“Get in there,” yells Creston, but Mason hesitates, seeing the officer heading his way with deliberation.
“I will arrest you for being an accomplice,” warns the sergeant, and then he turns back to Creston. “And I will charge you with breach of bail if he does try to go in. Understood?”
Tracy Jordan, Creston’s uptight receptionist, is totally outnumbered by the invading forces and she sits glumly at the reception desk with Clive Sampson for company. She would call her boss, but Samantha Bliss has made it very clear that no action of any kind will be made without Mrs. Creston’s say-so.
“Mrs. Janet Creston is taking over as interim company president until her husband has either served his sentence or has been exonerated,” Samantha dictated to the woman, adding, “Now type that up and send it as a memo to all departments and representatives.”
“I ought to check…” Tracy started, but Samantha stared her down.
“Not unless you want to start looking for another job in the morning.”
Now Samantha says to Janet, “You sit over there,” pointing Janet towards her husband’s throne, but the terrified woman shies off.
“I don’t think…”
“Hey, look at this,” shrieks Trina from the adjacent boardroom as she punches a button on a remote control unit to make a giant television appear from a trapdoor in the floor.
“All right, Trina,” laughs Samantha, and then she carries on to a bewildered Janet, “We’ll give him twenty-four hours to get really wound up, then we’ll offer a deal. You get the mansion in Dewminster together with all the household expenses for a minimum of twenty years, an annual six-figure salary, use of the helicopter and Lear jet for a reasonable number of trips per year —”
“Samantha,” says Janet putting out a hand to stop her. “Are you sure? It seems like a lot.”
“A lot,” says Samantha, laughing ironically. “It’s nothing after what he’s done. In fact there’s a very good chance you’ll end up with everything if he gets life.”
“But it seems so much.”
“Janet, you’ve spent forty years in purgatory because that man murdered your baby. This is only the start. Believe me… Oh, that reminds me,” she adds starting a to-do list on Creston’s desk pad, “before we leave we need to get copies of all the accounts, bank statements, transactions, and computer programs, and I’ll call in a forensic accountant to see if we can screw that freak in Canada who kept you prisoner.”
“I wouldn’t mind screwing that freak,” yells Trina, now playing with the control for the automatic Venetian blinds.
As the sun goes down in London, Bliss is still furiously writing, but the end is in sight.
“My love… my one and only true love… she is coming. I can feel her energy getting stronger as her carriage journeys ever southwards, borne on the mistral as it sweeps down the valley from the mountains…” he pens, but his right hand and wrist are stiff and sore. He tries switching to the left but gives up almost immediately.
Yolanda — please come back to me. Please come home, he writes absent-mindedly in the midst of the page and has to scrub out the words for fear that the typist might include them.
“I’ll have the rest finished by the morning,” he vowed to himself and the girl at the typing agency, but his eyes are drooping; the coffee is losing its grip. His daughter may be right. He may have to finish the final few pages on the plane.
“How’s it going, Dad?” Samantha questions using Tracy’s phone to wake him at six the following morning, while Janet and Clive are still asleep in Creston’s palatial office.
“Where are you?” he queries blearily, not recognizing the number.
“My new office,” she answers. “Janet has appointed me the company lawyer and temporary vice-president.”
“What!”
“Never mind,” she says. “It won’t take Creston and his high-priced goons long get back in. They’re already applying for an injunction.”
“Samantha… I don’t have time…”
“I know. So where are you with the book?”
“I should have it done this afternoon.”
“Good. Don’t miss that plane. Caas will meet you at Schipol. He’ll have a sign like one of those chauffeur guys. He’ll drive you to her place.”
“No news I guess.”
“Just don’t miss that plane, Dad.”
“Don’t miss the plane,” he muses once he’s put the phone down. “What’s she trying to tell me? What’s she saying? Am I too late? Will I be too late?”
He picks up his phone and hits the redial button in a panic.
