Deadly Sin (20 page)

Esmeralda slowly surfaces, but she comes out on the wrong side for Daphne. “God will punish you in Hell for eternity for saying such wicked, wicked things,” she admonishes with the malevolent pleasure of a pulpit pedant, as the fear in her eyes turns to pity.

“Is that what they told you?” shoots back Daphne, but she's too late, Esmeralda has gone back inside.

“Hello, Daffy,” calls Amelia as she flounces in with a lunch tray. “Mrs. Fitzgerald has sent you a little treat 'cos you've been poorly.”

Daphne's face brightens with a sardonic smile. The old carrot and stick routine, she laughs to herself as she turns to the young girl.

“Well, that's very nice of her, Amelia my dear. What is it?”

“A lovely bit of poached haddock with a creamy sauce.”

David Bliss also has lunch in sight as he queues in the staff canteen.

“Are you trying to upset our Muslim friends?” queries Commander Fox with a grin as he sidles up with his tray.

“No,” protests Bliss, before explaining the workmen's suspicious behaviour. “Although I find it funny that they didn't complain when the other blokes dug up the pavement.”

“Maybe that was because me, you, and half the Met. Police was standing on their front doorstep at the time.”

“Good point, sir.”

“So. What did you find?”

“Nothing,” says Bliss as he takes a double portion of steak pie.

“I don't suppose you thought of simply asking the workmen what they were doing before you upset our bearded brethren.”

“If only I could,” says Bliss, doubling up on mashed potatoes, and then he explains that he has checked with the Public Works Department and all the contractors authorized to repair the city's road and none have any record.

“That's very interesting,” admits Fox, and then he nods to Bliss's loaded plate. “What's up — lady of the house on strike?”

“Sort of,” shrugs Bliss as they search for a vacant table, but he is still focused on the pickup truck outside the mosque, explaining that he couldn't see the licence plates because of the camera angle.

“What about other cameras?”

“No luck so far,” admits Bliss. “But there's dozens of possibilities.” Then he reels off a list. “Red light and speed cameras. A couple of nearby banks and a warehouse have
got security. Then there's the congestion fee cameras and some intersections with traffic management cameras.”

“Phew!” exclaims Fox as he puts down his tray. “That would be quite a job.”

“Especially as I haven't got any of the numbers …” starts Bliss, then he drops his plate on the table and jumps up.

“What is it?”

“You know what Newton reckoned, guv,” he says as he readies to run. “What goes down must come up.”

“What about your lunch?” hollers Fox, but Bliss is already halfway back to the surveillance unit.

“Ooh, Daffy. You haven't eaten your lunch again,” scolds Amelia as if she is dealing with her six-year-old sister. “An' Mrs. Fitzgerald did it specially.”

“Please don't tell her,” says Daphne, pulling the girl into a conspiracy. “She'll be so upset after all the trouble, but I just didn't fancy it.”

“I don't rightly know …” starts Amelia, but Daphne slides a twenty-pound note into her hand and whispers, “I'm very partial to the pork pies at Marks and Spencer's.”

“Well …”

“You could take your young man to the pictures with the change.”

The force's videographer has his head in a pedophile's porno collection as Bliss rushes in.

“This jerk needs his bollocks chopped,” says the technician without looking up, but Bliss is in a hurry, demanding all the coverage from the Whitechapel camera for the days following the ill-fated visit.

“At least a week,” says Bliss.

“You'll have to give me some time,” says the man as he
stops a terrified ten-year-old moments before she is raped. “I've got to have this ready for court tomorrow.”

“It's urgent …” starts Bliss, but the videographer is already hitting “play.”

“And so is this. Just leave me a note of what you want and I'll give you a call as soon as I can.”

A message awaits Bliss as he returns to his office, and he screws up his face at the sound of the voice. “Bliss, it's Edwards. I'm back from Washington. Call me.”

“So, what's the current situation?” snaps the Home Secretary's man as soon as he answers.

“I've run across something very interesting,” Bliss tells him, then fills in the details.

