Читать книгу No Cherubs for Melanie - James Hawkins - Страница 10

The Grand Marnier in the gateau had started him drinking early, and the chef’s revelation that Gordonstone’s wife had committed suicide didn’t help. If ever there was a woman with a reason for murdering her husband, thought Bliss, she was it; but being dead and buried for ten years gave her a fairly convincing alibi. He would just have a single scotch he kidded himself. The news about Betty-Ann’s death gave him a convenient excuse, as if he needed one. A toast to a woman he’d met briefly twenty years earlier — a woman with whom, in some ridiculous way, he suddenly felt an affinity.

He selected a pub as opposed to a liquor store. Home held too many bad memories, and he didn’t fancy drinking alone there. Anyway it was early, very early. Too early to start in earnest; he would have to drive home from the pub, so he couldn’t afford to risk drinking much.

A sullen twenty-year-old in a baseball cap and Grateful Dead T-shirt was attempting alcoholic suicide at a nearby table. “I wuz up all night, thinkin’ about my life,” he said to a similarly dressed companion. “Where I am? Where I’m going? What I’m gonna do?” he added, with the rhetoric of a depressed pop singer. As if he had a choice, as if fate had not already laid out its plan. “That’s the story of my effin’ life.”

Bliss was tempted to tell him, from experience, that he may as well get used to it, when a fierce-faced young woman stormed up to the young man and casually dumped his beer in his lap. Punch-up, thought Bliss, readying to leave. But the man didn’t flinch; just turned to his companion with his voice so full of controlled anger his jaw was quaking, and said, “I guess it’s over then.” Bliss sat back, wishing he could have ended his relationship with Sarah so succinctly.

An hour and three drinks later he sat contemplating the smoke-stained ceiling, trying to make out familiar images in the dirty brown tar. Mother Teresa’s profile swirled into view, but vanished as a commotion at the bar attracted his attention. The landlord had grabbed the phone and was semaphoring to Bliss with his free arm. “Excuse me mate someone’s just stolen your car,” he called across the bar as the emergency operator answered.

Bliss spun to look out of the window. His car was gone. “What? Who the hell would want my car?”

“Joyriders,” the landlord replied, after he asked for “Police.”

“How did you know it was mine?”

“I saw you drive in. Anyway, that’s the spot they usually pinch ’em from.”

Bliss put on a crestfallen look. “It’ll probably be wrecked.”

The landlord gave him a look which said, I’ve seen your car, then spoke into the phone as he was connected to the police operations room.

Catching the bus to work the following morning, Bliss was grateful the rain had eased. In the circumstances he would have been justified in asking the duty officer to send a car, but he didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of having a laugh at his expense. The early shift are probably pissing themselves already, he assumed, rightly.

“Did you hear about poor old Dave Bliss,” one of them had said, “Someone nicked his wife, he gets into a plane crash, goes sick for nearly a year, then someone half-inches his car.

“When?”

“Last night outside the Four Feathers up Dalton Road.” They laughed. “I’d rather someone nicked my missus than my car,” said a wag.

“I wouldn’t go sick for ten minutes if someone nicked my missus,” said another.

“Who would want to nick your missus?” asked a third with a malicious twist…

“She’s not that bad,” he replied, paradoxically defending her.

There was a message waiting for Bliss on his desk; a response from a George Weston to a small article in the morning papers revealing that a police spokesperson had refused to confirm or deny that the death of Martin Gordonstone was now being treated as suspicious. But first he had to deal with another note — hand scrawled in an obvious attempt to disguise the writer’s identity. “This is the best we can do but it’s worth more than your old one,” a joker had scribbled, and left it attached to a battered dinky toy, hurriedly borrowed, Bliss guessed, from the lost property office. Dropping the toy and the note straight into a waste bin, and ignoring the guffaws of the assembled pranksters, he read the other message. It advised him that Weston had phoned to say he made a videotape of Gordonstone collapsing in the restaurant the night he died.

The vultures drifted away after one of them fished the toy out of the trash bin, leaving Bliss to contact the videographer and arrange to collect the tape.

A succinct third message awaited him in his pigeonhole. Report to Superintendent Edwards at 11:30 a.m. today.

