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

Sidestepping a guilty feeling that he was abandoning the hunt for the Major, telling himself there was little he could do until the body surfaced, Bliss set off for London. The driver of a small blue Volvo obligingly let him escape from the Mitre car park into the High Street and, with a quick salute of thanks, he slipped his Rover into the stream of traffic heading out of town toward the motorway.

The grey overcast had evaporated into milky blue and the hazy sun was already drying off the damp pavements as Bliss navigated the narrow streets, barely aware that the Volvo was tagging along behind. As the road opened up Bliss swept aside the fears that had been with him since the morning’s visit to the Dauntsey house and he found himself conducting the 1812 overture, volume blaring, bass speakers pulsating.

The music, erupting with canons, muskets and rifle volleys, rose in a crescendo and transported Bliss away from the bloody murder of the Major to another time, another place, and an altogether different scenario of violent death. In his mind he conjured formations of brightly festooned French Dragoons sweeping across the steppes, swooping out of the early morning mist, sabres and lances glinting in the sunrise, only to be mown down by a terrifying rabble of Cossacks armed with broadswords.

The triumphant chorus and jubilant peel of bells signified the finale of the orchestrated battle and Bliss savoured each chord almost as though it were the last time he would hear it. The final strains hung in his ears for a few seconds then the air stilled. The gentle buzz of the engine and the steady hum of the tyres on the road seemed only to augment the sense of tranquillity that had returned. Bliss loosened his grip on the wheel, relaxed back into his seat and glanced in the rear-view mirror. He jerked alert – the Volvo was still there and a chill rippled through him as he caught a glimpse of it slipping in behind a van. “Don’t be stupid,” he chided himself, dismissing immediately the possibility that he was being followed.

Why would someone be following me?

You know why. You remember what Mandy Richards’ murderer had screamed across the courtroom at the Old Bailey? He remembered. The killer’s words were forever burned into his brain. “I’ll get you for this copper – I’ll get you.”

Forget it, thought Bliss. Ignore it – it’ll go away. Like you ignored the threatening letters, the midnight phone-calls and the shadowy stalker, until someone put a bomb through your letterbox and took out your front door.

O.K., he conceded, but don’t panic. He’ll be more nervous than me.

Why? He’s done it before, remember. And he’s already spent one lifetime in prison: becoming acclimatised to the routine, inured to the coarseness and violence and revelling in the irresponsibility of institutional life. So how will he do it – run me off the road into a bridge support; pull alongside and put a single bullet in my brain; or pick off a tyre and laugh as I lose control and career into a bus or truck.

Passing an exit ramp, he checked the mirrors again. A small blue car was dissolving into the distance as it slowed in the deceleration lane and he admonished himself for allowing his imagination to run away with him. With a sigh of relief he rummaged through a glove-box of cassette tapes, seeking something less climactic than Tchaikovsky, and pulled himself together, telling himself that he was being ridiculous. A hit-man wouldn’t be driving a Volvo, he told himself. A hit-man wouldn’t be seen dead in a Volvo. Hoodlums don’t drive poky little Volvos with more safety features than a spermicidal condom. He would be a Jag man, or a Mercedes or BMW. Even the smallest of petty villains could manage a Jaguar, especially a hot one, and Mandy’s murderer was no small time villain.

Relaxing, Bliss amused himself with the notion of a villain turning up at a mobster’s convention, wearing a slick suit with an ominous bulge under his left armpit, driving a little blue family saloon. But five minutes later the Volvo was still there and his pulse raced as he spotted it tailgating a large yellow rental van with the hire company’s telephone number emblazoned across the bonnet. Ignoring the blare of an annoyed motorist’s horn he eased out and straddled the white line as he manoeuvred into a position where he could see the following driver. Peering deeply into the mirror he sought a familiar face, and a familiar pair of eyes – the same icy eyes that had stared unflinchingly at him across the courtroom eighteen years earlier as he stood in the witness box describing the pointless murder of Mandy Richards. But he couldn’t see, not clearly. His vision was obscured by distance and the constantly shifting traffic that conspired time and again to block his view.

Vowing to concentrate on his driving, he dismissed worries about the Volvo but couldn’t dislodge Mandy Richards from his mind, demanding to know whether he would have ducked if he’d known someone was behind him in the bank? But he’d been through this a thousand times – knew the answer – knew there was no answer. He had ducked – flinging himself sprawling onto the floor as the blast ripped through the space he’d vacated – nothing could change that.

Mandy Richards’ memory continued its torment as he sped along. She would have been thirty-eight, if she’d lived, he calculated, recalling that she had been twenty when both barrels of the shotgun exploded and ripped a cavity in her chest large enough to get his fist into. She had been a pretty girl, beautiful he had thought, seeing her framed photograph propped on her coffin at the funeral, though he’d not noticed at the time of the shooting. His eyes and mind had focused only on the gaping wound.

A mental snapshot of the scene in the bank hit him with the stark clarity of an unkind mirror and the road ahead dissolved into images of screaming bank customers, terrified tellers crouching behind the counter, and a tiny girl in a red dress clutching her mother’s hand while a puddle of pee grew around her feet. And there, spread-eagled on the floor, the lifeless bundle of flesh that had been Mandy Richards.

