Читать книгу Inspector Bliss Mysteries 8-Book Bundle - James Hawkins - Страница 11

“Would you mind if we didn’t go back to The Limes?” petitioned Daphne, fearing it to be Andrew’s regular stalking ground. She needn’t have worried. Land’s End wouldn’t have been far enough for Bliss.

“I thought we’d drive over to Marsdon,” he replied, chivalrously opening the hired car’s passenger door and sweeping her in. Her sleek cocktail dress of the previous evening had given way to flouncy printed cotton, its huge tangy-yellow flowers crying out for a picnic on a grassy river bank. A parasol wouldn’t have gone amiss, but she had stuck with the broad-rimmed straw hat, merely switching the crimson ribbon for lemon.

“It seems a long way to go for dinner.”

“Do you mind?”

“Oh no. Not at all. It’s a lovely evening for a drive.”

It wasn’t – not for him anyway. He was on the run again. Instead of the badly needed nap, he’d spent the first hour in his room at the Mitre poking into every conceivable hidey-hole and pacing with worry, and the next hour packing. Whoever had been making enquiries about him would be back – probably. But why hang about to find out. The strain, and the degree of powerlessness in the face of such an ethereal adversary, had worn him to the point where he was almost ready to bolt back to the safe house.

He had been sneaking out of the hotel when the Swedish receptionist spotted him loading suitcases in the car park. “Is it that you are leaving, Mr. Bliss?” she smiled, her glow-white teeth bringing a moment’s brightness to an otherwise gloomy day.

“I’ve been called away.”

“But you have already paid have you not?”

He had – two weeks in advance, twenty percent discount. “It doesn’t matter – I’ll probably be back in a day or so.”

The High Street seemed jammed with blue Volvos, both driven by short, funny looking, thirty-year-olds, and he was glad to have got away from the Mitre hotel and his Rover. But was this the future? Trailing his suitcases around in the boot of a rented car – finding a different hotel and switching every couple of days. Was he being forced to follow the blueprint of retribution drawn up by the killer? Had the threatening letters and menacing phone calls been just a tightening of the screw, dragging out the agony in the torture chamber of his mind?

“I did eighteen years for my part,” the killer was telling him. “Now it’s your turn.”

Even the bomb through the letterbox had been halfhearted – little more than a handful of powerful fireworks packed into a cardboard tube. If he’d wanted to kill me, couldn’t he have done that already? Shoot a single bullet from a silenced .44, then walk calmly away and melt into the crowd before anyone has even realised what’s happened.

“Marsdon,” said the sign, taking him unawares and making him question where his mind had been for the past twenty minutes.

He baulked at the first restaurant, a pushy place with fluorescent green shades and an egocentric sign plastered with recommendations and affiliations.

“Too busy,” he complained, with hardly more than a peep through the lace curtains. Too many nooks and crannies, was what he really meant; too many cozy romantic niches where who-knows-what could be going on under the tables, and who-knows-who could be hiding, waiting to pounce; too many candles and not enough light to spot a killer. Don’t be ridiculous, he said to himself, how could he possible know you were coming here? He could have followed us ... The way you’ve had your head stuck in the mirrors – you must be crazy. You’ve smacked the kerb three times – good job it’s a hire car.

“This looks different,” he said, driving on and catching sight of a gallows sign outside a barn-like building. “The Carpenter’s Kitchen,” proclaimed the legend under a carved pictograph of a chef’s hat surrounded by saws, mallets and unrecognisable implements.

The earthy odour of freshly milled wood hit them as Bliss opened the solid church-type door. Quickly stooping to avoid the rough-hewn beams at headache height, he ran his eye along the warped plank flooring. “It’s like being below decks in an old Schooner,” he said with unmistakeable delight.

“Look at this,” replied Daphne dashing off to fondle a diminutive wooden replica of Michelangelo’s David.

“’Tis all ’and carved,” said a buckled old man in workman’s overalls and carpenter’s apron, stepping from behind a sculpted pillar. “An’ ’tis all for sale ...” he added, his head screwing awkwardly on a spine fixed by years of bending over a workbench.

“We wanted dinner actually,” queried Bliss. “This is a restaurant, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, ’course ’tis – upstairs. You go on up. That boy o’ mine’ll look after you.”

