Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.

by James Hawkins

  “What… No tracks at all?” he asks sceptically.

  “Deer, elk and bear,” answers one of the dog-handlers. “But nothing worth following.”

  “So where did they go?” Bliss asks, but he is faced with a dozen blank stares. “Look,” he says, “Daphne may be a bit flighty, but she isn’t Mary Poppins.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” asks Phillips, and Bliss looks back over his shoulder.

  “I think that we’re being given the runaround,” he says, and his point is proven a short while later when he attempts to return, alone, to the States and is curtly informed by a blonde-haired shrimp of a border guard that his visa has been revoked.

  “What do you mean?” he screeches in disbelief.

  “Just carrying out orders, sir,” says the diminutive woman.

  “That’s what the extermination camp guards always claimed,” he mumbles under his breath as he uncurls himself from the car to confront her, demanding, “Why has my visa been cancelled?”

  “Suspicion of importing illegal drugs, sir,” says the officer, reading from a prepared script, but now she has a backup in the form of a heavyweight wrestler in uniform.

  “It was just tea and you know it,” fumes Bliss, refusing to back down. “It was a bag that Miss Lovelace, the missing woman, put into my suitcase because she’d already locked her own.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, sir,” the backup man says, and Bliss quickly gets the message as the female officer makes no attempt to disguise the fact that she’s lying when she says, “You see, sir, according to this, it was found to contain a quantity of narcotic substance.”

  “In that case, arrest me and charge me with illegal possession,” says Bliss, calling her bluff.

  “We’ve considered that, sir, but in the interests of international diplomacy —”

  “What do you know about diplomacy?” snorts Bliss, but the officer’s impassive face tells him he’s wasting his time.

  “I want to speak to the British consul, right now,” demands Bliss.

  It takes Bliss three hours, some serious arm-twisting by the consul, and the intervention of the governor to get his visa reinstated, and he’s grateful that he’d left Daisy holding Rick’s hand in Canada while he’s forced to suffer the obvious scorn of the immigration officers when they discover that they’ve been outweighed.

  “You’ll have to fill out a new application,” the woman officer spits venomously, then she spends ten minutes checking and rechecking every point before announcing that his new visa will expire in just two days. “At midnight following your scheduled appearance at the conference tomorrow,” she says firmly, and though no one says so directly, it’s pretty clear that he can expect to be railroaded out of town immediately thereafter.

  Trina and Daphne, on the other hand, are going nowhere and are back in the bathroom with the taps running.

  “Did you see his face?” asks Trina, talking of the hooded guard. “He had terrible zits,” she says as a voice calls from the intercom in the bedroom.

  “Mrs. Button. Miss Lovelace. Please return to the bedroom.”

  “I think I’ll call him Spotty Dick,” laughs Daphne.

  “Well, I’m calling the other one Bumface,” giggles Trina. “He was all pinched and wrinkled, like some of my old patients. But what are we going to do, Daphne?”

  “I did a course on captivity survival during the war,” whispers Daphne, and as she sits on the toilet seat in the cramped bathroom she finds herself dusting off sixty-five years of memories to recall the little psychological warfare officer who’d scared the daylights out of her group of wartime volunteers as he’d swaggered his way around the classroom.

  “The h’enemy takes comfort from the fact that they h’are h’in total control,” the major had said, scattering aitches through his rapid staccato speech like a gunner firing tracers. “They’ll tie you h’up, blindfold you and gag you. H’anything to stop you moving. Movement is a function of human behaviour. The h’idea is to prevent you from h’exhibiting normal human behaviour. It’s h’all part of the dehumanization process.”

  “At least they haven’t tied us up,” says Daphne as the voice on the intercom becomes more belligerent.

  “Mrs. Button. Will you please return to the room immediately.”

  “The golden rule is to start escaping from the moment you’re captured,” says Daphne, ignoring the voice. “Catch ‘em off balance before they’ve decided what to do.”

  “But how?” Trina wants to know as the voice grows angrier.

