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REGINALD HILL
THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES
A Joe Sixsmith novel
Copyright
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Reginald Hill 2008
“Roar of the butterflies” extract copyright © P G Wodehouse Reproduced by permission of the Estate of P G Wodehouse c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN
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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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: 9780007252732
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007292936
Version: 2016-01-28
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1 ’Fonlies
2 Enter a YFG
3 A Willie Day
4 Blackball
5 Tiger
6 Pastures New
7 A Fortunate Lie
8 Trust
9 A Royal Summons
10 Favours
11 Knobbly Scones and Lipton’s Tea
12 The Hole
13 Legal Advice
14 What’s Become of Waring?
15 Twitch
16 Wondrous Regiment
17 A Message from Frank
18 A Patch of Oil
19 And in my nightmares!
20 Lightning Strikes Twice
21 Frozen Broccoli
22 The Right Price
23 Pillow Talk
24 A Saving Bell
25 Last Breakfast
26 Pain
27 End of Play
By Reginald Hill
About the Publisher
Dedication
For
WRECKING CREWS
the world over.
(You know who you are!)
’Fonlies
Joe Sixsmith was adrift in space.
Light years beneath him gleamed the tiny orb he was supposed to make contact with, but he knew it was an impossible dream.
His muscles had melted, his lungs were starved of oxygen, and the only part of his mind not paralysed by terror was the bit that dealt with ’fonlies.
’fonly I’d done this…’fonly I’d done that…
‘No use messing with ’fonlies,’ Aunt Mirabelle used to say. ‘’fonlies don’t get your homework done, Joseph. You miss your football Saturday morning, you’ve got no one to blame ’cept yourself.’
How right she was! No one to blame ’cept himself…except maybe Willie Woodbine for being such a social climber…and Beryl Boddington maybe for standing him up…and definitely Merv Golightly for having a mouth like the Channel Tunnel…but first and last and as usual, himself, Joseph Gaylord (even Mirabelle kept quiet about that) Sixsmith for always going boldly half-assed where nobody had ever come back from before!
Enter a YFG
Way it started was this.
Monday afternoon, day before yesterday, though it seemed a lot longer ago, he’d been sitting in his office, minding his own business, which didn’t take much minding this time of year. Summer had parked its anticyclone firmly over Luton and fused the days and nights of July together with a heat too enervating to start a race riot in, let alone perpetrate any of the crimes that might send the distressed citizenry in search of a PI. Ice creams melted before they could reach your mouth, birds huddled beneath cats for shade, and flies buzzed with relief into spiders’ webs whose owners felt the tremor along the line and thought that maybe next Friday they’d stroll down there to take a look.
The plus side was that Joe too felt as energetic as a poached egg and couldn’t whip up much concern at the lack of client incentive to head off down the mean streets.
So clad in an off-white singlet and Bermuda shorts patterned with scarlet parrots sinking their beaks into rainbow-striped pumpkins, Joe sat at his desk and relaxed with his favourite book, Not So Private Eye, the reminiscences of Endo Venera, the famous Mafia soldier turned gumshoe. This was Joe’s bible. Everything you needed to know about being a PI was here, except maybe how to stay awake.
His head nodded, and he slipped into a dream in which he and Beryl Boddington were sliding naked down an iceberg, and he wasn’t at all pleased to have his descent interrupted by a voice saying, ‘Mr Sixsmith? Would you be Mr Sixsmith?’
He opened his eyes and found he was being addressed by a Young Fair God.
He was thirty at most, tall, boyishly handsome, with hair that shone pale gold against the darker gold of skin glowing with a proper