Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. Page 7

“Just give me five minutes, then pop along and see me, will you, David. I’ve got something that I think you’re going to enjoy.”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid, sir,” says Bliss, bracing for the explosion. “I didn’t quite make it back last night.”

  “David,” calls a pathetic voice from the top of the stairs, “are you on the telephone?”

  “Can I call you back?” whispers Bliss, not wanting Daphne to overhear, but Edwards is seething.

  “No, you f’kin well can’t —” he’s shouting as Bliss mutters, “Sorry — battery’s dead,” and hits the “off” button.

  The degree of Daphne’s degeneration is alarming. Without her false teeth and her customary blush of makeup, she has gained thirty years, and her puffy bloodshot eyes merely add to her age.

  “You should stay in bed,” says Bliss, guiding her back to the bedroom. “I’ll bring you a cup of Keemun tea.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she says, but her tone lacks conviction. “Maybe an Aspirin.”

  “I’ll find some,” he tells her as she slumps onto the bed.

  “You do know what that letter means, don’t you?” she says, focusing on him for the first time and expecting a response.

  “Well, I don’t know…” he waffles, but she’s clearly reached her own conclusion and doesn’t want to be contradicted.

  “David. You’ve no idea how many deaths I’ve had to deal with,” she says, her wounded conscience dragging her down. “I’ve lurched from funeral to funeral my whole life, and I’ve arranged quite a few of them in one way or another.”

  The metaphor isn’t lost on Bliss, who is well aware of Daphne’s exploits with a shadowy government unit during, and after, the Second World War, and he doesn’t like the direction she’s headed, but he can’t stop her, as she continues: “The poor woman was just too frightened to tell me that she couldn’t afford the trip. But what does that say about me, David? What kind of best friend does that make me? I might as well have been the one who pushed —”

  “Oh. You can’t blame yourself…” he starts, but realizes he’s wasting his breath.

  “Of course I can,” she says fiercely. “She could never have planned this trip on her own. She’d never even heard of Ulaanbaatar or Vanuatu.”

  “But you didn’t know she couldn’t pay.”

  “David, I’ve been Minnie’s friend for nearly fifty years. I knew very well that she didn’t have much money. Oh, she always had fur coats, and she could fork out for a pair of pricey boots from Merryweather’s if they took her fancy, but you’d never want to delve too deeply into her underwear drawer.”

  “Well, she’s not alone in that.”

  “You do realize that she was just waiting for me to pick up the phone and say, ‘Never mind, Minnie. It doesn’t matter,’” Daphne carries on. “That’s why she didn’t come to the wedding. She thought I didn’t care.”

  “But you do care, Daphne.”

  “Caring is doing, David. Otherwise it’s like a dead tree falling in an uninhabited forest.”

  “I’ll get you that tea,” says Bliss, heading for the kitchen with the intention of slipping in a call to Edwards, but he is not surprised when his plea for a few days’ compassionate leave doesn’t go over well.

  “You were off most of last week,” shoots back Edwards.

  “I know, but I spent all weekend on this case.”

  “Not my problem, Chief Inspector. You should leave it to Hampshire and the Transport Police.”

  “I realize —”

  “David,” Edwards sighs in apparent exasperation. “You collared the kid for them based on the evidence to hand at the time. They’re big boys down there. They don’t need the Yard to wipe their asses.”

  I get the picture, thinks Bliss. Now the case looks as though it’s going down the toilet, Edwards doesn’t want anyone in his department with poop on their hands in case some of it rubs off on him.

  “True, sir. It’s just that Daphne needs —”

  “Chief Inspector,” says Edwards, hardening, “I’m trying to run a police force, not a granny-sitter’s. Get her a do-gooder from social services if she needs help, but I expect you back here by midday.”

  “Yes, sir. Three bags full, sir,” says Bliss, knowing that the line is already dead.

  chapter five

  The sound of Elgar follows Bliss down Daphne Lovelace’s front path a couple of hours later. “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she repeatedly assures him, and he finally accedes to her request for some solitude. But the mournful music is still beating into his brain as he joins the motorway back to London, so he turns on the radio to change the tune.

