No Cherubs for Melanie (13 page)

“Sir, sir,” a fuzzy-haired policewoman was addressing him; she may have been there for a second or a minute.

He shook himself out of his thoughts. “What's happened?”

She gave him a critical look. “Nothing, sir. Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he replied, feeling anything but.

“Tea,” she offered and scuttled off to get him a cup without waiting for a response.

He delved back into his thoughts. Why are we doing this? Why not just knock on Bliss's door? No one had even considered it. Everyone assumed he wouldn't come out. Why? he asked himself. Why had everyone assumed that? Edwards, he realized. Edwards had spooked them into believing Bliss was dangerous. Edwards the puppeteer; Edwards with his hand up your backside, making you dance and sing to his tune. Then, if something goes wrong, he'll whip out his hand and be first in line to point a shit-covered finger. Bliss wouldn't shoot — Bryan knew him too well. Then he had an awful thought. What if Edwards
wants
Bliss to shoot? What if he wants him shot?

Tea in hand, he kept his thoughts to himself and sidled up to the hostage negotiator, a civilian hunched over a phone in one corner; a man trained to talk, wanting to talk, ready to persuade, to cajole, to say anything to avoid bloodshed. “Pick it up. Pick it up,” the man was murmuring, his headphones buzzing to the tune of Bliss's unanswered phone. Talking, negotiating, was difficult enough; not being able to negotiate was even more nerve-wracking. A dribble of sweat ran down his forehead and he brushed it aside. “Answer the bloody phone,” he pleaded.

Bryan caught the man's attention with a gentle touch. He looked up and his eyes said there was nothing to report. No communication, no demands, no threats to harm hostages. But this case was different:
there were no hostages, unless Bliss himself was considered a hostage — a hostage in his own home, a hostage in his own mind, a hostage to his own misfortunes. Misfortunes largely self-inflicted.

Ten minutes later, just as the nine o'clock news on the television in Bliss's apartment was winding down with a brief mention of the siege, there had been no change. Then one of the communication officers thought the unthinkable, aloud: “Maybe he's already done himself in.”

“He's definitely not answering,” added the negotiator from his corner, conveying the premise that only dead people leave their phones unanswered.

DCI Bryan choked on the tea dregs, cleared his throat with a loud cough, and unwittingly attracted everyone's attention.

“He wouldn't do anything silly…” he started, realizing he was expected to make a statement, but then he paused in reflection. Bliss had lost his wife and, possibly, his job. He was probably facing a criminal charge; disciplinary charges surely. He had certainly attacked Edwards. Had he? Edwards said so. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Anyway, bopping Edwards was hardly a good reason for doing yourself in; there were many who would think he should be congratulated. Bryan stuck his head out of the van door, peered thoughtfully up at the faintly glowing window of Bliss's living room and mused. “Living in a shit-hole, wife gone, car nicked, job on the line… Maybe he has flipped.”

With a panicky voice he radioed one of the marksmen on the roof.

“I haven't actually seen him,” came the reply. “Just the lights. Perhaps he's slumped in front of the telly…”

The word “slumped” finally jolted Bryan into action. “I'm going in,” he announced, turning back into the incident vehicle

“We'll cover you,” said one of the sergeants.

“That won't be necessary.”

A couple of minutes later, heavily protected in a bulky bulletproof vest, and feeling somewhat traitorous for it, he sidled along the third floor landing toward the familiar door. Tapping lightly with a shaky hand he found himself edging to one side. There was no reply. The shotgun blast he half expected didn't come either.

Counting off ten seconds he tapped again, adding softly, “Dave, please answer.”

Nothing. He wasn't surprised; he guessed that Bliss would be anticipating an ambush. Then, thinking he heard a movement inside, he gingerly laid his ear against the door and tapped again. Silence… Wait! Was there a noise from in the room or was it his heart pounding? He took a deep breath and listened hard. The sound he heard was coming from inside the room: a moaning, no, a murmuring, a faint mumbling. “Dave,” he called anxiously, thumping hard with the flat of his hand. “Dave, are you all right?”