“What if I’m too late? What if they’re already married?”
“Then you will have an even better story. You’ll be able to buy me a Porsche for Christmas.”
“You’re just trying to benefit from my misery.”
“It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, Dad,” Samantha reminds him, and he grimaces at the pain in his fingers as he carries on:
The mistral, the bitter icy blast from the snow-capped peaks of the High Alps, stings the faces of the carriage driver and his postilion riders as they forge southwards with their precious cargo…
“Hello, Janet,” says Samantha, pouring coffee from Tracy’s percolator as the sleepy-eyed woman appears from her husband’s office. “Are you ready for the big day?”
“This is too much…” Janet starts, convinced that she is still dreaming, but Samantha calms her with an arm round her shoulders.
“Hey! Come look at this,” yells Trina from the board-room, having stumbled over the button that has slid back the founder’s portrait to reveal Joseph Creston’s personal safe.
With a busload of forensic accountants and corporate lawyers threatening to drag the contents of his closets onto the street, Joseph Creston and his beleaguered team quickly capitulate, and by mid-afternoon, a beaming Samantha Bliss accompanies her client to the ground floor of the crumbling glass tower.
“You just leave the talking to me, all right,” warns Samantha as they head to the front door, where the cameras are waiting, with Trina and Clive in their wake.
“We have reached a satisfactory interim arrangement with Mr. Creston and the Creston company,” Samantha announces with muted pride once the hubbub has subsided. “And now, if you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Creston would like to return to her Hampshire home, which she hasn’t seen for forty years.”
“What about Creston Enterprises?” yells a loud-mouthed reporter above the crowd.
Samantha pauses, then leans back into the microphone. “Mrs. Creston has agreed that her husband can retain control for now; however, in the circumstances, she will expect to have considerable say in company policy.”
“Fuck… Fuck… Fuck!” screams Creston as he smashes his fists into the seat of his limousine while watching the press conference on television.
“And,” continues Samantha, now on her own hobby horse, “as Mrs. Creston is particularly interested in the environment and the welfare of the Third World producers, you can expect some changes.”
“Yes,” yells Daphne to her television set, and she reaches out to call Bliss on his cellphone.
“The customer you are calling is not available…” a pleasant-voiced computer tells her, so she puts the phone down and goes into the kitchen to make a celebratory pot of Keemun tea.
“Three hundred and eleven pages, ninety-one thousand words, in two days,” the typing agency manageress declares proudly as she hands over the document, and Bliss can hardly believe the bulk of the manuscript as he grabs it and heads for the waiting taxi.
“Nice… airport,” he says in English, knowing the driver will understand, and he uses the twenty minutes to skim through the script, then he calls Samantha.
“Dad,” says Samantha excitedly. “Peter just phoned. Chief Superintendent Edwards has thrown in the towel.”
“What?”
“Resigned. Apparently he’s done a deal. He’s going to plead guilty to the Breath
alyzer refusal providing that all the other charges are dropped.”
“Oh my God,” breathes Bliss as he races to the check-in desk with his manuscript in hand. “I can’t believe this. It’s really working.” Then he quickly opens his pad and scribbles:
The masked prince, now knowing that he had been duped by the treacherous usurper who called himself king, avenged himself by bringing down the impostor once and for all.
“You must hurry,” says the clerk pointing to the concourse clock. “The gate closes in five minutes.”
“Right,” says Bliss, already on the run, and as soon as he is settled in his seat on the plane he carries on.
The prisoner ripped off his mask, opened the door of his cell, and rowed across the bay towards his great château, the Château Roger. But would he find the woman of his dreams, his one true love, waiting for him? Or would his heartbroken spirit be destined to spend eternity endlessly pacing the halls and corridors of his monumental folly on the promontory overlooking the fortress on the island of Ste. Marguerite?
Bliss’s cellphone rings the moment he switches it on in the airport terminal in Holland.
