No Cherubs for Melanie
NO CHERUBS FOR MELANIE
Other Inspector Bliss Mysteries by James Hawkins
Missing: Presumed Dead (2001)
Nominated for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award
The Fish Kisser (2001)
NO CHERUBS FOR MELANIE
An Inspector Bliss Mystery
James Hawkins
A Castle Street Mystery
Copyright © James Hawkins, 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Copy-editor: Steven Beattie
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Transcontinental
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hawkins, D. James (Derek James), 1947-No cherubs for Melanie / James Hawkins.
(A Castle Street Mystery)
ISBN 1-55002-392-6
I. Title. II. Series: Castle Street mystery.
PS8565.A848N6 2002 C813’.6 C2002-902277-0 PR9199.4.H38N6 2002
1 2 3 4 5 06 05 04 03 02
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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To my dearest Amanda — my elder daughter.
With all the love that only the proudest of fathers can understand.
This is a story of relationships; where love, hate, good, and evil meet. It is of men and their daughters.
”Ye shall reap what you sow.”
chapter one
Death was very definitely in the air, yet not one of the hundred or so designer-clad women in the restaurant’s grand dining room — and only one of the overdressed men — felt the slight shift in ambience that signalled its presence.
The cognizant man, sitting alone beyond the gleam of the chandelier, could have been a public health inspector, but his suit, though aging, was too sharp, his shoes too shiny, and he had a robustness about him that said he’d done more with his fifty years than poke fingers into U-bends and grease traps. Sitting, he seemed tall, but his length was in his trunk; his legs had let him down an inch or two. In deference to the August heat, he’d slung his jacket carelessly over the back of his chair and loosened his tie with casual contempt. However, he meditated over each morsel of food with the morose dedication of a culinary critic. Other guests, uneasily noticing the man’s introspective countenance, and feeling the scrutiny of his nervously watchful hazel eyes, might have quite wrongly imagined that he was the one preparing for the grave.
Heads snapped around as a fat man erupted into the room through a panelled door. A whisper swept across the room, swiftly gaining strength, and was carried by waiters past the lone diner into the bustling kitchen, where it became a cacophony that drowned out the clash of pots and the hum of extractor fans. The chefs tried to pretend nothing was happening but the lower echelon gravitated into a grumbling huddle. “The old man’s pissed again!”
Out in the grand dining room, beyond the soundproof swinging doors, the fat newcomer navigated drunk-enly from table to table and an excited murmur spread from mouth to mouth: The sideshow had started, the evening’s entertainment had begun. Whom would he ridicule tonight? What would he shout?“Are you mad, woman? Champagne with pheasant! Never! I will not permit gastronomic suicide in my restaurant. Mon Dieu!” “Fork! Moron. Yeah, you. You don’t eat oysters with a fucking fork!”
But not tonight. Tonight he was too far gone for repartee, however abusive or one-sided.
A foreign tourist, American judging by his tie, grabbed the arm of a passing waiter and drew his attention to the drunk with a concerned nod.
Without a second glance the waiter leaned forward. “It’s alright, Sir, he’s the owner,” he said with confidence, as if recommending the plat du jour; as if such behaviour should be expected of all London restaurateurs.
The pantomime continued as the slobbering clown fell from table to table, grasping at imagined safety rails, steadying his hand on expensively manicured heads. “Mind the wig, old chap, cost a bloody fortune,” they laughed.
Around the room, twitchy fingers reached for cellphones. Whom to call? The police or the News of the World? The police, probably. Although the owner’s antics may at one time have smudged a column or two in the tabloids, the paparazzi and the public had long since found greater interest in other, more ridiculous, characters.
With a wry smile and without a hiccup, the tuxedo-clad pianist twisted his bow tie drunkenly and swung from Dvorák’s “New World” to the drinking song from Romburg’s Student Prince; few noticed.
Spouting gibberish, insisting that he should be heard, the owner clutched his throat. “Ah… urg… argh,” he gurgled and was misinterpreted by a wispy model-type. “Do you think he wants us to leave, Roger?” she asked her companion in a stage whisper.
“Bloody scandalous… Absolutely disgraceful,” echoed around the room, but to some the drunk’s behaviour was consoling: those able to point and snigger, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as that!”
“Wish I had a camera,” exclaimed one diner, and got a dig in the ribs from his skimpily clad female escort. (“We’ll have to be discreet,” she’d whispered saucily as they’d slipped away from her husband’s dismal book launch party. “Discreet!” he’d cried. “Wearing that!”)
Another diner was suitably armed, toting a video camera brought to record a momentous family occasion. But the celebration of forty years of undying matrimonial fidelity couldn’t stop the husband’s camera eye from roving.
“Please don’t!” implored the man’s wife, feeling the heat from guests at surrounding tables, but, shaking off her admonition, he continued filming.
