Chandler had come up with no further reported missing persons. Of the young woman suspected to have gone into the river Nene, there was still no sign. A dive team had been in there for several hours, but between the point at which the body possibly entered the river and where the flow might have taken it by now, there was a great deal of ground to cover beneath those murky waters. The situation was made worse by them having to guess at the time the woman might have gone into the water.
Bliss checked his watch. He had an hour or so before briefing. Time enough for a hot drink and a biscuit. ‘Coffee?’ he said to Chandler.
His DS nodded. She looked tired, purplish folds of skin lying beneath her eyes like bruises. ‘I’m gasping,’ Chandler told him.
‘You sleeping okay?’ Bliss asked as they headed towards the canteen.
‘As well as ever.’
‘Which is to say, hardly at all, right?’
Chandler gave him a sidelong glance. ‘Aww, are you worried about me, boss?’
‘Of course I am. I can’t afford to have yet another dozy copper on my team.’
‘You’ve got a great team. You told me as much after the Delaney and Thompson operations last year.’
Bliss grunted. ‘I was probably drunk.’
‘You probably were, and you’ll probably be so again. Fancy a few after work, boss?’
Bliss shook his head. ‘Nope. Not tonight. I have a date.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is. Would I lie to you?’
‘Damn straight you would. But you know what, I believe you for once. Word has it you’ve been stepping out with someone.’
Bliss shook his head and chuckled. ‘Oh, word does, does it? Pen, I’m not sure that what I am doing tonight would count as ‘stepping out’, but when you get to my age a date is a date and you don’t ask questions.’
They found a quiet table and stretched out, grateful for the pause. They shared the canteen with a handful of uniforms, who sat in their usual seats close to the door. ‘How about you, Pen,’ Bliss asked around the rim of his white mug. ‘Anyone new in your life? Anyone you’re stepping out with lately?’
‘I’m in between boyfriends. The men I meet outside the job are all too insecure about the largely male environment I work in. That and the number of dates I have to cancel because of work. As for other coppers, I really don’t want to be that woman.’
Bliss nodded. ‘I can understand. It must be difficult for you.’
Chandler had been seconded to a sex crimes unit down in London for almost a year, and had briefly dated her boss. It had not worked out. The amicable ending was a good thing, otherwise her DI might have chosen to cause problems for her – even though he had also breached protocol by sleeping with her. Bliss was aware that she had subsequently spent some time with a local businessman, but the relationship did not appear to have blossomed.
‘You ever think about getting out?’ he asked her now.
‘You mean quit being a detective? Not even once. Why would you ask?’
‘It’s something I think we all consider from time to time. Especially when being what we are and doing what we do impinges so much on our personal lives.’
Chandler shook her head, wavy strands of hair flapping and settling in turn. ‘I genuinely haven’t, boss. I’m not saying it won’t come one day, just that I’m not there yet. I love my job.’
Bliss smiled at her enthusiasm. Sometimes he forgot just how much younger, less cynical and worn down by it all his partner was.
‘And your parents?’ he asked. ‘What do they think about it these days?’
‘What do you think? I mean, if they haven’t accepted it by now they’re not ever likely to. For at least my first ten years in the job they both still believed it was a passing phase, something I would grow out of, expecting me to move closer to home and shack up with someone whilst knocking out two or three nippers. I guess they’ve accepted it now, but it’s more a question of tolerating rather than liking.’
‘Wait until you’re running the whole place, then maybe they’ll be proud.’
Chandler gave a thin smile. ‘We’ll see.’
A few minutes later they were done. The break had worked its magic. As they stood to go, Chandler winked at him and said, ‘Just in case I forget after the briefing, enjoy your… date.’
‘Oh, I will,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it will be everything I dreamed of.’
6
Lennie Kaplan had come off duty just in time to join Bliss for a drink in the pub, opting for a cider as Bliss ordered his own Guinness. The two of them now sat in Bliss’s lounge with plastic trays containing plates heaving with Chinese food perched precariously on their laps.
