The Dave Bliss Quintet (22 page)

The restaurants and bars on the promenade of St-Juan are winding down Sunday night as Bliss makes his way towards his apartment, but black thoughts turn him around at the door. You can't just leave the poor devil, he tells himself, you are a policeman. Then he spends the next hour prowling the promenade and beaches until finally, around one o'clock in the morning, he takes the potter's usual route out of town and up the hill towards the château.

A guard he doesn't recognize steps out of the shadows and silently challenges him. “This is a public road and I'm just going for a walk,” Bliss calls out with innocent panache as he keeps up a firm pace. The guard and his partner back away from a confrontation, and once out of their sight Bliss quickly finds the loosened post in the fence.

“Good night, lads,” he calls cheerily on his return,
and shrugs off their hostile scowls as he works on his plan for the following night if the missing potter should fail to materialize.

Rather than risk missing Commander Richards Monday morning, Bliss puts in a call to the duty officer at Scotland Yard in the early hours, stressing the importance of the commander calling him as soon as he reports for work, not after the Monday morning prayers. “It's critical,” he insists, knowing nobody will want to disturb Richards once he is in communion with other senior officers over the weekend's statistics, shaking their heads in disgust at the number of crimes; bellyaching about the inefficiency of junior ranks; complaining about politicians, activists, apologists, and civil libertarians; then debating at length the relative merits of various golf courses, hotels, and restaurants, before setting the agenda for the next freemasonry meeting.

Richards phones back at ten-thirty, indignant about Bliss using traceable phones. Dismissing the criticism without comment, Bliss fills him in, emphasizing the link between Grimes and Johnson as his reason for wanting to take action, though carefully avoiding the use of names.

Richards is unconvinced. “It's probably safer if you stay out of it, Dave,” he says, his mind clearly spinning to come up with a good reason. “I should let the locals deal with it.”

The equivocation in the commander's reply gives Bliss encouragement to push his point that the locals are working completely in the dark. Stopping short of divulging his identity, can't he point them in the right direction?

“Well, don't do anything hasty,” Richards replies, and Bliss has to laugh at the typical cop-out clause, guessing the conversation is being taped and knowing that, should anything go wrong, Richards will stand back and say, “I ordered him not to do anything risky,” and if medals are being doled out, he'll be there gladhanding, saying, “He took my advice and went ahead with care.”

“Do you need anything?” Richards adds, and Bliss moans about the inadequacy of one pair of grotty binoculars and a cellphone that is so insecure he is expected to use telephone booths.

“How come I didn't get any Superman gadgets?” he says, half-jokingly.

“Let me know if there's anything serious you need, Inspector,” ripostes Richards, clearly for the benefit of the tape recording, and Bliss catches on and calls his bluff for sport.

“Actually, Sir, there is. I'm going to need a milliondollar power boat.”

“Dave — I said serious,” laughs Richards.

“I am, Guv. This guy gets away with gawd-knowshow-much and you expect me to catch him with a boy scout survival kit. I'm surprised you didn't give me one of those things for getting stones out of horses' hooves. The only way I'll ever keep up with him is with a yacht.”

“You must be out of your mind,” Richards starts, then questions, “Who told you about the missing investments?”

“I have my sources, Guv.”

“Be careful, Dave. If he's caught on, you could have serious problems. Maybe you should leave this Grimes thing alone. This is not the reason you're there.”

“Look, Guv. I know exactly why I'm here,” Bliss says. “This is a load of baloney. It's just a make-work project to keep me out of the way while Edwards slips the noose.”

“Dave that's —” Richards starts to protest.

“How come I'm not allowed to tell anyone where I am or what I'm doing, then?” Bliss cuts in. “It's all a bit too bloody convenient as far as I can see.”

“Dave, believe me. It's not like that,” Richards insists, but Bliss is unconvinced.

“OK. Well, if you're serious, what about the yacht?”

Richards ducks the question again, asking, “Have you any idea where the target is now?” being careful not to mention Johnson by name.