  “I’d hardly describe it as an epidemic,” the minister of health is saying, and Bliss knows immediately that the man is being questioned on the current rash of suicides.

  “Then, how would you categorize it, Minister?” demands the interviewer.

  “There is no doubt that the figures confirm a slightly increased rate over the past week or so,” admits the minister.

  And that doesn’t include Minnie, Bliss tells himself, while wondering if other unexpected deaths may have been similarly misdiagnosed.

  “It’s being suggested by certain elderly support groups that the government is actually encouraging seniors to kill themselves to alleviate pressures on overburdened medical facilities.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaims the minister, but he is immediately ambushed by an irate welfare advocate.

  “Minister,” explodes the crusty-voiced woman, “your own figures suggest that as many as sixty percent of the elderly are unable to access care facilities; and with the increasing number of baby boomers…”

  Muttering, “I’m surprised she didn’t accuse him of pumping out do-it-yourself euthanasia kits,” Bliss changes the channel and focuses on the road.

  Ten miles ahead, where the motorway cuts a swath though the ancient village of Nettlebrook, a soaring footbridge swoops over the six-lane highway and carries gaggles of schoolchildren to and from the village school. But it’s eleven-forty in the morning, a time when, apart from a harried housewife hustling to the village store or the occasional hiker trekking across the South Downs, the footbridge is usually deserted. This morning is an exception: James Edward Temple, an eighty-five-year-old army veteran who has been a genial bar fixture at the local pub for the past fifty years, stands on the approach ramp in the heavy drizzle, looking down at the torrent of traffic and sees a gloomy future.

  “I’ll never make it by twelve,” Bliss tells himself as he peers anxiously ahead through the spray, and he’s forced to call Edwards.

  “One o’clock. My office. And no more excuses,” snaps the chief superintendent.

  The signed resignation letter in his jacket pocket tempts Bliss — it only needs today’s date — but he’s unwilling to abandon his mission. “I’ll do my best, sir,” he responds as a traffic snarl ahead cuts his speed still further.

  James Temple is also on a mission and, in Service tradition he’s bulled his boots, polished the buttons of his British Legion jacket and pinned on his medals. Tobruk, El Alamein and Sicily laud the old Desert Rat’s battle honours, proclaiming that he had shown his mettle alongside Monty in 1942 and had shipped across the Mediterranean in July of 1943 to be with Eisenhower at the start of the European liberation.

  At his present speed, Bliss is nearly ten minutes away from the lofty footbridge in Nettlebrook, but he’s in no hurry. If Edwards craps all over him for being late, he can always whip out his resignation letter. It sits, like a concealed weapon, in his pocket, and gives him considerable comfort.

  Temple feels the same way about his maroon military beret. It’s faded and battered now, and a moth has taken a bite out of one side, but it safely saw him through the war when so many of his colleagues’ steel helmets proved to be soft targets, so he has put his faith in it again today as he straightens it on his balding head, squares his shoulders and readies himself for his final assault.

  Two miles,
just under four minutes, to the bridge for Bliss. The traffic has speeded somewhat and he’s checking the car’s clock. “Nearly twelve,” he muses, and guesses that he’ll easily make it to Edwards’ door by one.

  Temple checks his watch. “Three minutes to zero hour, Sergeant Major,” he barks loudly and pulls himself to attention. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” he says, then orders, “By the left… wait for it… wait for it… Quick march.”

  On the bridge ahead of Temple, the dreary English day slowly turns to a dark Sicilian night, and the sky is suddenly lit by a thousand flares as the Germans and Italians prepare to defend the Mediterranean island; but the howitzers and machine guns aren’t for him this day. “Left, right, left, right,” he sings out with his head high, and he marches towards the far side where a cheering throng of Sicilian girls are waving and throwing flowers. “Hello, Johnny,” they yell, and urge him onwards as he crosses in the sky over the motorway.

  A giant gravel truck ploughing through the surface water is blocking Bliss with a cascade of spray, and he decides to sit back while others race blindly ahead.

