No Cherubs for Melanie (9 page)

He hadn't noticed. He'd even worn them — the other man's underwear. He'd even laughed later, much later, when she taunted him with it. “You didn't even notice you were wearing his bloody underpants did you?”

Talk about walking a mile in the other man's shoes — he'd driven to Bristol and back in the other man's Y-fronts. The memory still brought a wry smile to his lips.

And when, finally and inevitably, he'd actually caught them together he still wouldn't acknowledge the fact. It was a hurried lunchtime rendezvous. Sarah — his Sarah, the mother of his daughter — enjoying a romantic moment with George over a greasy pork pie, a shared packet of crisps, and a couple of lagers in a sleazy bar.

He was at work, following a suspect. But how serendipitous deception so often turns out to be. He would never know what hand of fate, ill or otherwise, persuaded his target to enter the same obscure back-street bar as his wife and George that day.

He'd discovered them
inflagrante,
but had remained oblivious for some moments, his attention entirely devoted to watching his target, a beak-nosed anorexic sixteen-year-old who was trying to fence a pocketful of hot watches that one of his mates had liberated at gunpoint from a jeweller's safe. Sarah half rose from a dimly lit nook, flustered into motion like a pheasant put up by a beater. He might never have noticed if she had remained seated and kept quiet. But her conscience was pulling the strings.

“Hello David,” she said, catching his eye.

That greeting alone should have alerted him. Not, “Hello Love,” or, “Hello Dear.” “Hello David.” So formal. Businesslike almost. Twenty-odd years of using the same toilet and sleeping in the same bed and she said, “Hello David,” with as much familiarity as she may have used to address the butcher.

“This is George,” she continued, with a nervous hand gesture, as if she expected him to know who George was.

Bliss looked puzzled, but his right hand automatically stretched toward the stranger expecting a shake. The stranger shrank back, anticipating a punch, and Bliss sought an answer in his wife's face.

“George is…” she started at last, but her face said: Surely you recognise him. You're wearing his bloody underpants.

“Yes, Dear,” said Bliss, urging her to finish the statement. But he knew — of course he knew. Who was he kidding? But his pride wouldn't let him make it easy.

The silence between them may have lasted eternally had not George summoned courage from somewhere. Pushing his chair back with a teeth-clenching screech, he stood. “David, I think it's time you knew that Sarah and I have decided to move in together.”

“That's nice for you, George,” Bliss said stupidly.

Sarah clearly thought it was stupid as well. “Is that all you can say?”

What did she want him to say? What's expected of a man in a situation like this? Did she expect him to fly into a jealous rage? Was he supposed to invite George outside and bop him?

“You can do what you want,” was all he could think of saying as he stalked away, beginning to feel the itch of the George's underpants. The young villain had pocketted the hot watches and scarpered, so Bliss headed for another bar.

It sank in about an hour later as he sat drowning his sorrows. I should have smashed his face to a pulp, he decided. That's what she wanted. That's what a real man would have done. Then I should have dragged her home and given her a right seeing to.

He swallowed his drink in a single gulp and, holding the empty glass in the air, spoke to the barman as if he were aware of the entire situation. “She was waiting for me to prove I still wanted her enough to fight for her.”

“They all do mate,” he replied knowingly, refilling the glass. “They all do.”

Sarah had gone when he eventually got home. Just one hurriedly packed suitcase, replaced with a scrawled note: “Sorry David. I've told Samantha.”

The ground opened beneath him and he started to plummet. She had walked away with twenty-five years of his life — the best twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of accumulated memories. More importantly, she
had stolen his hopes and dreams for the next twenty-five.
Their
hopes and dreams, he had thought: the ivy covered cottage near the sea, long walks on the beach in the sunset, reliving simple childhood pleasures with the grandchildren.
Their
grandchildren. Not step-grandchildren. Not confused grandchildren enquiring, “Are you my real Grandpa?”
Their
grandchildren playing in
their
garden;
their
grandchildren opening Christmas presents in front of
their
fire. Gone. His dreams —
their
dreams —snatched away by George and his hairy nostrils.

