Robbie's Wife
Authors: Russell Hill
Raves For the Work of
RUSSELL HILL!
“Russell Hill is such a sharp observer of the human scene, such an astute commentator on life in its joys and miseries, that you will find yourself turning the pages quickly to find out what new perception he will pass on to us next.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“The images... are sharp and real and the characterizations finely tuned.”
—Library Journal
“Vividly rendered... Russell Hill is a fine writer.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A sublime piece of writing, atmospheric and touching... A brilliant sense of literary balance... Fantastic.”
—Mike Hodges, director of
Get Carter
and
Pulp
“An inventive vision.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Rollicking, tender, hard to forget... Should be required reading for anyone aspiring to write.”
—Cosmopolitan
“A gem of a book... Hill has a knack for description and an eye for detail.”
—Chicago Daily Herald
“Vividly drawn... insightful characterization and effective evocation of atmosphere give the novel substantial power.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A masterpiece. Once again Russell Hill has hit the mark.”
—Garry Sayer
“Leaving this spellbinding novel, readers will not be able to reduce its effect to easy themes. Russell Hill is tougher than that. But readers will know that they have been changed.”
—The Denver Post
The pub was crowded, thick with cigarette smoke, music from a jukebox, the room filled with shouting voices.
Maggie rose and reached out toward me. “Dance, Jack Stone?” She took my hand and pulled me to my feet.
“Where?”
She turned her head toward the far end of the room and towed me through the crowd. I looked back at Robbie and he raised his pint toward me, grinning.
Maggie slipped into my arms and we danced to a Frank Sinatra song, Frankie crooning strangers in the night, and it was as if Maggie weren’t there, she moved so gracefully. She flowed with me, her body touching mine, and I could hear her singing along, her voice buried in my shoulder. The record stopped and she continued to dance, and I felt self-conscious, as if the whole village must be watching us, but nobody was paying any attention and the next record came on and we worked our way back to where Robbie was sitting.
“She’s not half bad, is she?” Robbie said.
“She dances beautifully.”
“You play a tango and you watch her and it’s like watching fucking with clothes on. Oh my, my Maggie can dance, right, love?” He leaned across me toward her.
“What’s right?”
“That you can dance.”
“You want to dance, Robbie?”
“Not now, love. Maybe when we get back to the farm we’ll do a bit of dancing.” He nudged me in the ribs.
“Don’t be too sure of yourself, you cheeky bugger,” she said. “Come on, Jack Stone. Dance with me again.” The jukebox was playing another Sinatra song.
“Go ahead, Jack,” Robbie said, “warm her up for me.”
I think, at that moment, I could have killed the bastard...
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WIFE
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Russell Hill
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-029)
First Hard Case Crime edition: March 2007
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 2007 by Russell Hill; lines from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael B. Yeats.
Cover painting copyright © 2007 by R.B. Farrell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-353-3
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-765-4
Cover design by Cooley Design Lab
Design direction by Max Phillips
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
W. B. Yeats
1.
She asked me if I would have fallen in love with her even if she hadn’t spoken so openly in the hallway of the farmhouse that morning. I didn’t know how to explain it. Up until that moment I don’t think I ever thought about the expression “falling in love.” But when I examine it, it’s never getting in love or becoming in love, like getting drunk or becoming pregnant — it’s falling in love, as if in the darkness I came to the edge of a precipice and fell into something quite unexpectedly. I didn’t step off or jump off, I fell. Sometimes I think it’s like those falling dreams I’ve had where I keep falling and it never ends, I never land, have no idea when the impact will be but it never comes. It’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same moment. Falling in love with Robbie’s wife was like that — dangerous and erotic and I didn’t know how to stop the fall. In the end I didn’t want to.
Heathrow hadn’t changed. It was still the slightly dumpy maze of endless corridors and I wondered if there were any places a plane could park that wouldn’t be at least a mile from the terminal exit. I felt washed out, the way I always feel after a trans-Atlantic flight. Just ahead of me an Indian couple with four children, obviously coming home to England, were trying to keep the children from running ahead, struggling with so much carry-on luggage that I wondered how they had been able to board the plane.