Missing: Presumed Dead (28 page)

“I still don't see what that's got to do with us,” griped Patterson. “I still don't see the connection.”

Bliss was still trying to work out the possible connection for himself when he drove into the motorway service area where he had escaped from the Volvo earlier in the week. The nutcase was still there, sitting in the same seat, still regressing, bending the ear of some other unsuspecting traveller. “Helen of Troy was my aunty, you know?”

Bliss chuckled as he went past in search of a coffee and sandwich, then he took a nearby seat and tried to take his mind off the meeting by watching her snare unwitting listeners. “Have you ever been here before ...?”

“So what's this great theory of yours, Guv?” Patterson had asked, still in a snit.

“Personally, I think that flighty, fun-loving, Doreen Dauntsey soon got fed up living with a cabbage, especially an ugly one, so she lured him into the attic and shot him. Then she told everyone he'd gone to stay on the estate in Scotland.”

“That's not much of a theory,” scoffed Patterson. “Why would he go into the attic? How would he get into the attic – he only had one arm?”

Bliss looked past him again, he had no answer and was becoming increasingly aware of the disgruntled murmuring from the other officers. He needed a juicy morsel to throw at them that wouldn't be seized on by Patterson.

“What about Jonathon's victim?” asked a spiky-featured officer, giving him a seconds breathing space. “If the Major was already dead in the attic, who did Jonathon kill?”

“It could have been just about anybody,” he started, then paused, half expecting Patterson to pipe up. “Follow me on this,” he continued, thankful for the silence. “Jonathon was pissed off with his father, seeing him as a failure for allowing his mother to struggle financially, and for deserting them, so he flattened the toy soldier, the Major, in a symbolic act of destruction. The
trick-cyclists
call it displaced aggression, I think. But it wasn't enough, nobody even knew he'd done it. So, as his mother's health deteriorated, he had to do something more to prove he really cared – something spectacular – murderously spectacular. Obviously he couldn't attack the real man, he had no idea what had happened to him, so he chose a surrogate. But he had to have witnesses ...”

“Why?” Patterson leapt on his back again. “Why not just pull some starving old bum off the street, promise him a meal and a bed for the night, bump him off and bury him?”

Hoping to lighten the atmosphere, Bliss put on a Chinese accent. “Confucius he say – If tree fall in forest and no-one see or hear. Did it fall?” He paused, not expecting applause, but not anticipating the stone-faced silence either. Discomfitted, he pushed on anyway. “He needed witnesses because he wanted to read about it in the papers and hear it on the news, and the only way to achieve that was to sacrifice someone in public – but not somewhere so public that the victim's face would be seen.”

“What about the duvet?” questioned a grey-bearded officer, showing a glimmer of interest.

“He buried it where he knew it would be found, then threw in the mangled toy as an effigy of the Major. It was all part of the illusion and might have worked if the real Major hadn't shown up.”

“It's more stupid than a bloody bedroom farce,” scoffed Patterson under his breath. “Someone ought'a make it into a pantomime. First we got a killer and no body, then a body and no killer, then no body ...”

“So where did Jonathon think the Major was?” asked the bearded officer talking over Patterson.

Bliss was tempted to say Scotland but knew it was an indefensible answer. He knew he couldn't explain why Jonathon had not gone there to confront the real man.

The Dauntsey estate was still there, according to the Scottish P.C. who had made enquiries. It was occupied by a tenant farmer, the son of the man who had first leased the farm from Doreen Dauntsey a few years after the war. He paid rent once a year, April 1st, rain, shine or snow – twenty and fifty pound notes just as the Major's written instructions had insisted – to be paid in cash to Mrs. Dauntsey.

“I'll happily send the Major a cheque,” he'd offered numerous times. “It'll save you having to traipse all the way up here every year.”

But she wouldn't hear of it. “My husband insists that I come to make sure everything is in order, Mr. McAllister,” she had said more than once.

“I allus felt like I was buying off a blackmailer or paying a ransom,” he told the Scottish policeman. “A bundle of used notes in a brown paper parcel. She never counted it. ‘Och, I'm sure I can trust you, Mr. McAllister – good day to you,' she'd say, then take the next train away home.”

