The Dave Bliss Quintet (34 page)

“Zhey all knew,” she confesses sheepishly, and Bliss comes close to kissing her.

A busker playing “The Way You Look Tonight” à la Brubeck on the seafront beneath them leaves Bliss commenting, “You look very nice, Daisy.”

Out in the Baie de Cannes, the azure sea and indigo sky are welded together with a darker seam of island green. Mackerel clouds redden progressively from carnation through carbuncle to claret and on to crimson as the sun sinks over L' Esterel mountains in
the west, and just above the eastern horizon the con-trail of a jetliner streaks the sky like a flaming vermilion slash across blue velvet. In the warmth of the evening's light, Daisy's eyes take on a softness that gives Bliss the feeling that Japanese prints loom large in his future, but the ghosts of his past are already preparing an excuse in his mind.

A familiar figure approaching across the terrace has him slinking behind his menu. “Don't look — ” he starts, but he's too late.

“
Bonsoir
, Monsieur Johnson,” calls Daisy, then yelps as Bliss kicks her under the table.

“Don't forget — my name's Dave Burbeck,” he hisses.

“Hello, Daisy,” acknowledges Johnson, as he swings in their direction and Bliss rises with an outstretched hand.

“Burbeck,” he introduces himself, not trusting Daisy to get it right. “Dave Burbeck.”

Johnson's eyes pinch questioningly as he's forced into a corner.

“Morgan Johnson,” he responds, adding, “Nice to meet a fellow Brit.” But his handshake is tentative, testing, probing: Do I know you?

Thank God he's never met me, thinks Bliss, but the intensity of Johnson's stare tells him he may be trying to match him against a collage of descriptions from his wife, his son, and Natalia.

“Monsieur Burbeck is an author,” says Daisy, attempting to unfreeze the moment.

Johnson hesitates, looking for a way out. “Nice ...” he starts, then spots his dinner guests and ducks away. “Catch you later.”

“Not if I catch you first,” breathes Bliss, watching him go through a backslapping routine with a couple of barrel-chested primates at a nearby table. One of the gorillas looks his way, catches a rebuke from Johnson, and quickly inspects the sunset over Daisy's shoulder.

They're checking me out, thinks Bliss, pulling out his camera. “You look lovely Daisy,” he says, and she beams as he frames her up. “Just a bit that way,” he signals, keeping her on the fringe — Johnson and his cronies in shot.

“
Daavid
...” she complains, realizing his aim is awry, but he gets off three good shots before Johnson's cohorts turn away.

“Sorry,” he says, turning the spotlight back to her and speaking under the cover of the camera. “Don't look around. Just go to the
toilette
and see if you know the men Johnson is with.”

“I zhink zhis is espionage,” she whispers, touching his forearm conspiratorially as she rises.

The
Sea - Quester
must be out there somewhere, he thinks, straining unsuccessfully to pick out the yacht from the ring of navigation lights strung across the darkening bay. No wonder Johnson's ashore. I bet it's none too comfortable aboard with his lunatic son still pining over a dead cagemate, his frumpy wife bitching, and his air-headed floozie trying to squeeze him dry.

“Zhey are Corses,” Daisy spits disdainfully as she returns to the table.

“You don't like them?”

“Zhey are
paysans
— peasants.”

Peasantry is obviously not as poverty-stricken as it used to be, he thinks, eyeing Johnson's companions with their gold-plated suits, watches, and spectacles.
Although he admits to himself that the stocky characters have a certain ruddy earthiness in their features. “How do you know they're Corsican?”

“
L' accent
, of course. Zhey speak
franç ais
— ”

“I know,” he says, cutting her off, “
comme une vache espagnole —
like a Spanish cow.”

“How you know?” she asks with surprise.

“Jacques taught me.”

Her face sours. “Oh.”

“You don't like Jacques much either, do you?”

“
Bof!
” She shrugs, suggesting she can take him or leave him.

By the time Bliss checks in with Richards at ten the following morning, the package has arrived and is in the commander's hands.

