Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “I’d like to know something about you before you …” she starts, then stops. “Sorry,” she says. “But I’ve never done this before … well, actually that’s not quite true. I have sort of done it once before. Why am I telling you this? You can’t hear me, can you? It’s just that they didn’t really give me enough information. It’s like an improv stage show I did in Los Angeles at some downbeat backstreet place. ‘Be natural — be yourself,’ they said and pushed me on stage — no scenery, no props, nothing. I just froze. I suppose I’ve always been used to having a script. So what will I say when people ask me about you?”

  Isabel stops and tries to get a read on Daphne from her face. The violet bruises are turning black under the parchment skin, like India ink bleeding through airmail paper, and Isabel reaches out with a hand that, too, is showing the scars of age.

  “‘Was she a good mother?’ people will ask,” carries on Isabel as she tenderly strokes Daphne’s face and tries to connect with the woman inside. “And I won’t know what to say.”

  “Mother,” sighs Trina, as Winifred brazenly stuffs the antique brass counter bell from the front desk of the Mitre into her handbag. “Please put it back.”

  “What, dear?”

  “Sorry,” says Trina turning to Imelda, the Latvian exchange clerk, after she has quit in a brief tug-of-war with her mother. “You’ll have to charge me for it. Just put it on my bill.”

  “Madam, it is zhe hotel bell,” croaks the young girl in astonishment, but Trina sloughs it off.

  “It was old. Time you had a new one.”

  “But, madam …” Imelda is still calling as Trina drags her mother to the car park and straps her in the back seat of the hire car.

  “Are we going to El Camino?” asks Winifred while Trina scans the index of her private investigator’s manual for the chapter on missing persons in preparation for her search for Daphne.

  “Only if you give the bell back,” says the wannabe private eye as she spots the fierce-faced manager pounding in their direction.

  “Identify precisely who is missing by compiling a subject profile,” Trina reads aloud, once the manager has left, and she begins to reel off a list of requirements: “Description; disabilities; deformities; name; birthdate; sexual orientation; marital status …” Then she pauses. “This is no good. It’ll take forever.”

  “Are we there yet?” inquiries Winifred from the back seat.

  “Won’t be long, Mum,” replies the young Canadian as she sets off for Daphne’s house to see if she can pick up a track from there.

  The trail of surveillance tapes has led David Bliss and his son-in-law to a quarter-mile stretch of urbanity where a growing sprawl of industrial units have spread like concrete fungi across a deer park that once backed onto the red brick Victorian terraces.

  “I forgot to ask,” says Bliss as he and Peter Bryan slowly cruise an area of welding shops and industrial bakers. “Is everything all right, baby-wise?”

  “Fine, Dave. No problems at all.”

  “Problems,” muses Bliss to himself, and fiercely focuses on passing factories to avoid listing a catalogue of crises caused by his daughter when she was a baby.

  “Although Samantha is beginning to worry that she might not be able to cope,” Bryan is saying as Bliss concentrates on overflowing staff car parks and jammed side streets with the growing feeling that, unless God is on their side, they will never find the truck.

  “All new parents worry about that,” answers Bliss in a reassuring tone, and he smiles inwardly in memory of the fragile young life that lay in his arms only yesterday, and who today is expecting her own baby — his grandchild.

  “So … what’s happening with Daisy?” inquires Bryan as they slowly tour row upon row of resting automobiles looking for one that sticks out.

  “I’ve had so much on my plate,” says Bliss, conveniently excusing himself for not dropping everything to pursue the woman he calls fiancée. “But I’ve spoken to her a couple of times.”

  The conversations have been as torturous as twentieth-century transatlantic telephone calls. “You go.” “No, you go.” “No, it’s your turn,” they bickered in between periods of silence, and then they echoed each other. “I’m okay. And you?” “I’m okay.” “The weather’s good.” “It’s good here, too.” Bliss is still signing off with, “I love you,” but whatever has come between them is a festering sore that won’t heal, and he would say “Just tell me the truth and get it over with” if he didn’t already know how much suffering that would cause him.

