Inspector Bliss Mysteries 8-Book Bundle. James Hawkins
years ago? he tried to recall, then realised that the exercise was pointless. The killer would have gone from being little more than a teenager to almost middle-age in the intervening years. And what had eighteen years in prison done to him? He’d be forty-one now, thought Bliss, feeling foolish as he drove off, quickly picking up speed.
The Volvo, bonnet up, looking like a breakdown victim, was parked on the next overpass with the driver carefully scrutinising the vehicles passing below. Bliss’s Rover came into view and in a flash the blue bonnet was dropped and the small car was hurtling down the approach ramp and back on the motorway. Bliss saw. Already spooked, his senses were on high alert and he caught a glimpse of the blue car weaving in and out of traffic as the driver struggled to catch up to him.
“One more test,” he mused and patiently waited until the car had settled into place behind a Volkswagen van. Then he indicated his intention of moving into the fast lane.
“Yes,” he said triumphantly as the Volvo nosed out from behind the Volkswagen and began to overtake.
“Now let’s see what you’ll do,” he said, cancelling the indicator and braking slowly. The Volvo slid smoothly back in behind the Volkswagen just as he suspected it would.
“Gotcha,” he said, but took little satisfaction in proving his point. Now what? he asked as warning sirens blared in his mind: Speed up; slow down; turn off; get the number ... Yes! Get the number and write it down. At least leave a record in the wreckage and hope that, whatever happens, the Rover doesn’t explode in a fireball when the bullets rip into it.
“Dauntsey played up to the old witch,” Donaldson fumed as he left the court an hour later with D.S. Patterson in one car, while Jonathon Dauntsey was carted away by his solicitor in another. “Bail!” he screamed. “Bail for a fucking murderer. Did you see the look she gave him?”
Patterson, and half the people in the public gallery, had witnessed the metamorphosis as the hatchet-faced old magistrate had preened back a few wispy strands of her silvery hair, put on a sympathetic smile, and locked eyes with Dauntsey in the prisoner’s dock. “The police are asking that you be remanded to their custody for another three days, Mr. Dauntsey. Is there anything you would like to say at this time?”
Dauntsey cleared his throat affectedly, dropped his head deferentially and spoke in a soft clear tone, “I’m certain that you will make the right decision, Ma’am – I am in your hands.”
In your bed as well, thought Donaldson, if the gooey-eyed look on his face meant anything.
“Are you not applying for bail, Mr. Dauntsey?” she continued with an encouraging mien and a clear implication that he should.
Superintendent Donaldson leaned into the crown prosecutor and whispered. “What the hell is she playing at?”
The rotund little prosecutor barrelled to his feet and coughed loudly. “I feel I should remind your worship that this is a murder case, Ma’am.”
Her face hardened back to steel as she swung on him. “And you don’t have a body, do you?”
“No, Ma’am.”
The hearing had gone downhill from then on. A court solicitor had been appointed, bail applied for and, despite vociferous objections by the crown prosecutor whose bald head had turned apoplectic purple, it had been granted.
Detective Sergeant Patterson and his superintendent had hit the town centre at afternoon rush hour en-route back to the police station and Donaldson had pulled some papers from his briefcase to occupy himself, but Patterson was incensed by what had occurred and had whinged angrily about the magistrate from the moment they left the court. “It really pissed me off when she asked if he had any complaints about the way we’d treated him,” he moaned angrily. “What did she think – that we’d used thumbscrews?”
“Probably,” mumbled the superintendent without consideration.
“Did you hear her sweet-talking him?” continued Patterson, then he mimicked the old woman’s crackly voice. “‘Now then, Mr. Dauntsey. Are you going to tell the police what happened to your father’s body?’ And what did he say in that smarmy voice of his? ‘I feel it would be best if he is allowed to remain at peace.’ Huh! It’s enough to make you chuck-up.”
Donaldson was trying to concentrate on his work and his tone had a tinge of annoyance. “Just don’t chuck up in the car, Sergeant.”
Patterson wasn’t listening, his mind was still back in the court. “It got me the way she says, ‘In view of the fact that he won’t tell me, I see no reason why he should tell you.’ I do – If I had my way I’d put me boot in his bollocks – that’d make him squeal.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it, Sergeant, but it’s purely academic. We still haven’t found the body and he’s been granted bail. Now ... if you don’t mind ...”
But Patterson was boiling and couldn’t resist grumbling. “I thought she was gonna give him twenty quid out of the poor box.”
Donaldson’s look of annoyance eventually shut him up but half a minute later a defective traffic light gave the sergeant time, and an excuse, to start talking again. “Bloody light’s broke,” he moaned, then abruptly changed the subject. “Mr. Bliss is gonna be pretty upset when he gets back.”
Donaldson ignored him. The silence sat heavily for a few seconds, then Patterson tried prodding, “He’s gone to London – It must have been something important.”
“’S’pect so.”
“He seems like a good man – our new D.I.”
“Uh – huh,” nodded Donaldson his head still buried in paperwork.
“I expect he’ll find it quiet here after the Met.”
“Probably.”
“I mean ... It’s not always this busy. We don’t get a murder everyday.”
“Thank God.”
“So, was he actually at Scotland Yard? – our D.I. Bliss.”
“Guess so.”
“I jus’ wondered, ’cos I was talking to someone at the Yard yesterday and they didn’t know him.”
“It’s a big place.”
“Yeah – but you’d think they’d ... ”
Donaldson looked up and protested. “Sergeant ... Are you trying to drive this car or drive me round the bend?”
“Drive the car, Sir.”
“Well shut up and drive then.”
“Sorry, Sir.”
Bliss was still driving; still trying to get a look at the Volvo’s number plate and the face of the driver; still trying to remember the face beneath the mask.
It was the bank’s under-manager who had eventually steeled himself to unmask the robber, although it wasn’t concern for the lifeless man’s well-being that had overcome his reticence. The manager was at lunch and he had been left in charge. Having one dead body in the foyer was going to be difficult enough to explain, he didn’t want two, if he could avoid it.
Bliss, engrossed in his attempts to revive Mandy Richards, hardly noticed as Margaret Thatcher’s face was peeled away revealing an unconscious thug with blood oozing from his mouth, nose and scalp.
“Oh my God!” breathed the under-manager assuming the worst, but, freed of the mask, the robber soon began to stir.
“Tie him up,” shouted Bliss, but the youthful executive shook his head.
“He isn’t going anywhere – only the hospital.”
In the aftermath of the botched robbery Bliss had found himself caught up in a controversy and knew his colleagues were weighing up the odds between him receiving a commissioner’s commendation for