  “Mrs. Button. Return to the room, now.”

  “It’s all about control,” Daphne continues unfazed as she zips through her memories of similar situations. “Once you roll over, they’ve got you.”

  “Mrs. Button. This is your last chance…”

  “And try to make eye contact with them whenever you can,” continues Daphne quickly, as she remembers the final part of the officer’s lecture.

  “They’ll avoid h’eye to h’eye contact whenh’ever possible because they ‘ave to go ‘ome to the wife and kiddies at the h’end of the day, and visit dear old granny h’at the weekend. So h’any action what makes you h’appear human makes it more difficult for them to take the final option.” Then he’d dropped his voice to add, “Of course, there’s always the vicious little bastard whose idea of fun is to poke out yer eyes with a knitting needle.”

  “What do you do in those circumstances, Major?” Daphne had enquired.

  “You prays for an ‘eart attack, luv.”

  The sound of the electronic bolt sliding back warns them that their time in the bathroom is up, and Spotty Dick wastes no time before thumping on the door.

  “Mrs. Button. Come out now!” he shouts.

  “What do we do?” whispers Trina.

  “Just pretend everything is normal. It shouldn’t take David long to find us,” says Daphne as she coolly opens the door and stares directly at their captor, enquiring, “Can I help you, young man?” as if he’s an encyclopaedia salesman.

  However, nothing is turning out normal for Bliss at Bellingham’s police station, where Captain Prudenski has been tipped off by the Customs Service and has no interest in becoming embroiled with a suspected drug dealer.

  “I don’t think there is anything else I can do for you, sir,” Prudenski declares with a cold eye when Bliss says he wants to revisit the monastery. “The ladies’ contraption was found in Canada, so I’ve no idea why you are even here. Why aren’t you searching there?”

  Looks as though I’m on my own, Bliss says to himself as he returns to his car and takes out his map.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Trina?” asks Daphne with utter seriousness as they sit at the small wooden table, and she continues prattling as if in a Monty Python sketch. “Whenever I have tea with Her Majesty we always have Keemun,” she says, then she leans in conspiratorially. “It’s her favourite, you know.”

  “I’d heard that,” says Trina, playing along. But beneath them, in the basement’s surveillance room, a hoot of laughter from Spotty Dick is quickly stifled by a newcomer who instantly takes in the scene and orders, “Wipe that stupid grin off your face, man, and get in there and stop them.”

  Daphne pours from an imaginary pot then she holds out a make-believe plate, asking, “Would you like a chocky bicky to go with that, dear?”

  “Gosh, thanks ever so much,” replies Trina as the door slams open.

  “Just in time for tea,” mutters Daphne, turning with an insouciant smile and asking, “Do you take milk and sugar?”

  “Game’s over,” says Spotty Dick sourly.

  “Oh, really. Does that mean we can go home now?” asks Daphne as a new face appears in the doorway, though this one is not shrouded by a hood.

  “Leave us,” the newcomer hisses to Spotty Dick, before he strolls into the room with the brashness of a corporate lawyer, pulls up a chair, and lets the tension build as his eyes hold steady on the two women.

&nbs
p; “Ladies,” he says eventually, making Trina jump, “I’m afraid that we have no choice but to keep you here as our guests until certain decisions have been made.”

  “But we wouldn’t tell anyone what you do here — would we, Daphne?” tries Trina.

  “You have no idea what we do here,” continues John Dawson with polished authority. “But we are not prepared to take that risk. And you will be well cared for — providing you co-operate.”

  “But what about our families?” cries Trina.

  “Ms. Lovelace has no family, but your husband and children will simply have to accept the fact that you are missing for the time being.”

  “You can’t do this,” spits Daphne. “I demand a lawyer. I demand my habeas corpus rights.”

  “Actually, ma’am,” says Dawson, “I regret to inform you that you have no such rights under the president’s anti-terrorism laws, and we can keep you incommunicado for as long as we deem you to be a threat to national security.”

  “And you seriously think that anyone would believe me to be a terrorist.”

