“Can I ask who’s calling?”
“Michael – just say Michael. He’ll know.”
A few seconds later the dead air was replaced by the hollowness of a speaker phone, but no voice.
“Superintendent Wakelin?” Bliss enquired speculatively.
The silence continued for a split second as the man at the other end struggled to place the voice “Oh Dave – Yes ... Sorry. How are you doing?”
Bliss hesitated, “It’s Michael, Sir.”
“Oh shit, of course. Sorry, Dave – I mean Michael. Fuck – this is confusing, isn’t it? Would you like to call back and start again?”
“No, that’s alright, Sir. I’m on a pay phone.”
“Thank Christ. Well what can I do for you ... Michael?”
“Can we meet?”
“Sure. When? Where?”
“Eighteen hundred hours at location B, if that’s convenient.”
A slight pause signalled uncertainty. “Location B,” he repeated vaguely.
How the hell did this man ever become a superintendent? He’s got a brain like a sieve. “Location B ...” Bliss was about to explain, then lost his patience. “Haven’t you got the list of locations? ... It’s that pub near Camden Lock.”
Samantha was next and his daughter answered her mobile phone at the first ring. “Dad – Where are you?”
“How’s your mother?” he countered, wary of giving anything away.
“Dad – I’m expecting a call.”
Did he detect a touch of aggravation? “Oh sorry – I just need a few things from your attic.”
“O.K. I’ll be home at ...”
“No,” he cut in, “I don’t want to come round. Will you bring them to me at the usual place?”
“Dad – surely we don’t still have to do that. It’s been more than six months ...”
“I can’t take the risk, Sam. I have enough on my conscience already ... if anything happened to you.”
“You don’t think he’s still out there do you?”
“I was followed today,” he admitted.
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry, I lost him.”
The phone went silent at her end. “What’s the matter, Sam?” he asked eventually.
“You know what’s the matter – I’m scared shitless. I don’t know why you don’t just stay in the safe house until they catch him – he’s a maniac.”
“I’ll be alright – I’m beginning to wish I’d never told you.”
“Well, perhaps that goes for me too. But whether I know or not doesn’t change the fact that I could become an orphan any day now.”
“Sam, that isn’t going to happen. Anyway, you’re twenty-eight. You don’t become an orphan at that age.”
“Don’t be picky. What do you need?”
He gave her a list, set a time, and with a final fruitless search for the Volvo around the service centre, set off for London.
Tottenham Court Road was more or less on Bliss’s route, once he’d reached London. He parked the Rover under a “No parking” sign, stuck a “Police – on duty” card in his windscreen and told himself that he wouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes.
The shop window was exactly as he remembered it from when he’d dragged Samantha there at the age of ten. The visit had been more his treat than hers – one of the times when a son would have come in handy. An antique bow window of tiny mullions, set in a latticework of lacquered wood, bulged out over the pavement, and a life-size guardsman, as stiff as the plywood on which he was painted, stood sentinel at the door.
The entirely appropriate smell of polished leather and Brasso had not changed, neither had a tinny electronic bugle sounding reveille overhead as he opened the door under the sign, “The Little Soldier – Dealers in miniature military memorabilia.”
A tall man with a well-disciplined moustache, a full head of grey hair, (fractionally longer than regulation and afflicted with an unruly curl), modelling a sharp mohair suit, came smartly to attention behind his counter. “Can I be of assistance, Sir?”
“Just looking,” he lied, annoyed at being pounced upon before he’d had a chance to draw breath, and he took his time studying an army of vividly painted small soldiers artistically arranged on a battlefield of green baize. “Very pretty,” he said finally sensing the man standing impatiently alongside him.
The instant frown of disapproval told Bliss he’d chosen the wrong expression. “These are historically accurate reproductions of military personnel ... not Barbie dolls, Sir,” said the dealer, his officer’s accent as crisp as the creases in his trousers.
Bliss mumbled something that could have been mistaken for an apology and dragged the plastic bag containing the remnants of the toy soldier out of his pocket. “I wonder if you can tell me anything about this?”
The look of abhorrence on the dealers face seemed fairly clear as he took the pieces and “tut-tutted,” leaving Bliss in no doubt that, in his Lilliputian world, the miniature statuary had never been a Rodin or even a Royal Doulton. In fact, Bliss was quite prepared for him to pucker his mouth, spit drily in disgust, and drop the pieces disdainfully into a garbage bin. But he didn’t. He studied them seriously, minutely examining each piece with a jewellers loupe, “tut-tutting” again and again until Bliss could stand it no longer and made a move to examine one or two of the other armies in the room.
“How did this happen?” asked the dealer without taking his eye off the magnifying glass, as if sensing Bliss’s lack of attention.
“Dropped,” suggested Bliss nonchalantly.
“Hmm,” he hummed, then “tut-tutted” and gave Bliss an inquisitive look. “I don’t think so.” But he didn’t press the point, returning to the model, leaving Bliss with the distinct impression that he was in his bad books.
With the inspection completed the dealer put down his glass and thoughtfully arranged the two halves of the model on a circle of baize. “Looks as though someone took a hammer to it,” he mused, then, giving nothing away, looked at Bliss critically and quizzed, “Where did you get this, Sir?”
What’s this – the third degree, thought Bliss, immediately riled by the dealer’s demanding tone. “A friend,” he shrugged.
“Well I can tell you it’s a Britains,” said the dealer.
“British,” corrected Bliss with gloating satisfaction.
The dealer looked up. “Oh you really don’t know anything, do you?”
“I’ve led a sheltered life,” retorted Bliss – mentally equating his lack of knowledge about toy soldiers to his ignorance of the inner workings of a dildo.
“Britains,” the dealer began again, then repeated the name for emphasis, “Britains were the world’s finest manufacturers of historically accurate fifty-four millimetre military personnel.” Then, weighing the tiny figure in his hand, he continued condescendingly, “This was made in their Hornsey Rise factory on Lambton Road. It’s hollow lead alloy. It doesn’t seem a big deal today, but Britains revolutionised the whole industry when the son of the founder, William, discovered they could save a lot of metal, and money, by making hollow figures. The Americans, in comparison, were still making solid models years later.”
“Very