In less than a minute the bulky figure had reeled his way from one side of the room to the other, leaving a trail of bemused, disgruntled, delighted, and offended patrons. His goal, the kitchen, lay directly ahead of him, and diners on the far side of the room were already losing interest, returning to more mundane matters: platters of undercooked, undersized, and overpriced culinary creations.
The padded service door to the kitchen was flung open and the slobbering owner filled the void like a marauding alien in a movie. A wave of silence spread through the kitchen; whisks, spoons, and knives ground to a halt as one of the monster’s pudgy hands gripped the door frame with white-knuckle force, his other hand grappling to loosen the clothing around his neck like a struggling lynch-mob victim. A burble of voices began to penetrate the silence, but the owner exclaimed, “Chef!” in surprisingly clear tones and
cut the babble as cleanly as if someone had pulled a plug. Then he slumped to the floor with a soft thud.
Less favoured guests — those seated at tables closest to the kitchen — sat mesmerized, their eyes riveted to the creature on the floor. And the expressions on their faces were mirrored in the wide eyes of the kitchen staff who stared, jaws dropped, like toilet sitters when the stall door unexpectedly flies open.
A doctor, attending his daughter’s engagement party at a nearby table, braced himself to rise. His wife’s hand and steely glare dissuaded him.
“He’s drunk again,” he mouthed, his conscience easily assuaged.
The chef de cuisine, ex-army by the trim of his moustache, took control. “Quick, get him in,” he commanded, his voice sharp with annoyance. Three sous chefs grabbed at the owner while the chef turned his attention back to the kitchen and donned his sergeant major’s persona. “Mis en place,” he bellowed, emphasizing the order by slamming a silver serving platter onto a metal table with enough force to buckle the oval dish beyond repair.
The pensive lone diner watched in silent consternation as the macabre tableau unfolded before him, then slid on his jacket, dropped enough cash on the table to cover the bill, and slipped from the room unnoticed.
“Crap!”
The shout pricked the ears of the old ginger cat. He tensed, sank deeply into the knotted shag-pile, and readied himself to pounce. The flying paperback missed by more than a chair’s width and landed with the sound of ripping paper.
“Sorry Balderdash,” his owner called. “I wasn’t aiming at you, old mate. It’s that damn book. Load of bloody —” The doorbell interrupted his apology and, rising slowly from the comfortably decrepit armchair, Detective Inspector David Bliss muttered disgruntledly. “It’s bloody Sunday afternoon.” Then he stumbled as his unbuckled trousers slipped halfway down his thighs. “Who is it?”
The only answer was a second peal of chimes; same chimes, different silly tune. God, how he hated those chimes; his ex-wife’s final kick in the teeth. “You keep the door chimes, Dave,” she had said with a leer, “I know how much they mean to you.”
Still struggling with his zipper, Bliss shuffled to the door, flicked the catch, and was flung backwards by the force of his commanding officer marching into the room.
“Bliss old chap. Hoped I’d catch you. Been phoning for days.” Detective Chief Inspector Peter Bryan kept walking, on a mission, making the old cat leap out of the way as he headed for the far side of the sparsely furnished room. “Your phone’s not working,” he continued, and swept the phone off the glass-topped side table, holding it aloft — a trophy, as the unconnected cord dangled accusingly in mid-air. “Do you want to talk about it Dave?” he asked, eyebrows raised — a priest visiting to enquire why a parishioner has converted to the other side.
“Not particularly, Guv,” replied Bliss, slumping into a chair that could have been chucked out by Oxfam; hiding an obvious rip with his left elbow; missing a couple of nasty cigarette burns. “What do you want?”
DCI Bryan, looking decidedly unpolicemanlike in Sunday jeans and golfing shirt, scanned the room with a scrap merchant’s eye: one dilapidated leatherette armchair, a small dining table that the previous occupiers hadn’t considered worth a struggle down the stairs, a television set that looked as though it may have been installed for the Queen’s Coronation, a couple of other bits, and a pile of tired cardboard boxes. Five quid for the lot.
Bliss saw the look. “The wife cleaned me out,” he protested, making no attempt to clear a space for his senior officer to sit.
“Thank God for that. I thought you’d had burglars,” said DCI Bryan, dropping the telephone onto the table. He checked his fingernails for dirt and selected his most serious expression. “Murder, Dave. It’s murder.”
Bliss relaxed into the enveloping security of the well-worn padded chair and felt the tension drain from him. This was not exactly what he’d been expecting and he joked in relief, “That’s the trouble with Sundays, Guv. Wife, kids, gardening, traffic, being polite to the neighbours. It’s murder. Bloody murder.”
Bryan let him finish. “Very funny Dave. But this is a real murder and I think you’ll be interested.”
Randomly selecting a glass from several on the floor by the side of his chair, Bliss drained the syrupy dregs then stared into the empty vessel, puzzling. Where did that go?
“I’ve decided to quit,” he said finally, as if the DCI had not spoken — as if murder no longer intrigued him.
