Missing: Presumed Dead ib-1

by James Hawkins

  “Will you be able to manage at the other end, George?” called Daphne.

  “Yeah — the ladies are all waiting, Mrs. L,” replied George, opening the back doors.

  “Mrs?” queried Bliss in a whisper.

  “Shh — I’ll explain in a minute.”

  “Ahh, the old goat,” he said, a crack of nostalgia in his voice. “I gave Mrs. L. this,” he continued, blowing out his cheeks in pride. “And I reckon it’ll fetch a pretty penny. What say you, Mrs. L?”

  “What’s that, George?”

  “I were just sayin’ to this young man as how the old goat’ll be quite a ’traction at the auction today.”

  Daphne winked at Bliss. “I wouldn’t doubt that, George. In fact I shall have my hand up for a few quid, and I’m pretty sure Mr. Bliss is keen — isn’t that so, Dave?”

  “Oh. Yes … Very keen.”

  George beamed.

  “So what’s the Mrs. thing?” smiled Bliss as George drove away with the contents of Daphne’s front hall.

  “Oh,” she chuckled, “just our joke really. I always buy enough meat for two, me and the cat, so George has his bit of fun. ‘How’s the General today, Mrs. L?’ he always calls when I go in the shop.”

  “He had me worried for a minute,” teased Bliss.

  “Get on with you,” she laughed, then added, “Come in a minute, I’ve got something for you.”

  “I’ve got a meeting …” he started, examining his watch, but she talked over him. “Oh don’t worry, it won’t take a second. It’s just that when I was going through the attic this morning, digging things out for the auction, I came across something that might interest you.”

  The black and white photograph had faded to a wash of tonal greys but the front porch of the Dauntsey house and the stiffly composed wedding group were instantly recognisable.

  “Well. Do you recognise anyone?” Daphne asked, giving him a few seconds.

  “You,” he said, immediately pointing to a slender beautiful woman in a body-hugging dress that made him wish, really wish, he’d been more than just a teenager’s lustful thought at the time.

  “Very good, and …?”

  “This must be Doreen …”

  “Oh I remember that terrifying hat?” screeched Daphne. “It was baby-shit brown. They should have sent her to France wearing that — who needs knickers with a hat like that. If that wouldn’t scare ’em off, nothing would.”

  “The old Colonel,” laughed Bliss, pointing to the old man, ram-rod straight in his guardsman’s ceremonial uniform. “And this must be Major Dauntsey, when he still had a face worth looking at.”

  “That’s right. It wasn’t much though was it?” She turned up her nose.

  “What happened to his chin?”

  “God knows.”

  “And who’s this by his side?”

  Daphne leaned closer for a better look. “Oh that was his best man,” she sneered. “Now he was a nancy-boy if ever I saw one. He was the Major’s aide-de-camp, and “camp” was the just about the right word for him. He fussed over Rupert worse than a debutante’s mother. Look …” she started, then rushed off in search of a magnifying glass. She was back in a flash, peering deep into the picture. “I thought so,” she said, giving Bliss the glass. “Look in his right hand.”

  “What is it?” he asked, unable to recognise the object that had caught the glint of the flashbulb.

  “Silver-backed clothes brush,” said Daphne, clearly remembering the article. “It was very swish, chased silver with inlaid rubies. He drove me crazy with it — every two minutes brushing the Major down like he was a prize poodle at Cruft’s. He was the sort who’d have creases in his underwear.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know,” she shook her head, and by her tone was uninterested in recalling. “A Captain somebody-or-other.”

  “Could it have been Captain Tippen?” asked Bliss, remembering the dog-tags in the Major’s trunk, trying a long-shot.

  “I don’t know … ” She screwed her eyes in thought. “Yes I do!” she exclaimed joyfully. “His name was David … Oh my goodness — I’m not as senile as I thought I was.”

  “David Tippen?” queried Bliss.

  “Oh, now that would be stretching the grey matter too far, but it was definitely David.”

