Missing: Presumed Dead (15 page)

Every few words in the letter brought another gale of laughter and the girl, seemingly unaware of the commotion she was causing, read further and laughed even louder. Bliss frantically searched for some means of escape, fearing he'd become caught up in some sort of performance art, a fringe festival event perhaps, but all eyes were on the girl. Any movement on his part would have drawn attention. He was trapped between a killer and a nutter.

“Have you been here before?” she suddenly enquired, with a fixed stare that pinioned him to his seat.

“A few times,” he mumbled.

“I've been here six times.”

Something in the earnestness of her tone made him suspicious. This was a motorway service area, not the Tate Gallery or even Disneyland. “Six times?” he queried.

“I was Anne Boleyn's principal lady-in-waiting once,” she insisted haughtily, and leant over the table to whisper confidentially “You wouldn't believe what I used to do for Henry when she wasn't up to it.”

Bliss swallowed hard. “And the other times you were here …?”

She leant back. “I was a cat once.”

Without the demented laughter the crowd began shrinking away, pretending disinterest, pretending that they had never been interested. Bliss readied to leave, waiting his moment until all eyes were elsewhere, but a strong feeling of
Deja-vu
suddenly held him in check. This wasn't a bank, the eccentric woman wasn't a killer, as far as he knew, but the whole situation seemed to have taken on the same surrealistic quality as the time he'd bludgeoned Maggie Thatcher's effigy half to death, following Mandy's murder.

As he rose, a tingling sensation on the nape of his neck convinced him the killer was present and he quickly scanned the faces searching for the Volvo's driver. No-one looked even faintly familiar. Then he paused in terror as a voice behind him shouted, “Oy!” It was the lunatic – he kept walking. “You never know,” she called after him with absolute sincerity. “You might have been someone famous too.”

Five miles further on the driver of the blue Volvo had pulled into an Esso station and was on the phone, his hand shaking as he whispered into the mouthpiece. “I've lost him,” he admitted, and before he took a breath to explain, the handset exploded in his ear.

“Shit – How? Where? When?”

“I think he caught on.”

“You useless piece of dog's ...”

“I couldn't help it – he seemed jumpy.”

“Of course he was jumpy – wouldn't you be if you were being followed by an incompetent turd like you?”

“Look, don't blame me. I didn't ask to do this. You should've done it yourself.”

“All I wanted was a clean job – Oh forget it. I'll do it myself. You'd better come back.”

Bliss dawdled in the service area for over an hour, vacillating between brazening it out, on the betting the killer wouldn't strike in such a public place in broad daylight, and slinking back to the car with his head down. In the end he decided to call for assistance and, without giving his name, phoned Scotland Yard from a booth and requested D.C.I. Bergen.

“He's on a course, Sir,” said the operator.

Police College – Bliss had forgotten. Junior command course – having his brain adjusted and his elbow lubricated.

“What about Superintendent Wakelin?”

“Can I ask who's calling?”

“Michael – just say Michael. He'll know.”

A few seconds later the dead air was replaced by the hollowness of a speaker phone, but no voice.

“Superintendent Wakelin?” Bliss enquired speculatively.

The silence continued for a split second as the man at the other end struggled to place the voice “Oh Dave – Yes ... Sorry. How are you doing?”

Bliss hesitated, “It's Michael, Sir.”

“Oh shit, of course. Sorry, Dave – I mean Michael. Fuck – this is confusing, isn't it? Would you like to call back and start again?”

“No, that's alright, Sir. I'm on a pay phone.”

“Thank Christ. Well what can I do for you ... Michael?”

“Can we meet?”

“Sure. When? Where?”

“Eighteen hundred hours at location B, if that's convenient.”

A slight pause signalled uncertainty. “Location B,” he repeated vaguely.

How the hell did this man ever become a superintendent? He's got a brain like a sieve. “Location B ...” Bliss was about to explain, then lost his patience. “Haven't you got the list of locations? ... It's that pub near Camden Lock.”

Samantha was next and his daughter answered her mobile phone at the first ring. “Dad – Where are you?”