A pep talk, assumed Bliss, immediately feeling more depressed than ever. He could guess the format if not the actual words. Welcome back, tidy yourself up, pull yourself together, lay off the booze, and stop farting about.

Central records opened at eight-thirty. Bliss strolled in at nine-fifteen and found the three clerks still clustered around a copy of the daily nude.

“Not disturbing you, am I?” he asked as sarcastically as possible. Two of the three men drifted languidly in different directions without comment, leaving the third to carefully fold the newspaper as if it were a precious manuscript.

“Yeah Mate. What d’ye want?”

“Detective Inspector to you,” shot back Bliss, resolving to bring up the question of uncivil civilians at the next divisional meeting.

The Betty-Ann Gordonstone file had been shredded, the clerk pronounced after a brief search through his records.

“Shredded!” cried Bliss.

“That’s right, Inspector. It was non-suspicious sudden death according to my records.”

“Suicide,” said Bliss.

“Maybe it were. It don’t say here. But it were destroyed in 1999.”

“Why?”

“You should read standing orders, Mate,” suggested the clerk, then he quoted the relevant order verbatim in an affected official voice. “Destruction of documents: non-suspicious sudden death files to be destroyed after seven years, unless the officer in the case specifically requests otherwise.”

“I know that,” replied Bliss untruthfully, but with sufficient conviction that most would have believed he was fully conversant with the standing order on the subject. “But I also know that files often hang around for years before they are shredded.”

“Not this one. Like I said, it’s gorn.”

“Are you sure?”

The civilian clerk took the enquiry as an affront. “Ruddy coppers,” he mumbled aloud, but kept the rest of his outrage under his breath. “Think they should be treated like ruddy God. I could run rings around most of ’em.” The phone rang, providing him with an opportunity to make Bliss wait while he took a lengthy message. Undeterred, Bliss waited; there was more to the Betty-Ann Gordonstone case and he wanted answers. Finally, the clerk put the phone down and looked at Bliss as if to say, Are you still here?

“Do you expect me to check my files again?”

His files? Bloody cheek. “Yes please.”

That wasn’t the correct answer; not the answer the clerk was expecting. A polite, “No, that’s all right, I believe you,” would have sufficed. The clerk slowly took off his spectacles and made a performance cleaning the lenses, contemplating various ways of thwarting Bliss’s request. In the end he simply opted to make a song and dance about finding the right book and after several false starts eventually slung the open book on the counter between them,

“There you are,” he shouted triumphantly, “See for yourself.”

Betty-Ann Gordonstone

Born 23rd June, 1955

Deceased15th October, 1992

File Location. Destroyed 15th October, 1999

“That’s seven years to the day,” said Bliss, more to himself than the clerk.

“Told you,” the clerk replied in a childlike manner.

Someone hadn’t wasted much time in destroying the file, Bliss noted, and reread the ‘Cause of Death’ column: suicide. Then he spotted the name of the investigating officer in the far right-hand column: Detective Inspector Edwards.

“Is that Superintendent Edwards?” he enquired.

“How should I know?”

“Is there any way of checking?”

“Yeah,” said the clerk, slamming the book shut with unnecessary force. “Go and ask him.”

Superintendent Edwards pretended to be absorbed in a file on his desk when Bliss arrived at his office at 11:30 A.M. “Shut the door,” Edwards shouted, apparently equating brusqueness with authority. “Nice to have you back,” he added, removing his spectacles, although something in his tone suggested he didn’t consider Bliss’s return to be at all welcome. “I hear you’ve taken the Gordonstone case.”

“Yes, Sir. Actually I wanted to talk to you about that.” Edwards looked up quickly. “Shoot.”

“Well, it’s early days yet, but I suspect the motive may have been revenge. You see I now suspect he murdered his wife in 1992—” Bliss would have continued with his theory but Edwards’ dismissive wave made it clear that he should stop.

“Officer, let me put your mind at ease. I can assure you Betty-Ann Gordonstone’s death was definitely suicide.”

“Suicide,” echoed Bliss.

“That was the verdict. Do you have a problem with that?”