A heavy package from the South of France was in itself sufficiently unusual to attract attention from the ordnance disposal officer stationed in the mailroom at the Yard, but it was the sender's name that really caught his eye. Bliss had considered using either of his aliases — Smith or Burbeck — but figured the parcel was more likely to be delivered to Richards intact if it bore his correct name.

“The bomb squad boys thought they'd got a live one,” laughs Richards, “but it's on my desk now. It'll probably be a week or more before we get the results.”

Bliss takes a deep breath. “That may be too late, Sir. I've booked my return flight.”

The momentary silence heralds the obvious question. “When?”

Time enough to nail Edwards, thinks Bliss, with no intention of giving precise details. “Don't worry, Guv. I'll be back for the disciplinary hearing next Monday morning.”

“You'd bloody better be.”

“I don't care what you say ...” Bliss starts, already wound up, then pauses, exploring the back of his mind — what did he hear? “Pardon?”

“I said you'd better be back in time. You'll be on the carpet if you miss Chief Superintendent Edwards's disciplinary hearing.”

Confusion makes Bliss wary. “I thought you were trying to keep me out of the way.”

“We were. We were keeping you out of harm's way. Why? What did you think?”

Who's “we” ? he wonders, but is still cagey. Richards has suddenly switched to a new script? “So. You're suggesting Edwards might have tried to nobble me.”

“Don't put words in my mouth, Inspector,” Richards warns, aware that the conversation is being recorded, though he adds with a laugh, “He's been frantic, pulling every string to find you. He even hired a PI to stake out your place.”

“Why didn't you warn me?”

“I did. I told you a dozen times not to tell anyone where you were.”

“No, I mean why didn't you warn me he was out to get me?”

“That'd be insubordination, Dave. You know that. Slagging off senior officers to their subordinates isn't good form.”

“Yeah, Guv,” he says, muttering
sotto voce
, “The bigger the lumps, the more they stick together.”

“Anyway, we put a protection unit on your place, just to be on the safe side. That's who spotted the Dick.”

“A protection team for an empty apartment ...” muses Bliss.

I'm obviously the monkey's paw in this, he thinks. They all want Edwards out of the job and if my evidence nails him everyone else is off the hook. But if I fail? Edwards will nail me and they'll all be standing around with hammers in hand to help him.

John Smith's credit card in his wallet tarnishes slightly as he realizes that his extended vacation is obviously being privately financed out of the pockets of a syndicate of Edwards's contemporaries — probably backing both sides — one financially, the other verbally, and he pictures Richards buddying up to Edwards with a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Don't worry, Michael. Everyone knows Bliss is a right shit disturber.”

“Gordon Grimes dipping into the Widows' and Orphans' Fund was just a coincidence then — just luck I happened to be here.”

“No, the auditors smelt a rat a couple of months ago and tipped us off. We needed someone on Johnson's tail so that when we made a move on Grimes we'd be ready to lift him. That's where you came in.”

“Two birds with one stone,” suggests Bliss, asking, “What went wrong?”

“When we lifted Grimes we tapped his phones. That's why we let him out on bail, thinking he'd rush home to tip off Johnson. Then we could have nicked Johnson for conspiracy to defraud.”

“And he didn't try to call?”

“No — not unless he confused the risky end of a shotgun with a telephone mouthpiece.”

“So where does that leave Johnson?”

“Free as a dicky-bird. He'll probably swear he had no idea where the money came from and put all the blame on Gordon Grimes. Unless we can prove the whole scheme was a fraud.”

Bliss perks up. “We can. I'm sure Grimes and his wife will testify after what Johnson did to them, and the pieces of pot I sent you should corroborate it.”

Some of the pot shards are already on their way to the British Museum for radiocarbon dating of the crustaceans embedded in the surface.

“They'll soon know if this stuff has been on the seabed for any length of time,” Richards tells him. “We should have preliminary results in a couple of days.”

“If my hunch is right,” says Bliss, “Johnson used Greg Grimes's research to get someone to turn out the amphorae that'll be leaked onto the black market.”

“What's the price tag?”

“Money means nothing to these guys from what I see,” replies Bliss, recalling Marcia Grimes saying, “The rich only want what they can't buy.”

