No Cherubs for Melanie (31 page)

“Meet me at Piccadilly Circus then. Midday.”

She'd come straight from court. The grungy dress of the previous day had been exchanged for a working uniform — dark grey skirt and a virginal blouse — and she breezed straight past him at the subway exit.

“Sam,” he called, startling her from a daydream. She turned, wondering how she could have missed him. Then it struck her: he looked older. No, not older, more mature, more trustworthy, in a hand-tailored suit that had never been near Marks and Spencers. They walked to the restaurant, fighting for pavement space among the hordes of hunters stalking lunchtime edibles.

“I thought you might like this place,” he said as they were guided to the table he'd reserved.

“Don't tell me,” she laughed. “This is just another excuse to take me out for a meal.”

“Oh, dear — do I need an excuse?”

She sidestepped the question and her face clouded. “What are we going to do?”

Before he could answer she marched off to hang up her coat.

“He's in big trouble, I know it,” she said, returning to her chair.

“Leave Edwards to me.”

“I didn't mean Edwards…” she started, then interrupted herself. “Back in a mo.” She was up again. The call of the loo, he realized, as she disappeared down the backstairs.

He ordered in her absence, hoping she wouldn't mind the lobster primavera. Who would mind?

No sooner had she sat than she was off again, retrieving her cellphone from her coat.

“Samantha, for God's sake sit still,” he called, “Stop popping up and down like a jack-in-the-box.”

“Sorry,” she blushed, resuming her seat. “I've been thinking… That bank place you called, maybe I should call. There must be some mistake.”

“You could try. But there's no mistake; the bloke was adamant. He'd never heard of your dad or Margaret. Plus the fact your bank said the money wasn't delivered.”

“Oh yes. I called them again this morning,” she said, forgetting in her consternation that she'd already told him. “They said that the money wasn't accepted and I can have it back.” A momentary relief spread over her face. “That's probably why he hasn't come home: he has no money.”

Bryan was less easily mollified. “That isn't why he hasn't phoned though, is it?”

Her face tensed again; her emotional pendulum was in full swing. Bryan continued, “He had every reason to phone if he hadn't received the money. Maybe he's in hiding?”

“He's not hiding from me. He never has.”

“You've known where he was all the time?”

She nodded, then saw the look of admonishment of his face. “What are you going to do Chief Inspector — slap me in handcuffs and charge me with obstruction, aiding and abetting a fugitive?”

“No. But you lied to me,” he pouted, irrationally feeling hurt. He knew it was irrational; knew that everybody, himself included, would lie if the situation demanded it. But it still stung that she hadn't trusted him.

Samantha, sensing his chagrin, slipped off a shoe and ran her foot up his shin under the table. “Never mind. I'll make up for it.”

She gave him a complete account, interspersed with mouthfuls of lobster and pasta, beginning with her father's gnawing belief in Gordonstone's guilt, and continuing through his discovery of Margaret's whereabouts and his assertion that he'd found the evidence he was looking for and was anxious to return to duty. “I know this sounds crazy,” she concluded, “I just can't help feeling that I should go and find him.”

“We could go and find him,” said Bryan. But he wasn't serious. Neither was she really, but there was a certain satisfaction in articulating the possibility.

“Are you really serious?” she asked, knowing he was not; she could recognize a smooth line when she heard one.

What the hell, he thought. “Yeah. Give me your phone. Can you get your things together in an hour?”

“Hold on, slow down,” she said, her spinning mind throwing up a roadblock. “He's not in Toronto, he's on an island somewhere.”

“We'll get a boat then. You've got the address.”

“Dad said something about a small plane.”

“We'll get a plane.”

“You mean it!”

“I do.”

Samantha and Peter Bryan were still rushing through their cappuccinos in London as the frost-glazed treetops of Little Bear Island hovered above the swirling lake mist, sparkling in the early morning sunlight. Winter's glacier was already sliding down from the arctic and the sharpness of the air signalled the approaching season. But much more had changed than the air. The island's soul had veered around. Yet to an outsider, nothing had changed. The day, as usual, had dawned without a chorus; the forest's waking silence echoed only with the roar of the breeze and the occasional crash of a falling leaf.

