by Jean Chapman
‘Cathy’s promised to phone me with any kind of news of her father,’ Liz said.
‘And I must phone Forstmann,’ Cannon was saying just as two large succulent slabs of ribs in their spicy aromatic sauce arrived, with bowls of fries, salads and breads. He swallowed. ‘You start,’ he said, rising to go outside to use his mobile. ‘I’ll be back.’
The restaurant and hotel were near to the docks and the nearby streets were busy. He walked to a quieter corner and as he waited for an answer watched the many fishing vessels moored up, their crews busy offloading their catches of king crab and cod, or cleaning the decks, while smaller craft were coming and going all the time. A real maritime community, sea in their blood. Cannon was thinking of the accountant, Midvinter, and his beloved boat, of the Viking panels in Christofferson Huset, as Forstmann answered.
‘And we’ve got a positive lead,’ Forstmann said after hearing what Cannon had to say. ‘A nurse saw Bliss leaving the hospital, noticed him because she thought he was awaiting attention, but then was sure he left without seeing anyone. He took a taxi. We’ve just traced this driver and he’s reported taking a passenger to Hammerfest, that’s a six-hour ride.’
‘So he can only just have reached …’ Cannon began. ‘But why Hammerfest?’
‘It has one of Norway’s largest airports,’ Forstmann said, ‘but we’ve had all airports on alert since the beginning so—’ He was interrupted urgently at his end. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.
Cannon went back to join Liz, who signalled to the waiter as he returned. His meal had been taken away to be kept hot.
‘So what did he say?’ she asked.
‘He’s following a lead; he believes Bliss took a taxi to Hammerfest.’
‘So he really did get out of the immediate area.’
‘Looks like it,’ Cannon said as he sliced meat from the end of his ribs, ate that, then dissected the first rib and picked it up with his fingers.
‘There’s an airport there but …’ Cannon wondered if Bliss could have hoped to leave the country that way. It seemed a risk kind of not quite up to Bliss’s standards – with everywhere being watched it was hardly clever.
Methodically he ate his way through his meal, though with this one thing niggling at his mind he hardly seemed to notice now what he put into his mouth.
‘That was different,’ Liz said as he reached for the glass of wine he had ordered.
‘What was?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’ve known you have your epiphany moments in the middle of a crowded office at the Met, behind the bar at The Trap with customers waiting, but never while eating a meal before.’
If it was an attempt at light-heartedness it did not work. He stared hard at her, or through her, she was not sure which. ‘Well, I’ve had no ideas,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll get the bill.’
As they went back to the hotel, the lights had gone on all around the shore and hills. Cannon walked past the entrance and Liz followed as he strode along the walkway, where the sofas were, to the end. Liz moved to the rail and looked at the upside-down mirror images of tiered lights in the water. Cannon stood back, motionless, very straight, hands by his sides – and, she guessed, seeing nothing at all. She shook her head, waited, and hoped this withdrawal would result in a sudden leap of understanding, as it had so often in the past.
‘Bloodaxe and Odin,’ he murmured, then repeated louder, ‘Bloodaxe and Odin. What a fool!’
‘You mean me, you or Forstmann?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, coming back to the now, where and who he was with. ‘Yes, me mostly. Look,’ he demanded of her, ‘accept that every move Bliss has made has been planned. Right! His escape from the Nordsol to go to his house.’ Cannon’s voice was urgent, full of conviction now. ‘Hammerfest must be halfway to Harstad and Christofferson Huset, yes, that’s right.’ His thoughts were developing as he talked. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I meet Bliss’s old friend who tells me of the exciting times they had sailing. Then in the house I see the whole hallway painted with panels of Viking invaders and Norse gods.’ He put his hands to his head. ‘And it takes me all this time to realize that Bliss has arranged a passage by sea from Hammerfest. The roads and the airport, forget those, he’ll have hired a boat, probably belonging to some seafaring family he knew years ago. I bet even now they’re heading across the North Sea towards … well, home!’
‘Thinking Higham is dead?’ Liz queried.