“They're like shoplifters in a power failure, Guv,” he adds, seeing in his mind's eye the inhabitants of the villas on the hills above St-Juan dipping into corporate funds and investors' pockets and then running when the lights come on.

“I'm hoping the other stuff will tell me who chopped off Grimes's hand,” he goes on, and Richards confirms the T-shirt and cigarette butts are on their way to the Home Office's forensic science lab for DNA testing.

“Have you any idea where Johnson is now?”

“He was in Cannes last night, dining with a couple of shady-looking Corsicans,” says Bliss, adding, “I was
surprised to see him alive. Marcia Grimes must be ready to kill him — she was just easing herself back into her husband's bed — and his son and wife aren't exactly his biggest fans. Even Natalia Grimes might come to her senses when she sees what he's done.”

“No shortage of suspects if he snuffs it then,” says Richards.

“Five — with Greg Grimes, if he can shoot left-handed.”

“The Dave Burbeck five,” suggests Richards with a laugh.

“Not you as well,” mumbles Bliss.

By Thursday he's taken on the attitude of the waiters and shop girls and is coasting. With three full days left he has only to fit together the heraldic puzzle to discover the name of the masked man, and then he can finish his novel and head home.

The golden beams streaming through the open window alert him to another brilliant dawn as he wakes to Brubeck playing “Balcony Rock.”

I'm going to come back here to live when my book's published, he tells himself as he strolls out, naked, into the sun and stretches himself on the lounger with his eye on the Château Roger. The wind-thinned foliage of the surrounding trees and the clear air have given the château and its green roofs a lift, and he looks forward to the day when the old building's image has been restored. Maybe I could get a retirement job as a tourist guide, he ponders, thinking of the future when the château will attract visitors from around the world and students will enquire in awe: “Is it true, Monsieur
Bliss, that you are the one who unravelled the
mystè re de l' homme au masque de fer
?”

“
Oui
,” he will proudly admit, then sell them a translated copy of his famous novel,
The Truth Behind the Mask.

The telephone bites into his thoughts. It's Daisy, with an invitation for coffee and, intriguingly, a chance to unearth some more information about the château.

“Eleven o' clock at L' Escale,” he agrees.

With time speeding up as his summer sojourn nears its end, he spends an hour each morning swimming in the cyan depths of the bay of St-Juan. The few days of sirocco wind has churned the ocean, freshening the fouled water, and has stripped the summer staleness from the air. The sugar-coated alps in the background cut into the clean sky as if they've had a touch-up, and he floats on his back in the soft mattress of sea watching the mountains for some time before realizing they
have
been touched up; despite the burning sun at sea level the highest peaks are already nosing into winter.

A couple of hours later Daisy leads him from the bright sunlight of the promenade into the dusky interior of the parish church of St-Juan.

Anticipating the discovery of a relic or an archival reference to the Château Roger, he is expecting her to take him to the vault or sacristy, especially as there appears to be a service in progress, but she drags him straight through the chancel and up the aisle. By the time his eyes acclimatize, it is too late to run from the assemblage. “I think I've been ambushed,” he breathes, halfway up the nave. The black-robed priest
who officiated at the meetings of the hoteliers —
le cor-beau,
a crow, as Jacques calls him — stands ready at the altar, and the flock coughs itself to a wheezy silence. Faltering under the weight of eyes, Bliss momentarily considers lightening the atmosphere by asking Daisy to marry him, but worries she may take him seriously.

The red-nosed priest greets him with a welcoming hand and views him with a degree of wonderment — as if he is already famous — while the hostility on the austere faces of the remaining congregants burns into the back of his neck.

“Zhe ladies have heard of your interest in zhe château,” intones the priest, and Bliss spins as the pressure of animosity raises his pulse. The audience, whom he judges from their uniform blackness to be a deputation of the château's relicts, stare malevolently from behind high-backed pews. Thirty ghostly white faces, seemingly unsupported as their age-withered bodies meld into the miasma of darkness, hold his gaze with as much contempt as if he were the Antichrist.