Missing: Presumed Dead (34 page)

Bliss got the message. “Right, Sergeant – you will personally drive those samples to the lab now. You will grovel and beg and, if necessary, you will kiss the scheduler's backside and lick his boots ...”

“The scheduler's a she, Sir.”

“Well it could be your lucky day then, Sergeant, but whatever you do, don't come back here without results.”

“Right, Sir.”

“And the next time the dog eats your homework – bring me the dog. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Guv.”

“I'm not surprised,” said Samantha. “He pretty much ran that office before you arrived. Your predecessor spent more time knocking back scotch than knocking off villains, and Patterson wore his shoes for years – not that he kept them very clean, if you get my meaning.”

“I think I'm beginning to.”

“So. What are you planning to do about the bloke who's trying to kill you?”

“I don't know anymore. So far everything I've tried would qualify for the
Guinness Book of Cock-ups
. It started with the letters – when the first ones arrived I thought I'd just ignore him and he'd get fed up.”

“But he didn't”

“He sent me the bomb instead,” agreed Bliss with a shake of his head, adding. “Plan B was to hide ... just a week or so in a safe house until he was caught – but he wasn't. Plan F ...”

“Hold on,” she said. “What happened to C, D and E?”

“Impractical,” he said, dismissing them without consideration. “Anyway, F was to come here or some other equally out of the way place and hope he didn't find out.”

“And he did?”

“Within days.”

“So what's your plan now?” she asked, pulling away and looking to him for an answer.

“I'm not going to run ...” he started, then stopped, realising it sounded foolish, and admitted that he no longer had a plan.

“You've got to have a plan, Dave,” she told him. “Life just sort of wanders aimlessly past if you don't have a plan.”

“I used to have a plan but I somehow got off the path and I've been trying to find my way back ever since.”

“Stop!” she cried. “I've heard enough.”

“What?”

“You have to stop trying to find your way back. There must have been a reason why you were derailed. All you can do now is to make a new plan, and start again. You'll never find your way back onto the old path, and if you do you won't be satisfied with what you find at the end of it.”

“Go back and start all over again at my time of life.”

“Exciting, isn't it?”

He looked deeply into her eyes. “I think it would be – with you.”

“Yeah ... well don't get your hopes up – I've been on my own a long time, and I'm quite happy not having to skivvy for man. Anyway, I've had more than my share of men using me as a dumping ground for their excess baggage.”

Chapter Fourteen
_____________________________

T
heir goodnight kiss had been full of promise, and Bliss floated back to Westchester at midnight with Pavarotti pumping out Puccini on the stereo and God at the wheel. The High Street was as busy as a Christmas Saturday on his arrival and, in his exhuberation, he couldn't grasp the possibility that the commotion wasn't anything other than a summer festival. Abandoning his car at one end of the street, he flowed with the throng toward the Mitre, where flashing lights and costumed players seemed to be entertaining a crowd, then an electrified voice smashed him in the solar plexus: “I bet it was a bomb.”

“What – what was that? What did you say?” he turned on the young man demandingly.

“I don't know mate, somebody said it was a bomb in the hotel – that's all I know.”

Craning over the heads of the crowd he looked ahead, recognised the flashing lights and variously hued blue costumes and went cold: police, fire and ambulance. This was the Mitre – there was no mistake this time – this wasn't an explosion in a tea shop down the road. He stopped dead and several of the scurrying rubber-neckers crashed into him, forcing him to shelter in a shop doorway. This was not part of the plan – not his plan. What had the computer screen said? he asked himself, wringing his hands in consternation. “Bang – your time is up.”

What now? he mused, but knew what he wanted to do: run back to Samantha and sink into the comfort of her arms; sink into her body.

White, the
Westchester Gazette
's reporter, caught his attention; flashing away at the crowd with a camera. He'll just love this – “London cop bombed out for the second time.” Probably sell copy to
Associated Press
or one of the nationals. It's a wonder none of the TV new-shounds are here, he thought, then scouted around and spotted a microphone wielding bimbo with big hair and teeth chasing reactions from bystanders.

