No Cherubs for Melanie (36 page)

“Slow down,” he thought to himself. There was no way he could get aboard, he'd never be able to climb up there.

The dinghy bumped the other float and Margaret scrabbled aboard. Bliss slunk behind the opposing float and pressed himself hard against the cold metal as his mind almost exploded in frustration.

Margaret was heaving the cargo into the plane.

“What's your plan,” he asked himself. He needed a plan.

Another heavy thud marked the arrival of another box.

Think, for Christ's sake, think.

Several more thuds, then the dinghy was pulling away.

“You've got to get aboard,” he said to himself., “Hurry. Get aboard and make a plan. She'll be back with the other two and it'll be too late.”

Heaving himself up the float he immediately realized his mistake.

Margaret was looking straight at him as she rowed back to the shore.

“Shit!” he spat through clenched teeth. His knife dropped to the water.

Did she see me? he worried.

Logic told him that it didn't matter; he had to retrieve the knife.

His tortured mind was soporific. Dappled sunlight on the shiny blade was a flashing beacon as the knife sank, but he was mesmerized into inactivity.

“It's gone — the knife's gone,” he said, like an imbecile, too stupefied by his ordeal to realize that he could reach out and grab it.

Time warped; the dinghy was back with all three people and he was still staring at the knife. He could see it clearly in the clean water but his lungs wouldn't let him dive again. He made a couple of false starts, but it was too late. The inflatable was being pulled onto the other float and deflated for stowage. Suddenly the knife became the most important thing in his life; he would have died to get it, and, as he dived, the plane's door shut and the engine burst into life.

The spluttering engine drowned his coughs as he surfaced and fought for air, but he had the knife. Too late. The plane was already inching ahead and he felt the rush of air as the propeller spun into life, kicking up spray. He felt the pull as the float started creeping forward. Margaret, the villains, the evidence, and his only hope of escape were getting away.

In a moment of lunacy he considered hanging on and escaping aboard the float. But the thought of landing at nearly one hundred miles an hour put him off, although he couldn't help feeling that Sylvester Stallone would have done it.

Frustrated and disheartened by his inability to prevent her escape, Bliss stabbed angrily at the float as it picked up speed. He held on, grasping a safety line, losing his temper, viciously slashing at the thin-skinned float, ripping into the sheet metal, digging the knife in like a can opener then twisting, gouging, and cleaving.

The plane picked up speed as the throttles opened and the engine roared overhead. The float, bouncing and
bucking, washed him with spray and bashed him against the waves, but he held on and lunged maliciously at the bulbous torpedo, imagining it to be Margaret. Faster and faster the plane tore over the water and he kept stabbing and jabbing, until the knife was suddenly wrenched out of his hand as it struck deep and held. Letting go of the float he was swallowed in the wash and he sank back into the water, and his spirits sank at the loss of the knife. Now he had nothing to fight off the bear.

They were running late, explained Phillips over his shoulder as they neared Bear Lake. “We more or less fly right over the place, so we'll drop you off and pick you up on our way back,” he added. “That'll give you four hours or so to find your father.”

Bryan glanced at his watch. “That's fine. We'll check out the bank and find a nice restaurant for lunch.”

“We could do a bit of sightseeing,” chimed in Samantha, convinced that locating her father was already accomplished merely by their arrival. “And shopping,” she added, realizing that in her haste to pack she had forgotten that, no longer pregnant, she was due on at any moment.

The pilot had been to Bear Lake before and couldn't hold in a short guffaw.

“What's up?” said his partner.

“You'll see,” he laughed, dropping down onto the lake.

A few minutes later Jock released the rope as the plane glided away from the short wooden pier.

“Where would we find the bank?” asked Samantha as soon as the noise of the departing plane permitted.

Peter Bryan had already sussed out the situation. “This way, Samantha,” he called, his size tens already pointing to Stacy's.

“Mr. Stacy, I presume?” he announced without hesitation as he swung open the door and clonked across the bare wooden boards.