“You bet I do, Sir. It wasn’t suicide. It was murder. He killed her.”

“Inspector…” “Sir…” Bliss tried interrupting, but was silenced by the forcefulness of Edwards’ response.

“As I was saying Inspector, it was suicide. You’re not questioning my professional integrity are you?”

Now what, thought Bliss, already feeling the senior officer’s bite.

“I’m sorry…” he began. “But…”

“Before you answer, just remember, Inspector Bliss, you weren’t involved in the case. You probably haven’t even seen the file.”

“I’m aware of that…” Bliss fumbled to find conciliatory words but failed, and his voice drifted off.

“Good. I’m glad you understand.”

“But you may not know he’d already murdered his daughter, sir.”

Edwards jerked forward in mock surprise. “I understood it was an accident.”

Bliss was passionate. “Believe me, sir, Melanie’s death was no accident. It was murder. Her father drowned her.”

“Not according to the coroner.”

“The coroner was wrong.”

The superintendent’s squinted eyes pierced Bliss. “And not according to the copper who did the investigation. He had it pegged as an accident. In fact there was never any mention of foul play.”

“It was me, sir. I was the investigating officer.” Edwards pretended he hadn’t known. “So are you telling me you committed perjury? Is that what you’re saying? You stood in front of a coroner’s jury, stuck your hand on the Good Book and deliberately perverted the course of justice.”

“No. It wasn’t like that.”

“Good. Because as far as I’m concerned the case is closed. The girl died accidentally and her mum committed suicide ten years later ’cos she couldn’t stand the strain anymore.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“It is as far as I’m concerned, and it better be as far as you’re concerned as well. Personally I don’t give a monkey’s fart whether he done her in or not, all I care about is keeping the records straight and if some prat like you starts stirring up shit from the past I shall take great delight in stomping all over you. I trust I make myself clear, Inspector Bliss.”

The onslaught forced Bliss to retreat somewhat, but he had no thought of total capitulation. “But you must admit it’s possible he killed his wife.”

Edwards slowly and deliberately pulled himself up to his full sitting height behind the oversize leather-topped desk, and fixed Bliss with a defiant stare. “I admit nothing of the sort. The case is closed, Inspector. It was suicide ten years ago and it will remain suicide today. Do I make myself clear?”

Although Bliss was nodding he couldn’t get his face to agree, so Edwards drove the point home with the hint of a threat. “Just remember, it may not be in your best interest to make waves. You need all the friends you can get at the moment.”

That went well, thought Bliss sardonically as he slunk out of the superintendent’s office and found DCI Bryan hovering in the corridor. “How are you getting on, Dave?”

“Brilliant, sir. You gave me a murder, I’ve ended up with three, and now I’ve got the superintendent on my back. Just brilliant. Thanks a lot.”

DCI Bryan tipped his head queryingly. “Three murders?”

“Gordonstone’s kid and his wife,” continued Bliss. “I’m almost sure they were murdered as well.”

“Almost, Dave?”

“Well, all right. Personally I’m sure. I can’t prove it yet, but I will.”

“So how have you upset the super?”

Bliss filled him in quickly. The chief inspector glanced up and down the corridor then caught hold of Bliss’s sleeve and dragged him toward the washroom. “In here,” he said. “I need a pee.”

As the door shut, he started. “Dave. Let’s get this straight. If the other two were murdered, who did it?”

“He did, of course — Martin Gordonstone.”

“So what’s the point in fannying around trying to prove it? It’s too late to prosecute him now and nobody’s going to thank you for dredging up old cases and proving your mates wrong.”

“You mean Edwards isn’t going to thank me.”

“Superintendent Edwards to you, Inspector, and… Yes, I do mean that.”

“Well, I don’t really care what he thinks. He’s no mate of mine. Anyway, I believe it’s important.”

“Why for Christ’s sake?”

“A motive of course. I’ve got to start somewhere and it seems to me that the family cupboard might be a good place to find a skeleton.

DCI Bryan stood at the urinal and spoke over his shoulder. “You’re looking in the wrong place, Dave. Lots of people had a motive from what I can understand.”