  “Parade halt!” orders Temple as he reaches the northern side of the bridge to find that the crowd has evaporated into the past. “About turn!” he bellows, and pirouettes neatly. “By the left… Quick march!” he yells again, and the steel decking sings as Temple marches back to the zenith of the bridge high above the London-bound traffic.

  The sweep of the bridge is directly ahead of Bliss now, though it’s hazy in the wash of the enormous truck, but the figure of the lone soldier is clearly visible as he stands erect with his lips formed into a bugle, trumpeting “The Last Post” to the wind.

  “What on earth is he doing?” Bliss wonders as he races towards the bridge.

  “Parade… dismiss,” commands Temple, then he spins smartly to his left and stamps his right boot so solidly into the decking that it sets the metal bridge shivering from end to end. “One, two, three,” he counts before snapping the sharpest salute of his entire career, then he takes four quick steps and dives headfirst over the balustrade.

  “What the hell…” screeches Bliss, and he is instantly on his brakes as the old soldier plummets directly into the path of the gravel truck ahead of him. But the truck driver is too close to the plunging man and is oblivious to the danger until his windshield explodes.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” yells Bliss with his eyes in his mirrors, willing himself into the psyches of the following drivers, while around him other drivers are chatting idly to their passengers as they forge unsuspectingly into the murk.

  Einstein’s law of relativity kicks in and slows Bliss’s world, and he watches in amazement as the dozing driver behind him suddenly wakes up, slams on his brakes and slews violently into the path of a speeding BMW in the next lane.

  Bliss is rapidly decelerating as the gravel truck looms large in his path, and he watches a ballet of the doomed in his mirror as car after car veers sharply to avoid him and smash into others. But the driver of a giant low-loader, laden with steel girders, knows that he can’t risk swerving and losing control so he brakes, though not soon enough, and the sky behind Bliss blackens. He desperately searches for a way out but, with speeding vehicles crashing either side and the slowing gravel truck ahead, he finds no escape.

  “This is it,” sighs Bliss in resignation, and he is bracing for the crushing impact when the driver of the gravel truck abruptly loses his grip on life and leaves forty tons of rock in control.

  “Oh, no,” Bliss yells as the truck swerves towards the central barrier. But suddenly the road ahead of him is completely deserted, and with the words of the bishop at Minnie’s funeral — “Yea, though I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death” — in mind, he squeezes the throttle and leaves the carnage behind.

  The wreckage is piling up on the London-bound carriageway as Bliss checks that he is clear of danger before sliding to a halt on the hard shoulder. But the mayhem is just beginning on the Westchester-bound side, where the gravel truck’s remains, and most of its load, are sending cars, trucks and vans fishtailing along the wet road and crashing into each other.

  A motor coach, crammed to the roof with elderly gamblers on a pilgrimage to a golden shrine, slams into the hurtling cab of the runaway truck and bursts into flames, then vehicle after vehicle smash into the inferno.

  Bliss leaps out of his car, unscathed, and looks around in disbelief. “Oh my God!” he breathes and reaches for his cell phone.

  “Eleven dead and sixteen seriously injured, most of them seniors with severe burns,” a BBC radio reporter is saying into his microphone three hours later, when Bliss eventually slips exhausted into a makeshift refreshment tent that a group of villagers has set up on the roadside. Police, fire and ambulance personnel jostle for space as the reporter continues, “A police spokesperson estimates that it will be several hours before the road is reopened,” and Bliss asks for a tea.

  “Are you all right, sir?” asks a straight-backed, bearded man with a degree of authority familiar to Bliss. “You look all done in.”

  “No, I’m fine,” says Bliss as he flicks open his wallet. “Metropolitan Police.”

  “George Donaldson,” says the oldtimer in a broad country brogue as he pours from a giant pot borrowed from the village hall. “I used to be the local bobby here, afore they took away our bikes and gave a bunch o’ bloomin’ schoolkids fancy panda cars,” he explains, confirming Bliss’s suspicion.

  “Better not let Superintendent Donaldson hear…” starts Bliss, then he pauses with a quizzical look as the old man’s name rings a bell, and George Donaldson laughs. “That’s my son, Ted, over at Westchester you’d be talking about.”

