The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  Bliss, fuming, could think of nothing worthwhile to say and they walked back to the plane in silence to find Yolanda sneaking a cigarette. Squeezing it out, she dropped it on the ground and opened the passenger door.

  “Where’s the pilot?” Edwards blared, baulking at the doorway. He was not having a good day—why should anyone else?

  Bliss and Yolanda looked at each other, but were saved the need to explain as Edwards spotted a uniformed man walking toward them. Satisfied, he climbed into the rear seat and was still fidgeting himself into place when the man, a security guard, veered off to continue his rounds.

  In the air, eventually, Yolanda concentrated on the flying, while Edwards concentrated on quelling his stomach. Bliss sat quietly, entranced by a white carpet of greenhouses and the endless ribbons of canals and roads, while steaming under the threat of disciplinary action.

  “How much longer?” Edwards queried gruffly after ten minutes in the air; ten minutes of edgy silence when neither man had said a word.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Yolanda replied cheerily, glancing at him in the rear view mirror, thinking: He looks awful. Mr. Bliss looks pretty rough too, she thought, stealing a look at his darkly pensive face out of the corner of an eye. “We might run into some turbulence soon,” she continued. “We often do around here.” Her right eye winked at Bliss and he caught the look. “It’s something to do with the sea,” she added for effect, noticing just a touch of brightness around his lips.

  Edwards moaned, saying nothing.

  Thirty seconds later her right hand eased its way across the short gap in between the seats and slid over the top of Bliss’ thigh. Her fingers gently squeezed into the soft flesh near his groin and all hell broke loose.

  The plane dropped like a stone and started spinning wildly. Her grip on his thigh increased. A scream came from the back. The plane crashed against an invisible cushion of air, then bounced off in the other direction. Her fingers bit into his flesh an inch from the end of his growing member. She stabbed at the controls and the nose shot upwards as Edwards was smashed back in his seat. Then the plane skidded onto its side forcing Bliss’ body to slide across the cockpit in her direction. Her fingers held his leg tightly as his world tumbled upside down. Bliss wanted to scream— terror or excitement? Before he could decide, Yolanda gave his thigh an extra little squeeze, let go, put both hands on the controls, and resumed level flight.

  “A bit bumpy,” she said nonchalantly.

  Superintendent Edwards slumped in the seat, a paper tissue held firmly over his mouth. He said nothing, the fear in his eyes said everything.

  Captain Jahnssen was waiting on the tarmac as they touched down. Yolanda had alerted him on the radio. “Pleased to meet you, Sir,” said the captain, unsure of the correct address to use for a foreign officer of equal rank—sticking with “Sir” as the safest bet.

  “Michael,” he snapped, gratefully collapsing onto the rear seat.

  “We’ll see you back at the port, Detectives,” the captain addressed Bliss and Yolanda together. “Why don’t you stop and get a meal. You two haven’t eaten all day. I’ll bring the superintendent up to date.”

  “Any news?” enquired Bliss, hopefully.

  The captain shook his head as he climbed in beside Edwards, and the car sped off with Yolanda slumping in relief and Bliss dancing on the spot.

  “What’s up Dave?”

  “Won’t be a minute,” he shouted, running for a nearby building.

  chapter seven

  Lisa McKenzie paced frenziedly outside the Flightpath restaurant at Stanstead airport, a few miles north of London, not far from Watford. Her exhusband sat inside chatting to the police constable who had come with them to meet Margery. Peter poked his head out the door for the fourth time. “Come and have a cup of tea, Luv.”

  A smile failed in the attempt and she shook her head. “I’m alright.” Abstinence had become a penitence: How can I eat when my baby is …? And to have eaten or drunk when not in her chair would have been doubly sacrilegious.

  The moment she’d left her chair in the apartment in Leyton the feeling came over her that she was doing the wrong thing: Believing that leaving the chair would somehow break the bond tying her to Trudy’s spirit and that, without a tether, the spirit would simply drift away.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” the officer had said, detecting her reluctance. “Me and Mr. McKenzie can get her and bring her straight back here.”

