A Year Less a Day (31 page)

“Mort wants you to sort out the Button broad properly,” Joshua had said, lifting Tom's head off the bloodstained carpet by his hair, once the damage had been done. “And he's ticked off with all your f'kin B.S., so be a good man and stop pissing him about or you might get hurt real bad.”

Tom hasn't moved from the floor all night, and knows that he needs a doctor, but Dingo had ripped his phone off the wall and trampled it to pieces as soon as they had arrived. “Just in case you get any silly ideas,” the goon had said.

Trina Button, on the other hand, does have a phone—a payphone in the foyer of the Pacific Mall—and she too has a doctor in mind when she puts on a husky tone to call the Health Ministry's accounts department, where her prayers are answered.

“I'm new here,” says Candace, the clerk, when Trina claims that she doesn't recognize the young woman's voice.

“Oh. Hi, Candace,” continues Trina sounding forlorn. “I'm Margery Woods calling from Dr. Fitzpatrick's
office; Dr. William Fitzpatrick on Hastings. Look I'm in a lot of trouble and I really, really need your help. Don't tell anyone for Christ's sake, but I think I've totally screwed up this time and I'm gonna get fired.”

“Oh my gosh. What have you done?” asks Candace, clearly feeling for her.

“I think I've totally over-billed the insurance company on one of our patients,” Trina whimpers and goes on to give Jordan's particulars before saying. “I won't go to jail, will I? I mean, it was an accident—honest. You won't call the police, will you?”

“No. Stop worrying. I can sort it out. Let me just check his records.”

“No record at all?” exclaims Trina in disbelief a few minutes later when Candace gives her the news. “It's worse than I thought, then. Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes. Quite sure. According to this, Jordan Jackson hasn't visited a doctor in more than five years, so you're in the clear. Just submit the correct bill now and no one will ever know the difference. My lips are sealed.”

“Oh, Candace. You're fantastic. Thanks so much,” warbles Trina, more puzzled than ever as she puts down the phone and heads back to her car without noticing that Dingo is on her tail.

Mort's black BMW idles silently in the parking lot as Dingo peels off from Trina, slips into the back seat and reports.

“I didn't hear much, Mort, but I think she's on to Fitzpatrick.”

“Fuck. Who was she talking to?”

“Someone called Candy I think, but I couldn't hear much. Though she definitely said Jackson's name.”

Jackson is also on Daphne's mind the following morning as Bliss drops her at the gates of Thraxton Manor.

“I don't agree with this at all,” he tells her for the nth time, but she blanks him out.

“I've got your cellphone, David, and I'll call as soon as I'm ready to be picked up.”

“Don't forget what I said. Just press ‘1' then ‘send' for the police station if there is any problem. Are you sure you don't want me to come in with you?”

“Good grief, no. That really would make him suspicious.”

“Are you quite certain about this?” he tries for a final time.

“David. Did I ever tell you about the time that I talked my way into the Russian Embassy in Cairo and slipped out the back with a defecting East German scientist?”

“You didn't ...” he begins, but capitulates. “All right, you win. Just make sure you call. I'll be waiting.”

Daphne is nonchalant as she jauntily strolls through the gate and up the driveway, humming Ringo's “Act Naturally” to herself. The spotlight of springtime has rallied against winter's final fling, and the speed of the thaw has been remarkable. It's only been three days since the blizzard, yet the early risers are already pushing up through the grass. Swathes of snowdrops and yellow crocuses line the approach to the old manor with abandoned profusion, while ribbons of snow, sheltering under hedges and in ditches, still frame the surrounding green fields in white.

Maxwell, a.k.a. Jackson, is stiff as he meets Daphne at the apartment's front door, and he doesn't soften as she climbs the stairs ahead of him, prattling on about the lovely sunshine and how it's so nice to have gotten out again after being forced to stay inside since the storm. “I do hope you managed all right without me,”
she is saying as she walks into the kitchen and finds her missing shoes sitting accusingly on the table.

“Oh. You found my shoes,” she cries in delight. “You clever man. I wondered if I would ever see them again. They're one of my most comfortable pairs. Wherever did you find them?”

