Missing: Presumed Dead (14 page)

O.K., I've had enough, he said to himself, pulled into the slow lane without indication, slammed on the brakes and steered for the hard shoulder.

“Let's see what you do now,” he said, telepathically addressing the pursuer.

The Volvo shot past in a blur, tangled up in a knot of cars vans and trucks, but the glimpse of the driver's profile was sufficient to tell him that the man was certainly of the right age and colour.

Skidding to a stop in a cloud of loose gravel, Bliss found himself next to an emergency phone and was already out of the car and picking it up before he stopped himself. What's the point – what's the emergency? I think I'm being followed! He dropped the phone with the realisation that he would have the motorway control officer in stitches.

“Some clown at Junction 129 reckons he's being followed,” he imagined him laughing to his colleagues with his hand over the mouthpiece. “Can you give me a description?” the officer would ask with a barely concealed smirk.

“A blue Volvo.”

“And the registration number ...?”

“I don't know ... S registration. I think.”

“You think?”

“I couldn't see properly.”

The hand would slide back over the mouthpiece, “He says he couldn't see.”

“What about the driver, Sir? Could you see him?” he imagined the next question might be.

“Male, white,” he would say and cringe while the control officer repeated the description sarcastically before saying, “I guess there's not more than a quarter of a million Volvo drivers in the country fitting that description, Sir. It shouldn't be too difficult working out which one was following you.”

“You don't understand,” he would say in frustration, “this man's a killer.”

“O.K., Sir. In that case you'd better give me a full description.”

That's a good point – what does he look like? he asked himself, deciding against using the phone and getting back into the car. What did he look like 18 years ago? he tried to recall, then realised that the exercise was pointless. The killer would have gone from being little more than a teenager to almost middle-age in the intervening years. And what had eighteen years in prison done to him? He'd be forty-one now, thought Bliss, feeling foolish as he drove off, quickly picking up speed.

The Volvo, bonnet up, looking like a breakdown victim, was parked on the next overpass with the driver carefully scrutinising the vehicles passing below. Bliss's Rover came into view and in a flash the blue bonnet was dropped and the small car was hurtling down the approach ramp and back on the motorway. Bliss saw. Already spooked, his senses were on high alert and he caught a glimpse of the blue car weaving in and out of traffic as the driver struggled to catch up to him.

“One more test,” he mused and patiently waited until the car had settled into place behind a Volkswagen van. Then he indicated his intention of moving into the fast lane.

“Yes,” he said triumphantly as the Volvo nosed out from behind the Volkswagen and began to overtake.

“Now let's see what you'll do,” he said, cancelling the indicator and braking slowly. The Volvo slid smoothly back in behind the Volkswagen just as he suspected it would.

“Gotcha,” he said, but took little satisfaction in proving his point. Now what? he asked as warning sirens blared in his mind: Speed up; slow down; turn off; get the number ... Yes! Get the number and write it down. At least leave a record in the wreckage and hope that, whatever happens, the Rover doesn't explode in a fireball when the bullets rip into it.

“Dauntsey played up to the old witch,” Donaldson fumed as he left the court an hour later with D.S. Patterson in one car, while Jonathon Dauntsey was carted away by his solicitor in another. “Bail!” he screamed. “Bail for a fucking murderer. Did you see the look she gave him?”

Patterson, and half the people in the public gallery, had witnessed the metamorphosis as the hatchet-faced old magistrate had preened back a few wispy strands of her silvery hair, put on a sympathetic smile, and locked eyes with Dauntsey in the prisoner's dock. “The police are asking that you be remanded to their custody for another three days, Mr. Dauntsey. Is there anything you would like to say at this time?”

Dauntsey cleared his throat affectedly, dropped his head deferentially and spoke in a soft clear tone, “I'm certain that you will make the right decision, Ma'am – I am in your hands.”

In your bed as well, thought Donaldson, if the gooey-eyed look on his face meant anything.

“Are you not applying for bail, Mr. Dauntsey?” she continued with an encouraging mien and a clear implication that he should.

Superintendent Donaldson leaned into the crown prosecutor and whispered. “What the hell is she playing at?”