Peter Bryan studied Bliss’s face for the first time since entering the apartment and shuddered at the realization that only six years separated them. You can count me out if this is what marriage and divorce does to you, he thought, seeing the chaos of the unkempt room mirrored in the older man’s face — unshaven, unwashed probably, and sagged under the twin weights of middle age and carelessness. The sad glaze of hopelessness in Bliss’s eyes startled Bryan. He’d seen the look before: prisoners, lifers usually, resigned to their fate, with nothing worth anticipating beyond the possible introduction of in-cell flush toilets and the certain visit of the HIV nurse.
“Why quit?” Bryan ventured with an upbeat lilt. “You’ve got at least ten good years in you for a full pension, and you are — well, you were — a damn good detective.” Bliss gave a ‘couldn’t-give-a-shit’ shrug, and slumped fully into the chair. “I wanna get on with my life.”
“I didn’t know you had a life to get on with,” Bryan retorted, immediately trying to bite back his words.
But Bliss took little notice. “You said I’d be interested in this case. Why?”
Did Bryan detect a glimmer of curiosity in the other man’s dark brown eyes? “Have you seen the papers?” he asked, but one glance round the room told him, Not.
“Guv, is this some sort of party game or did you bugger up my Sunday afternoon for a reason?”
“Inspector!” the DCI began, then checked himself. What is there to bugger up, he wondered. If this is life, it can only improve. But, Bliss was off duty after all. “OK, Dave. I’ll be straight with you.” He stabbed a finger at the whisky glass. “Word has come from above that unless you stop pissing away your life on gut-rot and get back to work, you’re finished.”
Bliss sneered, “I was right. That’s what I thought you came to tell me. So why give me the whole spiel about a murder?”
“Huh! Well, you were wrong. I was only supposed to tell you about the murder, to see if you had enough bottle to pull yourself together long enough to take the case.”
He’s lying, thought Bliss, but couldn’t avoid looking sheepish. “Try me then — let’s see if I’ve got any bottle left.”
“Does the name Martin Gordonstone mean anything to you?”
“Yeah. He’s that posh geezer who owns a fancy restaurant. Usually pissed as a rat, swearing at customers, chucking them out if he doesn’t like ’em, that sort of thing.”
“Was that posh geezer,” corrected Bryan. “Anything else?”
Bliss missed the innuendo. “Are we back to twenty questions?”
“Sorry Dave. I was hoping you’d remember.”
“Remember what for Chrissake?”
“Nineteen seventy-seven. You dealt with the death of his daughter.”
Bliss’s face went through a contortion that could have been mistaken for heartburn as his mind exploded with memory. “Melanie Gordonstone?” he queried in a disbelieving whisper, “You mean…”
The other man, eyes wide in agreement, nodded quickly. Bliss got the picture, found himself sinking into his mind, and his eyes blanked as he focused on the images that sprang up behind them. A child’s white, lifeless body drifted into view, floating face down in a pond, like a scuba diver scouring a reef. Only this diver was wearing neither a snorkel nor a mask. Time hadn’t diminished the memory. His first child fatality as a policeman. His first child fatality, period.
“You’ll always remember your first dead ’un,” the training school instructor had said. “
’Specially a kid.” How true, Bliss thought, how true.
He pulled himself back to the present and stumbled over his tongue. “I… I didn’t realize it was him… I had no idea it was the same bloke. I… I didn’t think he was into restaurants.”
“He wasn’t back then,” replied Bryan. “He was a stockbroker. Made a mint and got out years before everyone else lost their shirts on Black Monday. Very lucky or bloody good timing, who knows?”
DCI Bryan was still talking, unaware of the maelstrom raging in Bliss’s mind as he fought to disengage his thoughts from the image of the dead six-year-old, arms akimbo, embracing the water, while a halo of dark auburn hair floated around her head and a school of koi carp curiously inspected the newcomer to their world.
“Accidental drowning wasn’t it?” Bliss looked up. “Sorry?” he said, realizing he’d missed the question; the haunting image was still there, overpowering all his thoughts.
“His daughter’s drowning. Accident wasn’t it?”
“That was the coroner’s verdict.”
“It was an accident wasn’t it?” Bryan asked, his tone lifted a half pitch in surprise.
Bliss pondered for a second then nodded firmly. “Yes.” But his expression wouldn’t have fooled a social worker and he knew it.
Bryan caught the look and tried to make eye contact. Bliss quickly dropped his head for a close study of his left thumbnail but only found the deadpan features of a lifeless little girl. “Was it an accident?” he began quietly, hiding behind the softness of his words. “I don’t know. It was just a bit suspicious at the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.” Bliss paused, then added with calculated casualness, “I’ve often wondered if her father did it.”
“Why?”
“It’s difficult to explain, but he was sort of funny, uncooperative almost.”
“No. I meant, why would he have done it? Why would he have killed his own daughter?”