No Cherubs for Melanie (42 page)

Wednesday — a little after midday, although time had lost meaning — the crack of a pistol shot jerked him awake. Voices, on the beach just outside his hiding place, forced him deeper into the shadows and he scrunched himself into a tight ball under the steel killing table. Someone sounding like Samantha called, “Dad! Dad!”

“It's a trick,” he said to himself, remembering the previous time he'd heard someone calling. Margaret was back — it was his turn to die. First Eddie, then Sarah, now him. He held his breath praying that Margaret wouldn't find him.

Outside, in the sunshine, Detective Sergeant Phillips slipped his.38 back into the shoulder holster as a big male bear loped off along the beach, stopping every few yards to glance back ruefully. Losing one good meal would have been bad enough but he'd already seen himself through the winter on what Bliss had to offer.

It was the bear that had caught their attention as they'd skipped the lake's surface, choosing a landing place. With a steady north wind flicking up the waves and bringing an early taste of winter, the pilot had searched for a sheltered cove.

“Bear!” he'd shouted, shying away from landing. They'd looked, and were thrilled, forgetting for a moment the morbidity of their mission. The huge black creature, just off the beach, had paused at the sound of the plane then carried on lumbering back and forth expectantly outside the killing cave, knowing Bliss was inside, but too frightened by the dreadful aura of death to go in and get him. He had worn a deep path in the sandy soil since Sunday evening and had survived on the blueberries and cranberries ripening on the surrounding bushes, but he could wait for Bliss; thirst and hunger would force him out eventually.

In his more clearheaded moments, Bliss knew the bear was outside his refuge, but to him it was just another demon. Its huffing and pawing had tormented him for three days, and at times he had been tempted just to quit and walk into its waiting claws. But there was nothing quick about being clawed to death by a bear, he realized, not like a single shot in the head. And he'd seen enough gunshot victims to know that even that wasn't guaranteed.

The crack of a second pistol shot confirmed Bliss's suspicions as he cowered in the deepest corner of his hiding place. If only he hadn't lost his knife he would have had some protection, but weak and unarmed all he could do was to clamp his hands over his ears and pray he wouldn't be found.

“Dad! Dad!” Samatha was yelling as the search party walked the beach. “Shoot again,” she called to Phillips, “And keep shooting. He must hear it if he's still…”

“Dave! Dave!” Peter Bryan took up the shout, stopping Samantha from uttering the unthinkable.

Several shots reverberrated through the forest and kept the bear on the move, but in the quiet darkness of the cave Bliss heard only his own rasping breaths and the thumping of blood coursing through his temples. He knew they were closing in him; Margaret and her cohorts he assumed. Days and nights of playing cat and mouse with a bear on a desrted island had honed his animalistic instincts and he felt the vibes of the searchers, but he had nowhere to run. Another shot went unheard as he cowered deeper.

Outside on the beach the search party had turned away Samantha, close to breaking, was pleading, crying, “Da…ad. Please Dad. Where are you?”

Bryan and the others join in. “Dave! Dave!”

But Bliss, in the silent blackness of his hiding place, was back in a nightmare and imagined himself being strapped to the table; having his guts ripped out, his hands chopped off, and his remains dumped in one of the burial pits along with the bears.

She wouldn't kill me here, he tried telling himself. But wasn't this the place where most of Margaret's murderous activities took place?

The search party had split; Samantha and Bryan probing the fringe of the forest while the pilot and DS Phillips kept the bear in sight as they scoured the beach.

“Over here. There's a cave,” called Samantha a few minutes later as she stumbled over the entrance.

“Dad! Are you in there?” she called, and Bliss heard.

It was Margaret — he was certain, and he stilled his breathing and willed himself into a state of torpor. Perhaps he could cheat Margaret's murderous intent by dying.

Samantha, Bryan, and Phillips continued calling as the pilot ran back to the plane for a flashlight but their voices faded as Bliss sank into unconsciousness.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” Samantha screamed close to hysteria as the pilot waded toward the plane. Then she turned to the cave entrance. “Dad! Are you in there… Dad! Dad!”

