The Dave Bliss Quintet (36 page)

A spiked beach umbrella, snatched out of the sand by a ferocious gust, becomes a missile in the wind and hooks into the thigh of an angler. Rushing to the aid of the squealing victim at the shoreward end of the jetty, Bliss has taken a dozen steps when he stops, realizing he's left his manuscript and Walkman on the seaward end. He takes two steps back in concern when a second scream has him dancing in vacillation.

“Hold on,” he shouts to the casualty and turns in time to witness a catastrophe. “Oh my God!” he yells, seeing the pages of his manuscript riffling in the wind,
then a sudden blast plucks it off the jetty and dumps it into the sea.

“
Putain!
” he spits, and rushes back up the jetty. Tossing his wallet from his pocket onto the deck and struggling out of his shoes, he dives in. A silvery flash in the water beneath him catches his eye. It could be a sardine, he thinks, but it's not, and he finds himself staring at his apartment keys as they jink, like a lure, into thirty feet of water from his breast pocket. He surfaces for a breath, but the wind-driven waves are stronger than he anticipated, and by the time he looks back, the keys are gone. So is his manuscript — swamped under wave after wave. Torn between diving for his keys and retrieving his novel, he flounders for several long seconds before realizing that he is being towed out to sea and dragged down by his clothes. Letting go of the waterlogged pages he crawls to the beach and is washed ashore by the breakers. Sitting on the sand next to the injured fisherman, he watches forlornly as the manuscript is flopped around by the waves until it takes on water and sinks.

His socks squelch as he makes his way back up the jetty to retrieve his wallet and Walkman. “Three months' bloody work,” he whines, facing into the mistral, and finds himself looking across the promontory.

Marcia Grimes, flying along the promenade in the gale, breaks into his melancholia. “Thank God I've found you,” she cries, her words caught by the wind as she breathlessly tells of Johnson preparing to sail to pick up his haul. “You've got to stop him. He's going to get away.”

But it's not Bliss's problem — he's on his way home. What do you want? he wonders, giving Marcia a sideways glance. “Help me,” says her pleading look, and he sees her clinging to him to stop herself from drowning in guilt.

“You change your tune as often as your bed,” he mocks, and she doesn't argue. In any case Morgan Johnson is passé, and, with his mind absorbed by his lost saga, he shrugs uninterestedly. “Where is this hoard?”

“Corsica, he reckons.”

“That was fairly obvious,” he snorts, letting her know where he stands. “And where does he go from there?”

“Who knows? North Africa, the Middle East — the world.”

He is tempted to let her wallow, but the detective in him wants more, knowing that if the
Sea-Quester
makes it out of European waters with its shifty cargo no one will be particularly concerned about catching Johnson, and the widows of Scotland Yard will be five million out of purse. But he's suspicious of her motives. “How do you know?” he demands. “Did he tell you, or is this just another attempt to get me to rescue your stupid daughter?”

“She won't leave him. You know that.”

“How do you know ...” he starts, and then catches on. “You were on-board,” he breathes, recalling the slight scuffling he'd heard in the forward cabin the night he'd tried to get Natalia off the
Sea-Quester
.

Confessing by her silence, Marcia warns him, “Johnson knows who you are and what you're doing.”

“That's interesting,” he says, thinking, even I'm not sure of that anymore, then rounds on her angrily. “Whichever way I look at this shitty mess I see your face.”

“It's my daughter …”

“You don't deserve a daughter,” he starts, but backs off at the sight of her face. “Crocodile tears, Marcia,” he says, walking away with his own woes.

Commander Richards's dark tone alerts Bliss to the possibility that he's woken the senior officer. But why should he rest easy?

“Edwards is on his way back,” says Bliss, recalling the previous afternoon, at Nice airport, when he and Daisy watched him go up the escalator and through the security gate from the safety of a surveillance monitor in her friend's office.

“It's still Chief Superintendent Edwards to you, Inspector, I've warned you about that before,” cautions Richards, fearful of counting chickens.

“Not after tomorrow,” replies Bliss, though doesn't know where to take the conversation. “There's something else ...” he starts.