‘Well, knowing he’s in intensive care, and Bliss would know if he was going to stay free he had to move on quickly – he had to stick to his escape plan. The one thing he had not reckoned on was Forstmann giving Higham his own highly efficient police body armour.’
‘With an idea like this I think you need to see Forstmann face to face,’ Liz said.
He turned to look at her, as if seeing her properly for the first time since the driver had come to their table. She felt he weighed both her value and that of her suggestion.
‘You’re right,’ he said and led the way back to the entrance doors of the hotel in time to see the minibus driver receiving delivery of the hired vehicle. The manager also stood there.
‘I need urgently to go to police headquarters,’ he said to both men. ‘Will you give permission for your driver to take me?’
‘There’s no time to lose,’ Liz added, feeling Cannon’s eyes on her as she made the clichéd remark.
The manager’s mouth opened and closed, then he flung up his hands, exclaiming, ‘Feel free, as they say!’ Shaking his head, muttering something in Norwegian, he strode back into his hotel.
‘I think that means yes,’ Cannon said.
Liz was pleased to see the driver grin.
Cannon was not grinning when he came back from seeing Forstmann. ‘He’s very sceptical about the idea,’ he told Liz. ‘He said all coastlines and shipping were too heavily supervised these days for it to be possible. I pointed out a few incidents I knew off the top of my head – illegal immigrants, smuggling, illegal fish catches being landed.
‘He said it would have to be a small vessel to escape detection and wondered why anyone would try such a thing. I said he was obviously not a sailor himself, and the Vikings did it with oars and sails, which was probably a mistake and confirmed me as a nutcase.’
‘So …’
‘Oh, I still think he’ll do a spot of checking, but I’m going to ring Betterson.’
Betterson, who at one time had been up to his shoulders in surf to catch illegal immigrants and very seasick to apprehend smugglers, was not at all sceptical.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘whatever the outcome with Higham, he has his son and daughter with him, and I could do with you two back here. You both know Bliss better than anyone and more importantly you have the ear of the locals. If Bliss does make landfall anywhere in this area, that’s what I shall need. What do you say?’
‘I think it will be more what Forstmann says, and also how comfortable Toby Higham and his sister are with the idea,’ Cannon said soberly.
Chapter 29
They caught a plane from Hammerfest to Oslo the next morning and from there a midday flight back to the UK. They were both weary, emotionally drained, and crowded airports and planes did not encourage anything much other than necessary mundane remarks. Half between waking and dozing on the second flight, Cannon, unable to leave the problem alone, muttered, ‘Back on his own territory.’
‘Why Betterson wants you there,’ Liz had whispered in reply. Her exhaustion had more to do with the memory of parting from Cathy. The aching strength of the girl clinging desperately to her, Toby eventually pulling her gently away. A tender, concerned brother taking her into his own arms, reassuring her that their mother was on her way from Finland and would soon be with them. Liz had at last parted with the young woman with the promise that when she was back home they would both go to her friend and painting mentor, Paul Jefferson, for lessons. ‘He’s very good,’ Toby had confirmed. Liz had truthfully added that she had meant to d
o this for a long time; the two of them would do it together.
She moved restlessly, looked beyond Cannon out of the plane window; it had seemed very little to offer when the girl’s father lay so desperately ill. It had been all she could think of – but she would not forget.
If the journey up to that point had been tiring it was nothing to the frustrations that built up after they had picked up Liz’s car and begun their motorway journey back from Gatwick. After four hours of intermittent moving, crawling, coming to a stop at incoming traffic junctions, they pulled into a service station and Liz insisted on taking over the driving.
‘I’ve rested up to now, now you must. Once we get home, you know there’ll be so much to do taking up the reins again.’
‘Taken us longer than the two flights put together already,’ Cannon said and climbed gratefully into the passenger’s seat for the rest of the journey.
Evening opening time was drawing to a close when they drove into the car park, and as their lights swung in across the front of the public house they both noted the neatness of the flower tubs, and that the one demolished by Spier’s mother had been replaced and reset.
‘Back or front?’ Cannon asked.
