“Yes, but you didn’t have to pick dead bodies off the beach – or stand at someone’s kitchen table watching them die a little as you tell them their Mum, Dad or little kid is lying on a slab at the morgue.”
“Nobody said the police was perfect, Dave. I just get more satisfaction than I did pummelling flabby backsides and sweaty armpits. Most of the time I was up to my elbows in some dirty-minded fat geezer with bigger tits than mine, and I knew exactly what was going through his mind – not that he stood the remotest chance.”
“Well, I know what was going through my mind,” Bliss said, wondering if he qualified as dirty-minded.
She turned and kissed him tenderly. “Yeah – but you’re not fat and greasy.”
“So what’s happening with the murder case now?” asked Samantha as she drove him back to his car.
“Patterson’s pissing me about,” he complained, then revealed what had happened the previous afternoon when he’d asked if results on the duvet and syringe had come back from the laboratory.
“I’ll chase them up, Guv,” Patterson had said, making to pick up the phone.
“No – I’ll chase them up, Pat,” said Bliss, adding, “They might get a move on with an inspector’s boot up their ass. Which lab?”
The left half of Patterson’s face twitched violently as he leafed through a stack of papers mumbling, “I’ll have to look it up.”
“Look up what? Which lab did you send them to? – I can get the number.”
Putting his hand to his face he stilled the twitch and said, “Sorry, Guv. The courier must’ve forgot to take them.”
“What?” exploded Bliss. “You’ve been hanging on to that syringe for a week – this is a murder enquiry, Pat, not kids nicking sweets from Woolie’s.”
“Don’t blame me, Guv.”
“O.K. Where’s the paperwork?”
“Paperwork?” echoed Patterson.
“Sergeant – stop wasting my time. If the exhibits were packaged for transportation to the lab yesterday the paperwork would be ready to go with them, now where are the copies?”
Patterson needlessly hunted through his desk, muttering about the unreliability of couriers and the untrustworthiness of staff in general. “They seem to have disappeared,” he said finally, adding nervously, “Someone must’ve thrown them out.”
Bliss got the message. “Right, Sergeant – you will personally drive those samples to the lab now. You will grovel and beg and, if necessary, you will kiss the scheduler’s backside and lick his boots ...”
“The scheduler’s a she, Sir.”
“Well it could be your lucky day then, Sergeant, but whatever you do, don’t come back here without results.”
“Right, Sir.”
“And the next time the dog eats your homework – bring me the dog. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Guv.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Samantha. “He pretty much ran that office before you arrived. Your predecessor spent more time knocking back scotch than knocking off villains, and Patterson wore his shoes for years – not that he kept them very clean, if you get my meaning.”
“I think I’m beginning to.”
“So. What are you planning to do about the bloke who’s trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know anymore. So far everything I’ve tried would qualify for the Guinness Book of Cock-ups. It started with the letters – when the first ones arrived I thought I’d just ignore him and he’d get fed up.”
“But he didn’t”
“He sent me the bomb instead,” agreed Bliss with a shake of his head, adding. “Plan B was to hide ... just a week or so in a safe house until he was caught – but he wasn’t. Plan F ...”
“Hold on,” she said. “What happened to C, D and E?”
“Impractical,” he said, dismissing them without consideration. “Anyway, F was to come here or some other equally out of the way place and hope he didn’t find out.”
“And he did?”
“Within days.”
“So what’s your plan now?” she asked, pulling away and looking to him for an answer.
“I’m not going to run ...” he started, then stopped, realising it sounded foolish, and admitted that he no longer had a plan.
“You’ve got to have a plan, Dave,” she told him. “Life just sort of wanders aimlessly past if you don’t have a plan.”
“I used to have a plan but I somehow got off the path and I’ve been trying to find my way back ever since.”
“Stop!” she cried. “I’ve heard enough.”
“What?”
“You have to stop trying to find your way back. There must have been a reason why you were derailed. All you can do now is to make a new plan, and start again. You’ll never find your way back onto the old path, and if you do you won’t be satisfied with what you find at the end of it.”
“Go back and start all over again at my time of life.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?”
He looked deeply into her eyes. “I think it would be – with you.”
“Yeah ... well don’t get your hopes up – I’ve been on my own a long time, and I’m quite happy not having to skivvy for man. Anyway, I’ve had more than my share of men using me as a dumping ground for their excess baggage.”
Chapter Fourteen
Their goodnight kiss had been full of promise, and Bliss floated back to Westchester at midnight with Pavarotti pumping out Puccini on the stereo and God at the wheel. The High Street was as busy as a Christmas Saturday on his arrival and, in his exhuberation, he couldn’t grasp the possibility that the commotion wasn’t anything other than a summer festival. Abandoning his car at one end of the street, he flowed with the throng toward the Mitre, where flashing lights and costumed players seemed to be entertaining a crowd, then an electrified voice smashed him in the solar plexus: “I bet it was a bomb.”
“What – what was that? What did you say?” he turned on the young man demandingly.
“I don’t know mate, somebody said it was a bomb in the hotel – that’s all I know.”
Craning over the heads of the crowd he looked ahead, recognised the flashing lights and variously hued blue costumes and went cold: police, fire and ambulance. This was the Mitre – there was no mistake this time – this wasn’t an explosion in a tea shop down the road. He stopped dead and several of the scurrying rubber-neckers crashed into him, forcing him to shelter in a shop doorway. This was not part of the plan – not his plan. What had the computer screen said? he asked himself, wringing his hands in consternation. “Bang – your time is up.”
What now? he mused, but knew what he wanted to do: run back to Samantha and sink into the comfort of her arms; sink into her body.
White, the Westchester Gazette’s reporter, caught his attention; flashing away at the crowd with a camera. He’ll just love this – “London cop bombed out for the second time.” Probably sell copy to Associated Press or