No Cherubs for Melanie (34 page)

Once he had patched the roof darkness descended on the pit and, although the silence in the forest outside had been eerily unsettling, the black silence in the pit bottom hung over him like an anvil on a thread. The reason for the island's deathly silence and dearth of wild creatures had become all too clear with the discovery of the burial pit. Nature's instinctive aversion to death, he concluded. He couldn't count the number of times he had arrived at the scene of a road accident to find a mangled body dumped on one verge and a huddle of sombre witnesses across the road, on the other. It was, he knew, a primeval protective response to shy away from death, lest the attacker should be skulking in the bushes, seeking another victim. Even the birds have steered their migrations around Margaret's gruesome mortuary he theorized, realizing that he had not even seen a sparrow in nearly a week.

The first two hours in the pit dragged with the eternity of an avant-garde opera and he began to think that hiding here was a mistake. Would he not be safer at
large in the forest, he wondered, but quickly dismissed the idea, shuddering at the notion that all of his effort had been for nothing. But the silent loneliness nibbled at the edges of his mind, fraying his nerves and causing him to twitch in alarm at the slightest sound. Alone, truly alone, for the first time in his life, Bliss felt desolation sapping his spirit.

With Mrs. Bryan's admissions neatly woven into a tapestry of lies and deceit, Superintendent Edwards unofficially sought the ear of the divisional commander over lunch in the officers' mess.

“Got a spot of bother with Peter Bryan, Kenneth,” he began with airy nonchalance, manoeuvring himself alongside his senior officer at the self-service counter.

“I've managed to swing those three new motors you wanted,” replied the commander, as if he had not heard.

Edwards gushed. “Thank you, Kenneth, I appreciate that.” Then he carefully shaded his tone. “About Peter Bryan…”

“And I want your blokes to look after these…” the divisional commander continued, and Edwards tuned him out as he reeled off a longstanding litany of injuries which had been inflicted on police vehicles. “…cigarette burns, coffee stains, and a used johnny under the seat,” he was moaning as Edwards switched him back on. “And the bloody mileage. What are they doing — laps around the M25? It all comes off our budget you know.”

“I'll look into it Kenneth,” Edwards promised without sincerity, then added like a school tattletale, “But I wanted to have a quiet word about DCI Bryan. I suspect he's gone walkabout with Bliss's daughter.”

“What are you saying, that your DCI has gone AWOL now as well as Bliss?”

“Not exactly AWOL, no.”

“But he's done a runner with Bliss's girl?”

He nodded. “Seems likely, yes.”

“That's careless of you, Mr. Edwards, you should keep better control of your staff,” the commander said, placing Edwards firmly in front of the fan. “Let's just hope for your sake they turn up soon … before I find out officially.”

“Kenneth, I —” started Edwards, but the commander refused to get involved.

“Sorry old chap. Must dash,” he said, dumping his empty tray, all thoughts of lunch evaporating.

Edwards had lost his appetite as well and opted for a KitKat and coffee.

Thirst eventually forced Bliss out of the pit and dragged him back to the lake. Although his suitcase contained rust-spotted cans of food taken from the cottage kitchen, he needed water more than anything and was still lucid enough to know that his fever would progress and he would need more and more. If his revulsion hadn't driven him so quickly away from the killing cave he might have thought to take some lake water with him. Now, with a copper saucepan swinging from his belt, he hauled himself up his makeshift ladder and hobbled back to the beach in the moonlight.

A furtive movement among the trees was lost in the gloom, the sound swallowed by the swishing as he played the saucepan in the lake before bringing it to his lips and drinking noisily, revelling in the freshness of the cool clean taste. Oh for a toothbrush, he thought, regretting that he had omitted to collect his from the cottage's bathroom. Then he stopped, ears pricked, hackles raised. Had he heard something? The silence
was palpable. He knew instinctively that there had been sound, but could not reproduce it in his mind. He drank again, the deafening gurgle of water down his throat blotting out another sound. He stopped and an envelope of fear enclosed him as he warily refilled the saucepan and set off back to his hiding spot.