  She was torn, desperate for news, desperate to see Roger’s photograph and even desperate to see Margery, who at least embodied some link between her and her only daughter. “I’ll come,” she decided at last, after declining twice. “What time does she arrive?”

  “The plane’s due at seven twenty-eight,” the policeman said, with annoying precision. “We’ve arranged for Margery to be brought straight through immigration and customs, so we should be back here by half past eight at the latest.”

  It was now nearly eight-fifteen. “Delayed,” was the only information provided on the huge arrivals board, but they already knew that. The constable had contacted the control tower as soon as they arrived a little after six-thirty. “Two hours late leaving Avignon due to a puncture,” he had told them. “They might be able to make up a little time but they said we shouldn’t expect her much before nine-thirty.”

  “Damn,” swore Peter, well aware a couple of national papers had promised to run Roger’s photograph, as long as they had it before ten.

  “Let’s keep our fingers crossed shall we,” continued the policeman. “Anyway, another day won’t make much difference.” The immediate look of horror on Lisa McKenzie’s face alerted him to his faux pas and he fumbled to correct himself. “Ah … I mean. I know it does make a difference. But, um … It would give us more time to make sure the picture’s printed properly.” Her face was unmoved. “Anyway,” he placed his trump firmly on the table, “more people read the papers on Saturdays than they do on Friday.”

  Lisa McKenzie, convinced they were already too late, buckled under the weight of yet another setback. Her face scrunched and she started to cry. Peter flung a sympathetic arm around her and pulled her to his chest.

  “Sorry,” mumbled the policeman.

  “It’s O.K. Not your fault Constable. My wife’s very emotional at the moment.”

  Looking up, she caught the innocence in his vacant expression and realized the possessive term was just a slip; his troubled thoughts a banana skin for his tongue. Another wave of emotion rippled across her face and she wept more loudly.

  They had spent the first hour at the airport in the depressing waiting room at the police office, but had run out of conversation in the first five minutes. Aside from Trudy, any other topic would have been facile. The constable, an infatuated chrysanthemum grower, longed to tell them about the propagation of his latest creation, a huge double pink he was certain would win major prizes.

  “Do you like flowers Mrs. McKenzie?” he asked, with a bounce of brightness in his voice, hoping to take her mind off Trudy.

  “Not much.” Her apartment was overflowing with bouquets from well-meaning well-wishers—three since Margery’s call at lunchtime—and mention of more flowers immediately crumpled her face in thoughts of funerals.

  Lisa had spent most of her time in the waiting room staring bleary-eyed at a bulletin board, strewn with pictures of missing people, culled from the Police Gazette. Some bore inscriptions that terrified her: “Missing since October 15th 1982” was boldly printed under the smiling face of one little boy, forever four years-old in the minds of his distraught parents. Another said. “Last heard of in 1991—stated intention of visiting friend in Morocco.” “That’s ten years,” she mused, biting furiously at the quick of her nails.

  “She’s not here,” she screamed suddenly, “Trudy’s not here.”

  Peter leapt at her scream, flinging aside the seven-year-old National Geographic he’d been scanning.

  “Look,” she orde
red, her head zipping back and forth in a desperate search for her daughter’s likeness. Peter looked.

  The constable came up behind them. “It’s too soon,” he said, with quiet authority. “It takes at least a month for the photos to be in the Gazette. Anyway,” he lightened his tone, “I’m sure we’ll have found her by then.”

  Finally, after refusing an offer of tea from a grumpily indifferent sergeant, who had made it clear he would be sacrificing some of his own personal supply, they decided to take a walk around the airport. Everywhere she looked Lisa saw Trudy; every girl with long dark hair grabbed her attention; every female face, and some male, had familiar features. And what if she’d disguised herself? What if she’d cut her hair, bleached it, changed style, altered her entire appearance? No one escaped scrutiny without at least a cursory inspection, irrespective of age, size, or colour. The airport lounges were filled with potential Trudies and an embarrassed Peter eventually dragged her, fairly forcibly, away from the busiest areas.

