A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

  “I’ll email the picture to my contact in Vancouver later this afternoon, says Bliss as he takes a look at the time. “It’s still the middle of the night there. Mike Phillips knows Jackson’s wife. She’ll be able to clear this up.”

  “Good. So, how much longer are you staying? I was just thinking that you’ve never had the pleasure of Mrs. Donaldson’s Sunday roast, have you?”

  “Thanks, but I should be getting back,” says Bliss. “I was actually going last week until all this blew up, but I’ll probably stay for a few more days, just to make sure that Daphne’s all right.”

  “I can manage perfectly well on my own, David,” Daphne yells irritably from the kitchen. “My hearing is fine, and it’s not my fault if people won’t believe what I saw with my own eyes.”

  “Daphne,” calls Donaldson. “I’m not doubting you for a moment. I just don’t have sufficient evidence to get a warrant.”

  “He stole my polish,” she carries on as she brings in the tea, though she knows that won’t get her far.

  “I’ll give you the money for that,” says Bliss. “Anyway, lets just wait and see what Mrs. Jackson has to say about her husband, all right?”

  Lunchtime brings further news on the Jackson case. Daphne is in the kitchen defrosting the last of the turkey soup when Bliss takes another call from the Merseyside Mail office.

  “Dave,” gushes the editor, “I’ve got some brilliant news for Ms. Lovelace. We may have found Sanderson.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She was right. He didn’t come back after the sixty-four tour.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Well, I got a paper in Canada, The Globe and Mail, to run the picture with a story, and someone spotted him. Apparently he used to live in Vancouver.”

  “Used to?”

  “About ten years ago, the woman said, but she moved away, so she doesn’t know if he’s still there. I’m going to ask a Vancouver paper to run the story next, but I’ve a feeling we’re getting close. Could you let Mrs. Longbottom know?”

  Bliss puts down the phone, calling to Daphne. “You’d better start working on Mavis. I think the Beatles reunion is getting closer.”

  “What’s that about, David?” asks Daphne poking her head into the room.

  “Wouldn’t it be weird if he lives right around the corner from Ruth,” Bliss carries on, once he’s given Daphne the details. “I mean, you read about these kind of things in the papers and you never quite believe them—adopted twins who’ve lived next door to each other for fifty years and never knew; that kind of thing.”

  Daphne is equally overjoyed. “Maybe we should have a drink to celebrate,” she says opening the liquor cabinet. “The sun is just about over the yardarm.”

  “Whoa!” exclaims Bliss. “Why are we getting so excited? Aren’t we forgetting something?”

  “What?”

  “We have no idea if Sanderson is Ruth’s father. Her mother might have made up the whole story. And even if she did tell her the truth, what’s the chance that it was Geoffrey Sanderson with the mop-top haircut and a guitar case doing a backstage bonk while George was out front being screamed at?”

  “Oh, David. You are a wag,” laughs Daphne, but she takes the point. “How are you going to find out?” she asks.

  “I was hoping you’d have some ideas. I’m stumped.”

  “Well, I think you’ve done magnificently so far David, but if I could make a suggestion, I was reading the other day about a private investigator who did the old switcheroo with a chap’s beer glass in a pub to get his DNA off the saliva. Now it may be the sort of thing that only happens in novels, but it sounded genuine enough.”

  “It sounds a bit iffy to me,” replies Bliss. “Though I suppose it might work. But they’ve got to find him first. Mike will probably be able to help, but let’s wait and see what he has to say about the man at the manor first.”

  Mike Phillips and Ruth Jackson had more than sleep on their minds when they had gone to bed the previous night and, in consequence, are late rising.

  “I’ll have to get a move-on,” muses Phillips as he plugs in his computer to check for messages, but Ruth’s mind is still on Trina’s guinea pig.

  “I would never have forgiven myself if the poor thing had died,” she is saying as he pulls up his emails and finds the photograph from Bliss. “What’s the matter?” she asks, realizing that her lover has suddenly gone quiet.

  Phillips takes a deep breath. “You remember I told you that a Canadian named Jordan Jackson had turned up in England?”