  “I bet it was,” he said, staring into the picture, trying to communicate with the characters. That would explain how Major Dauntsey got the tags — good friends; best man at wedding; dying words as he lies on the battlefield. “Give these to my mother — tell her I loved her to the end.”

  “Can I borrow this?” he asked, knowing the answer. “Daphne, you’re a whiz.”

  “Thank you, Chief Inspector … are you going to kiss me again?”

  He did, on the cheek, and she held onto his arm as he made his way out with the picture.

  “By the way, you didn’t tell me what happened after the war,” he said as they neared the gate.

  “I stayed in France …” she began, the inflection saying there was more, much more, and all of it spun around in her mind until she settled on the salient feature. “Hugo, he called himself. He was an artist.”

  “The portrait?”

  She nodded with a melancholic smile, “I thought he loved me, but, there again, I suppose I thought I loved him.”

  “And Hugo?”

  “Hugo … ” her voice faded and her eyes drifted into the distance. “Hugo loved painting.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The road out of Westchester hummed soothingly beneath the tyres of Bliss’s liberated Rover, and the frenzied bustle of London offered the prospect of a peaceful haven after the stormy Saturday afternoon meeting.

  “The men aren’t very happy about this meeting,” Superintendent Donaldson had snapped, catching Bliss on his way up the front steps of the police station. And the men weren’t happy. Patterson had seen to that, polishing his truncheon amidst the disgruntled throng at the pre-conference moaning session.

  “I’m really sorry about this folks,” he had whined, smarmily. “Only this new D.I. wouldn’t listen to me. He thinks he’s still in the effing Met.” Adding, sotto voce, “If he ever was in the Met. I told him you deserved the weekend off but did he care? Did he fuck!”

  Bliss was still trying to puzzle out what had happened an hour later as he made for London, driving fast, trying to put the meeting behind him.

  It had started badly — feigned illnesses and hastily arranged weddings accounted for the absence of more than half the officers. Detective Constable Dowding’s truancy was especially notable.

  “His wife seemed confused when I called,” explained Patterson. “She said he’d already left — said you’d given him a special assignment to work on.”

  “I expect he’s following up on a couple of things we came across earlier in the week,” said Bliss, tongue in cheek, nurse Dryden’s mammary assets in mind. “I’ll discuss it with him later.”

  “Good afternoon,” Bliss greeted the twenty or so officers as he entered the conference room, and someone ripped the air with a noisy belch.

  “Afternoon,” grumbled a few, leaving feet on the desks in a conspiracy of disdain.

  “Sorry to spoil your weekend,” he commenced, noticing the intentionally varied assortment of sport and leisurewear and feeling the glare of hostility. “Only, this case is a week old and we don’t seem to be any further ahead really.”

  Patterson winced, visibly, but with his mind the way it was, he would have taken a congratulatory pat on the shoulder as a rabbit punch. “So, we’ve done absolutely fuck-all this week,” he grumbled, stabbing himself in the back. “That’s what you’re implying, Guv, isn’t it?” he continued, neatly planting the stiletto in Bliss’s hand. “You’re saying that getting a confession out of Dauntsey, gathering all the evidence, and finding his father’s body was nothing,” he snarled, his enormous fangs drawn. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say th
at, Sergeant …” Bliss protested, stung by the criticism, but, with their sergeant’s blood on the floor, several of the men jumped into the fray.

  “I found the bloody duvet,” blared Jackson, “and ruined me trousers in that damn grave.”

  “And I walked fuckin’ miles doin’ house to house enquiries,” shouted another.

  “And what about …”

  “Alright, that’s enough,” roared Bliss. “I didn’t say you hadn’t done anything …”

  “Sounded like it to me,” muttered Patterson, twisting the blade one more time.

  Bliss spun on him, enraged. “Sergeant Patterson, I said that’s enough. All I meant was … we haven’t succeeded in solving this case — either case, despite all the work you and the men have put into it. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. Now, if you’ll let me finish …” Pausing, he stared the men back into their seats, then started again, this time defensively. “I called this meeting because I have some new information that may assist us. I also want to get your input on what’s occurred so that I can spend tomorrow formulating a strategy, while you lot have the day off.”