He had seen the shots coming, not physically, not with his eyes. It was more of a feeling – a pulse of evil intent so strong he would have known the man was going to fire even if he hadn’t noticed the fingers tightening on the triggers. He had dropped to the floor, oblivious to the fact that the young woman was standing right behind him. She’d not felt the evil stare, hadn’t seen the tensing fingers. She was, in any case, too petrified to move in any direction.

The blast of acrid smoke from the gunshot still filled the air as Bliss picked himself off the floor, stared in horror for a fraction of a second at the crumpled rag-doll figure, then, without any deliberation as to the consequences, lunged at the hooded villain. Snatching the gun out of the startled man’s hand he set about him, slamming the barrels into his ribs, doubling him over, then pounding him repeatedly over the head until an assistant manager vaulted the counter, staid his arm, and brought him to his senses.

The gunman, a professional mobster in a comical Maggie Thatcher mask, slumped motionless into a corner with tendrils of blood dribbling out from under the mask and creeping down his T-shirt and Bliss stood back, his elation quickly turning to horror as he realised what he’d done. It had been the mask, he reasoned later when he’d had a chance to cool down. He couldn’t have beaten an unarmed man senseless, whatever the provocation, but, dehumanised by the mask, the robber had brought the attack on himself.

What else could I have done? What else could I have done? he kept asking himself as both customers and staff cringed fearfully away from him. And he was stunned by the look of revulsion on the face of the woman clutching the wet child. Who was the villain here?

“Police!” he shouted to the stunned bystanders as if justifying his actions. “Get an ambulance!” he continued, screaming at no-one in particular, rushing across the blood-slickened marble floor to tend to the young woman who had taken the blast intended for him.

“Oh my God,” he sighed, seeing her pulverised chest, mentally tearing through the Red Cross first-aid manual, desperately searching for guidance on gunshot wounds – but his mental page was blank. O.K. Don’t panic, he said to himself, think about the general rules. The three “B’s” of first-aid flashed instantly to mind and he easily recalled the first two. “Breathing, Bleeding, and ...” but then his mind froze, unable to remember the third. He gave up and went with the first two, deciding the ambulancemen would arrive within seconds and take over before he had need of the third.

Picking up one of the girl’s limp wrists he dug in his fingers desperately searching for the rhythmic beat of a pulse – nothing. He gripped harder, so hard that he felt the beat of his own heart pulsing through his fingertips and, with rising optimism, stuck his ear to her mouth. She wasn’t breathing. She had nothing to breath with. A couple of hundred lead pellets had turned her lungs into pin cushions. But he wouldn’t give up – he couldn’t give up. It was his fault. If he hadn’t been so stupid. “Armed police,” he had shouted at the robber. Armed with what? A blank cheque and a ballpoint Biro.

“Get a fucking ambulance!” he screamed again as he knelt over her, still searching his memory for a meaning to accompany the third “B.”

“Stop the bleeding,” he ordered himself, but she wasn’t bleeding, the blood pump that had been her heart was as decimated as her lungs. “Put her in the recovery position then.” Recover – from this?

With his mind racing, desperately searching for a way to resurrect the dead girl until a doctor or ambulanceman could arrive with a defibrillator and oxygen mask, he set about tidying up her dishevelled chest. One breast ripped aside by the blast, still clinging to her body with a flap of skin, had flopped loosely to one side and he tenderly positioned the bloodied mound of flesh back in place but, beyond that, could think of little to do other than search for a pulse again, and again, and again.

Over the years, images of that displaced breast had sprung to mind whenever he thought of Mandy. It was her pulped lungs and pulverised heart that had ceased to keep her alive but, deep in his psyche, it was her mutilated breast that symbolised her demise.

“Where’s the ambulance?” he cried, convinced that someone with the right training could work a miracle.

“Where’s the police,” echoed one of the survivors huddling in a corner well away from the bandit and the dead woman.

“I am the police,” he screeched, stung by the implied criticism.

It had only been a couple of minutes since the gun’s blast had fractured the air and filled the young woman’s chest with lead-shot, yet those minutes had the mind-concentrating intensity of a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Do something! Do something! Bliss was screaming inside. Then he had a revelation, breathed “cardiac massage” in relief, and was convinced he had solved the first-aid riddle.

His elation wilted almost immediately as he realised that Mandy’s chest offered absolutely nothing solid to palpitate. Her sternum and half a dozen ribs had been blown into shards. His heart sank and, with an impatient eye on the door, he was reduced to carefully arranging her body ready for a stretcher. Ignoring the hole in her chest, inwardly praying that it might somehow heal itself, he stretched out her legs, smoothed the creases out of her skirt which had ruckled under her bottom.

“Put her in the recovery position,” suggested someone in the huddle of terrified customers.

Recover! From this? He said to himself and sat back, downhearted, to wait for the ambulance.

