The Dave Bliss Quintet Read online

  THE DAVE BLISS QUINTET

  Also by James Hawkins

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  THE DAVE BLISS QUINTET

  An Inspector Bliss Mystery

  James Hawkins

  A Castle Street Mystery

  Copyright © James Hawkins, 2004

  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 Access Copyright.

  Editor: Barry Jowett

  Copy-editor: Jennifer Bergeron

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Printer: Webcom

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hawkins, D. James (Derek James), 1947-

  The Dave Bliss Quintet / James Hawkins.

  ISBN 1-55002-495-7

  I. Title.

  PS8565.A848D39 2004 C813'.6 C2004-901390-4

  1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04

  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.

  www.dundurn.com

  To my son, Captain Ian Hawkins, one of the

  many brave mariners who have navigated the

  Mediterranean Sea, at the mercy of its unpredictable

  winds, since time immemorial.

  chapter one

  “Am I interrupting? What are you writing?” The blade of a dagger sliced between her ribs, nicking her bikini strap. A pair of perfectly moulded breasts perked upwards in momentary relief, her back arched in agony, then she slumped to the sand with her attacker’s name on her lips.

  “Sorry,” he says, glancing up at the slender woman silhouetted against the Mediterranean sun, her plentiful breasts still safely clasped in her bikini’s hold.

  “I asked you what you were writing,” she repeats, sliding closer to him along on the seawall while casually dusting sand from her naked feet.

  “A novel,” he answers, pumping himself up, getting a lift from the words. Nothing wimpish — not a short story or a newspaper article. Nothing egotistical, either — like poetry or memoirs. “A novel,” he repeats, immediately realizing the allure the simple phrase could have.

  “Can I read it?” she asks.

  That’s allure, he thinks, saying, “No. Sorry, it’s not finished yet.” And, folding his journal with emphasis, he gazes out over the blue bay, seemingly seeking inspiration.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” she mumbles, edging away, then pauses quizzically. “Are you known? I mean … famous, perhaps. Should I recognize you?” Her narrowed, questioning eyes corner him.

  “Dave,” he says, tentatively extending a hand, peering into her eyes with the slowly developing realization that she may be the one he is seeking.

  “Dave?” she queries, then hesitates. And …? her eyes demand. Do I have to ask? Do you expect me to drag it out of you? Maybe your mother stitched it to your underpants — should I look? “Dave?” she queries again.

  “Dave …” He wavers, still undecided. “Dave Burbeck.” Shit! he thinks, why did I say that? Maybe because that poster over there says: “Festival de Jazz de la Côte d’Azur — avec Dave Brubeck.”

  With a curious eye on the poster she inches closer to him. “Not …?”

  “Oh, good Lord … no. Not Brubeck,” he replies a touch hastily. “It’s Burbeck, Dave Burbeck.”

  Now she eyes him skeptically and queries, “Burbeck?” as she checks out the poster again. “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  Bugger — I’ve only just started and she’s blown my cover already.

  “I said,” she continues, like a poodle with a bone, “it’s a bit of a coincidence — Brubeck; Burbeck.”

  “Sorry,” Detective Inspector David Bliss of London’s Metropolitan Police replies, hoping to move on. “I was miles away … thinking of the next line for my book.”

  “It must be very exciting being a writer,” she says, putting on her high beams in admiration and letting go of the bone. “What’s it about?”

  “Life.”

  “Romance?” she queries with a mischievous smirk.

  “Death.”

  “Oh,” she shudders, “I’m not keen on death.”

  “I’m not sure many people are.”

  “I’m Marcia, by the way,” she says, finally reciprocating and offering a hand, deliberately holding back her surname, waiting for him to be straight with her.

  “Dave Burbeck,” he starts, still holding her hand, still wondering how to break the ice. “Oh. You know that already.”

  “Yes,” she says, critically eyeing the poster on the billboard. “That is what you told me.” Then, catching Bliss by surprise, she jumps onto the sand and strides off along the beach towards the centre of St-Juan-sur-Mer. “See you again, Mr. Brubeck,” she calls over her shoulder with a knowing lilt in her voice.

  “It’s Burbeck,” he calls after her, adding, “Wait, I need to talk to you.” But she doesn’t.

  “Nice looking woman; could she be the one?” he muses, watching as she heads towards the centre of town. “Who would want to stick a knife in her?” And he picks up his pad and starts again.

  A gunshot rang out …

  “I think I’ve made contact,” Bliss says a few hours later, telephoning his office in London from a pay phone a few miles along the coast, in the ancient Provençal port of Antibes, strictly according to his handler’s instructions. (“Christ, that’s taking it a bit far,” he said originally. “Can’t be too careful, Dave,” the senior officer insisted.)

  “You think you’ve made contact,” his handler queries now, impatience adding a critical edge. “Didn’t she ID herself positively — give the code word?”

