Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.

by James Hawkins

  A third of the way around the globe, in London, it’s already mid-afternoon, though it’s not much brighter than Vancouver. “Thank God it’s Friday,” mumble millions of disheartened office and bank workers as they wish away the gloomy afternoon surfing the Internet for dreams in Barbados or Barcelona, while many others have already locked their desks and made a bolt for freedom.

  Maurice Joliffe, a brittle eighty-two-year-old with little substance to show for his longevity, is also making a break for freedom, and he pedals his creaking bicycle along Kensington High Road, head down against the rain, with a loaded pistol in his pocket.

  Joliffe and his steed are of similar age, both seeing their first daylight sometime between World War I and the Great Depression, and both suffer from arthritic joints and fatigued parts from which they are unlikely to recover without expensive surgery. The rusty springs of the pushbike’s saddle squeak at every bump in the road, and the cracked leather seat bites into Joliffe’s bony backside, but he willingly suffers the pain, telling himself that a new saddle now would be an unnecessary expense. It’s not as though he’s ever going to need the bicycle again after today, and he has already mentally pledged it to the Salvation Army.

  Maurice Joliffe, “Jolly” to many who have known him as the man who empties ashtrays at the Lucky Seven Bingo Hall in Balham, stops obediently at a pedestrian light while a couple of zippier cyclists take it as an opportunity to get ahead of the traffic. But now is not the time to get hauled in by an inquisitive cop who might question the bulge in his mackintosh pocket, so Jolly takes the opportunity to re-evaluate his plan while he waits for a wet-footed bunch of office girls to struggle across the road in front of him.

  It’s the gun that concerns him most, and he continues to wonder whether there might not be a better way. But it’s a question that’s been torturing him for two days, and he already knows that no other weapon is as reliable or dependable for his purpose — no other weapon can be guaranteed to achieve his ultimate goal.

  The handgun, an officer’s service revolver dropped by a clumsy captain during a military exercise at the end of the Second World War, had become Joliffe’s property in a barrack-room poker game, and he has polished and oiled it weekly ever since, though he has never once fired it. The heavy pistol, now with the initials MJ carved into its walnut stock, is the only souvenir of his two years’ conscription as a national serviceman, and he has kept it squirreled away from his wife and kids for more than fifty years, somehow knowing that a day would come when his care would finally be repaid.

  Today is that day, and as he pedals determinedly towards his objective with an entire tube of mentholated analgesic rubbed into his joints, his mind is finally at rest with his decision, and he can’t help but feel that it was always destined to be this way.

  “Just look at the rain,” says Bliss gloomily, as torrents wash against the dining room’s windows. “I just hope that they’re not outside somewhere…” Then he pauses in astonishment at his own words. “What am I saying? What am I saying?” he questions. “I’d love them to be outside.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t be able to search much in this, even if we knew where to start looking,” admits Phillips, although Daisy isn’t letting anyone give up as she turns to Bliss. “But you must find zhem, Daavid. Poor Rick will have — how you say — a heart attack if he does not go to sleep soon.”

  “I wish I could put his mind at rest,” admits Bliss, while Phillips continues to stare out of the window, musing, “I have this feeling that if I could focus my mind just a tiny bit more, I’d work out what happened.”

  Bliss has no such dilemma. “This is crazy,” he says. “It’s bloody obvious what happened. I bet they bumbled into that place late at night, and those trigger-happy jerks gunned them down thinking they were terrorists. Knowing those two, they were probably climbing the gates or trying to cut a hole in the fence.”

  “So, why not own up and just say it was the women’s own fault?” asks Phillips.

  “They can’t. Not without giving away the nature of the place — whatever that might be.”

  “You could be right.”

  “Which explains the way they dumped the bathtub thing back in Canada, and why they were so keen to get shot of me.”

  “So. Where do we go from here? They obviously can’t admit it now.”

  “Not unless someone turns up the heat in the press,” agrees Bliss.

  “Thank God there’s nothing in the papers,” says Bumface, as he and Dawson breakfast on large coffees in the surveillance room.

