Missing: Presumed Dead

by James Hawkins

  “She seems harmless enough,” said Bliss feeling a defence, was called for. “What do you think?”

  Patterson, needing time to consider, leant forward to pick up his coffee. “She a nosey old bat really. Not that I mind personally speaking – bit of entertainment. Though some of the youngsters don’t like it ’cos she knows so much of what goes on around here. I remember one case ...” he slurped some coffee as he tried to assemble the facts, gave up, and generalised. ‘This’ll be a tricky one,’ I said once, and Daph overheard. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, ‘Old so-and-so did it.’ ‘How the hell do you work that out?’ I said. ‘Because his father did exactly the same back in 1937,’ she said. And d’ye know,” he laughed, “She was absolutely right.”

  Bliss slid into the chair opposite Patterson and gave him something to think about. “Did I hear she’s got some sort of title?”

  “Title?” he queried, “Like ‘Lady’ – Oh yeah,” he scoffed, “I can just see it – Lady Daphne Lovelace – society dame and shithouse cleaner.”

  “No. I was thinking more along the lines of a C.B.E., or O.B.E.?”

  A mouthful of coffee splattered across the desk as Patterson exploded in laughter, “The O.B.E. Our Daphne – you are joking, Guv?”

  “Shush – she obviously doesn’t broadcast it, but no, I’m quite serious.”

  “Did she tell you that?” he queried, but didn’t wait for a response. “I reckon she’s having you on. I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s got a bit of an imagination – I mean, that story about crop circles and UFO’s ...”

  “Possibly,” said Bliss thoughtfully.

  “Possibly my foot. I’d bet my pension on it.”

  “You’re probably right. It was just something I overheard. I probably got it wrong.”

  “I would say so – Daphne – O.B.E.,” he guffawed.

  Bliss laughed along with him.

  “The Major’s body?” enquired Donaldson, with more than a trace of hope, as Bliss stuck his head into the chief superintendent’s office a few minutes later. Bliss strolled in, sat heavily and gave his head a negative shake.

  The senior officer took on a crestfallen look. “Shit, I knew I should have called in the Major Incident Unit ... Oh,” his face brightened, “I guess that’s a pun ... Major Incident – searching for a major.”

  “Very funny,” said Bliss noticing that the packet of chocolate digestives had taken a serious mauling since the previous day. “May I?” he asked rhetorically, reaching out for one of the last two.

  Donaldson swiped the packet off his desk faster than a shoplifter snatching a Rolex. “Rationed,” he mumbled, screwing the top and shoving it into a drawer. “One pack a day instead of fags,” he explained. “Can’t afford to give ’em away.”

  “Sorry, Sir.”

  “So what do you make of all this, Dave?”

  “On the face of it, it seems too simple. But what if we don’t find the body? What if he’s disposed of it so cleverly we never find it? Furthermore, what if he knows we can’t find it?”

  “Where – how?”

  Bliss relaxed in the chair with a shrug. “I haven’t a clue. If I knew I’d just go out and find it. Do you have any ideas, Sir?”

  Donaldson sat back and ruminated on a novelist’s palette of barely plausible explanations, “... dissolved it in acid; burnt it to a cinder; fed it to the pigs ...”

  “No, Sir,” interrupted Bliss, standing up and pacing with frustration. “He didn’t have enough time for any of that. In any case, the larger bones would have survived, especially the femurs.”

  A degree of agitation sharpened Donaldson’s tone and the Newton’s balls took another hammering. “Well, Inspector, perhaps you have some better suggestions.”

  “I suppose he might have had time to wall it up in the house or jam it under the floorboards,” mused Bliss, not waiting for the steel balls to stop chattering back and forth.

  “He might have had time, but the dogs would have sniffed it out.”

  “What about if he dropped it down an abandoned well and capped it with a load of concrete?”

  Donaldson caught the swinging ball as if the suggestion were serious enough to be considered in silence. “That’s possible,” he started slowly, then shook his head. “Dauntsey would have been plastered in cement.”

  One look at the senior officer’s face was enough to remind Bliss there was no cement. “I don’t know then,” he concluded and sat back down.

