James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“Where the hell is Bliss?” he asked, pausing to give Dowding a shake in passing.

“Oh! Sorry, Guv. I must’ve dozed off.”

“I said, where the hell … Oh, never mind. Go back to sleep.”

Bliss was drifting toward sleep himself as Samantha soothed the lines on his brow. “I’ll give you a penny for them, Dave?”

“I’m wondering what to do about Doreen?”

“She’s an old lady. She’s dying.”

“So am I. So are you — everyday we get a little closer.”

“That’s morbid.”

“True though. I just find it difficult to feel sympathy for somebody who thought she could sleep her way to a fortune, however small, and was prepared to live a lie for fifty years to keep hold of it. She didn’t give a shit about Rupert Dauntsey — alive or dead.”

“But he didn’t give a shit about her.”

“Two wrongs … ” he started, then shrugged. “Maybe they deserved each other, though I still can’t forgive her, especially after what Daphne went through.”

“What did Daphne go through?”

“I promised not to tell.”

She caught the lobe of his ear between her teeth. “I could bite … ”

He told … D-Day; the dead baby; Hugo — the works.

“Wow,” said Samantha, breathless. “And I worry about finding the odd dead body on the beach. But how did she get the O.B.E.?”

“I’ve no idea. It’s almost as if she’s ashamed of it. She always manages to slide off onto something else whenever she gets close to telling.”

“Goodnight, Dave,” she said, slipping off the bed without warning — just a peck on his lips and a squeeze of the hand.

He tried to grab her but she jerked away, saying, lightheartedly, “I told you — behave or you’ll be out. And I’ll tell Donaldson where to find you.”

“Sorry, Miss,” he joked.

She paused, hand on the door. “Just be patient, Dave,” she said, turning, clearly torn, then made a decision. “You know what they say, Dave — easy come, easy go.” And she was gone.

It was nearly 1 am. Westchester had shut down for the night; the barman at the Mitre had pulled down the shutters and gone home; Patterson was close to giving up. “Why the hell didn’t he tell us?” he said, putting the blame on Bliss for the hundredth time. “He should’ve told us somebody was after him.”

Dowding stirred sufficiently to find a more comfortable position.

Bliss couldn’t get comfortable. It wasn’t the bed’s fault. A maelstrom of thoughts kept him tossing as he tried to unravel the twisted eternal triangle between Doreen, Rupert Dauntsey and David Tippen — who did what to whom, and why? Daphne, the goat and Mandy’s murderer also surfaced from time to time but, amongst the mental turmoil, Samantha was the only constant, a solid ray of sunshine at the centre of the storm — like the eye in a hurricane. And he kept coming back to her, just the other side of a hollow stud wall he reminded himself, warming to indelible images of her mysteriously dark Asiatic eyes and olive black hair.

It was eighteen minutes after one. A wash of yellow light seeped from under her bedroom door. “Samantha,” he tapped lightly.

“Yes, Dave?”

“I can’t sleep — do you want a cup of tea?”

“Yes please — I can’t sleep either.”

“Do you take sugar?” he asked, walking in, two cups in hand. “I’ve been thinking about Bomber Mason, the Volvo driver,” he continued. But his mind was screaming: And you, Samantha. I’ve been thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you.

He eyed the bed, decided against pushing his luck, slumped into a bedside chair and tried to keep his eyes off her. “This Mason bloke and Mandy’s killer probably did time together …” he began while thinking: Get out now, why torture yourself like this. “He’s probably told Mason to find out my routine so he can strike at the best time.”

He looked at her — it was a mistake. Oh my God — you’re bloody gorgeous, Samantha.

“Dave …?”

“Yes … Sorry …”

“You’re staring.”

“Shit! … Sorry … Um … Maybe I should … um.”

“Dave.”

“Yes?”

“Mason … What are you planning to do about him?”

“Oh … Um … Mason … Yes.”

“So what’s your plan, Dave?”

Concentrating hard he focused on the tea in his cup and got his mind in order. “Alright. First thing in the morning I’ll pay him a visit and beat the crap out of him if I have to. Once I know where his buddy, the murderer, is … You’re bloody gorgeous, Samantha.”

“Dave,” she laughed.

“Sorry — it just sort of slipped out. I’d better go. Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow. Goodnight.”

“G’night, Dave. Thanks for the tea.”

It was three minutes before two. Patterson gave Dowding a shake. “O.K., Bob. Let’s call it a day. He won’t be back tonight and I’ve got to see a man about a dog first thing.”

“Right, Serg,” said Dowding, relieved.

It was eleven minutes past two. Bliss had lain awake counting every minute with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas Eve. I need a pee, he thought, regretting drinking the tea, and he crept out into the hallway. The spill of light from under Samantha’s door lit his path to the bathroom and the noisy torrent hitting the pan reverberated around the room, turning him pink. Then, faced with the early riser’s dilemma — to flush or not to flush — he flushed.

“Sorry,” he said, tapping lightly, praying she was still awake.

“Come in.” She was reading Woman’s Own . “Can’t sleep,” she explained as he poked his head round the door, not trusting himself to go in. “I was hoping this might bore me to sleep,” she laughed, flinging it aside. “You know the sort of thing — How to knit your own knickers; Haggis — boiled or fried; the joy of yeast infections.”

He looked askance. She was joking? “I forgot to ask earlier. Did you get hold of the forensic lab?”

“Oh yes. Patterson took the stuff in Monday afternoon.”

“I thought he would — I kicked his ass.”

“Not hard enough apparently. He didn’t tell them it was urgent.”

“Damn.”

“It’s O.K. They’ll make a start on the duvet first thing this morning and let us have a preliminary finding at lunchtime. The blood on the syringe …”

“Blood — What blood?”

“Didn’t they tell you? Oh no, of course not. Apparently they’ve found traces of blood, but it will take a while to identify because it was burnt?”

“Blood,” he breathed, adding, “That’s interesting,” as he started to close her door. “Thanks,” he said, absently, his mind absorbed as he tried unsuccessfully to find a link between Jonathon Dauntsey, the flattened toy Major and a syringe of blood. “Goodnight.”

“G’night, Dave.”

It was three-twenty-seven. The first shafts of midsummer sunlight had roused a cockerel in a nearby field and he was doing his best to pass on the news. Bliss needed no such alarm and was roaming the house trying to reconstruct Samantha’s background through artefacts and mementos. He found little, other than a plastic coffee mug extolling the beauty of the Seychelles which had washed up on the draining board in her kitchen, a tasteless Eiffel Tower saltcellar, a single Delft clog and a crooked Italian campanile: Souvenirs or airport presents, he wondered, finding none that bore personalised inscriptions.

A number of pictures, both painted and photographic, could have come from any high street shop, he thought; nothing garish, nothing requiring an explanation or a psychiatrist; nothing that looked more like an accident than a work of art. One picture, a family portrait in a gold frame, made him pause: a pony-tailed Samantha, aged 10 or so, together with mother and father, and a huge yellow Labrador in a green garden.