A close call with a speeding Rolls startled him from the nightmarish spectacle in the bank and forced him to check the mirror. The Volvo was still there. He shrugged it off as simply a coincidence, concluding that the driver just happened to be travelling to London, the same as him. However, a mile or so further on he felt himself soaring with relief as the other driver signalled his intention of leaving the motorway and swooped into the deceleration lane. Thank God, Bliss thought, switching his eyes and attention back to the road ahead. Behind him the trailing car took the exit lane and slowed to a crawl. Then, at the last moment, the Volvo swung back onto the motorway, tucked swiftly in behind a large pantechnicon and resumed the chase.

Bliss had just got his mind away from Mandy’s breasts and back on the Dauntsey mystery when fast approaching road works forced him to a crawl amongst bunching traffic. Slowing, he checked his mirror and caught a familiar flash of blue. “Shit!” he shouted, although he still couldn’t shift the underlying notion that a killer wouldn’t be seen dead in a Volvo.

O.K., I’ve had enough, he said to himself, pulled into the slow lane without indication, slammed on the brakes and steered for the hard shoulder.

“Let’s see what you do now,” he said, telepathically addressing the pursuer.

The Volvo shot past in a blur, tangled up in a knot of cars vans and trucks, but the glimpse of the driver’s profile was sufficient to tell him that the man was certainly of the right age and colour.

Skidding to a stop in a cloud of loose gravel, Bliss found himself next to an emergency phone and was already out of the car and picking it up before he stopped himself. What’s the point – what’s the emergency? I think I’m being followed! He dropped the phone with the realisation that he would have the motorway control officer in stitches.

“Some clown at Junction 129 reckons he’s being followed,” he imagined him laughing to his colleagues with his hand over the mouthpiece. “Can you give me a description?” the officer would ask with a barely concealed smirk.

“A blue Volvo.”

“And the registration number ...?”

“I don’t know ... S registration. I think.”

“You think?”

“I couldn’t see properly.”

The hand would slide back over the mouthpiece, “He says he couldn’t see.”

“What about the driver, Sir? Could you see him?” he imagined the next question might be.

“Male, white,” he would say and cringe while the control officer repeated the description sarcastically before saying, “I guess there’s not more than a quarter of a million Volvo drivers in the country fitting that description, Sir. It shouldn’t be too difficult working out which one was following you.”

“You don’t understand,” he would say in frustration, “this man’s a killer.”

“O.K., Sir. In that case you’d better give me a full description.”

That’s a good point – what does he look like? he asked himself, deciding against using the phone and getting back into the car. What did he look like 18 years ago? he tried to recall, then realised that the exercise was pointless. The killer would have gone from being little more than a teenager to almost middle-age in the intervening years. And what had eighteen years in prison done to him? He’d be forty-one now, thought Bliss, feeling foolish as he drove off, quickly picking up speed.

The Volvo, bonnet up, looking like a breakdown victim, was parked on the next overpass with the driver carefully scrutinising the vehicles passing below. Bliss’s Rover came into view and in a flash the blue bonnet was dropped and the small car was hurtling down the approach ramp and back on the motorway. Bliss saw. Already spooked, his senses were on high alert and he caught a glimpse of the blue car weaving in and out of traffic as the driver struggled to catch up to him.

“One more test,” he mused and patiently waited until the car had settled into place behind a Volkswagen van. Then he indicated his intention of moving into the fast lane.

“Yes,” he said triumphantly as the Volvo nosed out from behind the Volkswagen and began to overtake.

“Now let’s see what you’ll do,” he said, cancelling the indicator and braking slowly. The Volvo slid smoothly back in behind the Volkswagen just as he suspected it would.

“Gotcha,” he said, but took little satisfaction in proving his point. Now what? he asked as warning sirens blared in his mind: Speed up; slow down; turn off; get the number ... Yes! Get the number and write it down. At least leave a record in the wreckage and hope that, whatever happens, the Rover doesn’t explode in a fireball when the bullets rip into it.

“Dauntsey played up to the old witch,” Donaldson fumed as he left the court an hour later with D.S. Patterson in one car, while Jonathon Dauntsey was carted away by his solicitor in another. “Bail!” he screamed. “Bail for a fucking murderer. Did you see the look she gave him?”

Patterson, and half the people in the public gallery, had witnessed the metamorphosis as the hatchet-faced old magistrate had preened back a few wispy strands of her silvery hair, put on a sympathetic smile, and locked eyes with Dauntsey in the prisoner’s dock. “The police are asking that you be remanded to their custody for another three days, Mr. Dauntsey. Is there anything you would like to say at this time?”

Dauntsey cleared his throat affectedly, dropped his head deferentially and spoke in a soft clear tone, “I’m certain that you will make the right decision, Ma’am – I am in your hands.”

In your bed as well, thought Donaldson, if the gooey-eyed look on his face meant anything.

“Are you not applying for bail, Mr. Dauntsey?” she continued with an encouraging mien and a clear implication that he should.

Superintendent Donaldson leaned into the crown prosecutor and whispered. “What the hell is she playing at?”

The rotund little prosecutor barrelled to his feet and coughed loudly. “I feel I should remind your worship that this is a murder case, Ma’am.”

