Deadly Zeal

by Jean Chapman

  As they reached the stone wall some distance from the chapel, the low sound came again, strange, thin, like a person keening for a lost soul. ‘Glad you insisted on coming,’ Toby murmured appreciatively.

  Gee, so am I, Cannon thought, as the sound increased dramatically to something between the howl of a wolf and a banshee and the hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

  He followed Toby over the wall and as they began to pick their way between the long dead, his ears strained for any sound, any repeat of that awful cry, but the only noises now were those they made moving through the grasses.

  ‘So how do we go about this?’ Toby asked, shining his light all around the many old gravestones which made elongated dense shadows, confusing reality with imagination.

  ‘I would say you shout your dog’s name as loudly as you can,’ Cannon advised, ‘or whistle him if that’s how you usually call him.’

  Toby stood and gave a tootling double-note whistle, then they stood and listened. He turned and repeated the call in a different direction and again they listened. When he turned so his call went towards the chapel, they was a response. A single bark.

  ‘That’s Munch,’ Toby said and whistled again. Again the single bark.

  ‘He obviously can’t come to you,’ Cannon said. ‘Come on, shine your torch, let’s get off this humpy ground to a path.’

  The round pool of light Toby shone at their feet and the outline of the chapel spire just visible against the midnight sky was all they could see. Huge monumental stones and sarcophagi continually blocked their direct passage, but eventually Toby’s light fell on the pale gravel of a path.

  Toby whistled again, and again the bark and a keening whine, but it was much closer, more urgent, anxious. They hurried forward close under the ancient chapel wall, and here they realized were railed-in family vaults going back hundreds of years.

  Cannon started as the dog barked again; it was so close. Toby shone the light, and almost beneath their feet they saw there were steps down to a heavily railed crypt, and tied low and tight to the inside of the stout iron bars was a small white shape. The dog had freedom only to stand or sit.

  Toby swore and, passing the torch to Cannon, crouched as best he could on cramped steps and tried to free the dog. Talking to Munch all the time, he assured it that the bastard who had done this would suffer, and if only he could unknot the rope Munch’s ordeal would be over.

  ‘Let me,’ Cannon said, passing the torch back as Toby’s anger made him hasty and clumsy.

  It was not easy as the dampness of the night had swollen the rope since it had been tied, but bit by bit Cannon pulled the hemp freer, slacker from the thick ironwork. The moment it was done Cannon pushed his hands through the railing and lifted the dog up high enough for Toby to reach over and take him. To rid the dog of the rope, Toby undid its leather collar. Cannon took rope and collar and saw there was a label tied to it. He angled it into the beam of the torch. The writing was smudged with the rain and was in Norwegian.

  ‘Dod hommer,’ Cannon sounded out. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.

  Toby repeated the words in little more than a whisper. ‘Dod homme: death comes.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘But this is the same thing over again!’ Higham raged. ‘Our dogs were tied up to the stone garden urns, then shut in sheds, now your dog is found in a burial vault. Don’t you all see whoever this man is, he’s here, determined to … to …’

  To send you mad, Cannon silently supplied, and at the rate he and you are going he’ll succeed.

  ‘We can’t stay,’ Higham declared, ‘we’re only endangering my son, his wife, and …’ He paused to look at Karen, who had Munch on her lap. ‘May I tell Liz and John?’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Our coming grandchild.’

  Liz was the first to exclaim and congratulate the parents-to-be. Cannon followed and shook Toby’s hand.

  ‘So I intend we leave immediately,’ Higham went on.

  ‘For where?’ his wife asked.

  ‘For home!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where else?’

  ‘We came here because you wanted to be away from home,’ she argued. ‘We came to give Catherine a chance to expand her horizons. You’ve also brought Liz and John here away from their business for two weeks. Now you talk of going home.’

  ‘I refuse to let my family be a sitting target for this maniac,’ Higham stated loudly, ‘and do you doubt he knows where we are? So! Let’s hear someone else’s ideas.’

  ‘I want to see more of … Norway,’ Catherine said from the doorway, ‘and you’re shouting, Daddy.’