‘Front, let’s do it properly,’ Liz said, adding, ‘The back’s probably securely bolted if I know anything about Alamat’s sense of duty.’
It was strange walking in through the front doors like two ordinary customers, and for several seconds they stared at the woman behind the counter as she greeted them with a smile and in stilted English asked, ‘What may I serve you with?’ Then her mouth and eyes opened wide. She looked from one to the other, threw up her arms and ran immediately to the far end of the counter and called through to the kitchen. ‘Alamat! Come quickly!’
Their Croatian assistant came hurrying through in his cooking whites, his face alarmed by the urgency of Bozena’s call, then his face changed, beaming like that of his girlfriend.
He raised both arms and exclaimed, ‘Mr Cannon, Misses Liz, welcome, welcome home.’
After the handshakes and the welcome, Cannon looked around his bar and asked, ‘Where is everyone? Hoskins?’
‘We have good few eating earlier, but I think …’ Alamat cocked a rueful head, ‘we are not so popular with the locals, we do not have the same small talk, I think, they come but go home early. You will find bar takings down, but meals up, up!’ He grinned, putting his arm around Bozena. ‘We are a good team.’
Cannon nodded but Bozena cut in before he could say more.
‘You have had long journey. Alamat will bring meal upstairs to you, then you go to your bed. We sort everything out tomorrow – yes?’
‘That sounds good,’ Cannon said, ‘but what about Hoskins? The bar doesn’t look right without him.’
‘He is very busy gamekeeping for Mr Higham’s estate, you understand,’ Alamat said.
‘He says it is the time of the ducks,’ Bozena said, ‘and he will bring some.’
Cannon opened his mouth to disapprove of the very idea, but that too could wait until the morning.
Liz, revived by a good night’s sleep in her own bed, was downstairs first the next morning, intending to cook John a good breakfast before any business talk began. She could be sure Alamat would have her fridge and freezers well stocked. Instead, once she reached the bar she found herself looking around, first at her copperware and brasses. They shone and glowed as if burnished only a minute earlier, and tables and chairs had acquired a new gloss that she knew had only been achieved by hard vigorous polishing. She was momentarily not quite sure how she felt, and was even guilty of reaching up to the highest shelf above the bar and running her finger along it. Now she did tut at herself – how petty was that! Bozena was obviously a treasure – a divine gift, Alamat said her name meant – and he should hang on to her.
Her kitchen was just as neat, everything meticulously put in its usual place. Her mind was beginning to move to the idea that if they could increase their takings on the meals side, they could keep Bozena as well as Alamat, then she heard the sound of a car sweeping into the car park followed by a car door being slammed and the scrunch of gravel as someone strode towards the door. Cannon walked into the kitchen as the outer porch door was tried then knocked on.
‘You’re having breakfast before you do anything,’ she told Cannon as he went to the door.
‘Welcome home,’ she heard Regional Detective Edgar Betterson say, ‘Came the slow way, did you?’
‘Well, the motorway …’ Cannon began.
‘We’ve found a seagoing yacht beached not far from here,’ he said. ‘You might have been quicker on that.’
‘You think Bliss is—’
‘Know,’ Betterson interrupted. ‘Forensics just confirmed his DNA but any trace once he left the yacht –’ he spread his hands as if displaying emptiness ‘– what the tide didn’t wash away, the wind wiped out.’
Cannon pulled out a chair for him and he sat down gratefully, pushing his long legs wearily out under the table. ‘We’re searching, fingertip in the immediate area.’
Liz began making coffee, declaring Betterson looked as if he had not slept for days, and repeating her order that Cannon went nowhere until he had eaten.
‘We’re allowed to talk?’ Betterson asked drily.
‘We’ll all eat and talk at the same time,’ she answered. ‘OK?’
The banter was clearly over as Betterson leaned across the table, hands clasped and shaking, towards Cannon, as he described in detail the place where a Norwegian yacht had been found. ‘Owner a man who lives near Harstad, who did not know his boat was missing.’
