Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “Right,” says Bliss, resisting the temptation to say, With a very strong case of attempted murder, assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, and, possibly, high treason.

  “Now,” carries on the A.C. as the door finally closes behind the smokers and the eternally tardy. “I’ve ordered sandwiches and cold drinks to be sent in. Take off your ties, get your minds in gear, and don’t make any plans for this weekend.”

  Bliss checks his watch.

  “Going somewhere, Chief Inspector?” demands the A.C. in a tone that tells Bliss that his five o’clock flight to Nice will be leaving with at least one empty seat.

  “No, sir.”

  “Damn right you’re not. If we get this wrong the Queen won’t be the only one with a sore arse for the next month.”

  “Right, sir,” says Bliss, and he sits back as a couple dozen senior officers play footsie with the facts. The weather takes most of the heat, followed by a handful of civilians — Prince Philip’s equerry, his aide-de-camp, and his wardrobe mistress — who all should have made sure he was wearing appropriate clothing. The Met’s own men, the royalty protection officers, and the Queen’s detective could be in the firing line for not alerting anyone to Philip’s breach of etiquette, but Bliss’s peers are working on that as he tunes them out.

  Why didn’t his own P.O. stop him? Why the slow reaction from the Queen’s P.O.? Why didn’t anyone see it coming? These are the questions the cadre of white-shirted officers are readying to deflect as Bliss closes his eyes and finds himself in Cannes with his arm around Daisy.

  It is late afternoon on the Côte d’Azur. A million urban northerners clog the Mediterranean shores, seeking respite from the oppressive heat, as Bliss dreams of strolling with his fiancée under the shady palms and oleanders of Cannes’ beachside gardens and of watching the evening’s fireworks display from the Promenade de la Croisette. The promenade, the wide seafront boulevard that follows the gentle sweep of the bay, is lined with the world’s glitziest hotels and is so familiar to Bliss that he can picture every one of the opulent façades facing the golden beaches and multi-hued blue waters.

  Daisy’s hometown, and Cannes’ dowdy neighbour, St-Juan-sur-Mer, was Bliss’s domicile for a year while he laboriously wrote the manuscript that now sits, unread, on several publishers’ slush piles. So he knows the Croisette’s restaurants, the bars and glaceries that can stretch a visitor’s plastic to the limit in a single bite. He has felt the deeply cushioned comfort of the Carlton and the Miramar, and he is well aware of the ritzy, air-conditioned clubs and casinos filled with Middle Eastern men who have thrown off their white robes in favour of silk suits as they play away from home in a Mecca of immorality, where easy women, hard drinks, and gaming chips come and go with a flick of a finger.

  “Chief Inspector!” calls Commander Fox from outside, but Bliss has left the bustle of the waterfront in Cannes and is blithely floating across the serene cerulean bay to the infamous island of St. Marguerite, one-time home of the Man in the Iron Mask — the subject of his historical novel.

  “Mr. Bliss!”

  The ancient stone fortress that incarcerated the masked prisoner in isolation for eleven years guards the island from atop its rocky outcrop and looms above Bliss as his mind spins him back to the seventeenth century.

  “Dave! Dave!” whispers the man on his right, but Bliss is walking the dusty parade ground where Louis XIV’s feared Legionnaires once marched, towards the impenetrable cell block where the famous inmate was housed. Then he takes a sharp elbow in the ribs.

  “Sorry, sir. It must be the heat,” he says, giving his head a shake.

  “The Home Secretary wants a report on his desk yesterday,” says Fox above the guffaws of Bliss’s colleagues. “You claim to be a writer — so write.”

  “I do fiction, sir.”

  “Precisely. And it’d better sound bloody convincing.”

  Blame is still being shunted around the table as Bliss takes a pen out of his briefcase, and he can’t help smiling at the fact that officers who have collectively spent over five hundred years trying to nail violent offenders are now twisting their brains to let one off the hook.

  The weather is still the most favourable suspect, but a close second is the suggestion that Prince Philip simply stumbled and fell after pulling out his sword to give it to his equerry, feeling it inappropriate to enter a mosque armed.

  “Well, which do you want?” asks Bliss with his pen poised, and he can’t help thinking it might be amusing to simply stroll out to the press corps who are baying at the gate and say, “Okay. The gig’s up. The old fool caught us on the hop.”