  Higham was at once full of contrition and tried to lead her towards a seat, but she resisted.

  ‘No … I’m … glad you woke me. My idea, my … great wish is that I want to stay … and go with Toby on his bus.’

  Had she said she wished to go on a mission to Mars she could not have caused Higham more concern. ‘On his bus? On his bus!’ he exclaimed. ‘For God’s sake! So where’s he supposed to be going on this bus?’

  ‘All over,’ Catherine said expansively, ‘and I can go with him. He says so.’

  ‘And while Toby is away I am staying here with Karen,’ Trude announced.

  ‘Oh!’ Higham now threw up his hands, glared at his son. ‘So this has been discussed?’

  ‘My job is taking me, with driver and bus, up to the extreme north next week, to Kirkenes. Then as we drive back south we have a list and will call at the schools and colleges that have requested the touring exhibition. We already have quite a demand, and Cathy would be invaluable to me.’

  ‘Next week?’ Higham said. ‘I’m not waiting here for a week. I’d like to get away, get Catherine away, tomorrow.’

  ‘Could I make a suggestion?’ Liz, who had been listening carefully, said quietly. ‘When John agreed to come I understood there might be an opportunity to sketch and paint.’

  ‘That … is what … I want to do,’ Cathy put in rather dramatically. ‘I want to be an artist.’

  There was a slight embarrassed pause before Liz went on. ‘So I looked at what Norway has to offer. What it does have is a very stylish ferry service running along the coasts and up many fjords from Bergen northwards.’ She smiled and nodded at Toby. ‘They say it is the most beautiful coastal voyage in the world. I would love to see part of that, as I am sure Cathy would.’

  ‘Look!’ Toby burst in with enthusiasm. ‘Liz, John, Cathy and Father could fly to Bergen tomorrow, catch the ferry and meet me in Kirkenes. Then Cathy can transfer to the bus, you two and Father could stay on the ferry for the return trip, and we could all meet up in Bergen before you fly home.’

  ‘Our return tickets are from Bergen,’ Higham said, adding doubtfully, ‘but not happy about this bus idea. Though the thought of getting away tomorrow would be very good.’

  ‘It would be better than staying here and looking over your shoulder all the time,’ Trude Higham urged.

  It was in the end agreed but only after it had been decided that Karen and Trude should take Munch and travel to Finland to stay with her parents rather than remain in Oslo. Toby immediately undertook to make all the travel arrangements, and Karen to telephone her parents.

  In the setting sun the quayside at Bergen was an artist’s delight. Lined with a long terrace of steeply gabled four-storey wooden buildings, each painted in different shades – white, cream, brown, orange, terracotta – and their ground floors converted into shops and cafes. Even Higham relaxed enough to wish they had more time there before the Hurtigruten ferry they were booked on arrived.

  ‘Perhaps when we come back,’ Cathy said as they arrived at the ferry’s terminal and saw their boat, more liner-like than ferry. She turned excitedly to her father, took and held his hand as they boarded and waited in reception to be directed to their cabins.

  Cannon’s mobile burbled as Liz was exclaiming over the canopied double bed, saying, ‘Toby said it was the better-class cabins tha
t were available at short notice.’

  ‘The only ones,’ Cannon replied, adding as he looked at his phone, ‘It’s Betterson.’

  There was no preamble from Betterson this time; he spoke briskly as if to a colleague. ‘We’ve ascertained Michael Bliss has a second home. On the coast, posh end of Skegness, a seafront first-floor apartment. We’ve looked around, made enquiries, got a search warrant.’

  ‘And?’ Cannon heard himself prompt the DI.

  ‘Spier’s prints are all over the place. I would say he’s been living there.’

  ‘Spier?’ Questions were multiplying in Cannon’s brain. ‘Living, or hiding out, in Bliss’s flat? He also hired a van in Bliss’s name and had the keys to the shop and jewellery cabinets.’

  ‘Yes,’ Betterson confirmed, ‘but we found one other thing of far more significance, far more incriminating than your suspicions about the professor’s name.’

  ‘More damning?’ Cannon found he was breathing faster. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense,’ he said.