  “Yeah. You said not to worry. Why?”

  “Well. A friend of mine has sent a photo, and he wants to know if you recognize him.”

  Mike Phillips may be feeling nervous as he prepares to open the photo attached to the email message, but Ruth is backing up faster than a lion-trainer with a smashed chair.

  “What if it’s him? What if I’m still married?”

  “Ruth, you’ve got a copy of his death certificate.”

  “Signed by a doctor a month before he died,” she reminds him.

  “You don’t have to look at it if you don’t want,” Phillips tells her as he closely examines the picture evolving on screen.

  “Tell me it’s not him, Mike. Please tell me it’s not him.”

  “I never saw him,” admits Phillips. “He’d gone before I arrived. But he could be about the right age.”

  Curiosity draws Ruth closer until she finds herself peering at the screen, and Phillips watches her face for a clue.

  “Is it him?” asks Phillips, heart-in-mouth at her puzzled expression.

  “It could be,” she says vaguely, but she is clearly indecisive. “Possibly.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I can’t remember what he looked like,” she finally admits in frustration and takes off for the bathroom saying, “What about Trina? She’ll know.”

  “It’s probably psychosomatic,” suggests Trina when Phillips phones for her email address. “Ruth’s tried so hard to blot him out of her memory that she’s forgotten what he looks like.”

  “See if you recognize him.” says Phillips as he forwards a copy, then he hangs on the phone while Trina opens her email.

  “Well?” he asks.

  Trina studies the picture carefully but is still noncommittal, “It could be, but I haven’t seen him for six months, and I didn’t know him very well before that.”

  “I’m surprised Ruth isn’t more certain,” he says closing his screen as the horseman disappears.

  “There might be another problem, Mike.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, come on. Wake up, man. She never loved him. She loves you to pieces, and the last thing she wants now is for him to pop back up and ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”

  Phillips’ face is somewhere between puzzlement and glee. “Is that true?” he asks, and Trina scoffs in amazement.

  “Men! If they spent more time looking at a woman’s face and less time ogling her tits, they might have a better idea what was going on in her mind.”

  “Hey!” exclaims Phillips, though he doesn’t try arguing the point as Trina continues, “You said you were going to take her away for a break. Why not take her to England and confront him? Neither of you are going to be completely happy until you’re sure.”

  chapter seventeen

  Superintendent Donaldson has had a touch of indigestion ever since lunch—an allergic reaction, he suspects, to the second heaped portion of spotted dick pudding with custard, but he also has had a gut feeling that he has too lightly dismissed Daphne’s assertions about the new tenant on his beat. The fact that Daphne had never been wrong about a case during her twelve-year tenure at Westchester police station, albeit as the cleaning lady, eases neither his stomach nor his mind, and he finds himself taking a more critical view of Thraxton Manor before driving back to see her in the late afternoon sunshine.

  “I thought I’d just take a peek,” Donaldso
n tells Bliss and Daphne as she hands him a cup of Keemun.

  “Biscuit?” she offers, and Donaldson takes four of the chocolate ones to settle his stomach.

  “Anyway, the place is absolutely crawling with workmen,” he continues. “And it looks as though he is having the fences repaired and surveillance cameras put up on the gates.”

  “He’s certainly touchy about trespassers,” admits Bliss, recalling his second visit to the estate, when he’d had his head bitten off.

  “Did he give you any idea of his intentions?” Donaldson asks, turning to Daphne.

  “I thought you weren’t interested,” says Daphne, being deliberately snotty. “I thought you said he wasn’t a heinous criminal.”

  “Daphne, I said we had no evidence that he had done anything wrong, but I must admit, it does seem a little strange.”

  Feeling vindicated, Daphne puts down her teapot and relents, saying, “He told me that he was going to do the old place up, and that he had plans for the out-buildings. But he didn’t say what.”

  The phone rings. It’s Mike Phillips for Bliss.

  “Mrs. Jackson couldn’t positively ID him from the photo,” Phillips says. “So I thought I might bring her over for a few days to give her chance to get up-close and personal.”