  “I bet there is in Canada,” moans Dawson sullenly. “And knowing our luck, somebody will see it.”

  “Deny, deny, deny,” Bumface reminds him. “They wuz never here, remember?”

  “Oh. Don’t be so f’kin naïve,” spits Dawson. “The guards saw them, half the friggin’ patients saw them, and they’re splattered all over the surveillance tapes.”

  “Maybe we should… you know… just get it over with right now,” says Bumface, hanging himself with an imaginary noose.

  “That’s very clever, Steve. Then if someone really starts digging and we can’t produce warm bodies, we can always say that they sprouted wings and did a Harry Potter over the fence.”

  “Just trying to be helpful, John.”

  “Well, you ain’t,” fumes Dawson. “This is your neck I’m trying to save here and don’t forget it. You were the duty officer when that prick Wallace let ‘em in.”

  “It’s a bit late now, though, isn’t it,” cautions Bumface. “You’re in it as deep as us.”

  Jolly Joliffe stops his bicycle a block short of his chosen destination to look at his watch. It’s five minutes before four — five minutes to zero hour — time for final preparations. And without taking the revolver from his pocket, he clicks the chamber into place and checks that the safety catch is on, then reaches inside his jacket to ensure that the single page of his hand-printed will hasn’t fallen from his wallet.

  Hah! Won’t they be surprised when they get the news? he says to himself with thoughts of his five children on his mind, then he waits until the minute hand of his watch shows three fifty-seven before pushing off the curb to continue painfully along his path.

  It’s two minutes to four by the time the old man’s destination comes into view, and he’s relieved to discover that everything looks as it should.

  Ahead of him, at the top of a short hill, lies a solid Georgian building that has changed so little since its inception that only the illuminated sign over the doorway would have startled an eighteenth-century costermonger or his mule. “Barclay’s Bank,” proclaims the sign, although the words are illegible to Joliffe through his rain-fogged spectacles as he parks his bicycle against the curb.

  Joliffe checks that the bank doors are still open before removing the trouser clips from his ankles and unhooking his backpack from the rear carrier. Then he gives his gun pocket a reassuring pat, straightens himself on the polished brass handrail and pulls himself up the short flight of stone steps.

  “You only just made it,” laughs the young assistant manager as he stands at the door with keys in his hand.

  “Thanks, mate,” mutters Joliffe, and he pauses momentarily to regain his breath before entering the old building.

  The door closes with a solid “clunk” behind Joliffe, and the teak floor echoes with his footfalls as he makes his way towards the polished mahogany counter. Only two of the tellers’ windows remain open, and the bevy of last-minute customers are punished for their tardiness by being forced to wait. But Joliffe is in no hurry, and he hovers for a few minutes at a rack of brochures promising lifelong financial stability to anyone who can afford it, while deciding which of the young clerks to approach.

  Kim Kramer, a puppy-faced blonde with a dozen rings through her eyebrows, easily wins out over the uncompromising Janice Smith, who, with her thick-rimmed glasses and screwed-back hair, appears to have practised looking like a bank clerk from birth.

  It
is five after four. The last-minute customers have been as anxious to escape as the staff, and Joliffe is on his own as he shuffles towards Kim.

  “Ah, my final customer of the week,” she says with relief as she puts on a broad smile, though her nose turns up at the strong odour of mentholated rub commingled with the wet-dog stink of a sodden raincoat. “And what I can do for you today, sir?” she asks, quickly bringing back the smile.

  Joliffe checks left and right, ensuring that the other clerks are busy cashing up and that the last of the customers have left. He wants no heroes, no interference, no one to wreck his moment, and he leans forward and places his sopping backpack on Kim’s desk, calmly stating, “I want you to put ten thousand pounds in here please, Miss.”

  “What?” questions Kim as her smile morphs into a look of puzzlement. She knows the drill — knows she should nudge the panic button with her knee, knows that as soon as she pulls a wad of bills from a special compartment in her money drawer she will trigger an alarm. But she hesitates — surely this toothless geriatric is pulling her leg.