“How's your mother?” he countered, wary of giving anything away.

“Dad – I'm expecting a call.”

Did he detect a touch of aggravation? “Oh sorry – I just need a few things from your attic.”

“O.K. I'll be home at ...”

“No,” he cut in, “I don't want to come round. Will you bring them to me at the usual place?”

“Dad – surely we don't still have to do that. It's been more than six months ...”

“I can't take the risk, Sam. I have enough on my conscience already ... if anything happened to you.”

“You don't think he's still out there do you?”

“I was followed today,” he admitted.

“Shit.”

“Don't worry, I lost him.”

The phone went silent at her end. “What's the matter, Sam?” he asked eventually.

“You know what's the matter – I'm scared shitless. I don't know why you don't just stay in the safe house until they catch him – he's a maniac.”

“I'll be alright – I'm beginning to wish I'd never told you.”

“Well, perhaps that goes for me too. But whether I know or not doesn't change the fact that I could become an orphan any day now.”

“Sam, that isn't going to happen. Anyway, you're twenty-eight. You don't become an orphan at that age.”

“Don't be picky. What do you need?”

He gave her a list, set a time, and with a final fruitless search for the Volvo around the service centre, set off for London.

Tottenham Court Road was more or less on Bliss's route, once he'd reached London. He parked the Rover under a “No parking” sign, stuck a “Police – on duty” card in his windscreen and told himself that he wouldn't be more than a couple of minutes.

The shop window was exactly as he remembered it from when he'd dragged Samantha there at the age of ten. The visit had been more his treat than hers – one of the times when a son would have come in handy. An antique bow window of tiny mullions, set in a latticework of lacquered wood, bulged out over the pavement, and a life-size guardsman, as stiff as the plywood on which he was painted, stood sentinel at the door.

The entirely appropriate smell of polished leather and Brasso had not changed, neither had a tinny electronic bugle sounding reveille overhead as he opened the door under the sign, “The Little Soldier – Dealers in miniature military memorabilia.”

A tall man with a well-disciplined moustache, a full head of grey hair, (fractionally longer than regulation and afflicted with an unruly curl), modelling a sharp mohair suit, came smartly to attention behind his counter. “Can I be of assistance, Sir?”

“Just looking,” he lied, annoyed at being pounced upon before he'd had a chance to draw breath, and he took his time studying an army of vividly painted small soldiers artistically arranged on a battlefield of green baize. “Very pretty,” he said finally sensing the man standing impatiently alongside him.

The instant frown of disapproval told Bliss he'd chosen the wrong expression. “These are historically accurate reproductions of military personnel ... not Barbie dolls, Sir,” said the dealer, his officer's accent as crisp as the creases in his trousers.

Bliss mumbled something that could have been mistaken for an apology and dragged the plastic bag containing the remnants of the toy soldier out of his pocket. “I wonder if you can tell me anything about this?”

The look of abhorrence on the dealers face seemed fairly clear as he took the pieces and “tut-tutted,” leaving Bliss in no doubt that, in his Lilliputian world, the miniature statuary had never been a Rodin or even a Royal Doulton. In fact, Bliss was quite prepared for him to pucker his mouth, spit drily in disgust, and drop the pieces disdainfully into a garbage bin. But he didn't. He studied them seriously, minutely examining each piece with a jewellers loupe, “tut-tutting” again and again until Bliss could stand it no longer and made a move to examine one or two of the other armies in the room.

“How did this happen?” asked the dealer without taking his eye off the magnifying glass, as if sensing Bliss's lack of attention.

“Dropped,” suggested Bliss nonchalantly.

“Hmm,” he hummed, then “tut-tutted” and gave Bliss an inquisitive look. “I don't think so.” But he didn't press the point, returning to the model, leaving Bliss with the distinct impression that he was in his bad books.

With the inspection completed the dealer put down his glass and thoughtfully arranged the two halves of the model on a circle of baize. “Looks as though someone took a hammer to it,” he mused, then, giving nothing away, looked at Bliss critically and quizzed, “Where did you get this, Sir?”