Kaplan was a uniformed sergeant, whom Bliss had known since his days as a raw copper back in London. That the food was eaten in the company of a friend made it all the more palatable.
‘Remind me how long you’ve been in this place?’ Kaplan said, craning his neck to appraise the room.
‘I moved in the week before the Delaney-Thompson case took off last autumn.’
His friend nodded, chomping down some chow mein, greasy noodles spilling out of the corner of his mouth. Kaplan swallowed before responding. ‘So more than a few months then. Only, it looks and feels as if you moved in just last… actually, it looks and feels as if you haven’t yet moved in at all.’
Bliss dipped his head in the general direction of the media system spread out across the far wall. ‘I have all that plus my albums, CDs and Blu-Rays. What more could I possibly want?’
A Tom Scott album was playing on the Rega deck – Bliss’s one nod to pure tonal quality; though he had that backed up by a Marantz amp and his thirty-year-old Tannoy speakers. Scott blew a mean sax, the renowned session player responsible for more than twenty albums, including those featuring both Joe Sample and Larry Carlton on guitars. Bliss enjoyed a whole range of pastimes, including sport and movies, but he only ever truly got swept away by music, and the kind of blues, jazz and funk he had discovered in the late seventies had stuck with him all the way.
‘There’s more to life than this, Jimmy,’ Kaplan insisted. He got busy jabbing chunks of ginger chicken with his fork. ‘A media centre and two armchairs does not a home make.’
Bliss surveyed his castle with a fresh eye. There were no paintings or photos on the cream-coloured walls, the furnishings were exactly as Lennie had described, and in one corner of the living room he had stacked up a pile of unopened cardboard boxes. He had never noticed it before, but the house reeked of impermanence.
‘I know,’ Bliss said, shrugging. ‘And I do have more than this. I even have a bed.’
‘And I bet you still live out of suitcases.’
‘Not so, smart arse. I have a rail.’
‘On which you hang things up?’
‘If I had hangers, yes.’
Kaplan shook his head in dismay. ‘Oh, Jimmy. This would have been sad thirty years ago, mate. You’re in your mid-fifties. It’s time to act like it, don’t you think?’
Bliss forked a heap of rice and plum duck into his mouth. Then, still chewing, he set his tray on the floor, shuffled over to the large glass sliding doors that led to the garden, and reached around to the side to flick a switch.
‘There’s also that,’ he said, gesturing with his hand towards what lay outside.
During the day, irrespective of the weather, the garden looked beautiful. Its serene, zen-like styling hung beautifully, together with a koi pond, lashings of slate chippings and gravel, a number of standing stones dotted around, and plants that would flourish with time, care and tenderness. At night, with tasteful and artfully-placed illuminations, it presented a stunning view that was also serene in its simplicity.
‘Now that is spectacular,’ Kaplan said, nodding enthusiastically. He raised his glass of sparkling water. ‘And I apologise. If you have been working on that, then–’
Bliss cut him short with a harsh bark of a laugh. ‘Working on… No, Lennie.
I paid others to do the actual work. That lot out there would’ve broken my back, mate. I designed it all and drew up the plans, but the labour and sweat was down to others.’
‘I should’ve known better. So you have no excuse for the fact that you live like a squatter, just that you do.’
‘Tell me, what do you go home to, my friend? What will your night be like when you leave here? You will walk into a warm and cosy house, made so mostly by your warm and cosy wife, all enjoyed by three warm and cosy children. You have all that. Why would you not want to be there, Lennie? It’s more than enough. For you. Me? I have my music, my movies, and now I have my garden.’
‘And how about the love of a good woman?’
Bliss flapped a hand at him and scoffed. ‘I’ve not exactly been a monk since Hazel passed.’
‘But you’ve nobody right now, clearly. And not for some time, I’d be willing to bet.’
