Crazy Lady

by James Hawkins

  “Be careful what you say,” warns Daphne. “Maybe it was Mike who told someone.”

  “Not Mike,” replies Trina, shaking her head with absolute certainty, but she slowly puts the phone down. “Hey, let’s do this ourselves. Who needs the police?”

  chapter twelve

  Joseph Crispin Creston Jr., son of the great man himself, sits on his throne at the head of his boardroom table under the heraldic crest bearing a motto that translates loosely as, “We are one family under one God,” and he tries to focus on Dawes’ weekly financial update.

  “American chocolates are down again,” reports the accountant. “But our Californian division has a new lowcarb drink coming out next week.”

  “And Europe… Southeast Asia… Australia…” quizzes Creston one after another as he assimilates the state of his holdings and the health of his bank balance.

  “The Muslims have snatched another bunch of farmers in Ivory,” adds Mason, once Dawes has closed his ledger and left.

  “Anything more about Janet?” asks Creston.

  “Nothing, J.C.,” replies the lawyer with a shake of his head. “Look, according to our man in Abidjan they’re asking ten thousand a head.”

  “Pounds or dollars?”

  “Dollars — but I reckon they’d settle for a thousand.”

  “Forget it. You’ll just encourage them.”

  “But we ought to do something. If they keep this up we’ll lose half this year’s crop.”

  “So? Pull out. Start somewhere else.”

  “But these are our people…”

  “No, John,” says Creston, turning on his right-hand man. “They are not our people. They’re just damn lucky we buy their crops or they’d starve. Look, get hold of Craddock again. From what Peter Symmonds says that crazy Canadian woman seems pretty determined. Tell Craddock I want a one hundred percent guarantee that she won’t find Janet.”

  “But Janet won’t talk. Not after all this time.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if I can take that risk.”

  “Can you believe it,” shrieks Trina with her cap on backwards again as she emerges from a pizza parlour a couple of blocks from Clive Sampson’s house. “He even gave them his phone number.”

  “Amateur,” smiles Daphne.

  “They won’t take the order without a home phone number,” continues Trina, then she stops, asking, “You know what this means?”

  “That we can find out who he is,” guesses Daphne, but Trina is already ahead of her English associate.

  “Of course we can,” she says as she pulls out her cell-phone and calls directory inquiries. “But it also means he’s working alone. If he had a partner he wouldn’t have ordered. One of them would have just rushed in and paid cash.”

  “Unless he is very stupid…” Daphne is musing, when Trina shouts, “Rats!” and clicks off her cellphone.

  “Maybe he’s not so stupid,” she says, spitting, “Unlisted,” as she mentally rattles through her manual to the chapter on accessing discreet sources. “I’ve got it,” she trills after a few seconds and calls her homecare dispatcher. “Margaret,” she asks sweetly, “does your sister still work for the telephone people?”

  “I told you the police were useless,” says Trina five minutes later as they slowly cruise past Craddock’s tree-ringed suburban house.

  “True,” admits Daphne as she tries to peer beyond the greenery to see through the curtained windows. “But maybe we should call them now and tell them what we’ve got.”

  “You’re kidding, Daph,” says Trina, the smell of success lifting her voice. “I’m pretty sure they tipped this jerk off in the first place.”

  The sincerity of Craddock’s guarantee to Janet’s husband may have comforted the English executive, but it rang hollowly in Craddock’s own ears. The fact he pulled a major favour with his ex-colleague, Sergeant Dave Brougham, to find out where she was when she was at Trina’s house didn’t seem a big deal at the time, but now, with half the Vancouver Police on alert for the missing woman, he is coming to terms with the possibility that he has backed himself and his police informant into a corner, and what if Brougham decides to jump?

  “I bet that’s his car,” says Trina excitedly, eyeing Craddock’s dated Chevrolet Impala in the driveway. “I saw it parked down the road a couple of times near my place.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep Janet here,” suggests Daphne without considering the fact that they traced him so easily. “Let’s turn the tables and follow him.”