Keeping his head down, and wrapping his coat protectively around him, he hustled through the crowd and sidled up to the fire chief, introducing himself in a barely controlled voice. “D.I. Bliss – we met the other morning at the tea shop blast. What's happened?”

The fireman gave a nod of recognition. “Fire in the car park at the back.”

The words “Oh Shit – a car bomb, the worst” went through his mind and married up with images of devastation from Tel Aviv and Armagh. Wait a minute, he questioned himself, fighting aside the carnage of dismembered bodies. Did he say fire? “Did you say fire or explosion?”

“Fire – just a fire, mind it was pretty fierce.”

He paused for a breath and relaxed a notch, “That's the trouble with cars – gas tank goes up like a rocket.”

“No – it wasn't a car.”

“I thought someone said it was a car ...” he queried, his mind disorientated. He'd got it caught in a Möbius loop and couldn't get out. Every explosion was a bomb, every bomb had the signature of Mandy's murderer, and every one was directed at him whichever way he twisted or turned.

“No – it's not a car,” repeated the fire chief. “It was an animal.”

“What animal?”

“A goat, we think, a stuffed one by the looks of it – horsehair probably – tinder dry, although it's badly incinerated. Someone set fire to it right in the middle of the car park – probably a joke that misfired.”

“A joke,” screamed Bliss. “A joke – That was no joke,” and he raced back to his car and headed for the police station.

Daphne was in early Tuesday morning and made a beeline for Bliss's office. “I was so sorry to hear about the old goat,” she said, drifting in and sitting down without as much as a tap.

Bliss cocked his head, intrigued, “How did you hear?”

“Mavis Longbottom, you know, the cook at the Mitre, she called me late last night. She's the treasurer of the Women's Institute and says you're not to worry about the fifty pounds.”

“That's a relief.”

“Yes – she says you can just pay half, twenty-five pounds, because you didn't have a lot of enjoyment out of the poor old creature.”

Shall I throttle her or kiss her? Bliss wondered, then dug into his wallet and extracted a ten pound note. “Tell Mavis if she wants more she'll have to sue,” he said, handing it over.

“Have you any ideas who might have done it?”

“One or two,” he mumbled, burying his head in the daily incident log, hinting he'd rather forget.

Daphne missed the cue. “My guess is somebody doesn't like you ... or maybe they don't like goats.”

“Actually, I wanted to speak to you,” he said, rising to shut the door, feeling the goat was not only passé but that it had already received far more attention than it deserved. He had been right about the daily newspapers. “It's a flamin' goat,” declared the caption under the picture on the front page of the
Sun,
although the details were sketchy – little beyond the fact that a spokesperson for Westchester fire brigade assumed it to be a prank.

A grinning uniformed inspector was passing as he reached the doorway. “Are you alright, Dave?” he called.

“Fine, thanks.”

“Oh that's good,” he sniggered. “Only I understood someone had got your goat,” and went off down the corridor in stitches.

“Very droll,” Bliss shouted after him and slammed the door.

“Have you thought of visiting Doreen Dauntsey?” he asked, softening his face and turning back to Daphne.

“Yes, I have, to tell you the truth – I feel I should.”

“I was hoping you'd say that, only a friend of mine would like to go with you. Samantha – you remember her from the other night.” Pausing, he put on a smile and offered flattery as an incentive. “By the way, she's still talking about that wonderful dinner. She thinks you're marvellous.”

The flattery failed, Daphne's face fell. “You've seen her again then, have you?”

The temptation to tell her to mind her own damn business wasn't easily overcome, but he straightened his face understandingly. “Well, she is just about my age, Daphne.”

It worked. “Yes – of course she is, how silly of me, but why does she want to visit Doreen?”

Because Samantha had come up with the plan, he would have told her had he felt either the wisdom or necessity of explaining, but as he didn't, he merely pushed on as if she had agreed. “It might be best if you didn't say she was a policewoman. Maybe you could say she was your companion.”