“It's difficult to believe that Jonathon thought his father was still alive,” Bliss told the group, “Although he may have been so much under his mother's influence that he went along with it for fear of upsetting her. She was apparently quite convincing. ‘He's in Scotland – at the estate,' she'd say to anybody enquiring, and they would breathe a sigh of relief, mumbling, ‘Thank Christ for that.'”

“But what about his family?” asked a thick-thighed policewoman in a brave pair of shorts. “What about siblings, cousins, uncles. Did nobody ever check?”

“Obviously not.”

The street had relaxed when Bliss arrived at his house in London. It was Saturday, the double-manned surveillance car was either needed elsewhere or the crew were luxuriating in the rare pleasure of a weekend off. Unfettered residents, taking advantage of the summery weather, tarted up their cars without feeling spied upon, and children took a rare opportunity to kick a ball or throw a stone without getting yelled at by an unnecessarily anxious parent. Only Bliss, and the surveillance officers, knew the last thing in the world they cared about was what some snotty-nosed kid was doing in the street – unless it was a big snotty-nosed kid with a mask and a shotgun.

The normality of the street scene did nothing to allay Bliss's anxiety which had been mounting ever since the suburbs, when the gradually narrowing streets had closed in around him, tighter and tighter like a strait-jacket cramping his chest, making him want to turn away. But he stuck it out, determined this would be no drive-by, and he forced himself to pull up directly in front of the house. He was going in, going to stay – only a night or two, but, thanks to Daphne, it was time to stop running.

“Is there anything else that I can tell you, or you can tell me before we call it a day?” asked Bliss, wrapping up the meeting. Several checked their watches, praying no-one would ask a question or start a debate.

“What did you make of the syringe, Guv?” said a youngish policewoman in tennis gear, breaking rank with her colleagues and suffering their glares.

“What syringe?” asked Bliss blankly.

“I found it in the ashes of Dauntsey's Aga cooker,” she explained, having taken the initiative to sift through the ash-bin of the coal burning stove in the kitchen of the old house, thinking it an ideal place for someone to incinerate small incriminating items. “It had exploded in the heat and was all smoky and black, but I managed to find most of it.”

Bliss shook his head – completely in the dark. “Well, where is it?”

“I gave it to Sgt. Patterson on Tuesday, Guv.”

“I didn't think it was significant,” shrugged Patterson, leaping to his own defence. “It was obviously his mother's – being ill and all.”

“She's got cancer, not diabetes,” shot back Bliss, seizing a vengeful opportunity. “Where is it now? In the evidence store or at the forensic lab, I hope.”

Patterson, nailed, turned bright pink. “Um ... It's in my desk actually, Guv.”

“Well get it to the lab then – right away.”

Patterson wriggled, unconvinced. “It's burnt ... doubt if they'll find anything. Anyway, what are they supposed to be looking for? They'll want to know.”

“A sedative of some sort. My guess is he used it to tranquillise whoever he bumped off, which would explain how he got his victim up to the room in the Black Horse.”

“Have we any idea who he killed, Guv?” It was the policewoman again, thinking – that'll teach them for glaring at me.

“Well, we know for sure he didn't kill the Major ...”

“We don't know that at all,” complained Patterson still clinging to his conviction despite evidence to the contrary. “He confessed – I got his confession on tape.”

“I strongly suggest you listen to that tape again. You've been taken for a ride, Sergeant – Jonathon Dauntsey didn't confess to killing the Major.”

“But ...” protested Patterson. “He said he killed his father.”

“In which case I suggest you check his date of birth. I know the pace of life has picked up in recent years but, unless Jonathon's mother was ten months pregnant, I think you'll find he is not a Dauntsey.”

“Thank you for your attention ladies and gentlemen,” he added quickly and was out of the door before Patterson had a chance to respond.