What's this – the third degree, thought Bliss, immediately riled by the dealer's demanding tone. “A friend,” he shrugged.

“Well I can tell you it's a Britains
,
” said the dealer.

“British,” corrected Bliss with gloating satisfaction.

The dealer looked up. “Oh you really don't know anything, do you?”

“I've led a sheltered life,” retorted Bliss – mentally equating his lack of knowledge about toy soldiers to his ignorance of the inner workings of a dildo.

“Britains,” the dealer began again, then repeated the name for emphasis, “Britains were the world's finest manufacturers of historically accurate fifty-four millimetre military personnel.” Then, weighing the tiny figure in his hand, he continued condescendingly, “This was made in their Hornsey Rise factory on Lambton Road. It's hollow lead alloy. It doesn't seem a big deal today, but Britains revolutionised the whole industry when the son of the founder, William, discovered they could save a lot of metal, and money, by making hollow figures. The Americans, in comparison, were still making solid models years later.”

“Very interesting,” yawned Bliss regretting he had wasted so much time and becoming increasingly irritated by the man's attitude.

The dealer was unfazed. “This is ...” he glanced down at the figure, “Or rather ...
was
a mounted officer of the Royal Horse Artillery circa 1940.”

“Oh!” Bliss exclaimed with surprise.

Wrongly assuming the exclamation was in admiration of his expertise, the dealer beamed, but Bliss was tossing Arnie's words around in his mind, recalling that Rupert Dauntsey had been a major in the Royal Horse Artillery. Suddenly the model had life.

“Sorry,” he said, picking up the front half of the model with interest, now paying close attention. “I missed that. Could you tell me again?”

The dealer's face had, “Listen this time you moron,” written all over it as he repeated the information.

Bliss wasn't easily convinced and peppered the dealer with questions, demanding to know how he could be so certain about the identity of such a mutilated figure. It was the paint, apparently, the khaki service dress and, “Of course,” as if Bliss should know, as if everyone knew, “the steel helmet.”

“The steel helmet?” enquired Bliss.

“Britains were the only company who moulded the Royal Horse Artillery wearing steel helmets in 1940 and up to May 1941.”

“Oh, I see,” said Bliss, dropping the pieces back into the bag. “Well thanks a lot,” he added, making a move toward the door.

“Has your friend got any more?” called the dealer.

Bliss paused, “More – like this?”

“Yes – but not mangled.”

Bliss shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“I might be interested, that's all.”

Realising that he'd not seen any price tags Bliss swept his hand across a couple of regiments. “Are these worth something, I mean – are they valuable?”

“Depends what you mean by valuable, but ... possibly – depending on the condition.”

“And ones like this,” he said holding out the bag of horseman's remains.

“Maybe ... although I'd be particularly interested if there were a set.”

“A set?”

“Yeah – That's the officer you've got there. A major probably. The original set had a gun carriage with a team of horses and four outriders in addition to the major. Here, take my card – give me a call. I'm sure we could come to a satisfactory arrangement if your friend was interested in selling.”

Bliss drifted back to the counter, his interest piqued. “How would I know what to look for?”

“I could give you some clues,” the dealer said, picking up a red coated guardsman. “For instance, this is a Britains,” he said without bothering to check.

“How do you know.”

He laughed. “They made a mistake with this model and painted the plume on the wrong side of the bearskin ... look,” he pointed. “But don't worry, there are easier ways to tell.”

“Such as?”

Flipping the figure over in his hand he pointed out the inscription “Britains Ltd.” engraved on the base and laughed again – “Easy, see.”

Bliss, still not certain what he was looking for picked up a few of the models then asked. “Have you got any of the Horse Guards – it would give me a better idea?”

The dealer hesitated. “No, I don't think I do, but bring in any models you can. I'll soon identify them.”

Twenty minutes later Bliss pulled up in a quiet street of neat terraced houses and gazed nostalgically at the houses opposite. He had carefully gone through the routine of checking out the neighbourhood – no suspicious Volvo's, blue or otherwise – but he had spotted two large attentive men in a car half a street away, their wing mirrors trained on his house.