James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“It seems a long way to go for dinner.”

“Do you mind?”

“Oh no. Not at all. It’s a lovely evening for a drive.”

It wasn’t — not for him anyway. He was on the run again. Instead of the badly needed nap, he’d spent the first hour in his room at the Mitre poking into every conceivable hidey-hole and pacing with worry, and the next hour packing. Whoever had been making enquiries about him would be back — probably. But why hang about to find out. The strain, and the degree of powerlessness in the face of such an ethereal adversary, had worn him to the point where he was almost ready to bolt back to the safe house.

He had been sneaking out of the hotel when the Swedish receptionist spotted him loading suitcases in the car park. “Is it that you are leaving, Mr. Bliss?” she smiled, her glow-white teeth bringing a moment’s brightness to an otherwise gloomy day.

“I’ve been called away.”

“But you have already paid have you not?”

He had — two weeks in advance, twenty percent discount. “It doesn’t matter — I’ll probably be back in a day or so.”

The High Street seemed jammed with blue Volvos, both driven by short, funny looking, thirty-year-olds, and he was glad to have got away from the Mitre hotel and his Rover. But was this the future? Trailing his suitcases around in the boot of a rented car — finding a different hotel and switching every couple of days. Was he being forced to follow the blueprint of retribution drawn up by the killer? Had the threatening letters and menacing phone calls been just a tightening of the screw, dragging out the agony in the torture chamber of his mind?

“I did eighteen years for my part,” the killer was telling him. “Now it’s your turn.”

Even the bomb through the letterbox had been halfhearted — little more than a handful of powerful fireworks packed into a cardboard tube. If he’d wanted to kill me, couldn’t he have done that already? Shoot a single bullet from a silenced.44, then walk calmly away and melt into the crowd before anyone has even realised what’s happened.

“Marsdon,” said the sign, taking him unawares and making him question where his mind had been for the past twenty minutes.

He baulked at the first restaurant, a pushy place with fluorescent green shades and an egocentric sign plastered with recommendations and affiliations.

“Too busy,” he complained, with hardly more than a peep through the lace curtains. Too many nooks and crannies, was what he really meant; too many cozy romantic niches where who-knows-what could be going on under the tables, and who-knows-who could be hiding, waiting to pounce; too many candles and not enough light to spot a killer. Don’t be ridiculous, he said to himself, how could he possible know you were coming here? He could have followed us … The way you’ve had your head stuck in the mirrors — you must be crazy. You’ve smacked the kerb three times — good job it’s a hire car.

“This looks different,” he said, driving on and catching sight of a gallows sign outside a barn-like building. “The Carpenter’s Kitchen,” proclaimed the legend under a carved pictograph of a chef’s hat surrounded by saws, mallets and unrecognisable implements.

The earthy odour of freshly milled wood hit them as Bliss opened the solid church-type door. Quickly stooping to avoid the rough-hewn beams at headache height, he ran his eye along the warped plank flooring. “It’s like being below decks in an old Schooner,” he said with unmistakeable delight.

“Look at this,” replied Daphne dashing off to fondle a diminutive wooden replica of Michelangelo’s David .

“’Tis all ’and carved,” said a buckled old man in workman’s overalls and carpenter’s apron, stepping from behind a sculpted pillar. “An’ ’tis all for sale …” he added, his head screwing awkwardly on a spine fixed by years of bending over a workbench.

“We wanted dinner actually,” queried Bliss. “This is a restaurant, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, ’course ’tis — upstairs. You go on up. That boy o’ mine’ll look after you.”

Bliss was having second thoughts, fearful the food might have absorbed the characteristics of sawdust, but at least there were no Volvos in the car park.

“I think it’s rather quaint,” said Daphne, dawdling to admire award-winning turnings and carvings. “Oh look at this cat,” she said, stroking the life-like carving. “It reminds me of my old tom — the General.”

Five minutes later the cat, elm with walnut inlay and bright glass eyes, sat alert on the dining table checking out the dozen or so other guests in the upstairs dining room.

“Sit where you like,” the old man’s “boy” had said, and Daphne placed her purchase on a table sliced from the bole of an ancient tree, every growth ring clearly countable.

“Cinnamon,” she sniffed, then sat and picked a curled stick from a centrepiece of shaved rosewood, sandalwood and cedar. “I love cinnamon,” she added, running it under her nose. “It’s so Christmassy, don’t you think?”

Bliss frowned. “Would you mind if I sat there?” he said, holding out the other chair for her, inviting her to move.

She caught on. “I suppose you want your back to the wall, Chief Inspector — is that a man thing?”

He laughed it off. “No — it’s a policeman thing.”

She moved and the “boy” came back with the menus. Fifty-five guessed Bliss, but Daphne put him in his late forties — he had young hands, she explained later.

The menus were in keeping with the general theme. “I hate this sort of thing,” said Bliss, turning up his nose at the contorted literary, culinary and carpentry amalgamations. “Listen to this — Oak-smoked joint of venison with sauce of wood mushrooms and potato logs.”

“Oh don’t be so stuffy, it sounds rather good, and look they’ve got woodcock and wood grouse. Though I think I’d prefer something I can talk through — I don’t want to have to concentrate, nothing finicky — no bones. And nothing awkward like lobster or spaghetti.”

“I think I’ll have a steak,” said Bliss, reading aloud. “Grilled over charcoal burnt from Oak, Pine and Mesquite.”

“That sounds good,” muttered Daphne, though her face said she was still giving some thought to her selection. “You were very quiet in the car, Chief Inspector,” she said, looking up from the menu. “I guess you have something on your mind.”

Blue Volvos, funny little men snooping into hotel registers and untimely death. “The Major’s face actually …” he started, then paused. “It was pretty horrific. I don’t want to put you off your dinner.”

“No — I’m interested. Carry on.”

“Well, it was only a skeleton but the jaw and cheek bones had been stitched together with silver wire. The surgeon had obviously done his best, but there simply wasn’t enough bone. It reminded me of a horror movie. One of those low budget ones, Frankenstein’s Brother’s Monster or something. Anyway, the plot was that Frankenstein’s brother made an even more monstrous creature out of all the bits the doctor had left over when he’d finished his monster.”

“Are you making this up?”

“No — I don’t think so … Anyway, that’s what he looked like. And I thought it was significant that the pathologist had removed the face bones before showing the students the skull. I guess he didn’t want anybody throwing up all over the mortuary floor.”

“That would be the Major alright,” said Daphne, her face puckering in awful memory of the mutilated face. “He looked a right mess when he came back …”

The barman cut into their conversation. “Would you care for drinks while you’re looking at the menu?”