This time McAndrew left the fork standing upright in the turf. He turned to face Bliss, brow creased into horizontal furrows. ‘Bloody Hell! Who are you, the fucking ghost of Christmas past?’
Bliss had to concentrate hard to understand what the man was saying. People like McAndrew ought to come with subtitles, he thought.
‘I’m just here to ask you about what you saw that night, Mr McAndrew. Please don’t make this a pain in the arse for me, or instead of treating you like a witness I’ll start treating you like a suspect. Police brutality is still very popular in this city. Particularly with me.’
‘Suspect? For what? Fuck all happened. Aye, I remember that night, and I did my bit by phoning you lot.’
‘Yes. You did, and we’re grateful. You took the time. You bothered. So take some time and be bothered now.’
The Scotsman gave a stifled moan. ‘All right. But there’s fuck all I can tell you now that I didn’t tell your pals at the time. I heard the car, heard something being hit, saw something in the gutter and the car spread across the road.’
‘The car was askew, but on its correct side of the road. Yes?’
‘Aye.’
‘Was the vehicle facing the pavement or the centre of the road?’
The man chewed on his lower lip. Harsh acne scarring dominated both cheeks. ‘Pavement, I think. Your pals didn’t ask that one.’
‘Just now you said that when you first looked out of the window you saw something in the gutter. Sixteen years ago when you made that call you seemed certain it was a body.’
‘Och, I was bladdered. It was all a blur. Your pals found fuck all on the road, and then when they smelled the booze on me…’ He shrugged.
Bliss thought about that for a moment. Recalled the case notes. ‘Tell me, who suggested you might be too drunk to recall the incident clearly? Did you tell the officers, or did they tell you?’
The man’s eyes switched away. ‘It was a long time ago, pal.’
‘I know that. But I really would appreciate your help, Mr McAndrew.’ He wondered about the witness’s reluctance to assist, guessing it might be more than an aversion to the law and its enforcers.
The groundsman breathed heavily through a nose that looked to have been broken on more than one occasion. He seemed to struggle with his memory for a few seconds. Then he nodded and wagged a finger.
‘Oh, aye. That’s right. It wasn’t that night. All they did was take a few notes and then left me to go on and search the road. It was a few days later that one of them came back and spoke to me again.’
‘Really?’ To Bliss’s recollection a second interview was not recorded in the case notes. At least, not on the printout that Mia Strong had pulled up. ‘Can you remember what was said?’
‘No.’ Again the eyes focused on something in the distance.
Bliss didn’t believe him. There was something evasive and shifty about the man. ‘It was sixteen years ago, McAndrew. Whatever was said then is water under the bridge. If someone leaned on you, they’re no longer a threat. It’s me you’re answerable to now, and I don’t let go of things easily.’
This time the man’s gaze found his. He had the eyes of a trapped animal that knows its time has come. He nodded once.
‘Aye. All right. The copper told me nothing had been reported, that if there had ever been an accident, no one had been hurt, and that if I didn’t change my story they’d have a shitload of paperwork to do all for nothing. Your pal made it clear that I was going to suffer for that. He said all I had to do was make another statement saying I must have been out of my head on something. I dinnae want any trouble, you know?’
Bliss nodded. ‘I think I do. And the officers, they were the same two who investigated your initial emergency call?’
‘Well, one of them stayed in the car while the other one did all the talking. But aye, they were the same ones I spoke to that night.’
‘Can you remember the officer’s name? The one you spoke with that second time?’
‘No. No chance. But he was a Glaswegian like me.’
So Weller and Hendry had made a point of visiting McAndrew again. Only this time, Weller had remained in the car while Hendry applied pressure to have McAndrew change his version of events. As Bliss negotiated his way out of the car park and back onto London Road, he worked it through, trying to see the pieces being slotted together, the various strands being traced back to a single act. It seemed likely that Weller and Hendry had attended the scene genuinely following the emergency calls, but on finding no sign of an accident, and certainly no evidence that someone had been struck by a vehicle, they had approached the incident with little enthusiasm. Shortly afterwards, however, someone had got to them. Someone who wanted to make sure the incident was forgotten about altogether.