Why? Why? Why? His head was going to explode. All the hurt, anger, loneliness, and love swirling around in his brain was too much. Too many thoughts. Too many synapses firing simultaneously and sending out contradictory signals.

Some form of telepathy between father and daughter alerted Samantha to his distress.

“Are you all right, Dad?”

Her question snapped him back to the present. “Yeah,” he replied, but his voice was shaky.

“You said on the phone you wanted some advice.”

He took a few seconds to push Sarah and George to one side, then said, “I want to know how a man could kill his own daughter.”

“I hope you're not thinking of practicing on me.”

“Oh, Sam!”

Her face shone in the gleam of oncoming headlights. She was joking.

“Maybe,” he said with a serious tone, joking back

She laughed, “You don't need a lawyer. You need a psychiatrist.”

You could be right, he thought to himself, but said, “You don't understand. It's serious. I let a murderer go free twenty years ago and he killed again.”

Her voice took on a critical, lawyer-like tone. “Did you have sufficient evidence to prosecute?”

He shook his head. “I didn't look for any evidence. I broke the cardinal rule. I assumed it was an accident instead of assuming it was murder.”

“And now you believe it was murder?”

“I'd bet my pension on it.”

The trattoria, a favourite lunchtime haunt of Samantha and her legalist friends, was brash, noisy, and big. Big tables for big families, big plates, big steaming mounds of pasta, and the constant din of Pavarotti belting out pop operas. Bliss made a point of seeming disappointed with the menu. “Don't they have any real food?”

The waiter, Italian by necessity, overheard as Bliss had intended. “What would sir consider real food?”

Samantha stepped in. “Ignore him, he's in a bad mood. He's lost a murderer.”

Bliss shot her a look of alarm but the waiter shook his head, laughing lightly. “You lawyers,” he said.

“We'll both have the penne Alfredo with a couple of skewers of the lemon garlic prawns. Thank you, Angelo,” said Samantha, figuring her father was in no frame of mind to make a rational choice. Bliss considered protesting but instead asked for a very large scotch.

“You can't,” Samantha asserted. “You're driving us home.”

Feeling thoroughly defeated, he settled for a small scotch on the condition that he could have a glass of wine with the meal.

As Angelo moved away Samantha whispered, “His name's Godfrey really.” Bliss blurted out a laugh and she shushed him noisily with a finger to her lips. “So tell me about your murderer, Dad.”

“Murderers,” he said, and briefly recounted the circumstances of the three Gordonstone deaths and Betty-Ann's missing file.

“So what's your plan?” she asked when he had finished. “Go to the powers that be and confess everything? Confess you screwed up? There was no evidence. You said so yourself.”

“The evidence was probably there, I just didn't find it.”

“Legally speaking, that's immaterial. If there's no evidence of murder how can there be any proof you screwed up. Even if you're correct about the girl, there was only one witness, his wife, and she's been dead for ten years. You won't get much of a statement from her.”

“But he killed her as well.”

“Dad. It was suicide, the coroner said so.”

“He was wrong.”

“You don't know that, and in any case without a witness…” She left the sentence hanging; she had made her point.

Bliss gave her a sly look, as if he were holding all the aces. “What if I found a witness?”

“You're a bloody lawyer's nightmare. A client who insists on confessing the truth, even when there isn't a shred of evidence to back up the prosecution's case.”

“But there is evidence… at least I think there is.”

Samantha peered over the top of her wine glass and her wide brown eyes urged him to continue.

“What about the other daughter,” he said. “She must have known what was going on. I'm sure they kept me away from her because she knew her father killed her sister.”

Putting the glass down slowly, Samantha considered her reply, then jabbed a spoke into his wheel. “Dad, she was only a kid. This happened twenty-odd years ago.
Whatever she says now, a good lawyer would punch a dozen holes in her testimony: False memories, survival guilt, revenge against her father for precipitating her mother's suicide. Not to mention the fact that although she's been beyond his control for the past ten years she hasn't found it necessary to come forward and point the finger at him.”

