Bad to the Bone

by Tony J. Forder

  Dunne dipped his head. ‘You hit me again, Jimmy, and I’ll fucking shoot you. I swear I will.’

  ‘Fuck you, Bobby. Fuck you.’

  Neither man spoke for a while, anger sitting like a physical wall between them. Then Dunne put back his head and swept a hand over his scalp. ‘It could have all ended with Jodie if I’d only done the right thing.’

  Bliss thought he heard genuine regret in the man’s voice. Regret at the loss of colleagues. Or perhaps that was what Bliss wanted to hear. Even needed to.

  ‘There’s no good way out of this now,’ said Dunne. He looked out into the night. ‘Not for either of us. But you are the only one who knows the whole story. Penny still thinks it was Rhodes and Flynn. You’re the only one standing between me and my freedom.’

  Bliss’s eyes dropped to the gun. ‘You think it’s going to end here, Bobby? Do you really believe it will be all over for you if you pull that trigger?’

  Dunne raised the weapon, stared directly into Bliss’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  Then Bobby Dunne aimed the automatic at Bliss’s face and shot twice. Before the echo of the gunshots had died away, he put the barrel of the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 37

  It looked like the fair and circus had come to town at the same time. The area was awash with the flickering lights from myriad emergency vehicles. Squad cars, unmarked Armed Response Vehicles, ambulances, CID saloons and SOCO vans. Dozens of police officers and detectives littered a small area around the Ford Focus pool car. Still more were thrashing through the fields and undergrowth nearby, scouring embankments and weaving their way through thickets. Away in the distance, the lights of the city sparkled like jewels.

  Chandler sat on the drop-down step leading up into one of the ambulances, head in her hands, palms nursing moist eyes. ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ she said beneath her breath. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard.’

  DC Mia Strong stood by her side, one arm around her shoulders. ‘Hey, come on,’ he said. ‘You have to stop those tears.’

  ‘But the blood. Jimmy’s face… covered in all that blood… The stupid fuckwit!’

  A shadow fell across her line of vision, and the sole of a leather shoe scraped across gravel. ‘I could have you for insubordination,’ Bliss told her. The laugh he gave was fleeting and insincere. His head was swathed in bandages, dried blood caking his cheeks, trailing lines reaching down towards his chin.

  The two female DCs looked up at him. Strong gave a faint smile, but Chandler shook her head, eyes flaring with anger. ‘I can’t believe you came out here on your own to challenge him. I mean, have you seen the size of Bobby Dunne? Forget the weapon he had, he’d snap you in half with his bare hands.’

  Bliss gingerly raised a hand to his head. ‘I don’t think that’s what he had in mind, do you?’

  After receiving treatment from a paramedic, he had spent ten minutes or so explaining what had happened between him and Dunne. He knew he’d have to do it all over again for Sykes and DCS Flynn. The sequence of events was clear, despite the flood of adrenaline it had released.

  When the two shots were fired into his face, Bliss’s head had jerked back instinctively. The explosive sound was surprisingly loud in the small car. When Dunne fired into his own mouth and the back of his head failed to erupt in a shower of blood, brain matter and bone, the big man stared at the gun for several seconds, trying to work out why he was still alive.

  ‘The clip is filled with blanks,’ Bliss told him. ‘I didn’t think they’d be quite that noisy.’

  ‘But how…? How could you have…?’

  ‘In a way, you told me. Just like you told me everything else I needed to know.’

  ‘I did?’

  Bliss nodded. ‘When I was certain about you, about what you had done, I knew I would need all the evidence I could lay my hands on. It’s the one thing this fucking awful case has lacked all along. I got to thinking about the report sheets you produced. Things have changed a great deal in the past sixteen years or so, and all forms are very different these days, which meant that if you had forged them recently, you must have a supply of them. I thought you might even have the original files tucked away somewhere. I spent some time trying to figure out where you would hide them, and then I remembered the night I went to see Simon Palmer. You and I had that smooth brandy in your shed. That’s when you told me that you thought a man’s shed could hide all their secrets.’