But, witnessed or not, there had been a fundamental shift in the island's atmosphere since the previous Thursday, when the very real pain in his leg had drawn Bliss back to earth on the beach. He had opened his eyes and stared in disbelief with the realization that the noise he had assumed to be Alice's plane was actually a powerful speedboat, its wake showing it had come from around the next headland and was headed out into the lake. Although already some distance from the shore he had no difficulty
making out the solitary figure at the helm — Margaret. It was, he thought, the final nail in this coffin of unreality. Absolutely nothing was at it appeared. He had spent three days in a fool's paradise, living in a house that wasn't a home with a victim who was the villain, and torturing himself paddling a canoe with a woman who owned a speedboat. To say he had misjudged Margaret was like saying the Texan who bought London Bridge believing it to be Tower Bridge was a dab hand at picking a bargain.

Unarmed and wounded, Bliss sat on the sun-warmed sand for a while, mulling over what had happened, and had difficulty suppressing a feeling of relief; at least he'd finally got to the root of the matter. But a chill ran through him as the night's shutters started to descend. It was nearly eight o'clock and there was still no sign of Alice's plane returning from the settlement. Thinking that she would not see him in the twilight, he was on the point of building a fire on the beach when his heart sank with the realization that she had been leaving, not arriving, when he had seen her fly over the island. She had left without him and he had wasted much of the evening, and a great deal of hope, in anticipation of being rescued.

“Now get out of that,” he said to himself, comprehending the seriousness of the situation but unable to formulate a plan of escape, as he sat mesmerized by the tiny ripples that barely ruffled the fine white sand. Ideas came and went but the only thing of which he was certain was that once he made it to safety he would return with reinforcements and take Margaret into custody. But, to start, he would need to find out where the boat had come from. There had to be a dock and probably a house, and maybe — with luck — a telephone or radio.

Sticking to the safety of the beach he set off toward the headland but had not dragged himself far when a sudden whiff of something raised the hairs on the back of his
neck. Fearing the presence of a bear or Bo, he froze and inhaled deeply. The meat and shit smell of an abattoir turned his nose and drew him inland away from the beach. With the feeling that the odour might somehow hold the key to his survival he inched forward, pulling himself from tree to tree, painfully dragging the wounded leg. The source of the smell became visible in the form of a black phantom hovering just above the ground. A creepy background murmur increased in volume as he inched forward and, as he watched the black mass constantly morphing from one eerie shape to another, he had the feeling that the tranquilizer might be taking over again. “It must be the drugs,” he told himself as he watched the spectre slowly spiral, like smoke on a still day. Suddenly, as if sensing his presence, the apparition simply melted and silence returned. He rushed forward, as fast as his leg would permit, and discovered a small deserted clearing with a leafy woodland floor. There was no bag of bones, no chunks of stinking carrion, no pile of rotting vegetation, but the overpowering smell hadn't dissolved — something dead lay close by. The vanishing black spectre, a cloud of insects and flies, knew a thing or two about rotten smells and were clearly not all deluded.

He was on the point of venturing forward into the clearing itself when memory of the bear pit struck him and he dropped slowly to the ground to scrutinize the area ahead of him. Some of the startled flies were still disappearing into small holes in the ground. There was something smelly underground! The stench was so strong it made him retch. It must be a dead bear, he decided, nothing living could smell that bad.

Leave it, he said to himself, and started to inch away.

What if it's just wounded
?

Are you crazy, he thought. You can't save yourself. What are you going to do with an enraged injured bear
full of gangrene?

Oh, God, he thought, looking at the bandage on his leg, which now leaked like a rusted burst pipe. Gangrene!

He racked his brain — what did he know about gangrene? Nothing — only that it was fatal. But so was Margaret, he'd concluded.