Bliss was having second thoughts, fearful the food might have absorbed the characteristics of sawdust, but at least there were no Volvos in the car park.

“I think it’s rather quaint,” said Daphne, dawdling to admire award-winning turnings and carvings. “Oh look at this cat,” she said, stroking the life-like carving. “It reminds me of my old tom – the General.”

Five minutes later the cat, elm with walnut inlay and bright glass eyes, sat alert on the dining table checking out the dozen or so other guests in the upstairs dining room.

“Sit where you like,” the old man’s “boy” had said, and Daphne placed her purchase on a table sliced from the bole of an ancient tree, every growth ring clearly countable.

“Cinnamon,” she sniffed, then sat and picked a curled stick from a centrepiece of shaved rosewood, sandalwood and cedar. “I love cinnamon,” she added, running it under her nose. “It’s so Christmassy, don’t you think?”

Bliss frowned. “Would you mind if I sat there?” he said, holding out the other chair for her, inviting her to move.

She caught on. “I suppose you want your back to the wall, Chief Inspector – is that a man thing?”

He laughed it off. “No – it’s a policeman thing.”

She moved and the “boy” came back with the menus. Fifty-five guessed Bliss, but Daphne put him in his late forties – he had young hands, she explained later.

The menus were in keeping with the general theme. “I hate this sort of thing,” said Bliss, turning up his nose at the contorted literary, culinary and carpentry amalgamations. “Listen to this – Oak-smoked joint of venison with sauce of wood mushrooms and potato logs.”

“Oh don’t be so stuffy, it sounds rather good, and look they’ve got woodcock and wood grouse. Though I think I’d prefer something I can talk through – I don’t want to have to concentrate, nothing finicky – no bones. And nothing awkward like lobster or spaghetti.”

“I think I’ll have a steak,” said Bliss, reading aloud. “Grilled over charcoal burnt from Oak, Pine and Mesquite.”

“That sounds good,” muttered Daphne, though her face said she was still giving some thought to her selection. “You were very quiet in the car, Chief Inspector,” she said, looking up from the menu. “I guess you have something on your mind.”

Blue Volvos, funny little men snooping into hotel registers and untimely death. “The Major’s face actually ...” he started, then paused. “It was pretty horrific. I don’t want to put you off your dinner.”

“No – I’m interested. Carry on.”

“Well, it was only a skeleton but the jaw and cheek bones had been stitched together with silver wire. The surgeon had obviously done his best, but there simply wasn’t enough bone. It reminded me of a horror movie. One of those low budget ones, Frankenstein’s Brother’s Monster or something. Anyway, the plot was that Frankenstein’s brother made an even more monstrous creature out of all the bits the doctor had left over when he’d finished his monster.”

“Are you making this up?”

“No – I don’t think so … Anyway, that’s what he looked like. And I thought it was significant that the pathologist had removed the face bones before showing the students the skull. I guess he didn’t want anybody throwing up all over the mortuary floor.”

“That would be the Major alright,” said Daphne, her face puckering in awful memory of the mutilated face. “He looked a right mess when he came back ...”

The barman cut into their conversation. “Would you care for drinks while you’re looking at the menu?”

“I think I need an aperitif – something to bolster me up, something with a bit of body,” mused Daphne. “A Dubonnet, I think, with just a twist of lemon to take the edge off the sweetness.”

“A scotch for me, please,” said Bliss.

“Anything with that, Sir – ice perhaps?”

“Neat, thanks.”

“We do something called a Scotch Pine ...”

“Just the whiskey – thank you,” he replied, his tone sharp enough to draw blood.

“That’s why he got the D.S.O.,” continued Daphne, her mind still on Major Dauntsey. “They say that even though he was injured and under fire, he still managed to carry one of his wounded men more than three miles toward a first aid station. He wouldn’t let anyone help – said it was his duty.”

“But I understood he could hardly speak.”

“That was after the explosion,” she nodded in agreement. “The man he was carrying literally blew up in his face and ripped off his arm. A grenade they think – on his belt or in his pocket. Either the pin jerked out or a sniper’s bullet hit it. Anyway, the explosion killed the soldier and blew away half the Major.”

