“Where you been?” she demands, angrily poking him awake. “I look everywhere.”
“Sorry, Daisy.”
“Why you no love me?”
How many times has she asked? How many times has he wanted to say, I do, in a way, but there is someone burnt so indelibly in my heart that I can’t escape.
“Because she’s dead…” he begins angrily, then stops himself and softens as he explains. “There’s someone else, Daisy, but she died. I tried to save her, but I couldn’t, and she took my heart with her to her grave.”
The news hits Daisy harshly and she stands with a deeply furrowed brow as she tries to process the information.
“Someone else?” she questions vaguely after a few moments.
“But she’s dead,” he reminds her, though knows that won’t be enough, that it isn’t enough for him either.
“Oh, Daavid. Zhat is terrible,” says Daisy, sitting beside him. “But why you not tell me?”
Bliss shrugs. He knows how unfair it would be to say to a woman, As much as I want to be with you, it is only because my one true love is not here.
“I’ve tried counselling, therapy, self-talk…” Welling tears stop him as he replays memories neither coloured nor faded by time, perfect memories of a perfect relationship — just a few weeks of sheer ecstasy, a wonderful, magical time when two foreigners in a foreign land found pure love in each other’s minds and bodies.
“She was everything a man could ever ask for,” he says quietly, willing himself not to look at Daisy, knowing she has a right to be offended by the insinuation that she is less.
But Daisy is not blind to his words or his sudden coolness. “What happened?” she asks, though she would rather not.
“Long story,” he says, finally relieved that he no longer has to pretend, either to her or himself. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”
But where does zhat leave me? questions Daisy silently, with a look of pleading, and Bliss sees what is going through her mind and tries to soften the blow. “Daisy,” he says, gently taking her right hand. “I look into your eyes and I see a beautiful, warm woman and, in a way, I love you.”
“But —”
“There is no magic, Daisy. There never was. We became friends before we were lovers and I… well, I thought I would get over her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I could lie. I could marry you and tell you that you are the one I truly love, but that wouldn’t be fair. I know, deep down, that I would always wish that you were her.”
Tears are streaming down Daisy’s face — tears for herself. “But she is dead,” she reminds him, as if he needs reminding.
“I know. That’s the worst thing. I have no way of ever getting my heart back. She took it with her.”
“What about her grave — you could visit,” begins Daisy hopefully. “You could kneel at her grave and say —”
“Cremated, I think,” says Bliss, lightly putting a hand on her arm to stop her. “No grave. I never even saw her body. I was wounded… we crashed… I crashed.”
“A car?”
“A plane.”
“You were flying?”
“Yes… no… not really… I don’t know,” he says, and then he stares out over the sea and relives the terrifying moments in a rusty Illushyn cargo plane when he grappled with the controls at the side of a dying woman — the woman who ran off to heaven with his heart and left him in hell.
“I did not hear,” says Daisy once he has given her a sanitized version of the incident when he and Yolanda rescued a group of Western computer experts from Saddam Hussein’s clutches before the Americans slung the dictator in jail.
“No one heard, Daisy. In fact, officially, I think I’m supposed to kill you now that I’ve told you.” The Frenchwoman shrinks back in concern, but Bliss cracks a wan smile. “Just joking. Although you probably shouldn’t tell anyone. We shouldn’t have been there.”
“What is her name?”
He wants to correct the tense but doesn’t, and he knows why; he knows that she is still alive in his mind, that she will always be alive, that she will outlive him. “Her name is Yolanda… Yolanda Pieters,” he says, and finds himself going off into the distance again searching for an image. It’s an easy search. Her face, sheer unadorned beauty — the most beautiful face he ever set eyes on, with just a single imperfection that he found intriguing — is dreamlike today, though it isn’t always that way. Sometimes, when he’s feeling the loss most, it’s nightmarishly marred by the agony of her death throes.
“Daavid. You must move on,” Daisy tells him as she sits beside him and tries to comfort him.
“I’ve tried. God, how I’ve tried.”
She reaches out to stroke his cheek. “Now I understand,” she says, as tears stream down her face.
“I wish I understood,” mutters Bliss. “It’s been more than three years. How long will it last?”
“Forever, Daavid,” she says, knowing that her tears are not only for him and his lost love, they are for those who took a piece of her heart when they departed. And she turns to the Château Roger, where, along with memories of her grandfather and several other relatives who were swept up by the Nazis during the war, she too can find an image.
Roland was his name, and Daisy closes her eyes as she reruns the painful image of the young Parisian boy — a city sophisticate with a Beatles haircut and Daddy’s souped-up British Mini — who was the first to sample her tender young flesh. She was a pretty fifteen-year-old schoolgirl at the time, in the mid-sixties, and was diving after a shoal of sardines in the bay one sunny summer’s day. Roland was diving nearby with an entirely different kind of fish on his mind. He struck, and landed his virginal catch in a little hidden cove where the tunnel from the château’s basement comes out onto a golden beach. Forty-five seconds later Roland hit his stride, and with a triumphant yelp and a premature ejaculation he left Daisy in the sand while he shot off up the château’s tunnel in search of another adventure.