An alarm bell rings in Bliss's mind. He's missed something important, something Marcia Grimes said Sunday evening at L'Escale, and he quickly replays the meeting as he catches on to the fact that when she said, “Have you seen him — he's gone again,” she was talking about Johnson. He was so preoccupied with her husband's fate he'd completely forgotten.

“He must have been here at the weekend, Guv,” he tells Richards, adding with growing awareness, “And, from the way she spoke, probably Saturday night — the night Grimes lost his hand.”

“Dave … this sounds very iffy,” Richards warns.

The cranky sound of a reluctant engine gives Bliss his signal, and the rusted iron railing leaps free under his gloved hand. With a deep breath, he slips through the gap, repairs the fence, and edges warily forward. At least he isn't facing the death penalty, like Frederick Chapel — he hopes.

Daisy's stalled car engine bursts into life at the fifth try, and, with a wave of thanks to the hoodwinked security guards, she heads back to keep Marcia company on the promenade and await Bliss's return — she hopes. Earlier, her obstinate reluctance to participate in the plan to distract the guards while Bliss slipped past in the darkness and found the loosened stake was only overcome by his gruesome description of a severely wounded man bleeding to death. Marcia's tearful pleadings finally persuaded her, though her hands shook as she dropped him at the bottom of the hill. “Be careful,
Daavid
— please,” she implored. “Zhat is a very bad place.”

The path is obvious as soon as Bliss folds back the curtain of undergrowth. A worn track with cracked twigs and bent foliage stands out in the sickly green light of his night vision goggles. The goggles — high-end Soviet military specifications — were smuggled, he guessed, by one of the Moscow Mafia with a villa on the hills above St-Juan, together with the odd MiG fighter or Scud missile. He picked them up in a specialist spy store in the heart of Cannes, together with a couple of miniature flashlights and several aerosols of pepper spray. Then he headed to the supermarket for a five-kilo family pack of the best rump steak. The hounds of the Château Roger, if they existed, were to have a juicy alternative to a gloved hand.

The light-intensifying goggles leave both his hands free for wielding the carrot and the stick as he heads deeper into the undergrowth, southwest towards the château, according to the luminous wrist compass obtained from the same source as the glasses, although the likelihood of finding Grimes alive, anywhere, is becoming remote. It is now more than thirty-six hours since Bliss's gruesome
find. It is three o'clock Tuesday morning and there have been no developments. The gendarmes are stumped, according to Daisy's source. With only a cleanly severed hand — nothing chewed, no shark or propeller attack — and with no personal details beyond the fact that they suspect the loser to be the promenade potter, they've shoved the hand in a cooler at the morgue to await the discovery of the rest of the body.

Now inside the grounds he's safe from the heavies on the hill, but he inches ahead cagily, worried about not only guards and dogs, but also the possibility of tripwires and booby traps. He saw graphic signs warning of high-voltage security devices prominently displayed around the perimeters of several of the nearby villas, and, whilst he only noticed the “Guard Dogs” signs on the château's fencing, he is taking no chances.

Strands of bright moonlight filtering through the heavy foliage turn night to day through the lenses of his goggles, but the greenish tinge of the intensifiers adds to the creepiness of the petrified forest. Unkempt and overgrown, with straggly vines hanging like tentacles and decaying trees lying drunkenly against the living as if their downfall has been frozen in time, the woodland has a darkness deeper than that of night. And Bliss's mind isn't made any easier by the nerve-racking nature of his quest. If Greg Grimes is still alive he might be a ghastly sight. But Bliss has had his share of stomach-turners in his career, and he tries to put the chilling thoughts behind him as he forges through the undergrowth, wondering where the path will lead.

Progress along the trail is sluggish as Bliss treads warily, musing, “If Grimes comes this way every night, he's got more guts than me.”

Slowly moving shadows in the moonlight keep his adrenalin pumping unnecessarily as palm fronds waft in the light airs, and every so often he leaps at the sound of a tiny nocturnal creature scampering for its life. More than once the deafening sound of a dead leaf crashing through the branches in the silence stops him in his tracks, and a rabbit, panicked to the earth at his approach, kicks to life just two feet ahead and sends him hurtling to the ground.

