“Why do you want the information, sir?” she asked in a cool tone, accompanied by the steely gaze of a professional.
The question caught him off guard; his immediate reaction was to disclose his identity, but he thought better of it. It didn't make sense. It would, he thought, be impossible to explain why he had not simply gone to the nearest police station with his request. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had a prefabricated story about Margaret
being a long lost relative, but the investigator's continued penetrating gaze made it obvious she was watching closely for signs of prevarication, and was becoming suspicious of his hesitation. He finally opted to stick to the truth, more or less.
“She's inherited a valuable restaurant in London and I've been asked by her family to tell her.”
“Don't they have lawyers to do that sort of thing?”
“At a price. I was coming over anyway, on holiday,” he explained. “So I said I'd try to find her.”
She looked at him askance, doubt deeply etched into the lines on her brow.
“What's the problem?” he asked.
“I'll be honest with you,” she said. “Men sometimes try to hire us to find their runaway wives or girlfriends so they can harass them or even bump them off.”
He felt her sizing up his reaction. “You're kidding.”
She shook her head in seriousness. “I could lose my licence if something like that happened.”
Her fixed stare offered no room for manoeuvring. He met her eyes and responded icily. “I am trying to find Margaret Gordonstone to tell her about the death of her father and her inheritance.”
She challenged him with a stare for a full second before visibly relaxing. “OK. I'll try to find her,” she said with a dazzling smile that appeared from nowhere. “Where can I call you?”
“I'm not sure⦔ he began. Her smile started to wilt. “I stayed at the Gateway last night,” he continued, pulling the receipt from his pocket. Her smile picked up. “You can call me there,” he finished.
There was only the question of payment to resolve. “Two hundred dollars upfront,” she requested.
“Visa?”
“No problem. Give me a couple of hours. And have a nice day.”
The phone was ringing by the time he'd got back to the hotel and re-registered just after four o'clock. He flung himself across the bed and snatched up the receiver. Too late. He had to wait until the message was recorded on the voice mail.
“I have the information you require Mr. Bliss,” said the investigator's tinny recorded voice, “if you'd care to give me a call.” That was fast, he thought, as he dialled her number and a small part of him was disappointed that he no longer had an excuse to give up and go home. It was nowhere near five o'clock.
“Where is it?” he enquired as he scribbled down the address.
“About a thousand miles north, somewhere called Little Bear Island,” she said, as if she were talking about the suburbs.
He whistled through his teeth. “A thousand miles. How long would it take to drive there?”
“Forever, I think,” she laughed. “There are no roads.”
He found himself whistling again and resolved to stop doing it. “No roads?”
“Welcome to Canada, eh.”
“No roads,” he repeated. “How can I get there?”
“Fly probably,” she sounded vague. “Then it looks like four or five days' hike from the nearest town; three days by canoe maybe.” She was obviously tracing out a route on a map and continued after a slight pause. “There are some pretty steep rapids.” Then her tone picked up optimistically. “Perhaps you could hire a float plane to drop you on Bear Lake, but you'll have to hurry if you want to get there before winter closes in.”
“It's only September.”
“Like I said, Mr. Bliss, welcome to Canada. Oh, and have a nice trip.”
The hotel receptionist made it abundantly clear by her expression that she didn't believe him when, ten minutes after booking in, he booked out again, claiming he had to rush back to his dying mother in England, but she wished him a nice day anyway as she tore up the credit card slip.
Reversing the charges from a street payphone, and catching an earful of abuse for doing so, Bliss called Samantha and excitedly reported his news.
“Dad. What if you get there and find it's the wrong Margaret Gordonstone?”
“I've thought of that, but she's roughly the right age; and Bryan said she lived in the wilds of Canada.”
“Why not phone her first. She might be away.”
“She doesn't have a phone, I've already checked. There is no listing for her name or address. By the way, what is Edwards doing?”