“Lots of people had a motive to bop him on the nose or kick him in the goolies, but if everyone who’s ever been insulted by a restaurant owner bumped them off, there’d be a huge shortage of restaurants in this country.”

“What about business partners?”

“Weren’t any, as far as I can tell. The staff say he owned the place outright.”

“Disgruntled staff then. Didn’t mean to kill him, just give him a bellyache for a few days.”

“It’s possible,” conceded Bliss grudgingly.

“Do you know how he was poisoned yet?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea — why?”

“Just a thought, Dave, but I don’t suppose Gordonstone could have been a suicide as well?”

“Not a chance.”

“Wait, Dave. Think about it. His daughter drowns —”

Bliss interrupted quickly. “Was drowned.”

The chief inspector wrenched up his fly and turned to give Bliss a hard stare. “Let me finish. His daughter drowns accidentally. Ten years later his wife commits suicide and for another ten years he’s a lonely, fat, old drunk. I’d have thought suicide was a strong possibility in such circumstances, wouldn’t you?”

Bliss opened the door to leave. “I’ll think about it, sir. But suicide would be totally out of character for Gordonstone. He was too pigheaded, too —” Bliss broke off, momentarily frozen. He stood half in and half out of the washroom, his hand seemingly glued to the brass handle on the door. There, disappearing down the corridor, was Sarah, his ex-wife. He wanted to call out, but her name stuck in his throat. His mind, trapped in a continuous loop, kept asking, What’s Sarah doing here? A tense tremor started in his hand and shivered through his body. Then, as if feeling the force of his stare, the woman turned. Bliss’s heart sank — it wasn’t her. In fact, the secretary didn’t look anything like Sarah. The illusion, conjured by the woman’s familiar hairstyle, vanished. The DCI, stuck in the vestibule behind him, misinterpreted the cause of Bliss’s hesitation. “Dave, do you need some help with this one?”

Bliss rapidly pulled his thoughts together. “No. Not at the moment anyway.”

“OK. But stick with the program, Dave. Gordonstone was murdered by a person or persons unknown, and I doubt it has anything to do with his wife or daughter. So stop digging up old skeletons and move on.”

Easier said than done, thought Bliss, as he turned and ran smack into Superintendent Edwards, marching solidly down the corridor toward them.

Edwards spoke right through him. “Ah, Chief Inspector Bryan. Can I see you in my office in five minutes, please?”

Bliss cadged a lift home, deciding one bus a day is enough for anyone, then he rooted through his life’s remains in the pile of cardboard boxes stacked untidily against one wall of the apartment. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” he muttered, searching for Melanie’s file — a copy of it anyway, from twenty years ago. She had always been in the back of his mind and he had never been able to let go of the thought that he had somehow failed the little girl, so he was certain he had kept the paperwork.

A school photograph of his own daughter fell out of an old exercise book and jogged his memory. Samantha! Maybe it’s in that pile of stuff I stored in her attic after Sarah threw me out, he mused, and scrabbled to find the phone which was buried beneath piles of law books, LPs, and a bundle of love letters he’d sent to Sarah during their courtship. “You keep these,” she had said while they were cleaving apart their intertwined lives, making it clear by her tone that neither his love nor his letters were any longer her concern.

“Hi, Dad,” Samantha said, answering her phone the moment it rang. “That’s a coincidence, I was just going to call you. How are you doing?”

He considered explaining, but chose not to. “I’m back at work.”

“Great.”

“Not really. They’ve given me an impossible murder just to keep me occupied, and fed me a load of garbage about being the only one who could solve it.”

“Oh.”

Bliss picked up a distinct lack of surprise in her voice. “Did you know about this?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

“What?” she replied guardedly.

A penny dropped. “You had something to do with this didn’t you?”

Her tone was mischievous, “What, Dad, murder? You know me better than that.”

“No. You know what I mean. You spoke to DCI Bryan, didn’t you?”

“Who me?”

“Yes, you.”

“I might have.”

“Huh. You bloody lawyers are all the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“Always interfering in other people’s problems.”

“That’s what we lawyers get paid for. Anyway, it’s reassuring to hear you admit you have a problem.”

Bliss tried bravado but his voice lacked conviction. “I could have sorted it myself.”

