The Dave Bliss Quintet (2 page)

“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 being sidelined.

“That's it, Inspector. In fact, you are specifically ordered not to take it further. This is very delicate, as I'm sure you appreciate.”

Bliss nodded appropriately, none the wiser.

“Precipitous action on your part could prove fatal,” Richards continued, his face saying he was well aware of Bliss's proclivity for taking matters into his own hands when he believed the situation demanded it.

But what about me? wondered Bliss. Could it prove fatal to me as well? He didn't ask, suspecting the unreliability of any possible answer.

“Just find him, and enjoy yourself while you're at it,” Richards concluded, asking, “Is that a problem?”

“What's he wanted for?” Bliss asked, but the senior officer's blank expression and vague explanation left him hanging.

“Worldwide crackdown on the big boys. Someone upstairs pissed off with prisons full of petty criminals when the real villains are laughing all the way to the Caribbean and the Côtes du filthy rich.”

“Don't we have special people for this?” asked Bliss.

“Yeah — you.”

“Give me a break, Guv. You need someone who can mingle with the hoi polloi. Why not pick someone with an aristocratic background?”

“Yeah — like they're lining up to join the force, Dave. I can just see it: Lord Fotheringale hyphen Smythe the poxing third turning up at training school in a Ferrari, with his butler, valet, and personal chef dragging behind in a Range Rover.”

“I knew a cop who had a Ferrari once.”

“I remember his case,” Richards said. “Didn't he go down for three years for extortion? Wasn't he rolling over pimps for twenty percent of their takings and showing the new girls the ropes?”

“That's him,” Bliss laughed, “but what about MI5, or whatever they call themselves these days?”

“Not their bag. This has nothing to do with national security. This guy's just a crook.”

“Interpol then?”

“Waste of time, unless we know for sure where he is.”

The heady scent of oleanders,
writes Bliss, restarting his journal as he strolls around the bay towards the lighthouse that dominates the town from its lofty outcrop,
and the bouquet of mimosa and hibiscus fills the motionless parched air, already laden with the perfume of lavender and rosemary, and sweetens the stench of decaying seaweed and overburdened sewers.

He pauses, scrubs out the whole lot, and starts again.
Oleanders
, he writes, stops, and slams the book shut — his concentration sabotaged by the heat, the beauty, and a degree of apprehension. Worrisome thoughts of Chief Superintendent Edwards weigh him down as he struggles up the Chemin du Calvaire towards the Cap D'Antibes lighthouse. Rough stone steps, grooved by the feet of pilgrims since 981, according to the sign, lead him past the
Stations of the Cross let into wayside niches, and he tags onto a group of straight-faced novitiates under the tutelage of a wimpled nun. They may be following the footsteps of a millennium of Christians, but he can't help feeling they've been led to the Côte d'Azur as a warning against the sins of the flesh.

“Christ is condemned to die,” he translates, using the bas-relief carving as a guide at the first of the tableaux. The figures of Pontius Pilate's court, assembled to pronounce the verdict with Judas skulking in the wings, are carved into the background, with the thorncrowned head of Christ taking centre stage. Turning away, he smiles at the ironic thought that were it today, Chief Superintendent Edwards would undoubtedly be the one in the middle with the toga and laurel wreath.

The walk back to his apartment should only take fifteen minutes along the narrow laneways fringed with oleander, mimosa, and grapevines, but his eyes and mind wander to the barely covered nymphs sashaying to and from the beach. Where are all the fat women? he is wondering, when a couple of grandes dames, with two hours of makeup and more glitz than a mirror ball, light up as they hobble by on four-inch stilettos. Their string thongs bite deeply into flabby behinds. He returns their smiles — just for a second.
Oh, their agony and their ecstasy.

The afternoon drips by as he soaks up the sun on the apartment's balcony.

Bollocks to Richards and the lot of them, he thinks to himself. Why should I put myself out? I think I'll just
stay here and write my book. It might even turn out to be a best-seller —
Six months in Provence,
or something similar.

Seeking inspiration, he peers over the balcony. Fifty feet below, a lemon tree straddles an unmarked fence line between the garden of the ground-floor apartment and the park beyond. Ripe lemons dot the tree like Christmas decorations, and he watches as one, fatigued by the heat, lets go of its branch and falls to the grass.

“Wow!” He laughs, startled by the synchronicity of the event, feeling that, in some way, he had been drawn to watch — as if the lemon were a gift to him. It is a Hollywood moment, he decides — lights, cameras … action! — but isn't everything here a movie set?

The lemon, starkly yellow in the bright afternoon sun, shines like a beacon, and, pulling on shorts, he plops a fresh ice cube into his Perrier and heads for the elevator.

The click of a door latch catches his attention as he emerges on the ground floor. He spins — too late, the door has closed, but he knows which one — and stands in frustration as he feels the stare of the occupant through the spyhole. Now what? he wonders, knowing the apartment is the one that backs onto the garden bordered by the lemon tree. Returning to the elevator in disappointment, he is struck by a feeling of déjà vu and casts his mind over similar occasions during the previous week. The same door latch had clicked more than once. The same eye had spied.

“Weird,” he mumbles, sloughs off the temptation to squint through the spyhole, and takes the stairs up to his apartment, the climb giving him thinking time.

I'll phone Samantha, he thinks, realizing he hasn't spoken to his daughter since a brief call from the airport
in Nice to report a terror-free flight. And tell her what?
There's a lemon on the grass and I want to pick it up.

What did Richards say? “No personal calls, Dave.” Though he pulled back at the sight of concern on Bliss's face. “Except in emergencies, of course.”

This is an emergency, Bliss lies to himself, and calls.

Listening to the
brrring
of her phone, he works out how long it has been since he spoke to her. Two weeks, he realizes. What to tell?

I'm writing a book.

Great — what's it about?

OK. Better not mention the book, but what else? Two weeks walking the streets and quays clutching a photograph of the wanted man. But what was he wanted for? Who wanted him? What would happen to him?

Two weeks and absolutely nothing has happened — apart from the woman on the beach this morning, and the lemon falling — hardly notable. Though maybe it is some sort of portent, signalling the start — but of what?

Samantha's recorded voice breaks into his thoughts and invites him to leave a message. He puts the phone down. What could he have said?
Love you — miss you.