“Peter says he's blustering about, ripping into everyone, shouting about getting an arrest warrant, and threatening you with life imprisonment.” The line went quiet, Bliss wondered if he'd been disconnected.
“Sam!”
“I'm here, I'm here,” she said falteringly, clearly in the midst of serious deliberation. Then she came to a decision. “Dad, Peter says if you are back by tomorrow night and apologize to Edwards, he won't press charges.”
He dismissed the offer with little consideration and without comment, but picked up on her familiar use of the DCI's first name. “So how is Peter?”
“He's all right, Dad. I really believe he's trying to help you.”
“Yeah. You're probably right, but I'm not sure I can trust him or anybody else just at the moment.”
She didn't respond, feeling more than a little wounded.
“How's your mother?” he asked, although he had been determined not to.
“Pissed off with you,” she replied spitefully. “She says you still owe her four thousand quid. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty-six to be exact. She made me write it down so I wouldn't forget to remind you.”
“Damn!” he swore, reminded once again of money. “Sam, luv?”
“Why is it whenever you say, âSam, luv,' like that, I know you're going to ask me to do something I don't want to do.”
He ignored her. “There's a couple of small bills I've forgotten to pay. Could you sort them out for me? I'll give you the money as soon as I get back.”
She tried to sound exasperated, “Where are they?”
“Under the telly.”
“They'd better be small; I'm short this month as well. And what about Mum's money?”
“I still love her, Sam.”
“Dad!”
“What?”
“You've got to let go.”
“Letting go is the hardest part.”
“Fucking right it is.”
“Samantha Bliss! I sometimes wonder if you were switched at birth for the illegitimate kid of an east-end dockie.”
Laughing, she said, “Luv you,” and rang off.
Unencumbered by his suitcase, Bliss temporarily placed his cares in the hands of fate and felt an increasing sense of freedom as he wandered the wide tree-lined boulevards of Toronto, marvelling at the neck-straining cityscape surmounted by the one of the world's tallest towers.
Obtaining Margaret's locality was, it seemed to him, achievement itself, and getting there was almost a
fait accompli.
He walked with a devil-may-care lightness in his step and a feeling that now everything was turning around and all would be right in the end. It was as if Melanie was helping him along. Melanie's memory, guiltily locked away in a compartment of his mind for the past twenty years, visited only occasionally, had now slipped the latch and was determined not to go back until he had appeased her death by uncovering the truth.
The first travel agent he tried was accustomed to pampering people off to Tahiti or the Bahamas, and had never heard of Little Bear Island. The wasp-waisted girl, with more wire in her mouth than teeth, suggested he try a wilderness adventure specialist. Another agency's windows were full of yuppie cruise liners and picture-perfect palm shaded beaches. He didn't bother going in.
The third agency he found, in a backstreet just off the edge of the glitzy downtown core, was squeezed between grocery stores offering a fascinating variety of fruits and produce cascading from the shopfronts, spilling onto the streets in exotic displays. The travel agent was unfamiliar with Margaret's island but would, he said, make enquiries if Bliss could give him thirty minutes. He filled the time by browsing along the street, wondering aloud how certain strange-looking vegetables tastedâor were they fruits? Then he paused for a drink under the shade of a café's flamboyant awning. He was bewildered by the forty-two choices of ice cream, twenty-seven types of coffee, sixteen varieties of
bagel, and ten flavours of cream cheese. Deciding that Canada was not for the numerically challenged, he wasn't altogether surprised when his selection of Irish Cream coffee turned out to be only the first in a series of multiple-choice questions.
“Small, medium, large, or jumbo, sir?”
“Medium.”
“Milk or cream?”
“Milk please,” he replied quickly, then immediately regretted his rashness.
“Will that be all, sir?”
He was tempted to ask for a bagel but felt intimidated by the number of variations on offer so stuck with the coffee.
The travel agent had found the island and mapped out a route by the time he returned. According to him, Bliss was in luck: he could be there in thirty-six hours or so, although the last of three flights would still leave him with a ten-mile stretch of lake to cross, something the agent could not arrange.