Her face hardened back to steel as she swung on him. “And you don’t have a body, do you?”

“No, Ma’am.”

The hearing had gone downhill from then on. A court solicitor had been appointed, bail applied for and, despite vociferous objections by the crown prosecutor whose bald head had turned apoplectic purple, it had been granted.

Detective Sergeant Patterson and his superintendent had hit the town centre at afternoon rush hour en-route back to the police station and Donaldson had pulled some papers from his briefcase to occupy himself, but Patterson was incensed by what had occurred and had whinged angrily about the magistrate from the moment they left the court. “It really pissed me off when she asked if he had any complaints about the way we’d treated him,” he moaned angrily. “What did she think – that we’d used thumbscrews?”

“Probably,” mumbled the superintendent without consideration.

“Did you hear her sweet-talking him?” continued Patterson, then he mimicked the old woman’s crackly voice. “‘Now then, Mr. Dauntsey. Are you going to tell the police what happened to your father’s body?’ And what did he say in that smarmy voice of his? ‘I feel it would be best if he is allowed to remain at peace.’ Huh! It’s enough to make you chuck-up.”

Donaldson was trying to concentrate on his work and his tone had a tinge of annoyance. “Just don’t chuck up in the car, Sergeant.”

Patterson wasn’t listening, his mind was still back in the court. “It got me the way she says, ‘In view of the fact that he won’t tell me, I see no reason why he should tell you.’ I do – If I had my way I’d put me boot in his bollocks – that’d make him squeal.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it, Sergeant, but it’s purely academic. We still haven’t found the body and he’s been granted bail. Now ... if you don’t mind ...”

But Patterson was boiling and couldn’t resist grumbling. “I thought she was gonna give him twenty quid out of the poor box.”

Donaldson’s look of annoyance eventually shut him up but half a minute later a defective traffic light gave the sergeant time, and an excuse, to start talking again. “Bloody light’s broke,” he moaned, then abruptly changed the subject. “Mr. Bliss is gonna be pretty upset when he gets back.”

Donaldson ignored him. The silence sat heavily for a few seconds, then Patterson tried prodding, “He’s gone to London – It must have been something important.”

“’S’pect so.”

“He seems like a good man – our new D.I.”

“Uh – huh,” nodded Donaldson his head still buried in paperwork.

“I expect he’ll find it quiet here after the Met.”

“Probably.”

“I mean ... It’s not always this busy. We don’t get a murder everyday.”

“Thank God.”

“So, was he actually at Scotland Yard? – our D.I. Bliss.”

“Guess so.”

“I jus’ wondered, ’cos I was talking to someone at the Yard yesterday and they didn’t know him.”

“It’s a big place.”

“Yeah – but you’d think they’d ... ”

Donaldson looked up and protested. “Sergeant ... Are you trying to drive this car or drive me round the bend?”

“Drive the car, Sir.”

“Well shut up and drive then.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

Bliss was still driving; still trying to get a look at the Volvo’s number plate and the face of the driver; still trying to remember the face beneath the mask.

It was the bank’s under-manager who had eventually steeled himself to unmask the robber, although it wasn’t concern for the lifeless man’s well-being that had overcome his reticence. The manager was at lunch and he had been left in charge. Having one dead body in the foyer was going to be difficult enough to explain, he didn’t want two, if he could avoid it.

Bliss, engrossed in his attempts to revive Mandy Richards, hardly noticed as Margaret Thatcher’s face was peeled away revealing an unconscious thug with blood oozing from his mouth, nose and scalp.

“Oh my God!” breathed the under-manager assuming the worst, but, freed of the mask, the robber soon began to stir.

“Tie him up,” shouted Bliss, but the youthful executive shook his head.

“He isn’t going anywhere – only the hospital.”

In the aftermath of the botched robbery Bliss had found himself caught up in a controversy and knew his colleagues were weighing up the odds between him receiving a commissioner’s commendation for bravery, a charge of attempting to murder the bank robber or the station “Tosspot” award for stupidity.

“You’ll get something for this,” everyone agreed, and in his own mind he wouldn’t have felt maligned if he’d been convicted of attempted murder, or, at a minimum, an offence of causing Mandy’s death by reckless over-enthusiasm.

The commissioner’s commendation won the day, but he had quickly squirrelled the vellum certificate into a rarely visited drawer.

With his mind agitated by the disturbing memories, Bliss had been letting the car drive itself and was horrified to find his speed had crept to more than a hundred miles an hour. Easing his foot off the accelerator he realised that subconsciously he had been trying to outpace the Volvo. And, once he’d slowed, he did his best to remember the bandit’s face and found himself replaying the trial in his mind. What had he claimed in his defence? “I never meant to hurt no-one. It were the copper’s fault. If he hadn’t shouted about having a gun I would never have shot.”

His assertion hadn’t saved him. “You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree,” the judge had said sagely, adding, “Life imprisonment is the only punishment which I am permitted by law to impose.” And, despite the seriousness of his words, he obviously took great satisfaction saying it.

