‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ he assured her. ‘You must carry on as if you and I never spoke. One more thing – is there any chance that I or another officer could come up and have a look through Bernard’s personal things? There may be something, anything, that might help us find out more about what happened to him.’
‘Yes, of course. If you think you need to. He had his own study, but I really have no idea what you hope to find.’
‘Probably nothing,’ Bliss told her. ‘But maybe everything we need.’
He ended the call with a promise to contact her with further news, and immediately got to his feet, intending to head back to the incident room. As Bliss rose, however, his head seemed to lurch from side to side, and the room swam in and out of focus, walls and ceiling closing in on him. He felt a warm, tingling sensation in his right ear, a piercing high-pitched shriek filling his head, and his knees buckled slightly. Bliss reached out a hand and placed it palm down on the desk to steady himself, spreading his fingers to their widest span, drawing in a deep breath at the same time. The sensation was similar to that of a panic attack, he’d been told.
‘Are you okay, boss?’
Looking up, he saw Chandler standing in the doorway, concern creasing her face. He nodded and straightened immediately, raising a hand. ‘I’m fine. My fault. I’ve not had a thing to eat all day. Bit of a head-rush, that’s all.’
His DC said nothing, but she didn’t look at all convinced.
‘Let’s not get into it right now,’ he said, more abruptly than he’d intended. ‘Do you have something for me?’
The smile that formed never touched her eyes. ‘A break, hopefully. One night in June nineteen ninety, two separate emergency calls were made regarding an accident. Both callers said they had heard a vehicle revving hard, followed by squealing brakes, moments before striking something or someone. One of the callers claims to have seen a body lying on the side of the road immediately afterwards, a car idling close by. They made the call, but by the time they got outside, there was no sign of either the body or the car.’
Bliss felt himself nodding excitedly. The possibilities raged inside his mind. This was more like it. ‘Where was this?’ he asked.
Chandler’s smile grew wider. ‘High Street, Fletton.’
Getting better all the time. Less than half a mile from the lake where Jane Doe had most likely been buried first time around.
‘The team are putting together all relevant information as we speak,’ Chandler pressed on. ‘I’ve asked them to have a report prepared for an eight thirty briefing tomorrow morning.’
‘Excellent news, Pen,’ he said, scarcely able to contain his enthusiasm. Bliss wanted that information now, wanted to press on with the case, but Penny had made the call and, despite his frustration, he refused to alter her decision. Patience was not one of his few virtues, but loyalty was. ‘Did you keep the other team working on the reverse chronology tracking?’
She nodded. ‘Normal hours for them. Unless they come up with anything useful, of course.’
Bliss reflected on his earlier concerns. Delegation did not come easy to him, and he still had regrets over leaving Penny to fend for herself all day, but she had done a good job in his absence. He’d not been missed.
‘Well done,’ he said, finding her eyes with his. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you felt abandoned today. I shouldn’t have gone off on a tangent this afternoon, but I was just sucked in by the odd coincidences surrounding DI Weller’s death. No excuses. I was wrong to leave you hanging in the wind. You did a great job, but I shouldn’t have gone off like that.’
Chandler shrugged, allowed herself another smile. ‘I’m glad you did. I needed something like this to give me a kick start. Those sergeant’s exams have been hanging around me like a bad smell, but today has given me fresh impetus. I’m encouraged by how I handled things.’
He grinned. ‘Well, good for you. All part of my master plan, of course.’
‘Of course. So, did you find what you were looking for at Weller’s place?’
‘I’m not entirely sure. Probably, but I want to turn it over a few times in my mind and make sure I have it straight before I run it by you.’
‘Sounds reasonable. Anyway, I forgot to ask earlier, but how did you get on this morning?’
‘This morning?’ For a moment he wondered if he’d slipped up and said something he’d rather have kept to himself.
‘You had something on the go, but you didn’t say what. Anything I need to know about?’
She was fishing. He knew it, and she knew he knew. But Penny being Penny, she didn’t care.