“Dead!” The word soured the air in the tiny plane's cabin like a fart in an elevator. “Dead? Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure. Absolutely certain,” said Peter Bryan, “Probably died fairly quickly, according to the doctor.

The buzz of the float plane's engines dropped to a hum, waiting for a response.

“I can't believe it…” started Bliss, his speech slowed and slurred by his still-swollen tongue. “I'd say pinch me, but I know it's real, I saw it happening.”

“We'll soon get you to the hospital, Dad,” said Samantha, tears streaking down her cheeks as she tenderly stroked her father's face. He lay jammed in the centre between her and Bryan in the rear of the plane. He should have been on a stretcher but, according to Phillips, it could take a day or more for an air ambulance to reach them.

“How are you feeling now?” asked Samantha as they lifted clear of the lake

“I'll be better when I've had some coffee. But what happened to Sarah? What have you done with your mum's body?”

Samantha tenderly took her father's hand and swivelled around in time to see Little Bear Island sinking into the horizon behind them. What happened back there? she wondered. “It's Margaret who's dead, Dad… Not Mum.”

“It's all right, Luv…” he said, his eyes faraway. “I'll look after you now.”

“But, Dad…”

“Better leave him,” whispered Bryan. “He's had a nasty shock.”

Bliss closed his eyes; he couldn't muster the energy to argue. He knew he was right.

Tears continued to trickle off Samantha's chin but she didn't wipe them away. She wouldn't let go of her father's hand and resolved never to let go of it again — ever.

Samantha had only her father's pulse to tell her that he was still alive and the flight dragged toward eternity until the pilot finally announced they were nearing Goose Bay.

Bliss stirred. “Where are we?”

“Won't be long, Dave,” replied Bryan. “We'll soon get you that coffee.”

Samantha squeezed his bruised and bloodied hand and attempted to cheer him up. “Good news, Dad: we've got your car back.”

He remembered, at least he seemed to. “That's not good news — I needed the insurance money.”

“Don't worry, I've been negotiating damages and compensation on your behalf.”

“Compensation,” he said vaguely, desperately trying to make sense of what was happening. “What for?”

Oh Christ, she realized, he doesn't know about the apartment — or the cat!

“Don't worry about it now.”

“About what?”

Samantha looked to Bryan for help. He gave her a vacant look, then looked at Bliss, then back at her, like an umpire. “F'kin' thanks,” she muttered from the corner of her mouth.

“Never mind, Dad. You just get better and stop worrying about money. Everything's going to be all right.”

“Good.”

Not bad, she agreed, but how the hell am I going to break the news about his trashed flat and Balderdash? Then she looked ahead and found a colossal white montain blocking their way. “Where did that come from?” she breathed, then realized it was a cloud. “Rain,” she said, pointing it out to the pilot, like a back-seat flyer.

“Snow, probably,” he said, peering into the billows as if searching for a pathway.

“Snow? — What's the date?”

“October first.”

Bliss was unconscious again, this time by design, under the operating lamps at Goose Bay General Hospital.

“Nothing too serious,” the surgeon assured Samantha. “Physically, he could go home tomorrow.”

“And mentally?” she asked.

That was a whole other can of worms, he told her.

Bryan was amused by the hospital's pompous title; the only hospital for four hundred miles and they call it a “General.” Samantha, worrying about her father, was slow on the uptake and looked askance.

“Arthritic? Spinal injuries? Geriatric?” he mused on the possibilities. “Can you imagine travelling four hundred miles through the forest with a broken leg and a fractured skull, and they turn you away because it's a burns unit?”

She laughed — really laughed — for the first time in three days.

“Let's get some tea,” he suggested. “Then find the police station and see if they have any more information.”

They took paper cups and drank as they walked, neither could stomach sitting in the canteen with Miss Thornton-Fink's vomit splodges on the wall.

“They were Chinese … Either from Hong Kong, Canada, or the States,” said the constable, acquiring an authoritative voice as he dealt passports onto his table one after the other like stud cards.