Following the verdict Bliss had turned to the public gallery in time to see a light of triumph flash across Mrs. Richards’ face, then she crumpled under an emotional millstone and burst into tears, overcome by relief that she had finally laid her daughter to rest. But the drama wasn’t over. The prisoner’s dock erupted in violence as a couple of burly guards moved in on the convict.

“It’s that fuckin’ copper what should go down. Him and is big mouth,” he yelled as the jailers tried to take him from the dock. “He’s the one who should go down, not me. I’m innocent,” he screamed as he flailed his fists at the men. “I wouldn’t shoot no woman. What sort of scum do you think I am?”

The three bodies sank briefly beneath the dock’s parapet as the guards smothered the enraged prisoner, before dragging him to his feet, with his arms painfully up his back, as the judge added fourteen days loss of privileges to his sentence.

“Take him away,” ordered the judge and the prisoner shot Bliss a venomous look that penetrated his skull with a viciousness that hurt.

“I’ll get you for this ... pig,” he screamed, then he screamed again as one of his elbows dislocated.

“Forget it,” everyone said afterwards, but the impact of the killer’s words had eaten away at Bliss for weeks. Forget what? That he’d been accused of murder or forget that he had caused Mandy’s death. He was innocent, everybody said so. But innocent of what? Innocent of crime. But what about impulsive behaviour and misjudgement – was he innocent of that.

“It was just bad luck,” they said and he had to agree.

It was bad luck – bad luck for Mandy that he had been in the bank that day. If he hadn’t been there the killer would have walked away with a bagful of loot and the only losers would have been the insurance company.

Getting off the motorway without being seen by the driver of the Volvo seemed, to Bliss, to be his safest option and, as he spotted a coach slowing to take the exit into a service area, he took a chance. Pulling sharply in front of the coach, ignoring the driver’s angry fist, he slipped into the deceleration lane. Then, shielded by the monstrous vehicle, he drove into the coach park and hid amongst the herring-boned ranks of leviathans. Had the Volvo followed? He couldn’t tell – the coaches blocked his view.

Keeping his head down, Bliss infiltrated the snake of passengers spilling out of one of the vehicles and had taken a dozen paces before realising he had joined a party of shrivelled pensioners. He was sticking out like a sunflower in a cabbage patch. Telling himself that it was unlikely the killer would risk accidentally hitting a little old lady mid-afternoon in a busy car park, he stayed with the group and made it safely to the self-service restaurant.

Security cameras scanned the room and, picking out a table in full view of one of them, he slunk into a seat opposite a lumpy girl with a Neanderthal brow. With his head bowed he searched the crowded room, seeking a single man doing the same. He came up blank. Everybody seemed to be in pairs or groups – but hadn’t he joined a group and, looking across at the girl in the opposing seat, wasn’t he now part of a pair.

The girl caught him looking. Her hooded eyes under heavy brows viewed him critically for a few seconds then, as if he were her audience, she sniffed loudly and openly swiped a dribble of snot off the end of her nose onto her sleeve. Having fixed his attention, she delved into a ragged canvas handbag and, with a victorious grunt, flourished a blue airmail envelope and began unfolding a dog-eared letter. Her rubbery mouth formed each word as she read silently from the flimsy paper for a few seconds, then she paused, looked up, and laughed uproariously. Bliss shrank himself lower in the seat as her laughter drew looks from across the room, thinking, just my luck – a loony tune.

Every few words in the letter brought another gale of laughter and the girl, seemingly unaware of the commotion she was causing, read further and laughed even louder. Bliss frantically searched for some means of escape, fearing he’d become caught up in some sort of performance art, a fringe festival event perhaps, but all eyes were on the girl. Any movement on his part would have drawn attention. He was trapped between a killer and a nutter.

“Have you been here before?” she suddenly enquired, with a fixed stare that pinioned him to his seat.

“A few times,” he mumbled.

“I’ve been here six times.”

Something in the earnestness of her tone made him suspicious. This was a motorway service area, not the Tate Gallery or even Disneyland. “Six times?” he queried.

“I was Anne Boleyn’s principal lady-in-waiting once,” she insisted haughtily, and leant over the table to whisper confidentially “You wouldn’t believe what I used to do for Henry when she wasn’t up to it.”

Bliss swallowed hard. “And the other times you were here …?”

She leant back. “I was a cat once.”

Without the demented laughter the crowd began shrinking away, pretending disinterest, pretending that they had never been interested. Bliss readied to leave, waiting his moment until all eyes were elsewhere, but a strong feeling of Deja-vu suddenly held him in check. This wasn’t a bank, the eccentric woman wasn’t a killer, as far as he knew, but the whole situation seemed to have taken on the same surrealistic quality as the time he’d bludgeoned Maggie Thatcher’s effigy half to death, following Mandy’s murder.

As he rose, a tingling sensation on the nape of his neck convinced him the killer was present and he quickly scanned the faces searching for the Volvo’s driver. No-one looked even faintly familiar. Then he paused in terror as a voice behind him shouted, “Oy!” It was the lunatic – he kept walking. “You never know,” she called after him with absolute sincerity. “You might have been someone famous too.”