  Although the motorway was now speeding Bliss away from the town, he was still smarting from Patterson’s assault and couldn’t help thinking there was more to the antagonism than an interrupted Saturday afternoon.

  “This is the man we were looking for,” he had said, producing the Dauntsey’s wedding photograph, and Patterson had immediately jumped on him.

  “It’s pretty useless showing us that now we’ve found him.”

  “This man … ” continued Bliss, ignoring Patterson while pointing to the Major’s aide-de-camp. “This man may have been Captain David Tippen, something of a Gay Cavalier, if you get my meaning. Anyway, who checked him out?”

  “Sergeant Dobson, Guv.”

  Dobson rose, shaking his head. “Sorry, Guv, bad news I’m afraid. According to the Ministry of Defence, Tippen’s body was never found, he was listed as missing — presumed dead.”

  “Where? What battle? When?”

  “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “Do you think it might be important?”

  “Doubt it, Guv.”

  “I was being sarcastic, Sergeant. Of course it’s important — find out please.”

  Patterson had his doubts and sneered, “What possible relevance could that have?”

  Sensing another insurrection, Bliss quickly stepped in to quash it. “We know Tippen’s dead, we’ve got his tags, but what about his family — don’t they have a right to know?”

  “I thought this was supposed to be a murder enquiry,” grumbled Patterson.

  I’m going to belt you in a minute, thought Bliss. “Dauntsey obviously knew where the body was,” he explained. “How else could he have got the dog tags. And if he knew, how come he didn’t tell the Army administration, or the man’s family?”

  “I still don’t see what that’s got to do with us,” griped Patterson. “I still don’t see the connection.”

  Bliss was still trying to work out the possible connection for himself when he drove into the motorway service area where he had escaped from the Volvo earlier in the week. The nutcase was still there, sitting in the same seat, still regressing, bending the ear of some other unsuspecting traveller. “Helen of Troy was my aunty, you know?”

  Bliss chuckled as he went past in search of a coffee and sandwich, then he took a nearby seat and tried to take his mind off the meeting by watching her snare unwitting listeners. “Have you ever been here before …?”

  “So what’s this great theory of yours, Guv?” Patterson had asked, still in a snit.

  “Personally, I think that flighty, fun-loving, Doreen Dauntsey soon got fed up living with a cabbage, especially an ugly one, so she lured him into the attic and shot him. Then she told everyone he’d gone to stay on the estate in Scotland.”

  “That’s not much of a theory,” scoffed Patterson. “Why would he go into the attic? How would he get into the attic — he only had one arm?”

  Bliss looked past him again, he had no answer and was becoming increasingly aware of the disgruntled murmuring from the other officers. He needed a juicy morsel to throw at them that wouldn’t be seized on by Patterson.

  “What about Jonathon’s victim?” asked a spiky-featured officer, giving him a seconds breathing space. “If the Major was already dead in the attic, who did Jonathon kill?”

  “It could have been just about anybody,” he started, then paused, half expecting Patterson to pipe up. “Follow me on this,” he continued, thankful for the silence. “Jonathon was pissed off with his father, seeing him as a failure for allowing his mother to struggle financially, and for deserting them, so he flattened the toy soldier, the Major, in a symbolic act of destruction. The trick-cyclists call it displaced aggression, I think. But it wasn’t enough, nobody even knew he’d done it. So, as his mother’s health deteriorated, he had to do something more to prove he really cared — something spectacular — murderously spectacular. Obviously he couldn’t attack the real man, he had no idea what had happened to him, so he chose a surrogate. But he had to have witnesses …”

  “Why?” Patterson leapt on his back again. “Why not just pull some starving old bum off the street, promise him a meal and a bed for the night, bump him off and bury him?”

  Hoping to lighten the atmosphere, Bliss put on a Chinese accent. “Confucius he say — If tree fall in forest and no-one see or hear. Did it fall?” He paused, not expecting applause, but not anticipating the stone-faced silence either. Discomfitted, he pushed on anyway. “He needed witnesses because he wanted to read about it in the papers and hear it on the news, and the only way to achieve that was to sacrifice someone in public — but not somewhere so public that the victim’s face would be seen.”