  ‘In a closet in the bedroom we found the professor’s academic gown. One of the forensic boys noticed that there was a thread pulled. They took it away, and the thread you found in Riley’s dog’s teeth is an absolute match. Under a microscope the torn edges, well, there’s no doubt.’

  ‘So was Bliss actually wearing it at the time Riley was battered to death?’ Cannon tried to picture the scene. Then he remembered the road accident. The ‘great black bird’ that had caused the limousine in front of Higham’s to crash. Had that been someone wearing, or flourishing, this same black academic gown? ‘And why would he do that?’ he asked aloud.

  ‘We’ve a lot still to prove,’ Betterson said before delivering his final piece of information, ‘but I can tell you it was definitely Bliss who flew from Gatwick to Oslo, we have him on airport CCTV. The Norwegian police have been brought up to date.’

  ‘As you have about what’s been happening here, I presume,’ Cannon said.

  Betterson confirmed this and as the Nordsol ferry gave a loud departing blast on its siren, he asked with some curiosity, ‘Where are you?’

  The explanations given and the call ended, Liz and Cannon went on deck to watch as the ferry, using a combination of side and forward thrusters, moved slowly away from the quayside and made her way along the middle channel out and away from Bergen.

  Liz raised her gaze from the crowded properties on the quaysides and streets to the hills beyond, the green pastures, the wooded slopes, the higher peaks where snow shone bright white, golden-edged with dying sun. Cannon watched her affectionately and knew tomorrow would see her sketchbooks out. Meanwhile he leaned on the rail and fell to making a series of mental logic bubbles.

  One. Spier goes to Bliss’s van hire company and takes away a van. Two. Spier clears the shop of walking sticks.

  No, he stopped himself, I’m doing this from the wrong man’s point of view.

  One. Bliss arranges for Spier to pick up the van. Two. He gives Spier the shop keys.

  No, no, no. He scowled down at the waters swirling past the ship’s sides as they picked up speed. No, before that.

  One. Bliss takes Ford’s dog and ties it up in Spier’s mother’s garden. Two. With Spier thoroughly implicated in both murders, he offers him help in the form of a hidey-hole in his Skegness flat. Three. He tells Spier to fetch the hire van, gives him the shop keys, tells him as long as he clears the shop of all walking sticks, he can help himself to whatever he chooses, even gives him the keys to the jewellery display cases. Bliss, he concluded, had now reached the point where he did not care how much it all cost.

  Cannon growled quietly to himself. Perhaps Liz’s idea of bringing Higham on this ferry might be saving his life. He glanced over to her, then over to the scenery she was watching so avidly. Lights were appearing in houses, and along the roadways near the coast. Some specks of brightness looked incredibly high and inaccessible, as unreachable as Cannon found understanding what was motivating Michael Bliss, this seemingly mild academic.

  Cannon had known him best as the most valuable member of the quiz team. A quiet man who, it seemed to Cannon, spoke when spoken to, listened a lot, dropped in the odd sagacious remark. A pleasure to have in the bar.

  First he needed to be sure whether in fact Michael Bliss was Professor Michael Heaven, Toby’s former university tutor. Had something Toby told his tutor about his father triggered some vehement hatred to the point of murder? Perhaps what he needed to know was far more about Professor Heaven’s background. Betterson said he was doing this but Cannon itched to be on the spot doing these enquiries himself. He promised himself he would find out – sooner or later he would uncover the truth. He would fully understand.

  ‘Time to go below, I think,’ Liz said, but they stood on at the rail, and she asked, ‘So what have you concluded?’

  He was about to deny even thinking about the case but as she raised her eyebrows at him, he said, ‘I need to know all about Toby Higham’s relationship with his university tutor, Professor Michael Heaven.’

  Rather against his will, he found himself explaining the two names and the porter’s laugh.

  ‘But didn’t Toby ever meet Professor Bliss when he was visiting his parents?’ she asked.

  ‘I got the impression the only person Toby ever got to know was Paul because of his painting,’ Cannon said, feeling that he had underestimated Liz when he had expected her to ridicule his idea. ‘Toby certainly never came to the pub.’

