If Fear Wins

by Tony J. Forder

  ‘Everything we have so far suggests your son was extremely happy in his job,’ he said, setting his cup down into its saucer. He ignored the chocolate digestives fanned out on a chipped white plate. ‘Was that your impression?’

  ‘Very much so,’ the victim’s father responded. His tone and manner were resolute. ‘Duncan was career RAF all the way. He had the right kind of skill set to move into industry if he had chosen to, but that never interested him.’

  ‘You were air force as well, I believe?’

  ‘I was. An engineer by trade. Then we decided upon a different lifestyle.’

  ‘Which was when you opened this place?’ Chandler asked.

  It was Mrs Livingston who answered that one. ‘My doing, for the most part.’ A small, ineffectual-looking woman, she appeared to be running on memory muscle alone. Her hair was all over the place, and she wore no makeup. Each of her forty-eight years was on display. As she spoke, Mrs Livingston toyed with a silver necklace bearing the old St Christopher’s medal. ‘We had visited York on so many occasions down the years, and while there is an awful lot of competition in the business, running our own tea room here was something I really wanted to do.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’ Chandler sipped her drink and raised her cup. ‘And a very nice brew it is, too.’

  ‘We’re not Bettys, my dear, but we do our best.’

  Bliss smiled. Bettys Café Tea Rooms were on a different level altogether. Linen tablecloths and napkins, bone china crockery, gleaming cutlery, and daily queues outside the door and down the street.

  ‘How about Duncan’s personal life?’ he prompted, keen to get back on track. ‘No issues that you were aware of? No run-ins with friends, girlfriends? Did he ever mention any concerns in that regard? Any threats made against him?’

  Again it was the father who took that one up. ‘None whatsoever. That doesn’t mean there were none, only that Duncan never spoke of it. He was the kind of person whose stock response was “Yeah, not so bad” when asked how things were, but I feel certain he would have spoken to us if there was anything serious going on in his life. We’re a close family, Detective.’

  ‘That must make this whole thing doubly awful for you both. Coming without any warning whatsoever, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’ The man’s eyes were glazed, looking internally, it seemed to Bliss. ‘It’s a terrible shock. Duncan had so much going for him, especially with his recent promotion to celebrate.’

  Bliss shot a glance at Chandler. Their eyes met and he gave a single shake of the head. ‘Promotion?’ he said as if barely interested. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Actually, it’s about to… was about to, I should say.’ Livingston swallowed and blinked back a tear. ‘Duncan told us he was being promoted into a different department, and was going to pretty much double his income. He told us he would be able to help out during lean periods for the business. He was due to start this week.’

  ‘Is that so? You must have been thrilled.’

  ‘And proud. Very proud. The job is nothing like the ones that were available in my day, of course. Much more technical now. Duncan is… was a whizz at that sort of thing.’

  Bliss nodded, then carefully steered the conversation in a different direction. His mind was buzzing for the next few minutes as he ran through the possibilities. Either Flight Lieutenant Holbrook had withheld vital information from them – which Bliss doubted very much – or Livingston had lied to his parents. If that was the case, why? To boost himself in their eyes? That didn’t feel right – these two were clearly already extremely proud of their son. No, Bliss was convinced that their victim had done so in order to explain away additional income. Perhaps he had been right all along and this was somehow tied in with drugs.

  Either way, they had just discovered the first black mark against Duncan Livingston, and Bliss believed it would prove to be telling.

  17

  On the way back to the station, Bliss detoured out to the spot where their victim had met his brutal end. He parked up in the small dirt drive by the barred gates where the body had been discovered, then he and Chandler walked across the road to the clearing into which Bliss had probed when they first came to the crime scene. Bliss edged his way closer to the area where the trees had appeared to spread their branches wide, like hands stretching out their fingers. He spotted the security cameras. One of them remained pointed out towards the road. Bliss confirmed that it lay too far back into the grounds for it to have been physically moved from this side of the fence. Plus, now that he thought about it, the security company themselves would surely have mentioned something if the camera had not been focussed exactly where they had intended.

