A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

“I’ve put out a missing person report to the men on the ground. Maybe I should call the dog teams back in to try and track her.”

  “The only place I can think of is the manor,” says Bliss.

  “But I’ve spoken to Maxwell,” insists Donaldson. “She hasn’t been seen there since the episode with the furniture polish.”

  Superintendent Donaldson’s statement is no longer true. While in her day Daphne Lovelace might have slipped stealthily away into the woodland, or even tried to take them out with a knife or a hastily fashioned garrotte, she had been no match for the armed guards who had roughly hauled her out of her trench and marched her to the stables with her arms behind her back.

  “Oh, for chrissake. That’s all I need,” says the man at the top of the stairs as Daphne is forced inside. “Bring her up and tell the men to get back to work.”

  “Maybe we should think this out over lunch,” suggests Donaldson, with an eye on his stomach, as Bliss escorts him back to his car outside Daphne’s. “Unless you’ve got any other plans, of course.”

  Bliss is just about to say that he had intended visiting the force’s doctor to get signed back to work, when his eye is caught by Daphne’s can of polish on Donaldson’s rear seat.

  “Hey, guv. Did you say that Maxwell handed that polish to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. Would you get it checked for his dabs, please?”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “Look, I know Ruth reckoned that Maxwell definitely wasn’t her husband, but I’m just beginning to wonder if she lied, and Daphne was right all along.”

  “Why would she lie about that?”

  “I bet the last thing she really wanted was to find that her husband was still alive, judging by the way that Mike dotes on her. And Mike told me that he’d never seen Jackson before, so he wouldn’t have known who he was talking to.”

  “Dave,” says Donaldson with a kindly hand on Bliss’s shoulder, “don’t you think you might be taking this Maxwell thing a bit far?”

  “No, sir, I don’t. Daphne is certain that he’s an impostor, and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’ve ever known her to misjudge anyone.”

  “And if there are prints?”

  “We can send them to Mike Phillips. He’ll be back in Vancouver by this evening. Who knows, either Maxwell or Jackson could be on file in Canada.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm,” says Donaldson, relenting. “Though I doubt it will do any good either. If she is there at the manor, I’d bet my pension that he doesn’t know it.”

  It would not be a good day for Donaldson to back a horse, and he could never picture the scene above the stables at Thraxton Manor as the diminutive Daphne, looking like an ad for a shelter for the homeless, clutches her sprouted hat in one hand and her tattered old shopping bag in the other, while Maxwell leans over her, demanding, “Who knows you’re here?”

  “Lots of people: Minnie Dennon, Mavis Longbottom ... She used to be the cook at ...”

  “Shuddup you stupid old bat. Why the fuck could-n’t you have left me alone?”

  “You should have your mouth washed out with soap ...”

  “Shuddup! Shuddup!”

  “Temper, temper, Jeremy.”

  “I said shuddup!” he screams, and slaps her sharply across the face.

  Daphne takes a second to compose herself before softly saying, “I suppose you’re proud of that, Jeremy.”

  “Shuddup or I’ll do it again.”

  “Do you smack little children about as well?”

  “I warned you ...” he starts, and the second slap sends Daphne sprawling.

  “The game’s up Jeremy,” she says calmly, from the floor. “Why do you think Inspector Bliss from the Yard and Sergeant Phillips gave you a visit? Just a friendly social call? Or perhaps they wondered what you were up to shipping that funny smelling plywood all the way from Vancouver.”

  “Shuddup ... Shuddup ... Shuddup.”

  The afternoon drags slower than the wait for a heart transplant for Bliss. He’s toured the city a couple of times, and checked the hospital; the neighbours have rallied and searched their gardens again; Donaldson has sent a few uniformed constables to quiz the locals and search the woods at the end of Daphne’s street; and Mavis Longbottom has ditched Gino and shows up with a different man.

  “I was never quite sure if Gino was asleep or dead most of the time,” she explains as the lanky George unwinds himself from her little car and stands awaiting an introduction.