  ‘No,’ Liz agreed.

  ‘I have Betterson looking into the professor’s background,’ he mused.

  ‘Then isn’t that all you can do?’ she asked, adding, ‘Shall we go in, it’s getting chilly.’

  Once back in their cabin he sat on the side of their bed wondering whether he should phone Toby, see if there might be more he could tell him. He glanced at his watch. He shook his head; too late for a casual call.

  ‘Why the head shake?’ Liz asked as she stood before him, already in that ridiculous nightshirt, embroidered with a baby bear cuddling a toy bear, surrounded by stars and a new moon way up on her shoulder.

  ‘It can wait,’ he said. ‘I love you.’

  ‘You mean there’s nothing you can do until morning,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘It can wait,’ he repeated, ‘and I do love you, more than you’ll ever know.’

  ‘And I love you,’ she said, going to him, her voice very low with a threat of a tear as she added, ‘And I do know.’

  Gently the two of them kissed, slowly falling back on to the double bed in their superior cabin.

  Chapter 18

  The Nordsol made two stops in the night, and Cannon was awake for both of them. He slipped from their bed, curious to watch the procedure of docking and loading in the night-time.

  The first stop was Måløy, which seemed a sizeable place. He remembered reading that Rolls-Royce Marine had interests there. It was no doubt a busy port in the daytime but not much was happening at half past four in the morning.

  The only lights were those mounted high on the sides of the warehouses and reflected on the black waters in glittering, shortening lines as the distance between ship and quay diminished. Three or four men moved about their work, catching ropes thrown from the ship, pulling in the heavy hawsers attached to them, heaving them up and over the mooring bollards.

  The ship’s huge freight doors were lowered down to the quay. Three cars immediately emerged from the shadows of the buildings and drove aboard. A forklift truck, loaded with a mountain of wooden crates, came from the lighted interior of one of the warehouses and was driven into the ship’s cargo hold by a separate ramp.

  It was slick, efficient and soon accomplished. The ramps were immediately raised, the mooring ropes released, and the ferry resumed its journey.

  Cannon was on deck when they docked at Torvik at half past seven; this was a much smaller but very picturesque port.

  He watched a man walk ashore; he wore a black fleece with ‘
Crew’ in large yellow letters on the back. He went across to the open door of an office and came out carrying a very large black portfolio, which he brought on board. This seemed the only business they had in Torvik that morning. No passengers and no cars or cargo.

  He was at the rail for a more definite reason when they docked at Ålesund. He knew from the departure boards at Oslo that there were flights from Oslo to Ålesund. If Bliss had found out where they were, it was in theory possible he could have flown to Ålesund to join the ship there – and continue his reign of terror.

  Cannon stayed at the rail until they were ready to sail. He watched a family party saying goodbye to an elderly couple.

  ‘Goodbye!’ they called as they walked up the gangway. The two children on the quay were in tears but waving energetically. ‘See you at Christmas,’ the old man called to them.

  ‘I love you, Gramps!’ one of the children shouted back.

  Cannon cleared his throat, scowling at a threatened surge of emotion.

  He had left Liz and Cathy on deck sketching and Higham installed with his iPad and a novel in the panoramic lounge. He decided before he rejoined them he would explore a bit more of the Nordsol.

  Cannon started by going to the shop. Here he bought a lanyard to hang his plastic cabin card on. This, he was told, had to be zapped if he left the ship at any point, and when he re-boarded. ‘That way we know who has gone ashore and who has come back,’ the girl in the shop told him with a friendly smile.

  ‘What happens if someone doesn’t come back?’ Cannon asked.

  ‘The captain could delay his ship for a little time but these ferries run on a very strict timetable; if a passenger misses the ship it is up to him or her to make their way to the next port and re-board there. We take no responsibility for missing passengers.’

  Thinking of Higham, Cannon felt this was an unfortunate way of putting things, but knew what she meant.

  He made his way next to the cafeteria. This he found was a twenty-four hour service, which provided everything from snacks to hot meals for short-distance travellers going from port to port. He served himself with a coffee and sat sipping it, listening to the comings and goings of passengers.