  “Wow!” exclaims Bliss. “The RCMP must have money to burn.”

  “Are you kidding?” laughs Phillips. “This is coming out of my wages.”

  “I don’t have room for any more guests, David,” worries Daphne once Bliss has informed her and Donaldson.

  “They’ll have to stay at the Mitre,” says Bliss. “I remember it being quite cozy when I stayed there once, and it wasn’t terribly expensive.”

  “This is getting interesting,” says Donaldson, helping himself to two more cookies. “Maybe I should try to get an undercover man in there. With so many workmen coming and going it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Hang on, sir,” cautions Bliss. “Nothing has changed. We only have Daphne’s suspicion that he’s up to no good, and now we’re not even sure that he is an impostor.”

  “David ...” spits Daphne, angrily. “I thought you were on my side.”

  “I just think it makes sense to wait until Mrs. Jackson takes a gander at him, that’s all. Then we’ll know for sure. Mike says they’ll be over in a day or so.”

  DS Phillips’ plan for a quick hop over the Atlantic comes unglued almost immediately when he tells Ruth about it.

  “Would you like that?” Phillips asks her as he hangs up on Bliss. “Spring in merry old England. We could do the sights, and we might even see the Queen.”

  “I’d love it. After all, I am half English—as far as I know,” replies Ruth, but her face tells an entirely different story, and she grips the chair with white knuckles.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Phillips, spotting the distress.

  “I can’t. I’m not allowed to leave the country while I’m on bail. Anyway, I don’t have a passport. People like me don’t usually get very far.”

  “Stop that this instant,” snaps Phillips. “I don’t want to hear that kind of nonsense ever again.” Then he takes her into his arms and hugs her warmly, saying positively, “Leave it to me. I’ll sort something out. We are going to England.”

  Mike Phillips’ departure leaves a vacuum in the hotel room once he’s gone to work, and Ruth finds the walls being sucked in around her until she can stand the pressure no longer and escapes onto the balcony.

  The warm spring sunshine glares off the snow-blanketed peaks, but it fails to lift Ruth’s claustrophobia as she finds herself hemmed in by the ring of mountains; mountains that she has never crossed. Beyond them, she knows, are the wide open prairies rolling from Alberta through Saskatchewan to Manitoba, and after that, the lakes and forests that stretch all the way from Ontario to the islands that edge the Atlantic Ocean. But for Ruth Jackson, née Ruth Crowfoot, of the Coast Salish First Nation, the Rockies are as much a hurdle as a heritage.

  “I can’t do it,” she muses aloud, as she watches a plane from Vancouver International Airport rising like a gull on the wind as it circles to gain height before slipping eastward over the peaks. “I’m trapped here. I can’t fly.”

  The persistent ringing of the room’s telephone draws her away from the balcony and she grabs the receiver, expecting it to be Phillips.

  “Ruth, it’s me,” says Trina, then she laughs. “Kylie and Rob are threatening to leave home.”

  “Why?” asks Ruth.

  “OK, tell me I’m stupid if you like, but ... Do you put bananas in your Bolognese sauce?”

  “Oh. Trina,” laughs Ruth, then her tone darkens. “Mike wants me to go to England with him.”

  “I know,” gushes Trina. “Aren’t you the lucky one?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “What do you mean? Scared of what?”

  Of flying; of leaving here; of what I might find in England; of strange people in a strange country; of strange customs and food, she thinks, though she says only, “I’m scared of having to give up Mike.”

  “Why would you have to give up Mike?” Trina demands, but she knows the answer; she knows that when Ruth had stood next to Jordan, repeating, “For richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; ’til death do us part,” she had meant every word, and going back on any of those promises now, whatever the provocation, may be difficult—if not impossible—for someone who has vowed to atone for her mother’s immorality.

  “Don’t worry,” carries on Trina. “I don’t expect it’s him.”

  “Him,” murmurs Ruth distractedly, as she tries unsuccessfully to come up with an image of Jordan in her mind. “I’m not sure if I would know him anymore,” she carries on, honestly.