  And you think this one looks alive? muses Bliss to himself as he watches the dour six-footer with slumped shoulders staring at the ground.

  “I could ask the army to help again,” Donaldson had half-heartedly suggested mid-afternoon, “but I haven’t a clue where to tell them to search. Plus, I’ll look like an idiot if she comes waltzing back again like she did last time.”

  A reporter from the Westchester Gazette shows up a little after four and asks for a recent photo. Without the weather to worry about, the pressman is scratching for work, although he loses interest somewhat when he learns that Daphne’s disappearances are becoming habitual. “Let me know if she’s not back by tonight,” he tells Bliss.

  By five in the afternoon, with no sign of Daphne and only an hour or so until sundown, Bliss is beginning to fear the worst and thinks he is headed for a nervous breakdown.

  Across the world in Vancouver it is the other end of the day, and with the morning sun just a few degrees above the Rockies, it’s time for Trina Button to pull off another scam on Candace at the Health Ministry, before the greenhorn clerk has a chance to get the sleep out of her ears.

  During all the excitement over the England trip, Trina had put aside the box of Zofran, but the question, “To whom were they prescribed?” had bugged her for two days until she had found the relevant pharmacy. Then she had used her nurse’s uniform and a saucy smile to twist the pharmacist’s arm until he’d admitted that the serial number stamped on the torn label showed they had belonged to a cancer patient named Peter Healy.

  “Who’s his doctor?” Trina had inquired as she’d peeked over the man’s shoulder at the store’s computer terminal.

  “Dr. Fitzpatrick,” he’d replied, and the alarm bells in Trina’s mind had rung all night until the phone lines to the Health Ministry opened in the morning.

  “Hi Candace. It’s me, Margery Woods,” Trina says from a payphone when she finally gets through the computerized messaging maze at nine-fifteen. “You remember ... from Dr. Fitzpatrick’s office?”

  “Oh, Margery,” says Candace in resignation. “What have you done this time?”

  “I pushed the wrong button and totally deleted a patient,” replies Trina bouncily. “One minute he was there, and the next minute—poof! He was gone.”

  “No worries, Margery. I can sort that out.”

  “Candace, dear, are you ever going to stop saving my life? Maybe I could take you out to the theatre, or dinner ...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” laughs Candace. “What’s the patient’s name?”

  “Peter Healy,” Trina says, then reads off the date of birth and Personal Health Number that she had finagled out of the pharmacist.

  “That’s interesting,” muses Candace, and Trina holds her breath while the girl complains about the uselessness of the system before asking confusedly, “Are you sure that name’s right, Margery?”

  “I think so,” replies Trina. “Like I said, I just ‘poofed’ him into thin air, but what’s the matter?”

  “It looks like you ‘poofed’ him permanently.”

  “Oh my God. He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No. But he should be. According to this, he hasn’t had any treatment since early November.”

  “I’ve probably screwed up his records. You know what I’m like.”

  “But he’s got AIDS and cancer.”

  “Maybe he transferred to another practice,” suggests Trina, but Candace has already checked.
>
  “No. He had his last hospital treatment on the fourth of November and Dr. Fitzpatrick prescribed Zofran on the sixth, and that’s the very last entry.”

  “I probably made a boo-boo,” laughs Trina, but Candace fails to see the funny side and her tone darkens.

  “Margery, this is serious. I’m going to have to report this. Mr. Healy could be dead for all we know. This just isn’t good enough.”

  “Does that mean I can’t take you out to dinner, then?” says Trina with a crack in her voice as she feigns the sniffle of a tear.

  “Please don’t cry, Margery.”

  “Sorry, Candace. It’s just that I feel that I’ve lost a really good friend,” says Trina, barely able to control the tears, and her snivels start the other girl off.

  “I feel the same way, Margery,” sobs Candace. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “What if I really, really, really promised to be more careful in future, Candy sweetheart.”

  “I don’t know ...” wails the clerk.

  “I’ll never, ever, screw up again, Guide’s honour,” bawls Trina, giving herself a salute, and Candace starts to break.