The drinks arrived. Bliss slugged his back. “I needed that. So what was Arnie talking about? He said the Major had got them all killed because he made them tidy up instead of retreat.”

“I heard the rumours,” said Daphne, taking a few thoughtful sips. “He was hailed as a hero at first; given the D.S.O. for the way he’d dragged the injured man out under fire. It was only later, when the few survivors got back, that they started telling a different story; that the whole thing was his fault. But you know what the Army’s like. They’d never admit a mistake – especially when committed by a senior commissioned officer.”

“Sounds a bit like the police force,” muttered Bliss.

“Anyway, what were they going to do – court martial a one-eyed man who didn’t have a right hand to hold a bible or a voice to speak the oath?”

“But was Arnie right? Did he make the men clear up the battlefield before retreating?”

“Who knows?” she shrugged. “It’s the maxim of all peons worldwide. If anything goes wrong – blame the boss.”

“So you don’t believe it then?”

“If he did do what Arnie said then he must have had a good reason. Only idiots set out deliberately to do the wrong thing.”

“But wasn’t he an idiot? Arnie seemed to think so.”

“He went to university.”

“Money,” scoffed Bliss.

“And he became a Major,” she added.

“Influence, connections. Don’t forget, his father was a Colonel. What were the recruiters going to say? Anyway, it was wartime – the ability to breathe was high on the list of selection criteria.”

The waiter was back with a wooden bowl overflowing with cheese sticks. Daphne was still undecided, torn between the wood-pigeon pie and the off-cuts of oak-smoked turkey, and asked for a few more minutes.

“So where do you go from here?” she asked Bliss as the waiter headed for another table.

“We’re just spinning our wheels,” he replied, idly nibbling a stick. “We’re checking for missing persons; waiting for blood tests on the duvet; pulling Jonathon’s house to pieces and digging his garden – the other body has to be somewhere, but we’re stumped until it turns up. I’ll have to talk to Doreen again tomorrow. Somebody has to tell her that her husband’s dead.”

“Well, I don’t think it will come as much of a shock.”

“What do you mean?”

“Chief Inspector – if anybody knew where the body was you can be sure it would have been Doreen Dauntsey. Losing your husband isn’t like leaving an umbrella on a bus.”

“I’ve been putting it off until we’ve confirmed his identity.”

“Is there some doubt ...?”

“No – not really. It’s just that Jonathon was so adamant.”

“Well, personally, I’ve no doubt it was Rupert from the way you describe the wounds. Most people couldn’t bear to look at him. Of course, he wasn’t what you might call well-known in the town. He went away to one of them pricey prep schools, then onto Marlborough College – I think. And he spent most holidays in Scotland on the estate. And his father, the Colonel, was none too popular – crusty old bastard – thought he was still in the guards the way he’d order the locals about. And he seemed to think the police were his personal retainers from what I’ve heard.”

“No wonder Rupert turned out the way he did.”

“What way?”

Gay; queer; poof; fairy – he ran through the list in his mind searching for the word she had previously used to describe him and was struck by the incongruity of the situation. The woman in front of him was old enough to be his grandmother – at a stretch – yet enveloped in the wrinkled skin and white hair was a young imp. It was in her eyes – the daredevil look that said she would still take on the world, or a frisky con-artist. I bet Andrew’s bollocks still ache from last night, he thought to himself. That’ll teach him.

“What way did Rupert turn out, Chief Inspector?” she persisted.

Had he misinterpreted what she’d said about the Major. “You know ...” he began, suspecting she was teasing him, “ ... batting for the other side.”

She shrugged it off with a smile. “Like I told you – it was only a rumour, and I’m not sure I believed it myself, especially after he married Doreen.”

“Well, what if I told you I’m beginning to think that the Major wasn’t Jonathon’s father?”

“I could have told you that.”

“You could?”

“Yes, in fact I was going to tell you on Wednesday evening, then you dashed off and left me ...” her face soured at the thought of Andrew and she sweetened it with a slurp of Dubonnet. “Anyway, after our chat on Monday evening I got to thinking about what had happened, and one or two things just didn’t make sense ...” She paused for a moment’s deliberation, then admitted, “I’ve been a bit naughty, I’m afraid, but when I was polishing the custody officer’s desk I couldn’t help noticing Jonathon’s custody record sort of sticking out of the filing cabinet. Anyway, his date of birth was the 4th of April, 1945.”