Samantha moved on. “Tell me about the murder.”

“It’s three murders, actually.”

“Three. I didn’t know.”

“Neither did the DCI. Anyway, as you dropped me in it, you can buy me dinner and give me some free legal advice while I tell you about it.”

She laughed. “Tonight?”

“Can you?”

“Sure. Pick me up at eight. If I’m paying for dinner you can drive, deal?”

He immediately sussed out her plan: he who drives, does not drink. “I’d like to lodge an appeal…”

“Take it or leave it.”

“OK. I’ll be there.” He’d half put the phone down before he remembered. “Sam,” he shouted into the mouthpiece, and caught her just in time. “I just remembered. I can’t drive. Someone’s nicked my car.”

“A likely story,” she laughed.

“Still smoking I see,” she chided as he clambered into her car two hours later.

“So?”

“I wouldn’t mind, Dad, but you used to be so fucking sanctimonious when we were kids.”

“Samantha! Do you have to swear?”

“All lawyers do. Anyway, don’t change the subject, I’m not going anywhere until you’ve got rid of that awful stink.”

Bliss took a long drag then tossed the barely smoked butt out of the window.

“Litter lout.”

“I can’t win, can I?”

“It’s not a competition, Dad. I just worry about you that’s all.”

“How’s your mother?” he asked as they drove off.

“Dad, do you really care?”

“Of course I do.”

“Maybe if you’d shown her how much you cared she wouldn’t have left.”

“Don’t rub it in, Sam. Do you think I don’t know that?”

They drove in silence while Bliss relived the pain of his separation. The denial: “This isn’t happening.” The misplaced optimism: “She’ll come back.” The pleading, the crying, the begging: “I’ll change.” “No you won’t.” “I’ll try.”

Bliss broke the silence. “What does she see in him Sam? How is he different from me?”

“Dad. He’s there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do I have to explain?”

“Yes.”

“You were never there — not when she needed you.”

“Is that what she says?”

“C’mon, Dad. You were always working; or that’s what you said you were doing. That or playing your keyboard with your headphones on.”

Bliss defended himself indignantly. “I was working.”

“All right, Dad, I believe you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“I said I believed you…” She paused, then added softly, “But Mum didn’t.”

Bliss sulked. “Well she should have. Anyway, how is whatsisname?”

“George, Dad, his name is George. As if you could have forgotten.”

She’s right, he thought, how could I forget George? Gangly George. Hairy-nostril George. Closing his eyes he let his mind wander and found himself arguing with his conscience. “Poor me. Poor cuckolded husband. Last to know as usual.”

Are you sure you didn’t know? his conscience chimed in.

Did I know?

Perhaps it was comfortable to pretend it wasn’t happening.

I’d never admit it.

Who would admit it?

What do you expect me to say. “I say old man, my wife prefers some other chap.”

Be honest with yourself at least.

OK. Of course I knew. Not the details. Not his name. Not his hairy nostrils. I thought it was a passing phase, just a fling. Put a bit of sparkle back into her life. I’m not stupid. I saw through the pathetic excuses, the poorly disguised lies, the extra shopping trips. New clothes never worn, not for me anyway. The expensive necklace: “Just felt like treating myself, you don’t mind do you?” How stupid did she think I was? So why not admit it? I thought she’d get over it. Come running back with her tail between her legs. Only she didn’t come back. And it wasn’t a tail between her legs — it was George.

“Hold tight, Dad!” Samantha’s shout of alarm jerked him back to the present. He grabbed the dashboard with both hands and stabbed at an imaginary brake as his daughter swerved around an unlit parked truck with inches to spare.

“Stupid place to park,” he shouted, as if anyone could hear, then turned to Samantha. “Do you want me to drive?”

“You’re kidding — you lose your own car and now you want to wreck mine?”

“I didn’t lose it,” he protested but, conceding she had a point, relaxed and let his mind drift back to thoughts of Sarah.

Deep down she had wanted to be caught, he’d realized. Tempting him with obvious little clues, little Freudian slips which grew bigger and bigger as her guilt egged her on to make mistakes. And then there was the farce with the underpants — George’s semen-stained underpants, left in her car following one of their most intimate moments, either by accident or, as Bliss later began to suspect, by design. She had tenderly washed, dried, and folded them, then placed them in his underwear drawer. By accident or by design?