“Caas is waiting for you outside. I’ve just spoken to him,” says Samantha, before asking, “Is it done?”
“Almost finished,” yells Bliss as he races towards the arrivals concourse and the end of a quest that has taken more than three centuries.
“Samantha told me what you do,” says Caas conversationally as they drive towards the city, but Bliss’s heart is in his mouth, his pulse is pounding, and he needs something considerably stronger than brandy to stop his hands shaking.
“Is she there?” he asks, but Caas doesn’t know. Is she married? he wants to ask, but dare not.
“Here we are,” says the young Dutch lawyer as he pulls into the curb outside a smart tower block. “Apartment one thousand and twenty-four on the tenth floor,” he adds, calling, “Good luck,” as Bliss climbs out.
I should have brought flowers, thinks Bliss and he checks the street hopefully, but there are no stores.
“OK, this is it,” he tells himself and he slips into the building in the wake of a resident and waits for the elevator.
Janet Creston, née Thurgood, is back in the tiny chapel at Creston Hall, crying softly as she caresses her crucifix, the smooth-featured Jesus that she has imbued with the spirit of her firstborn ever since the night that her husband ripped the bronze out of her hand and smashed it into the skull of her crying baby.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” she prays softly, while Clive Sampson sits next to her with sympathetic tears running down his cheeks, vowing silently to his God that he will spend the rest of his life trying to heal her hurt.
“Hello,” starts Bliss as Yolanda opens the door, and he grips the manuscript with white-knuckle force as he holds it out. “I wrote this for you,” he carries on, determined that she should have it whatever the circumstances.
Yolanda doesn’t move. She’s frozen physically and mentally as she tries to assimilate the spectre in front of her, still trying to fathom out whether or not he’s real.
“I won’t stay if I’m intruding,” Bliss carries on as he attempts to see behind her. “Only I just wanted you to know that… I, um… that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my entire life. That you have never left my thoughts for one moment since I first met you, and —”
“David,” she says, finally getting her mouth to work.
“Just let me finish please,” he says blocking her with a hand. “I just want you to know that even if eternity means forever, I have no option but to wait for you.”
A thousand kilometres away, on the Provençal coast of southern France, the chilling mistral dies away and the warm westerly pounant ripples the indigo surface of the bay of Cannes.
David Bliss’s usual seat is empty at L’Escale in St-Juan-sur-Mer, but Angeline, the waitress, is drawn across the deserted road to the promenade by a strange feeling, and she finds herself peering at the derelict château on the promontory in the twilight.
“Bizarre!” she mutters at the ghostly glow of flickering candlelight in the glassless windows of the old building, but then she shrugs it off with a “Bof” and blames it on the sun, which has just sunk into the distant depths of the Mediterranean sea.
chapter twenty
“Please, David —” Yolanda starts as she waves off the manuscript, but a Dutchman’s voice inside the apartment cuts her off.
“Who is that, Yolanda?”
“No one,” she replies and is starting to close the door when it is stayed by a larger hand.
“Can I help you?” asks the pyjama-clad man in a heavy accent, and the blood drains from Bliss’s face as he tries to hide the manuscript and turn away.
“Sorry, Klaus — sorry,” stutters Bliss. “I am not Klaus,” says the man, opening the door wide to reveal a red-faced Yolanda. “I am Jan, Yolanda’s husband. Klaus does not work here. He is my business partner.”
“Partner…” echoes Bliss, but Yolanda has come to life and is tussling with Jan over the door.
“Please, David. Just go — please just go,” she is pleading as she tries to unglue her husband’s hand, but Bliss has a foot in the door as he repeats, “Partner… Klaus?”
“Yes,” says Jan, wrenching Yolanda’s hand away and opening the door wide. “Klaus is my associate…”
“David, just go — leave me alone. Please go… go!” Yolanda is yelling in the background, but Jan has other ideas.