  Donaldson took on a phlegmatic tone. “If it doesn’t turn up we’ll just go for a trial without a body – it’s been done before. It may be unusual but certainly not unique.”

  Bliss wasn’t so sure. “What if he gets in the box and recants his confession. Where does that leave us?”

  “The jury will still hear the confession.”

  “I know – but he says, ‘I was confused – we had a bit of a barney. Dad went for me with the knife. He got cut somehow – nothing serious, and ...’”

  Donaldson wasn’t listening, he was still working on devious methods of concealing a body. “I wonder if Dauntsey’s playing some sort of intellectual game with us. He’s hardly been a raving success in his life. Maybe he’s just trying to prove how smart he really is.”

  “And he’s prepared to murder his own father in the process ... I somehow doubt it.”

  “He’s weird enough.”

  “Possibly, but that still leaves us seriously short of physical evidence.”

  “What about the duvet? Witnesses saw him bundling something wrapped in it into his truck – and the duvet was obviously missing from his father’s room at the Black Horse.”

  “It was only the duvet,” he says to the jurors. “I got blood on it and was taking it to get it cleaned.”

  “But he buried it in a grave.”

  Bliss gave it some thought then replied in a Dauntsey-like nasal whine, “Once I’d removed the duvet from the Black Horse with the intention of getting it cleaned I realised that I’d be too embarrassed to return it, so I chose instead to dispose of it. I’d be more than happy to pay ...”

  “This is nonsense, Dave,” said Donaldson, rising to give strength to his words.

  “I know – I’m just thinking out loud. Just saying: What if the jury aren’t convinced – not beyond the threshold of doubt? What if they find him ‘Not guilty’? Once acquitted, he can’t be re-tried. I’ve just got a feeling the smug little bastard’s laughing at us.”

  “You’re suggesting a good lawyer would get him off.”

  “I’m suggesting any lawyer would get him off. I’m suggesting that even a pox-doctor’s malpractice lawyer would get him off. If you ask me we’re missing something really important.”

  Donaldson deflated himself slowly back into his seat as if exhausted by the effort of attempting to compute an explanation for Jonathon Dauntsey’s behaviour. “We are missing something – One body: Major for the use of.”

  “What do you make of this?” asked Bliss reaching into his briefcase and picking out a small plastic evidence bag containing the mangled mounted soldier. “This was in the grave with the duvet,” he explained. “The vicar seemed to think it may have been buried with a child but ...”

  Donaldson took the figurine with interest. “You told me about it on the phone. A soldier on horseback – what happened to it?”

  “Dowding put his spade through it, but it was already flattened.”

  Donaldson shrugged and dropped it on the desk, “No idea – ask Dauntsey, see what sort of reaction you get.”

  Bliss retrieved the small figure. “I understand you searched Dauntsey’s house, I hear it’s stuffed with antiques.”

  “Hardly. The whole place has been stripped, apart from a couple of rooms. It almost looks as though they were moving out. They probably had to sell stuff off to pay death duties after the Colonel died. Anyway, like I said, Jonathon’s never made much of himself. The three of them were living on the Major’s army pension from what I can gather.”

&n
bsp; “What does Jonathon do for a living?”

  “Not much – he tried writing books but didn’t make a lot of money.”

  “How many authors do?”

  The conversation hit a lull as both men sought something positive to say and Bliss wandered around the room idly setting a few of the executive toys in gentle motion. “The matron seemed to think that the Major and his wife were separated,” he said, spinning a gyroscope.

  “That’s possible. It could explain why he’d taken a room at the pub.”

  “Not really – she’s in the nursing home.”

  “Maybe it was a symbolic act – distancing himself from the family home.”

  “I have another source who suggests the Major may not have lived here for years.”

  “You are well informed, Inspector, but if he wasn’t living here where the hell was he?”

  “Scotland.”

  Donaldson digested the information slowly but then dismissed it as irrelevant. “It doesn’t matter a great deal where he was living, all we want to know is where he is now. That reminds me – the marine unit are chomping at the bit to search the rivers and ponds.”

