The Dave Bliss Quintet (30 page)

Daisy is lying in ambush at the potter's old spot on the promenade, but Bliss's smile of greeting fades at the sight of her face.

“You've been crying,” he says, as she takes his arm.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Oh dear,” he muses, sensing trouble, suspecting she bears a warning from the town's women not to upset the apple cart.

Ushering him into a dark corner of L' Offshore Club she sits stiffly, her eyes hunting the room. For what, he wonders, eavesdroppers or a way out? He waits patiently — this is her party.

“Cognac,” she orders urgently, when an eagle-eyed, bandy-legged waiter swoops out of nowhere. And then she turns to Bliss with a question that seems determined to get out despite her best efforts to keep it in.

“You are a policeman. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“You won't laugh zhen?”

“I promise,” he says, but then she wins a short reprieve as the waiter delivers their drinks.

“I been to zhe château before,” she admits after a momentary check for the emergency exit.

“I knew it,” he replies with a degree of triumph. “But why didn't you tell me?”

Searching for an answer in her glass of liquid gold, she finds the sunshine of a warm summer's day in 1970. The last day of that year's summer — the fifteenth of August. A bubbly fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, tanned and toned from a summer on the beach of St-Juan, taunts a clean-bodied teenaged holidaymaker; Roland is
un Parisien.
Eighteen and a half — a city-sophisticate with savoir-faire and Daddy's souped-up British Mini.

“What is zhat château?” he asks while they lazily swim out into the bay and catch a glimpse of the building as they look back over the hills of St-Juan.

“It is a secret,” she tells him, then dives through the shimmering blue in pursuit of a shoal of sardines. He dives, pursuing another variety of fish, and strikes. Kissing and fondling they play in the soft water bed until Roland seeks to land his catch.

“Let's go to zhe château,” he suggests, but her face darkens.

“No. If we go zhere we will die.”

“Zhat is crazy,” he says, laughing. “It is a silly story to frighten
les enfants
. It is zhe ghost under zhe bed. Are you
une enfant, peut-être
? Do you still ' ave zhe ghost under zhe bed?”

“No,” she protests, “I am no kid.”

“OK. Zhen we go.”

“Roland was from Paris —
un Parigot
— he knew everything,” Daisy explains to Bliss as she looks up from her drink and describes how they swam around the rocky promontory and found the entrance to the hidden cove.

“Roland had been there before,” she continues, then seeks consolation in her drink as she admits to being teased into submission.

“Are you scared, my little
poule
?” he calls, swimming through the narrow straits into the deserted emerald basin.

“I am not a chicken,” she protests, and to prove her point she swims into his clutches.

Roland has slipped out of his trunks and T-shirt by the time she catches up.

“Roland!” she cries.

“I am James Bond — double-oh seven,” he says in movie-learnt English. “Take off your clothes, Pussy Galore, and I will show you my weapon.”

“I already see your weapon,” she giggles.

Daisy's memories, shrouded in shame, dwell on the psychological hurt as she explains the few moments of Roland's sexual release. “I scared and say
‘ Non, non,'
but he laugh and call me chicken. Zhen I cry when I zhink I am not
une pucelle —
a virgin — anymore.” Reliving the moment, she shuts her eyes as the reminiscence continues.

“
Cocorico!
” cries Roland one minute and thirty seconds later, as he dresses and strides off in search of another adventure, leaving her to weep into the sand.

The cave-like entrance to the dark tunnel takes his eye and he heads for it.

“If we go to zhe château we will die,” she calls, as he beckons her to tag along.

“Co-co-co-co,”
he clucks.

“I am no chicken,” she says, following.

“I swim back on my own and never see Roland again,” she tells Bliss in conclusion. “But I cry a lot. My
maman,
she says, ‘ Why you cry?' I say nothing, but I zhink maybe I ' ave zhe
ballon.”

Bliss cocks his head, enquiring, “The
ballon
?”

“
Oui
— zhe
bé bé
,” she replies, pointing to her stomach and starting to cry again.

“You thought you were pregnant.”