The phone goes quiet for a few seconds as Edwards digests the information, then he comes back a different person. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, Dave.”

“What?”

“Well. As you say yourself, there was nothing there.”

“Yeah. But there obviously was —”

“Dave … Chief Inspector. Hang on a minute. You know one of the reasons you and I never got on when we were on the job together … you never did what you were f'kin told. You were always prancing off on your own f'kin hobby horse and leaving everyone else to clean up the shit.”

“Sir —”

“Canada, America, the south of f'kin France —”

“But —”

“No. No more ‘buts.' Just listen for a f'kin change, Chief Inspector. If I say leave it, I mean leave it. Unless you want the Home Secretary himself to get on the blower and chew yer f'kin ear off.”

That went well, Bliss tells himself as he slams down the phone.

“You look as though someone just pinched your sandwiches,” laughs Peter Bryan as he strolls in.

“Edwards,” spits Bliss, nodding to the phone just as it buzzes, and he is right again.

“Dave … Sorry … P'raps I was a bit hasty,” splutters the ex–chief superintendent. “I'll come over and see what you've got.”

Bliss shakes his head in wonderment as he puts down the phone.

“What is it, Dave?”

“Have a look out the window, Peter. See if there's a herd of flying pigs, will you,” he chuckles before explaining.

The unease felt by Mavis Longbottom as she left St. Michael's has been gnawing at her all day. If Minnie Dennon or any of Daphne's other long-time friends were still alive, she would go back mob-handed and demand admittance. But without them, she needs an excuse — one that Davenport can't frivolously dismiss — and as she takes the bus to Daphne's house with the emergency key in her purse, she is hoping to find one in the mail: an unpaid bill, a cheque that needs a signature, a pension payment, or something similar.

Anxiety over of the Jenkins family and their pit bulls has kept Mavis at bay since Daphne's incarceration, and she steels herself as she walks up the opposite side of the street and crosses at the last minute.

The desecrated garden has recovered a little thanks to Bliss's work, but the faded remains of swastikas and four-letter words still mar the walls as she approaches the front door.

“Oh, no,” she is sighing aloud, with the key in the lock, when a woman's voice spins her.

“Are you Miss Lovelace … Ophelia Lovelace?”

If there is a familiarity in the voice it doesn't register with Mavis as she takes in the visitor, an athletically tall woman in her late sixties.

“No,” she replies, with a quizzical lift, wondering who would call Daphne by her first name, and the woman hovers with a degree of tentativeness before asking, “Does she live here?”

Mavis holds back while she tries to place the woman. Stylishly dressed — en route from a wedding or a christening perhaps — with a floppy-brimmed straw hat. Obviously not a friend; someone official because of the name — a name Daphne hasn't used since her teenage years — but she isn't offering a business card … a Jehovah's witness?

“Well?” questions the woman eventually.

“Sorry … I could give her a message,” suggests Mavis, reluctant to admit that the house is vacant, but a sudden bout of nervousness turns the woman pink and has her backing away, mumbling, “Don't worry, I'll come back another time.”

“Can I tell who wanted her?” calls Mavis, as the woman hits the street and almost breaks into a run, and she watches for a few seconds before shrugging. “Weird,” she says and turns to put the key in the lock.

The stench knocks Mavis back as the front door opens. Bliss did his best — picking up the excrement and garbage, scrubbing the carpets, breaking the seals on the doors and other apertures, and fixing the broken window. But the incessant heat and a new round of vandalism have undone some of his handiwork. A dead rat and a fly-infested bag of feces lie on the doormat, surrounded by a pile of flyers and bills. Several houseplants have succumbed to the heat, and the stink of rotting food comes from the kitchen's refrigerator.

Death surrounds Mavis as she stands in the hall amidst a swarm of flies, and she crumples in tears at the knowledge that, without its exuberant and energetic mistress, the house is just a smelly abandoned building.

The gentle rap of knuckles on wood is as startling as a voice from the grave, and Mavis momentarily shrinks in
fear before wiping her eyes and straightening herself with the thought that the strange woman has returned.