Bliss sat in traffic built up ahead of some road works on Oundle Road. He switched on the radio which was tuned to the local station, Hereward FM. Traffic updates featured regularly, particularly on Saturdays when the city centre was at its busiest. A Coldplay cut was fast approaching its keyboard outro, so Bliss kept one ear open for the end.
He thought about what to do next. McAndrew’s information hadn’t given the inquiry the injection of pace he’d hoped for, but the subtle nuances related to the way Weller and Hendry had handled things suggested either a lack of professional integrity or a cover-up of some description. Bliss couldn’t see Bernard Weller dumping an inquiry for no good reason, though it was possible that he’d been persuaded. But why, and by whom? Those questions remained unanswered.
Bliss considered driving across to Thorpe Wood and pulling out all the case notes again, but Mia Strong would look to get involved and he wasn’t sure he wanted to bring her in on this just yet. For the time being he didn’t want Weller’s involvement even known of let alone discussed, because it was the single strand that he was determined to keep flying on its own. Bliss was becoming more and more convinced that the line he, Bobby and Penny were following was the one that would ultimately lead them to the place they needed to go.
Whether they would like it once they got there was another matter entirely.
Chapter 16
Everyone has their secrets. Even policemen. For some it is a reliance upon either drink or drugs, whichever one makes them forget. Others are on the take, or run up huge debts that spiral out of control. Some make use of the prostitutes they deal with, or remove stolen goods for themselves during a raid on known fences. Jimmy Bliss had an acquaintance with booze that was still recent enough to recall in vivid detail, but he had never touched drugs. He’d never taken a pay off in his life, either, though a few had been offered.
But Bliss did have secrets. Secrets seared into his very soul. Like the fact that he and his wife had been sexual swingers for the final year of their marriage. Hardly something you discuss in the staff canteen, or chat about over a cosy beer after a hard day’s coppering. As secrets go, it was a big one. As intimate as they come. Squalid, perhaps. Deadly, too. Because ultimately this lifestyle choice had led to Hazel’s murder.
Bliss thought about this as he sat in the smoky lounge of a bar tucked away beneath a small baker’s shop in an alley that ran between two of the main pedestrianised roads in the city centre. He sat alone at a perfunctory table, working on a pint of Old Peculiar, while he waited for the evening’s musical attraction to appear on a tiny stage wedged into the corner of the subterranean bar. The band covered work by a number of guitarists Bliss admired, and he’d been looking forward to this evening for a number of weeks. Whilst waiting for the set to get going, his thoughts had become introspective. He wondered why he hadn’t called Emily and asked her to join him. The obvious and immediate answer caused further reflection: these were the sort of moments he had once shared with his wife, and Bliss had no idea how he might react with someone else alongside him.
Though their musical tastes had been a little different, Bliss had appreciated Hazel’s commitment to sharing that part of his life. Music was in his sou
l, and she had often sat in their living room listening to him play his guitar. Many dim-lit evenings had seen the pair of them curled up together on a sofa, while his CDs played softly in the background. It was almost impossible for him now not to hear a piece of music without associating it with his wife. Perhaps this evening had been a bad idea after all, he thought.
Mood somewhat soured, Bliss could then think of nothing else but Hazel, and the course of events that had led him to this solitary existence. He and his wife had become friendly with a couple Hazel worked with at a central London advertising agency. Their friendship with Darren and Lucy Martin had entered its sixth month when Hazel came home one night and told Bliss about their friends’ alternative lifestyle. At first Bliss had laughed it off, but had also fleetingly imagined what it would be like to see Lucy spread eagled on a bed with her clothes off. Even screwing her. The imagination was a powerful thing, almost entirely without conscience.