  “You must understand how hard this is for me,” Isabel Semaurino is saying as she talks to herself in Daphne’s darkened room. “I wasn’t prepared for this. I thought you’d be dead already. They didn’t tell me … I guess they didn’t know.”

  “Is everything all right, miss?” asks Brenda, Amelia Brimble’s replacement, as she puts her head around the door. “How is the old duck?”

  “Still asleep.”

  “You can take a break and get some tea if you want,” says Brenda as she clatters in with a stand for an intravenous drip. “The nurse is coming to put a tube in to stop her getting dehydrated.”

  “All right,” says Isabel, grateful to be given direction, grateful to be back on the script. Exit stage left, she muses internally as she gives Daphne’s hand a squeeze and rehearses her lines one more time. “Bye, Mother. I’ll come back later.”

  “Mother,” she mouths, recalling the woman who authored and directed her life as she makes her way down the stairs. Do this; Do that; Come here; Go there; Don’t do that … Pushed and shoved into piano and violin, singing and ballet — squeezed into a tutu and crammed into pointes against her will; shouted at and slapped when she outgrew her dancing shoes.

  “She’s just too tall and gawky to be a ballerina,” Mrs. Fairweather, her teacher, finally admitted — something she would have said after the first lesson if she could have afforded to.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose, Mum,” the fifteen-year-old cried, but she was already being thrust in a different direction.

  “Never mind, Isabel, dear. There’s plenty of tall women in Hollywood.”

  Stagecraft, elocution, and deportment — years of auditions and humiliations, but she made it to Los Angeles eventually: a few walk-ons; endless propositions; even a couple of lines off-camera to Meryl Streep in the wilds of Africa. At least, Meryl Streep was in Africa — on location on the plains of the Serengeti amongst herds of wildebeest and elephants. Isabel Semaurino, a.k.a. Devonia Dressler, was on a sterile Foley stage in the back lot of an L.A. studio.

  Patrick Davenport’s door is closed as Isabel slides out to sign back into the Mitre for a few days, and she doesn’t hear Hilda Fitzgerald’s derisive laughter as her brother attempts to censure her.

  “Christ, you’re such a drip. What’r’ya gonna do. Fire me?” mocks Hilda. “For God’s sake, Pat. Somebody has to wear the f’kin trousers around here.”

  “This Canadian woman reckons she’s some kind of detective.”

  “So. What can she do? The old baggage fell over and hit her face — big deal. The old crumblies are always on their bums —”

  “No,” cuts in Davenport, although he lacks conviction as he tries to explain that it is Daphne Lovelace who is supposedly a detective.

  “Yeah. And I’m the queen of f’kin Sheba,” laughs Fitzgerald as she lets herself out and slams the door.

  Daphne’s front door still bears the shoulder marks of Anne McGregor’s driver when Trina Button arrives with her mother in tow.

  “Sorry, luv,” says the carpenter brought in by the police. “I don’t know nuvving. Maybe the neighbours …”

  “They’ve locked her up again,” yells Misty Jenkins above the baying of the pit bulls as soon as Trina inquires. “And not before time. She wuz a damn nuisance.”

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” says Trina, once she has processed the information and decided that she would have visited anyway had she known of her friend�
�s plight.

  Misty tosses her head. “So?”

  “Nothing,” says Trina guilelessly. “I just remember an elderly couple …”

  “That’s right,” Misty steps in quickly. “Dad’s brother — Uncle Phil — and Aunt Margaret. He died a month or so ago and they didn’t have no kids so dad got the place.”

  “And gave it to you?”

  “Well, we got kicked out of our other place ’cos of the dogs.”

  “Dangerous Dogs — 24 Hr. Guard,” reads the oversize warning sign on the closed gate of an industrial compound, bringing Bliss and Bryan to a halt in their search.

  “Eyes,” cautions Peter Bryan nodding to several motorized surveillance cameras, perched atop masts, that are swivelling in their direction.

  “Well, this isn’t another fruitcake factory, that’s for sure,” says Bliss as he spells out the visible security measures: “Retinal scan entry system; triple-mesh, fifteen-foot fence with razor wire topping; reinforced concrete anti-blast berms; high-intensity halogen spots and floods.”

