The Dave Bliss Quintet. James Hawkins
possible presence of Chief Superintendent Edwards is enough to drive him to order a double Scotch as he deliberates on the suspended officer’s motives.
He could be on holiday, says his inner voice.
He’s suspended, facing dismissal — for what? Abuse of authority and neglect of duty. Doesn’t sound like much, but he nearly got me killed trying to protect his own backside.
So … he could be on holiday.
He’d only be happy if I were dead. Perhaps that’s the plan. That’s why I’m here on my own — no backup, no witnesses.
“You are not to tell anyone of this mission. Do you understand? Not anyone.” Richards repeated, his face saying he meant it. “As far as everyone is concerned you are on indefinite convalescent leave and no one else will know — not even the force admin officer. If anyone enquires they’ll be told — honestly — that you are sick,” he said, before adding forcefully, “This is very big case.”
Big or dodgy, Bliss thinks, downing the Scotch, seeing Edwards’s fingerprints everywhere. Set Bliss loose on some risky adventure where the best possible outcome is an anchor around his neck ten miles out in the Med.
He might just be on holiday! screams his inner voice again, desperately wanting him to believe it. Then, with a sudden realization that he has absolutely no idea what is going on in the rest of the world, he finds a pay phone and calls Samantha.
“How are you? Have you found him yet?” she blurts out as soon as she hears his voice.
“Shhh — you’re not supposed to know.”
“What’s up? Do you think my phone is tapped? Dad you’re just a cop, not James Bond.”
What to say? My last will and testament is under the mattress in the spare bedroom. You can keep the car.
“I’m OK, love. Just thought I’d give you a call,” he says. There is little point in burdening her with worries of Edwards. Particularly as he may be mistaken — hopes he is mistaken.
“There is something you can do, though,” he says, realizing that now the informant has surfaced, Morgan Johnson is a huge step closer to being real. “Maybe you could ask a few discreet questions — who wants him and why. Make sure I’m not chasing a wild goose.”
Samantha senses there is something else. “And …?” she queries.
Warning himself he is getting paranoid, he tasks her to phone Edwards on a pretext. “Just to make sure he is home,” he says. “Tell him you’re doing a survey on the police suppression of free speech. That should get him going.”
“OK. If I’ve got time.”
“Please, Samantha,” he begs, then warns in afterthought, “Make sure you use a pay phone.”
But what if he’s not at home? Bliss sets himself puzzling as he puts down the phone, wanders across the road to the seawall, removes his shirt, and painfully plucks a few grey hairs from his chest as he ponders, What if he is here in the South of France? What does that prove?
He could be working on his defence.
He could be, but surely his best defence would be the mysterious disappearance of the prime witness — a certain detective inspector of close acquaintance.
He wouldn’t risk that.
Not personally, maybe, but I bet he’d like to. Not only did you uncover an inconvenient murder that he’d swept under the rug for his own benefit, you also screwed up his restaurant business and broke his wrist.
That’s all in the past, he tries telling himself, but knows that Edwards has a long memory.
The morning drags with frustrating slowness, and Bliss spends much of the time tugging at a recalcitrant hair as he lounges in the warmth of the mid-morning sun, cogitating on the Edwards problem while listening to Brubeck playing “Black and Blue” on the radio of the beach café behind him.
Given a choice, Bliss might simply kick back and golf away the rest of his life, but he fears that “out of sight” will certainly leave him “out of mind,” and the disciplinary board will let Edwards off the hook. Even with his evidence, Edwards is still capable of squirming his way out of the dung heap he’s piled up for himself. Not that he needs to. He has enough names, dates, and places in his little black book to finger most of his colleagues into throwing him lifelines.
That is Edwards’s MO, and has been from the day he joined up. Every indiscretion by a fellow officer, every game of golf or glass of beer on company time, every insurrection, however slight, has been meticulously recorded as a hedge. And, like Napoleon, he has never forgotten or forgiven a single transgression.
Turning anxiety into action, Bliss heads along the beach with his journal in hand and a picture of Edwards in his mind. It is nearing Sunday lunchtime, and memories of Saturday night still haunt some of the faces on the beach. After an hour of diligently searching every prone figure for either Edwards, Johnson, or Marcia, he gives up when he realizes he is starting to have naughty thoughts about near-naked fifteen-year-old schoolgirls. This should be illegal, he thinks, constantly shocked by his inability to judge the age of sun worshippers from more than a few yards, and, plonking himself under a striped umbrella of a beach café, he writes:
The chaud-froid of life stuns with the sharpness of a blisteringly hot sun reflecting off a glacier. The very young and extremely old stand apart, but there is no place for middle age. The middle-aged either pretend to be young or are forced to be old. Nothing in the middle. Seventy-year-olds party the night away. At home they’d be in bed by ten, wrapped in a flannelette nightie, complaining of bunions and biliousness.
Mothers, even grannies, dress with more daring than their offspring. “Mum,” the kids complain. “You’re not going to the beach in that. I can see your thingies.”
“Why not? I can see yours.”
“Yeah, but I’m only sixteen. You’re old enough to know better.”
“Who’s the parent in this relationship?”
This place is all about sex, he realizes, and is not disillusioned when a lone woman under the next umbrella peels a purple fig with impossibly long fingernails and exposes the swollen pink interior.
“Witch,” he mutters, as she runs her tongue sensuously around the bulbous fruit before taking it, whole, into her mouth.
Back on the beach, a gaudily overdressed Senegalese salesman wearing a coolie hat wilts under the weight of watches, bracelets, and necklaces and is mobbed by a bunch of faithful come to worship at the shrine of glittering possessions.
Twenty watches, stamped Rolex or Cartier according to the whim of the man whose hat he has borrowed, clinch his forearms — ten on each arm, like slave-master’s irons — and a hundred other tacky trinkets with expensive names weigh him to the sand. Women and children swamp him as he sinks, and he spreads his wares as best he can. A young girl buys a shell necklace. The string snaps as she puts it on, showering shells onto the sand where other children scrabble for them. Look, Mum. I’ve found a shell on the beach.
Bliss arrives earlier than usual at L’Escale and sees Angeline dodge a speeding motor scooter only to be nailed by a rollerblader as she jumps the curb to the sidewalk. The two English couples, still clutching plastic raincoats, have played musical chairs again, the women having realized that staring out over gently bobbing boats in the serene harbour all evening loses its appeal faster than a shocking pink woolly hat with a spinning plastic rotor blade. Now they can watch the passing hordes and toxic traffic while their partners crick their necks.
Bliss returns their nods of greeting. “Beautiful day again. Did you enjoy the beach?”
“Not on Sunday, old boy,” says Hugh, adding in a reverent whisper, “It doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
“The