A minute later, breathless, he was back inside the incident post. “He's there all right. We'll have to go in, and quickly.”

Then Edwards arrived, his newly plastered arm picked out nicely by the bright florescent lighting in the vehicle. “I discharged myself,” he proclaimed proudly, as if it were some kind of achievement. “What's happening, Chief Inspector?”

Bryan brought him up to speed.

“Well, you must do what you think is best,” Edwards said, craftily lobbing a grenade into Bryan's court.

A blast with the force of a thousand firecrackers rocked the air less than a minute later and a freelance photographer who had sidestepped the police cordon smelt a champagne dinner, while the other journalists bulged forward against the orange tape with IRA on their lips. The pigeon's coo turned into a shriek of alarm as a pulse of dirty grey smoke ballooned out of Bliss's window and signalled the start of controlled mayhem.

Floodlights pierced the shattered window. Security systems in neighbouring apartments paused for a second in electronic thought, then screeched in alarm. The sledgehammer team, poised in readiness on the landing, swung a heavy iron head into Bliss's door. The locks held but the frame gave way. The crash-helmeted assault team swept over the door and through the gap, guns first, crouching, ducking, weaving, leapfrogging from one doorway to the next through the apartment.

It was over in less than four seconds. Shock tactics practiced in heavily furnished multiroomed buildings proved superfluous in the cramped starkness of Bliss's apartment.

Bliss's television, his sole sleeping partner for the past ten months, had taken the brunt of the blast. The old set — which had rocked with bomb blasts over Hanoi, Excocet strikes off the Falklands, and Scud attacks on Tel Aviv — had fallen victim to friendly fire. A youngish constable looked down at the smoking remains. “Christ, it still had valves!” he exclaimed, his voice full of nostalgia.

Bliss's tiny apartment was suddenly crammed with personnel jammed embarrassingly together, as if waiting for some unacceptably intimate act to occur. Then someone moved the old leather armchair and discovered Balderdash. The terrified cat, ticking off yet another life from its roster of nine, hissed like a burst bicycle tire,
puffed himself up into a cartoon character, and prepared to pounce. One policeman's hand, offered in comfort, took a vicious swipe. Its owner shrieked in pain and another policeman's boot crashed into the old cat's skull — Ten!

Superintendent Edwards stepped out of the lift and viewed the carnage from the landing. “Well where is he then?”

The concerned look on DCI Bryan's face alerted the senior officer to the bad news.

“We definitely saw the lights go on,” protested the woman detective who had been watching from a car in the street below.

DCI Bryan spun on her. “Did you actually
see
Inspector Bliss come home?”

“Not exactly,” she admitted.

“Not exactly!” Edwards flung his head back in disbelief and cried out in genuine pain as the sling yanked at his broken wrist. “Well if he's not here where the bloody hell is he?”

Bliss was riding on a tube train, sorting through the contents of his suitcase, wondering how many fugitives in history had used the Victoria line for their getaway. Samantha said she had done her best to find clean clothes; the stale smell emanating from the suitcase suggested failure. A blue uniform appeared in his peripheral vision, and his heart skipped a beat.

“Tickets, please.”

He scrabbled through his pockets. The ticket inspector eyed him suspiciously. Wraparound sunglasses more suited to a rap singer with dreadlocks only served to accentuate his stature as a slightly balding, beer-gutted, grandfather-to-be. He ditched them under the seat as soon as the inspector turned away.

Every glimpse of a uniform spun his head. He tried not to react, telling himself not to be so foolish, reminding himself of the number of offenders he had personally caught only because they had reacted to his presence
by attempting to run or hide. Had they played it cool, he might never have shown any interest.

Half a world away, and twenty-eight hours later, he was still nervously avoiding uniforms as he wandered around the terminal at Toronto's Pearson International Airport in a daze, half wondering how he got there and what he should do next. He checked his watch for the umpteenth time, comparing the result with the giant hands of the terminal's skeletal clock, which was as much an engineering exposition as a functional timepiece.