Bliss laughed, “Just sort of sticking out was it? Although I must admit I didn’t check his birth date.”

“Well, you had no reason to, but I did a little calculation. I’m pretty sure that Doreen and the Major were married on the 27th of May 1944, it might have been the 26th but I think it was the 27th, Anyway, he went off to his regiment the following day, so, unless she was 10 months pregnant when Jonathon was born, he definitely isn’t a Dauntsey.”

Bliss added up the months in his head and laughed. “You’re absolutely right. Although ... what about when he returned ...”

Daphne blocked him with a hand. “The baby would already have been born. In any case, according to Doreen, his thingy was one of the bits which had been blown off.”

The thought set Bliss’s teeth on edge. “Ooh, painful ... So who is Jonathon’s father?”

“You’d have to ask Doreen – but to be honest there’s a good chance she won’t know. Oh dear, that sounds so bitchy, doesn’t it – the sort of thing one of those Hollywood actresses would say.”

The waiter was hovering for their order and Bliss expressed intrigue in the Dovetail pâté as a starter.

“Wood pigeons,” explained the waiter. “Though the chef uses the whole birds not just the tails.”

“Sounds interesting,” he said giving a nod.

“Compote of wood mushrooms for me, please,” said Daphne, adding sotto voce, “I do hope they use bolets du bois and not those tasteless white button things.” Once the waiter had moved off with their order, Daphne continued, “I came across the Major in France. After he was wounded, before he was shipped home.”

Everything suddenly fell into place in Bliss’s mind and he held up his hand, beaming, “I’ve got it now, you were a nurse; Queen Alexandra’s I bet; went in with the troops on the front lines – hence the O.B.E. No wonder you like looking after people, taking birds under your wing.”

“Detective Inspector,” she started, getting his title right for once, pointing up the gravity of what she was about to divulge. “It’s rather sweet that you should imagine me in a blood covered apron, comforting the wounded, but it would be dishonest of me to let you go on believing that, and it wouldn’t be sensible in the long run.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you but I wasn’t a nurse – my job wasn’t to save lives.”

“What did you do?”

Daphne appeared not to hear as she stroked the wooden cat. “I hope you don’t put the General’s nose out of joint, he can be very jealous at times,” she said, then, without changing tone or taking her eyes off the statue, asked, “Do you ever tell lies, Dave?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s very honest,” she looked up quizzically, “unless you’re lying.”

“Daphne – What on earth are you rambling about? All I wanted to know was what you did during the war.”

With a final stroke of the cat she seemed to make up her mind. Fixing Bliss with a hard stare she stunned him. “I killed people.”

Bliss choked – seriously choked. He’d taken a sharp involuntary breath at the wrong moment and inhaled a flake of pastry from a cheese stick.

“Water,” he coughed, and took several slurps before trying to speak through the spluttering – “You ... killed ... people?”

“I knew I should have lied ... Here, have some more water, you’re going red.”

The waiter was back. “Something wrong, Madam?”

“He’s choking.”

“Don’t make a fuss,” Bliss pleaded, gasping for air.

“More water, Sir?”

He waved the glass away and doubled over with coughing and retching. The lights were going out – fading into a fuzzy haze, his eyes were streaming, his oxygen-starved brain was struggling for a solution and all he could think was – this sweet little old lady’s a killer.

A dozen pairs of hooded eyes sneaked a look, conversations drifted to a standstill. Time held it’s breath. Waiting for what? Then Daphne leapt out of her chair, ran around the table and smashed her fist into his back. Bliss exploded in a fit of coughing, panting and wheezing as he forced his lungs to inhale, but the obstruction had cleared and he gasped himself back to normality.

“You nearly choked to death,” said Daphne, her voice full of concern as she re-sat.

“What d’ye expect after what you just told me?” he replied accusingly.

“I’m not proud of what I did. And quite honestly I’d rather you kept this just between us.”

“But who did you kill? When? Why? – I don’t understand.”