At first there was no real encouragement to join in, but when Bliss and Hazel were enjoying dinner one evening at their friends’ house, Darren showed them both a photograph of him and Lucy posing naked with another couple. There was nothing sordid or unsavoury about it, and all four seemed perfectly relaxed and at ease with what they were doing. Later that night as Bliss and his wife lay together in bed, Hazel suggested going to the next swingers’ night. Just to watch, at first. But to join in if they felt like it. They agreed that if either of them felt it was wrong, they would stop and never talk of it again.
Though astounded by the suggestion, Bliss was also excited by the prospect. There was no jealousy; it was only sex, after all. Not love, not a relationship. It quickly went on to become a significant part of their lives. Once every few weeks they joined other couples in losing their inhibitions, exploring possibilities, pushing sexual boundaries. Then one night as they lay on the living room sofa together, Hazel told him she wanted to stop. Bliss remembered being both surprised and relieved, realising for the first time that he had been on the verge of suggesting the very same thing. They never discussed it again.
Less than a month later, Hazel was torn from his life.
It was five days after her death that Bliss discovered his wife’s reason for wanting to quit the swingers’ club. Lucy Martin called him up unexpectedly and told him that one of the men Hazel had been having sex with had become obsessed with her, and that he had been pestering Hazel to change her mind and continue attending the events. He then tried to persuade her to have an affair with him outside the swingers’ environment, something she had refused to do. Less than a week before she was murdered, Hazel told Lucy Martin that the man’s pursuit of her was becoming aggressive, and that she feared him.
The day after Lucy’s tearful confession, Bliss used his contacts within the swingers’ community to track the man down, only to learn that he was a Detective Inspector stationed in Croydon. By now entirely convinced that the DI had killed Hazel, Bliss waited patiently for several days until he was able to confront the man alone and on neutral territory.
A burst of applause plucked Bliss from his reverie. He blinked a couple of times, and through the smoke-filled gloom saw the band wandering onstage and hoisting their instruments. His own hands now almost frozen around his pint glass, the hubbub of low voices becoming obscured once more by the past, Bliss dragged his thoughts away from the present and back to that night of violent confrontation.
‘My name is Jimmy Bliss,’ he’d told the man, whose eyes gave him away in an instant. Bliss knew then, without even asking, that this fellow policeman had murdered Hazel.
To his recollection, Bliss had only ever wanted to take the lives of two men: the first was a paedophile who walked free from court due to a break in the chain of evidence, having raped and tortured several children between the ages of eleven months and seven years. The second was the man who had ended the life of the only woman Bliss had ever loved.
But there was a difference between wanting to kill, and doing so. Wanting to was, perhaps, a very human reaction to extreme behaviour bordering on evil. Doing so was to take that final step across a line where morality and justice merged to form a smudged and indistinct boundary.
The fierce beating he administered was a release of rage and grief – something he had never once regretted. Neither did he regret leaving the man alive, though beaten badly enough to require an extensive stay in hospital. The killer had already taken away the most precious thing in his life. Bliss wasn’t going to allow the man to remove what remained.
Bliss brought himself back into the bar lounge, released a deep breath and cuffed a stray tear from his eye. He’d come out this evening to enjoy himself, to relax and blow away some cobwebs, but had instead allowed melancholy to prevail. A solemn end to what had been a pretty good day. He’d spent the afternoon chilling out in front of the TV watching sports. First a decent game of rugby between the Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints, and then Sky Sports News for the latest football news. Chelsea beat Everton convincingly, Peterborough lost for the fourth game in a row. He’d then called Emily and made arrangements for the following day, feeling like an awkward teenager once more. At that point the promise of a pleasurable evening lay ahead of him.
The band launched into ‘Room 335’, a Larry Carlton cut that Bliss had been trying to learn recently. He nodded in time with the beat, tapped a hand on the table, moved the fingers of his left hand as if fingering notes on a fret board. He did his best to immerse himself in the music, trying to let it seep in through his pores, but the damage was already done. After only two more songs, Bliss drained his glass and left the bar.