  “Great,” yelps Trina, pulling out her manual and looking up covert surveillance techniques. However, a few minutes later she is less enthusiastic. “It says here that we need to set up a static observation post and we need at least two cars.”

  “Look out,” says Daphne, spying Craddock’s bald head through the winterized foliage as he emerges from his front door, and Trina quickly hides her face under her manual.

  “Not that,” screeches Daphne snatching the book away. “We don’t want to give him ideas.”

  Craddock has no idea he’s under surveillance although it is certainly on his mind as he carefully checks the street. Then he spots Trina’s black Jetta parked a few hundred feet away in a no parking zone. “Oh fuck,” he mutters and ducks back into the house.

  “That’s torn it,” says Trina.

  “True,” says Daphne, “but he’s got a lot more to lose than us. He’s a wanted man.”

  Craddock picks up the phone and puts it down a dozen times as he races to come up with a plan to spirit Janet out of his garage, but with Trina and Daphne on his tail he’s out of his depth.

  “Trina,” says Daphne with her eyes on Craddock’s front door. “Maybe we should cover the back in case he does a runner.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “Sure,” says Daphne, stretching, ignoring the fact that she has never actually bothered with the formalities of a test as she slips behind the wheel. Ten minutes later she sighs in relief at the younger woman’s reappearance.

  “No back entrance,” Trina declares breathlessly as she slides back in. “He’s well and truly trapped.”

  “So are we,” points out Daphne, crossing her legs meaningfully.

  “’round the corner,” says Trina. “There’s a bunch of rhododendron bushes. I just went.”

  Time passes like a day on death row for Craddock as he checks and rechecks Trina’s car from behind his bedroom curtains, and he is not cheered by the knowledge that even a relatively short jail stretch can turn into a lengthy, or even terminal, nightmare for someone who has ever worn a police badge.

  The hours pass slower, much slower, for Janet, who, abandoned by her fretful captor, is sinking both physically and mentally as she lays motionless in the back of his van. But she has been here before: same situation, same silence, same isolation, same abuse — different abuser.

  “You have displeased the Lord,” Browning, her self-appointed saviour, said whenever she balked at participating in perverted and painful rituals apparently ordained by his version of the Bible. And while he and some of his devotees might be spiritually uplifted by sexual acts too taboo even for the Kama Sutra, Janet more often than not took isolation and meditation as a penance for her disobedience: a day, three days, a week — the punishment as arbitrary as Browning’s biblical interpretations.

  Possible punishment is also uppermost in Craddock’s thoughts as he sneaks another peek at the persistent duo camped out on his doorstep. Losing his PI licence is a certainty, though not the end of his world, whereas a conviction for abduction, bodily assault, and forcible confinement are not even on the same planet. “How the hell did I get into this?” he questions himself, but knows it was the money.

  Money is also on Joseph Creston’s mind as he and his cabal of cronies meet to discuss the growing crisis in Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa fields.

  “We could step up security,” suggests Mason. “Hire some heavyweight mercenaries from South Africa. They’re a dime a do
zen now.”

  But Creston is shaking his head. “Big picture, gentlemen,” he says. “Let’s look at the big picture. Chocolates have been declining per capita in relation to other commodities for almost a decade and relative prices have slid in response.”

  “Oversupply,” mutters Mason unnecessarily.

  “Quite. So let’s redress the balance. We don’t need more security. We need less.”

  “There could be all-out religious conflict, us against the Muslims,” warns Mason, but Creston shrugs it off.

  “Not us,” he says. “Anyway, it’s been happening for years, and most of these people aren’t really Christian. Shit, if I lived in a mud hut and scavenged for peanuts all my life, I’d believe the tooth fairy was God if you paid me.”

  “But the church gives them hope, J.C.,” says Dawes, surprised at Creston’s unusual irreverence. “We offer them a brighter future.”

  “Grow up. You spend more on shit-paper a day than most of them earn.”

  “It’s the market price, J.C. You said so yourself.”