She shut him out again, going back to the cat, then reminding him. “We came to talk about the Major.”

“You can’t do that – You can’t give me a heart-attack then change the subject. This isn’t the Women’s Institute – ‘You can finish the crochet at home ladies, now we’re starting the strawberry jam.’”

“You are funny, Chief Inspector.”

“No, I’m serious. I want to know.”

Daphne spent a few moments brushing crumbs off the table then her eyes locked onto one of the table’s growth-rings and she followed it around until it disappeared under Bliss’s left hand. “People do things in wars,” she began sombrely, concentrating on his fingers. “Disgusting things; things they’d never dream of doing normally; things they’d never admit having done ...” The turmoil of indecision slowed her speech. “I wish I hadn’t said anything ...” she paused then looked up, pleading with her eyes. “Don’t say anything, will you?”

He wouldn’t, he assured her.

“I belonged to a special unit during the war,” she began, explaining calmly. “French-speaking men and women trained for a specific mission during the invasion of France. The Allies were concerned the French would side with the Germans after D-Day and turn on our troops.”

“Why should they?”

“Fear mainly – the Gestapo had rounded up many Frenchmen and sent them to concentration camps. Almost every family had at least one member who’d been arrested and imprisoned and the threat was clear – cooperate or they die. But the French had other reasons.”

“What reasons – surely we were liberating them?”

“That’s true, though some still hadn’t forgiven us for deserting them at Dunkirk and don’t forget we’d destroyed their fleet at Oran – killed thousands of sailors to stop the Vichy Government handing the ships over to the Germans.” Checking to make sure she wasn’t being overheard, she lowered her voice a couple of notches. “And they never liked us very much in the first place.”

“I still don’t understand. What were you expected to do – kill Frenchman before they could kill our people?”

“No – of course not. We were trained to prepare the way for the invading forces – let the French know we were coming as allies to free the country, not turn it into a British colony like the Germans claimed in their propaganda; to warn them to keep away from the coast; persuade them to dig in or hide in the cellars. We were supposed to galvanise the resistance to co-ordinate the blowing up of bridges, derailment of trains, blocking roads, that sort of thing. But the main task was to get behind enemy lines and vector artillery fire onto concentrations of German troops. Once the battle started our people wouldn’t have a clue where the fleeing Jerries were and the danger was we could have wiped out the local population without even scratching the enemy. So you see, it was my job to kill people.”

The first course arrived and the interruption gave Bliss an opportunity to get his thoughts together.

This wasn’t bad, he thought, this wasn’t the admission of some deranged old biddy who had wiped out half the inmates of an old peoples home with arsenic in the soup; this wasn’t a rampaging granny mowing down the queue in the post office because her welfare cheque hadn’t arrived; this wasn’t a mobster in a mask ...

“It was wartime – people die. You said so yourself,” he began, offering absolution, but she sliced into a mushroom with such fierce concentration that he backed off and centred on his pâté.

“How did you get there?” he tried conversationally after a few minutes.

“Parachute.”

“You parachuted into France?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Was it during the day or at night?”

“Night.”

“Did you have a reserve?”

“No.”

“Are you going to keep this up all evening? … I said, are you …”

“I heard you, Chief Inspector, but sometimes it’s best to leave old skeletons in the cupboard.”

“That’s exactly what Jonathon said.”

“He was right then.”

Bliss sat back with an admiring smile. “I can’t get over that. You – parachuting out of a plane over enemy territory in the middle of the night.”

“I sometimes wonder if it was a dream myself.”

Bliss took a few moments to finish his pâté’ and used the hiatus to study her with deepening respect, realising that if it were anyone but Daphne talking he’d probably not believe a word of what they were saying. But there was something so totally sincere in her manner. “So what happened?” he asked eventually.

Daphne toyed indecisively with the remaining mushroom – shunting it back and forth across her plate.

Then she edged it onto the rim and started working it around.

“Daphne – I said, what happened?”

The mushroom went round and around the plate rim, faster and faster, but there was no way out.

“Daphne?”