  Dunne eased out a sigh, and turned his head away.

  ‘I know,’ Bliss said, nodding. ‘The fucking irony, eh? Anyhow, I drove over to your place, got into your garden, picked my way into your shed and started removing slats from the ceiling. I found a box of old blank crime report forms, cartons of other forms, plus the original files from the two cases. I also found your gun.’

  Dunne looked back at him, his eyes betraying bewilderment. ‘Why didn’t you just remove it and lock it away somewhere? Use the evidence you found to arrest me?’

  Bliss had asked himself that same question several times. He wasn’t sure the answer was good enough, but it was all he had.

  ‘I needed you and me to be alone, Bobby. No Sykes, no Flynn, no brief, no fucking rules and regulations. I wanted to look in your eyes up close when you told me your story. I wanted to see the truth for myself. I guessed you might go and collect your gun once you knew we were supposed to be seeing Jodie’s friend, because you knew she was the only one left who might recall what Joe Flynn looked like. And, of course, you no longer had Rhodes to do your dirty work for you. I had to leave the gun in place in order to make sure you came here tonight, but I obviously had to make sure it was safe. So, among other trips I made to various places, I paid a visit to the ARV crew who were over in Stilton on the practice ground, and obtained a clip of blanks.’

  Dunne was looking closely at him now. ‘You’re good, Bliss. Too fucking good for your own health. You’re acting like you have the upper hand now, but I don’t think you’ve thought this through properly. See, I don’t need a gun to kill you. I could snap your neck right now without too much effort.’

  ‘Yes, you could,’ Bliss agreed. ‘But you were wrong earlier when you said this would all be over. You see, the last thing I did before coming to meet you was put a letter on Penny’s desk. In it I outlined your involvement, and where the evidence can be found. Killing me won’t end it after all, Bobby.’

  Dunne was silent for several seconds, then suddenly threw open his door and made a run for it. In the darkness and gathering mist, Bliss lost sight of him within seconds. By the time Bliss had reacted and scrambled out of the car, Dunne was gone. Bliss started to give chase anyway, but after just a few strides his head began to swim, the world started to turn, faster and faster, until his legs buckled and he fell to the ground, smacking his head on the road and opening up a deep laceration on his scalp. Cursing, he managed to force himself into a sitting position, and when his head had cleared and his vision had righted itself, placed a call to HQ and waited for the inevitable overkill of personnel to arrive.

  When Chandler pulled up and emerged from her car, her immediate response was to forget herself and start slapping his arms, berating him for acting so foolishly. Now, as Mia left them alone by the ambulance, Penny swept both hands through her hair, shaking her head gently.

  ‘I’m still in complete shock,’ she told Bliss. ‘Bobby Dunne a killer? It’s crazy. Absurd.’

  Bliss thought so, too. He’d known about it for hours, yet still he felt numb. ‘I could have lived another two lifetimes and not guessed. He played us brilliantly, me in particular. I had no idea he could be that subtle.’

  ‘He had a lot to protect,’ Penny reminded him.

  ‘He did. His whole life, in fact. You know, I thought he might pull the gun on me and take me out, but I never expected him to try and off himself. I can’t believe he’d do that to his family.’

  ‘It makes me wonder if we knew anything about him at all.’

  B
liss looked up sharply as several officers in the distance congregated swiftly. One broke away from the group and started to move towards Bliss and Chandler. As he closed in on them and came forward into the soft glow of flickering lights, Bliss noticed that the uniform wore a look of utter anguish. Bliss felt a tug deep in his gut. This was not going to be good news.

  The search party had come upon the result of DS Dunne’s actions long before they realised he had been involved. On the southbound stretch of the A1(M), a long tailback of cars had caught the attention of several officers. In the middle lane beneath one of the bridges, what remained of Bobby Dunne after he had jumped directly in front of a heavy goods vehicle lay in bloody, ragged pieces, smeared across the road’s surface.

