“It only took me a minute to find her,” continued Bliss. “I remember walking across the lawn into the woods, calling her name, and there she was, face down in the pond. They could have found her if they’d looked.”
“But they didn’t look?”
“Obviously not.”
“And you didn’t find it strange?”
Strange? His mind shuttled back to the pond and the lifeless little bundle of flesh as he picked at a split nail until it broke off and jerked him back to the moment.
“Strange? Not at the time. Afterwards, sometime afterwards, I started wondering about a lot of things but I didn’t know what to do. The coroner’s verdict was clear. No hint of foul play. No unresolved issues. Accidental drowning.” Bliss squeezed the remains from a bottle of scotch into a glass and took a gulp before continuing. “Look, Guv. I’ve never told anyone before but I’m pretty sure he killed his daughter.”
“That’s just your imagination, Dave. Time has a way of distorting things.”
“And sometimes it makes things clearer.”
“True. But why the father?”
“You know how it is, Guv. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling something isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
Trying to think beyond the tenacious image of the dead little girl, Bliss closed his eyes and sank back into his chair, leaving the other man with his backside propped against the windowsill. “Gordonstone never really pushed; he was always happy to accept that it was an accident, that she just fell in. If she’d been my six-year-old, I’d have been jumping up and down demanding explanations. I’d have been at the police station every day, banging on doors, shouting my mouth off, wanting to know what was happening, wanting action, wanting answers.”
“And he wasn’t demanding answers?”
“No,” Bliss shook his head with earnestness. “He took it all too calmly for my liking, and I’ll always remember him saying, ‘Well officer, these things happen.’ I think I was more upset than he was.” He took a slow swig, changing his rhythm, buying time to deliberate before deciding to reveal his trump card. “Then there was the sexual thing.” The DCI raised an eyebrow interestedly, and waited.
“The pathologist couldn’t be certain but he thought she may have been interfered with — somebody playing doctors and nurses, mommies and daddies, you know the sort of thing.”
“And you think it was the father?”
“Who else?”
“You tell me.”
“According to the parents they never let her out of their sight except for when she was at school, and even then the mother took her and picked her up.”
“It could have been the mother,” the DCI chipped in, his voice loaded with experience. “It’s not without precedent, although they usually go for boys. And the parents must have let her out of their sight sometimes or she wouldn’t have drowned.” Bliss massaged his forehead with both hands trying to work the knots out of his mind. “According to them she was supposed to be with her big sister, Margaret. The two girls had gone exploring together, and the pond was just behind the house. They’d rented the place for the summer holidays to get the kids out of the city. They’d just arrived and the girls went off to explore while they unpacked.”
“So what did the big sister say?”
Bliss hesitated, staring into his drink and searching for an answer; but all he could see was the little six-year-old cherub with long dark hair and a white marble face.
Peter Bryan prodded, “Well?”
Bliss made a performance of finishing his drink, lighting a cigarette, and checking out a small rip in the knee of his trousers. Finally he threw the empty cigarette packet toward an overflowing rubbish bin and admitted, “I didn’t interview her.”
“Who did?”
Bliss didn’t answer right away, knowing there was no satisfactory answer, and that his brain would always shut down altogether whenever he tried to fabricate something plausible out of nothing.
“Dave, it’s not too difficult. All I’ve got to do is dig up the file.” Bliss held up his hand to silence the other officer and then, in a barely audible whisper, said, “No one interviewed her.”
The DCI dropped his cup onto the windowsill, splintering the atmosphere with an audible crack, then leaned closer to Bliss, his face screwed into a blend of curiosity and confusion. “But surely she was the prime witness. You said the two girls were together. Someone must’ve interviewed her.” The old cat shrank into the carpet again and held its breath as Bliss tried to conjure an image of the elder sister out of thin air and came up in the middle of an impenetrable fog. The chief inspector was still waiting for him when he came out the other side with no sign of relief on his face, and the senior officer picked up the vibes.
“What’s that look for?”
“What look?” said Bliss, trying hard to take the pain out of his face.
“That look that says, ‘Can I trust you?’”
“OK. Can I?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on what you say.”
“In that case I ain’t saying nothing.”
DCI Bryan pushed himself off the windowsill and took up a headmaster’s stance, hands knotted behind back, head craned forward questioningly. “Dave, if you want to get something off your chest, particularly if it might affect this case, you may as well tell me. It happened more than twenty years ago so I don’t suppose anybody will be too worried about it now.”
Bliss feared the sting of the cane hidden behind the encouraging words and appealed to the other officer with eyes wide. “I didn’t do anything wrong, but I’ll be honest I’ve had something on my conscience ever since that case. It might have something to do with Martin Gordonstone’s murder, it might not. I really don’t care anymore so I may as well tell you.”
“Oh, shit. Don’t tell me Gordonstone coughed to murdering his own daughter.”
“No, Guv. Far from it. It wasn’t what he said, it was more the things he didn’t say that bugged me.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“He kept saying, ‘If there’s anything you want to know just ask.’ I’d ask but he never really gave a straight answer.”
“Be specific, man.”
Bliss gave it a few seconds thought. “Well, I remember asking him how long the girls had been gone, and he was sort of vague. He said something like, ‘Difficult to say precisely, officer. We were unpacking and I don’t remember when they left the house for sure. It could have been ten minutes, but it may have been fifteen, possibly longer.’ So I suggested that I ask the sister but he said, ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ve already asked her and she doesn’t have any idea.’ I told him I should still like to ask her and he said, ‘I’ve told you that won’t be necessary.’”
Bryan studied Bliss’s face closely. “So you never interviewed the other girl.”
Bliss shook his head. “Never even saw her. Looking back on it now, I feel bloody stupid. It’s obvious he kept her out of the way, but at the time —”
“What did his wife say?”