James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“The Royal Horse Artillery gun carriage — you asked me …”

“Have you got the set?” he demanded, his enthusiasm running away with his mouth.

“Peter …”

“Not now … Have you got it?”

These boys are keen, thought Bliss. “Yes, I think so.”

“When can I see it?”

It’s only a toy — not the crown jewels. “Well …”

“I’m here all day or I can come to you.”

“It’s in Westchester, Hamp …”

“I know the place — it’s eleven now, I can be there by two, one-thirty at a pinch.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Bliss. “There’s no rush. Anyway, I haven’t asked the owner yet …” then he paused, thinking, who is the owner? Doreen, I suppose.

“I was only calling to let you know — you seemed rather keen …”

“Look, I must see it …” the dealer hesitated for a second then seemingly made up his mind. “I’ll give you five hundred pounds if you tell me where it is and keep quiet about it.”

Bliss’s throat tightened to a squeak, “How much?”

“O.K. … Seven hundred and fifty, as long as it’s genuine and no-one else knows.”

Samantha was back with the coffee and a puzzled frown. “What is it, Dad?”

He clasped his hand over the mouthpiece and took a deep breath. “I’m missing something here — hold on a minute.” Then he spoke questioningly back to the phone. “We are talking about the same thing I hope. The seven hundred and fifty pounds … that’s not for buying the set?”

“No, no. That’s just for telling me where it is.”

Bliss held his breath and spoke slowly. “Would you consider making that a thousand pounds?”

Captain David Tippen’s house had gone. Even the street had gone — bulldozed into the foundations of a mega-store and a leisure complex. The duty sergeant at Guildstone police station remembered the street, “Crumbly old hovels — good riddance, I said. It were a bloomin’ rat-hole.”

There were only eight Tippens in the phone book, none David or D, but Bliss decided it was worth a few minutes of his time. The first two had left machines in charge of their phones. Three, four and five turned a deaf ear, and number six rang forever. “Hallo,” said a thin voice, just as Bliss had decided to quit.

“Is this Mr. Tippen?”

“You’ll ’ave to speak up.”

“I said …”

“Yeah. I heard ya. What’ye want?”

“I’m looking for relatives of a David Tippen.”

“Yeah, I knows him,” he replied, with a confusing use of the present tense. “He’s me uncle’s boy.”

“No — I’m looking for a man who was a Captain in the Royal Horse Artillery during the war.”

“Aye, that’d be ’im alright.”

“Unbelievable,” breathed Bliss.

“Who are ya anyhow?” queried the old man.

“Police — Detective Inspector Bliss.”

“Police, eh? Why didn’t you say so afore?”

“Can you just tell me where he is,” Bliss tried again.

“Gawd knows — the poor blighter never came back, did he? Missing in action, they said.”

“Oh. I thought you meant he was alive …” started Bliss, formulating a further question when inquisitiveness got the better of the old man. “What’s this all about? Mebbe you’d best come ’round here. I’m back of the old cattle market.”

“I’ll take you, Guv,” said the sergeant when he asked for directions. “You’ll never find it without a guide — unless you use your nose.”

Sergeant Jones was right about the nose — though it wasn’t the market giving off the stink, it was the ancient clapboard house lurking behind it.

The old man took even longer to answer the door than the phone, but each time Bliss knocked anew, his crotchety voice drifted through the splintered woodwork. “Alright, alright, I’ze a coming.”

And, when the door finally creaked open, it revealed a Dickensian scene of poverty, together with a decayed man who fitted the setting perfectly. “Come in,” he said amidst a waft of hot stench which hit the two officers and had them scrabbling for handkerchiefs.

“’Tis the cats,” explained Tippen, a straggle-haired geriatric, sideswiping a ginger tom with his ivory-handled walking cane. “You’ll get used t’it in a mo. Come along in — I were just ’aving me tea. I’ll make ya a cuppa.”

“Not for us,” said Bliss sharply, remaining rooted to the doorstep as the old man shuffled back into the house, his shabby black clothing blending into the gloom.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” he called, the pallor of his face showing up as he turned back to the door. But Bliss was having difficulty motivating himself to follow into the murky labyrinth of narrow corridors, looking, as far as he could tell, as if they had been tunnelled through mountains of newspapers and ceiling high heaps of rotten clothing. It was a hellish version of Alice in Wonderland, he realised, complete with black rabbit in a waistcoat. Sergeant Jones finally nudged him into action, and together they struggled forward against the tide of decay, grateful they had passed on the old man’s invitation to his tea party.

The sergeant was still retching an hour later as he sat at the police canteen bar, slugging down a third whisky, shaking his head, muttering, “I can’t believe it,” for the twentieth time. “I’ve never smelt anything like it. Did you see all that shit?”

“Everywhere,” replied Bliss, scrutinising his feet at maximum range. “I’ll have to throw these shoes away. I’m not having them in my car.”

“I’m not sure it was all cat shit either,” said the sergeant, sniffing his jacket with care.

“I’d rather not think about it.”

“I’m gonna burn this uniform.”

“A good dry-cleaner will probably get it out.”

“Sulphuric acid wouldn’t kill a smell like this.”

“I’d best be off,” said Bliss, rising. “I’ll leave it to you to contact Social Services and make arrangements to get him out and cleaned up.”

“Thanks, Guv. They’re gonna love me.”

“I bet you’re glad you came with me now,” he laughed.

Sergeant Jones scowled in mock anger. “I’m just glad you got the information you needed.”

“Oh yes,” he said, picking up an envelope containing the tattered remains of a photograph which the old man had miraculously found amidst the garbage. “I think I’ve pretty much got the case wrapped up now.”

There were two uniformed men in the photo and Bliss had recognised them immediately: the Major and the Captain — two soldiers in battledress standing just a little too close; smiling just a little too much; and, fifty years on, their eyes still sparkling for each other. The picture had slotted into place in Bliss’s mind the moment he took it from the grubby claws of the old man, and everything suddenly made perfect sense: Rupert’s nancy-boy reputation; his whiny accent; his sudden marriage to Doreen; his retention of the dead man’s dog tags. And, when he turned the photograph over, Captain David Tippen’s neatly caligraphied hand spoke directly to him: “ This is me with my very best friend, Rupie .”

“He should never ’ave gone in t’army,” the old man had said with nostalgic concern. “He didn’t ’ave the constitution for it, he were too much of a mummy’s boy … Killed her it did, when he didn’t come back.”

“Imagine Doreen,” Bliss had postulated to the sergeant on their way back to the police station. “She marries a bloke who gets shipped off to war before he has a chance to get his leg over, then he comes home looking like Dracula and announces his dick’s been blown off. ‘But don’t fret about it, my little turtle-dove,’ he says, ‘’Cos I’m a poofter anyway.’”