camera which he passed to Archambaud. Next came a black hood with eyeholes which he pulled over his head, then a pair of long latex gloves which he put on.
    Now he took out a length of polished wood, about two and a half feet long, like the extension butt of a snooker cue. And finally he drew forth a bin liner from which he took a gleaming steel cleaver blade, six inches deep and eighteen inches long, with a threaded tail of another eight inches which he screwed into the end of the wooden butt.
    Mazraani was trying to rise. Archambaud raised the cosh again but Andre said, “No need for that, Arch. Here, sir, let’s give you a hand.”
    He placed one of the dining chairs on its side in front of the stricken man, then pushed him forward so that his head rested over the chair back.
    “Just get your breath, sir,” said Andre. “Arch, you ready?”
    “Do we really need this . . . ?” said Archambaud uneasily.

    d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 59
    “Main point of the exercise. Just point the fucking thing and try to keep it steady.”
    He pushed the tall man’s long hair forward over his head to leave the neck clear, grasped the polished wood of the butt, and raised the glistening blade high above his head.
    “You rolling?”
    “Yes,” said Archambaud in a low voice.
    “Then here we go!”
    The blade came crashing down.
    It took three blows before the severed head fell onto the carpet.
    “All that practice with logs, thought I’d have done it in one,” said Andre. “You OK?”
    Archambaud managed a nod. He was pale and shaking but he still held the camera pointed at the body.
    “Good man,” said Andre.
    He wiped the blade on the bearded man’s robe before unscrewing it from the handle and dropping it into the bin liner which he replaced in the sports bag.
    “Now all we need are the credits then we’re out of here.”
    From the bag he took a cardboard tube about eighteen inches long out of which he pushed a paper scroll. This he unrolled, to reveal that it was covered with Arabic symbols. After checking it was the right way up, he held it before the camera for thirty seconds.
    “OK,” he said, replacing the scroll in the tube. “You can turn that thing off now. Time to go. You touch anything out there?”
    “Just the door handles, and I wiped them.”
    “Great,” he said, removing the hood and dropping it into the bag.
    “We make a good team. Morecambe and fucking Wise, that’s us. In fact, let’s see . . . ”
    He looked at his watch.
    “Four minutes thirty since we came through the door. I gave us five, and I was only expecting one of them. Now that’s what I call show business!”

    3
    WA L K I N G T H E D O G
    After his first attempt to get back to work, Pascoe spent the next two days in bed. On the third he was feeling recovered enough to insist that he was going to spend another day on his back only if Ellie joined him, which she did, purely on medical grounds, she said, which in fact turned out to be true as she cunningly contrived to leave him so exhausted that when he woke again, it was the morning of the fourth day.
    He appeared so much better that Ellie had few qualms about letting him take their daughter’s dog Tig out for a stroll after lunch.
    “You won’t be taking the car?” she said.
    “Of course not. I’m going for a walk, remember?” he retorted.
    Satisfied that this amounted to an assurance he wasn’t going anywhere near Police HQ, she waved him a good-bye