Richards snorts, “Oh, what now?” and awakes in Bliss a mutineer. If he hadn't lost his manuscript he probably wouldn't have reacted, but, with the feeling that he has nothing further to lose, he bellows, “Get stuffed,” and slams shut his cellphone.

“You need me more than I need you,” he shouts to the phone and lumps Marcia, Richards, the commissioner, and even the force widows and orphans into one grovelling bundle. “What's in it for me? I'm not in Edwards's black book. I got my revenge — I broke his wrist. Fight your own battles.”

His phone rings. It's Richards — boiling. “Make sure you get on that plane, Inspector. You will be back in my office at nine tomorrow. No ifs, buts, or maybes.”

If the captain of the charter yacht had been sober he probably wouldn't have sailed. If Bliss had any sense he wouldn't have asked, but, as he insisted to Daisy,
“Johnson must be stopped.” However, taking off to Corsica has nothing to do with catching Johnson, and he knows it. His war, he has decided, is against all the spectres of the Château Roger and the treacherous winds — especially the treacherous winds. Dispirited over the loss of the manuscript, he is determined to take at least one scalp back to England — Johnson's.

The sleek yacht is fully fuelled and ready to roll, according to Captain Jones, who is in a similar condition, but rounding up a crew will take time. With Johnson already two hours ahead Bliss can't wait. Can it be that difficult? he asks himself, surveying the controls and instruments on the bridge: ahead, astern, port, starboard. At least he won't have to worry about up and down, he thinks. If the old captain had been sober he probably wouldn't have agreed, but John Smith's gold weighs heavily in Bliss's favour.

“We'll need a cabin boy,” the old man starts, and Daisy, still trying to atone, steps forward.

“Ah, ah. A frog Wren,” he roars, as if it's the funniest thing anyone's ever said.

“I don't understand ...” says Daisy, but Bliss is anxious to get underway and studies the charts. Assuming the greybeard is steady enough to get them out of the harbour without ramming anything, he'll have plenty of searoom to practice while the old man sleeps it off, seeing that once past Île Sainte-Marguerite they have a straight run to Corsica.

The first hour is a training session and now, with the coast receding into a ragged line on the horizon, the captain slips beneath the radar into the watchkeeper's bunk, joking, “Call me when we hit land.”

With his eyes glued to the blank horizon and his
hands fastened to the wheel, Bliss steers them on a course more drunkenly than the captain. Up and down appear to be the most predominant motions as the nor'westerly mistral, on the stern, drives the following waves that pick them up and corkscrew them through the water. It's fast — like a giant surfboard — and Bliss fights with the wheel as they come close to broaching time and again.

“It's a hundred and sixty kilometres, as the shitehawks fly,” the captain told them before taking to his bunk, but the seagulls are not flying today. The winterized wind has swept the sky clear of everything — clouds, birds, and haze — and whipped the wavetops into a blizzard of foam. Daisy opens the bridge door to throw up and is doused. Slamming the door, she stands dripping, like a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest, and laughs, “
Merde!
”

A school of bottlenosed dolphins leads the way, porpoising ahead of them and diving through the green waves. Daisy clings to Bliss's arm, fearful of the bow digging into a wave and spearing one of the playful mammals, but the fast-swimming creatures are always one leap ahead.

The compass arcs back and forth like a metronome as the wheel is wrenched one way and then the other, and Bliss's white fingers cramp numbly as he fights to hang on. “Should I stop?” he worries, but the thought of battling his way back, crashing head on into the waves, keeps him driving forward. But even at fifteen knots the yacht slams into walls of water that send reverberations rippling through the vessel. Fearful of submarining the bow beneath a wave, he slackens off.

“This'll take hours,” he moans, feeling the boat relax as he brings the throttles back.

“Twelve — maybe more,” the captain warned him before they took off.

“It took less than three on the ferry,” he protested. But this isn't a colossal high-speed ferry — and this isn't a three-hour zip on a silk-smooth day. Even stabilized cruise liners will be passing out pills and plasticized paper bags today, he realizes, thinking it ironic that the only time Jacques didn't forecast a foul wind they were hit by a howler.

