Missing: Presumed Dead (10 page)

Chapter Four
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“P
sst ... Psst,” Detective Sergeant Patterson hissed at D.C. Dowding, catching his attention as he sauntered in the back door of the police station early Tuesday morning. “Loo,” he mouthed, steering him into the lower-rank's toilets.

“What's up, Serg?”

“Do me a favour,” Patterson started with a degree of sanguinity, opening his fly, aiming at the urinal and handing a note over his shoulder. “Find out who this motor's registered to.”

Dowding took the proffered scrap and glanced at the typewritten number. “Sure, Serg – no problem. Whose is it?”

Patterson shot him a puzzled look. “I worry about you at times, Dowding. I wouldn't be asking you to find out if I knew would I?”

“No, Serg. Sorry.”

“Thanks,” said Patterson walking away shaking his head.

“Hang on, Serg. You haven't told me which case this is.”

“No, I haven't, have I?” he replied, still walking, opening the door. “Use yer loaf, lad – make one up.”

Dowding stared at the registration number on the scrap of paper thinking it seemed familiar. “You've gotta give me some idea, Serg.”

“Know thine enemy, Dowding,” said Patterson darkly, “know thine enemy,” letting the door slam on its spring behind him.

Patterson was back at his desk in the C.I.D. office when D.I. Bliss walked in. “G'morning, Guv,” he called cheerfully, “What d'ye think of The Mitre?'

“Good morning, Pat – It's alright. Any news on the body?”

Patterson screwed up his nose and gave his head a quick shake. “What's the grub like? I hear they do a good dinner.”

Bliss was mentally moving ahead and shrugged off the enquiry. “It's O.K. – I want a full briefing this morning at ten: all C.I.D personnel; dog-handlers; search commanders and scenes of crime boys.”

“Done,” said Patterson scribbling haphazardly on a note-pad.

“I'll be in my office. Let me know when you've arranged it.”

“It's already arranged,” grinned Patterson exposing protruding gums along with a mouthful of tobacco tinged teeth, more like a snarl than a smile, and leaving Bliss mentally betting that he wouldn't be able to cram them all back into his mouth.

“Oh.”

The sergeant patted himself on the back. “I guessed you'd want a strategy session so I put out an order first thing.” He left the implication “Before you got out of your pit” unspoken.

“Thanks.”

“So how is Daphne?” fished Patterson.

“Daphne?” questioned Bliss, as if her name needed clarification.

Patterson obliged. “Yeah. Daphne. The cleaning lady.” Then he sat back, eyebrows raised questioningly, and left Bliss to wriggle.

What's he driving at? wondered Bliss. Why not simply confess to having dinner with her? But something in Patterson's tone held him back, a certain superciliousness – the tone of a blackmailer – hinting: “I know something about you that you wouldn't want broadcast.”

Bliss let the silence build – though not intentionally, and was still deciding whether or not to reveal his visit to Daphne's for dinner when Patterson let him off the hook. “Dowding says she bummed a ride to the churchyard yesterday.”

“Oh yes – I'd forgotten.”

“How old d'ye think she is, Guv?”

Bliss, feeling the stab of yet another barb, gave him a hard stare – He's not suggesting there's something going on between us is he? “I suppose she's my mother's age – sixties, sixty-five maybe,” he replied, feigning total disinterest in Daphne as he casually rooted through the morning's sheaf of crime reports.

“Ugh – I bet she's nearer seventy-five, Guv,” he said somewhat scornfully.

“How come she's still working?”

“Don't ask me.”

“I am,” said Bliss, putting down the reports and giving Patterson critical attention.

Clasping his hands behind his head, the sergeant thrust out his legs and stretched back in his chair. “They've tried to get rid of her several times. Last year they gave her a retirement party – dinner, bouquet, carriage clock – the works. Next day she comes in regular as All-Bran, plonks the clock on the Chief's desk and says, “I won't be needing this for a while, Sir.” He paused for a chuckle, all gums and teeth, then carried on. “They even stopped paying her at one time. She didn't care – didn't even know for a few months. They had to tell her in the end. “Never mind,” she says,

“Give it to the widow's and orphan's fund.”

