Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.

by James Hawkins

  “We’re only going to ask at the gate,” Daphne reminds Trina resolutely as they take the highway south. “We’re not going in.”

  “I agree.”

  “After all, it’s only a bloomin’ hat.”

  “I know that.”

  “I can easily make another one.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Trina, “we’re not going in.”

  “Good. As long as we’ve got that straight.”

  “We have.”

  Steam rising off the treetops vapourizes into the clear blue sky above the Cascade Mountains as the VW turns off the highway, but while robins and chickadees twitter cheerfully in the forest, fresh memories of the ill-fated expedition in the Kidneymobile begin to weigh more heavily as the women drive the twisty road towards their goal. They drive in silence, neither of them admitting any apprehension. The road that had taken them several hours to navigate in the mechanical bathtub takes only fifteen minutes by car, and they arrive at the gates before they have a chance to change their minds.

  “Here we are,” says Trina in surprise as she slows in the shadow of the high gates, although she is momentarily confused when she sees that the mission’s signboard has gone, replaced by a more sinister one that warns that the premises are the property of the federal government and that trespassers will be prosecuted. “Is this the place?” she asks, turning to Daphne.

  “It looks like it,” says Daphne releasing her seat-belt. “Pull in over there.”

  But a chill comes over Trina as she views the high fence topped with a roll of razor wire. “I’m not so sure about this…” she begins, and she readies to drive on.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going in,” repeats Daphne as she catches hold of the door handle. “They can bloomin’ well bring it to the gate after all the trouble they’ve caused. You just keep the engine running and we’ll take off at the first sign of trouble.”

  “You be careful…” cautions Trina as Daphne heads for the entryphone.

  “Are you sure they’ve gone?” whispers Daisy as Bliss drags himself to the balcony’s glass door and eases the mattress aside.

  “Don’t worry, love!” he calls. “It’s broad daylight. The maid should be here soon…” Then he pauses. “Oh, no!” he sighs with the sudden realization that it is Saturday, the projected day of Daisy’s departure, and he had declined cleaning services. “The maid might as well wait until I’ve left on Sunday,” he had told the operator when booking.

  “You are going to miss your flight,” he tells Daisy as he checks the bandage on her swollen ankle, once he’s explained the situation.

  “Maman will worry.”

  “I’d better try to get to one of the other cottages and find a phone…” he starts, but Daisy stays his hand. “Daavid,” she queries, with something that’s been on her mind for several hours.

  “Yes?”

  “Last night. Before zhis happened. You said you had something for me.”

  Now what? he questions himself. Admit that I lost the ring; admit that Sarah was probably right — that I did usually put the job before her; admit that I might do the same again with Daisy? “It’ll keep,” he says with the realization that his vacillations had kept him awake almost as much as the pain in his leg and his concern over the attackers’ return.

  Daphne stands at the gate with her finger on the entry-phone’s call button, but she turns and shrugs to Trina when there is no response.

  “Come on, let’s go,” says Trina with growing uneasiness. But Daphne spots the surveillance camera and stares at it openly.

  “Halloo,” she trills. “Anyone there? I’ve come for my hat.”

  A flock of gulls takes off from garbage bins inside the compound, and their shrieks of alarm make her jump as they pierce the silence. But once the birds have flown, peace returns and she again yells, “Halloo…”

  “Daphne…” calls Trina, but the older woman waves her to be quiet. “I think I heard someone,” she says, but Trina is doubtful.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Listen,” says Daphne, then she loudly shouts, “Halloo! Who’s there?”

  “Maybe I should call Mike,” suggests Trina. “He’s a policeman. He’ll know what to do.” But her face falls when she pulls out her cell phone. “No service,” she says, dropping the car into drive. “We’d best go. I’ll treat you to another hat.”

  “Trina,” Daphne reminds her sternly, “I made that hat with my own hands.”

  “Sorry…” starts Trina, but the other woman has set her sight on the fence. “Where are you going?” Trina demands as Daphne begins to kick a path through the undergrowth at the side of the gate.