  “What about the duvet?” questioned a grey-bearded officer, showing a glimmer of interest.

  “He buried it where he knew it would be found, then threw in the mangled toy as an effigy of the Major. It was all part of the illusion and might have worked if the real Major hadn’t shown up.”

  “It’s more stupid than a bloody bedroom farce,” scoffed Patterson under his breath. “Someone ought’a make it into a pantomime. First we got a killer and no body, then a body and no killer, then no body …”

  “So where did Jonathon think the Major was?” asked the bearded officer talking over Patterson.

  Bliss was tempted to say Scotland but knew it was an indefensible answer. He knew he couldn’t explain why Jonathon had not gone there to confront the real man.

  The Dauntsey estate was still there, according to the Scottish P.C. who had made enquiries. It was occupied by a tenant farmer, the son of the man who had first leased the farm from Doreen Dauntsey a few years after the war. He paid rent once a year, April 1st, rain, shine or snow — twenty and fifty pound notes just as the Major’s written instructions had insisted — to be paid in cash to Mrs. Dauntsey.

  “I’ll happily send the Major a cheque,” he’d offered numerous times. “It’ll save you having to traipse all the way up here every year.”

  But she wouldn’t hear of it. “My husband insists that I come to make sure everything is in order, Mr. McAllister,” she had said more than once.

  “I allus felt like I was buying off a blackmailer or paying a ransom,” he told the Scottish policeman. “A bundle of used notes in a brown paper parcel. She never counted it. ‘Och, I’m sure I can trust you, Mr. McAllister — good day to you,’ she’d say, then take the next train away home.”

  “It’s difficult to believe that Jonathon thought his father was still alive,” Bliss told the group, “Although he may have been so much under his mother’s influence that he went along with it for fear of upsetting her. She was apparently quite convincing. ‘He’s in Scotland — at the estate,’ she’d say to anybody enquiring, and they would breathe a sigh of relief, mumbling, ‘Thank Christ for that.’”

  “But what about his family?” ask
ed a thick-thighed policewoman in a brave pair of shorts. “What about siblings, cousins, uncles. Did nobody ever check?”

  “Obviously not.”

  The street had relaxed when Bliss arrived at his house in London. It was Saturday, the double-manned surveillance car was either needed elsewhere or the crew were luxuriating in the rare pleasure of a weekend off. Unfettered residents, taking advantage of the summery weather, tarted up their cars without feeling spied upon, and children took a rare opportunity to kick a ball or throw a stone without getting yelled at by an unnecessarily anxious parent. Only Bliss, and the surveillance officers, knew the last thing in the world they cared about was what some snotty-nosed kid was doing in the street — unless it was a big snotty-nosed kid with a mask and a shotgun.

  The normality of the street scene did nothing to allay Bliss’s anxiety which had been mounting ever since the suburbs, when the gradually narrowing streets had closed in around him, tighter and tighter like a strait-jacket cramping his chest, making him want to turn away. But he stuck it out, determined this would be no drive-by, and he forced himself to pull up directly in front of the house. He was going in, going to stay — only a night or two, but, thanks to Daphne, it was time to stop running.

  “Is there anything else that I can tell you, or you can tell me before we call it a day?” asked Bliss, wrapping up the meeting. Several checked their watches, praying no-one would ask a question or start a debate.

  “What did you make of the syringe, Guv?” said a youngish policewoman in tennis gear, breaking rank with her colleagues and suffering their glares.

  “What syringe?” asked Bliss blankly.

  “I found it in the ashes of Dauntsey’s Aga cooker,” she explained, having taken the initiative to sift through the ash-bin of the coal burning stove in the kitchen of the old house, thinking it an ideal place for someone to incinerate small incriminating items. “It had exploded in the heat and was all smoky and black, but I managed to find most of it.”

  Bliss shook his head — completely in the dark. “Well, where is it?”

  “I gave it to Sgt. Patterson on Tuesday, Guv.”