“They were in the grounds,” he says dryly.

“Oh dear. They must've dropped from my bag the day before the storm when I came and you were out. It was such a lovely day, so I walked around the garden. I remember when your dad ...”

“Well, I'm not my father,” he butts in harshly. “So in future I'd rather you didn't just wander around when I'm not here. Anyway, how could you have gotten home without your shoes?”

Daphne ignores the coldness and pushes ahead with the script she's already practiced in her mind as she picks up the shoes. “These are my working shoes. I always wear walking shoes to get here—you must've noticed. These must have fallen out of my bag when I sat on the lawn.”

“They were under the snow.”

“That would be right, Jeremy,” she says slipping them in her bag with ease and pulling out her duster and furniture polish. “It was the day before the big storm. Thank you ever so much. I'm really quite fond of them.”

But the apartment dweller has an edge to his voice as he takes hold of the spray can, saying, “Look, Daphne ...”

“Daffodil ... Remember, Jeremy? When you were a little boy, you always called me Auntie Daffodil.”

“Yes, precisely,” he says. “But I'm not a boy now and I can manage perfectly well, so, to be honest, I really don't think you should come anymore.”

Daphne picks up a smile as she takes the can back and boldly sprays the table. “Oh, I don't mind ...”

“Well I do,” shouts the occupant as he grabs the can and throws it into the garbage. “Now just leave me alone you old bat, and don't come back.”

“Jeremy would never have spoken to me like that,” Daphne bitches ten minutes later as she relates the experience to Bliss when he picks her up near the manor's gates. “Monty would have wrung his neck.”

“But that was forty years ago,” he reminds her as they drive away.

“People don't change that much, David,” she says, still full of umbrage. “He was a nice boy then, and he would be a nice man today. He is definitely not my little Jeremy.”

“Never mind,” says Bliss. “How about lunch at the Mitre Hotel to cheer you up? My treat.”

“I'd like that, David,” she says, perking up; then she adds mischievously, “The food's quite good there now that Mavis has retired.”

“By the way,” he says as he drives into the city, “speaking of Mavis, I've had another phone call from the newspaper guy in Liverpool.”

Once Bliss had dropped Daphne off close to the gates of Thraxton Manor, he had raced back to the house and had been dancing around the phone awaiting her call, when the features-editor of the
Merseyside Mail
had called.

“I'm just doing a follow up,” the familiar voice had said. “Would you happen to know if Ms. Lovelace managed to track down all the people in the Beatles' photo?”

“Yes, thanks. Apart from someone called Geoffrey Sanderson, I believe,” Bliss had answered, hoping to end it there.

“So Mrs. Longbottom is still planning the reunion then?”

“Oh yes. I think so,” he'd replied, wishing Daphne were home to do the lying.

“OK. Well we'll run the photo and a little blurb asking if anyone knows the whereabouts of Geoffrey. Can you tell me anything else about him?”

“Not really. He'd be in his sixties—probably—and his old next door neighbour thought he might have stayed in Canada after the tour.”

“Oh, that's interesting,” the editor had said. “If we don't turn up anything here, I'll have a word with a Canadian reporter I know. See if we can get something rolling out there.”

“This is very good of you.”

“Not really. Good human-interest stories with happy endings aren't that easy to come by. Who knows, we might even be able to get Sir Paul or Ringo to attend—now that would be a scoop.”

“Daphne Lovelace, OBE,” Bliss had said to the air once he'd put the phone down. “You are going to be in big trouble with Mavis Longbottom.”

“Oh, you are an old worrywart,” Daphne laughs, once Bliss has recounted the gist of the call and they arrive at the Mitre. “How on earth is Mavis ever going to find out?”

Superintendent Donaldson has also chosen the Mitre for lunch and is thrilled to see that Daphne has fully recovered. “This is on me,” he insists as they wait in the lounge bar to order.

“I told you the food had picked up,” says the senior officer as the three of them choose the day's special of steak and oyster pudding, with asparagus spears and creamed spinach, followed by Bramley apple crumble and custard.