The rotund little prosecutor barrelled to his feet and coughed loudly. “I feel I should remind your worship that this is a murder case, Ma'am.”

Her face hardened back to steel as she swung on him. “And you don't have a body, do you?”

“No, Ma'am.”

The hearing had gone downhill from then on. A court solicitor had been appointed, bail applied for and, despite vociferous objections by the crown prosecutor whose bald head had turned apoplectic purple, it had been granted.

Detective Sergeant Patterson and his superintendent had hit the town centre at afternoon rush hour en-route back to the police station and Donaldson had pulled some papers from his briefcase to occupy himself, but Patterson was incensed by what had occurred and had whinged angrily about the magistrate from the moment they left the court. “It really pissed me off when she asked if he had any complaints about the way we'd treated him,” he moaned angrily. “What did she think – that we'd used thumbscrews?”

“Probably,” mumbled the superintendent without consideration.

“Did you hear her sweet-talking him?” continued Patterson, then he mimicked the old woman's crackly voice. “‘Now then, Mr. Dauntsey. Are you going to tell the police what happened to your father's body?' And what did he say in that smarmy voice of his? ‘I feel it would be best if he is allowed to remain at peace.' Huh! It's enough to make you chuck-up.”

Donaldson was trying to concentrate on his work and his tone had a tinge of annoyance. “Just don't chuck up in the car, Sergeant.”

Patterson wasn't listening, his mind was still back in the court. “It got me the way she says, ‘In view of the fact that he won't tell me, I see no reason why he should tell you.' I do – If I had my way I'd put me boot in his bollocks – that'd make him squeal.”

“I wouldn't doubt it, Sergeant, but it's purely academic. We still haven't found the body and he's been granted bail. Now ... if you don't mind ...”

But Patterson was boiling and couldn't resist grumbling. “I thought she was gonna give him twenty quid out of the poor box.”

Donaldson's look of annoyance eventually shut him up but half a minute later a defective traffic light gave the sergeant time, and an excuse, to start talking again. “Bloody light's broke,” he moaned, then abruptly changed the subject. “Mr. Bliss is gonna be pretty upset when he gets back.”

Donaldson ignored him. The silence sat heavily for a few seconds, then Patterson tried prodding, “He's gone to London – It must have been something important.”

“'S'pect so.”

“He seems like a good man – our new D.I.”

“Uh – huh,” nodded Donaldson his head still buried in paperwork.

“I expect he'll find it quiet here after the Met.”

“Probably.”

“I mean ... It's not always this busy. We don't get a murder everyday.”

“Thank God.”

“So, was he actually at Scotland Yard? – our D.I. Bliss.”

“Guess so.”

“I jus' wondered, 'cos I was talking to someone at the Yard yesterday and they didn't know him.”

“It's a big place.”

“Yeah – but you'd think they'd ... ”

Donaldson looked up and protested. “Sergeant ... Are you trying to drive this car or drive me round the bend?”

“Drive the car, Sir.”

“Well shut up and drive then.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

Bliss was still driving; still trying to get a look at the Volvo's number plate and the face of the driver; still trying to remember the face beneath the mask.

It was the bank's under-manager who had eventually steeled himself to unmask the robber, although it wasn't concern for the lifeless man's well-being that had overcome his reticence. The manager was at lunch and he had been left in charge. Having one dead body in the foyer was going to be difficult enough to explain, he didn't want two, if he could avoid it.

Bliss, engrossed in his attempts to revive Mandy Richards, hardly noticed as Margaret Thatcher's face was peeled away revealing an unconscious thug with blood oozing from his mouth, nose and scalp.

“Oh my God!” breathed the under-manager assuming the worst, but, freed of the mask, the robber soon began to stir.

“Tie him up,” shouted Bliss, but the youthful executive shook his head.

“He isn't going anywhere – only the hospital.”

In the aftermath of the botched robbery Bliss had found himself caught up in a controversy and knew his colleagues were weighing up the odds between him receiving a commissioner's commendation for bravery, a charge of attempting to murder the bank robber or the station “Tosspot” award for stupidity.

“You'll get something for this,” everyone agreed, and in his own mind he wouldn't have felt maligned if he'd been convicted of attempted murder, or, at a minimum, an offence of causing Mandy's death by reckless over-enthusiasm.