“Hello —” she starts as she opens the door, then she shrinks back, slack mouthed, at the sight of Tony Oswald. “Oh!”

“I was just passing and thought I'd check on the house for Miss Lovelace,” says Oswald, introducing himself with his card, and Mavis bursts into tears again.

It only takes half an hour for them to clean away the mess, but nothing will shift the smell from the broken fridge.

“I'd better get someone to come and take it away,” says Oswald holding his nose, leaving Mavis to question how Daphne will manage without it.

“Mavis,” he begins, with a soft hand and a sympathetic look, but she doesn't wait for the rest.

“She's not coming back is she?”

Oswald shakes his head in dismay. “I'm sorry,” he says. “But they don't do return tickets to places like St. Michael's.”

“I know,” agrees Mavis softly. “I guess I've known since she went in, I just didn't want to admit it.”

“We never do,” he sighs. “There's no great rush, but she's going have to decide what to do with the house. Has she mentioned it to you?”

Oswald's eyes screw in critical surprise when Mavis explains that she hasn't visited Daphne. She spots the look and is quick to deflect the accusation on to Patrick Davenport.

“I'm sure he has his reasons,” says Oswald as he rises to leave. “Why don't we go together tomorrow morning. I'll call and make an appointment.”

The speed at which Michael Edwards arrives to view the video, as well as the degree of interest shown by his ex-boss, surprises Bliss as he runs and reruns the grainy clip of the two workmen and their pickup.

“Stop … rewind … slow … back again,” sings out Edwards, time after time, as he presses his face against the monitor.

“It must be a tool or something,” he pronounces confidently as he finally pulls away, but Bliss won't bend and loudly counts the tools as they come off and are thrown back on the truck as he reruns the clip again.

“One wheelbarrow, two pickaxes, two shovels, one trowel, and a long metal bar that they were using to line up the slabs. And that's it.”

Edwards shrugs off the evidence. “I still reckon it's a tool or something.”

“I don't think it could be,” persists Bliss, and he makes a point of stopping the recording to show that nothing was left behind. “What happened to it?”

But Bliss is pushing the wrong man, and Edwards pushes back.

“So. Did you get their names?”

“No, sir.”

“What about the licence plate number?”

“I didn't notice —”

“You were suspicious enough to speak to them,” breaks in Edwards pointedly. “But you didn't take the number?”

“That's valid, sir,” admits Bliss. “But they seemed genuine.”

“Let's get this straight, Chief Inspector. Just for the record. You interviewed the two men and were satisfied that they were bona fide workmen.”

“Well, at the time —”

“No. Were you satisfied? 'Cos if you weren't I'm sure Commander Fox would want to know why you were derelict in your duty in not recording the number on the back of the fucking truck — get me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So. You were satisfied. Yes?”

Bliss's answer is in the form of a hostile stare that
invites Edwards to perform an impossible act of self-abasement.

“Good, Chief Inspector. Glad we agree,” says Edwards in ignorance of Bliss's thoughts. “So, let's just concentrate on protecting Her Majesty from now on and forget about any silly misjudgements you may have made in the past.”

London's architects turned their backs on the sluggish slate grey Thames for centuries and used it as a sewer, but today, as David Bliss strolls along the flower-bedecked embankment on his way home, he stops to watch the timeless waters and wonder how many bags of quick drying cement it might take to permanently sink Edwards.

His cell phone snaps his daydream. It is Daisy reminding him that he hasn't called in several days.

“I'm sorry,” he says, although whether he was punishing her or pushing so that she would bounce back, he doesn't know. “But I'll definitely get a flight tomorrow evening.”

“Daavid …”

A moment's hesitancy warns him to expect the worst and it comes.

“Not zhis weekend please. I cannot explain, but …”

“All right,” he says curtly. “I've got plenty to do anyway.”

“But, Daavid —”

He is not listening. He doesn't want to hear “cousin” or any other excuse. If she stops now before the lie it will be easier to forgive her — if he chooses to.