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?”

“I believe he is, sir.”

“All I’m saying, Peter, is don’t stick your neck out for him. He isn’t worth it. A man who can’t separate his personal life from the job is a liability. You know that.”

Bryan gave a noncommittal nod. “He’s also a damn good copper who happens to have been through a rough time. That last case nearly got him killed.”

“Don’t get sentimental, Chief Inspector, that was nearly a year ago. We’re running a police force not a bloody kindergarten.”

“I know that, sir. But we all have problems from time to time.”

“Yeah. And we leave ’em at the door.”

The chief inspector wasn’t going to argue and contented himself with mumbling, “We all make mistakes.”

Edwards heard. “Humph. The only time people say that is when they’ve just made a bloody great balls-up.”

“Are you saying it was a mistake to give Bliss the case?”

Edwards need not have answered, his expression made his feelings clear. “Let me put it this way: it was your idea, so I’ll hold you personally responsible if he screws up. If you want to keep him on the case, on your head be it.”

“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take, sir.”

“Right, well keep him under control. Give him two weeks at the most, and for God’s sake keep him focussed. You know me, Peter, I like to give a man a fair shake.” I know you, thought Bryan, staring at his feet. A pompous toad who’ll jump on anyone if it makes you look good. The secretaries know you as well — I’ve heard them warning newcomers, “Don’t bend over in front of Edwards, ‘cos he’ll whop a finger up your fanny as soon as look at you.” And how come you drive a filthy great Mercedes and holiday in Fiji? It’s a wonder Internal Investigations aren’t camped out on your front lawn. Oh… I know you, all right.

“So,” said Edwards, his tone indicating he’d had the last word and the meeting was over. Bryan was half out of the door before he realized he hadn’t even started his coffee.

The pavement was still damp from an overnight shower when Samantha answered the front door to her neat, terraced house, half a slice of dry toast sticking out of her mouth.

“Sorry I’m late,” said her father, slipping into the barely furnished hallway. “Busses,” he muttered, without need of further explanation.

She waltzed past him down the short hallway, stepped into her shoes, slid on her coat, and swallowed the toast in a single fluid motion. “I’ve got to get going,” she called, half out of the front door. “Your stuff’s in the attic.” she added sourly, “And don’t mess my place up.”

“Would I?” he called, genuinely offended.

She turned. “I’ve seen your place, remember.”

Bliss ignored the innuendo and pointed a finger at her belly. “Have you told your mother about… ?”

She dismissed the question with an unconcerned, “Not yet,” and quickly changed the subject as she made for her car. “Must dash. I’ve got an indecent assault at Snaresbrook Magistrates.”

“Prosecuting?” he asked, hopefully.

“Defending,” she replied over her shoulder, knowing how much it would aggravate him.

“Hm,” he grunted, but refused to be drawn.

Swinging a bulky brown briefcase onto the rear seat, she leapt behind the wheel and shouted, “Don’t forget to lock up behind you,” as the engine burst into life. She was gone before Bliss could object.

Samantha’s whirlwind exit left an uncanny stillness in its wake. Bliss felt Melanie Gordonstone’s ghost calling him. He knew she was there, in the attic — it was the reason for his visit — yet suddenly he found himself stalling. What was he scared of? What harm could she do him now? Was she seeking revenge?

The only coffee in Samantha’s kitchen — instant decaffeinated — compared favourably with the stuff available in the police canteen, but then, so would used engine oil, he thought. But at least she had fresh milk. He drank two cups before venturing to the loft.

The time-worn buff folder with nibbled edges, creased corners, and faded green treasury tags jumped out at him and he did not need to read the label. He stared blankly at the file; opening it was unnecessary, he already knew every detail, even the stain made by a wayward tea cup in 1983, and he was unable to explain, even to himself, why he had bothered to search it out.