  “Don’t worry,” says Daphne, “I’m not going in. I just want to get a better view. I’m sure I heard something.”

  “Daphne… Come back!”

  “The place looks deserted,” she calls over her shoulder as she peers into the grounds.

  “We’d better go, then,” advocates Trina, but Daphne is tugging speculatively at the wire.

  “Have you got a towrope?” she asks roguishly.

  “No,” lies Trina, but she gets out of her car and calls. “Hey! Anybody there?”

  “Another one bites the dust,” muses Bliss as he and Daisy prop each other over the raised hood of Daisy’s rental car. “The radiator’s got a couple of holes, the air filter’s punctured and some of the electrics look shot.”

  “Can you make it go?” asks Daisy hopefully.

  “If we push it,” laughs Bliss, then he looks down the track to the distant road and adds, speculatively, “although it is downhill most of the way.”

  “Keep going… keep going…” encourages Daphne a few minutes later as Trina inches the Jetta forward with her tow-hitch tied to the fence.

  “Just get ready to run,” Trina warns, still expecting half a dozen gun-toting guards to rush out and blast them, but Daphne isn’t listening as she waits to slip through the gap.

  “I’m only going to get what’s rightfully mine,” she calls, readying her defence.

  “This is very dangerous,” admits Bliss, at the wheel of the freewheeling Toyota as it gathers speed, in reverse, down the hillside towards the highway. “I just hope the brakes will hold without power.”

  “See. I told you there was no one here,” says Daphne, strolling nonchalantly into the empty guardhouse and kicking at a few scraps of paper on the dusty wooden floor.

  “Nothing…” agrees Trina, pointing to frayed wiring where phones, cameras and lights had been forcefully ripped out.

  “I bet they didn’t leave my bloomin’ hat,” says Daphne despondently as they carry on through the compound towards the main building, but Trina is still wary, and she carries her useless cell phone ahead of her like a weapon.

  “They were obviously up to no good,” Daphne is saying, pointing to the deserted offices and living quarters, now stripped of every trace of habitation, when a metallic bang brings them up short.

  “Run!” cries Trina, but Daphne grabs her hand.

  “Who’s there?” demands Daphne with the authority of a sentry, and as her words echo around the empty buildings, the gulls take off in fright again. But amongst the birds’ raucous cries there is an unmistakeably human sound.

  “Help…” cries a weak voice from inside an old outhouse on the edge of the forest. “Help…”

  “Someone’s here.”

  “I told you.”

  “Help…”

  “I didn’t realize it was this steep,” yells Bliss as he grapples with the wheel, one-handed, while he hangs onto the handbrake with the other. Behind him, Daisy grimaces as she is flung around by the bouncing car. “Hang on,” he shrieks as he sees another looming pothole, but he’s zooming backwards without power and can’t avoid it.

  “Putain!” screams Daisy as she flies off the seat and comes down heavily.

  “Sorry,” says Bliss, keeping up the pressure on the brake.

  “I think it came from over there,” whispers Trina, po
inting to an old outhouse on the edge of the forest clearing, and they creep, hand in hand, towards the building. Then, after a moment’s pause to look at each other, Daphne whips open the door.

  “Willy — it’s you!” cries Trina at the sight of the pitiable man chained to the steel pipe.

  “Who?” asks Wallace.

  “Oops — oh, sorry… Spotty —” she starts, but Daphne kicks her.

  “What’s your name?” asks Daphne.

  “I don’t think I should…” he begins, and Daphne starts to close the door.

  “All right… all right.”

  “Well?” questions Daphne.

  “It’s Wallace — Allan Wallace,” says the pathetic-looking prisoner. “Can you get me out?”

  “Yes —” starts Trina, but Daphne kicks her again.

  “Possibly,” says Daphne, as if giving it her fullest consideration.

  “I helped you escape,” he pleads, and Daphne seemingly relents.

  “All right. But we want to know what was going on here first.”

  “I can’t —” he starts, and the door begins to close again. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you.”

  “Hold tight!” yells Bliss, seeing the traffic on the highway approaching at speed, and he puts all his weight behind the brakes and prays.

