James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“How do you know.”

He laughed. “They made a mistake with this model and painted the plume on the wrong side of the bearskin … look,” he pointed. “But don’t worry, there are easier ways to tell.”

“Such as?”

Flipping the figure over in his hand he pointed out the inscription “Britains Ltd.” engraved on the base and laughed again — “Easy, see.”

Bliss, still not certain what he was looking for picked up a few of the models then asked. “Have you got any of the Horse Guards — it would give me a better idea?”

The dealer hesitated. “No, I don’t think I do, but bring in any models you can. I’ll soon identify them.”

Twenty minutes later Bliss pulled up in a quiet street of neat terraced houses and gazed nostalgically at the houses opposite. He had carefully gone through the routine of checking out the neighbourhood — no suspicious Volvo’s, blue or otherwise — but he had spotted two large attentive men in a car half a street away, their wing mirrors trained on his house.

His house had changed and he found himself staring at it with the eyes of a stranger. The front door was different — despite the wood-grain finish and polished brass knocker it was quite obviously reinforced steel and blast-resistant. A pattern of scorch marks etched into the stone step, and fanning out across the pavement, still marked the spot where the bomb had exploded. But it wasn’t the physical changes that alienated him, the house no longer had a welcoming feel. It was, he felt, more like unexpectedly finding yourself outside your childhood home — wanting to rush in and find mother at the sink and father asleep in front of the television; the sweet smell of freshly baked apple pie; the cozy warmth of laundry drying around the fire and the promise of a new Beano, Dandy or Boy’s Own.

But there was no mother or father here. This was no childhood den. This was still his house — he had a key, and there was nothing stopping him from entering; only the words of the protection squad commander. “I wouldn’t go back to the house if I were you, Dave — not until we’ve caught him. If he’s desperate enough he’ll try again, and next time it might be a machine gun from a passing car, a la Al Capone.”

He drove away with a certain sadness, managed to force a mendacious smile for the two caretakers as he passed, then was forced to stop and search for a tissue. He’d bought the house for a fresh start, having finally shaken off the divorce doldrums, and now his world had been trashed again, this time by a villainous ghost from the past.

Arriving early at the pub for his rendezvous with Superintendent Wakelin, Bliss checked out the car park and surrounding streets for blue Volvos and jotted down the numbers of a couple, though neither looked promising.

The waitress was beautiful, stunningly so, yet appeared to have no idea as she bustled around serving everyone with the same innocent smile. Bliss was mesmerised by her beauty and wanted to glide his fingers down her slender arms and stroke her soft cheeks just to have the memory for his dotage. “I remember the day I touched the most perfect woman,” he would boast to his peers on the bowling green. “She had stepped straight out of an Old Master — not a Rubens. She was a Rembrandt or Botticelli, or a Bartolini statue. Naked? Naturally. Though nothing coarse, nothing pornographic.”

She wasn’t naked, but her loose fitting dress flowed sensuously over her curves, like the robes of an Egyptian princess, and the open smile on her fresh virginal face left her more exposed than most women totally nude.

“Yeah, mate — What d’ye want?” Her rough cockney accent broke the spell and she slipped under the wheels of her chariot.

“Hello, Michael,” called Superintendent Wakelin pointedly, as he appeared out of nowhere and slid into the cubicle beside him. Bliss tore his eyes off the young woman, now just a waitress, and greeted the senior officer.

“Drink, Guv?”

“So, how are you getting on in Hampshire?” enquired Wakelin once the waitress had wiggled away.

“They’ve given me an interesting sort of murder … local man killed his father.”

“Domestic, eh! — should be easy enough for you.”

“Oh yeah,” he replied, choosing to ignore the minor problem of the missing body, “but they could manage perfectly well without me. In fact I don’t think they quite know what to do with me. Superintendent Donaldson seems alright, although he’s on his way out. I think he just wants a quiet life. I could see it on his face as he gave me the case. Here you are, son — play with this. Even the Met couldn’t fuck this one up.”

“So what are you saying?”

“To be honest, I want to come back. I’ve done my time.”

He had — six months in a safe house, a padded prison with two acres of neatly tended gardens and a movie star’s video library.

“Dave … Oh fuck — I’ve done it again. Sorry … Michael, this guy is determined, and he’s done his homework. He knows where you work, live and probably where you play; he knows your car; he got your phone number — even though it’s ex-directory, and you changed it twice; he even managed to clean out your bank account — in case you forgot.”

Bliss had no argument. “I see you’ve still got a couple of goons doing surveillance on the place.”

“We want to catch him, Dave — Don’t you want him caught?”

“Of course, but that’s the other thing I wanted to see you about.” He hesitated while the waitress bent over to put the drinks on the table. “Pretty girl,” he said to Wakelin as she drifted away.

Wakelin shrugged, “Didn’t notice. Now what’s the problem? What’s happened? You sounded pretty panicky when you called?”

Bliss gave himself time to think as he tested the house Cabernet Sauvignon . “I think he’s caught on,” he said eventually.

Wakelin pursed his lips in a whistle of surprise. “Already?”

“I’m pretty sure I was tailed from Westchester today.”

“You’re gonna have to go back into the safe house then, whether you like it or not.”

The mere thought was enough to have him backtracking. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent certain. It could have been a coincidence.”

Wakelin wasn’t fooled. “Surely the safe house isn’t that bad?”

“A padded cell is just as much a prison. Anyway, I’ve had other villains threaten me in the past.”

“And how many of them have actually tried to kill you?”

He knew the answer. So did Bliss.

Wednesday started early and uncomfortably for Bliss. Blue demons had tormented his sleep, chasing him out of bed and into the office at five-thirty. He walked the half-mile from the hotel, and took pleasure in the birthing smells of the dawn, smells that would be swamped by exhaust fumes within the hour. Baker’s yeast, coffee, and even pungent piles of newsprint stacked against the newsagent’s door hailed the new day, though the stench from the fishmonger’s was clearly more an odour of things past than things to come. Without his car he found freedom in the crisp silence of the deserted streets and dawdled to relish images of the morning: the scattered refraction of steeply slanting sunlight through a jeweller’s display of cut crystal; a tousled cat slaking his thirst at a stone trough after the night’s hunt; and a skein of Canada geese winging noisily overhead in search of pasture.

A half-timbered Tudor Inn at one end of the High Street had thrust its upper storey out over the pavement, and Bliss was engrossed in the elegant sweep of the jetty when a persistent teeth-clenching screech brought him to a nervous stop and had him shrinking into a pharmacist’s doorway. Mandy’s killer was back in a flash and his ears pricked as he tried to identify the sound and connect it to some fearsome weapon. Baffled, he was still deciding whether or not to run, when a pile of filthy overcoats shuffled around the corner dragging a supermarket trolley with a buckled wheel and one lifetime’s agglomeration. He watched silently as the white-bearded man passed, warily taking each step as though he were in a minefield, angrily muttering some unintelligible incantation. How pathetic, thought Bliss, watching the bagman struggling with his load. The poor old sod must be at least eighty and still trying to avoid the cracks in the pavement — maybe he’d do better stepping on a few.