  “She won’t be here Luv,” he said, firmly taking her arm. “The constable has gone to enquire if there is any more information, I said we’d meet him in the restaurant.”

  “What about that girl over there?” she tried, refusing to give up.

  He looked. “She’s at least forty. Come on. Let’s go and wait for Margery.”

  A dark ponytail bobbed in the distance—she struggled in its wake. “Stop it,” he commanded sharply, dragging her toward the restaurant.

  “Nothing new,” the policeman said as they met a few minutes later. “I’m sure we’ll find her easily once we’ve got the photo,” he added with a smile to Lisa, hoping to make up for his previous insensitivity.

  “Roger might not know anything,” she replied coldly, refusing to get her hopes up. Disappointment had knocked her back into the old kitchen chair too many times already.

  Peter stepped in. “We won’t know if we don’t try. Trudy has to be somewhere, and you know how mad she was about that computer. Maybe this guy will know something, or some of his friends might.”

  Roger certainly knew where Trudy was, though had no idea what she was doing.

  Trudy was typing again. Sending another message to her mother that would get no further than the little green screen. The first message in nearly five hours.

  “MUM. WHERE ARE YOU. PLEASE HURRY …” Her fingers paused, the flurry of activity had sapped her energy. Every movement she made away from her breathing hole in the door now requiring more and more effort. She was already completely drained by the time she had crawled to the computer but, with her lungs screaming for air, she willed herself to stay just long enough to keep in touch with her mother.

  “GET DAD,” she added, in desperation, and then she was gone again. Her painful pilgrimage starting once more.

  “Do you like the herring?” Yolanda enquired, stuffing a large prawn into her mouth, peering at Bliss through the trio of tall white candles, which formed the only barrier between them as they sat in one of the few remaining Dutch restaurants in the tourist resort, a few miles to the north of the port. The ride in the BMW had taken twenty minutes but, as Yolanda explained, they had no choice, unless he preferred Indonesian, Chinese, or American; all of it fast and foreign. Bliss looked at the partially exposed fish skeleton on his plate, debating how and when to finish it; wishing he’d opted for a burger or chow mien.

  “Every visitor to Holland must eat at least one raw herring,” she continued as if reading from a Michelin guide. “It is the law.” She kept a straight face and for a moment he could have believed her.

  Then he laughed. “You’re joking.”

  She smiled, admitting nothing.

  “Anyway,” he said, “if they are that good, why didn’t you have one?”

  She pulled a face and pretended to spit on the floor. “They’re disgusting. We only give them to visitors.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “If you are a good boy and eat all of your herring,” she said, slowly lifting a huge prawn to dangle tantalisingly in front of his face, “you can have another one.” Laughing, she quickly popped the prawn, whole, into her mouth.

  The candlelight flickered between them as he studied her. Analysing her face carefully, without staring, trying to identify the one or two unique features that would distinguish her from any other woman. Fashionably unruly short blond hair, baby blue eyes, nicely formed white teeth and a pair of lips some men would kill for.. But such a description could fit thousands of similarly attractive women. As a detective he searched for something more noteworthy, more uniquely identifiable, more defining: The deep dimple in her left cheek, not reflected in the right, was certainly striking, though hardly conclusive. Her nose was perhaps a little bulbous; not unattractively so. But the feature which struck him so positively lay either side of her mouth, where her flesh creased deeply, and perfectly, into a pair of delicately curved parentheses, bracketing her lips and accentuating her smile.

  Tiredness dragged him down as his eyelids drifted together and, giving his head a quick shake, he renewed the conversation. “I wonder what has happened to LeClarc.”

  “They threw him off the ship,” she replied casually.

  “But why? They obviously planned to put him in the truck …”

  She interrupted, laughing. “I know, but he was too fat and they couldn’t get him in.”