  “Sorry?” she queries, still convinced that she has misheard the grandfatherly figure.

  “I’ve got a gun,” continues Joliffe, doing his very best to put on an “I-can-be-violent” face as he slowly pulls it from his pocket and draws her eyes to it. “But don’t worry. I won’t hurt you — not if you put ten thousand pounds in my bag.”

  Kim hits the alarm with a shaky knee, then opens her drawer and begins to count out the money. But she pauses, still questioning her senses, and looks up, desperately wanting to say, “Please don’t be silly. Just leave and I won’t tell anyone.” But Joliffe’s gun hand is shaking worse than her knee, and she’s too terrified to speak.

  “Hurry up. Hurry up,” urges the old man as he nervously eyes the other tellers. But if anyone knows what’s happening, they’re not reacting. However, as Kim slowly fills the bag, in accordance with the bank’s security policy a flurry of activity is taking place behind the scenes. The manager is on the phone to the police station, the safe is being locked, alarms are being rung at the bank’s head office, and a supervisor is heading towards the front door to provide the assistant manager with backup.

  “C’mon, luv. Get a move on,” pleads Joliffe, guessing that his time is running out, and Kim speeds up a fraction.

  “Sorry,” she mutters, emptying her drawer and handing him the bag. But she hangs on as he starts to take it and steels herself to look into his tired grey eyes and question, “Are you really sure you want to do this?”

  It’s a question that Joliffe has asked himself time and again over the past few days, and as he takes the bag, he seeks to reassure her. “Don’t worry. I’m going to bring it back, luv. I’m only borrowing it for a few days. And I’ll pay the interest.” Then he shoves the gun back in his pocket, pushes himself upright against the desk and hobbles towards the front door.

  Despite the bank’s policy of not interfering with armed robbers, the sight of a dishevelled renegade, apparently on the loose from a nursing home, shuffling his way out of the building with a bag of loot is so ludicrous that the two men at the door block Joliffe’s path to freedom.

  “Why don’t you just put down the bag, sir?” suggests the supervisor gently, stepping forward as if to take it. Joliffe doesn’t hesitate. He pulls the loaded pistol from his pocket and sticks it to his temple.

  “Open the door or I’ll kill myself.”

  “Don’t be silly, sir,” says the supervisor, uneasily backing off a notch.

  “I mean it,” continues Joliffe, releasing the safety catch. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Oh, come along, sir,” chides the assistant manager with a dry laugh, but Joliffe isn’t joking.

  “Open the door,” he shouts, cocking the trigger with a click that reverberates around the cavernous room with the force of a gunshot. Then he counts, “One… two…

  “Okay — okay,” says the supervisor, opening the door. “You go ahead.”

  “Armed robbery in progress” is the report that immediately electrifies the police airwaves, galvanizing every officer on duty into a state of alertness and sending a helicopter, six police cars and a vanload of heavies in body armour to the front line, while additional units are scrambling from across the city to provide backup.

  The sound of sirens startles Joliffe as he hobbles down the bank’s stone steps to his getaway bike. He hadn’t anticipated such an immediate hue and cry and is rattled as he straps his bag of winnings to the carrier.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” he mutters, angry with himself for his clumsiness. But he finally gets it attached, and lifts his leg over the crossbar to find the pedals. However, in his panic, he’s overlooked two crucial elements: the gun in his pocket is still cocked, and he’s forgotten to put on his bicycle clips.

  “Damn,” mumbles Joliffe, remembering the clips, but it’s too late. A police car, screeching out of an intersection behind him and weaving quickly through the busy traffic, forces him to take flight. With adrenaline juicing life into his aged legs, he kicks off from the curb and spins the pedals with such vigour that, by the time the police car skids to a halt at the bank, he is pumping his way out of sight over the top of the hill. With rasping breaths and thudding heart, Joliffe fights to keep the pedals turning, but his break for freedom is short-lived. As he crests the rise and starts his descent, the flashing lights of police cars emerging from the murk at the bottom of the hill tell him he’s trapped.