“Thank you, Daphne, you're a genius,” he said to the corridor wall, took fifty pounds out of his pocket and poked his head back round the door. “All have a drink on me tonight,” he said handing it to the nearest. “Take tomorrow off and we'll crack this case next week.” Then he raised his eyebrows at Patterson, fully expecting an argument, and was a trifle disappointed when the man begrudgingly nodded his thanks.

Two hours later he stood on the threshold of his house with more than a tingle of nervousness in his groin. You could run, he told himself – it's an option. No-one would know. You could high-tail it back to the Mitre – you've already paid. Then he thought of Daphne, knickerless, charging the German machine gunners on a bike, and he slipped the key into the lock.

Samantha had helped with the decor and choice of fabrics when he initially moved in. “You're useless, Dad,” she had said.

“I'm a man. It's not my fault.”

But the decor had changed, the bomber had seen to that, and the hallway was unfamiliar, hostile even as he stepped inside. He stopped, feeling as vulnerable as a naked man in a cell, realising that his home had been violated; that it had been intruded upon, first by the essence of the bomber himself, then by a slew of policemen, scientists, rubber-neckers, reporters, architects, estimators, builders, and a battalion of civil servants. Even the commissioner had been to inspect – it wasn't every day that one of his officers was bombed out of his home.

“It's like it were in the Blitz,” one of the neighbours had said with a glint in his eye. “Even the King came to have a gawp then.”

The heavy steel door clanged shut behind him. There, that wasn't so difficult, was it? he breathed in relief. And the decorator's have done a good job, no sign of the bomb damage ...

“Br-rr-ing.”

He jumped out of skin and the phone shrieked again.

“Br-rr-ing.”

The killer was back – It was less than a minute and he was doing it again.

“Br-rr-ing.”

He must be watching the place – get out, get out before a grenade whistles through a window.

“Br-rr-ing.”

GET OUT NOW!

You are kidding? That's what he wants. He's outside right now, leering, a mobile phone in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other.

I thought you were going to stop this.

Tell my pulse that.

“Br-rr-ing.”

Answer the phone.

What – put it to my ear and listen for the “Bang” as my head gets blown off.

“Br-rr-ing.”

Stand back and hit the speakerphone button then. Alright – good idea. “Yes – who is this?”

“Identify yourself.”

“What?”

“I said – identify yourself.”

Don't tell him – Duck! Duck! “Who are you?”

“This is Tew Park police station – identify yourself.”

“Oh shit,” he muttered. “I've set off the alarm.”

He'd forgotten – Big Brother was watching.

“This is D.I. Bliss ...” he started, then pulled himself up. “Sorry – This is Michael.”

“What's the codeword?”

There was nothing friendly in the demand – and it was a demand. The codeword? His mind was racing – what's the codeword? “Hang on, I haven't used it for six months.”

“Police officers are en-route – state your codeword.”

“Sarah.” It came back in a flash. “It's Sarah.” Ex-wife Sarah – how could I have forgotten? Well, it has been more than five years now.

“Thank you, Michael – you should have informed us you were visiting the property.”

“Yes – sorry. Spur of the moment. I didn't think.”

That's what had happened with the codeword, he recalled to himself. You gave Sarah's name on the spur of the moment – still living in the past – still rushing back to press your nose against the toy shop window.

“A patrol unit will be with you in just a few moments, Sir,” continued the voice on the speakerphone.

“That won't be necessary officer,” he was saying, but he was staring at the door – the steel anti-blast door with double deadbolt locks – still wondering if a deranged sniper with a high powered rifle was out there just waiting for a chink to appear.

“The unit is with you now, Sir. If you'd be good enough to open the door and just confirm your identity.”

“Wait, wait – How do I know ...?”

“How do you know what, Sir?”

“How do I know ...” his voice faded.

This is stupid, Dave. You're making an ass of yourself. You're right.

“If you would just open the door, Sir.”

His hand was on the handle but it wouldn't turn.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Open up, Sir – Police.”

“Sorry,” he said a few minutes later as he sat, crammed in the kitchen with two gregarious Bigfoots in blue uniforms. “I really haven't got a lot to offer you.”