  “He doesn’t look very friendly,” warns Bryan as a uniformed gorilla emerges from the main building and is dragged by his Doberman towards the gates.

  The sign over the retinal scanner reads, “Continental and International Imports,” and Peter Bryan jots down the telephone number.

  “We could pull rank,” suggests Bliss, but the approaching primate doesn’t look as though he’s likely to do more than grunt, so they take off and leave him scratching his dog’s ears.

  “Leave a message,” echoes Bliss once he has called the number, but his cellphone buzzes the moment he’s cut the recording off.

  “It’s nearly four-thirty, Bliss,” steams Michael Edwards.

  “Shit,” mutters Bliss under his breath. “Just on my way, sir. Ten minutes.”

  “I just want a few minutes with her, that’s all,” explains Trina to Patrick Davenport, but the manager is holding up the front door post and shows no sign of bending.

  “The doctor’s examining her. In any case, she wouldn’t know you. I’m afraid she’s not doing very well.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well,” sighs Davenport. “The Good Lord wants to see us all eventually.”

  “Look here,” says Trina as she plants herself on one leg and takes up the vrksasana tree position, “I am a Canadian medical professional and I want to see her right now.”

  “I thought you said you were a detective.”

  “I happen to be a nurse as well,” she fiercely claims, without admitting that most of her time is spent mopping up vomit and changing colostomy bags for Canadian wrinklies. “So I am perfectly capable of deciding her condition for myself. This isn’t a prison, is it?”

  “Sorry,” says Davenport starting to close the door. “Anyway, her daughter’s with her.”

  “She doesn’t have a daughter …” Trina is saying as the lock clunks firmly into place.

  “We could move her to the hospital,” explains Geoffrey Williamson to Isabel Semaurino as they talk over Daphne’s lifeless form. “But she’s probably better off here at the moment. Although, as things progress, we might have to introduce a feeding tube.”

  “Will that hurt?”

  Williamson gives her a straightforward look, saying, “It’s good that you’re here, Mrs. Semaurino, because we will have to make some very difficult decisions in the next little while.”

  “I understand,” says Isabel, although she feels herself getting off script again and reaches out to trace a finger over Daphne’s face. “What happened?” she questions, gently stroking the bruise.

  “Easily explained,” says Williamson as he lets himself out. “She probably fell when she was running away.”

  Daphne is still falling — deeper and deeper inside her mind — as she wills herself to stay out of the light. Michael Kent is with her, begging her to let him take the rap. “We both tell them you knew nothing, all right,” he whispers through shattered teeth in the darkness. “You were just a passenger — a friend. You knew nothing.”

  “But they won’t let me go.”

  “Yes, they will,” he insists as they huddle together on the stone floor of the old prison. “They’ll let you go so they can track you to find out who you report to.”

  “Mother … Mother …” calls a voice from outside, but Daphne shuts down right away, knowing it’s a trick. “They might try to trick you,” Kent carries on in the blackness. “They’ll tell you I pointed the finger at you. They’ll mess up your mind. Don’t believe them — everything they tell you will be lies.”

  “Daphne, can you hear me?”

  “But what about you?”

  “Save yourself. It’s too late to worry about me.”

  “Mother …” Isabel tries again, squeezing Daphne’s hand and chattering into space. “I really would like you to know something about me before you go.”

  Daphne is still in Prague, trussed together with the man she loves, and she would rather die than live with the torment of his torture.

  “I’ve got two children,” Isabel is saying, but Daphne won’t hear as she blots out all the pain — past and present — and wills herself to sleep. “They’re grown-ups now, of course. Luigi and Maria — they’re sort of everyday spaghetti names in Italy — did I tell you that’s where I live, in Tuscany? Anyway, that’s the problem with having an Italian husband. They have this tradition about naming kids after grandparents. ‘Think I’m going to call my kids Annunziata or Pancrazio and you’ve got another think coming,’ I said to Marco — that’s my husband, Marco. He’s okay. Well, he was okay. Real machismo kinda guy — tight leather pants, hairy chest, and a way with words.” She pauses with sweet memories that sour almost as fast as Marco. “Of course, he’s Italian, so it turned out that I wasn’t the only one he was talking to … But we sorted it out eventually.”