  Bliss had no desire to take one last look at the man who had been a good friend these past few years. He didn’t want his last mental image of Bobby to be the stuff of nightmares. Memories of the man would be forever tainted, however. There was no escaping that fact. Instead he allowed Penny to drive him back to Thorpe Wood.

  ‘Did you see the newspaper?’ he asked Chandler as they hit the slip road heading towards the city.

  She shook her head. ‘No. I heard about it, though. The retraction is out there now, as well.’

  ‘Too late for me and Emily, unfortunately.’ He told Penny about the phone call.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss. Maybe she just needs some time.’

  ‘It didn’t sound that way. It felt… definite. Like the end.’

  ‘But she didn’t actually say that. Telling you not to call her is not quite the same as ending it completely.’

  ‘You think I should call? Despite what she said.’

  Chandler stifled a laugh. ‘You really don’t know women at all, do you?’

  ‘Maybe not. Fact is, recent events suggest I don’t know anything about anyone.’

  ‘Except me, I hope.’

  Bliss smiled. Nodded. ‘Yeah. There’s always you to rely on, Penny.’

  ‘That’s a fact. Perhaps you ought to do it more often.’

  ‘Perhaps. Maybe you could have kept Bobby alive.’

  Chandler rolled her eyes. She pointed the car in the direction of HQ and put her foot down hard. ‘Jesus, Jimmy. Are you going to take Bobby’s death on now? You want another burden to carry?’

  Bliss made no reply, but he did give weight to her question. It was in his nature to accept blame, even to seek it. He’d always seen it as taking responsibility for his actions. When it came to his wife’s murder, he’d been responsible for agreeing to the wife swapping. In the case of the suicide marking the end of his previous murder case, his responsibility had been to agree to using the poor soul to entrap a killer. And now there was Bobby Dunne. Bliss had decided to challenge Bobby on his own, whereas Penny’s presence may have prevented the man from escaping. I’m responsible for that, too, Bliss told himself. That his decisions had been merely part of a sequence of events made no difference to him. Penny was right – he did carry these burdens.

  Bliss doubted he would ever be released from them.

  Chapter 38

  Detective Chief Superintendent Flynn’s office seemed a great deal smaller than Bliss remembered. Perhaps it was the presence of an extra person in the form of Sykes, who sat at the desk alongside Flynn. Bliss felt the gaze of both men upon him, and the atmosphere in the room was charged with tension and raw emotion. He’d just been asked a question, but it had somehow escaped his conscious thoughts.

  ‘Sorry,’ Bliss said, not looking up. ‘Would you repeat that?’

  It was Sykes who had spoken. As he did again now. ‘One would think you’d be keen to pay attention, Inspector. This may be an unofficial enquiry, but you’d do well to give it your due regard as a formal one will follow in due course.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ Bliss nodded absently. He felt as if only a part of him was here in the room with these two senior officers. And not the largest part, either. Inside he felt as if he had nothing left to give, nothing to offer this or any other proceedings. He had been allowed to clean himself up, have his bandage changed, but this attended only to the exterior.

  ‘I asked you to tell us at what point you began to suspect Detective Sergeant Dunne was responsible for murder.’

  ‘Just today. Prior to that we had pretty much decided that Rhodes had shot his wife and then killed himself.’

  ‘This was the verdict of your entire team?’ Sykes asked, leaning forward. His eyes sparkled intensely.

  Bliss forced himself to get a grip. He couldn’t afford to make such stupid errors. ‘No. Sorry, I meant to say that I had decided Rhodes was guilty.’

  ‘In other words, you left your team out of this crucial stage in the investigation. Effectively, you went your own way, on a lone crusade.’ Sykes rammed home the allegation.

  But Bliss had been expecting it and was prepared. ‘That’s true. But I had my reasons. Good reasons.’

  ‘I’d be interested to hear them,’ Flynn said, inserting himself into the grilling. Bliss looked up in time to see a flush of irritation pass across Sykes’s cheeks. The interruption had not been welcomed.

  Bliss cleared his throat. ‘The fact is, it was only yesterday that I began to suspect Sergeant Rhodes. At that point it seemed to me that his calling in sick and then taking an unscheduled holiday was more than coincidental.’