  “Yes. And who sets the market? If the price gets too high we’ll pull out. No one else is going to buy it, and it’s not as though they can live on the stuff.”

  “Couldn’t we start paying a fair price?”

  “We could if the Americans did the same,” Creston explodes. “And that’s just about as likely as them giving Iraq back to Saddam.”

  Creston’s uncharacteristic flare-up scatters his pink-faced deputies, but Mason holds back.

  “This Janet thing is really getting to you isn’t it, J.C.,” the lawyer says tactfully once the room has cleared.

  “I never stopped loving her, you know. I just couldn’t trust her after what happened.”

  “And you couldn’t turn her in now? Get her some proper counselling?”

  Creston comes back to the boil. “I told you, I love her,” he snaps as he pours himself a scotch. “Any news from Canada?”

  “Nothing more from Craddock; I guess he has everything under control. Browning called just to confirm that he’s wiped all records of transactions —”

  Creston stops him with a wave of his glass. “It won’t make any difference, John. We’ve funnelled millions through that place over the years. If anyone digs deep enough they’ll find it. Somebody will catch on eventually.”

  “I’m amazed no one’s ever audited him,” agrees Mason, although he is well aware of Beautiful’s remoteness, both geographically and politically. “But we’re pretty fireproof: private company, no wussy-assed shareholders bleating about poor performances at the A.G.M. Plus, you happen to have a very good lawyer.”

  “Yes. Thanks,” replies Creston as the fiery drink mollifies him. “I’d say I owe you, but I happen to know what you charge.”

  Bliss has sunk and is forlornly wandering the darkened medieval laneways and deserted quays of St-Juan-sur-Mer in the hope of spotting Yolanda. His apartment walls keep crowding in on him, and his bed is as cold and uncomforting as a prison bench.

  The verdigris stained roofs of the Château Roger glint dully in the moonlight, reminding the neophyte historian and jilted lover of his task.

  “Eleven years,” he muses as he tries to find the masked prisoner’s island across the gloomy strait and seeks to infiltrate the masked man’s psyche while questioning whether he has as much stamina. But that was three hundred years ago, he reminds himself, wondering if in a less frenetic era such a gesture might have been easier to bear. “At least I’m free…” he begins, and then stops himself with an ironic chuckle. “I’m not free. I’ll never be free if she doesn’t come back. I’ll be wearing a mask for the rest of my life; shuffling through life like a prisoner. There has been a miscarriage of justice,” he cries across the dark abyss. “Yolanda is mine. I love her. I’ve always loved her. She loves me.”

  A warm light from the windows of L’Escale draws Bliss across the road from the promenade with the promise of a good night’s sleep, and as he orders the first of a long line of cognacs he pulls out his pad with both Louis XIV and Chief Superintendent Edwards in mind.

  Prince Ferdinand of Hungary listlessly haunted the hallways of Louis’ great palace at Versailles with a wan face as he contemplated a lonely future without his great love. How can I do as the king suggests ? he asked himself repeatedly. How can I prove my love without need of the sword or lance?

  The king, at cards with the Marquis de Dangeau in the Salon de la Guerre at the north end of the great gallery, spied the lovestruck prince and leaned conspiratorially into his opponent with sport in mind.

  “You are noted for your deftness of hand at the tables, Dangeau,” said the wily king. “What odds would you give that I can outwit that sad-faced fellow?”

  “Outwitting may be of little consequence if it has no profit in it,” replied the marquis.

  “Then I shall profit by it,” announced the king joyously. “A thousand livres says that I may persuade this down-hearted petit prince to build me the great château that I desire in Provençe — a château of elegance and grandeur befitting my state, a château which I have oft desired but which, I lament, my chancellor forbids for lack of riches.”

  “Then, should you win, you will have both the château and a thousand livres,” said Dangeau. “But what if you lose?”

  “You forget yourself, Dangeau,” said His Majesty leaning across the table with fire in his eyes.”It is not my practice to lose.”