Five miles further on the driver of the blue Volvo had pulled into an Esso station and was on the phone, his hand shaking as he whispered into the mouthpiece. “I’ve lost him,” he admitted, and before he took a breath to explain, the handset exploded in his ear.

“Shit – How? Where? When?”

“I think he caught on.”

“You useless piece of dog’s ...”

“I couldn’t help it – he seemed jumpy.”

“Of course he was jumpy – wouldn’t you be if you were being followed by an incompetent turd like you?”

“Look, don’t blame me. I didn’t ask to do this. You should’ve done it yourself.”

“All I wanted was a clean job – Oh forget it. I’ll do it myself. You’d better come back.”

Bliss dawdled in the service area for over an hour, vacillating between brazening it out, on the betting the killer wouldn’t strike in such a public place in broad daylight, and slinking back to the car with his head down. In the end he decided to call for assistance and, without giving his name, phoned Scotland Yard from a booth and requested D.C.I. Bergen.

“He’s on a course, Sir,” said the operator.

Police College – Bliss had forgotten. Junior command course – having his brain adjusted and his elbow lubricated.

“What about Superintendent Wakelin?”

“Can I ask who’s calling?”

“Michael – just say Michael. He’ll know.”

A few seconds later the dead air was replaced by the hollowness of a speaker phone, but no voice.

“Superintendent Wakelin?” Bliss enquired speculatively.

The silence continued for a split second as the man at the other end struggled to place the voice “Oh Dave – Yes ... Sorry. How are you doing?”

Bliss hesitated, “It’s Michael, Sir.”

“Oh shit, of course. Sorry, Dave – I mean Michael. Fuck – this is confusing, isn’t it? Would you like to call back and start again?”

“No, that’s alright, Sir. I’m on a pay phone.”

“Thank Christ. Well what can I do for you ... Michael?”

“Can we meet?”

“Sure. When? Where?”

“Eighteen hundred hours at location B, if that’s convenient.”

A slight pause signalled uncertainty. “Location B,” he repeated vaguely.

How the hell did this man ever become a superintendent? He’s got a brain like a sieve. “Location B ...” Bliss was about to explain, then lost his patience. “Haven’t you got the list of locations? ... It’s that pub near Camden Lock.”

Samantha was next and his daughter answered her mobile phone at the first ring. “Dad – Where are you?”

“How’s your mother?” he countered, wary of giving anything away.

“Dad – I’m expecting a call.”

Did he detect a touch of aggravation? “Oh sorry – I just need a few things from your attic.”

“O.K. I’ll be home at ...”

“No,” he cut in, “I don’t want to come round. Will you bring them to me at the usual place?”

“Dad – surely we don’t still have to do that. It’s been more than six months ...”

“I can’t take the risk, Sam. I have enough on my conscience already ... if anything happened to you.”

“You don’t think he’s still out there do you?”

“I was followed today,” he admitted.

“Shit.”

“Don’t worry, I lost him.”

The phone went silent at her end. “What’s the matter, Sam?” he asked eventually.

“You know what’s the matter – I’m scared shitless. I don’t know why you don’t just stay in the safe house until they catch him – he’s a maniac.”

“I’ll be alright – I’m beginning to wish I’d never told you.”

“Well, perhaps that goes for me too. But whether I know or not doesn’t change the fact that I could become an orphan any day now.”

“Sam, that isn’t going to happen. Anyway, you’re twenty-eight. You don’t become an orphan at that age.”

“Don’t be picky. What do you need?”

He gave her a list, set a time, and with a final fruitless search for the Volvo around the service centre, set off for London.

Tottenham Court Road was more or less on Bliss’s route, once he’d reached London. He parked the Rover under a “No parking” sign, stuck a “Police – on duty” card in his windscreen and told himself that he wouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes.

The shop window was exactly as he remembered it from when he’d dragged Samantha there at the age of ten. The visit had been more his treat than hers – one of the times when a son would have come in handy. An antique bow window of tiny mullions, set in a latticework of lacquered wood, bulged out over the pavement, and a life-size guardsman, as stiff as the plywood on which he was painted, stood sentinel at the door.

The entirely appropriate smell of polished leather and Brasso had not changed, neither had a tinny electronic bugle sounding reveille overhead as he opened the door under the sign, “The Little Soldier – Dealers in miniature military memorabilia.”

A tall man with a well-disciplined moustache, a full head of grey hair, (fractionally longer than regulation and afflicted with an unruly curl), modelling a sharp mohair suit, came smartly to attention behind his counter. “Can I be of assistance, Sir?”

“Just looking,” he lied, annoyed at being pounced upon before he’d had a chance to draw breath, and he took his time studying an army of vividly painted small soldiers artistically arranged on a battlefield of green baize. “Very pretty,” he said finally sensing the man standing impatiently alongside him.

The instant frown of disapproval told Bliss he’d chosen the wrong expression. “These are historically accurate reproductions of military personnel ... not Barbie dolls, Sir,” said the dealer, his officer’s accent as crisp as the creases in his trousers.