“I think maybe you should come inside,” he says, catching hold of Bliss’s sleeve. “It seems that my wife does not wish me to talk to you for some reason.”
Beautiful is burning, consumed by the hellish, satanic fires so often prophesied by the Lord Saviour. But the devil that set this conflagration is Wayne Browning, the saviour himself. However, this is no Waco or Jonestown. Pathologists and gagging policemen won’t be raking the coals for the charred mortal remains of worshippers seeking immortality. Browning and a few of his most devoted angels have taken off through the forest in search of a new nirvana, while the rest of his dejected brood, a few scrawny children and a dozen wasted women, have lost their wings and walk in a ragged line towards a cordon of flak-jacketed policeman cowering behind cruisers and machine guns.
“Stop there,” opens up a Mountie with a bullhorn and the women immediately comply. Then, as the heavily armed men move in to surround the pathetic group, a dozen fire engines with screaming sirens blast their way up the gravel road. But Beautiful is gone, along with all trace of the millions of dollars that the Creston Foundation has laundered over the years.
Caas is waiting with the engine running as Bliss gets back into the car. “So?” questions the young lawyer brightly.
“I thought I could change history,” says Bliss with an ironic smirk as he leafs through his manuscript, then he throws it onto the back seat and slowly shakes his head. “How stupid of me.”
“But what about Yolanda?”
Bliss’s hand on the young man’s shoulder suggests masculine affinity as he offers some sagely advice. “Louis XIV was absolutely right,” he tells him. “He always claimed that sacrifice is the only thing that all women desire.”
Joseph Creston Jr., receives the news about Beautiful from Mason with a touch of a smile, although he has little to be pleased about. The charity commissioners have joined the tax inspectors to dig through his books, and his lawyers are still trying to contain the flood of lawsuits that threaten to engulf him
“The lack of physical evidence linking you to the baby’s death is encouraging,” said Barnes, of Barnes, Worstheim and Shuttlecock as he reviewed the murder case, although he was less optimistic regarding the bribing of Edwards and the assault on police.
Bliss’s cellphone rings. “How did it go, Dad?” chirrups Samantha, and he finds himself laughing.
“I think I had a very, very lucky escape.”
“You didn’t get her back?”
“No… although in a way I suppose I have,” he says, knowing that Yolanda is going to have a very hard time with both her husband and Klaus. “I guess I’m going to have to buy you that Porsche after all.”
“Oh, Dad,” she sighs.
“Don’t worry, Sam, nothing about her was real. She was just a mirage,” he says breezily, then explains that the captivating image he fell for was just a façade put up by a desperate and deceitful woman, before adding, “Everything she told me was a lie.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. She’s just a sick, self-centred woman with no conscience. Klaus obviously caught on that she was going to be a nightmare so he ran the other way. She jumped into my bed to make him jealous.”
“And it worked.”
“No,” says Bliss, laughing. “He didn’t come. But she still had a couple of weeks to kill before her husband expected her home so she came back to me for a second dose.”
“But that’s terrible…”
“Actually, no,” cuts in Bliss, smiling in relief. “It means that I’m finally free and I can get on with my life… plus I don’t have to change history for my novel.”
In Vancouver, Trina is back to chasing her guinea pig, while Inspector Mike Phillips still sits on the report linking Dave Brougham with Craddock, Janet’s abductor.
Jody Craddock, ex-cop turned private investigator, is still in Hawaii, but no one takes any particular notice of the broken hobo who scavenges the garbage bins alongside the gulls and iguanas on the outskirts of Hilo.
In Dewminster, England, Amelia Drinkwater has stood down from the bench, much to the relief of the local constabulary, and hits the bottle while she awaits a verdict.
The warm Provençal sun lights up the fortress on the island of Ste. Marguerite the following morning as Bliss sits on the promenade in St-Juan-sur-Mer with his pen poised over a plain sheet of paper.
Crazy Lady Page 30