  “Perhaps another cognac, monsieur?” inquires Angeline, seeing an empty glass.

  Bliss momentarily forgets that the waitress is not privy to his concerns as he adamantly replies, “I will not lose, Angeline. I will not lose.”

  Joseph Creston professes a love for his wife equal to Bliss’s love for Yolanda, despite the fact that the company chairman hasn’t seen Janet for more than forty years, and once Mason and the rest of the staff have left the office high above London’s Liverpool Station in the heart of the city he paces the deeply carpeted executive suite thinking how different life could have been.

  “I did everything for that damn woman,” he might fume bitterly, but what he did for Janet was provide for her as long as it suited his business, care for her as long as it fitted his timetable, and think of her when time permitted. And if questioned as to why he never divorced her or sought out another, he could always fall back on the Church. “Whosoever God joins together in holy matrimony,” he would recite haughtily, “let no man put asunder.”

  Trina and Daphne have no intention of waiting another forty years to rescue Janet Thurgood, although as the evening drags by without any sign of movement in Craddock’s dark house, they are beginning to wonder if they might not already have missed their chance.

  “Perhaps he climbed over the back,” suggests Daphne for the nth time, but Trina is skeptical.

  “No. He’s scared. I bet he’s creeping around like a cockroach hoping no one turns on the light. We could bust in and stomp him into the woodwork.”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies,” laughs Daphne, but Trina seems to have a plan.

  “OK,” she continues positively. “Let’s just flush him out.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d have some idea. Didn’t you train for this kind of thing?”

  “Not exactly,” says Daphne, although her cogs are spinning as she whips back through her wartime training days trying to come up with a similar scenario. After a few minutes recalling lectures about sabotage, explosives, and escape manoeuvres, she spends several more replaying a series of real-life incidences before shaking her head negatively. “The problem is that we need him to lead us to Janet. He won’t risk that as long as he thinks we’re following him.”

  “But if we don’t follow him we won’t know where she is,” explains Trina unnecessarily. “He’ll never go to her as long as we’re here. He’ll be checking every car, pulling U-turns, racing. We’ll never keep up and chances are he’ll just drive in a circle.”

&nb
sp; “Wait,” says Daphne with a remembrance from the past. “‘Always keep the enemy guessing,’ they said. ‘Never do the expected.’ We’ve got to out-think him, Trina, not out-race him. We know he’s stupid, so let’s give him some rope and wait for him to tie a granny knot.”

  “You’re the boss,” says Trina, starting the engine.

  “Oh… Oh!” exclaims Craddock seeing the Jetta’s lights flare. “What the hell are they playing at now?”

  “Home,” declares Daphne. “There’s more than one way to skin a rabbit.”

  “I was hoping for a nice piece of steak,” says Trina as they drive slowly past Craddock’s house, both staring fixedly ahead.

  “That’ll get to him,” says Daphne, laughing, as they reach the end of the road and Trina steps on the gas.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Bliss says to himself when he finally wakes, fuzzy-headed, and realizes that even his alcohol-driven dreams have solely featured Yolanda, and he phones Samantha.

  “I’m going to Paris for a while,” he tells his daughter. “I need to do some research in Versailles and the Louvre.”

  “You’re not running away are you?” she questions.

  “No,” he insists, thought he knows he is partially lying. “Look,” he protests vociferously, “you told me to script into my novel all the things I want in my life. Well I am. But this isn’t just about Yolanda anymore.”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Dad.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he carries on without listening. “But I really do need to spend time in Paris. Don’t worry, I’ll be back here in a couple of weeks.”

  Will I ever return? Bliss deliberates a couple of hours later as the speedy SNCF electric train, the luxurious Train Grand Vitesse, accelerates almost silently out of StJuan’s station while he stands at a window scanning the narrow streets as they whip past, still hoping for a glimpse of blonde hair, still wondering if the entire episode has been either a dream or a nightmare, still thinking that he might simply wake at his destination and find himself at Waterloo railway station on his way to a normal day at Scotland Yard.