“She seems harmless enough,” said Bliss feeling a defence, was called for. “What do you think?”

Patterson, needing time to consider, leant forward to pick up his coffee. “She a nosey old bat really. Not that I mind personally speaking – bit of entertainment. Though some of the youngsters don't like it 'cos she knows so much of what goes on around here. I remember one case ...” he slurped some coffee as he tried to assemble the facts, gave up, and generalised. ‘This'll be a tricky one,' I said once, and Daph overheard. ‘Nonsense,' she said, ‘Old so-and-so did it.' ‘How the hell do you work that out?' I said. ‘Because his father did exactly the same back in 1937,' she said. And d'ye know,” he laughed, “She was absolutely right.”

Bliss slid into the chair opposite Patterson and gave him something to think about. “Did I hear she's got some sort of title?”

“Title?” he queried, “Like ‘Lady' – Oh yeah,” he scoffed, “I can just see it – Lady Daphne Lovelace – society dame and shithouse cleaner.”

“No. I was thinking more along the lines of a C.B.E., or O.B.E.?”

A mouthful of coffee splattered across the desk as Patterson exploded in laughter, “The O.B.E. Our Daphne – you are joking, Guv?”

“Shush – she obviously doesn't broadcast it, but no, I'm quite serious.”

“Did she tell you that?” he queried, but didn't wait for a response. “I reckon she's having you on. I wouldn't put it past her. She's got a bit of an imagination – I mean, that story about crop circles and UFO's ...”

“Possibly,” said Bliss thoughtfully.

“Possibly my foot. I'd bet my pension on it.”

“You're probably right. It was just something I overheard. I probably got it wrong.”

“I would say so – Daphne – O.B.E.,” he guffawed.

Bliss laughed along with him.

“The Major's body?” enquired Donaldson, with more than a trace of hope, as Bliss stuck his head into the chief superintendent's office a few minutes later. Bliss strolled in, sat heavily and gave his head a negative shake.

The senior officer took on a crestfallen look. “Shit, I knew I should have called in the Major Incident Unit ... Oh,” his face brightened, “I guess that's a pun ... Major Incident – searching for a major.”

“Very funny,” said Bliss noticing that the packet of chocolate digestives had taken a serious mauling since the previous day. “May I?” he asked rhetorically, reaching out for one of the last two.

Donaldson swiped the packet off his desk faster than a shoplifter snatching a Rolex. “Rationed,” he mumbled, screwing the top and shoving it into a drawer. “One pack a day instead of fags,” he explained. “Can't afford to give 'em away.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

“So what do you make of all this, Dave?”

“On the face of it, it seems too simple. But what if we don't find the body? What if he's disposed of it so cleverly we never find it? Furthermore, what if he knows we can't find it?”

“Where – how?”

Bliss relaxed in the chair with a shrug. “I haven't a clue. If I knew I'd just go out and find it. Do you have any ideas, Sir?”

Donaldson sat back and ruminated on a novelist's palette of barely plausible explanations, “... dissolved it in acid; burnt it to a cinder; fed it to the pigs ...”

“No, Sir,” interrupted Bliss, standing up and pacing with frustration. “He didn't have enough time for any of that. In any case, the larger bones would have survived, especially the femurs.”

A degree of agitation sharpened Donaldson's tone and the Newton's balls took another hammering. “Well, Inspector, perhaps you have some better suggestions.”

“I suppose he might have had time to wall it up in the house or jam it under the floorboards,” mused Bliss, not waiting for the steel balls to stop chattering back and forth.

“He might have had time, but the dogs would have sniffed it out.”

“What about if he dropped it down an abandoned well and capped it with a load of concrete?”

Donaldson caught the swinging ball as if the suggestion were serious enough to be considered in silence. “That's possible,” he started slowly, then shook his head. “Dauntsey would have been plastered in cement.”

One look at the senior officer's face was enough to remind Bliss there was no cement. “I don't know then,” he concluded and sat back down.