Back downstairs, in Samantha’s living room, he dropped the unopened file on the coffee table and scanned through the contents in his mind. He could recall every word with almost the same precision as he could recite the Lord’s Prayer or take the Oath in court. There was, he knew, a statement headed ‘Martin Gordonstone, father of deceased,’ together with statements from Betty-Ann Gordonstone, née Miller, mother of deceased, Dr. Mohammed Akbar, GP, and Dr. Eugene Finestein, pathologist. There was also another statement, the first one in the file, had he chosen to look. He knew it was there but his mind worked hard to blot it out, to pretend it didn’t exist — to pretend it had never existed. It was the statement of twenty-two-year-old Detective Constable David Anthony Bliss.

He escaped to the kitchen, threw open the window, lit a cigarette, and made himself another coffee. It was no better than the first two, but its preparation filled time and occupied his mind.

The temptation to open the file eventually nagged him back into the room. Melanie’s spirit was demanding action; not retribution — it was too late for retribution now, he knew, but not too late to excavate the truth and satisfy the poor girl’s soul, not to mention the balm it might apply to his conscience.

The file still lay accusingly on the table despite his prayers that it might have vanished. Tearing his eyes away from it, he deliberately distracted himself by scouting around the room for signs of Samantha’s pregnancy. What had changed? Nothing, as far as he could see. The little house looked the same as usual. Like Samantha, he thought: neat, clean, and compact. More books than a junior school, less furniture than a squatter’s pad.

“What do you expect to find?” he said to himself and tried casting his mind back to the time that Sarah had been pregnant with Samantha. But he shook his head after a few seconds realizing that the memories had faded beyond recognition and he questioned whether the images of his beautiful young wife he managed to summons were recollections or fantasy. Thoughts of Sarah, still young and still his wife, triggered a flood of emotion and his face started to crumple. “Stop it,” he ordered, and managed to pull himself together.

Perhaps Samantha has bought a book on childbirth, he thought, changing the subject away from Sarah, scanning the bookshelves crammed with legal texts. But there was little room on Samantha’s shelves for such trivia as the birth of a baby. What else, he wondered. A pregnancy testing kit in the bathroom, a fridge full of peanut butter, or a cupboard full of Fry’s chocolate creams. He searched fruitlessly. No cuddly toys, no photos of herself when she was a baby — nothing.

Maybe it is a false alarm. Damn, he thought, realizing he’d been so preoccupied with his own problems he’d never asked the obvious: Who’s the father? He scolded himself for his lack of interest, but noted that she hadn’t volunteered the information. She would have told me if she’d wanted me to know, he reasoned. What would she have said if I had asked? Mind your own fucking business, probably, he thought with a smile. Then quite irrationally he became angry. “It is my business,” he declared out loud. “A quarter of the poor little sod will have my genes.” The idea tickled him, twenty-five percent of his identity going to make up a new life and marching off into the future.

The thought of a young child dragged him back to the file on the table. There were, he knew, photographs of a child in the file. Death-scene photographs, taken to show the coroner every gory detail of the unfortunate incident. He sat slowly, and picked up the file, picturing every detail of the photographs. They were, he recalled, not at all gruesome. Not like the usual murder pictures. No blood, no faces contorted in agony, no jagged wounds, no severed body parts with protruding bones, no brains and skull fragments splattered all over the front of an express train or patterned across a wall. Just a little girl sleeping peacefully in a hospital cot and the same little figure, naked, sculpted out of polished white marble, as she lay on the mortuary table awaiting the mortician’s knife.

He continued to resist the temptation to open the file. There is no point, he thought, defying the power of his own conscience. Why punish yourself again?

You deserve to be punished, said his conscience, playing Devil’s advocate.

“Don’t open it.”

Open it.

“Don’t open it.”

Punish yourself.

“Don’t punish yourself anymore.”

Temptation won. He opened the file. The photographs lay on top and he slowly shuffled through them sad nostalgia. The little stone cherub had not aged. One of the photographs was missing, although he could not remember where it had gone. But he was able to conjure it up from memory: the light blue lake dappled with touches of white from a few passing clouds, some trees — bushes really, hawthorn and elder, he recalled — tiny pink splotches of water lilies hiding amongst a raft of greenery, the shadow of a taller tree falling across a patch of water and muddying it with a deep grey tint. And there, in the centre, was a shoe forming a tiny red speck that looked more like a glitch in the film than something tangible in the water.