“It is très dangereux. You cannot go zhere,” Daisy yelled after him, but his motor was running so fast he didn’t care if he was coming or going.
Daisy shudders at the memory of Roland’s dead body being washed ashore a couple of days later — minus his zizi — but at that time she was still scared of the château’s legendary ghosts and kept silent about their tryst, worried that a vengeful resistance fighter in the basement mistook him for a Nazi storm trooper.
She shakes off the unhappy memories of her loss, realizing that she is facing another, and asks, “But why you in Iraq?”
“They did have weapons of mass destruction,” replies Bliss. “Cyber-weapons. That’s why the inspectors never found them.”
“Cyber-weapons.”
“A computer virus to attack our systems.”
“What will happen?”
“Maybe nothing,” he says, not wishing to alarm her with the prospect of a super-virus kicking in and screwing up the world. “Although I think we’ve seen the signs: major power outages in America; bank computers on the blink for a week; the internet crashing.” He pauses, knowing that the big one is still out there, that everything to date has been small fry. But he knows that it is like waiting for the earthquake that will one day kill Los Angeles. “It’s coming… it’s coming,” everyone warns, then bang, the bottom falls out of the Indian Ocean and swallows a quarter of a million people in Asia. And all you have to do is constantly worry about one dead woman, he chastises himself, but then admits that it’s not constant, only when it’s triggered — similar hair, voice, colour, eyes, shape.
Stop it… stop it… she’s been dead for years, he tries telling himself, but the more that time has gone on, the worse it has become. You need closure, says the voice in his mind, but he disagrees. I need Yolanda. Need to know that I didn’t kill her.
You didn’t kill her. You would have died for her — you wanted to die for her.
And still she left me.
She d
idn’t want to. It wasn’t her choice.
“Daavid,” breaks in Daisy from outside.
“I thought I’d got over her,” he says, but he can’t help comparing her to the château’s victims as he sits looking towards the old building. Sixty years on and many of the town’s widows still dream that their lovers were sent to a remote concentration camp and will one day march home, strapping young men.
Daisy’s grandmother was amongst those who stayed awake night after night when the war ended, but the pain was always still there the following morning: the gnawing, insidious pain of hope, watching the door for hour upon hour, begging, praying, screaming, pleading. “Come back. Please come back. I love you — I love you more than you can possibly know.”
“Daavid. You have to move on,” Daisy tells him, and he wants to say he’ll try, but he finally gives up.
“So do you, Daisy,” he says as her tears continue to stream. “I’m sorry, but I can never take a chance with you or anyone else. I can never look into your eyes and say with honesty, ‘You are the only one for me.’”
chapter six
Daphne Lovelace has dug out a serious-grey pillbox hat for her lunch meeting with Superintendent Ted Donaldson at the Hole-in-the-wall.
“The buffet looks good,” starts Donaldson with his eyes in that direction, but Daphne is all business as she flips open a notebook on the table and readies a pen.
“The files are missing — well, not exactly missing,” Donaldson admits as soon as he has stacked his first plate.
“Where are they then?”
“There never were any.”
“Three dead babies and no files?” questions Daphne skeptically, wondering if her old friend is just being diplomatic about sensitive documents.
“All natural causes — death certificates duly signed by two doctors — so no police investigation or inquest. The coroner seemed satisfied; just a coincidence.”
“Three is one more than a coincidence,” says Daphne sharply. “Two is a coincidence, Ted. Not three.”
“Daphne. If we investigated every natural death we’d never do anything important.”
“And three deaths in one family isn’t important?”
“Suspicious,” he confesses. “But it was before my time.”
“You’re not hiding anything, are you?”
Donaldson’s seat is a little uncomfortable as he admits that his predecessor wasn’t always as straight as he should have been. “Old Bob Hinkey could bend the rules a bit at times.”
“So who bought him off?”
“I’m not saying that,” protests Donaldson, though knows that Daphne well understands the local politics. “Put yourself in Bob’s place. He probably spent his weekends shooting and fishing over at Creston’s estate. Have you seen the place? Bigger than Buckingham Palace, choppers flying in and out, more security than the padlock on the prisoner’s pee bucket down at the station.”
“So what’s he scared of?” questions Daphne. “Nothing ticks off a villain more than the prospect of being done over by another one,” suggests Donaldson.
Daphne queries, “Creston — a crook?”
Donaldson shrugs. “I’ve got no proof, but that’s how most of these bigwigs make it — either them or their ancestors. It ticks me off that we waste time nicking some unemployed jerk for pinching a bar of chocolate when people like Creston are siphoning millions out of their companies.”
“If Creston is as pious as he claims he’ll have to get off his camel sooner or later or he’ll be going downstairs with the rest of us.”
“Nice idea,” laughs Donaldson. “But he’s already working on that. According to someone — let’s say a friend of mine — Creston shovels money into religious organizations all over the place. Mind, I take a less charitable view. I reckon he does it for the PR and the tax write-off.”