  “Not exactly, Guv, though I didn’t expect her to immediately. She’ll probably be a bit cagey for awhile … want to check me out. She’s probably got a lot at stake.” He pauses, thinking: Her neck, probably. “But she’s English, thirty-five-ish, short black hair, mouthwatering breasts, eyes like pools of liquid ebony …”

  “What the hell?” exclaims the voice on the phone.

  “Oh. Sorry, Guv. I got carried away. Anyway, she obviously made a beeline for me when no one else was about. The beach was almost deserted — everyone still sleeping it off or jostling for a croissant and chocolat chaud. The bloody beaches are packed by nine in the morning, and Noel Coward was wrong — mad dogs and Englishmen aren’t the only ones baking in the midday sun — and no one leaves ’til five.”

  “Hardly a day in the office, though,” snorts the sarcastic voice at the other end with the weariness of a wet Thursday in London.

  “Tougher, if you ask me. Have you any idea what it’s like to be a professional sunbather?”

  “Stop whining. You’re getting paid. By the way, what’s your cover?”

  Bliss tells him, and the phone explodes. “Dave Burbeck!” yells his contact.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Guv. But the name just slipped out. Anyway, it matches my initials. Dave Bliss, Dave Burbeck.”

  “Detective Inspector Bliss,” starts the voice, a mixture of officialdom and royally pissed-offedness. “You’ve had two weeks swanning about on the poxin’ beach in the South of France to come up with a plausible cover, and the best you do is a bleedin’ rock star.”

  “Jazz, actually. But it’s Burbeck, not Brubeck.”

  “Don’t push it, Bliss. So what bloody creative occupation did you conjure up for Mr. Burbeck? Astronaut, perhaps?”

  “I’m an author, working on my first novel — a historical mystery.”

  The line goes silent while his contact thinks for a few seconds. “That’s actually a bloody good cover,” he says, taking his hand off the mouthpiece, Bliss’s inappropriate choice of name temporarily forgotten or forgiven. “But what about the informant?” The crustiness is back. “Where is she? Who is she? Why the bloody hell did you let her go?”

  Leaving the pay phone, nestled coolly under a fruitladen fig tree in the shade of the stone ramparts of the fifteenth-century fortifications, Bliss flinches under the stark glare of the midday sun and scuttles into the shade of a clump of eucalyptus trees edging a dustbowl. A group of serious-faced pétanque players momentarily take their eyes off their boules and critically inspect him as he flops onto a convenient bench, flicks away a hostile wasp, opens his writing pad, scrubs out his previous words, and begins again.

  The pink and white blossoms of oleanders, together with the trumpets of h
ibiscus, paint the hedgerows and scent the air with a sweetness that transcends the derision and bitterness of everyday existence.

  The pétanque players pick up where they left off, like a small grazing herd that was only momentarily alarmed by the presence of a predator. Typically French, thinks Bliss, perplexed by the indifference of the seemingly earnest players as their boules ricochet off stray pebbles on the bumpy ground and veer off course. Why don’t they play on a proper court? he wonders, his desire for competitive precision honed on the billiard-table bowling greens and fiercely rolled cricket pitches of England, and his mind leads him home and to the reason for his presence on the Côte d’Azur.

  “We want you to take it easy for awhile, Inspector,” Commander Richards, his contact, declared a few weeks earlier, immediately raising Bliss’s suspicions. Richards was a stranger. An admin man from headquarters with half-rimmed reading glasses, a no-nonsense moustache, and a seriously sympathetic mien. He had been brought in for the occasion, Bliss assumed. Bad news, like a solicitation for a charitable donation, was always easier delivered by, and received from, a stranger, and Bliss saw through the ploy, and the words, immediately. Take it easy permanently, the commander meant, hoping Bliss might take the hint.

  “You probably need a bit of help from the trickcyclist after what you’ve been through,” he suggested, and Bliss knew what that meant as well. Seeking help from a psychiatrist was an easy route to an untimely discharge, his record of service indelibly embossed “Unfit for duty.” Funny that, he thought. Get a bullet in the leg in the line of duty and the force can’t do enough for you … but a wounded brain can be more damning than bubonic plague.

  “Have a stiff drink, old chap. Do you a world of good,” was about all the sympathy you might expect following a traumatic event — and Bliss had certainly suffered that. Of course, he might wangle a spell of light duties — as if regular police work were particularly heavy — frittering away a few months, even years, flying a desk at New Scotland Yard, churning out irksome directives with Richards and the rest of the sore backside brigade, muttering: “My life’s bloody boring; why should you be enjoying yourself?” Or quit. Wasn’t that what they really wanted? A tasty pension was being dangled — his twenty-two years of service would be rounded up to thirty, and they’d throw in a disability bonus — then he could follow the common path down to a little country pub where he would enthrall his patrons with wildly exaggerated tales of heroic adventures. Not likely, he’d decided unhesitatingly, perplexed by coppers who’d spent half their careers chucking inebriates out of pubs, and their retirements dragging them back in. There was, in any case, a more selfserving reason for him not to ride off quietly into the sunset: retribution. He still had a score to settle. However, there was an alternative on the table: a covert assignment on the French Riviera under the guise of protracted convalescent leave.

