James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

The triumphant chorus and jubilant peel of bells signified the finale of the orchestrated battle and Bliss savoured each chord almost as though it were the last time he would hear it. The final strains hung in his ears for a few seconds then the air stilled. The gentle buzz of the engine and the steady hum of the tyres on the road seemed only to augment the sense of tranquillity that had returned. Bliss loosened his grip on the wheel, relaxed back into his seat and glanced in the rear-view mirror. He jerked alert — the Volvo was still there and a chill rippled through him as he caught a glimpse of it slipping in behind a van. “Don’t be stupid,” he chided himself, dismissing immediately the possibility that he was being followed.

Why would someone be following me?

You know why. You remember what Mandy Richards’ murderer had screamed across the courtroom at the Old Bailey? He remembered. The killer’s words were forever burned into his brain. “I’ll get you for this copper — I’ll get you.”

Forget it, thought Bliss. Ignore it — it’ll go away. Like you ignored the threatening letters, the midnight phone-calls and the shadowy stalker, until someone put a bomb through your letterbox and took out your front door.

O.K., he conceded, but don’t panic. He’ll be more nervous than me.

Why? He’s done it before, remember. And he’s already spent one lifetime in prison: becoming acclimatised to the routine, inured to the coarseness and violence and revelling in the irresponsibility of institutional life. So how will he do it — run me off the road into a bridge support; pull alongside and put a single bullet in my brain; or pick off a tyre and laugh as I lose control and career into a bus or truck.

Passing an exit ramp, he checked the mirrors again. A small blue car was dissolving into the distance as it slowed in the deceleration lane and he admonished himself for allowing his imagination to run away with him. With a sigh of relief he rummaged through a glove-box of cassette tapes, seeking something less climactic than Tchaikovsky, and pulled himself together, telling himself that he was being ridiculous. A hit-man wouldn’t be driving a Volvo, he told himself. A hit-man wouldn’t be seen dead in a Volvo. Hoodlums don’t drive poky little Volvos with more safety features than a spermicidal condom. He would be a Jag man, or a Mercedes or BMW. Even the smallest of petty villains could manage a Jaguar, especially a hot one, and Mandy’s murderer was no small time villain.

Relaxing, Bliss amused himself with the notion of a villain turning up at a mobster’s convention, wearing a slick suit with an ominous bulge under his left armpit, driving a little blue family saloon. But five minutes later the Volvo was still there and his pulse raced as he spotted it tailgating a large yellow rental van with the hire company’s telephone number emblazoned across the bonnet. Ignoring the blare of an annoyed motorist’s horn he eased out and straddled the white line as he manoeuvred into a position where he could see the following driver. Peering deeply into the mirror he sought a familiar face, and a familiar pair of eyes — the same icy eyes that had stared unflinchingly at him across the courtroom eighteen years earlier as he stood in the witness box describing the pointless murder of Mandy Richards. But he couldn’t see, not clearly. His vision was obscured by distance and the constantly shifting traffic that conspired time and again to block his view.

Vowing to concentrate on his driving, he dismissed worries about the Volvo but couldn’t dislodge Mandy Richards from his mind, demanding to know whether he would have ducked if he’d known someone was behind him in the bank? But he’d been through this a thousand times — knew the answer — knew there was no answer. He had ducked — flinging himself sprawling onto the floor as the blast ripped through the space he’d vacated — nothing could change that.

Mandy Richards’ memory continued its torment as he sped along. She would have been thirty-eight, if she’d lived, he calculated, recalling that she had been twenty when both barrels of the shotgun exploded and ripped a cavity in her chest large enough to get his fist into. She had been a pretty girl, beautiful he had thought, seeing her framed photograph propped on her coffin at the funeral, though he’d not noticed at the time of the shooting. His eyes and mind had focused only on the gaping wound.

A mental snapshot of the scene in the bank hit him with the stark clarity of an unkind mirror and the road ahead dissolved into images of screaming bank customers, terrified tellers crouching behind the counter, and a tiny girl in a red dress clutching her mother’s hand while a puddle of pee grew around her feet. And there, spread-eagled on the floor, the lifeless bundle of flesh that had been Mandy Richards.

He had seen the shots coming, not physically, not with his eyes. It was more of a feeling — a pulse of evil intent so strong he would have known the man was going to fire even if he hadn’t noticed the fingers tightening on the triggers. He had dropped to the floor, oblivious to the fact that the young woman was standing right behind him. She’d not felt the evil stare, hadn’t seen the tensing fingers. She was, in any case, too petrified to move in any direction.

The blast of acrid smoke from the gunshot still filled the air as Bliss picked himself off the floor, stared in horror for a fraction of a second at the crumpled rag-doll figure, then, without any deliberation as to the consequences, lunged at the hooded villain. Snatching the gun out of the startled man’s hand he set about him, slamming the barrels into his ribs, doubling him over, then pounding him repeatedly over the head until an assistant manager vaulted the counter, staid his arm, and brought him to his senses.

The gunman, a professional mobster in a comical Maggie Thatcher mask, slumped motionless into a corner with tendrils of blood dribbling out from under the mask and creeping down his T-shirt and Bliss stood back, his elation quickly turning to horror as he realised what he’d done. It had been the mask, he reasoned later when he’d had a chance to cool down. He couldn’t have beaten an unarmed man senseless, whatever the provocation, but, dehumanised by the mask, the robber had brought the attack on himself.

What else could I have done? What else could I have done? he kept asking himself as both customers and staff cringed fearfully away from him. And he was stunned by the look of revulsion on the face of the woman clutching the wet child. Who was the villain here?

“Police!” he shouted to the stunned bystanders as if justifying his actions. “Get an ambulance!” he continued, screaming at no-one in particular, rushing across the blood-slickened marble floor to tend to the young woman who had taken the blast intended for him.

“Oh my God,” he sighed, seeing her pulverised chest, mentally tearing through the Red Cross first-aid manual, desperately searching for guidance on gunshot wounds — but his mental page was blank. O.K. Don’t panic, he said to himself, think about the general rules. The three “B’s” of first-aid flashed instantly to mind and he easily recalled the first two. “Breathing, Bleeding, and …” but then his mind froze, unable to remember the third. He gave up and went with the first two, deciding the ambulancemen would arrive within seconds and take over before he had need of the third.

Picking up one of the girl’s limp wrists he dug in his fingers desperately searching for the rhythmic beat of a pulse — nothing. He gripped harder, so hard that he felt the beat of his own heart pulsing through his fingertips and, with rising optimism, stuck his ear to her mouth. She wasn’t breathing. She had nothing to breath with. A couple of hundred lead pellets had turned her lungs into pin cushions. But he wouldn’t give up — he couldn’t give up. It was his fault. If he hadn’t been so stupid. “Armed police,” he had shouted at the robber. Armed with what? A blank cheque and a ballpoint Biro.