  Bliss cocked his head as if he’d missed something. “Is there some suggestion he dumped the body in water.”

  “No ... but you know what these special operations blokes are like – any excuse to put on their rubber suits and piss about on company time.”

  “I suppose the bloody choir will be demanding extra practice time next, so they can give him a good send off.”

  Donaldson acknowledged the humour with a wry smile. “What should I tell the marine unit?”

  Bliss shrugged, “It’s your decision boss, but I think we’re jumping the gun. I reckon the body will turn up.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We’ll have to make an appeal for information in the local press.”

  The mention of the press had Donaldson extricating the packet of digestives from his drawer. “Some bloody newshound who’s had his nose snubbed by us in the past will have a field day,” he exploded. “I can just see it ... banner headlines ...” he carried on, and used a biscuit as a baton to write imaginary letters in the air. “‘Major loss for Hampshire Police – Anyone in possession of the body should hand it in at their nearest found-property office’...”

  “Wait a minute, Sir,” cut in Bliss, leaping up as an important notion struck him. “Assuming the Major came down from Scotland to stay at the Black Horse – where are his clothes; his suitcase; his overnight bag?”

  Donaldson paused long enough to take a chunk out of the biscuit. “Good point, Dave – get onto it.”

  Sergeant ‘Pat’ Patterson was herding the men and women into the briefing room, sending out scouts to drag smokers away from their habit in the prisoner’s exercise yard.

  Patterson watched the newcomers settling while letting his feelings leak. “You’re late. The new D.I. will think we’re a bunch of carrot crunchers. You know what these Big City coppers are like – think we spend our time rounding up stray sheep …”

  “Or shagging sheep in your case, Serg,” called D.C. Spillings from the back of the room.

  A burst of laughter split the expectant air, but quickly fizzled as D.C. Dowding thundered in, his face black with anger, and he rounded on Patterson with clenched teeth and a tight tone. “I wanna word wiv you, Sergeant.”

  Spillings heard. “What’s up, Dowding?” he laughed. “Has the Serg shagged your sheep as well?”

  David Bliss marched into the room, stifling the last of the laughter, leaving Dowding scrabbling for a seat.

  Patterson rattled off a preliminary assessment of the current situation, not that any of the officers needed to be reminded, and quickly handed the floor to Bliss.

  “The man we are searching for only had half a face and one arm,” he began after thanking them for their attendance, implying they’d had a choice. “Did we know this?” A sea of blank faces stared at him as if he were an alien. “Well, someone – anyone. Did we?”

  A youngish policewoman with sparkly chocolate eyes, frizzy black hair and a smoky voice, finally caved in under his gaze and answered, “No, Sir.”

  Bliss homed in on her. “Do you think that this is something that we should have found out – maybe – perhaps? I mean, it does explain certain things – why he didn’t go into the bar at the Black Horse to pick up the key. Why he slipped in the back way. It may also explain why he may have been living on the estate in Scotland.” He glanced at Patterson. “Have we confirmed that by the way?”

  Patterson’s face was as blank as the sea around him and he quickly threw the spotlight on Spillings. “Have we confirmed that?”

  “No, Serg.”

  Patterson suddenly bristled with enthusiasm, as if it had been his idea from the beginning. “Well, get onto it then. Find out where the estate is and get the locals to check it out. How long has he lived there? When he left? Who looks after him?”

  Quickly rifling through his notepad Bliss added to the list. “We also need details of his doctor and dentist up there. We’re still trying to establish who saw him last and we need to start putting together a full picture of this man. Talking of pictures – do we have any?”

  “I’ll get someone to check out the local paper,” said Patterson, still bubbling with enthusiasm. “He’s the sort of man who’s bound to get his mug in the press from time-to-time; local elections, charity do’s, that sort of thing.”

  Bliss stuck in a pin in his bubble. “My information is that he possibly hasn’t been around here for the best part of forty years.”

  A gasp of amazement went round the room.

  “I guess you didn’t know that either,” continued Bliss sweeping his eyes from face to face, feeling a certain satisfaction in the obvious fact that none of them had uncovered such basic information. “Well, what have you got? What do you know? When was he seen last?”