‘Harstad, where Bliss’s house is,’ Cannon contributed, ‘and where the boat was found. That sounds like the place where we found Timmy Riley’s dog.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Liz, confirmed, ‘and at high tide that’s quite a channel.’
‘He had some luck in that it was a high tide and there was a following gale force wind,’ Betterson added.
‘Luck would not have had anything much to do with it,’ Cannon said. ‘The wind was perhaps providential but the high tide – I can’t believe Bliss didn’t take that into account.’
‘But if he deliberately sailed to arrive this near his home, where is he? We’ve found no trace, no witnesses, nothing. That’s why I’m so pleased to have you back. I need people the locals talk to without reservations, with local knowledge, ears to the ground. Most of all, of course –’ he leaned back and sighed ‘– I need to get this maniac banged up before he does more harm.’
‘Yes,’ Cannon agreed quietly, ‘it needs finishing.’
There was a pause as all three dwelled on the truth of that statement, then Betterson reflected, ‘Spier being in Norway was a bombshell. None of us expected that!’
‘Bliss has used Spier all the way along,’ Cannon said. ‘It seems to me from the first night here in the pub after Spier created a scene, even then I think Bliss saw him as a useful decoy.’
‘Once the newspapers got on to Spier, it certainly made us waste time, money and resources trying to find him,’ Betterson agreed. ‘It became police trial by public opinion stirred up by the media.’
‘Then he sets up a “burglary”,’ Cannon went on, ‘using Spier to get rid of the tell-tale walking sticks. After that he shelters Spier in his flat in Skegness, keeps him indebted, then uses him as a red herring to get away from Kirkenes, but leaves him to his fate.’
‘Bliss must have promised a great deal for him to undertake a journey to Norway,’ Liz said.
‘Probably told him he needed to get out of the country to keep out of our hands,’ Betterson said. ‘The one thing that man does not want is to go inside.’
‘But Spier’s usefulness is at an end now,’ Cannon said.
‘Unless …’ Liz began, and immediately had their full attention. ‘Unless Bliss is manipulating Spier’s mother. He might say he could exonerate her son from being charged if she co-operated with him – hid h
im, say.’
‘Wouldn’t have thought she’d have tried that again, she’s been under observation for weeks,’ Betterson said, ‘but I could arrange a search warrant, make sure, look in Spier’s hidey-hole.’
‘Hardly seems sophisticated enough for Bliss,’ Cannon said, ‘but I’ll talk to the locals, see what they think. I could drop in on Mavis Moyle. I presume she’s in the picture?’
‘Enough to make her very wary,’ Betterson confirmed.
‘Right, and I’ll see Hoskins, of course. You know he’s gamekeeping?’
Betterson pulled a face. ‘Well, he should be good at it.’ He rose from the table.
‘I’ve got sausages and bacon ready,’ Liz said.
‘I’d better not stay …’
‘Make them into a sandwich,’ she offered.
As she was doing so, Cannon’s mobile burbled.
‘Toby Higham,’ he mouthed to the other two, and both now waited to hear. ‘Good, good,’ Cannon said, then shook his head. Call over, he explained, ‘Alexander Higham has regained consciousness. Apparently his first words were “let’s go home”.’
‘Another reason we must catch up with Bliss,’ Betterson said grimly. ‘Can you imagine what the newspapers would do to us – me – if Higham comes home and Bliss still manages to get at him?’ He shuddered. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘He will kill anyone who gets in his way now,’ Cannon said quietly, ‘anyone.’
Chapter 30
At Mavis Moyle’s cottage, Cannon found everything locked up: her home, Bliss Antiques, not even a bedroom window ajar. Mavis must now feel she had no obligation to open the shop, for there was little likelihood of her being paid any more, and any takings would, he imagined, be an embarrassment to someone like Mavis.
While he still stood looking up at the cottage, a car drew up beside his jeep and Sergeant Maddern joined him at the gate. ‘Mavis all right?’ he asked.
‘No one at home,’ Cannon answered. ‘Knocked but everything’s locked up.’
‘I know she’s been getting out somewhere every day now she’s not opening the shop or, as she says, she can see no one. I’ll just have a look round myself.’
