James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

I’m not.

Bloody liar — you’ve always been a bloody liar.

Have not.

Why did you get expelled from school then? Why did your dad chuck you out of the house then?

“Mrs. Dauntsey — can you hear me?” asked Bliss, on the outside, but the words couldn’t cut through the nagging voice in Doreen’s mind.

No-one would ever have known Jonathon wasn’t Rupert’s son if he hadn’t come back, would they?

He didn’t come back smart-ass. Not in person anyway.

But you didn’t know that at the time did you? You should’ve seen your face when the ambulance rolled up at the front door and you thought Rupert was going to pop out and point at your belly saying, “Whose is that then?”

“Mrs. Dauntsey, Mrs. Dauntsey,” Samantha broke through the haze. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“I was shocked when I saw him,” she said, breaking back into the real world for a second, trying to escape the voice.

Thunderstruck would be more accurate, said the voice, reminding her she would never escape. Y ou spewed your guts up remember; couldn’t bear to look at him for weeks. She remembered, only too well, and her face showed the pain as she thought of the nights she’d lain awake in the cold lonely bed, Jonathon swelling inside her, as she listened to the anguished whimpering of the tormented man in the turret room next door.

“I used to lie awake at night praying for him,” she said, sounding compassionate, her downcast eyes looking for sympathy.

Now say that again with a straight face, sneered the voice.

I did pray for him.

Yeah — prayed he would die; prayed for ways you could bump him off without getting caught; prayed he’d cut his wrist.

That would’ve have been a bit tricky wouldn’t it — with only one arm? Anyway, would it have been so terrible? What was life for him? — trapped inside a useless body; pretending to be someone else; mourning his lost love; stuck in the turret room all day and night — alone most of the time.

“Doreen … Doreen,” Daphne was nagging at her sleeve. “Doreen, dear. Do you think we should call a doctor?”

“Doctor?” she asked vaguely. “No — why? There’s nothing wrong with me.” Doctors! she swore under her breath — Bloody crooks the lot of ’em. Like Doctor Fitzpatrick, pleading poverty in his leather patched tweed jacket and cloth cap; doing his rounds in a beatup Ford Popular — his gleaming black Bentley reserved for weekends in the city. Doctor Fitzpatrick — long dead now — the only other person to know the truth about the creature in the turreted room.

“The radiographer must have mixed up the pictures, Mrs. Dauntsey …” the old doctor had said, pouring over the x-rays perplexedly after being called upon to examine the returned hero — expected to certify the extent of his wounds for his pension. But there had been no mistake and he had caught on eventually.

Bliss, his senses alert to the slightest shift in the atmosphere, found himself drawn to a grandfather clock which someone had appliqued with millions of multicoloured seeds. The tasteless timepiece was wheezing noisily as it wound itself up to deliver the hour, and, under his gaze, it stopped, a tick short of eleven and, at that precise moment, the parade room at the police station jumped to attention.

“At ease,” barked Donaldson, entering with the assistant chief on his shoulder, then he faltered, seeing the measly turnout. “Christ — is this the best we can do?”

“Short notice, Guv,” explained Patterson, failing to mention that he’d not put himself out; that the twenty or so men and women he’d rounded up had, in large part, been swanning around the police station in search of an excuse for swanning around the police station.

“We’ll just have to manage, I suppose,” said Donaldson, going on quickly to explain that their new detective inspector had not spent the night at his hotel and had been missing for the past three hours.

“Probably got lost,” quipped Patterson, fixing his tombstone teeth into a ventriloquist’s smile.

Donaldson, recognising the voice, directed his words at the detective sergeant, thinking — let’s see if you think this is funny. “D.I. Bliss received a death threat yesterday morning,” he began, straight-faced. “And last night someone stole some of his personal property and set fire to it in the car park behind the Mitre Hotel — outside his window — obviously intended as a portent.”

“As a what?” asked Patterson.

“As a warning — to scare the shit out of him,” explained the assistant chief, thinking: Get yourself a dictionary — moron.

Sniggers ran around the room but Donaldson barked, “This ain’t funny.”

D.C. Dowding wasn’t so sure — he’d heard about the goat. “Can I ask what exactly was cremated, Sir?” he said with barely suppressed humour.

“It was a stuffed goat,” admitted Donaldson and got the expected gale of laughter. “O.K.” he shouted angrily. “This ain’t Alabama — it’s not the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses. This is Westchester — nobody is going to run one of our men out of town. I repeat — nobody!”

Patterson, sullen-faced, appeared serious. “It sounds more like a prank to me — kids probably …”

“Oh for God’s sake, Pat. Haven’t you been listening? I said he received a death threat yesterday morning.”

But Patterson sloughed it off. “I wouldn’t mind a quid for every little punk who’s threatened to put me in a concrete overcoat.”

“Sergeant Patterson,” said the A.C.C. “Have you any idea why D.I. Bliss was transferred here from the Met?”

“Haven’t a clue, Sir,” he replied honestly, despite all the strings he’d pulled to find out.

None of them knew — until Superintendent Donaldson filled them in.

The bizarre grandfather clock, in the Coffee House, summoned enough energy to strike only the first four beats of eleven, and time moved forward for Bliss as a pair of clacking stiletto heels announced the manageress’s approach, shattering the petrified atmosphere. “Is there some sort of problem here?” she demanded, alerted by the waitress and the epidemic of worried expressions infecting her other customers.

Talk about uptight, thought Bliss, appraising the woman’s clenched buttocks, over-strung brassiere and tightly permed hair. “There’s no problem,” he said, brushing her off.

“Well — Is madam alright?” she continued, pointedly peering for signs of life in Doreen’s wheelchair.

“Yes,” said Doreen weakly, “I’m alright.”

“She’s just had a bit of a shock,” confided Bliss, leading the woman out of the old lady’s earshot, fearing she was on the verge of asking them to remove Doreen for causing a disturbance. “Her husband’s died,” he added, not untruthfully, and watched the woman scuttle back to the kitchen.

“Maybe you and Daphne should go back to the other table,” he said, turning to Samantha, concerned that Daphne’s presence might be intimidating her old friend.

“I didn’t have to help get her out of the home …” complained Daphne, her feathers ruffled, but Doreen held up a hand, saying through the tears. “You might as well stay, Daphne. I quite relish the idea that I’m still worth gossiping about.”

“Just keep quiet then,” whispered Bliss to Daphne, “and don’t mention that damn goat again.”

“I didn’t realise at first,” Doreen sniffled. “It wasn’t as though I knew him well.”

“Didn’t realise what?” interrupted Daphne immediately, drawing an angry “shush” from Bliss.

“A nurse came in everyday and did his bandages,” continued Doreen. “His face was such a mess that it never occurred to me.”