“Little bastard,” he swears, brushing himself down, then he pushes on until he suddenly finds his path blocked. Looking up, he discovers that he stands in the moon-shadow of the giant building, and realizes the path he's followed is not a shortcut but a direct lead to the château. A thin mist of cloud has frosted the moon, but the eerie light only enhances the awesomeness of the structure. Like an ancient temple swallowed by the rampages of a steamy rainforest, the ghostly ruin still struggles to maintain dignity. But once-proud columns buckle under the strain of age and weight, canopied balconies with ornate stone balustrades droop wearily, and wounded statues lie where they fell. It's not so much decaying as melting, he concludes, surveying the sagging facade, although it has retained sufficient pride to keep its roof above the surrounding trees. The only things missing are a troupe of chattering monkeys and a flock of squawking parrots, he thinks as he takes off his goggles, surveys the monolith through the eyes of an intrepid explorer, and breathes, “
Merde
— this is creepy.”

Apprehensive at the prospect of entering the crumbling edifice, though heartened by the apparent absence of guards or dogs, he climbs the flagging marble steps, keeping tight to the edge, gingerly testing each slab first. Lizards scurry into crevices and snakes slither aside as the
flight of steps opens onto a wide tiled apron surrounding the building, and he nervously eyes the château's enormous entrance doors, ominously shadowed under a heavy canopy perched on a colonnade of fluted pillars.

Maybe I should call in the local boys, he thinks, reaching for his cellphone, then pulls back, realizing nothing has changed. If the Johnson case isn't strictly above-board, and he blows it by causing an international incident, Richards will have him for breakfast. Neither Interpol nor the Sûreté will be satisfied with anything short of major bloodletting at such a blatant breach of protocol. But how can it be above-board? he thinks. There are no written reports, no orders on paper, nothing incontrovertible. I'm not even supposed to use the cellphone in case someone traces the number.

“Oh well. Nothing ventured ...” he breathes and steps towards the doors, his mind made up.

The main doors are bolted and barred with a “Danger!” sign stapled across the central joint. A side door looks more inviting and gives easily — too easily — so easily that he falls through the opening and stumbles across the floor. But at least there is a floor. The solid marble floor of the cathedral-vaulted main entrance hall takes his weight as his footfalls echo around the cavernous chamber.

“Wow,” he breathes, awed by the enormity of the room with its twin staircases curling off into the distance.

“Hello! … Anyone here?” he calls, and is annoyed at the crack in his voice. His weak entreaty echoes eerily around the enormous cavity and elicits no response, yet he senses someone's presence as certainly as he has sensed an evil ambiance from the moment he entered the grounds. “No wonder Daisy is scared to death of the
place,” he says to himself, but tries to rationalize the ghostly atmosphere by blaming it on the phosphorous green aura his goggles give to everything.

Realizing he is invisible in the darkness, he lays down the lump of steak, takes off his goggles, and switches to a flashlight. The piercing shaft of white light brings everything into sharp focus and makes it scarier than ever. At least the goggles gave everything an appearance of unreality — like watching a grainy old movie.

“I should get out of here,” he says to himself. Then what? Go back and tell Marcia Grimes I don't know if Greg's here because I crapped myself at the front door? OK. But if he is here, he's probably in hiding — worried to death that whoever lopped off his right hand might come back for the other.

The slender beam of light reveals jagged cracks and dislodged chunks of stucco, but he judges the inside is in better shape than the outside.

Now what? he says to himself as he stands in the vast hall staring at the giant staircases, his resolve draining at the enormity of the problem. Up there must be at least a dozen bedrooms, with bathrooms, dressing rooms, and numerous closets and hidey-holes, then, above that, the servants' quarters in the dormers and attics under the numerous gables and roofs — scary at the best of times. On this floor there must be any number of kitchens, studies, sitting rooms, and smaller rooms, and …

But he doesn't want to think about the cellars. Yet, judging by the way the château has been built up on a plinth to give the best possible view across the bay, there is at least one level of basement beneath him.