  “If you promise ...”

  “Thank you. Thank you,” cries Trina. “You’re wonderful, Candace.” Then she pushes her luck. “Oh, there’s just one more little thing. Just so that I can get my records straight. What was his address?”

  “You’d better write it down,” says the girl as she pulls up a screen, and Trina readies herself with a lipstick, but the row of cherries have already clinked into place in her mind, and she is not in the least surprised when Candace replies, “One-four-six-five Newport Avenue, apartment twenty-four.”

  While Candace in the Health Ministry might have been a walk in the park for the home care nurse, the elderly curmudgeon in the Department of Vital Statistics is less of a pushover when Trina phones asking for information about Peter Healy’s apparent death.

  “Sorry, Madam. But the rules don’t allow me to give details of deceased persons over the phone,” the woman says, starkly.

  “I’m not asking for details of a deceased person,” says Trina sweetly. “I’m simply asking you to confirm that he isn’t deceased. Now, is that against the rules?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, is it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Would you please find out? By the way, perhaps I should advise you that I am recording this conversation.”

  The line dies briefly before a blast of muzak nearly takes off Trina’s ear.

  “Sorry. Was that too loud, dear?” says the woman when she comes back on line five minutes later.

  “No, I was enjoying it,” says Trina, truthfully. “So, can you tell me?”

  “I suppose so,” snaps the woman, and she hands over the information as if it is coming out of her own pocket. “No record of any Peter Healy in the past year.”

  “There,” says Trina in her nurse’s voice, “That didn’t hurt one little bit, did it?”

  Daphne is back in the hayloft above the stables at Thraxton Manor, but this time she is firmly tied to a solid beam that hasn’t shifted an inch in more than four hundred years, and nothing a little old lady does is going to change that. Her arms feel as if they have been broken, her fingers are numb from the bindings on her wrists, and her mouth tastes like a dirty dish-cloth.

  “Sorry about this, me old duck,” Liam, one of the security guards, had said as he’d prepared a length of broad duct tape to gag her. “I don’t wanna do this, but you’re such a wily old bird—we can’t have you flying off when we ain’t looking now, can we?”

  “Oh, no; it’s quite all right young man. You needn’t apologize. I do understand,” Daphne had replied, but her apparent empathy had failed to soften him.

  Trina Button, in Vancouver, is equally unyielding as she pays the smelly superintendent at 1465 Newport Avenue another visit, and sees a flicker of recognition in his face when she asks about Peter Healy.

  “Never heard of him,” lies the stinky sixty-year-old as he tries to shut the door in her face. But Trina knows different, and she launches herself against the door with a flying drop kick that sends the paunchy little man crashing back into his apartment.

  “Sorry,” says Trina, attempting to lift him by his right ear lobe while firmly planting a stiletto heel on his hand, “but I happen to know that he was here. So, unless you want me to rip off my clothes and scream rape, you’d better start talking.”

  “I don’t ...” starts the little man, but Trina fiercely wrenches at his ear, yelling, “One more lie, and I scream.”

  “He’ll kill me,” he mumbles and Trina begins to screech.

  “All right. All right,” yells the old man. “Quit it, will ya?”

  “So,” she says, keeping up the pressure on his ear, “tell me why you lied about Jordan Jackson. Tell me about Peter Healy.”

  “They just give me the names, lady. Like I told you before, it ain’t healthy asking questions around here.”

  “Who gives you the names?”

  The momentary delay in answering causes the superintendent considerable pain as Trina’s free foot slams into his groin.

  “Ow, bitch.”

  “Shall I do it again,” she questions sweetly, “or are you going to tell me?”

  “OK. Lay off. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”

  When Trina leaves the building ten minutes later to fetch a bandage for his hand and pain killers for his groin from her medical kit in the car, she has extracted more than enough details from the superintendent for Mike Phillips to work on when he gets back from England, although she still plans to squeeze the scruffy little man for the name of the organization’s “Mr. Big.”