  ‘But why on earth would you even suspect a fellow officer?’ Sykes demanded, forcing the attention back to his own line of questioning. ‘From what I’ve seen of the case notes, this inquiry had made few advancements other than identifying the remains. How did you come to make that mental leap, Inspector?’

  ‘Connie Rawlings had informed me that one of Jodie Maybanks’s regulars was a uniform. At first this made little impression, because that sort of relationship is not exactly unheard of, but when I later learned of what happened to both Bernard Weller and Alan Dean, I checked back through records to see whether these men might be linked, and how. It was then that I also noted the name of Clive Rhodes featuring significantly.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but you haven’t explained why you took it upon yourself to move the investigation further along,’ Sykes snapped. ‘Why you deliberately kept this information from your team, why you excluded them from your ongoing inquiries.’

  ‘Give Inspector Bliss a chance,’ Flynn cautioned. His voice was low, but the point was made.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Bliss said. ‘As I was about to say, the moment I started taking Rhodes seriously as a suspect, I realised had a decision to make. To involve my team in the investigation of one of their colleagues, or make progress on my own and spare them that dilemma. Police officers investigating other police officers often become tainted by their actions, and it can make future relations between officers extremely difficult. I didn’t want to put my team through that ordeal until I was certain of my facts. You may decide that I made the wrong decision, but it was made with the very best of intentions.’

  Bliss swallowed, dropped his gaze. This was the point at which Flynn could decide to interject. The DCS was aware that Bliss was now lying to a senior officer, and if he wished to make that known and disassociate himself from the matter, then Bliss would face the prospect of losing his job.

  ‘It was most certainly the wrong decision,’ Sykes insisted. He looked across at his own superior, expecting a nod of agreement.

  Instead, DCS Flynn spread his hands and said, ‘I’m not so sure about that, Superintendent.’

  ‘But surely keeping such vital information from your own team is a direct contravention of the rules,’ Sykes argued. His cheeks were turning red.

  ‘That may be strictly true, but I’m convinced by what I’ve heard here today that Inspector Bliss was thinking only of his squad. We all know what a quagmire it can be when you’re investigating your own colleagues, and I believe the Inspector was simply determined not to have such an inquiry taint his team.’

  Flynn had given him a way out, and Bliss took it. ‘That�
�s exactly it, sir. I wanted to keep fellow officers away from what was always going to be a difficult and delicate matter. I accept that I broke the rules, but I genuinely believed it was in the best interests of everyone around me.’

  ‘Not for DS Dunne, as it turned out.’ Sykes fixed him with a hard glare, his words dripping poison.

  Bliss felt the blow, and it stung because he knew that if he’d handled matters differently, Bobby Dunne might still be alive. Even so, Bliss felt he had to retort.

  ‘With respect, DS Dunne was not only a colleague, he was also a good friend. I held his work in the highest regard, and considered him a decent man. I regret the choice he made. That said, he brought his downfall upon himself.’

  ‘I’m still not clear about the details of what happened between you and Dunne. Another flagrant breach of protocol seems to have left you and Dunne alone at a moment of heightened tension. You should never have confronted him on your own.’

  ‘And I’ll regret that for the rest of my life,’ Bliss said. And he knew he would, despite what anyone else said.

  ‘The precise details are for another day,’ said Flynn. ‘I’m sure Inspector Bliss needs some time to recover from this tragedy, not to mention his own physical wounds, after which we will expect a full report.’

  ‘As the Inspector’s direct line manager, I’m not sure I’m happy with that arrangement,’ Sykes complained. ‘It seems to me that we need a full debriefing now, while the information is fresh in the Inspector’s mind.’

  ‘And as the officer in command of the entire CID team, I think we need to have a little compassion.’ This time Flynn turned his hardened gaze upon Sykes. ‘Mistakes have been made, and they will be discussed more fully once we have all relevant information at our disposal. However, I have no desire to make what is already a terrible situation even worse. I think we need to take a step back and remember who actually solved this case.’