“Stacy,” said the lone occupant cagily. “It's just Stacy.”

“Like Lovejoy,” suggested Bryan and got an unexpected nod of familiarity.

“Yeah. The antiques guy. We get him on the satellite.”

“Oh,” replied Bryan with surprise. “So, Stacy, I called you yesterday morning about a friend of mine — David Bliss, the policeman.”

The look on Stacy's face, bottled, would have outsold any proprietary laxative. “Um…aah…agh,” he floundered, then coughed repeatedly to clear a tenacious frog.

“So where is Mr. Bliss, Stacy,” the DCI continued, in a ‘“don't muck me about'” interview room manner.

Stacy gathered together his Humpty-Dumpty figure as best he could and tried again. “I… I've… I've never heard of him.”

“This is definitely where I sent the money,” called Samantha, scouting behind Stacy and finding the Western Union sign on the wall.

“I sent it back,” Stacy protested, fearing he was being accused of theft.

“We know that,” said Bryan. “But what I want to know is why Mr. Bliss gave this address if he wasn't here?”

“I…I…” Stacy was still bumbling. “I don't know, but you can check my records.”

With his hands steadying his prolapsed torso, Stacy wobbled across the room to the mail counter and retrieved a war surplus ledger with a ripped calico cover. Flopping it open onto the counter he needlessly checked his own entries. “No record,” he shook his head gravely.

“Give me that,” demanded Samantha, coming up from behind and roughly snatching the book out of his hands. She futilely ran her finger down the last few lines before giving Bryan a blank stare that pleaded, “What the hell do we do now?”

Old Jock had shuffled into the store at a discreetly nosy distance and perched himself in the window overlooking the lake. Samantha swung on the old man. “Have you seen him?”

“Och, I dunna ken, lassie. What's he look like?”

“Tall — tallish, anyway,” she began, then wavered. What does he look like? “Hair…?” Her mind was out of focus; she froze indecisively.

“Light brown,” chipped in Bryan.

“Yeah,” she continued, annoyed with herself for not remembering, then she realized with horror that she really didn't remember what he looked like at all. Of course you know what he looks like, she told herself, it's just difficult to describe him as though he were an object, as though he were a missing person. Yet, simply attempting to describe him to a stranger seemed to be an admission of loss and she suddenly found herself fighting back tears. Bryan finished the description while she struggled to grasp the prospect that her father was actually missing and that the return of the money wasn't some silly error.

The old Scotsman said they must be mistaken, then Samantha was lifted by a moments optimism. “There must be another bank…” she started, but Stacy quickly squashed the idea.

“Nope.”

Perplexed beyond annoyance, Samantha searched for some way to relieve her frustration and found the telephone. “I'd better phone Dad's place,” she began. “Maybe he's home now.” Then she added with a vitriolic glower at Stacy, “If he's not here.”

Bliss was not at home either; at least he wasn't answering his telephone. Samantha hung on, listening to the persistent brr, willing with all her mind that he should pick it up, wondering if the handset she was holding was the same one he had held nearly a week earlier. Finally she put it down in dismay.

The arrival of a strange aircraft had caught the eye of many in the small settlement and an advance party of housewives, suddenly finding themselves short of sugar or salt, slipped into the store and promptly forgot what they had come for as they stood around discussing well-worn topics. A crumple-spined old man, skillfully flipping his dentures in and out in time with his breathing, shuffled up to Samantha. “Hi. Where a'ya from?”

“England… I'm looking for my father, have you seen him?”

“Oh yeah.”

“You have?” she shrieked. “When? Where?”

“Don't take no notice —” started Stacy, but she shocked him into silence.

“Shut up, you.“

“When did you see him?” she demanded of the shrunken pensioner.

“All the time,” he mumbled. “Will ya git me a drink, eh?”

Stacy tried again. “Bob'll tell you anything you want for a drink.”