  “This is absolutely hush-hush,” Richards whispered, leaning menacingly across his desk, his tone as sharp as his moustache. “Not a word to anyone — understand?”

  Bliss recoiled into his chair, ducking a waft of whisky-laden breath, and Richards took it as a rejection. “It’s OK, Inspector,” he said, relaxing. “I quite understand. I don’t suppose you want another foreign assignment just yet.”

  “It wasn’t an assignment ...” Bliss started, then tried to let it drop, knowing he was still under a cloud for attacking his senior officer and then flying halfway around the world in pursuit of a multiple murderer on his own initiative. The fact that the officer, Superintendent Edwards, had been promoted while facing disciplinary charges arising from the incident gave Bliss a fairly good idea of the direction of the wind.

  “It’s entirely up to you,” Richards said with an encouraging half-smile, “but I would have thought a few months in the South of France, full pay plus all expenses — and I mean all expenses — would get you back on track.”

  “Have you any idea …?” Bliss scoffed, knowing the usual stinginess of the force.

  But Richards knew the cost. “It’s an important case, Inspector. The sky’s pretty much the limit.”

  If this was an olive branch, it was hung with juicy fruit. Or would it turn out to be just a carrot to lure him out of the way while a certain senior officer was given a slap on the wrist?

  “I can’t,” Bliss replied, easing himself forward. “I’m a witness against Edwards. He nearly got me killed trying to cover his backside.”

  “Chief Superintendent Edwards to you,” Richards admonished, his tone immediately souring. “Innocent until proved guilty, Inspector, as I’m sure you’re aware. And you needn’t worry — you’ll be notified of the disciplinary hearing in plenty of time to return.”

  “Your mission,” Richards told him, “is simply to locate this person, positively identify him, and report his whereabouts.”

  The apparent simplicity of the task left Bliss skeptical. They didn’t need an inspector for this. A grunt with six months’ service could do this — even a civvy could do it — at a fraction of the cost.

  “Is that it?” he asked, certain he was being sidelined.

  “That’s it, Inspector. In fact, you are specifically ordered not to take it further. This is very delicate, as I’m sure you appreciate.”

  Bliss nodded appropriately, none the wiser.

  “Precipitous action on your part could prove fatal,” Richards continued, his face saying he was well aware of Bliss’s proclivity for taking matters into his own hands when he believed the situation demanded it.

  But what about me? wondered Bliss. Could it prove fatal to me as well? He didn’t ask, suspecting the unreliability of any possible answer.

  “Just find him, and enjoy yourself while you’re at it,” Richards concluded, asking, “Is that a problem?”

  “What’s he wanted for?” Bliss asked, but the senior officer’s blank expression and vague explanation left him hanging.

  “Worldwide crackdown on the big boys. Someone upstairs pissed off with prisons full of petty criminals when the real villains are laughing all the way to the Caribbean and the Côtes du filthy rich.”

  “Don’t we have special people for this?” asked Bliss.

  “Yeah — you.”

  “Give me a break, Guv. You need someone who can mingle with the hoi polloi. Why not pick someone with an aristocratic background?”

  “Yeah — like they’re lining up to join the force, Dave. I can just see it: Lord Fotheringale hyphen Smythe the poxing third turning up at training school in a Ferrari, with his butler, valet, and personal chef dragging behind in a Range Rover.”

  “I knew a cop who had a Ferrari once.”

  “I remember his case,” Richards said. “Didn’t he go down for three years for extortion? Wasn’t he rolling over pimps for twenty percent of their takings and showing the new girls the ropes?”

  “That’s him,” Bliss laughed, “but what about MI5, or whatever they call themselves these days?”

  “Not their bag. This has nothing to do with national security. This guy’s just a crook.”

  “Interpol then?”

  “Waste of time, unless we know for sure where he is.”

  The heady scent of oleanders, writes Bliss, restarting his journal as he strolls around the bay towards the lighthouse that dominates the town from its lofty outcrop, and the bouquet of mimosa and hibiscus fills the motionless parched air, already laden with the perfume of lavender and rosemary, and sweetens the stench of decaying seaweed and overburdened sewers.

  He pauses, scrubs out the whole lot, and starts again. Oleanders, he writes, stops, and slams the book shut — his concentration sabotaged by the heat, the beauty, and a degree of apprehension. Worrisome thoughts of Chief Superintendent Edwards weigh him down as he struggles up the Chemin du Calvaire towards the Cap D’Antibes lighthouse. Rough stone steps, grooved by the feet of pilgrims since 981, according to the sign, lead him past the Stations of the Cross let into wayside niches, and he tags onto a group of straight-faced novitiates under the tutelage of a wimpled nun. They may be following the footsteps of a millennium of Christians, but he can’t help feeling they’ve been led to the Côte d’Azur as a warning against the sins of the flesh.