  This is getting boring, thought Bliss, with no-one even intimating they might have a snippet of information. “Do any of you know anything about the man you’re searching for?” he asked eventually, realising that the silence was becoming embarrassing.

  “He’s an old dead major,” said one, though it was more a question than a statement.

  “And ...?”

  “And nothing, Sir.”

  “Do you mean to say that’s all you know about the victim?”

  D.C. Spillings had a twist of sarcasm in his voice as he answered on behalf of the group. “You’ll probably reckon we’re pretty stupid, Guv, but I s’pose we was working on the assumption we weren’t likely to find two dead old majors on the same day.”

  You asked for that, thought Bliss and waited while the laughter died down. “O.K. Spillings – I take your point, but that was yesterday. As time goes on, assuming the body doesn’t surface, it will become very important to know precisely who we’re looking for.”

  Most of the meeting was consumed with practical arrangements for conducting house-to-house enquiries and interviewing everyone who had been at the Black Horse during the disturbance, but a few constructive ideas were bounced around. Spillings, still seemingly fixated on the paranormal, came up with a half-serious suggestion that the Major’s body may have been used for some sort of satanic ritual.

  The smoky voiced policewoman swung on him sarcastically. “What? You think they’re using crippled old squaddies now in place of beautiful young virgins – I doubt it.”

  “No,” shouted Spillings above the laughter, “I just reckon there might be some religious reason why he flung the duvet in the grave, that’s all.”

  Even Dowding, his mind troubled by some greater dilemma, managed to come up with a proposal that merited attention. “We could do a re-enactment at the same time tonight – see if anyone’s hanging about the churchyard who might remember seeing Dauntsey on Sunday. We’d get some idea how long he had to get rid of the body as well.”

  Arrangements were made for a re-enactment and Daphne breezed in
, rounding up discarded coffee cups and stray Kit Kat wrappers, as the meeting broke up. “Good morning, Chief Inspector. How was the Mitre?” she enquired, with a curiously intimate expression.

  “Fine thanks,” Bliss replied guardedly, breaking off a conversation with Patterson and praying she would say nothing about their dinner engagement.

  “I hope they’re feeding you well,” she added with a wink, obviously taking innocuous delight in having a shared secret.

  Thank God, he thought. “Fine, thanks. Yes.”

  Dowding was prowling around in the background, just out of range, waiting for an opening. Bliss finally caught on. “Do you want something, lad?”

  “I wanna speak to Sergeant Patterson.” The words “in private” hung unspoken and Bliss obliged, saying he needed to ask Jonathon Dauntsey some further questions.

  Bliss was barely out of earshot when Dowding rounded on the sergeant in a venomous whisper. “What the hell’s going on, Serg?”

  “What d’ye mean?”

  “You’ve dropped me in the shit.”

  “You wanna keep your mouth shut tight then.”

  “Oh. Very funneee,” he sneered.

  “So what’s your problem?”

  “I did that vehicle search you asked for and it comes up no record. Then I get a very strange phone call from someone at Scotland Yard, asking me why I want to know. I says, ‘What’s it to do with you?’ He says, ‘Don’t give me no flannel,’ real nasty. ‘I wanna know who authorised that vehicle search and what for.’”

  “Oh shit – you didn’t tell ’im did you?”

  “How could I – I didn’t know – You didn’t tell me.”

  “I meant – you didn’t give him my name did you?”

  “No, I just said it were the Dauntsey case – checking all the vehicles anywhere near the scene. Must have got a wrong number.”

  Patterson started to move away. “Good thinking, lad. Well done.”

  “Wait a minute, Serg,” said Dowding grasping his arm, “I wanna know whose motor it is.”

  Patterson shook his arm free with a scowl. “How the hell should I know? That’s why I asked you to run a check.”

  The other detectives, sensing an approaching storm had scuttled out of the room. Dowding kicked the door shut and closed in on the sergeant, spitting a volley of abuse through clenched teeth. “Don’t give me that bollocks. I’m just a fucking prawn to you, aren’t I? You used me – you know damn well who that motor belongs to.”