‘No. Thanks for asking, though. Nothing you need to concern yourself with. It was a personal matter, as I think I mentioned.’
‘Did you? I’d forgotten.’ She paused, then fixed her gaze on him. ‘You’d better get some food inside you, boss. Can’t have you fainting like a big girl.’
Bliss laughed. As they moved to leave his office together, Chandler turned her head towards him and leaned in. It was the slightest of movements, but Bliss noticed, and for one awkward moment he thought she was going to kiss him. Instead he saw her nostrils flare, her head dart back.
‘What was that?’ he asked. He stopped walking and stared at her.
‘What was what?’
His mind raced. What exactly had she done? Sniffed the air? Sniffed him? Did he smell? Did he have bad breath? His thoughts finally came to rest on what she may have seen when she entered his office.
His frown deepened. ‘Were you smelling my breath?’
He heard her suck in some air. ‘Sir, I…’
‘Do you think I’ve been drinking? Is that what you thought when you saw me sway, Penny?’
Bliss saw Chandler wrestling with her emotions. Her first instinct would be to back off, but her true nature would plough ahead regardless of the consequences. It was one of the things he most admired about her.
‘Sir, I’m worried about you,’ she admitted finally. ‘You’re pale, you look weaker than I’ve ever seen you, and today is not the first time I’ve seen you stagger.’
‘And all that adds up to my having a problem with booze, right?’
‘Not necessarily, no. You may not be eating right. You said yourself that you hadn’t had a meal today.’
‘Yes, but clearly you didn’t believe me. You think I’m hitting the bottle.’
‘You’ve had a bad time recently. You wouldn’t be the first cop to…’
‘Stop,’ Bliss snapped, raising a finger. He left it there in front of her face. ‘Just stop right there. I’m grateful for your concern, but frankly I’m very disappointed that you see me as the sort of bloke who’d get pissed while on duty. You know a great deal about my life, Penny. Far more than anyone else, and I mean anyone. You’ve seen me drunk exactly once, and I couldn’t have been more off duty than I was that night.’
The memory of waking up in her spare bedroom still burned inside his mind. He’d gone on a drinking binge after a bout of depression. Fortunately for Bliss, a barman had recognised him and had called Penny. She had rescued him from his moment of weakness, and had never mentioned it since.
‘I’m not saying I think you’ve been drunk on duty,’ Chandler argued.
‘Then what are you saying?’
She couldn’t answer him. Bliss didn’t accept for one moment that she actually thought he would be drinking on duty, but dark thoughts of him and the demon drink had formed inside her mind and those thoughts had not been fully explored. Perhaps he ought to have explained his illness, but Bliss believed he was entitled to a little privacy. That she had dared try and capture the smell of alcohol on his breath hurt him a little. And that was the overriding feeling right now.
‘I’ll see you at briefing tomorrow,’ he said eventually. His tone suggested their conversation was at an end. ‘Please try not to think the worst of me if I happen to smell of mints.’
Chapter 11
Suitably ashamed, Bliss later ch
astised himself for that final cheap shot at Penny. He would make a point of apologising before the morning briefing, and she would forgive him; in fact, she probably already had. In her own way, Penny was looking out for him, and her concern should have been welcomed rather than rejected in such a mean-spirited manner. He’d acted like a jerk. He knew it wouldn’t be the last time.
After work he hadn’t felt in the mood to join his colleagues for a drink, so instead Bliss treated himself to a poor three-course meal at a pub close to his home, washing down the tasteless food with a pint of IPA. At best it was fuel, at worst a culinary disgrace. As he pushed his dessert plate aside and drained his glass, Bliss caught sight of his reflection in a window and briefly saw himself through the eyes of other patrons in the pub: some poor, pathetic loser eating alone, a Billy-no-mates with less life than a dog’s pelt.
It was this thought that led Bliss to calling his parents the moment he returned home. They had moved to Spain many years ago, taking over a small bar and restaurant in a mountain village twenty miles north of Marbella. On hearing the news, Bliss had joked with his father that they were only moving out there in order that he could meet up with all the villains who had skipped bail to live abroad. According to subsequent letters and phone calls, he’d not been far wrong.