It was the cameraman, the scenes of crime officer, who spotted it through his lens and called Bliss’s attention.

“Did she have her shoes on?”

He hadn’t noticed, he had been so wrapped up in his frantic efforts to breathe life into her.

A phone call to the emergency room soon answered the query. “Yes, one of her shoes was missing, the left one.”

She must have kicked it off when she was struggling in the water, they had decided. He remembered the semisubmerged shoe vividly. Wading out to retrieve it with his trousers rolled knee high. A red sandal, Clark’s, size…? He’d forgotten the size and tortured his brain for a full half minute before deciding it was immaterial.

Although he had forgotten the shoe size he remembered the ambulanceman, a gentle giant of a man who tenderly scooped the little body off the grassy bank with hands as big as shovels and swung her onto the stretcher. Bliss still had his lips affixed to hers as the man carried the stretcher to the waiting ambulance, he was still blowing, still breathing movement into her chest, and his tears still trickled onto her tiny cheeks. Within moments a plastic oxygen mask had replaced his mouth and the ambulance drove away, a mechanical respirator now pumping air into the lifeless lungs, the little chest heaving futilely, mocking life. Her tiny heart no longer even trying to beat. Each future page of her life’s passport now stamped with a single word, “Dead”

And under the photographs in the file lay the statement. His statement. The statement headed, “This statement of David Anthony Bliss, consisting of two pages, each signed by me, is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.”

He didn’t read the statement, he had no need, but the final paragraph leapt off the page accusingly. “I believe that Melanie Ann Gordonstone, aged 6 years, wandered away from the house and accidentally fell into the lake while her parents, Martin and Betty-Ann Gordonstone, were otherwise engaged.” Those words, those exact words, had reverberated confidently around the Coroner’s Court twenty years earlier, in the clear calm voice of the young policeman standing in the witness box. And the voice of the coroner, an older, gravelly voice filled with quiet authority and a lifetime’s experience, invited him to confirm the statement so there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind. “Is that your honest belief, Officer?”

“It is, Sir,” Bliss had replied.

“Thank you, Officer. No further questions.”

He had faltered leaving the witness box and looked at the faces in the sparsely peopled room: the stoic face of Martin Gordonstone; the dishevelled face of his wife, a poor crumpled figure who had snivelled throughout the twenty minutes of the proceedings and had been excused from giving evidence by the coroner on the basis that she had no material facts to offer; the impassive face of a reporter from the local paper who’d seen it all before. He’d seen the sad faces, heard the sorry stories and the guilt-ridden excuses: “I only left her for a minute, I don’t know how it could have happened.” It happens, he thought, all too often it happens. And, at the back of the courtroom, Bliss spied a huddle of grieving relatives awaiting the next inquest, an inquest into the death of a ninety-three-year-old victim of road accident.

There was no sign of Margaret. No twelve-year-old weeping tears for her little sister. In fact, as far as anybody in the courtroom was concerned, Margaret might never have existed. Gordonstone had hardly mentioned his surviving daughter as he recounted his well-rehearsed story. Bliss, in his evidence, though not in his statement, had carefully avoided making reference to Margaret; he had no wish to explain why he hadn’t interviewed her. Everybody, it seemed, had avoided mentioning Margaret.

With no further witnesses to be called, the grey-haired coroner removed his half-spectacles and, doing his best to inject as much sympathy as he could into his voice, pronounced that Melanie Ann Gordonstone had been the victim of a tragic accidental death. But he’d seen it all before, as well.

“We thought it would be too upsetting for Margaret to attend,” explained Gordonstone loudly in the foyer outside, after the verdict had been handed down. It seemed a reasonable assertion at the time; it was only later that Bliss wondered about the true meaning of the statement. Would it have been too upsetting for Margaret, or would it have been too upsetting for her father if she had used the opportunity to blurt out that he had killed her sister? And, Bliss thought, why had Gordonstone found it necessary to make such a loud and public declaration about Margaret’s absence? Isn’t it usually the guilty who most vociferously protest their innocence?