His head was buzzing as he drove home, but that was the after-effects of the smoky lounge and the plague of terrible memories. Nothing to do with his disease this time. Not even that had managed to force its way through today.
So here he was, about to sob uncontrollably and blind himself to the dark streets. More than three years on and still every time he thought about his wife, the tragedy of her death, it reduced him to tears and a sense that gathering black clouds of doom would circle above him for the rest of his life.
The lyrics from the chorus to a track by Dream Theatre came to mind:
Once the stone you’re crawling under
Is lifted off your shoulders
Once the cloud that’s raining over your head disappears
The noise that you’ll hear is the crashing down of hollow years.
It was a beautiful song, insisting that a state of utmost misery could be emerged from, but thinking of it now made Bliss realise how hollow and alone he felt, cast adrift from the kind of happiness other people took for granted. Viewing life from a distance rather than experiencing it for himself.
Not for the first time, Bliss succumbed to the weight of misery heaping itself upon him. Warm tears leaked from his eyes, and a low, rumbling moan emerged from somewhere deep inside his chest.
In a perverse way, Bliss welcomed these moments. Though other, better times might lie ahead, for the time being, it was sometimes enough to be reminded that he was still alive.
If not exactly living.
Chapter 17
Walking Bonnie and Clyde was the first thing on Sunday’s agenda. Instead of taking them over to the mere, he walked the Labs down to the Ferry Meadows country park and once around the largest of the lakes. He’d set out with the intention of walking further, but his body didn’t feel up to it. Weariness enfolded him, sapping his energy in a swift and merciless fashion, and there was nothing he could do about it. Fatigue being a major factor with Ménière’s, Bliss realised this was an aspect he would have to work on. Mentally as well as physically.
As he showered and then dressed in preparation for his lunch date with Emily, Bliss’s mind drifted back to the night before. Speaking with Emily earlier in the day about his wife had drawn Hazel close to the forefront of his thoughts for the first time in a while. The evening at the bar had been a washout, a huge disappointment. His mood upon returning h
ome had become increasingly morose, and instead of watching something from his vast DVD collection, he’d wallowed in memories stirred by music from the past couple of decades. Sitting in his living room, with the curtains drawn and the stereo on low, was like being trapped inside a time machine. Close your eyes and you were taken back, remembering where you were when you first heard a particular song. Who you were with. Favourites shared.
He was certain he would dream about Hazel, and knew it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience.
Each time it was the same. Bliss found himself looking up through his wife’s eyes, his body hers, seeing the man raping her, yet at the same time feeling the penetration; seeing the man come at her with a knife taken from their own kitchen drawer, feeling the pain of each attack; seeing the gleam of excitement in the man’s eyes, feeling the life ebb away from her; seeing himself in place of the man responsible for Hazel’s murder, feeling his wife’s sense of betrayal.
Bliss woke in a cold sweat. Panting. Not like they do in movies where people sit up abruptly, but with his head pressed back into the pillow, weighed down by fear and outrage. He wept for a few minutes, the horror of it all too much to bear, yet unable to stop himself from remembering. On the night of Hazel’s murder he’d realised what his bare feet were slipping in long before he saw the dark, slick pool of blood. He’d known what he would find on the floor by the bed long before his eyes came to rest on his wife’s open eyes and terribly abused body. He’d recognised the shrill sound of the scream rising up from the very centre of his being long before it emerged from his lips.
He’d reacted as a husband, not as a policeman. A policeman would have secured the scene, protected the evidence. The husband collected up the empty husk of his wife and held her bloody body close, sat that way for very nearly an hour before picking up the phone and making the call. Not once did it cross his mind that he would be called to account over those details: the blood on his clothes, the delay in calling for help. Nothing else had entered his thoughts. His wife was dead. Murdered. Bloody and broken. That’s all there was, then, and for a very long time afterwards. Even now.
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