  Bliss halted and turned. ‘Give me a leg up,’ he said to Chandler, cupping his hands together and lacing the fingers to indicate exactly what he wanted her to do.

  ‘Right here?’

  ‘Right here.’

  ‘You going scrumping, Jimmy? If so, I have to tell you I don’t think this is a fruit-bearing tree.’

  ‘I’m going hunting,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Hunting? For birds?’

  ‘For evidence.’

  Chandler formed the grip to support Bliss’s foot, and after a couple of trial movements to build up a bit of momentum, he took off and reached up with both hands to fasten onto one of the lower branches. It was thin enough for him to obtain a firm grip. Beneath him, Chandler struggled and steadied herself by planting her feet wide. Feeling with his other foot, Bliss found a large knot to step up onto, and then levered himself up another couple of feet using his elbows and biceps. He glanced back over his shoulder at the road, followed a straight line all the way across to the CCTV camera, then dollied back his focus to closely examine the branches of the tree he was in. It took only seconds, but he found exactly what he had expected to find.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ he called out. ‘Better mind out, Pen. This could get ugly.’

  Back on the ground following a couple of clumsy aborted attempts, Bliss brushed down his jacket and trousers, freeing them from leaves, flecks of bark and clumps of mossy soil. He bent forward at the waist and spent a few seconds rummaging around through the undergrowth. Chandler was almost frothing at the mouth waiting for him to speak up, but he left her hanging while he surveyed the clearing once more. Their drive back from York had done little to thaw the frost between them, their idle chatter stilted and unconvincing. It was an unusual state of affairs between them, but Bliss had let it slide.

  His DS broke before he did.

  ‘Well?’ Chandler said. ‘You want to tell me what that was all about?’

  Bliss grinned. Nodded. ‘I’m happy enough now that the camera points out onto the road naturally. That it hasn’t been tampered with. That’s one out of three issues I had. But the van did not park where it did by coincidence. You want to know why?’

  ‘No. Let’s discuss North Korea instead. Or my recipe for lemon drizzle cake.’

  ‘Patience, grasshopper. And a little less sarcasm might help, too. Pen, the thing is, those branches up in that spot don’t spread out fortuitously as I previously thought. Some have been bent right back, so much so that I can see the tear in them where they have been snapped. Just not all the way through. Other branches did have clean breaks, and I found plenty of the missing sections in the undergrowth beneath the tree.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting they were cleared away deliberately. Creating a gap through which the security feed could capture what took place that night.’

  ‘That’s what I suspect. I would think it’s the local council’s responsibility to carry out any trimming, as the trees are on this side of the fence. I doubt they go that far back though. We can check with the owners to see if they do so themselves every now and then, but I don’t believe that’s the case. I think whoever murdered our airman wanted it captured on film. Moreover, wanted their chanting captured on film.’

  Chandler was nodding now, her eyes bright and eager. ‘That makes sense when
you put it all together in that way. But that is just your interpretation of events at the moment, and doesn’t actually disprove the terrorism theory. Maybe these three extremists wanted it seen in order to prove it was a terrorist act.’

  Bliss took a breath. ‘No. I don’t see it that way. Think about it, Pen. If they had wanted to advertise their act, they could have done so in a hundred better locations where the entire thing was guaranteed to be both captured on CCTV and left in the open for anyone to find. That’s what these people want – to terrorise. This is too abstract, too vague. This, to me, reeks of an incident they wanted to come across as coincidentally filmed, wanted us to discover with the specific intention of it eventually leading us to believe it was a terrorist attack on a member of the armed forces. They wanted us to think it, but were unwilling to expose themselves as the perpetrators the way these people so often do. Ultimately, if you drill down deep enough, it was neither one thing nor another. And that’s what convinces me this is not what we’re meant to believe it is.’