“Give him one then,” stepped in Bryan, feeling it was time to be less confrontational in the hope of garnering
support from the locals. Then he addressed the assembly. “We're looking for an English policeman who was supposed to be here last week. Did any of you see him?”

Seemingly taking their cue from Stacy, the small band shook their heads and remembered the bread they had left in the oven or the lure they had left unattended in the lake. One rough man with a gut capable of concealing twins, even triplets, and looking as though his major contribution to society was doing one armed press-ups and vomiting down his shirt, spat, “Cops,” as he headed out the door; he needed to add nothing to let them know where he stood on the subject.

Peter Bryan spun back on Stacy. “What about Margaret Gordonstone?”

“Never 'eard of her. Now did you want to buy something?”

Bryan looked at Samantha but she shook her head, unable to bring herself to ask for Tampax in such a hostile environment.

“That's four bucks for Bob's scotch then.”

“Wait,” said Samantha, still unable to come to terms with the situation. “This must be the place.”

Stacy took the proffered bill from Bryan and spoke to Samantha as he handed him the change. “Sorry, dear — you're just confused, that's all.”

“C'mon” said Bryan, but she stomped her foot with the petulance of a thwarted child in a sweet shop.

“No, I won't leave. I want some answers.”

“We've had all the answers we're going to get here,” Bryan said, physically dragging her out of the store and leading her to the beach.

The glassy lake shimmered under the early afternoon sun and, like a mirage in the distance, the nearest of the
islands swam in and out of their vision. Margaret's island was hiding in the haze.

Samantha sat cross-legged on the sand, sullenly plopping pebbles into the lake. “I've let him down. I must have got the wrong postcode — written something wrong. He must be frantic, wherever he is. He must think I don't care — that I didn't send the money.”

Bryan would have loved to be able to tell her she was wrong but couldn't, so he kept quiet.

“I'm sure he thinks I do things just to annoy him,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Well, he always thinks I'm getting at him because I take defence cases, but I don't have any choice. Anyway, I enjoy defending people.”

Bryan gave it some thought as he soaked in the warm midday sun.

“He's caught in a deadly embrace,” he said, eventually.

She looked up with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he wants you to be a successful lawyer by winning cases, but inwardly he's sickened by the thought of you helping villains get off. So his mind is screaming ‘Win,' and ‘Lose,' at the same time, and whichever side wins, he loses. It must be very difficult for him.”

“I'd never thought of it like that, I thought he was just bloody-minded.”

He can be that as well, thought Bryan, absentmindedly humming a few bars of “The Laughing Policeman.”

“I never do anything right for Dad,” she continued morosely after some reflection. “I left his telly on so you could kill his cat.”

“Samantha, please don't. I feel bad enough about that without you continually rubbing it in.”

She sniffled, close to tears. “You'd better get used to it.” She carried on, “I didn't pay his bills…Didn't watch the video. I didn't even find out who owned the restaurant.”

“What video? What restaurant?”

“Someone took a video the night Gordonstone died. Dad left it on top of his telly. You remember — the one you blew to pieces when you murdered his cat.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“What?”

“That video might have been evidence in a murder case.”

“Well, you shouldn't have blown it up then, should you?”

“Your Dad shouldn't have had it at home. It should have been in the evidence cupboard.”

“That's right, put the blame on him,” she said, rising, addressing the lake histrionically. “Good old Dave Bliss — let's shit all over him. Everybody else has shit on him. Mum shit on him —”

“Samantha!”

She spun round. “Don't Samantha me!” she shouted, then carried on. “Edwards shit on him. I shit on him, and now you. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.” Then she stormed off along the beach kicking up a cloud of sand.

He trailed after her. “What's this about a restaurant?”

“Don't talk to me!” she screamed, angrily swinging a fist behind her and missing by several feet. He backed off and let her take out her frustration on her shoes.

The beach was gradually swallowed by the encroaching forest and finally she dropped onto a fallen log and burst into tears. “I'm sorry,” she spluttered after a few minutes, sensing him beside her.