The commissioner's commendation won the day, but he had quickly squirrelled the vellum certificate into a rarely visited drawer.

With his mind agitated by the disturbing memories, Bliss had been letting the car drive itself and was horrified to find his speed had crept to more than a hundred miles an hour. Easing his foot off the accelerator he realised that subconsciously he had been trying to outpace the Volvo. And, once he'd slowed, he did his best to remember the bandit's face and found himself replaying the trial in his mind. What had he claimed in his defence? “I never meant to hurt no-one. It were the copper's fault. If he hadn't shouted about having a gun I would never have shot.”

His assertion hadn't saved him. “You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree,” the judge had said sagely, adding, “Life imprisonment is the only punishment which I am permitted by law to impose.” And, despite the seriousness of his words, he obviously took great satisfaction saying it.

Following the verdict Bliss had turned to the public gallery in time to see a light of triumph flash across Mrs. Richards' face, then she crumpled under an emotional millstone and burst into tears, overcome by relief that she had finally laid her daughter to rest. But the drama wasn't over. The prisoner's dock erupted in violence as a couple of burly guards moved in on the convict.

“It's that fuckin' copper what should go down. Him and is big mouth,” he yelled as the jailers tried to take him from the dock. “He's the one who should go down, not me. I'm innocent,” he screamed as he flailed his fists at the men. “I wouldn't shoot no woman. What sort of scum do you think I am?”

The three bodies sank briefly beneath the dock's parapet as the guards smothered the enraged prisoner, before dragging him to his feet, with his arms painfully up his back, as the judge added fourteen days loss of privileges to his sentence.

“Take him away,” ordered the judge and the prisoner shot Bliss a venomous look that penetrated his skull with a viciousness that hurt.

“I'll get you for this ... pig,” he screamed, then he screamed again as one of his elbows dislocated.

“Forget it,” everyone said afterwards, but the impact of the killer's words had eaten away at Bliss for weeks. Forget what? That he'd been accused of murder or forget that he had caused Mandy's death. He was innocent, everybody said so. But innocent of what? Innocent of crime. But what about impulsive behaviour and misjudgement – was he innocent of that.

“It was just bad luck,” they said and he had to agree.

It was bad luck – bad luck for Mandy that he had been in the bank that day. If he hadn't been there the killer would have walked away with a bagful of loot and the only losers would have been the insurance company.

Getting off the motorway without being seen by the driver of the Volvo seemed, to Bliss, to be his safest option and, as he spotted a coach slowing to take the exit into a service area, he took a chance. Pulling sharply in front of the coach, ignoring the driver's angry fist, he slipped into the deceleration lane. Then, shielded by the monstrous vehicle, he drove into the coach park and hid amongst the herring-boned ranks of leviathans. Had the Volvo followed? He couldn't tell – the coaches blocked his view.

Keeping his head down, Bliss infiltrated the snake of passengers spilling out of one of the vehicles and had taken a dozen paces before realising he had joined a party of shrivelled pensioners. He was sticking out like a sunflower in a cabbage patch. Telling himself that it was unlikely the killer would risk accidentally hitting a little old lady mid-afternoon in a busy car park, he stayed with the group and made it safely to the self-service restaurant.

Security cameras scanned the room and, picking out a table in full view of one of them, he slunk into a seat opposite a lumpy girl with a Neanderthal brow. With his head bowed he searched the crowded room, seeking a single man doing the same. He came up blank. Everybody seemed to be in pairs or groups – but hadn't he joined a group and, looking across at the girl in the opposing seat, wasn't he now part of a pair.

The girl caught him looking. Her hooded eyes under heavy brows viewed him critically for a few seconds then, as if he were her audience, she sniffed loudly and openly swiped a dribble of snot off the end of her nose onto her sleeve. Having fixed his attention, she delved into a ragged canvas handbag and, with a victorious grunt, flourished a blue airmail envelope and began unfolding a dog-eared letter. Her rubbery mouth formed each word as she read silently from the flimsy paper for a few seconds, then she paused, looked up, and laughed uproariously. Bliss shrank himself lower in the seat as her laughter drew looks from across the room, thinking, just my luck – a loony tune.