  By the time Bliss has brought the car to a stop and flagged down a passing motorist, Daphne and Trina have used a tire iron to jemmy Wallace from his makeshift cell. And as Bliss and Daisy ride to hospital in Seattle, the forlorn CIA officer is cadging a lift into Bellingham from his erstwhile prisoners.

  “Wait a minute,” says Daphne as they prepare to drive away. “I still I haven’t got my bloomin’ hat.”

  “Never mind,” says Trina, happy to get away. “You’ve got plenty more at home.”

  “No,” insists Daphne, “it’s my favourite. And you never know; I might get invited to a wedding while I’m here.”

  chapter nineteen

  “Daavid. It is la Tour Eiffel!” yells Daisy, pointing excitedly towards the replica of the famous structure as the white limousine sweeps them to the door of the Paris Hotel two days later.

  “I know,” says Bliss with his finger on a pictorial map. “I promised you a foreign holiday, and that’s what you’re getting. And look — over there is New York, and up there is Venice, Monte Carlo, Luxor, Mandalay…”

  “We got the whole damn world here, sir,” drawls the Nevada driver as he opens the door for Daisy, and he’s not entirely wrong. Samantha and Peter Bryan have arrived from England, Daisy’s mother and an aunt are on their way from France, and a slew of people led by Trina and Daphne have flown down from Canada.

  “Las Vegas?” Daphne had trilled disbelievingly when Trina had taken the call from Bliss on Saturday afternoon.

  “Yeah,” Trina had assured her excitedly. “And he wants us to fly down there on Monday. He says that his Uncle Sam is gonna pay.”

  “He’s never mentioned an Uncle Sam to me,” Daphne had said, scratching her head. “Let me speak to him.” But Bliss had gone by the time she had taken the phone. “Where is he?” she’d asked, turning to Trina.

  “He was on a pay phone somewhere,” she’d replied, looking puzzled. “But he said he had to go, because Daisy’s ankle was being operated on.”

  “Just remember,” Daphne whispers as she and Trina watch Bliss pushing Daisy towards them in a wheelchair. “Don’t mention that we went back to the monastery. He won’t understand.”

  “Hello, Daphne,” beams Bliss as he spies the two women in the hotel’s Parisian-styled lobby, then his face clouds in confusion. “How on earth did you get your hat back?”

  “Uh-oh!” exclaims Trina, and Daphne kicks her foot. “This one?” asks the Englishwoman, as if she is surprised to find it on her head.

  “Yes,” enquires Bliss. “Wasn’t that the one you lost at the monastery place?”

  “Similar…” nods Daphne, then she uses the cast on Daisy’s foot to get her out of the jam. “Oh, dear. What on earth has happened to you?”

  “Hey, Mike!” calls Bliss, leaving Daisy to explain her injury as he spies his Canadian counterpart talking to Trina’s husband. “Any sign of the baby?”

  “Another week, they think. But what’s been happening? I heard you’d been shot.”

  “Just a scratch,” replies Bliss before briefly outlining the nighttime attack.

  “You could’ve been killed,” says Phillips, but Bliss shakes his head. “Just a friendly warning, I think; although I wouldn’t mind catching them.”

  “Maybe you should hire Daphne and Trina to investigate for you,” laughs Rick Button. “They’re calling themselves ‘Lovelace and Button — International Investigators,’ and Trina has run up some fancy business cards on my computer.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. They reckon they’ve cracked the secret of that monastery place.”

  “Seriously?” asks Bliss.

  “Hi, Dad,” interrupts Samantha as she and her husband approach. “What have you been up to now?”

  “Upsetting the natives,” he laughs.

  “I’ve kept your seat warm for you, Dave,” says Peter Bryan, smiling broadly as he holds out his hand, though Bliss can’t help feeling that it will always be something of a hot seat with Chief Superintendent Edwards at the helm.

  “Actually, I want to speak you about that, Peter,” he starts. “But what’s the outcome on the suicide situation?”