  “Well, Ms. Lovelace, it seems that you entered the United States illegally by failing to obtain a visa at the border. So, yes, we do consider you a risk.”

  The Mission of Mercy Monastery doesn’t appear on Bliss’s map — in fact it doesn’t appear on any map — and he’s forced to drive blindly around the thickly forested foothills of the Cascade Mountains searching for landmarks until he spots a familiar bar.

  A dozen pairs of eyes follow him into the saloon, but the surrounding forest is abuzz with the sound of chain-saws, so he’s not surprised by the absence of the lumberjack who’d spotted the missing women the previous evening. However, a paunch-bellied woodsman propping up the bar appears to be something of a fixture.

  “I’m looking for the monastery place,” says Bliss casually, once he’s ordered a coffee, but he’s surprised by the oldtimer’s shrug of ignorance.

  “Sorry, fella,” says the gap-toothed senior. “I’m kind’a new round here.”

  A hoot of amusement from behind the bar leaves Bliss perplexed. “Do you know the place?” he asks, turning to the bartender.

  “No, sir. Not me, sir. I don’t know a damn thing,” he replies, and as Bliss sweeps his eyes around the room, the other occupants snigger into their beers.

  “I see,” he says and changes his mind about the coffee.

  “Hey — I’ve already made it!” the barman calls after him, then a gale of laughter follows him out the door.

  Bumface and Spotty Dick are also finding amusement as they watch the surveillance monitors at the monastery and see Daphne and Trina scuttle back to the bathroom for another strategy session.

  “God knows what the hell they do in there,” laughs Bumface.

  “That’s one of life’s little mysteries, Steve,” says Spotty Dick, adding, “I even used to wonder if they had twin johns in the women’s.”

  A cloud of concern suddenly darkens the other man’s face. “They could be cooking something up,” he warns, staring into the screen.

  “Don’t worry,” chuckles Spotty Dick. “They ain’t got a stove.”

  “Know thine enemy, Trina,” says Daphne once the taps are running.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the fence I saw when we arrived. It was designed to keep people out, not in. This is not a prison, and this isn’t a cell.”

  “But what about the cameras?”

  “Observation, not security,” she says. “Otherwise they’d have one in here as well.”

  “Ladies…” calls Spotty Dick on the intercom. “Come out of the bathroom, please.”

  “So what are we going to do?” whispers Trina.

  “What would they expect of two middle-aged housewives?” asks Daphne, dropping thirty years without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Housework?” questions Trina.

  “Precisely. And, just like good housewives, we’ll put a lot of effort into it.”

  With his suspicions cemented, if not actually confirmed, by the occupants of the bar, Bliss finds the path to the monastery and makes his plans. There’s clearly no point in knocking at the gate and asking politely again, he tells himself as he sits watching the road from a blind spot about a mile away from the monastery’s gates. Courtesy is clearly not on their topten list of commandments.

  Meanwhile, Trina and Daphne have plonked themselves onto one of the beds, with their backs to the camera, and have begun to knit.

  “What the hell are they doing now?” asks Dawson with his eyes on the monitor.

  “Knitting, John,” laughs Bumface. “Her Majesty reckons they’re making an escape rope.”

  Traffic is sparse as the afternoon wears on, and after more than thirty hours without sleep Bliss comes close to snoozing several times, but he needs something bulkier than an ordinary car to prise open the gates for him, so has no choice but to wait.

  “Stop that!” orders Dawson’s irritated voice on the intercom, and the two knitters redouble their efforts.

  The door opens a minute later and Spotty Dick appears, asking, “And just what do you think you are doing?”

  “Knitting, of course,” says Daphne. “Here,” she adds, holding out an imaginary skein of wool. “See if you can get the knots out of that, would you.”

  A mile away, a flash of white through the trees signals the approach of a vehicle larger than a sedan, and Bliss perks himself up and starts his engine.