As he left the beach for the forest, a cacophony of disturbing noises crowded in on him, yet, every time he paused, so did the sounds. He froze, trying to stop the blood roaring through his temples and the breath whistling through his nostrils. He listened — nothing. But the moment he set off again, he was instantly surrounded by sound. Every movement brought with it a polyphony of terrifying noises. Each swish of his clothing became the snorting breath of a bull moose, every sigh of the breeze in the uppermost branches a vampire bat, and every snap of a twig underfoot the crack of a gunshot. Danger lurked everywhere in the thin light. A shadowy figure hid behind every tree, every twisted stick became a rattlesnake, every spiky bush took the form of a porcupine, and every creaking branch bore the weight of a cougar.

The nearest he had come to such feelings of perilous isolation was early in his career, walking the deserted London streets at three or four in the morning with only his radio for comfort, knowing that around the next corner or up the next alley he might stumble across an armed lunatic. But now he had no radio — he was truly alone.

The eyes of the faceless forest were everywhere, bowing him under their weight and slowing his progress to a crawl, as he moved haltingly, constantly searching for the slightest movement or sound. But the fever was already jangling his nerves. Shadows followed him, keeping abreast, then, in the milliseconds between movements he heard an animalistic snuffling, as a
giant's snout scented the air. Bo, he thought, sensing the glare of the dog's watchful eyes. He spun round.

“Don't bugger about Margaret!” he shouted, almost willing her to shoot him; anything to relieve the tension. “You can always say you put me out of my misery,” he jibed, not knowing what reaction to expect.

With a heart-stopping
crack
, a twig snapped in front of him. He whipped backwards and the dark shade of forest turned into a black wall. It wasn't Bo. A giant bear had stepped into his path and stood like a rock. Run, he thought ludicrously. “Never run,” Margaret had warned. “You can't outrun a bear. Running just triggers a chase response. You have to stand up to them and be ready to fight.”

The huge bear reared up and barked hoarsely, like a Rottweiler with laryngitis. Bliss might have sneered at the pathetic roar had he not been so terrified. His precious pot of water was the first casualty as it thudded to the soft woodland floor.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, too scared to let the sound out. He backed up half a pace, pulling the butcher's knife from his belt, knowing it would be useless against the huge creature. What about a tree, he thought, sizing up the nearest, considering whether he could climb with his damaged leg, but Margaret's words came back: “Bears climb trees for fun.”

Everything went into slow motion. His mind, overloaded with snippets of absurd and ineffectual escape plans, rooted him to the spot. The bear, calculating the wisdom of taking on a meal the size of Bliss, hesitated and dropped back to all fours.

“Attack!” Bliss's mind told him. “Rush him — catch him unawares. Stab him in the eye or kick him in the goolies.” His mind may have been willing, but his heart wasn't in it. The bear was as big as a tank and
looked twice the size in the darkness. Then, almost without thinking, he got behind a low springy branch and retreated, pulling back on it with all his might.

The bear made up his mind to attack and, huffing with a hacking warning cough, pawed the ground like a playful dog. Bliss had no intention of being the toy for a three-hundred-pound sheepdog and, as the bear advanced, let go of the branch, thwacking it straight into the creature's face. Feinting from tree to tree, leaping out of the way as the half blinded animal swiped madly at the air, he worked his way, one tree at a time, toward his haven. The enraged bear blundered after him chopping a swath through the undergrowth, ferociously pawing at everything that moved, grasping at swinging branches, huffing and barking in anger, clawing at the pain in his face as if to remove the cause.

In a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, Bliss scrabbled for sticks and rocks and tossed them clattering off into the bush, keeping the animal disoriented as he slipped from tree to tree. Closer and closer he got to the relative safety of the pit with the bear floundering from one decoy to the next, but he had no plan, and no time to think of one. Survival from moment to moment occupied every fibre in his body. Getting into the pit, replacing the cover, and preventing the bear from following were issues so enigmatic that his mind refused to even consider them.

The bear was gaining ground. Using his nose instead of his ears, the wily male homed in stealthily and the unexpected silence disoriented Bliss, who lost his bearings in the darkness. Although the pit could not be far off, his sanctuary had suddenly become a trap again. With every movement he expected the ground to cave under him and drop him onto the sharp spine of stakes. The bear's continual snuffles echoed directionless through the silence,
leaving Bliss twisting and turning in alarm. An envelope of fear squeezed so tightly around him he didn't even dare to breathe for fear of giving himself away.