After a couple of hours, with his bladder straining, he sends Daisy to rouse the captain. She returns emptyhanded. “He is
paf
— drunk.”

“How the hell can anyone sleep through this?” he complains jovially, but is beginning to worry. The radar screen is as clear as the horizon, but what happens when it gets dark? What if it gets significantly rougher?

An hour later, ready to burst, he gives Daisy a quick lesson and dashes to the head.

“You're good,” he says when he returns, and acknowledges that she has better control of the vessel than he.

The captain struggles to the surface late in the afternoon.

“Did anyone get the licence plate?” Bliss wonders aloud, as the old mariner hauls himself upright on the wheel. Bliss tries hanging on. His fingers and forearms ache, but there's a sense of achievement in navigating from A to B, even drunkenly. The captain is of the same opinion and insists on taking over. “This is nothing,” he roars, swaying in rhythm.

“How about some late lunch?” Bliss suggests, realizing that neither he nor Daisy has eaten. But, in his haste to take off, it hadn't occurred to him that the vessel wouldn't
have stores, that few charterers would simply jump aboard with a gold card saying, “Follow that yacht.”

“Is there any food?” he asks the skipper, at which the old man gives him back the wheel. “Hang on,” he says. He rummages through a bar fridge and comes up with a bottle. “Try this,” he laughs. “It's a fairly hearty claret.”

The only solid foods are cashews and condiments; they settle for the nuts while the captain gets his teeth into the Bordeaux.

Under the old skipper's hand the vessel straightens herself and lifts her prow towards the mountainous island coming at them over the horizon.

“Corsica,” he pronounces, as if he'd discovered it.

The large blip of Johnson's yacht stands out brightly on the radar screen among a fleet of smaller vessels as they nudge into the shelter of the Golfe du Calvi a few hours later.

“Could that be the
Sea-Quester
?” Bliss enquires casually, pointing to the large dark shape silhouetted in the moonlight.

“
Bof!
” The skipper shrugs, unaware of Bliss's quest. “We'll get a berth in the harbour and go ashore,” he adds, and gets no argument from either of them. The thought of bobbing around in the bay all night isn't appealing, and they need food — solid food.

Bliss's cellphone bursts to life as he readies to throw a line to the wharfinger in Calvi harbour, and he's tempted to ignore it.

“Catch,” he shouts, tossing the line, and then flips open the phone.

It's Richards — apologetic. “Dave, we were cut off. I've been trying to get back to you all day,” the commander says, blaming the unreliability of modern communications.

What a difference a day makes, thinks Bliss, playing along. “I've been all at sea.”

“No sweat,” says Richards, “I've got you now. Look, I've smoothed it over with the commissioner. We'll stall the hearing until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I've booked reservations for you on all three early flights.”

“Sorry, Guv. No can do. I'm still convalescing,” Bliss breaks in. “Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've got a castiron case.”

“Don't give me that crap. Get your ass back here and be in my office —”

That didn't last long, thinks Bliss as he hits the off key, muttering, “Manners.” Edwards will walk, but that's everyone else's problem. I'll be in his good books. Anyway, what will they do if I net Johnson and the missing money?

And what if you don't?

Maybe I won't go back. Maybe I'll just stretch Smith's credit card to the limit.

Bliss's credit snaps ten minutes later at the cash machine outside a main street bank. “
Putain
,” he mutters, assuming that Richards has blocked the card, but Daisy steps in.

“It has no money,” she explains, reading the screen, and they try three more banks without success. It's nearly midnight on Sunday, at the end of a busy weekend; the machines are exhausted.

“What is zhe plan?” asks Daisy once they've found a restaurant that takes credit cards. But he has no plan.

“I'm just fed up of being used,” he confides, and realizes that he still has nothing to go on — only Marcia's word that Johnson is here to pick up the treasure. “All we can do is follow the
Sea-Quester
in the morning.”

“If the captain is awake,” says Daisy dubiously.

The captain is dining aboard — on a fairly filling Burgundy.

“We say he will 'ave
mal au cheveux
— zhe hairache — in zhe morning,” she laughs, but Bliss doubts the well-practised old sailor will feel any effects.