“Oh it’s you, Chief Inspector – I thought I heard voices,” said Daphne blundering in with a bucketful of cleaning materials. “I didn’t expect you in yet.”
He jerked upright and flung his eyes open. Voices? Was I talking out loud? “You’re in early , Daphne,” he said cheerily, hoping he wasn’t blushing.
“I like to get started at six – always have.”
“I should have thought someone of your age would enjoy a lie in.”
The bucket dropped with a clang and she struck back crustily. “Most old fogeys die in bed, Chief Inspector – I minimise the risk by spending as little time there as possible.”
“Oh I didn’t mean ...” he began apologetically, but she was already laughing.
Smiling, he went back to his assessment of the Dauntsey case and picked up a sheaf of papers to give the impression of busyness.
“I’ve got my eye on a nice leg of lamb for tonight,” she said, dusting around the boxes of his still unpacked office.
“Sorry?” he said, looking up, realising he’d missed something important.
“I said I was thinking of doing lamb tonight – have you forgotten you’re coming ...”
His mind was focused on the paper in front of him – a page from a message pad. “No, I hadn’t forgotten ...” he began, then drifted to silence, pre-occupied by what he was reading.
“Seven-thirty or eight?” she asked.
His mind was miles away – Scotland – a purple heather estate on the banks of a loch somewhere in the Highlands – the distant skirl of pipes, the abattoir smell of boiled haggis. “According to this, the Major didn’t live there,” he said waving the paper at her before scrunching it and aiming at a litter bin.
“Didn’t live where?”
His brow creased inquisitively. “Didn’t you say he lived in Scotland?”
“No – I don’t believe I did. I suppose he may have done, but all I said was that I hadn’t seen him ...”
“ ... Since Suez,” he interjected, suddenly remembering that it had been the matron of the nursing home who’d mentioned Scotland. “Actually, I wanted to ask you about that. It struck me as strange afterwards. Why Suez, what made you think of that?”
A look of consternation clouded Daphne’s face and he worried he had offended her in some way. Putting down her can of spray polish, she scooted across to the door and checked the corridor with exaggerated care. As she returned to his desk her thoughtful expression suggested she was considering the wisdom of revealing some great secret, but she shelved the idea at the last moment, saying, “I’d rather tell you tonight – if that’s alright – at dinner.”
“In that case why not let me take you somewhere posh as promised – I could do with something to cheer me up.”
The implication that her leg of lamb would not have cheered him smarted, but she rationalised quickly. “Thank you, that would be nice – at least I won’t have to wash up.”
Bliss was still trying to piece together the newly acquired information from Scotland as Daphne dragged her vacuum cleaner into the next office, and he wandered thoughtfully around the room abstractly picking at files and boxes.
“Whoomph,” the low boom of an explosion shook him out of his thoughts and left him trying to identify the sound. The backfire of a car, was his first thought, but the frequency was too low – so low it was tangible rather than audible – more like a pressure wave pulsing through the atmosphere. The following silence was almost as tangible as the boom of the blast, leaving him wondering if he’d heard anything at all, even dismissing it and fleetingly returning to his inner debate over the Dauntsey murder.
Twenty seconds later he’d reached the part in his hypothesis where Jonathon was grave-side, unrolling the duvet from the body, when a second explosion hit. An explosion of instantly identifiable sounds – the pandemonium of disaster: shrieking alarms, sirens and bells; shouting men; thundering feet; slamming doors; screaming engines and squealing tyres.
Swept up in the excitement, Bliss rushed to the control room where half a dozen shirt-sleeved operators were electrified by the madly pulsating warning lights and flashing computer screens. At lightening speed the control officers were tapping buttons and flicking switches as they struggled to deal with a flood of incoming calls and alarms. And, above the electronic hum, the enlivened buzz of their voices – asking, ordering, directing, informing.
“What’s happening? Where are you? Do this, do that, go there, stop the traffic, secure the area – fire services are en-route, hospitals are being alerted.”
“What’s happening?” whispered Bliss, leaning over one of the women, trying not to interrupt her.
“Shush,” she waved him off with an irritated flick of the wrist and continued calling into her microphone. “Alpha five-niner – location, over?”
“What is it?” he tried again, a note of insistence adding authority to his tone.
She ignored him. “Alpha five-niner,” she continued to call, “State your location – over? I’m getting nothing from fifty-nine, Serg,” she shouted at the man on an opposing console.
“What’s happening, Serg?” called Bliss, but was blanked out as the sergeant stared straight past him, treating him like an inconvenient post.
“Try fifty-four ...” he shouted to the controller. “No, belay that, I’ll do it myself.” He picked up the microphone. “Alpha five-four, alpha five-four. What’s five-niner’s ten-twenty?”
“Am I invisible?” Bliss questioned flippantly. Have I died? Did he get me? Then his thoughts darkened and left him pondering – Is this what death is like? What was that explosion? Maybe I am dead – maybe he did get me. “Sergeant!” he bellowed in something of a panic.
“I’m busy – what do ye want – who are you?”
The loudspeaker cackled overhead. “Alpha five-four to Delta Alpha – I’ve no idea where five-niner is. We’re just arriving at the scene – looks a mess-over.”
Unable to wait any longer Bliss harshly grabbed the sergeant’s shoulder, “I’m D.I. Bliss. Will somebody tell me what’s happening?”
“Sorry, Guv – There’s been an explosion. One of our uniformed ...”
“Where?” insisted Bliss, cutting him off.
“Mitre Hotel in the High Street.”
Bliss felt his knees giving – his hotel, the hotel he’d left only thirty minutes earlier. The hotel where he would have been shaving or showering had he waited for the receptionist’s early call. “Oh God!”
“Are you alright, Guv?”
Now what? Admit I know who did it? Admit it was my fault – again?
“Yes ... yes ... I’m alright. I suppose I’d better get down there. Have you called the Super?”
“Everything’s under control, Guv.”
Not in Bliss’s mind it wasn’t. His brain was exploding with questions. How did he find me so quickly? How did he know I was at the Mitre? Why