“Trina said they think Janet was involved in a religious group,” begins Daphne, then questions, “I don’t suppose you could find out from your friend if any of Creston’s largesse reaches Canada.”
“You’ll get me shot… aiding the enemy.”
“What enemy?”
“David told me that you and Trina had cooked up some crazy notion about being private eyes.”
“And PIs are the enemy?”
“Competition… definitely not privy to classified information.”
By the time Ted Donaldson has persuaded himself that a second helping of bread and butter pudding would round him off nicely, Daphne figures that he is sufficiently softened to try another tack.
“D’ye know anything about Amelia Drinkwater?” she asks with blank-faced innocence.
Donaldson puts down his spoon. “You mean the venerable Mrs. Drinkwater, Chairman of Dewminster Magistrates…” he begins, then lowers his tone. “I didn’t know she qualified for a Christian name. I could tell you one or two things…”
Daphne leans across the table. “Just one good one will do.”
“Well, to start with she strikes more terror into my officers than she does the villains.”
“Really?”
Donaldson checks around before saying, “Bloody old battleaxe. Her husband died young and her son committed suicide, and I can’t say I blame either of them.”
“I’ve met her,” agrees Daphne. “What happened to her boy?”
“Abuse,” mouths Donaldson. “She totally smothered him. He was still living at home in his thirties for God’s sake; Peter Pan syndrome, couldn’t grow up… you know the type.”
“Why suicide?”
Donaldson shrugs. “The only way out I suppose.” Janet Thurgood hasn’t been trying to escape from Trina’s again, but with the possibility that Mike Phillips or Dave Brougham might show up at any time, Rob has been turned out to make room for her in the main part of the house. However, Trina is convinced that a police visit is imminent so she checks the basement suite.
Wearing dark shades and Kylie’s Nike runners, she slips from room to room, keeping low. She flips open each door and jerks back as if expecting a shot, then she launches herself into the room and dives for cover.
“I’ve seen them do this in the movies,” she hisses over her shoulder to her daughter, who is standing at the bottom of the stairs pretending to stick her fingers down her throat.
Trina inches her way across the room on the floor and closes the curtains before turning back to Kylie. “Shh,” she hisses with her fingers to her lips. “The place may be bugged.”
Telephone, paintings, lamps, and a four-foot-high plastic flamingo all get inspected, though Trina has little idea of what to search for.
“Here’s a bug,” calls Kylie, picking a dead spider from behind the television, and she gets a tart look from her mother.
“There’s a police car up the hill,” calls Rick as he comes home from the office and catches Trina in the act.
“I know. They’re after Janet.”
Rick laughs — he can’t help it. “April fool.”
“That is not funny,” screeches Trina, almost convinced that there is a SWAT team hovering in the neighbour-hood, then Rick spots that Kylie is wearing Janet’s brown head scarf.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting Janet away from here,” explains Trina, and then she reveals the plan that she has inveigled her daughter into by lifting all embargos. “Kylie is going to run down the street and around the block to draw fire.”
“No way,” says Rick, grabbing his daughter.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Mum’s paranoid as usual. There aren’t any cops. Anyway, they wouldn’t fire on an unarmed woman.”
“That lot would fire on their grannies if…” sneers Trina before realizing that her words are self-defeating. “But Ky’ll be fine.”
The plan to move Janet to the home of Trina’s enema-loving patient, Clive Sampson, was welcomed by the elderly man when Trina asked him.
“I wouldn’t mind the company,” the septuagenarian readily admitted, and the fact that Janet was wanted by t
he police didn’t faze him at all.
“I’ve done a few things in my time —” he started, but Trina stopped him.
“I’m sure we all have, Clive. But Janet is innocent, OK?”
Janet sits on Rob’s bed caressing her crucifix as Trina outlines her plan. The homecare nurse looks into her charge’s face as she speaks and notices that some changes have occurred since the first time she saw the terrified woman. Gradual awareness of her surroundings and some decent food seem to be softening her, although at the mention of the police the muscles of her cheeks harden and her eyes glaze as she focuses intently on the face of Jesus.
“Don’t worry,” soothes Trina. “You’ll be safe with Clive. He’s a very nice man.”
Janet relaxes, although the transition seems to leave her in a deeper fog. However, a moment later, something in her questing eyes tells Trina that she is trying to look forward.
“We’ll just wait until it’s dark,” Trina is telling her when Daphne phones with an update on her meeting with Donaldson.
“I’ve got a plan,” Trina tells the Englishwoman excitedly as she picks up the phone in her bedroom.
“I remember the last one,” replies Daphne sourly, recalling the other woman’s hare-brained scheme to raise money for kidney transplants by pedalling a kidney-shaped quadricycle from Vancouver to New York. “It’s downhill all the way,” the zany Canadian announced as they set off together on a practice run, only to end up imprisoned in a secret government establishment in the mountains of Washington State.
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