She stopped, stabbed the mushroom angrily with her fork and looked straight through him, focusing somewhere far off in the distance – somewhere in the past. “I was cold, wet , miserable and scared to death. My partner ... my friend ... hit a power line. Electrocuted – dead. He had the maps. I wandered – lost, disorientated, hungry for two or three days – then the guns started.” Her eyes closed as the barrage went off in her mind and she sat silent until the noise had faded.

“A young French woman, my age, was lying by the side of the road covered in blood, screaming,” she said as she re-opened her eyes, but her voice was as distant as her gaze. “She’d been shot or hit by shrapnel.”

Mandy Richards was back, her crimson chest stippled with shreds of green blouse. And her killer – blood and snot dribbling out of his nose – his face more ghastly than the mask that had been pulled off. And now another face had got stirred into the horrific mental morass – the Major’s face, or what was left of it: half a shattered jaw strung up with wire and a few rotten teeth set at crazy angles.

But Daphne was having her own nightmare.

“When I bent down to see if I could help I realised she had a baby, wrapped in a fluffy blue blanket soaked in blood. ‘Take my baby – please take my baby,’ the poor girl was screaming.’ ‘Where to?’ I said. ‘To my mother – Mama – she will take care of him. Please, please take him.’ She paused and stared over Bliss’s shoulder at a blank wall, waiting for the pain to abate – hoping she might wake before the worst. ‘Where is your mother?’ I asked,” – the horror movie refusing to stop in her mind. “And she gave me the name of the town ... I couldn’t believe my luck. It was the town where I was supposed to be and it was still behind enemy lines. I was desperate ... I had to get there ... I still had my job to do. Without me our artillery would just destroy the whole place.”

Burying her head in her hands Daphne tried shutting out the images, then gave up and confronted herself with the facts. “I took her bicycle and put my radio in the wicker carrier, you know the sort that all French bikes have ... and ... ” she paused again, fighting off the memory, hoping it had never happened – hoping it was only a movie. “And ...” she tried again. “And ... I wrapped her baby in my shawl ... and ...” The words wouldn’t come.

Bliss shook off his own demons and helped out. “And the baby ...?” he asked.

“I put him in the basket on top of the radio.” There, I’ve said it. Now finish the story. “And I rode away. ‘Good luck,’ she called, ‘Bon chance – Bon chance. Tell my mother I’ll be home in a day or so,’ she cried. ‘I’ll be home as soon as the guns have stopped. Tell her not to worry.’”

She sat silent for a few moments, still staring through the wall as images piled up in her mind and she sorted them in order. “A British soldier tried to stop me at a checkpoint. He was sure I was French. Of course, I looked French – that was all part of the training. We had French instructors – girls our own age who had escaped or been in England at the start of the war. With the French it’s not just the language, it’s the way you stick out your bum and pout; the way you sniff everything; the way you use your hands to talk.

“‘Cor blimey, Miss, you sound as though you’ve just come off Brighton beach,’ he said.

“‘Let me through or I’ll ...’” She paused, “Well, you can imagine what I said.

“‘Ere,’ he said, ‘You’re English, ain’t you?’

“‘Of course I’m English you bloody little twerp,’ I said, though I wasn’t quite so polite.

“‘Well I’m blowed,’ he said. ‘But you can’t go through there, Miss. The h’enemy’s up ahead. They’ll mow you down,’ he said.

“‘Get out the way,’ I said, shoving him off.

“‘I’ll shoot,’ he shouted.”

Then she smiled in memory. “‘What’s your name?’ I said. “‘Corporal something-or-other,’ he said.

“‘Right Corporal,’ I said. ‘If you shoot me, I’ll wrap that gun round your bleedin’ head and when I get back home I’ll tell your mother what you did. Now bugger off.’” Bliss’s broad grin ended in a chuckle as she continued.

“I couldn’t believe how quiet it was as I cycled up that road, as if the guns were holding their breath, I even heard a bird singing – in the middle of a battle, a bird – incredible.” She paused at the memory, re-creating the sound in her mind. “Then I saw my first Germans, camouflaged, scuttling into the ditches and aiming. I stopped and got off – didn’t know what to do, then I thought ... wave something white. I had to use my knickers in the end, I didn’t have anything else white. ‘Achtung! Achtung – Stoppe,’ they shouted. But I just kept going until a machine gunner took out my front wheel. I couldn’t leave the bike – the baby and my radio were in the basket, so I got up and pushed it with one hand, waving my knickers in the air with the other – what must they have thought of me – a desperate prostituée with a wobbly front wheel I guess. I kept shouting ‘Let me through’ in French. ‘My baby needs his father.’”