  ‘Okay. I see what you’re getting at. For argument’s sake let’s say you’re right. I’m still having a problem with the camera up there. Why would it be focussed on a road which is usually obscured by trees?’

  ‘My betting is it’s not so much the road, rather the little drive and the gate where I am currently parked. I reckon if we were to view footage from that camera prior to it being pruned back, there’d be enough of a view to see who comes and goes over there, to see if anything parks up in that clearing.’

  ‘The point of which would be ..?’

  ‘I can’t say. Maybe that’s also their land. Maybe whoever owns that land has a deal with the chemical company to utilise that one camera on their pole for its own security. Or it could be that they are just doing the sensible thing and covering all angles.’

  ‘As we should,’ Chandler said.

  ‘As we should,’ Bliss agreed, as if it had been his point all along.

  18

  DCI Edwards was stepping out of the incident room just as Bliss and Chandler were walking back in. The three almost collided.

  ‘Bliss, my office,’ Edwards said, striding away without waiting for him to respond.

  He glanced at Chandler and screwed up his face in mock angst.

  ‘Whose cornflakes did you piss on this time?’ Chandler whispered.

  Bliss shrugged and shook his head. ‘Fucked if I know,’ he replied in an equally low voice. ‘It must just be a day with a ‘Y’ in it.’

  Bliss followed Edwards along the corridor, up one flight of stairs, and into her office. She had waited for him by the door, which she then closed behind him. Bliss frowned, his smile wiped away in an instant.

  ‘Please take a seat, Inspector,’ Edwards said, moving around the desk and sitting down.

  Bliss followed suit, wary now, alarm bells ringing inside his head. This had all the hallmarks of a bollocking, yet as far as he was aware he had done nothing to warrant one – although that had never stopped his DCI from handing them out before. Yet, there was something almost tender about Edwards’s stern countenance as she appraised him.

  ‘Inspector Bliss, I have to inform you that at approximately eleven-thirty this morning, Marjory Thompson was taken to Peterborough city hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.’

  Something solid seemed to emerge from absolutely nowhere to lodge in Bliss’s stomach. It felt like a shell had been blasted into his gut.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Thompson had a meeting with her solicitor regarding her trial. As per their usual arrangement, Miss Craig brought Thompson a treat – a can of Dr Pepper, which is not available inside the prison. The way Craig tells it, Thompson drank it all and crushed the can. She then became animated, and at one point a little later on appeared to suffer a severe coughing fit. Craig was about to call for help when Thompson settled back down. Miss Craig now accepts this was most likely a diversionary tactic. She says Thompson’s eyes and speech started to become weak, and then Craig felt something warm on her own legs. She looked down to find blood, and lots of it. Beneath the table. Thompson had manoeuvred the can so that it split, and then she pulled it in half and used the sharp edge to open up a vein.’

  Bliss exhaled. There was a slick sheen on the palms of his hands, and they felt clammy. The office did not seem to have enough air in it for the two of them. He licked his lips and worried his scar with his left thumb.

  Marjory Thompson was awaiting trial for aiding and abetting her son in the abduction of DS Chandler with intent to both rape and murder her. Bliss had met Thompson many years earlier when her own young daughter was raped and murdered. Thompson suspected her then boyfriend, who was the victim’s father, but the investigation had cleared the man. Bliss signed off on that decision. Just last autumn, Bliss and his team investigated a series of rapes and murders and tied them in with a prisoner on death row in California. Lucas Delaney was the man Bliss’s team cleared of raping and murdering Marjory Thompson’s daughter a decade and a half earlier. But the two also had a son together, and it was Malcolm Thompson who was the foul beast running riot in Peterborough. Having abducted Chandler and lured Bliss out to the Norfolk coast, the two men had scuffled, before the soil around their bodies on the edge of a cliff gave way and dropped the younger man like a stone to his death. Despite everything the man had done, Bliss tried desperately to save him. Not a moment of sleep had been lost in coming to terms with the fact that he failed to hold on to Malcolm Thompson’s hands on that awful rain-drenched morning. He decided now that no further sleep would be lost at the news of the monster’s mother taking her own life. It would save the tax payer money, and both him and Chandler from having to face a trial and all the bullshit that went with it. Even at the end, it seemed, Marjory Thompson had failed to figure out the best way to exact her revenge.