Bliss was not easily deterred. “I bet she was terrified of him. Everybody else was.”

Samantha studied her father carefully. “Were you frightened of him?”

He contemplated his answer carefully and found himself walking through a mental minefield. Frightened? he asked himself. Was I? And should I admit it, even to myself?

“No…” he began, then started again. “Yes. In a way, yes. Not physically, but he had a sort of aura. Like a…” Bliss found himself stumped for a simile.

“Like an Old Bailey judge,” suggested Samantha.

“Yeah. You know the feeling.”

“Doesn't everyone?”

It must be part of every judge's training, Bliss thought. Somebody must give them lessons in how to scare the pants off you with just a look.

Dinner arrived. Bliss checked his watch: twenty-five minutes. Giving the pasta a poke he grumbled, “What were you doing Godfrey, making it?”

Samantha tried killing him with a look, but failed.

“It's Angelo, sir. And yes, we make it fresh for each customer.”

“That was spiteful,” Samantha said as soon as the waiter left.

“Sorry. I'm just fed up with everyone dumping on me all the time. I've got no one else to take it out on, besides the cat.”

They began the meal in embarrassed silence, then Samantha started thinking aloud about Margaret, Gordonstone's eldest daughter. “Let's just say she did play ball and spilled the beans about her father killing her sister. What good would that do you? What are you going to do, insist they prosecute you for perjury?”

“Neglect of duty,” he suggested, his expression making it clear he had given the prospect careful consideration.

“Come off it, Dad, you're just trying to get rid of the guilt. You just want someone to absolve you of your sins. Shit. If you're that concerned why not go the whole hog: become a Roman Catholic, go to confession, say three Hail Marys, and you'll be right as rain.”

“Don't be funny, Sam, I'm quite serious.”

“So am I, Dad.”

Undeterred, Bliss insisted on laying out his thoughts about Gordonstone's eldest daughter. “I reckon she went to Canada to keep clear of him. Put yourself in her place. He'd killed your sister and convinced the police it was an accident, then he makes your mother's murder look like suicide. You'd be scared to death.”

“She wouldn't be scared now he's dead,” Samantha mused, then saw a look of triumph spreading across her father's face and acted quickly to dispel it. “Dad, I'm not saying you're right. I'm not agreeing with you.” His face clouded again as she continued, “What I am saying is, even if she was scared to come forward earlier, there is nothing stopping her now, so why hasn't she?”

“Maybe she's waiting for someone to ask,” he replied, his tone and expression indicating he had every intention of being the one to do it.

Bliss declared himself full when Samantha toyed with the desert menu and said she was considering the Tiramisu.

“How do you stay so slim?” he laughed, reaching over and giving her a prod. Her eyes dropped automatically to her belly. She looked up, a worried frown across her forehead. “Actually, Dad, there's something I've been meaning to tell you.” Her expression warned him to keep quiet. “I think I'm going to have a baby.”

It took a few seconds to sink in. “You think…?”

A smile spread back over her face. “Oh, don't worry, it's probably a false alarm. I don't expect you want to be a grandfather, not yet anyway, not at your age.”

Without giving him an opportunity to reply she slapped down enough money to make up for Godfrey's hurt feelings and was on her way to the door.

The meeting between Superintendent Edwards and DCI Bryan had started cordially, with Edwards pouring the chief inspector a coffee.

“What's this I hear about Bliss ferreting about in central records, nosing into the Betty-Ann Gordonstone case?” Edwards said.

“He thinks it may be linked to Gordonstone's murder somehow.”

“Rubbish.”

“That's my view. I've told him to lay off and concentrate on finding Gordonstone's killer.”

Edwards waved Bryan to a chair. “Look, I think it might be a good idea to yank him from that case. Put somebody else on to it.”

“Oh no, sir.” Bryan said. “I think he's the right man for the job as long as he stays focussed.”

“And if he's not up to the job?”