Bliss was breathless with anticipation, “What happened?”

“There were six of them, only boys really – young hoodlums. Today they’d be spraying graffiti on bridges or dealing grass in the Hauptstrasse Burger Bar, but somebody had got them up as soldiers and given them real guns with live ammo, so they felt pretty big. One of them spoke French, badly. ‘What do you have in there?’ he asked, pointing his gun at the basket. ‘My baby,’ I said. ‘I live over there and I want to go home, my husband is waiting for his dinner and my baby needs feeding.’ I don’t think he understood, and one of the others kept screaming, ‘Shoot her – just shoot her.’ Then one of them said something crude. My German wasn’t very good but I knew what he was suggesting ‘Look,’ he said, ‘She’s got her knickers off already.’”

The main course arrived, served on wooden platters, and Bliss started to eat, silently, dying to tell her to continue, but, sensing the fragility of her condition, left her to choose the moment. Daphne had yet to start her turkey and was pushing pieces of it around her plate, then she slammed her knife and fork onto the table making him jump. “I don’t know why I feel I have to explain ...” she began, her fists clenched in fierce anger.

“You don’t,” he said soothingly, and reached out to comfort her. But they both knew that she did have to explain – that she would explain – that she needed to explain.

“I wish they had raped me – all of them,” she began again, her voice subdued, and with the words came tears. She wiped them with her napkin then carried on crying and talking at the same time. “It wouldn’t have mattered – not really. I would have got over it in time.”

“They didn’t rape you?” he asked kindly as she paused to wipe her eyes again.

“No,” she sniffled. “They took the baby. One of them picked it out of the basket. I thought they’d see the radio – I couldn’t let them see the radio, so I started screaming, ‘Donnez-moi mon bébé – Give me back my baby – Give me back my baby.’”

“‘Do you want your baby?’ he said, holding it high in the air, taunting me.”

“‘Give me my baby,’ I cried.” And her eyes found the distant spot again as she fought back the tears.

“He threw the baby – not at me – at one of the others, but a shell exploded and he turned just at the wrong moment. He wasn’t looking.” She paused to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, then looked right into Bliss’s eyes. “They just walked away – ‘It doesn’t matter – we’ll all be dead tomorrow,’ one of them said.” She hesitated for a moment to compose herself, then, more calmly, continued. “I was surrounded by death yet that baby meant everything to me – I’d promised his mother you see.” The tears came again and she started to get up. “You’ll have to excuse me, Dave,” she snivelled. “I’m just a silly old woman. I’ll be back in a minute – fix up my face.”

He rose with her. “Will you be alright?”

She patted him back down. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Bliss was on the verge of seeking her out when she returned, dry-eyed, though her face was flushed.

“I didn’t come back to England after the war,” she explained. I couldn’t face my mother and her snotty friends. ‘And what did you do in the war, little Ophelia?’ they would have asked, their little pinkies poking the air as they sipped Earl Grey and pretended to be posh. What would I have said? You nearly choked to death when I told you – imagine what they would have said, ‘Oh how dreadful,’ she put on a plummy accent, ‘How could you, Ophelia?’ Then they would have asked for another cucumber sandwich.”

Bliss found himself laughing – nervous relief, he assumed. Relieved she’d got over the worst – that she was able to make light of it, however dreadful it had been. But the worst was to come.