Then, with a satisfied snort, and for no apparent reason, the bear ambled off into the darkness and the deathly silence of the forest returned. Bliss sank to the ground trembling. “I'm too old for this,” he breathed, and couldn't understand why he wasn't having a heart attack.

A few seconds later he jumped back into the pit, barely breaking his fall with the makeshift rope. He patched the roof above him as best he could then crouched, terrified, expecting the giant creature to crash through the roof and drop on him at every moment.

Nursing his hugely swollen leg, Detective Inspector Bliss of the Metropolitan Police sat in the dark, damp pit waiting for Armageddon and wondering what had happened to his life. “At my age I thought I would have had everything sorted,” he mused, speculating on the speed his life had free-fallen since Sarah had let go. And, although Margaret hadn't exactly picked him up, she had certainly given him cause to rebound. Some rebound, he thought, surveying his gloomy circumstances. I suppose they would call this a dead-cat bounce, he thought, wondering who “they” might be. He also wondered how his old cat was faring without him

Every minute was a day. Every moment he expected the stealthily moving Margaret to rip off his roof and peer down at him. And where was the bear, he wondered, imagining it to be skulking impatiently above like one of its white coated cousins waiting for a seal to pop out of an ice hole.

And what would Margaret do if she found me, he worried. Just pray she won't, he told himself. Stacy or Jock will soon arrive with the cavalry, he thought hopefully, but his trust in salvation lasted only a minute before he started worrying again. Would she shoot? Could she shoot? It would be cold-blooded murder.

“She's murdered before,” he said aloud, unaware the sound had escaped, then reflected on the incident that triggered the chain of events binding him to Margaret. How had she killed Melanie? Did she drag her sister screaming and kicking to the water's edge and hold her under? Or did Melanie run from her and accidentally fall?

“Stop it,” he said, knowing he was trying to excuse her again. She killed her mother. He couldn't get away from that. She was quite forthright about that. That was no accident. Even Edwards had not claimed it was an accident. And euthanasia was no defence — not in law anyway. So, she was perfectly capable of murder, he decided, staring up at the lattice roof, imagining her standing above it with a rifle. It would be like picking off an elephant in a circus ring from the front row, he realized; a kid could do it with a spud gun. Maybe this isn't such a good place to hide, he thought, maybe I would be better off in the forest. At least there I could run. He slumped back. With this leg?

But his tormented mind, flying back and forth between pessimism and optimism picked him up and flung him down a hundred or more times as he lay in the dark awaiting the executioner, while trying to imagine a fitting eulogy for himself. “He wasn't a raging success but he was generally good at avoiding calamitous disasters.”

“Until now,” he said, wondering why he was still alive. She could have killed him easily had she chosen, especially when he was unconscious. So why didn't she? Maybe she is not a cold-hearted killer after all.

“There you go again,” said his alter ego, “dismissing the obvious because you don't want to accept the reality. This woman is a pariah who killed her sister, mother, and God knows how many innocent creatures to get her own way, and you think she cares whether or not you live.”

But the fundamental question uppermost in his mind remained unanswerable. Would she deliberately murder him or would he simply die before help arrived? Maybe that's her plan, he concluded. She'd just let him die of exposure and septicaemia. But, how would she explain that to the authorities? The troops will come eventually, he thought; Samantha will contact someone, surely. But, even then Margaret wouldn't need to explain his disappearance, he decided, not in any defensive way. “Nosy old codger,” she could say. “Came poking around my island, trespassing. He must have wandered off and got lost. He's probably been eaten by a bear or fallen into the lake and drowned.”

And if they search, and they probably will, using dogs and infrared heat detectors, what will they find? Visualization of the maggot-infested bear carcasses in the burial chamber was enough to give him the answer. Margaret had dug out the dart from his thigh while he was tranquillized, and not very gently by the look of it, leaving a wound that even now could be mis-diagnosed as having been caused by him falling on a jagged rock or stake. A week or so of putrefaction and infestation would make it certain to be overlooked.