The Price of Butcher's Meat by Reginald Hill

he knows his stuff, and though I’m still a long way off Olympic qualifying, I’m feeling a lot lisher than when I came.
    I checked there were no one looking, then stood up and went down the steps from the terrace with a lot of care. Didn’t fancy breaking me other leg!
    Once on the lawn, I just meant to have a bit of a wander, but I’m still best in a straight line and as I’d got up a fair head of speed, I just kept going with the house at my back till I found myself plowing through some shrubbery.
    Here I stopped and checked back. The house were out of sight. That would get the buggers worrying, I thought. Bit childish, mebbe. But if they’re going to treat me like a kid, I might as well enjoy myself like one!
    So on I went till finally I came up against the boundary hedge. Thick and thorny. Good for keeping intruders out. And prisoners in!
    I wandered along it for a while. I were beginning to feel knackered now and I was just thinking of setting off back when I spotted this gap.
    Not a gap really. Just the point where two sections of hedge met but without getting all intertwined.
    I heard a car go by on the road. The road that led into Sandytown.
    The road to freedom.
    I felt a sudden urge to take a look at it.
    And why not? I thought. I’m not a prisoner! And my dressing gown’s one of the thick old tweedy kind, none of them flimsy cotton kimonos or whatever they call them.
    So I took a bit of a run, or mebbe a slow trot’s nearer the mark, and got my shoulder into the breach.
    Before my spot of bother I’d have walked through here, no trouble. But it turned out to be narrower than it looked and for a moment I thought mebbe I was going to get stuck and end up shouting for help.
    Didn’t fancy that, so I gave one last heave and burst through onto the roadside verge.
    Except it weren’t the kind of verge I expected, nice and flat and grassy. Instead it were a steep bank that fell away to the tarmac about twenty feet below.
    No way of stopping. All I could do was try to remember all I’d learnt about falling, and curl up tight and try to roll. It were sod’s law that there should be a car coming down the hill exactly at that moment. I had time to think, Whatever hitting the tarmac don’t break, the collision will take care of!
    Then I was under the front wheels and waiting for the pain.
    When it didn’t come, or at least not so much as you get shaving with a lady’s razor, I slowly got up.
    No sudden agony, no broken bones. I’d lost a slipper and my stick, but I were alive and didn’t feel much worse than I’d felt thirty seconds earlier.
    If we look closely we can see God’s purpose in everything, my old mate Father Joe Kerrigan once told me.
    I looked closely.
    Here was a road leading down to Sandytown, which had to have a pub, and I was leaning up against a car.
    Joe were right. Suddenly I saw God’s purpose!
    They were nice folk in the car. Real friendly. I sat in the back with this lass. Could have been thirteen, could have been thirty, hard to tell these days. Turned out I knew her dad. Played rugger against him way back when I were turning out for MY Police. He were a farmer and used to play like he were plowing a clarty field. Couldn’t see much point to having players behind the scrum. Reckoned all they were good for was wearing tutus and running up and down the touchline, screaming don’t touch me, you brute! We had a lot in common, me and Stompy.
    They dropped me at this pub. The Hope and Anchor. I didn’t have any money with me. Likely I could have talked the landlord into giving me tick, but this guy Tom in the car volunteered to sub me twenty quid,so no need to turn on the charm. I went into the pub. The main bar were full of trippers eating sarnies and chicken tikka and such. On the other side of the entrance passage were a snug, half a dozen tables, only one of ’em occupied by a couple of old boys supping