“It’s not funny. You were shocked because you assumed I’d been a nurse. It’s so stereotypical – men maim and women mend. But that wasn’t me. That wasn’t cheeky-faced Ophelia Lovelace from Westchester Church of England School, and Mrs. Fanshawe’s ballet class for the daughter’s of gentle folk. This was Daphne Lovelace – murderer. I killed people, Dave – hundreds of people. I picked up the dead baby, wrapped it in the shawl, put it back in the basket, then went into that town and found a whole garrison of Germans frantically packing to withdraw. And I got on my little radio and told them to bomb the fuck out of the place – don’t screw up your nose like that, I was saying fuck before you were born – I wanted shells raining down on the Germans, pulping them into the ground, pulverising the life out of them. I wanted to kill every last one of them. And do you know – it felt good. It felt so good after what they did to my baby. It felt so good I didn’t care anymore. If my radio hadn’t worked, I would have stood in the middle of the town waving my knickers at the bombers, screaming, ‘Down here – the fucking Krauts are down here – bomb the bastards to pieces.’”

“Is everything alright, Sir?” interrupted the waiter noticing they weren’t eating.

Bliss testily shooed him away. “Fine, fine.”

Daphne sat, eyes glazed into the distance, flicking back and forth as if she were watching the battle going on behind them. As if every flash and blast were being replayed in her brain. “And the bombs came,” she carried on, with powerful emotion. “The shells came, and I was in the middle of it. It was like God had turned the volume up to 11. The noise was so loud I could see it – each new bomb or shell sending shockwaves of sound smashing into the columns of smoke, tearing them apart. Everything was shaking – buildings; trees; the ground. One earthquake after another and I was right in the middle of it. I was the bull’s-eye and I didn’t care.”

Her eyes drifted to a close as the battle raged in her mind, then they popped open as if she had remembered something really important. “It was in colour – that was the strangest thing really. Not black and white like the documentaries and movies. More colour than I’d ever seen. Not ordinary colours – colours so vivid I wanted to shout, ‘Cor look at that!’ Brilliant white and yellow flashes that hurt my eyes, glowing reds and oranges like mini sunsets, spring-green fields and freshly leafed trees. And the sky – the clearest, brightest, warmest blue. It was as if God didn’t know there was a war going on. I remember thinking, over and over, why doesn’t God stop this – he doesn’t care, he couldn’t even make the day miserable. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been drizzly and cold. Nobody wants to die on a lovely summer’s day. I was so mad with God for doing that I never really made it up with him. I suppose I shall find out soon enough whether or not he ever forgave me.”

“Forgave you for killing Germans?” he asked, unsure.

“Do you think they wanted to die, Dave? Do you think they couldn’t see the sky or hear the birds?”

“Your dinner’s getting cold,” he said, not having an answer and they ate in reflective silence for a while.

“Have you ever been back?” he asked when the air had settled.

“I go back occasionally,” she answered, concealing, by the languidness of her words, the hundreds of hours she had spent pacing the quaint cobblestone streets, interrogating startled strangers, desperately scouring every face for the young woman. Wanting to say, “I’m sorry about your baby.” Needing to say, “I’m sorry about your baby.” More than fifty years – still trying to make sense and move on, still trying to pull part of herself away. Like a harassed mother dragging a screaming kid from a toy shop window, knowing the moment she lets go he’ll race back.

“What about parachuting? Did you ever do it again?” he asked as the platters were taken away.

“I was going to once, just for fun, to celebrate my fiftieth ...” she paused in thought. “Or was it sixtieth? Anyway, when I went to the place they made such a fuss – training course; medical examination; static lines; instructors and such. I couldn’t be bothered with all that nonsense and I said, ‘Look here, young lady. I was jumping out of planes while your dad was still in short pants.’ It didn’t make any difference. They wouldn’t let me – not without all the rigmarole.”

Daphne ordered the Black Forest Gâteau for dessert – “There’s irony for you – now I’m eating their cakes.”

“The same for me,” said Bliss, too pre-occupied to make his own choice, and they sat in tense silence as the pressure built in his mind. There was more to be said, he knew it – Daphne sensed it. But it was his turn, not hers. Tell her about Mandy Richards, tell her about the baby.

“I killed a baby once,” he announced inside his mind, but the words wouldn’t come out. “I was hoping to get away from it eventually.”

What is this? he asked himself. A competition? My ghosts are more frightful than yours. Would it make her feel better? Would it make me feel better?

What would she say? One look at her sorry face gave him the answer: You’ll never escape completely.

A wooden cuckoo popped out of a clock and jump started the time.

“So, I suppose you’re gearing up for the auction tomorrow,” he said, enthusiastically digging into his gâteau.