  “Good,” says Trina. “After what he’s done, if it is him, he doesn’t deserve to be remembered. Now why don’t I pick you up in ten minutes and we’ll discuss this England thing over a coffee?”

  Trina’s driving is all over the place as usual, and it takes Ruth a few minutes to realize that they are headed in the general direction of her old home. “We’re not going back to the Coffee Shoppe are we?” she asks in sudden panic.

  “You can’t avoid the past forever,” says Trina, though she adds reassuringly, “No, we’re not going back there. I thought we would visit Raven and some other people who’ve missed you.”

  “Do you think Jordan misses me?”

  “Ruth ...” says Trina, looking her friend deep in the eyes and letting God take the wheel. “Jordan is dead. You have the certificate.”

  “The really strange thing is that I don’t hate him,” carries on Ruth, her mind as wayward as Trina’s driving.

  “But lack of hatred isn’t love, nor is it the opposite of love,” says Trina, then questions herself out loud. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “Reader’s Digest or Chicken Soup for somebody-or-other’s soul,” suggests Ruth. “But I know what you mean.”

  Ruth’s reception in Donut Delight is embarrassing-ly effusive as Darcey spots her and shrieks to the others, “Look everyone. It’s Ruth. It’s Ruth.”

  The entire crossword gang—and half a dozen other ex-patrons of the Corner Coffee Shoppe—rush to hug her, and she wilts under the deluge in the doorway as Trina keeps up the pressure from behind.

  “Wow. Look at you,” enthuses Matt as he holds her at arm’s-length and eyes her appreciatively.

  “Don’t turn sideways or we’ll miss you,” teases Maureen, and Ruth obligingly spins to show off her svelte figure as she jokes, “Don’t take your envy out on me, Maureen Daniels.”

  Raven is the last to appear, and she is altogether repentant as she brings a couple of cappuccinos to the table, saying to Ruth, “I’m really, really sorry about Jordan. I’ve given all that channelling stuff up now.” Though she smarts a little when Ruth replies, “Don’t blame yourself, Raven. I didn’t believe you anyway.”

  “When are you coming back?” is a question on everyone’s lips, t
hough the answer “Never,” sticks in Ruth’s throat.

  “The old café isn’t the same without you,” says Darcey. “We never go near the place now.”

  “I bet she’ll have to close soon, the way it’s going,” adds Matt, though any smugness that Ruth may feel is well hidden as she responds, “That would be a shame.”

  “I’m still worried what Tom might do,” admits Ruth, once she is sitting alone with Trina over their coffees.

  “He’s just a piece of dirt,” spits Trina. “Just do what I did. Let him know that you’re not scared of him.” Then she checks her watch and leaps from her seat. “Shit! I’ve forgotten to clean up Mrs. Hewitt’s morning barf,” she says, then she gives Ruth a reassuring smile. “Just be careful where you go, that’s all; though he won’t try anything in a busy place, and if he does, just knee him in the balls.”

  “I already tried that,” says Ruth, “but he came back again.”

  “Here, catch.” says Trina, taking a cellphone from her medical bag and throwing it to Ruth. “It’s Kylie’s. I confiscated it.”

  “Why?”

  “Boys,” scoffs Trina. “Her last bill cost me a fortune. Do me a favour, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “If any boy calls, tell him she moved to Yellowknife.”

  Trina is half out the door when she pauses in thought, then rushes back to Ruth with her hand in her purse. “Here,” she says, slipping a fifty dollar bill into Ruth’s palm. “Pay for the coffees and treat yourself with the change.”

  “Trina. You can’t ...” protests Ruth, but the home care nurse has gone.

  “It’s on the house,” says Raven with a confused look a few seconds later as Ruth attempts to foot the bill. “I told Trina.”

  The sun may still be shining as Ruth makes her way back to the city centre, but she hardly notices as she wanders down Georgia Street to the duck ponds in Stanley Park, her mind in turmoil over Mike’s proposal.

  Is it fear of flying or fear of facing the future? she wonders to herself as she approaches the water and finds a familiar figure tossing crusts to the birds.