It was his mother who answered the phone. Bliss could hear the pleasure in her voice as they exchanged greetings, but it wasn’t long before the maternal instinct kicked in.
‘How are you doing, Jimmy?’ she asked, the question much more than casual.
‘I’m fine. Bonnie and Clyde send their love.’
She laughed. ‘I’m sure they do. Seriously, though, how are you?’
‘Seriously, though, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘I could always tell when you were lying, Jimmy.’
‘Really. How?’
‘Your lips were moving.’
Now it was his turn to laugh. ‘How’s the old man?’
The sigh that rattled down the line was born of frustration. ‘Oh, that bloody old fool. We brought in that new manager so your dad could take a back seat, and he spends more time there now than he ever did before. Says he doesn’t trust the manager to run the place properly.’
Bliss shook his head. That was typical of his father. ‘You tell him to take a breather. It’s time the both of you started enjoying your money.’
‘What money?’
‘Don’t plead poverty, Mum, we both know you’re rolling in it. Anyway, I’m thinking of coming out there for Christmas,’ he told her. He wasn’t sure if he meant it, but it had been something to say.
‘Really? That’s smashing. We’d love to see you. Anyone coming with you?’
Subtlety wasn’t one of his mother’s strengths. ‘I doubt it, Mum.’ Bliss thought about Emily Grant, but made no further comment.
They batted some small talk back and forth for a further ten minutes or so. When eventually he told her he had to go, his mother gave it one last shot. ‘You would tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn’t you, Jimmy?’
A layer of guilt settled on him when he thought about the news Captain Scowcroft had given him that morning. But he couldn’t see what good it would do anyone to upset his parents right now. They’d had enough of that, Bliss thought.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I give in. I confess. Mum, I’m gay.’
‘Thank goodness, love. For a moment I thought you were going to tell me you’d found God.’
Relieved that the conversation had ended on a real belly laugh, Bliss decided that in future he would call his parents only when he was feeling at his best. His mother’s radar was simply too good. She’d be great in a room interviewing suspects.
After walking Bonnie and Clyde over by Orton Mere, Bliss spent some time surfing the Internet, having entered the keywords ‘Ménière’s Disease’ into the Google search engine. He found a lot of websites dedicated to the disease, along with several online forums. One of the sites in particular seemed to have a wealth of interesting material, so he set it as one of his favourites and also saved some of the more informative pages to his computer’s hard drive. Bliss believed the Internet to consist mostly of porn or useless information, but at times like this he appreciated its usefulness. On the forums he discovered people with the same fears, the same lack of comprehension, and knowing there were other sufferers somehow made him feel a little better.
When his patience for surfing was exhausted, Bliss watched the movie K-Pax on DVD, wondering as he had after each previous viewing whether the character played by Kevin Spacey was, as he’d claimed, visiting from another planet, or if the Jeff Bridges character had been correct in his diagnosis of mental instability caused by harrowing family murders. Bliss enjoyed films that made him think about them long after they were over. They reminded him of life and all its absurdities. The movie Crash had the same effect, the unfolding story revealing how critical the impact people have on each other can be. Bliss had considered those possibilities long after the haunting Bird York song had died away and the credits stopped rolling.
After the DVD he’d tried to sleep, but the night would not release him. Neither would the investigation, thought of which kicked aside both his illness and the speculation relating to the movie. Recognising the familiar signs of insomnia, and not wanting the effects of a late sleeping pill to muddle his thinking during the morning briefing, Bliss decided to go for a drive to see if he could make himself drowsy.
It was only when driving either through or around the city that Bliss realised how little it felt like home. Having always considered it characterless, in recent times he had come to think of Peterborough as a place without soul. Its inhabitants seemed to drift through it like balls of tumbleweed, occasionally bumping into each other and creating a minor tangle, but leaving no lasting impression on each other. The word he could best use to describe it was ordinary, and perhaps that meant he did belong after all.