The Canadian Mountie at Pearson International Airport listened to Peter Bryan's explanation for their visit with growing skepticism. When Bryan finished talking, Sergeant Gdowski turned to Samantha. “You came all this way just cuz your dad didn't phone. Are you guys crazy or what?”

“We are crazy,” admitted Samantha, who wanted to tug her co-conspirator's arm and say, “Let's go home.”

“Crazy or not,” added Bryan, “we're here now, so can you tell us how to get to Bear Lake?”

“You should've called ahead,” the sergeant complained, sweeping his hand across a map on the wall behind him. “I bet there's upwards of fifty Bear Lakes in Canada. Do you know there's so many lakes in this country that no one's ever counted 'em. Many of 'em don't even have names.”

They didn't know, didn't care, and shrugged simultaneously. “Can you help us find him?” appealed Samantha.

Gdowski turned to Peter Bryan. “I'd have to get clearance, Sir.”

“It's sort of unofficial, Sergeant.”

“How come?”

“Officially he's AWOL, but we think he's in trouble.”

“He sure is if he's AWOL.”

“Come on, Peter, we'll get a cab,” said Samantha, feeling they were getting nowhere.

“Hang on. I ain't trying to be funny, Miss. It's just that I don't know where to start.”

“We've got the address my dad gave me over the phone. He even gave me the postal code.” She delved into her purse and came up with her note pad.

“OK. Now we're talking. If we've got the postal code we can pin it down right away.”

He pinned it down all right — straight to Stacy's store. “Shit, there's gotta be some mistake,” he said, massaging his forehead in disbelief. “There's gotta be lots of simple answers.”

“One will do,” said Bryan.

“Eh?”

“Sergeant, we would be very happy to have just one of your explanations.”

“Yeah,” the sergeant said. “Just give me a second.” He picked up the phone and made a few hurried calls, then turned to address Bryan and Samantha. “Boy are you folks lucky. We're sending someone out near Bear Lake first thing tomorrow to investigate a plane crash 'bout a hundred kilometres away. I can get you a ride if you want.”

They wanted. “But what about the extra sixty-odd miles?” Bryan asked.

“No big deal, the pilot can run you over there while our guy investigates the wreck.”

“Great.”

An hour later, as guests of the Mounties, they relaxed over dinner at their hotel, unable to believe their good fortune.

The
Lego Hotel
on the airport strip could have been in Sydney, Singapore, or Sheffield, but it was bright and clean.

“Do you folks want one room or two?” the sergeant had enquired as he introduced them to his friend at the front desk.

“Two —” started Bryan, but Samantha's shout of “One,” trumped him.

“I don't know what came over me,” she apologized a few minutes later. “It's not too late if you'd prefer to be alone.”

“It's fine with me.”

“I don't usually do this,” she prattled on, still nervously apologizing as the elevator took them to the seventeenth floor. “I just didn't want to be on my own. Are you sure you don't mind?”

Is this attractive, desirable woman crazy, he thought. “I really don't mind,” he said, “The room has two Queen-size beds, so it would be silly to have two rooms.”

“How come you never married?” she asked, then searched his powder blue eyes for an answer.

“I'm only thirty-six, not past it yet. How old are you, anyway?”

She gave him a saucy wink. “Frightened of accusations of cradle snatching are we?”

“No. I was actually wondering if you could introduce me to a younger sister.”

“Oy!” she exclaimed, digging him in the ribs. “I'm twenty-five, if you must know.”

“Wow, that means your dad was…”

“Seventeen,” she said, with a certain pride. “Mum and Dad were only seventeen.”

“Did they love each other?”

“I think they still do, really. Mum just wanted a change that's all. Twenty-three years having dinner in the same restaurant with the same menu might be too much for most people.”

“So she found a different restaurant?” Gangly George's, he knew, Bliss had told him. “Does she like the menu there?”

“There's more pasta than steak,” Samantha said, summing George up succinctly. “But that's the trend nowadays.”

Bryan nodded knowingly as he let her out of the elevator and headed to their room.