The Dave Bliss Quintet. James Hawkins
exactly, Guv, though I didn’t expect her to immediately. She’ll probably be a bit cagey for awhile … want to check me out. She’s probably got a lot at stake.” He pauses, thinking: Her neck, probably. “But she’s English, thirty-five-ish, short black hair, mouthwatering breasts, eyes like pools of liquid ebony …”
“What the hell?” exclaims the voice on the phone.
“Oh. Sorry, Guv. I got carried away. Anyway, she obviously made a beeline for me when no one else was about. The beach was almost deserted — everyone still sleeping it off or jostling for a croissant and chocolat chaud. The bloody beaches are packed by nine in the morning, and Noel Coward was wrong — mad dogs and Englishmen aren’t the only ones baking in the midday sun — and no one leaves ’til five.”
“Hardly a day in the office, though,” snorts the sarcastic voice at the other end with the weariness of a wet Thursday in London.
“Tougher, if you ask me. Have you any idea what it’s like to be a professional sunbather?”
“Stop whining. You’re getting paid. By the way, what’s your cover?”
Bliss tells him, and the phone explodes. “Dave Burbeck!” yells his contact.
“I know what you’re thinking, Guv. But the name just slipped out. Anyway, it matches my initials. Dave Bliss, Dave Burbeck.”
“Detective Inspector Bliss,” starts the voice, a mixture of officialdom and royally pissed-offedness. “You’ve had two weeks swanning about on the poxin’ beach in the South of France to come up with a plausible cover, and the best you do is a bleedin’ rock star.”
“Jazz, actually. But it’s Burbeck, not Brubeck.”
“Don’t push it, Bliss. So what bloody creative occupation did you conjure up for Mr. Burbeck? Astronaut, perhaps?”
“I’m an author, working on my first novel — a historical mystery.”
The line goes silent while his contact thinks for a few seconds. “That’s actually a bloody good cover,” he says, taking his hand off the mouthpiece, Bliss’s inappropriate choice of name temporarily forgotten or forgiven. “But what about the informant?” The crustiness is back. “Where is she? Who is she? Why the bloody hell did you let her go?”
Leaving the pay phone, nestled coolly under a fruitladen fig tree in the shade of the stone ramparts of the fifteenth-century fortifications, Bliss flinches under the stark glare of the midday sun and scuttles into the shade of a clump of eucalyptus trees edging a dustbowl. A group of serious-faced pétanque players momentarily take their eyes off their boules and critically inspect him as he flops onto a convenient bench, flicks away a hostile wasp, opens his writing pad, scrubs out his previous words, and begins again.
The pink and white blossoms of oleanders, together with the trumpets of hibiscus, paint the hedgerows and scent the air with a sweetness that transcends the derision and bitterness of everyday existence.
The pétanque players pick up where they left off, like a small grazing herd that was only momentarily alarmed by the presence of a predator. Typically French, thinks Bliss, perplexed by the indifference of the seemingly earnest players as their boules ricochet off stray pebbles on the bumpy ground and veer off course. Why don’t they play on a proper court? he wonders, his desire for competitive precision honed on the billiard-table bowling greens and fiercely rolled cricket pitches of England, and his mind leads him home and to the reason for his presence on the Côte d’Azur.
“We want you to take it easy for awhile, Inspector,” Commander Richards, his contact, declared a few weeks earlier, immediately raising Bliss’s suspicions. Richards was a stranger. An admin man from headquarters with half-rimmed reading glasses, a no-nonsense moustache, and a seriously sympathetic mien. He had been brought in for the occasion, Bliss assumed. Bad news, like a solicitation for a charitable donation, was always easier delivered by, and received from, a stranger, and Bliss saw through the ploy, and the words, immediately. Take it easy permanently, the commander meant, hoping Bliss might take the hint.
“You probably need a bit of help from the trickcyclist after what you’ve been through,” he suggested, and Bliss knew what that meant as well. Seeking help from a psychiatrist was an easy route to an untimely discharge, his record of service indelibly embossed “Unfit for duty.” Funny that, he thought. Get a bullet in the leg in the line of duty and the force can’t do enough for you … but a wounded brain can be more damning than bubonic plague.
“Have a stiff drink, old chap. Do you a world of good,” was about all the sympathy you might expect following a traumatic event — and Bliss had certainly suffered that. Of course, he might wangle a spell of light duties — as if regular police work were particularly heavy — frittering away a few months, even years, flying a desk at New Scotland Yard, churning out irksome directives with Richards and the rest of the sore backside brigade, muttering: “My life’s bloody boring; why should you be enjoying yourself?” Or quit. Wasn’t that what they really wanted? A tasty pension was being dangled — his twenty-two years of service would be rounded up to thirty, and they’d throw in a disability bonus — then he could follow the common path down to a little country pub where he would enthrall his patrons with wildly exaggerated tales of heroic adventures. Not likely, he’d decided unhesitatingly, perplexed by coppers who’d spent half their careers chucking inebriates out of pubs, and their retirements dragging them back in. There was, in any case, a more selfserving reason for him not to ride off quietly into the sunset: retribution. He still had a score to settle. However, there was an alternative on the table: a covert assignment on the French Riviera under the guise of protracted convalescent leave.
“This is absolutely hush-hush,” Richards whispered, leaning menacingly across his desk, his tone as sharp as his moustache. “Not a word to anyone — understand?”
Bliss recoiled into his chair, ducking a waft of whisky-laden breath, and Richards took it as a rejection. “It’s OK, Inspector,” he said, relaxing. “I quite understand. I don’t suppose you want another foreign assignment just yet.”
“It wasn’t an assignment ...” Bliss started, then tried to let it drop, knowing he was still under a cloud for attacking his senior officer and then flying halfway around the world in pursuit of a multiple murderer on his own initiative. The fact that the officer, Superintendent Edwards, had been promoted while facing disciplinary charges arising from the incident gave Bliss a fairly good idea of the direction of the wind.
“It’s entirely up to you,” Richards said with an encouraging half-smile, “but I would have thought a few months in the South of France, full pay plus all expenses — and I mean all expenses — would get you back on track.”
“Have you any idea …?” Bliss scoffed, knowing the usual stinginess of the force.
But Richards knew the cost. “It’s an important case, Inspector. The sky’s pretty much the limit.”
If this was an olive branch, it was hung with juicy fruit. Or would it turn out to be just a carrot to lure him out of the way while a certain senior officer was given a slap on the wrist?
“I can’t,” Bliss replied, easing himself forward. “I’m a witness against Edwards. He nearly got me killed trying to cover his backside.”
“Chief Superintendent Edwards to you,” Richards admonished, his tone immediately souring. “Innocent until proved guilty, Inspector, as I’m sure you’re aware. And you needn’t worry — you’ll be notified of the disciplinary hearing in plenty of time to return.”
“Your mission,” Richards told him, “is simply to locate this person, positively identify him, and report his whereabouts.”
The apparent simplicity of the task left Bliss skeptical. They didn’t need an inspector for this. A grunt with six months’ service could do this — even a civvy could do it — at a fraction of the cost.
“Is that it?” he asked, certain he was