  Daphne’s dark tunnel suddenly has a dim light at the end. She sees it coming and quickly turns back.

  “Mother. Mother?” calls Isabel earnestly, sensing a slight shift in Daphne’s aura, but Daphne has gone again.

  “It seems so funny calling you mother considering we’ve never really met,” Isabel carries on once the air has stilled. “Where was I? Oh, Marco. Well he thought he could sing — like I said, he’s Italian. He thought he was Mario Lanza until Elvis came along. Of course he’s old now. Italian men do that — they’re twenty-one from the time that they’re ten until they’re about fifty-nine, then wallop, they suddenly realize that their hair and teeth are going and they flop into a chair in front of the television, prop themselves up with grappa and pasta, and wait to die.”

  Anne McGregor is on her way to the front door in civvies as Trina Button steams in demanding to see Ted Donaldson.

  “He’s gone, madam,” explains the duty constable.

  That’s not good enough for Trina. “Get him back immediately,” she demands. “Someone is killing my partner.”

  “Are you talking murder?” asks McGregor as her shoes squeak to a halt on the polished tile floor.

  “Excuse me,” says Trina, edging McGregor aside. “I was talking to this nice young man.”

  “I’m the new superintendent,” insists McGregor. “So please talk to me. Now what do you mean — murder?”

  Trina’s complaint is convoluted by the fact that she continually runs back and forth to the window to make sure Winifred hasn’t escaped from the car, and McGregor tires. “Wait a minute,” says the superintendent, pulling Trina to a stop. “The only facts that you have offered me are that Mr. Davenport won’t let you see Miss Lovelace. Everything else is pure speculation.”

  “Yes … No … Well, it’s a matter of intuition,” insists Trina. “It’s what differentiates a good detective from a bad one.”

  “How would you know that?” asks McGregor, beginning to wish that she had kept walking.

  Trina senses the skepticism and decides it is time to draw upon her inner strengths, so she twines one leg around the oth
er and her right arm around her left, in the eagle pose, and meditates for a moment.

  “What on earth …?”

  “The garudasana pose!” exclaims Trina loftily, and then, filled with the confidence of an eagle, she explains, “I am a Canadian law enforcement professional, and Miss Lovelace is my associate.”

  “What?” scoffs Anne McGregor.

  “Excuse me, madam,” breaks in the duty constable as he spots Winifred out of the window. “The lady that was in your car seems to be heading towards the cathedral across the park.”

  “Oh, Mother,” sighs Trina, but she keeps her pose — at Winifred’s present speed she will arrive just in time for morning communion.

  “She does have the O.B.E. you know,” says Trina switching back to Anne McGregor.

  “Your mother?”

  “No. Daphne Lovelace. She solved the Creston murders last year, and then there was the big drug bust at Thraxton Manor —”

  “Wait a minute,” cuts in McGregor. “I remember the Creston case. A Scotland Yard man solved that.”

  “Chief Inspector Bliss,” agrees Trina. “But call him and ask who really solved it. He’ll tell you. It was me and Daphne Lovelace.”

  “I haven’t got his number —” starts McGregor as an excuse, but Trina has.

  “Trina. I’m in a meeting,” groans Bliss as Edwards pulls a nasty face.

  “David. You’ve got to help. They’re killing Daphne.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Trina …” he is complaining as McGregor takes the phone.

  “Chief Inspector. It’s Anne McGregor,” she says, and she waits for an intonation of recognition before asking, “Just put my mind at rest. Did Miss Lovelace solve the Creston murder cases last year?”

  Trina folds her arms smugly as the superintendent’s face reddens.

  “Oh … Thank you, I had absolutely no idea.” McGregor is saying a minute later when she has heard how Daphne nailed the killers after discovering a baby’s body in a monkey’s grave, while at the other end Michael Edwards is marching up and down in front of Bliss, spitting, “Chief Inspector. Would you please turn that f’kin thing off.”