‘You would lose your money, mate.’
‘Really? Do tell.’
‘It’s something and nothing right now. Someone from the nick.’
Kaplan laughed, his stomach rippling. ‘Of course it is. Dipping your nib into the company ink is a solid long-term plan.’
‘It’s not intended to be. We see each other occasionally. That’s all either of us wants from it.’
‘Well, that’s good in one way, I suppose. But don’t you want someone to grow old with? I’m sure others have told you by now that it’s okay to move on from Hazel. What happened was tragic, and with you being you I know that you still blame yourself. Even if that were true – and it’s bullshit by the way – you are still entitled to live a normal life.’
‘I’ve had relationships. I even lived with another woman for a while, down in Bedford. It’s not that I’m avoiding the future, I’m just not actively seeking one. The way I figure it, I wake up in the morning, take my first breath of a new day and I will have taken one step closer. Enough of those, and the future will come to me.’
‘But not in any good way if you don’t throw off those shackles, Jimmy. What about that cop out in LA? You liked her, right?’
‘I did. Robbie Newman was a lovely woman. If I happened to live a bit closer than almost six thousand miles away, I might be interested. But I don’t, so I’m not.’
Kaplan leaned forward, squinting at Bliss now. ‘So how about DI Burton? From what I hear you two are quite chummy.’
Bliss did not respond. His eyes dropped.
‘Ah. So she’s the company ink.’ Kaplan grinned and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Not a bad choice, Jimmy. But deliberately temporary and dicey. How come?’
‘Let’s just put it down to the fact that I’m not interested enough to start something that might lead to anything more serious.’
Kaplan started to reply, but Bliss shook a raised finger at him. The conversation was over - at least as far as he was concerned. He did not feel the need to burden his friend with the knowledge that Hazel was upstairs at that very moment.
She had never set foot in this house whilst alive, had never even visited Peterborough whilst she still drew breath, and had been murdered sixteen years earlier in London. Despite that, every night he went upstairs to bed, Hazel was waiting for him. Not that he could see her. Nothing supernatural was occurring. There was no physical form, not even a translucent apparition for his breath to be captured by. There were no ghosts in his life. He was heartbroken, not hallucinating. Nor was he a spiritual person, although the kind of peaceful, calm processes prescribed by Buddhists were appealing to him. He did not, therefore, believe that his dead wife’s spirit inhabited his new home. What he felt, what seeped into his pores every night while he lay in bed, was Hazel’s presence. The knowledge of her, the fact of her life before she was so cruelly murdered and taken from him. Memories made real, he supposed. Hazel did not exist in this house with him, she merely occupied a room inside his head.
No, his friend did not need to know any of that.
Kaplan was done with his food. He set his tray down and Bliss felt his friend’s gaze bear down on him once more. ‘Why are you so concerned about me right now?’ he asked.
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t be? You’re coming off the back of an extremely traumatic experience.’
‘Now you’re sounding just like my mother, Lennie.’
‘That wasn’t what I was shooting for. Concerned friend, more like. How is she, by the way?’
‘She’s well, thanks. Loving life in Ireland. Still misses my old man, of course. You two should get together and swap stories.’
Kaplan took another swig of his water before responding. ‘All joking aside, that bloody investigation last autumn could so easily have gone the other way for you. Penny, too. It must have been terrifying.’
‘For us both. But you know, we’re also both fine. One evil, twisted fuck didn’t survive, whilst another sits banged up awaiting trial. That’ll do me. I am happy in my largely bare, rented property. I spend ten or twelve hours a day at work, and when I need to relax I can come home and sit out in my garden, or plant my arse in a chair to watch a movie or, like now, talk over some great music and completely ruin the mood.’
Kaplan laughed, spreading his hands. ‘If you’re happy, then who am I to argue? Which brings me to other things. How’re the spins?’