  He hits the brakes, but the rain-slick rubber pads skid uselessly around the rim, so he decides to let go. The pedals of his ancient bicycle are exhilarated by the sudden freedom and take on their own life, spinning and shrieking like delighted kids on a merry-go-round. Joliffe, too, is elated, and despite his fear he drops fifty years as he looks to the bottom of the hill and plans to evade capture by leaping the curb and detouring through a pedestrian walkway. But fate takes a hand: Joliffe’s flying chain grabs his flapping trouser leg and jams it into the cogwheel. The pedals stop with such jarring suddenness that he’s almost overthrown, but he hangs on and flies headlong down the steep slope, wobbling erratically, while he frantically tugs at his wedged leg.

  A couple of umbrella-wielding women step blindly onto a crosswalk in Joliffe’s path and he frantically screeches, “Out of the way! Out of the way!” as he tugs furiously at his jammed leg.

  The women leap back to the curb, but Joliffe has lost control and is heading into oncoming traffic, forcing drivers and pedestrians to clear a path. A speeding courier skids on the soaked roadway, ricochets his van off a bus and swerves into the path of an oncoming lorry. A woman police driver, screaming through the traffic with her siren, slams on her brakes and watches in horror as the truck veers across the road ahead of her.

  “Oh my God,” she breathes as the twenty-ton monster scythes through a central hurdle and barrels towards a crowded bus stop.

  With only seconds to react and nowhere to run, a dozen startled pedestrians stand transfixed like store dummies.

  Joliffe sees the disaster unfolding in front of him and gets a grip on his handlebars, but he’s still flying, and he slews past the truck and flies into the path of the police car. Behind him, pedestrians wake up and start to scatter, but the trucker finally wrests control, stands on his brakes and sideswipes half a dozen parked cars before solidly coming to rest against a concrete lamp standard.

  Meanwhile, the fleeing bank raider has crashed headlong onto the hood of the police car and is staring through the windshield at the astonished policewoman.

  As Constable Wendy Martin leaps from her car and takes a step towards the stricken man, the cocked pistol slips from Joliffe’s raincoat pocket and begins a slow glide down the hood. The crack of the shot when the gun hits the ground is smothered by the cacophony of sirens and the throb of the police helicopter hovering overhead, so much so that the woman police officer shares everyone’s surprise when her right leg suddenly caves under her and she falls heavily to the g
round.

  chapter thirteen

  David Bliss is pacing at Vancouver’s downtown police station. He’s anxious for members of the press to settle, and the conference to begin, when Peter Bryan gets through to him on Phillips’s cell phone with news of Maurice Joliffe’s escapade. It’s still morning on the Pacific coast, and still raining, but it’s six in the evening in soggy London, where the Friday rush hour is winding down and the snarl-up in Kensington High Road is gradually being straightened out.

  Despite the continuing rain, a crowd of rubber-neckers hang around as a tow truck hooks up the last of the smashed vehicles; while accident investigators take measurements and insurance adjusters scour the area searching for loopholes amongst the wreckage.

  Constable Wendy Martin is in the emergency room at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. She will recuperate, once the bullet has been removed from her thigh; however, the fate of Joliffe’s vintage bicycle is less certain. The mangled machine will probably end up as a curio in the force museum, though for now it sits in the evidence room at Kensington police station, together with the gun and the bag of stolen money.

  Maurice Joliffe is also something of a curio, and a parade of amused officers take it in turn to gawk at the hapless, patched-up villain while he sits in the interview room, not knowing whether to chuckle or cry, as he waits for the legal-aid lawyer.

  “Good news, Dave,” says Bryan, as Bliss prepares to support Trina’s anxiety-drained husband at the press conference. “We may have a breakthrough in the suicide cases.”

  “Oh. That’s good,” says Bliss absently, without admitting that since Daphne’s disappearance he has given little thought to the situation that had triggered the imbroglio.