The clock's giant minute hand showed 10:01 P.M. and he drifted away, wandering idly around the terminal, trying to clog his mind with a plethora of irrelevant deliberations that would shut out Edwards and Sarah. It would be another hour or more before the sun would make its way up the Thames and over London's horizon so that he could call Samantha and make sure she was all right.

He had worried about her ever since their meeting in the bustling refreshment room at King's Cross station where she had passed him the suitcase, together with a small bundle of cash, with all the furtiveness of a cocaine dealer. She was concerned that she may have been followed. A suspicious-looking couple was sitting in a car outside his flat, she had told him, but he assured her that such events were common in the area in which he lived.

“Anyway,” he said, “It's me they're after.”

Clearly anxious, she kept her voice to a low whisper. “They might have been waiting for
you
, but they could have caught
me
.”

“Since when has it been illegal to take a few things from your dad's flat?”

“I seem to remember an obscure offence of knowingly aiding a wanted criminal to escape justice.”

“Samantha, be serious. I'm hardly Ronnie Biggs or Lord Lucan.”

“I
am
being serious, Dad. You must have arrested people for a whole lot less than breaking someone's wrist in your time.”

He was indignant. “It was an accident Samantha.”

She was adamant. “That's what they all say. Anyway it won't stop them arresting you.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours,” she replied with little conviction. “Anyway, where are you going?”

“I'm not telling anyone.”

Her tone suggested she was genuinely hurt by his lack of trust. “Why? Do you think they are going torture it out of me?”

He ignored the sarcasm. “I'll call you when I get there.”

“You could lose your pension over this.”

“Never mind. I've got a successful daughter to support me.”

“Forget it,” she said harshly, then she softened. “Dad?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do be careful.”

“Who's being paranoid now? Anyway it's quite exciting being on the run. Funny, after all these years seeing it from the other side, at least I know what mistakes not to make.”

“I have to go,” she said with finality as they hugged for the fourth time, then she was swept away into the rush-hour crowd. He wiped the trace of tear from his eye as he approached the booking office window, then had to duck behind a cast-iron pillar to do so again before he could face the clerk.

It was nearly midnight at the airport and Bliss still felt close to tears as he stood by a bank of payphones watching the cleaning staff sweep and mop with a flamboyant furiousness that hinted it was time for all passengers to be somewhere else. Feeling out of place he picked up a phone and had an imaginary conversation while keeping his ears tuned to the cleaners as they vociferously decried the filthy habits of the travelling public.

“Look at this,” bitched one, pointing to a glob of chewing gum stuck in the carpet and giving Bliss such a glower he almost felt responsible.

“I know,” replied the other, in a voice weighed down by a lifetime's experience of misplaced chewing gum. “I know.”

Every piece of dirt, every scuff mark and every full litter bin invited a further derogatory comment from one or other of the men, causing Bliss to speculate on the obvious. Without dirt, who would need cleaners? He had on many occasions applied the same principle to the police force. Without criminals, who would need the police? It was an argument he had, in the past, used to mollify fellow officers lamenting the loss of a case. “It's like fishing,” he would say. “You have to let some get away otherwise you'll have nothing to catch the next time.”

He put the phone down, picked it up again, and dialled Samantha's number. She answered almost immediately, her grumpy voice complaining it was still dark, then enquiring, “What's the time?”

“What's happening there?” he retorted, deliberately ducking her question.

“Peter is pretty pissed off with you.”

“Peter now is it?”

She ignored him. “He promised Edwards you'd give yourself up yesterday morning. Edwards is
threatening to charge him with neglect of duty if you don't show up soon.”

“That's hardly likely.”

“Are you sure you're doing the right thing?” she enquired, a mixture of concern and censure in her voice.

“Who knows, but it beats sitting around in that poky flat waiting for the world to end. I'm quite enjoying myself really… Oh my God!”

“What!”

“The cat. Balderdash; I forgot all about him.”

“Don't worry, I'm taking care of him.”