  Bliss laughed with her, “No, I don’t think so … although …?”

  Yolanda’s face became serious. “What’s he worth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He must be valuable or they wouldn’t want him. People steal things because of what they are worth.”

  “Sometimes,” he agreed. “Usually … But sometimes they take things because they are jealous, to get revenge, or … or lots of reasons.”

  “What about the other eight missing people?” she asked, changing tack. “How many of their bodies were never found?”

  He thought for a moment while the waiter collected their plates. The herring’s eyes had been staring accusingly at him for at the past five minutes and he was pleased to see it go. “Only one for sure—the woman; the one who committed suicide. There were a few burned bits left from the guy who hit the train, but it must have been like trying to identify a pig by examining a barbecued pork chop.

  She shuddered. “Dave, I’m eating.”

  “You asked,” he said, and continued, in revenge for the herring. “I’ve seen the photos. All the identifiable bits were so badly burned you couldn’t be sure they were human.”

  “DNA?” she enquired, knowing he would understand.

  He shook his head slightly. “Doubt it; they might have tried, but they had no reason. His wife said it was him, recognized his clothes and car. The inquest said it was an accident: lost control and crashed through the fence. It was just bad luck the train was there at the same time.”

  “Bad luck or very good timing,” she mused. “Zo, the other six,” She leaned forward earnestly, seeking information in his eyes, a balloon glass of Chardonnay cupped in both hands like a crystal ball suspended midair between them. “Where are they?”

  He shook his head again, but his eyes remained riveted to hers. “No one knows,” he replied. Their eyes stuck. His face tingled. Her lips parted, just a fraction. Time stopped.

  Then the waiter broke the spell and they leaned back while he scurried around removing bits and pieces of unwanted cutlery to make room for the main course.

  “Steak and chips,” Bliss had insisted, having been coerced into the herring; feeling one native dish would be sufficiently politic. She had chosen a warm chicken salad with an unpronounceable name for herself.

  “Nobody really took any notice of the disappearances until we got the tip about LeClarc,” he said, as soon as the waiter was out of earshot.

  “Why not?” she enquired, then pushed a forkful of food in his direction. “Try this it’s wonderful.” He opened his mouth, almost involuntarily, and she slid the fork in.


  “Mmm, that’s good,” he mumbled, though was glad he had chosen the steak. “Lots of people disappear,” he continued, returning to his theme. “Most turn up sooner or later. If they are adults and there is no real suspicion of foul play, we don’t go out of our way to look for them.”

  Considerately, she held her next question until he had eaten a few chunks of steak. “But these people were important. Somebody should have made enquiries.”

  The implied criticism stung and he went on the defensive. “It’s not that simple. Two of them, the woman and the guy hit by the train weren’t missing: they were dead. One man disappeared in the Atlantic. The loner who lived in the Welsh mountains was eccentric.”

  Yolanda’s head cocked to one side. “Centric?” she questioned.

  “Weird—a bit crazy,” he explained.

  “Okey dokey. But that leaves four.”

  He chewed thoughtfully trying to remember what had happened to the others. “The two men in the boat,” he said, between bites, “could have been an accident. It could’ve sunk, caught fire, hit by a whale …”

  “Eaten by a herring,” she proposed, and made him laugh again.

  “Seriously,” he continued, straightening his face, “anything could have gone wrong.”

  “And the other two men?”

  He shrugged. “Run off with their secretaries; scarpered with the social club Christmas fund; fell in love with each other and started a gay bar in California.”

  Yolanda laughed.

  “Who knows,” added Bliss, “but the point is, nobody linked the cases together. The M.O. was different in each case.”

  He stopped—checking her face for comprehension—then carried on. “All the informant said was LeClarc was going to be kidnapped, nothing about the others, they might not be connected at all.”

  Yolanda stared meditatively into her wineglass for sometime, then began slowly. “This was well planned; would have cost a lot of money. King, Motsom, and the driver had to be paid, and the special truck had to be on the right ship. If that crewman …”