  “So I guess you know what happened, then.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Old Jimmy Temple jumped off the bridge,” he replies nonchalantly, as if it’s a regular occurrence.

  “You knew him?”

  “I told my missus that summit like this ‘ud ‘appen,” George continues, then leans in to whisper, “Alzheimer’s,” as if he is afraid of the word.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It started a couple o’ weeks ago when he slapped a thousand quid on the bar in the White Swan sayin’, ‘Drinks are on me ‘til it runs out.’”

  “A thousand pounds?” queries Bliss.

  “Well, there were bloomin’ chaos. Must ‘a bin nigh on five ‘undred people crammed in that ther’ pub within ten minutes. An’ when the money ran out, old Bert, the landlord, were on the phone to the police station, but that were a waste o’ time. ‘Leave it to me, Bert,’ I said and I arrested Jimmy for causin’ a breach of the peace. Not that I had the power to do it, mind you, but it were just a way o’ getting’ him outside afore he were lynched. ‘What d’ye wanna do a daft thing like that fer?’ I said to ‘im, but he didn’t care. ‘Plenty more where that came from, George,’ he laffed.”

  Bliss’s cell phone rings — the tenth such occasion since lunchtime — and he checks the caller’s I.D. It’s Edwards again; his spirits sink, but now he has time to respond.

  “David, it’s Mike Edwards. Look, I’ve only just heard what happened. Are you injured?”

  “No. Just pretty shaken up…”

  “Well, don’t worry about a thing. Take as much time as you want. Have the rest of the week off. I hear you did a great job getting some oldies out of a burning bus.”

  “Well, it was —”

  “I’m putting you in for a commendation.”

  “Thank —”

  “And I’ve got a nice little jaunt lined up for you. How do you fancy a conference in Seattle next week? They want an expert to speak about the growing international problem of people trafficking and I thought you’d be ideal.”

  “That would be —”

  “Fabulous… By the way, I might have been a bit hasty when I called earlier. Sorry about that. Just wipe out the messages, will you.”

  That was short and smarmy, thinks Bliss, wondering if he’d heard corr
ectly. Did he actually say sorry? he queries, then replays Edwards’ previous messages and tut-tuts over the string of abusive expletives, but gleefully saves each one. One more nail in your coffin, Mr. Edwards, he is thinking to himself when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

  “So you’ve met my old dad, have you?” says Superintendent Donaldson.

  “Yes,” laughs Bliss with an eye on the senior officer’s stomach. “I should’ve spotted the likeness. Interesting man; he seems to have his finger on the pulse. He was telling me about the old boy suddenly splashing his dough around a few weeks ago.”

  “I heard about that, but he was always a bit loopy. That’s what happens to men who spend too much time on their own without a good woman to keep them sane,” says Donaldson with an expressive wink. “Anyway,” he carries on, “we can manage now if you want to get off home.”

  “Actually, I’m going back to Daphne’s. I wasn’t at all happy leaving her this morning.”

  Elgar is still performing as Bliss rings Daphne’s frontdoor bell, but it’s at a normal level now. Daphne, on the other hand, is far from normal. She’s still wearing her nightdress and dressing gown, and her teeth are lying in a tumbler by her bedside.

  “I didn’t expect you back,” she says with apparent grumpiness.

  “Obviously.”

  Then she takes in his dishevelled appearance. “Oh my God. You’ve ruined another coat.”

  “Bit of an accident,” he mumbles, as he leads her to the kitchen, saying, “I could use a special cup of your Keemun.” But she breaks into a flood of tears and slumps into a chair.

  Bliss doesn’t need to ask; the signs are all around him. Breakfast dishes still litter the kitchen table, Missie Rouge is begging at the fridge door, and another dead gin bottle has hit the floor.

  “What is it?” he asks gently as he hands her one of several fallen handkerchiefs.

  “It’s Thursday, David. Minnie always came for tea.”

  “I’ll light the fire,” he says, heading for the sitting room, but Daphne has other ideas. “I’d rather be on my own, David,” she says, rising determinedly and edging him towards the front door. “You’ve got plenty of work to do, I’m sure.”