Bliss mumbled something that could have been mistaken for an apology and dragged the plastic bag containing the remnants of the toy soldier out of his pocket. “I wonder if you can tell me anything about this?”

The look of abhorrence on the dealers face seemed fairly clear as he took the pieces and “tut-tutted,” leaving Bliss in no doubt that, in his Lilliputian world, the miniature statuary had never been a Rodin or even a Royal Doulton. In fact, Bliss was quite prepared for him to pucker his mouth, spit drily in disgust, and drop the pieces disdainfully into a garbage bin. But he didn’t. He studied them seriously, minutely examining each piece with a jewellers loupe, “tut-tutting” again and again until Bliss could stand it no longer and made a move to examine one or two of the other armies in the room.

“How did this happen?” asked the dealer without taking his eye off the magnifying glass, as if sensing Bliss’s lack of attention.

“Dropped,” suggested Bliss nonchalantly.

“Hmm,” he hummed, then “tut-tutted” and gave Bliss an inquisitive look. “I don’t think so.” But he didn’t press the point, returning to the model, leaving Bliss with the distinct impression that he was in his bad books.

With the inspection completed the dealer put down his glass and thoughtfully arranged the two halves of the model on a circle of baize. “Looks as though someone took a hammer to it,” he mused, then, giving nothing away, looked at Bliss critically and quizzed, “Where did you get this, Sir?”

What’s this – the third degree, thought Bliss, immediately riled by the dealer’s demanding tone. “A friend,” he shrugged.

“Well I can tell you it’s a Britains,” said the dealer.

“British,” corrected Bliss with gloating satisfaction.

The dealer looked up. “Oh you really don’t know anything, do you?”

“I’ve led a sheltered life,” retorted Bliss – mentally equating his lack of knowledge about toy soldiers to his ignorance of the inner workings of a dildo.

“Britains,” the dealer began again, then repeated the name for emphasis, “Britains were the world’s finest manufacturers of historically accurate fifty-four millimetre military personnel.” Then, weighing the tiny figure in his hand, he continued condescendingly, “This was made in their Hornsey Rise factory on Lambton Road. It’s hollow lead alloy. It doesn’t seem a big deal today, but Britains revolutionised the whole industry when the son of the founder, William, discovered they could save a lot of metal, and money, by making hollow figures. The Americans, in comparison, were still making solid models years later.”

“Very interesting,” yawned Bliss regretting he had wasted so much time and becoming increasingly irritated by the man’s attitude.

The dealer was unfazed. “This is ...” he glanced down at the figure, “Or rather ... was a mounted officer of the Royal Horse Artillery circa 1940.”

“Oh!” Bliss exclaimed with surprise.

Wrongly assuming the exclamation was in admiration of his expertise, the dealer beamed, but Bliss was tossing Arnie’s words around in his mind, recalling that Rupert Dauntsey had been a major in the Royal Horse Artillery. Suddenly the model had life.

“Sorry,” he said, picking up the front half of the model with interest, now paying close attention. “I missed that. Could you tell me again?”

The dealer’s face had, “Listen this time you moron,” written all over it as he repeated the information.

Bliss wasn’t easily convinced and peppered the dealer with questions, demanding to know how he could be so certain about the identity of such a mutilated figure. It was the paint, apparently, the khaki service dress and, “Of course,” as if Bliss should know, as if everyone knew, “the steel helmet.”

“The steel helmet?” enquired Bliss.

“Britains were the only company who moulded the Royal Horse Artillery wearing steel helmets in 1940 and up to May 1941.”

“Oh, I see,” said Bliss, dropping the pieces back into the bag. “Well thanks a lot,” he added, making a move toward the door.

“Has your friend got any more?” called the dealer.

Bliss paused, “More – like this?”

“Yes – but not mangled.”

Bliss shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“I might be interested, that’s all.”

Realising that he’d not seen any price tags Bliss swept his hand across a couple of regiments. “Are these worth something, I mean – are they valuable?”

“Depends what you mean by valuable, but ... possibly – depending on the condition.”

“And ones like this,” he said holding out the bag of horseman’s remains.

“Maybe ... although I’d be particularly interested if there were a set.”

“A set?”

“Yeah – That’s the officer you’ve got there. A major probably. The original set had a gun carriage with a team of horses and four outriders in addition to the major. Here, take my card – give me a call. I’m sure we could come to a satisfactory arrangement if your friend was interested in selling.”

Bliss drifted back to the counter, his interest piqued. “How would I know what to look for?”

“I could give you some clues,” the dealer said, picking up a red coated guardsman. “For instance, this is a Britains,” he said without bothering to check.

“How do you know.”

He laughed. “They made a mistake with this model and painted the plume on the wrong side of the bearskin ... look,” he pointed. “But don’t worry, there are easier ways to tell.”

“Such as?”

Flipping the figure over in his hand he pointed out the inscription “Britains Ltd.” engraved on the base and laughed again – “Easy, see.”

Bliss, still not certain what he was looking for picked up a few of the models then asked. “Have you got any of the Horse Guards – it would give me a better idea?”