‘The spins’ was the way others summarised and dealt with Bliss’s medical condition. Meniere’s Disease affected his inner ear, gave him vertigo, among many other symptoms, and often caused his whole world to spin like a top. His subsequent loss of natural balance occasionally gave him the gait of a drunkard. It could be embarrassing at times, but it could also be something that wrought havoc with both his mind and body to the point of exhaustion. Mentally it was tough, dealing with a chronic illness that probably was not going to improve, and could easily worsen. That worsening could include partial or complete deafness, even full disability. That could be a lot to deal with, but was something Bliss had parked in a dark corner of his mind. Obsessing could only do harm, and he had learned to cope with the strain.
‘Did Penny put you up to this? Did she ask you to fire all these questions at me?’
‘Not at all. She may have mentioned her concerns in passing.’
Bliss reckoned it was probably much more than that, but he let it drop. He came back around to the question and gave a straight response to his friend. ‘How are the spins? Much like a recovering alcoholic, I take each day as it comes, Lennie. It’s the only way. I manage it as well as I am able.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Happy to see you still pushing rocks uphill, mate.’
Bliss smiled. ‘It certainly feels like that some days. Anyway, how about you and yours – all well at Kaplan Towers?’ He was starting to feel uncomfortable with the focus squarely on himself.
‘Sonia and the girls are fine, thanks for asking. Sonia was saying only the other day how you hadn’t been over since Christmas.’
Bliss had spent two days with his mother in Ireland during the break, but upon his return had taken up Kaplan’s invitation to spend a day at his place out in Newborough with the family.
‘Hardly a lifetime ago,’ he said. ‘You getting any writing done, Lennie?’
‘Some. I may step up from blogging to the heady heights of self-publishing on Amazon.’
‘Really? What kind of stuff?’
‘The best of my blogs.’ He laughed, and Bliss joined in.
Kaplan’s side-line was his humorous take on a copper’s life. He was allowed to publish no true facts, but change a name you change a fact, and that seldom alters the entire story. His bosses hated it, but the majority of his colleagues couldn’t wait for the latest weekly update. A few took umbrage, and one or two had been vocal in their disapproval of the blog’s openly mocking style. But Kaplan’s view was that theirs was a stressful job at the best of times, and if he could both shed a light on the difficulties he and his colleagues faced on a daily basis, whilst raising a few smiles along the way, where was the harm? Bl
iss concurred, and was fully supportive of his friend’s escape from the true horrors.
‘If only people really knew what went on inside our heads, eh?’ Kaplan said. ‘How often we’d like to toss out the fluffy bullshit and beat one of those mouthy fuckers with a telephone book.’
Bliss nodded. These days the modern police service was supposed to be a fully inclusive, completely tolerant, public service provider as opposed to the ‘force’ it had once been. The reality was that, for most young coppers coming through, that naivety lasted only about as long as it took to have their first volatile encounter with the public they were attempting to serve. Being verbally abused, spat at, physically attacked and threatened with weapons was nobody’s version of fun. You had to work your way through it – and most did – but you were seldom the same afterwards.
Their conversation drifted to other – safer – topics, and Bliss felt completely relaxed by the time his friend’s cab arrived to take him home. After Kaplan had left, Bliss walked himself through a minor physical workout, one designed to both keep him supple and improve his balance. He had noticed an improvement in neither, but faint hope kept him at it. The exercises allowed him to stay in reasonable shape for his age, which was a nice bonus.
Bliss thought about his friend’s observations earlier in the evening, and wondered if other people were equally concerned about the fallout from the Thompson-Delaney operation and the effect it may have had on him. He decided it didn’t matter. He had been cleared for duty, and felt no greater stress in relation to that specific investigation. Bliss suspected that, as with his health condition, the impact of his work was cumulative. It would catch up with him one day, but he did not see it happening for a while yet. As for his lack of commitment to the new home, no one had mentioned it before because no one else had visited him since his return. Bliss wondered what that said about him.
If Fear Wins Page 5