“Perhaps. It is possible,” she sniffles through the tears. “I did not know. But I could not tell
Maman
because it is a crime — she would kill me.”

Bewildered by the depth of her concern over a teenager's thirty-year-old misjudgement, Bliss struggles to reassure her. “It doesn't matter now. Nobody worries today about things like that.”

She shook him off. “It does matter.”

“Why?”

“Because Roland is dead,” she cries, her olive-black pupils holding him rigid as the import of her words sink in.

“When? Where?” he asks, but has guessed the answer.

“Zhe château.”

The words of her mother, “Zhe château has taken our men,” run through his mind as he pulls her into his arms while she sobs.

The phone is buzzing as Bliss lets himself into his apartment. “Somebody wants
me
for a change,” he mumbles.

“We're still waiting for that quote for a yacht, Inspector,” Commander Richards complains, seriously pissed off.

Methinks he doth demand too much, thinks Bliss, saying, “Sorry, Guv. I've been busy. I think I've got a murder on my hands.”

“Oh God … not Johnson. Please tell me it's not Johnson.”

“No. Not Johnson. But why did you ask?”

“Dave. I warned you. Some people might want something to happen to him. But who's been murdered?”

He sloughs it off. “It's just an old case. But how come no one wants to tell me what Johnson's supposed to have done?”

The heavy silence suggests Richards is weighing his options. Bliss gives him a nudge. “Let me guess. Some prat in the pension department has invested my future in a seriously iffy treasure hunt and — ”

“No,” explodes Richards. “It's not a Force matter — not directly.”

I guess I'm half-right then, he thinks, and pushes harder. “So … what if someone with sunshine coming out his bum has … ” Then he stops. “You said, ‘ we are still waiting.' Who's ‘ we' ?”

“Dave. I'll personally wring your bloody neck if this ever gets out, but you might as well know the Force Widows' and Orphans' Fund administrator has topped himself.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Quite. So stop messing about and find out where Johnson is. The bastard is swanning around the fuckin' Med in a yacht unofficially financed by the university fees of dozens of dead coppers' kids.”

It was the usual thing, he explains — gambling debts. The administrator had dug himself a grave with his own money, then burrowed deeper and deeper into the charity's funds. And, just when he needed an undertaker, his sister-in-law popped up like an angel saying her boss was seeking investors who wanted to quadruple their money overnight.

“Marcia Grimes?” queries Bliss, quickly catching on. “Oh no! Not Greg Grimes's brother?”

“The very same. He's been under suspicion for a couple of months. Arrested in his office yesterday, five million quid short. We gave him bail and he decided to skip — permanently.”

“Oh my God!” breathes Bliss, thinking of the potter.

“That poor bloke. First his wife. Then his daughter and his hand in quick succession. Now his brother. Has anyone told him?”

“I don't think so,” replies Richards. “Officially no one knows where he and his wife are. Perhaps you would do the honours.”

“That's not an honour. I was hoping to get away from that down here,” he moans, thinking: Marcia Grimes, you have a lot to answer for.

Putting down the handset he finally realizes why Richards had been so concerned about him giving away his location, or information, over the phone. The digital recording of all calls to Scotland Yard is a godsend to snoopy coppers and admin clerks, and if Grimes had got wind someone was chasing Johnson and the missing money, he could have run.

Drifting thoughtfully to the balcony he notes that the complexion of everything has changed. The sky has changed. Though still cloudless, the blue has lost its softness and has taken on a dark intensity. The atmosphere has sharpened and bristles with an electric dryness. Î le Sainte-Marguerite stands out so crisply in the crackly clear air that it has sprung into the foreground and now sits just off the château's promontory. The beach-front flags salute stiffly, palm fronds wave frenetically, and there is a vibrancy in the water as the tops of waves are whipped into an invigorating spray that enlivens the beachcombers.

So it wasn't a put-up job, he laughs to himself. And all the time you thought you were just an inconvenient pimple on Richards's backside. No wonder he wouldn't tell you why they wanted Johnson tracked. The media and the loony left would have a field day if they discovered someone had picked the purses of the widows of Her
Majesty's Grand Metropolitan Police Force — purveyors of policing to the royal personage, and the nation's capital, since 1827.