  The superintendent plays dead when she gets back with the pills, and Trina’s threats to batter down the door won’t make him budge. He has crawled into his bedroom, barricaded himself in, and is on the phone, adding to Mort’s woes.

  “She’s figured it out, Mort,” he bleats as he lays on his bed trying to rub life back into his testicles. “She’s blown the doc’s story, and she even knows that Jackson ain’t dead.”

  Trina stuffs a handful of Tylenols into the superintendent’s mailbox in the lobby on her way out, then tries piecing together her new-found knowledge as she drives off to visit her first patient.

  “It is so simple,” she says to herself, realizing that it wouldn’t be difficult among Vancouver’s legions of street people to find one who was on his last legs who bore a passing resemblance to Jordan. The promise of a bed more comfortable than the sidewalk, a steady supply of dope, and a little bit of cash for dependants, would have been all it took. After all, Healy was dying anyway. And when he was too far-gone to recover, or even care, he was carted off to the hospital and signed in as Jordan Jackson. Dr. Fitzpatrick is conveniently on hand to confirm his identity and condition and, as the body is trundled away by the undertaker, the good doctor puts his signature on a death certificate bearing the name of Jordan Artemus Jackson.

  “I bet half the people in that dump are just waiting to die,” she tells herself with a backward glance. “Just waiting for someone else to step into their shoes, miraculously recover, then walk away a new man, with a valid driver’s license, a passport, and a clean slate.”

  Tom Burton is also a new man, and he walks out of the remand centre absolutely determined to go straight, when Joshua and Dingo drive up in the black BMW. “Hi Tom,” calls Dingo jovially from the passenger seat. “Mort sent us to give you a ride.”

  “I’ll walk,” says Burton, having finally decided that his life as a villain’s pimp is not worth the aggravation, but Dingo’s door starts to open.

  “That’s not very friendly, Tom,” says Dingo, slamming Tom against a wall. “Especially as it was him who fixed your bail. He gets upset if people turn him down.”

  “He’ll have to be upset then. You’d better tell him that I can’t work for him anymore.”

  “You’re gonna ha
ve to tell him yourself,” says Dingo, as he opens the rear door with one hand and flings in the unfortunate man with the other.

  Mort is in his office behind the porn studio, but he’s not expecting to see Tom—ever again—nor is he expecting a buzz on the outside door’s entry-phone.

  “Shit!” he exclaims when he checks the surveillance monitor and sees a figure nervously searching around as if he’s on the lam.

  “Come up,” yells Mort viciously as he releases the door lock, and he walks through the studio to the landing. “Well, well, well,” carries on Mort sarcastically as the familiar figure climbs the stairs. “If it isn’t my poor little f’kin cousin Jordan.”

  “Hi Jeremy ...” starts Jackson airily as he reaches the top, but Mort turns on him with a snarl.

  “I’ve told you before. Don’t call me that.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “Do you reckon I should be proud of that, eh? D’ye think I should go ’round sayin’ I’m Jeremy Maxwell, son of Monty? You know ... the bloke who blew his wife away and topped himself?”

  “I know what your father did. That’s all I ever heard from you when we were kids. ‘My dad’s a murderer,’ you used to say to frighten me and the other kids, like it was some sort of achievement.”

  “Scared you though, didn’t it?” laughs Maxwell as he heads back through the studio with Jackson in tow. “‘I’m Mort—short for mortuary,’ I used to say in a creepy voice, and you’d hide under the f’kin bed for a week.”

  “It wasn’t funny, Jeremy ...”

  “Will you stop calling me that?”

  In England, Daphne Lovelace is having the same problem with John Waghorn, as he checks on her in the hayloft and takes the tape off her mouth to give her some water.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Jeremy?” she asks him when she’s moistened her lips.

  “Oh, for chrissake, cut that out. You know damn well that I’m not Maxwell. You nosed through my stuff and found my passport.”

  “Jordan Jackson,” muses Daphne, confusedly.

  “So?”

  “Well ... Why didn’t your wife recognize you?”