The commissioner’s commendation won the day, but he had quickly squirrelled the vellum certificate into a rarely visited drawer.
With his mind agitated by the disturbing memories, Bliss had been letting the car drive itself and was horrified to find his speed had crept to more than a hundred miles an hour. Easing his foot off the accelerator he realised that subconsciously he had been trying to outpace the Volvo. And, once he’d slowed, he did his best to remember the bandit’s face and found himself replaying the trial in his mind. What had he claimed in his defence? “I never meant to hurt no-one. It were the copper’s fault. If he hadn’t shouted about having a gun I would never have shot.”
His assertion hadn’t saved him. “You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree,” the judge had said sagely, adding, “Life imprisonment is the only punishment which I am permitted by law to impose.” And, despite the seriousness of his words, he obviously took great satisfaction saying it.
Following the verdict Bliss had turned to the public gallery in time to see a light of triumph flash across Mrs. Richards’ face, then she crumpled under an emotional millstone and burst into tears, overcome by relief that she had finally laid her daughter to rest. But the drama wasn’t over. The prisoner’s dock erupted in violence as a couple of burly guards moved in on the convict.
“It’s that fuckin’ copper what should go down. Him and is big mouth,” he yelled as the jailers tried to take him from the dock. “He’s the one who should go down, not me. I’m innocent,” he screamed as he flailed his fists at the men. “I wouldn’t shoot no woman. What sort of scum do you think I am?”
The three bodies sank briefly beneath the dock’s parapet as the guards smothered the enraged prisoner, before dragging him to his feet, with his arms painfully up his back, as the judge added fourteen days loss of privileges to his sentence.
“Take him away,” ordered the judge and the prisoner shot Bliss a venomous look that penetrated his skull with a viciousness that hurt.
“I’ll get you for this ... pig,” he screamed, then he screamed again as one of his elbows dislocated.
“Forget it,” everyone said afterwards, but the impact of the killer’s words had eaten away at Bliss for weeks. Forget what? That he’d been accused of murder or forget that he had caused Mandy’s death. He was innocent, everybody said so. But innocent of what? Innocent of crime. But what about impulsive behaviour and misjudgement – was he innocent of that.
“It was just bad luck,” they said and he had to agree.
It was bad luck – bad luck for Mandy that he had been in the bank that day. If he hadn’t been there the killer would have walked away with a bagful of loot and the only losers would have been the insurance company.
Getting off the motorway without being seen by the driver of the Volvo seemed, to Bliss, to be his safest option and, as he spotted a coach slowing to take the exit into a service area, he took a chance. Pulling sharply in front of the coach, ignoring the driver’s angry fist, he slipped into the deceleration lane. Then, shielded by the monstrous vehicle, he drove into the coach park and hid amongst the herring-boned ranks of leviathans. Had the Volvo followed? He couldn’t tell – the coaches blocked his view.
Keeping his head down, Bliss infiltrated the snake of passengers spilling out of one of the vehicles and had taken a dozen paces before realising he had joined a party of shrivelled pensioners. He was sticking out like a sunflower in a cabbage patch. Telling himself that it was unlikely the killer would risk accidentally hitting a little old lady mid-afternoon in a busy car park, he stayed with the group and made it safely to the self-service restaurant.
Security cameras scanned the room and, picking out a table in full view of one of them, he slunk into a seat opposite a lumpy girl with a Neanderthal brow. With his head bowed he searched the crowded room, seeking a single man doing the same. He came up blank. Everybody seemed to be in pairs or groups – but hadn’t he joined a group and, looking across at the girl in the opposing seat, wasn’t he now part of a pair.
The girl caught him looking. Her hooded eyes under heavy brows viewed him critically for a few seconds then, as if he were her audience, she sniffed loudly and openly swiped a dribble of snot off the end of her nose onto her sleeve. Having fixed his attention, she delved into a ragged canvas handbag and, with a victorious grunt, flourished a blue airmail envelope and began unfolding a dog-eared letter. Her rubbery mouth formed each word as she read silently from the flimsy paper for a few seconds, then she paused, looked up, and laughed uproariously. Bliss shrank himself lower in the seat as her laughter drew looks from across the room, thinking, just my luck – a loony tune.
Every few words in the letter brought another gale of laughter and the girl, seemingly unaware of the commotion she was causing, read further and laughed even louder. Bliss frantically searched for some means of escape, fearing he’d become caught up in some sort of performance art, a fringe festival event perhaps, but all eyes were on the girl. Any movement on his part would have drawn attention. He was trapped between a killer and a nutter.
“Have you been here before?” she suddenly enquired, with a fixed stare that pinioned him to his seat.
“A few times,” he mumbled.
“I’ve been here six times.”
Something in the earnestness of her tone made him suspicious. This was a motorway service area, not the Tate Gallery or even Disneyland. “Six times?” he queried.
“I was Anne Boleyn’s principal lady-in-waiting once,” she insisted haughtily, and leant over the table to whisper confidentially “You wouldn’t believe what I used to do for Henry when she wasn’t up to it.”
Bliss swallowed hard. “And the other times you were here …?”
She leant back. “I was a cat once.”
Without the demented laughter the crowd began shrinking away, pretending disinterest, pretending that they had never been interested. Bliss readied to leave, waiting his moment until all eyes were elsewhere, but a strong feeling of Deja-vu suddenly held him in check. This wasn’t a bank, the eccentric woman wasn’t a killer, as far as he knew, but the whole situation seemed to have taken on the same surrealistic quality as the time he’d bludgeoned Maggie Thatcher’s effigy half to death, following Mandy’s murder.
As he rose, a tingling sensation on the nape of his neck convinced him the killer was present and he quickly scanned the faces searching for the Volvo’s driver. No-one looked even faintly familiar. Then he paused in terror as a voice behind him shouted, “Oy!” It was the lunatic – he kept walking. “You never know,” she called after him with absolute sincerity. “You might have been someone famous too.”
Five miles further on the driver of the blue Volvo had pulled into an Esso station and was on the phone, his hand shaking as he whispered into the mouthpiece. “I’ve lost him,” he admitted, and before he took a breath to explain, the handset exploded in his ear.
“Shit – How? Where? When?”
“I think he caught on.”
“You useless piece of dog’s ...”
“I couldn’t help it – he seemed jumpy.”
“Of course he was jumpy – wouldn’t you be if you were being followed by an incompetent turd like you?”
“Look, don’t blame me. I didn’t ask to do this. You should’ve done it yourself.”
“All I wanted was a clean job – Oh forget it. I’ll do it myself. You’d better come back.”
Bliss dawdled in the service area for over an hour, vacillating between brazening it out, on the betting the killer wouldn’t strike in such a public place in broad daylight, and slinking back to the car with his head down. In the end he decided to call for assistance