Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill

eggshells to make sure we don’t feel sidelined.”
    “You reckon? Well, I think pretty soon you’re going to hear a great deal of crunching underfoot. Something’s happened, and us being on the need-to-know list is even less likely than Hector getting things right. And if you’d care to bet on that, I’ll just run home and get the deeds of the house!”
    A man who had left a garden hammock to get blown up on an English Bank Holiday should have learned to distrust certainties.
    Fortunately Wield didn’t take the bet. Fifteen minutes later Pascoe got a summons to the CAT Ops Room. When he arrived he was met by men coming out carrying computer equipment. Inside he found Glenister talking animatedly into the scrambler phone. As he approached she finished speaking and handed the receiver to one of her men, who unplugged the phone and put it into a box.
    “You’re moving out?” said Pascoe.
    “Yes, we’re on our way. Wouldn’t have been long anyway, we were just about done here, but something’s happened. What do you know about Said Mazraani?”
    “Just what I’ve seen and read. Lebanese academic, teaches at Manchester, good looking, talks well, dresses smart, claims high-level contacts throughout the Middle East. In other words, all the right qualifications for getting on the talking-head shows whenever 76 r e g i n a l d h i l l
    they want an apparently rational Muslim extremist viewpoint. What the papers called the acceptable face of terrorism until he blotted his copybook with Paxman.”
    This had been the previous month, after the kidnapping and videoed execution of an English businessman called Stanley Coker. Mazraani had been trotted out to give an insight into the motives and mind-set of the kidnappers, a group calling themselves the Sword of the Prophet.
    He prefaced his remarks with a fulsome expression of sympathy for the dead man’s family, which he repeated when asked if he unreserv-edly condemned the killing. “Very nice of you,” said Paxman. “But do you condemn the killing?” Again the verbiage, again the question. And again, and again. And never a direct answer came.
    Next day the papers went to town, led as always by the People’s Voice.
    The People’s Voice , the youngest and fastest-growing of the tabloids, was in fact not so much the voice of the people as the rant of the slightly pissed know-it-all in the saloon bar who isn’t fooled by government statements, legal verdicts, historical analyses, or forensic evidence, but knows what he knows, and knows he’s right!
    The Voice headline screamed:
    BEHEADING HOSTAGES IS OK!
    (SO LONG AS IT’S DONE IN THE BEST OF POSSIBLE TASTE)
    “That’s the one,” said Glenister. “Well, barring miracles, he’s done his last talking-head show. For the past two days there’s been a rumor that Al Jazeera received a tape showing an execution, a beheading. But not a western hostage this time. A Muslim.”
    “So? In Iraq they’ve shown little compunction about killing their own.” Then it came to him what she was saying. “You don’t mean . . . ”
    “This morning the BBC, ITV, and Sky all received copies of what is presumably the same tape. Yes, it’s definitely Mazraani. He hadn’t been seen in any of his usual haunts for several days. We sent a team to visit his flat in Manchester. They were told to be discreet but there was already enough of a smell to bother the neighbors. He was in there, him and his head, quite close but not touching. Plus another man not known to us.”

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    “Jesus!” exclaimed Pascoe. “Was he beheaded too?”
    “No. Shot. They want me back over there now. Mazraani was on my worksheet.”
    “This sounds like big trouble,” said Pascoe.
    “More than you can imagine,” she said grimly.
    “Well, thanks for bringing me up to date . . . ” he began.
    “That’s not why I sent for you,” she interrupted. “It will be in the papers anyway. Al Jazeera have said