The Dave Bliss Quintet. James Hawkins
fair price to me,” says Samantha, well aware of the situation.
“But Edwards might get off the hook.”
“So what?”
“Do you know what he did to me?”
“Dad, as far as I remember you broke his wrist,” she says, recalling his violent reaction as Edwards tried to save his own skin by taking Bliss off a controversial case.
“Trust you to bring that up. I was provoked. He was trying to save his neck — you know that.”
“OK. But it didn’t help his wrist, did it? So, if you want my professional advice, I’d say take it — a few months in the sun will do you good.”
“Don’t you want to know what Johnson’s been up to?”
“Not particularly,” she says.
“You were right — drugs.”
“Did I say drugs?” she asks, confused. “That isn’t what I was told.”
“I thought you said you haven’t had much chance.”
“I haven’t — but rumour is he may have done a runner with a fair wad of investments.”
“How big a wad?”
“About a hundred million quid or so. Though it’s just a whisper — pure speculation. He’s probably innocent.”
“Innocent!” scoffs Bliss. “You’re telling me that this guy may have scarpered with more than one hundred million pounds in investments — a hundred million! — and you say he’s innocent. What did they think they were investing in — a gold mine?”
“Sunken treasure,” she tells him.
“Sunken dreams, more like it.”
“Humph,” she snorts. “And just where did these investors get that sort of money in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they worked hard — life savings, that sort of thing.”
“Don’t be naive, Dad. People who knock their guts out for fifty years to keep themselves in dentures and diapers in their dotage don’t usually risk it on a dubious treasure hunt. I bet most of it was dodgy lolly. Serves them right.”
“That’s your trouble. You’re a defence lawyer.”
“Don’t blame me. You sent me to law school.”
“My fault again,” he says, thinking: You’re beginning to sound more and more like your mother every day. Then he asks, “What about Edwards?”
“Dad. I’ve got a lot on …”
It’s an excuse; he can tell from the drag in her tone.
“Why not call him yourself?”
Telling her he is concerned about phone taps won’t wash. “Use a pay phone,” she’d say, but the truth is that he doesn’t know how far Edwards is prepared to go, and imagines his lawyer lodging a counter-complaint of making nuisance calls.
“Maybe you could try for me, Samantha.”
“Maybe.”
“Please.”
The parade of pots has taken on a new significance as Bliss strolls the promenade to the bar L’Escale after dinner.
Despite Marcia’s admonition against it, he is tempted to confront her husband, and stands amid the throng of beguiled women watching the genial potter spinning off tiny ceramic heartwarmers. Many of the faces in the crowd are familiar — groupies, he guesses, and figures he would find them there most evenings.
On the edge of the crowd is another familiar face: one of the hoteliers, scowling at the procession of little wet pots headed off along the promenade towards his hotel.
Jacques is back, though he seems to be keeping a distance.
“So — what happened to the mistral yesterday?” Bliss grunts with phony chilliness.
Jacques shrugs as he lights a cigarette, then blows out his answer with an accompanying cloud. “Putain — we were so lucky. It was just ten kilometres away.”
“Not here, though, was it,” Bliss continues to grumble, as if he had been looking forward to the refreshing blast of mountain air in place of the smoke.
“Ah, vous enculez les mouches,” Jacques spits. “You are parting zhe hairs.”
“It’s splitting hairs, Jacques. Not parting hairs. We say: splitting hairs.”
“Zhere — you are parting zhe hairs again.”
Bliss turns in frustration and finds four pasty-faced individuals shuffling seats.
“So — no beach today?” greets Bliss, tongue in cheek, as they finally sit.
“No. Not today,” pipes up Jennifer with a mutinous edge to her voice. “We had to do the laundry today, didn’t we. We’re going to the beach tomorrow.”
Hugh shakes his head sadly. “Probably not — they spoke of rain.”
“Who spoke of rain?” cuts in Jennifer in outright insurrection.
“The BBC World service last night,” he ripostes authoritatively. “They say there’s a big depression headed this way.”
Jennifer’s scowl suggests it has just arrived.
“What do they know?” Bliss puts forward conciliatorily, his mind still on Edwards as he searches the moonlit sky for trace of a cloud. “They’re a thousand miles away.”
“Well we never watch the French telly,” whines Mavis. “The weather forecast’s never very accurate, is it Hugh?”
“Les Anglais sont complètement dingues,” scoffs Jacques, tapping his temple suggestively.
Hey, we’re not all crazy, thinks Bliss, though has no intention of defending the mental state of Hugh and Mavis. “Don’t worry,” he says, turning to Jennifer, “I’m sure the weather will be perfect for the beach tomorrow.”
“Non, non, non,” says Jacques. “Not tomorrow.”
“What is this — a bloody conspiracy?” Bliss mumbles angrily to the sky. “What has everybody got against the weather? There hasn’t been a bloody cloud in more than two weeks.”
“It is not zhe cloud of which I speak,” explains Jacques. “It is zhe wind.”
“Not the damn mistral again,” spits Bliss, sitting resignedly.
“Non, Monsieur. Le mistral was a pet de lapin. Tomorrow la tramontane will give you zhe wind up.”
Notwithstanding Jacques’s indecorous assessment of the mistral as nothing more than a rabbit’s fart, Bliss has to agree with him. “La tramontane?” he queries.
“Oui, Monsieur,” says Jacques, then explains in lurid detail how the icy blast is already gathering its battalions and winding itself up, ready to sweep down from the permanently snow-capped Alps of Switzerland and Austria.
“That’s it then,” says Hugh, in apparently cheerful resignation.
However, memories of the misplaced mistral spur Bliss to lean across to a glum Jennifer and whisper a message of hope. “I should wait and see if I were you.”
Leaving L’Escale, Bliss wanders homeward along the promenade weighed with concern — worrying that he may be the reason for Morgan Johnson’s sudden departure. If Marcia had smoked him out so easily, could not Johnson or one of his people? But there is a difference — Marcia had been expecting him. Was Johnson?