The dealer hesitated. “No, I don’t think I do, but bring in any models you can. I’ll soon identify them.”

Twenty minutes later Bliss pulled up in a quiet street of neat terraced houses and gazed nostalgically at the houses opposite. He had carefully gone through the routine of checking out the neighbourhood – no suspicious Volvo’s, blue or otherwise – but he had spotted two large attentive men in a car half a street away, their wing mirrors trained on his house.

His house had changed and he found himself staring at it with the eyes of a stranger. The front door was different – despite the wood-grain finish and polished brass knocker it was quite obviously reinforced steel and blast-resistant. A pattern of scorch marks etched into the stone step, and fanning out across the pavement, still marked the spot where the bomb had exploded. But it wasn’t the physical changes that alienated him, the house no longer had a welcoming feel. It was, he felt, more like unexpectedly finding yourself outside your childhood home – wanting to rush in and find mother at the sink and father asleep in front of the television; the sweet smell of freshly baked apple pie; the cozy warmth of laundry drying around the fire and the promise of a new Beano, Dandy or Boy’s Own.

But there was no mother or father here. This was no childhood den. This was still his house – he had a key, and there was nothing stopping him from entering; only the words of the protection squad commander. “I wouldn’t go back to the house if I were you, Dave – not until we’ve caught him. If he’s desperate enough he’ll try again, and next time it might be a machine gun from a passing car, à la Al Capone.”

He drove away with a certain sadness, managed to force a mendacious smile for the two caretakers as he passed, then was forced to stop and search for a tissue. He’d bought the house for a fresh start, having finally shaken off the divorce doldrums, and now his world had been trashed again, this time by a villainous ghost from the past.

Arriving early at the pub for his rendezvous with Superintendent Wakelin, Bliss checked out the car park and surrounding streets for blue Volvos and jotted down the numbers of a couple, though neither looked promising.

The waitress was beautiful, stunningly so, yet appeared to have no idea as she bustled around serving everyone with the same innocent smile. Bliss was mesmerised by her beauty and wanted to glide his fingers down her slender arms and stroke her soft cheeks just to have the memory for his dotage. “I remember the day I touched the most perfect woman,” he would boast to his peers on the bowling green. “She had stepped straight out of an Old Master – not a Rubens. She was a Rembrandt or Botticelli, or a Bartolini statue. Naked? Naturally. Though nothing coarse, nothing pornographic.”

She wasn’t naked, but her loose fitting dress flowed sensuously over her curves, like the robes of an Egyptian princess, and the open smile on her fresh virginal face left her more exposed than most women totally nude.

“Yeah, mate – What d’ye want?” Her rough cockney accent broke the spell and she slipped under the wheels of her chariot.

“Hello, Michael,” called Superintendent Wakelin pointedly, as he appeared out of nowhere and slid into the cubicle beside him. Bliss tore his eyes off the young woman, now just a waitress, and greeted the senior officer.

“Drink, Guv?”

“So, how are you getting on in Hampshire?” enquired Wakelin once the waitress had wiggled away.

“They’ve given me an interesting sort of murder ... local man killed his father.”

“Domestic, eh! – should be easy enough for you.”

“Oh yeah,” he replied, choosing to ignore the minor problem of the missing body, “but they could manage perfectly well without me. In fact I don’t think they quite know what to do with me. Superintendent Donaldson seems alright, although he’s on his way out. I think he just wants a quiet life. I could see it on his face as he gave me the case. Here you are, son – play with this. Even the Met couldn’t fuck this one up.”

“So what are you saying?”

“To be honest, I want to come back. I’ve done my time.”

He had – six months in a safe house, a padded prison with two acres of neatly tended gardens and a movie star’s video library.

“Dave ... Oh fuck – I’ve done it again. Sorry ... Michael, this guy is determined, and he’s done his homework. He knows where you work, live and probably where you play; he knows your car; he got your phone number – even though it’s ex-directory, and you changed it twice; he even managed to clean out your bank account – in case you forgot.”

Bliss had no argument. “I see you’ve still got a couple of goons doing surveillance on the place.”

“We want to catch him, Dave – Don’t you want him caught?”

“Of course, but that’s the other thing I wanted to see you about.” He hesitated while the waitress bent over to put the drinks on the table. “Pretty girl,” he said to Wakelin as she drifted away.

Wakelin shrugged, “Didn’t notice. Now what’s the problem? What’s happened? You sounded pretty panicky when you called?”

Bliss gave himself time to think as he tested the house Cabernet Sauvignon. “I think he’s caught on,” he said eventually.

Wakelin pursed his lips in a whistle of surprise. “Already?”

“I’m pretty sure I was tailed from Westchester today.”

“You’re gonna have to go back into the safe house then, whether you like it or not.”

The mere thought was enough to have him backtracking. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent certain. It could have been a coincidence.”

Wakelin wasn’t fooled. “Surely the safe house isn’t that bad?”

“A padded cell is just as much a prison. Anyway, I’ve had other villains threaten me in the past.”

“And how many of them have actually tried to kill you?”

He knew the answer. So did Bliss.