An aerial shot of Peterborough at night could never be confused with one of Las Vegas. The only real illumination was the cathedral, and while the building itself was magnificent, it could hardly be called a Mecca for tourists. A dull amber sodium lighting cast a sombre glow over the parkways that ringed the city, but the centre itself was dimly lit and gloomy. Having lured in both sizeable businesses and a more metropolitan public than it was used to, Peterborough had spent the last quarter of a century wondering how to deal with the influx. That it had promised more than it delivered was not in doubt, and the signs of ageing were gathering like carrion crows around road kill.
Bliss drove over to Bretton, pulling up as close to the woods as he could, not far from where he had parked on Tuesday evening following the shout. A flat-roofed, two-storey secondary school huddled in the moonlit darkness to his right, while to his left lay a wide single-track path that led to a large playing field and the woods themselves. This was the most likely parking spot for whoever had buried Jane Doe a few hundred yards away. A bit of a struggle with a corpse, but easy enough with a sackful of human remains and a spade. Not a lot of bulk, and even less weight. Few houses close by had a good view of the path entrance, and just a dozen or so yards along it became entirely obscured by trees. The person responsible for digging that shallow grave would not have been hurried.
So why not go further off the path and deeper into the woods? Bliss wondered, remembering his initial thoughts when first surveying the scene. If he was going to bury someone he would do it as far off the beaten track as possible. Perhaps their quarry had been disturbed after all. Someone walking a dog? A couple seeking intimate contact away from prying eyes? Bliss shook off the questions, the answers to which, he guessed, would probably never reveal themselves.
As he sat quite still in the car and reflected on the way the investigation had panned out so far, Bliss’s thoughts strayed once more to his hospital visit. The news he’d received earlier in the day just might account for the insomnia. He would spend time finding out more about this bloody Méni
ère’s thing, but it would have to wait. If the disease allowed him to. The scariest thing about it was the control it seemed to have over the individual sufferer. It was all very well intending to fight it, looking to make it into work each day and focus on the job, but what if the symptoms became so bad he couldn’t move without fear of falling over? What if he couldn’t even climb out of bed? Another bridge to jump off when he got to it, he supposed. At this rate he’d need a bungee cord around his waist.
He shrugged the negative thoughts aside and brought Emily Grant to mind. It would have been nice to see Emily earlier, and he’d forgotten to ask Penny about her. The two of them had been due to meet at Thorpe Wood, and Bliss wondered if Emily had managed to discover anything else of interest. Absurdly, he also found himself speculating as to whether Emily had mentioned him. Bliss laughed at himself and shook his head. At the age of forty-three, it was time he grew up.
He gunned the Vectra’s engine and drove off. One of the oldest parts of Peterborough, Fletton was all the way across the other side of the city, but at this time of night it took less than ten minutes to get there. The High Street was a long, narrow road that ran between Fletton and Woodston. Bliss drove along it both ways, passing darkened houses, cars jammed close together on both sides of the street. Pausing briefly on a deserted corner, engine idling with a gentle, well-tuned purr, Bliss wondered what further news would be revealed later that morning. Where on this road had the reported incident taken place? Who had made those calls? Had anyone else heard or seen something that night but not bothered to call? How in-depth had the official reports been, considering no body was discovered? How well would those involved remember the incident now? Would they even still be around? These were all questions the murder squad could and should be able to answer over the next couple of days.
The incident as reported by at least one person seemed to match the investigation team’s line of thinking: that Jane Doe had been struck by a vehicle shortly before her death. Bliss wondered if they were looking at a true accident here, some drunk driver perhaps, who had been sober enough to cover his or her tracks afterwards, or had Jane Doe been run down deliberately? Bliss could see it in his mind; the driver checks the body, discovers she’s still breathing and, aware that the commotion would have been overheard and probably reported, pulls her into the vehicle and speeds off. Either scenario was possible, and both would be fully explored. Whichever proved to be the truth, the ultimate act had been one of murder.
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