Wandering to the kitchen table, where the pot shards still lay scattered, he procrastinates by piecing fragments together as he puzzles over why Greg Grimes might have made a haul of pseudo-Romano amphorae, and why someone had wrecked them. But a bigger picture starts to come together in his mind as he picks at the shards, and Marcia Grimes's mug shot is front and centre. Disenchanted with her husband, she skips off to Johnson with a huge dowry collected from friends, family, and the grieving widows of Scotland Yard. No wonder she claimed there was no such thing as a free fuck. But if she had paid dearly for sex, most of the money had come from the pockets and purses of others.

None of the pottery shards appear to fit, either together or into the bigger picture, so he drops them and thoughtfully examines the grubby Brubeck T-shirt. How the hell am I going to break the news about his brother to him? he worries, as he stares at the old shirt and imagines Grimes wearing it in the underground bunker as he sweated over the large wine jars.

“Take Five” was recorded in 1959, his CD cover tells him, and he listens to the classic tune over and over as he peers at the faded logo and tries to fit it into the picture. “More than forty years,” he muses, unsurprised, knowing that lurking in the bottom of his own wardrobe are similarly washed-out garments screaming “Beatles” and “Stones.”

The dampness and dirt of the château's underground have left their mark, he realizes, but so has something darker — much darker.

Ten minutes later he's in Daisy's office with the door shut and the outline of a sketch in his mind as he holds the shirt accusingly in front of her face. “You recognized it,” he says, gloves off.

“No.”

“Daisy — please don't lie.”

“I no lie — ” she starts, but he stops her with a policeman's cautionary look and a tone of admonishment. “Daisy … ”

Cornered, she blabs, “OK. I tell you. I zhink maybe it was zhe shirt Roland was wearing the day we went to zhe château — but it is thirty years.” Then she bursts into tears at the memory.

Whether it is pain or relief, Bliss has no way of knowing, and he waits until she has calmed before showing her the large semicircular stain of dried blood on the shirt's hem. “Do you know what this is?”

Her fear-filled eyes suggest she has a fairly good idea.

“So how did he die? Do you know?”

Nodding, she explains the little she knows. That she followed Roland into the tunnel and they found candles and matches amid some junk left by squatters near the entrance. Reluctantly, and petrified, she was dragged by peer pressure through the German bunker and on to the château's sub-basement, but when Roland mounted the steps towards the trap door she stalled. To go further, into the building itself, was sacrilegious and questioned the very canons of her moth-er's and grandmother's faith. She was already agnostic in her beliefs of the château's legend, but she knew in her heart that raising the trap door would reveal the unpalatable truth. Unwilling to deal with the ramifications of atheism in a deeply religious household, she
ran. Two days later Roland's body washed ashore further along the beach.

“He was dead,” she says, her eyes fixed darkly on the shirt, then she cheers herself a touch as she explains, “In France we say zhat he
bouffe les pissenlits par la racine
. Zhat means he is eating dandelions, roots first.”

“That makes sense,” agrees Bliss. “But do you know what had happened to him?”

“Zhey say he'd been stabbed to death,” she says, adding quietly, “Some people say his
zizi
was cut off.”

“His
zizi
,” Bliss echoes, but doesn't bother to solicit a translation, asking instead, “And you never told anyone what happened that day?”

“No — never. You are zhe only person who knows. But I did tell one person zhat maybe I saw Roland swimming out to zhe
promontoire
zhat day. Zhat perhaps he go to zhe château.”

“Who did you tell?”

“Jacques.”

“Jacques the fisherman at L' Escale?”

“He is not
un pêcheur
,” she laughs. “He is
un flic —
a detective like you. Zhat is why I zhink you talk to him.”

“No. I had no idea he was a cop. And he thinks I'm a writer.”

“He is under zhe covers like you. Zhat is why he says he is
un pêcheur.
”