“You were lucky to get sausage and mash before,” sneers Daphne, then she outlines the details of her recent visit to the manor, saying to Donaldson, “You've got to arrest him, Superintendent. He's a charlatan.”

“Daphne, my dear,” replies Donaldson with a kindly hand on her arm. “To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I can do anything at all. I'd never persuade the Magistrate to give me a search warrant because you thought you saw a dodgy passport when you were trespassing in someone's apartment.”

“But he's claiming to be Jeremy Maxwell,” she complains bitterly.

“He can claim to be George III if he wants, Daphne. As long as he's not doing it with intent to defraud.”

“But he's living on the Maxwell estate.”

“So you're going to have to dig up the real Maxwell to swear on the Good Book that he's been diddled out of his inheritance by an impostor; otherwise, I don't see what I can do.”

“We could run both the names through the computer to see if there's anything known,” suggests Bliss, and Donaldson quickly agrees.

“OK, Dave. Stop by the station once you've dropped Daphne off at home after lunch and we'll have a look.”

Lunch at the Mitre had been everything that Donaldson claimed it would be. However, he is still rounding it off with a cup of tea and a handful of chocolate digestive cookies when Bliss shows up to check the criminal records at three.

“Would you like a biscuit, Dave?” offers Donaldson, as Bliss spells out the names, but he shakes his head, laughing. “You'll explode one of these days, sir.”

“Ah, but I'll explode happy, David,” he replies, then goes on to say that without full names and dates of birth it may be very difficult to get a match on either of the two men.

“I realize that,” says Bliss, well used to the problems of information overload, and, after the computer has spent a few seconds in electronic thought, he's proven correct. Nearly a thousand Jeremy Maxwells and over five-hundred Jordan Jacksons have somehow found their way into the archives over the past thirty years, and separating out the inhabitant of Thraxton Manor proves impossible.

“It might be easier if we had a photo,” says Bliss, and Donaldson has an idea.

“I'll send one of our surveillance guys out to snap a mug shot of him,” the senior officer says, adding, “but only because it's Daphne Lovelace saying it. I sometimes wonder how we manage without her still around.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Bliss. “I'm sure that will make her happy. And I can send a copy to my contact in Vancouver to see if they can ID him.”

The temptation to tell Ruth that the doctor had lied about treating Jordan leaves Trina Button with a major headache—if Fitzpatrick hadn't seen Jordan since September, if ever, why had he signed a death certificate? Answers may lie in the box of Zofran pills found in Jordan's room, Trina suspects, and she is on the trail of the pharmacist who sold them. She had wheedled the box out of Sergeant Brougham, despite the fact that the officer had gotten his mind entrenched in prosecution mode, and was still trying to claim that they were material evidence in a murder case.

“And precisely whose murder are you talking about in particular?” Trina had demanded of Brougham, as she'd challenged him in the foyer of the police station, then she'd openly switched on her mini tape recorder and defiantly held it under his nose as she awaited a response.

“Turn that off,” he'd ordered, trying to snatch the tiny machine, but she had spun away and adroitly dropped it
down the front of her nurse's uniform, shouting loudly to the desk clerk, “Sergeant Brougham is assaulting me. I want to lay charges.”

All heads had swivelled their way and Brougham had backed off faster than if he'd been stung. “I'm not going to touch you as long as you turn it off,” he'd angrily protested, but Trina had kept up her vociferous tirade.

“Sergeant Brougham is now attempting to blackmail me,” she had ranted, attracting the attention of several members of the public and a passing policewoman.

“Just turn it off, damn you.”

“Sergeant Brougham is now swearing at me.”

“I'll throttle you ...”

“Sergeant Brougham has just threatened to kill me. I have it on tape. Call the police.”

“Shut up, you stupid woman. This is a police station.”

“He's swearing at me again.”

“I'll arrest you if you don't stop it.”

“I am now being unlawfully arrested by Sergeant Brougham ...” she had yelled at the top of her voice and had slapped her wrists together and held them up in front of his face.

“All right, all right. You can take the damn pills.”