Daphne bristled. “Chief Inspector. Do I look like a pathetic old witch who has to pay some withered flunky to talk to me? Haven't you ever heard them? ‘Oh – this is my companion,' they say, all lah-di-dah, and you know jolly well it's only a tarted up cleaning lady putting on airs and graces. No, I shall say she's my niece, visiting from some unheard place, and if anybody starts asking awkward questions, I'll give them the illegitimate-royal routine.”

“The what?”

“You lean in really close and say, ‘She's actually Prince Phillip's bastard daughter. I was his chambermaid you know, but for God's sake don't let on.' It works wonders.”

“That's very good,” laughed Bliss. “You sound as if you've done this before.”

Daphne fidgeted uncomfortably and coloured up, and Bliss gave her a critical stare as he tried to figure out what she was thinking. “You
have
done this before, haven't you?” he said, astounded, reading her mind.

The mental vacillation between admission and denial tortured her face for several long seconds before she finally plunged in. “Well, just how do you think I got the Order of the British Empire, Chief Inspector?”

“I assumed it was because of the way you crossed the line in France and wiped out the Germans ...” he began, but she was shaking her head from the start. “You don't get an O.B.E for that. That was wartime service.” Then she clammed up, her face suggesting her mind was somewhere else.

“Well come on, Daphne, you can't leave me in suspense like this.”

“I think I've said enough,” she mumbled, getting up and gathering her cleaning paraphernalia. “When do you want me to take your lady friend to see Doreen?” she added acerbically.

“No. Wait a minute,” he said, grabbing her aerosol of furniture polish and forcing a stand-off. “I want to know.”

She capitulated, slumped back into the chair and started with Hugo, in Paris, near the end of the war.

“Hugo?” he queried vacantly, his mind tied up with dead goats and skeletal Majors.

“Hugo, the French artist,” she reminded him, taking him back to their first evening together: pork chops and treacle pudding with custard; the portrait of a beautiful young woman; the framed O.B.E.; the stuffed goat in her hallway – forget the damn goat, he said to himself as he tried to recollect the picture and the painter. What had she said about him? he asked himself. “I loved Hugo, but he loved his painting.” I wonder what she meant?

“Yes, I remember Hugo,” he said in an encouraging tone.

“I was with him for two years,” she began, pain, pleasure, longing and regret all coalescing into a mien that, if anything, came down on the side of happiness. But then she froze, focusing somewhere into the distance, and her face took a roller coaster ride through her emotions as she thought about what to tell. How she had wandered penniless, lonely and confused into a Parisian bar and fainted from hunger. How she'd woken to the stench of smoke and garlic in Hugo's studio as he sat, naked to the waist, quietly studying her face while he sketched.

“
Cigarette?
” he had said, offering one of the foul Galloises as she stirred, but she needed food and told him so.

He cut her a hunk of greasy dried sausage and broke a baguette in two, then, with hardly a word, she offered herself in exchange. What did it matter? The Frenchwoman's baby was dead; the German soldiers she had rained shells upon were all dead; millions more on both sides were dying or dead. Who would know, or care, if two strangers found a few moments relief from the abomination of everyday existence in each other's bodies.

“In a way it was Rupert Dauntsey's fault,” she went on, catching Bliss completely off balance.

“Rupert Dauntsey – the Major?” he asked incredulously.

Her eyes went down to the floor as if in search of a memory, but when she looked up they were swelling with tears and her voice was barely audible as she bit back the sobs. “I heard on the grapevine that a Major from Westchester was in a French hospital ...” She paused, snivelling loudly into a white handkerchief pulled from her sleeve. “I didn't know it was Rupert at first, but I desperately needed something to cling on to, anything to wake me from the nightmare and return me to reality ... and I thought a friendly face from home ...” Her voice failed as the tears welled up and overcame her.

“It's alright, Daphne,” said Bliss rushing to comfort her, but it wasn't alright. The horrific memories had not faded with time, nor had they become any easier to bear, and she bit her knuckles furiously as the vivid scenes forged their way to the surface: an American troop truck ... six G.I.s on 24 hours R&R, and a dozen or so others going on eternal leave.