  “Ladies… ladies,” pleads Spotty Dick. “Would you please stop this nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?” retorts Daphne indignantly. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you the story of the emperor’s new clothes?” Then she holds up the make-believe rope and eyes it critically. “Not bad,” she says, as she peers through the imaginary artefact and locks her gaze with his. “What do you think?” she asks with the calmness of a hypnotist, and the moment stretches and stretches until he finally breaks free. “By the way,” she asks as he makes for the door with his head down, “what’s your name?”

  “That’s interesting,” she muses to Trina as the door gently closes.

  A large white Ford delivery van passes Bliss’s forested hideaway, and he waits for it to disappear before gingerly emerging onto the road. Ahead of him, the two men in the vehicle are trundling along the back road at a leisurely pace at the end of just another working day, north of the border in Canada, and have their sights set on a few beers and a game of pool or two in the monastery’s bar.

  “Wann’a smoke, Reggie?” asks the driver as he holds out a pack to the front-seat passenger.

  “Sure. Why not, Buzzer,” says the passenger, with a nod to the inert figure concealed under a large trough of dead salmon in the back of the van. “He ain’t gonna complain.”

  However, in the monastery’s surveillance room, Dawson is furious at the women’s refusal to obey, and is screeching at Spotty Dick. “Can’t you see what she’s doing, you idiot? Get back in there right now and make them stop.” Then he spins on Bumface, yelling, “Go with him and make sure he does.”

  Outside, Bliss is scorching after the Ford van, while anxiously searching ahead for the occasional flash of white through the trees; praying that he won’t suddenly round a bend and find himself peering into their rear-view mirrors.

  “Ladies… ladies,” repeats Spotty Dick, crashing back into the room while carefully avoiding Daphne’s gaze. “You’ve got to stop this, now.”

  “Oh, hello,” says Trina, picking up where Daphne left off. “Just hold the end of this, will you?”

  “Stop it!” he yells, then unthinkingly gives them credence by snatching at the imaginary rope.

  Bliss is still two hundred metres from the gates, and his pulse is racing as he nudges the car round bend after bend at breakneck speed.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” exclaims Daphne in mock anger as Trina starts to cry.

  “Oh, for chrissakes…” moans Bumface from the doorway.

 
; Bliss’s timing is perfect. He rounds the final bend just as the huge gates are swinging open, and without a moment’s hesitation he guns his engine and flashes through the gap before the van driver has a chance to get his vehicle in gear.

  “Terrific!” he exclaims as the giant gates flash past in a blur, and ahead of him, through the trees, he catches his first sight of the monastery. Then his whole world explodes.

  chapter nine

  Thirty minutes later, with the dust settled, Daphne and Trina are back in their room nursing their wounds after an abortive escape bid, while Bliss is back at Bellingham police station wondering how the hire-car company will react to their vehicle’s shredded tires and the ragged line of bullet holes across the trunk lid.

  “They sure as hell get touchy about trespassers up there,” the desk officer explains as Bliss recounts the moment when a row of vicious spikes had sprung out of the roadway in front of him, a dozen sirens had screeched overhead, and a couple of hooded men had jumped from behind trees with sub-machine guns. “You’re lucky to have got out alive.”

  “But what are you going to do about it?” demands Bliss angrily.

  “I suppose I should give you a ticket for trespassing…” the sergeant begins as he scratches his head, though is saved further deliberation by the appearance of Captain Prudenski.

  “Chief Inspector Bliss, there’s a couple of people who need to talk to you,” he says without ceremony.

  “People?” queries Bliss, but the captain clams up and ushers Bliss into a room where two smart-suited, smart-mouthed, executive types wait with painted-on smiles.

  “Look, David — you don’t mind if we call you David, do you?” asks one, his tone as clipped as his brush-cut hairstyle.

  “Who are you?” queries Bliss.

  “That’s not important, David,” starts the other, a beefier version.

  “In that case, I think I’d prefer you to call me Detective Chief Inspector,” says Bliss coldly, sensing that he holds the higher ground, guessing that their desire for anonymity means they are probably walking on quicksand.