The first leg of the trip would leave at eight o'clock the following morning. Did he want a one-way or return flight?
Some quick mental arithmetic left him with few illusions and a stark choice. A hotel for the night or enough money to get back to Toronto after seeing Margaret. He chose the latter and was grateful that at least he had an open ended first-class return to Paris. From there he would hitchhike back to London if necessary.
After retrieving his suitcase, he walked to the lakeshore and sat on the grass for a while, watching the yachts and ferries skimming across the silk-smooth lake to the ring of offshore islands, until they slowly faded into the sunset.
Night came to the city without darkness, and with the night came the creatures: the drunks, drug addicts, and dropouts littering the sidewalks and clogging the well-trodden tourist paths, hands outstretched, mumbling supplications and thrusting hand-written entreaties toward passers-by, as if a few words scribbled on a scruffy card added legitimacy to their solicitations. A few, Bliss noticed, had laboriously scripted their life history onto more elaborate cards, some with hand decorated borders and illuminated capital letters, and had catalogued their downward spiral like a list of professional achievements. These perverse parodies of curriculum vitae seemed to follow a predictable pattern, he noted, as if they were responding to an employment advertisement for which there was a list of required criterion. “Reformed alcoholic,” “Unemployed,” “Divorced,” and “Wrongfully convicted,” appeared to be obligatory qualifications, although he noticed that several took obvious pride in proclaiming, “No convictions.” Each heading was followed by more detailed explanations, including dates and places where appropriate and, as Bliss meandered from one beseeching figure to the next, it appeared that each had a more compelling cause than his, or her, neighbour. None of the street people bothered Bliss; they seemed to recognize him as one of their own, although he was oblivious to the similitude.
Night wore on, the last of the late-night tourists were shepherded to their hotels or whisked away in limousines, and most of the panhandlers simply crumpled into formless heaps and slept like discarded sacks of humanity dropped carelessly onto the sidewalks. He found a vacant bench in a well-lit piazza and kept himself awake listening to the pulse of the city: the hum of air conditioners, the background buzz of traffic, punctuated occasionally by the screaming siren of an emergency vehicle, the ear piercing screech of cicadas, their
mating calls ripping repeatedly through the clear night air like orchestrated dentist's drills, and the constant tinkling of an ornamental waterfall, which added a pleasing counterpoint.
But he started drifting; the balmy Indian Summer air that cozily enveloped him was lulling him to sleep. Jerking himself upright he lit a cigarette. One of the street people was at his side in a second, attracted by the flare of his match.
“Spare a cigarette?” he pleaded.
“It's my last one, mate,” Bliss lied.
The grey eyes probed him deeply. “You're new,” the man snorted, as if this were an undesirable state of affairs.
Another bundle of rags shuffled into place alongside the first; the burning match had drawn him from a greater distance and he was wheezing heavily with the exertion.
“He's new,” pronounced the first man, making newness sound like a sexually transmitted disease.
“What have you got in there?” mumbled the second man, eyeing the old, but solid, suitcase.
Bliss gave them a cigarette to share on the condition they leave him alone.
“You're all right,” one of them mumbled as they shuffled away.
“He's new,” retorted the other, making it clear that, as far as he was concerned, it might be some time before Bliss could be fully accepted into their society. Then they started sparring over the cigarette and fought, Laurel and Hardy like, as they tottered away.
Realizing that his ânewness' and his suitcase made him a target, he resolved not to risk falling asleep and watched cautiously as shadowy figures drifted in and out of the piazza, picking at the litter bins and scouting under
the shrubbery for anything edible or otherwise useful. He kept a firm hand on his suitcase as he carefully scrutinized the stubbly face of those who ventured uncomfortably close, making sure he could identify them later should it be necessary. But most kept their distance, like predatory animals skirting with a watchful eye around the edges of a rival's territory.