  “It’s pretty much resolved,” says Bryan, “and the charges against young Ronnie Stapleton have been dropped.”

  “I was never really convinced that he’d shoved Minnie,” admits Bliss. “I feel kind’a bad that he ended up in hospital.”

  “His father’s gone public, demanding a gallantry award for him for attempting to save the old lady’s life,” says Bryan. “And he’s pushing for a public enquiry.”

  “Talking of enquiry…” says Bliss, and he turns to Daphne. “Rick tells me that you’ve solved the monastic mystery.”

  “Oh. Didn’t I tell you, David?”

  “No. You know very well you didn’t.”

  “Well, I thought you would have worked it out for yourself, to be honest,” she teases, “now that you’re a Chief Inspector.” Then she carries on relentlessly. “Especially as you’re the great detective who discovered the identity of the man in the iron mask?”

  “Yes, enough already,” he laughs. “But I’m keeping that under my hat until my book is published.”

  “All right, then…” says Daphne, starting to wander away.

  “Whoa!” says Bliss, holding her back. “You haven’t told me what they were doing at the monastery.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she says, straight-faced. “I’m keeping that under my hat — just in case I decide to write a book as well.”

  “Dad,” asks Samantha petulantly, “when are you going to tell us why we are all here?”

  “I’ll tell you at dinner,” he says. “But Daphne’s going to spill the beans about the monastery first — aren’t you?”

  “Okay. I’ll do a deal,” Daphne relents. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Daphne Lovelace!” he exclaims. “I don’t believe you said that.”

  “It was a government hospital for tourists,” she finally explains, knowing that Bliss will jump to the wrong conclusion.

  “So why the secrecy?” he asks, falling into the trap. “What were they — foreign dignitaries? Disgraced monarchs?”

  “No — they were tourists with something to offer,” she replies enigmatically, playing a guessing game. But Trina can’t wait and jumps in with the answer.

  “Kidneys,” she says excitedly. “All the patients were each selling a kidney.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right,” says Daphne, then she recounts details of Wallace’s confession.

  “Do you realize that every time an American citizen goes to Korea or China to buy a kidney from a living donor it sucks seventy-fi
ve thousand dollars out of our economy?” the CIA officer had told them, repeating the mantra that had been used to sell him on the idea.

  “And it goes into the pocket of some poverty-stricken peasant who is willing to risk his life to feed his wife and kids,” Trina had suggested acerbically.

  “Sometimes,” Wallace had admitted. “Though more often than not they’ll blow it on a new car, a satellite TV and a cell phone. Anyway, think of the health benefits of having the operation in a modern Western clinic compared to having your kidney whipped out in a backstreet butcher’s shop in P’yongyang or Beijing.”

  “So you bring them here so that they can blow it on a shiny new Ford —” Trina had started, but Wallace had cut her off.

  “No. They don’t get paid. They get something much more valuable — a passport from the U.S. of A.”

  “Who told you all this, Daphne?” Bliss wants to know when he’s heard her out.

  “Chief Inspector!” she exclaims, apparently mortified. “I’m surprised you would expect me to reveal the source of confidential information.”

  “What source?”

  “You’re doing it again. Anyway, don’t you want to know about the lottery scam?”

  “Are you saying that was them, too?”

  “Yup,” says Trina. “And Daphne got Wilting Willy to confess that as well.”

  “Got who?” asks Bliss.

  “Oops! Sorry,” says Trina as Daphne kicks her again. “Me and my big mouth.”

  “His real name is Spotty Dick, if you must know,” explains Daphne, confusing the issue. “And he was the one who tried to help us escape.”

  “So you let him go?” nods Bliss, catching on.

  “Once I’d put the bite on him a little,” admits Daphne as she leans into Bliss conspiratorially. “Anyway, he’s a marked man.”

  “So, c’mon, Dad,” says Samantha. “You didn’t drag us all this way to discuss police business.”

  “You’ll have to wait —” he is saying when Trina cuts in.

  “Your dad’s gonna help with the kidney marathon — aren’t you, Dave?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Spoilsport,” says Daphne.