Donaldson took on a phlegmatic tone. “If it doesn't turn up we'll just go for a trial without a body – it's been done before. It may be unusual but certainly not unique.”

Bliss wasn't so sure. “What if he gets in the box and recants his confession. Where does that leave us?”

“The jury will still hear the confession.”

“I know – but he says, ‘I was confused – we had a bit of a barney. Dad went for me with the knife. He got cut somehow – nothing serious, and ...'”

Donaldson wasn't listening, he was still working on devious methods of concealing a body. “I wonder if Dauntsey's playing some sort of intellectual game with us. He's hardly been a raving success in his life. Maybe he's just trying to prove how smart he really is.”

“And he's prepared to murder his own father in the process ... I somehow doubt it.”

“He's weird enough.”

“Possibly, but that still leaves us seriously short of physical evidence.”

“What about the duvet? Witnesses saw him bundling something wrapped in it into his truck – and the duvet was obviously missing from his father's room at the Black Horse.”

“It was only the duvet,” he says to the jurors. “I got blood on it and was taking it to get it cleaned.”

“But he buried it in a grave.”

Bliss gave it some thought then replied in a Dauntsey-like nasal whine, “Once I'd removed the duvet from the Black Horse with the intention of getting it cleaned I realised that I'd be too embarrassed to return it, so I chose instead to dispose of it. I'd be more than happy to pay ...”

“This is nonsense, Dave,” said Donaldson, rising to give strength to his words.

“I know – I'm just thinking out loud. Just saying: What if the jury aren't convinced – not beyond the threshold of doubt? What if they find him ‘Not guilty'? Once acquitted, he can't be re-tried. I've just got a feeling the smug little bastard's laughing at us.”

“You're suggesting a good lawyer would get him off.”

“I'm suggesting any lawyer would get him off. I'm suggesting that even a pox-doctor's malpractice lawyer would get him off. If you ask me we're missing something really important.”

Donaldson deflated himself slowly back into his seat as if exhausted by the effort of attempting to compute an explanation for Jonathon Dauntsey's behaviour. “We are missing something – One body: Major for the use of.”

“What do you make of this?” asked Bliss reaching into his briefcase and picking out a small plastic evidence bag containing the mangled mounted soldier. “This was in the grave with the duvet,” he explained. “The vicar seemed to think it may have been buried with a child but ...”

Donaldson took the figurine with interest. “You told me about it on the phone. A soldier on horseback – what happened to it?”

“Dowding put his spade through it, but it was already flattened.”

Donaldson shrugged and dropped it on the desk, “No idea – ask Dauntsey, see what sort of reaction you get.”

Bliss retrieved the small figure. “I understand you searched Dauntsey's house, I hear it's stuffed with antiques.”

“Hardly. The whole place has been stripped, apart from a couple of rooms. It almost looks as though they were moving out. They probably had to sell stuff off to pay death duties after the Colonel died. Anyway, like I said, Jonathon's never made much of himself. The three of them were living on the Major's army pension from what I can gather.”

“What does Jonathon do for a living?”

“Not much – he tried writing books but didn't make a lot of money.”

“How many authors do?”

The conversation hit a lull as both men sought something positive to say and Bliss wandered around the room idly setting a few of the executive toys in gentle motion. “The matron seemed to think that the Major and his wife were separated,” he said, spinning a gyroscope.

“That's possible. It could explain why he'd taken a room at the pub.”

“Not really – she's in the nursing home.”

“Maybe it was a symbolic act – distancing himself from the family home.”

“I have another source who suggests the Major may not have lived here for years.”

“You are well informed, Inspector, but if he wasn't living here where the hell was he?”

“Scotland.”

Donaldson digested the information slowly but then dismissed it as irrelevant. “It doesn't matter a great deal where he was living, all we want to know is where he is now. That reminds me – the marine unit are chomping at the bit to search the rivers and ponds.”

Bliss cocked his head as if he'd missed something. “Is there some suggestion he dumped the body in water.”

“No ... but you know what these special operations blokes are like – any excuse to put on their rubber suits and piss about on company time.”