Bryan shuffled through the assortment. “They look genuine enough.”

“Probably are. With the sort of money these guys make, they could buy themselves a diplomat anywhere in the world.”

“What about Margaret Gordonstone?”

“Only one alias as far as we know. From her things, we've worked out that she goes under the name of Melanie Brown, and she's got a place in the bush not far from Bear Lake settlement.”

“Little Bear Island,” said Samantha helpfully. “That's where we found Dad.”

“No, Ma'am, not according to what we found, although it's not far from there. I'm going over to take a look in the morning. You're welcome to come along if you want.”

Samantha gave Bryan a look. “What about Dad?”

“We'll see.”

Samantha sat back and let the two policemen discuss the deplorable state of the criminal world. She cast her eyes over a rogue's gallery of photos covering one wall. But she soon realized there was only one rogue: the policeman himself, in dozens of manly and heroic poses. An egotist's portfolio of “Me” mug shots. Me with my hat on crooked. Me wearing a new uniform. Me with a big dog. Me with an even bigger dog. A bigger me, no dog. Me with my foot on a dead moose. Me with my foot on a dead bear.

She listened in on the conversation.

“Thefts?” asked Bryan.

“What could you steal here? There's mebbe fifty
cars in the town, and folks 'ud be mighty suspicious if you got yourself a new TV the day after the neighbours lost theirs. There's sometimes fightin' over women — sometimes the other way 'round.”

“What do you do? Arrest them?”

“Nothing — you crazy or what? I jus' lets 'em fight it out and make sure I'm around to take 'em to the hospital. That way they all put me down as the good guy.”

That explains the photos, thought Samantha, distaste causing her to rise. “I think we should get back, Peter.”

“Where are you folks staying? I could offer you a room…”

“We've made arrangements, thanks,” said Samantha, grabbing Peter's hand and tugging him toward the door.”

“What arrangements?” he whispered, aside, before they got as far as the pavement.

“I don't feel like being polite; I can't be bothered to sit around comparing the weather, prices, jobs, lying politicians, and everything else we have in common. I want to go to a hotel, strip off these dirty clothes, relax in a hot bath, and work off my stress with the man who found my dad.”

He gave her hand a squeeze and her lips the brush of a kiss. “I think I'd like that as well.”

Disappointment struck at the local store after they had bought underwear, matching lumberjack shirts, and a bagful of toiletries: there was no hotel in the town. What now: go back to the cop, cap in hand?

“But you might wanna try the fishing lodge,” the storekeeper suggested.

“This is…” Samantha wanted to say beautiful, but the word seemed so inadequate, so she reached for his mouth instead.

“Who needs an aphrodisiac here?” he mumbled through the kiss as they waltzed slowly back and forth along their private verandah with the rhythm of the lake making music beneath their feet.

Their fisherman's cabin, as quaint as an oil painting, etched itself into the forest bordering the lake and stared into the sunset. The verandah, jutting out on stilts, seemed to float on the surface and sway with the drift of the rippling waves.

“Dad's lost his marbles,” she said eventually, pulling away, her mind still troubled.

“No, he'll be fine.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, his arm protectively round her waist, soaking in the tranquil mood of the aquamarine lake.

“You never explained why you told Edwards you were going to Nepal,” she said eventually, feeling uneasy about interrupting the silence.

“It was the first thing that came into my mind. I wasn't going to tell him Canada.”

“You did that for me?”

“And your dad.”

“Edwards could have you shot at dawn.”

“I'm pissed off with the man. Everybody kow-tows to him like he's some sort of God — me as well, I'm ashamed to admit. Anyway, I had a vested interest.”

“What?”

“My credibility. I told Edwards your dad could handle the Gordonstone murder. Edwards reckoned he couldn't. So where does that leave me?”

“I guess he was right. Dad came here to salve his conscience, to prove that Martin Gordonstone killed his daughter. Now look what's happened: he's proved nothing, even his prime witness is dead. And he nearly killed
himself. What a disaster. Edwards is going to have a bloody field day with both of you.”