  Before heading back down to speak to his team, Bliss made a couple of calls. The first was to an elderly man by the name of Joe Lakeham, husband of the first murder victim Bliss had seen following his return to the area. In a calm, neutral manner he told the widower about Marjory Thompson’s suicide.

  ‘We spoke about closure before, Mr Lakeham,’ Bliss added. ‘I think you have it now.’

  ‘You know what, Inspector? I think I do.’ There was relief in the man’s voice. Release, also. Bliss knew Lakeham would feel unburdened. Something he himself still yearned for.

  He then called DI Angie Burton from sex crimes. Burton had been involved with the Thompson-Delaney case. In addition, since the investigation had ended, Bliss had spent more time discussing it with Burton than anyone else. Chandler was too close to it and too close to him; there was just the right amount of distance between him and Burton.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ she asked him. He had recounted the events exactly as laid out by Edwards, with no allowance for emotion.

  ‘Hard to tell. Truth is, I’m not sure if I feel anything. No pity, that’s for sure. But no pleasure, either. She was a despicable person, just like her ex-boyfriend and their evil spawn. I’m happy there won’t be a trial to endure. Beyond that, I really couldn’t care less.’

  ‘You want some company tonight, Jimmy?’

  He laughed. Even to his own ears it sounded bitter. ‘You think I need it because of this? I told you, Angie, neither my thoughts nor my day have changed in any way. If you’re worried I’m going to go home and dwell on this, then please don’t. There’s no need. It’s not going to happen.’

  ‘And what if I’m the one who wants the company? What if I do feel bad?’

  ‘Why would you?’

  ‘I’m not saying I do. Just asking what if.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not right now. That could change.’

  ‘Let’s not pretend the world is a worse place for her absence.’ Bliss could feel himself becoming angry, and he did not know why.

  The line was silent for a moment. Then Burton said, ‘Have you never for one moment allowed for the
fact that the person Marjory Thompson became was sculpted on the night her own daughter was raped and murdered? That she too was a victim of Lucas Delaney?’

  ‘What would be the point?’ Bliss said. ‘There’s no coming back from what she did, no matter what drove her to it. Please don’t ask me to feel any remorse, or any pity. She knew what her son was doing. She actively encouraged it. And then she set him loose on Penny.’

  ‘I wondered when we would get around to Penny.’ Burton’s voice was simmering with her own mounting anger now. ‘This is not about her, or your feelings for her. This is about you, and your lack of… I don’t know. Empathy? Compassion? You see Thompson as a straight up cold-hearted bitch who sanctioned and possibly even promoted murder. All I am asking is that you consider for one moment the events that led her there.’

  Bliss took a breath. He wished now that he had never made the call. He realised where the anger was coming from, that he was expected to feel something he could never feel and so be ashamed of it. Except that he refused to.

  ‘And I’m saying I don’t see the point. It won’t change a thing. It won’t bring anyone back, it won’t prevent any of the rapes that occurred, and it won’t turn back time and have me nowhere near that cliff edge last year.’

  ‘But it could change something, Jimmy. It could change you and the way you see things that you allow to sit there in the dark.’

  For just a second or two, Bliss considered his response. He could be tactful, he could roll it back. One way or another they would end up sleeping together. But that would not be being true to himself. Instead he said, ‘In that case, I don’t want to think about it anymore, and I don’t want to discuss it any further. If that’s what it would do to me, then I don’t want to make that change. I can live with how I am, Angie. Can you?’