  “Heatstroke,” decides Commander Fox firmly, but the assistant commissioner sees a mine in the road.

  “Hang on a minute, Roger. What if he suddenly pops his head out of the palace and says, ‘I did it — the miserable old bat was getting on my nerves’?”

  A superintendent from the Public Order Unit wonders aloud how the Queen will parse the incident in her annual Christmas address, and as the laughter subsides, a mimic pinches the bridge of his nose and takes on the Queen, saying, “In August of this year, my husband tried to put the wind up me …”

  It is nearly seven o’clock by the time the meeting breaks up. Heatstroke wins the day, and Bliss’s circumspectly worded report wins general approbation, although, as he walks home in the evening sunshine, he can’t help but reflect that the penalty for attempting to pervert the course of justice is life imprisonment.

  Daphne Lovelace is on the phone the moment he walks in the door.

  “I thought you were going to see Daisy.”

  “So did I,” he replies sourly, but his sex life is on neither his nor Daphne’s agenda.

  “I saw it on television,” she carries on, without need of elucidation. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

  “Heatstroke …” starts Bliss, but Daphne has more faith in her eyes than that.

  “David, I may be getting on a bit —”

  “It was just a slip of the sword,” he cuts in quickly. “Anyway, what possible reason could he have?”

  “Henry VIII made a habit of it.”

  “True. But Philip’s not exactly short of male heirs. Anyway, Henry didn’t get his own hands bloody. He had enough sense to use the official executioner.”

  “I could do with one of those,” snorts Daphne, although, under questioning, she admits that all is quiet on the western front. “I think they’re away for the weekend,” she adds, before returning to the errant Prince Philip. “They did say it was the heat on the news.”

  “Then that must be right,” says Bliss, and a few minutes later he gets the same information from Daisy.

  “I’m really sorry,” he says after explaining the situation. She understands, she claims, but since the death of her grandmother the distance between them has grown. Spring was scented by millions of Provençal orange blossoms for the couple as he put the final touches to his historical novel, but now the tender fruits are withering in the summer’s relentless sun.

  “Just a few days — maybe a week,” he says with his fingers crossed.

  “But you will miss all zhe fireworks.”

  “I know,” he replies.

  “Perhaps zhen I should come back …” starts Daisy, but she trails off as her mother calls. “I am sorry, Daavid,” she says, “but I zhink she needs zhe toilette.”

  Bliss feels her slipping. “I’ll call in the morning. I love you.” he says hurriedly, but she has gone. “Damn. Damn. Damn,” he is still swearing as the phone buzzes again.

  “Fox,” barks the commander. “My office at eight tomorrow morning.”

  Bliss senses that someone has turned up the heat, and he drops the phone to switch on the television. The air-waves are buzzing with the news and repeatedly show the attack from every angle, but no one, it seems, is buying heatstroke. Pundits are pointing out the obvious: that, unless someone at the palace forgot the electricity bill, Their Royal Highnesses live in a perfumed wo
rld more closely controlled than an upscale tobacconist’s humidor.

  “Inherited insanity” is the word on the air, and there is no scarcity of regal examples to call upon. Mary Queen of Scots and Charles VI of France, both distant relatives of Philip, get a mention, as do many of his more recent kin, including his mother, several Georges — especially the second, who died when he fell off the royal loo at Kensington Palace, and the third, who was nutty enough to be certified — Prince John, various cousins, and even Edward VIII, who, it is suggested, must have been totally round the twist to ditch the crown for a doubly divorced Yankee gold digger.

  Syphilis, porphyria, and alcohol take much of the blame for the procession of royals with psychoses, although inbreeding is certainly not excluded. Heatstroke is not even on the list, and the official line is stretched still thinner when a retired chauffeur augments his pension with tales of driving the couple around in an icebox, fiercely insisting to a reporter, “The Duke would never get in the car unless it were bloomin’ freezin’.”

  By midnight, Bliss is struggling to sleep, while political commentators and royal watchers are being dragged off the beaches in Bali and out of bars in Melbourne to keep the discussion going. There is even suggestion that the Lord Chancellor could return from his holiday home in the Seychelles. However, whilst his role in deposing a mentally incapacitated monarch is enshrined in law, there is apparently nothing on the books to deal with the lunacy of a monarch’s spouse, beyond the commoners’ Mental Health Act.

  As the night wears on, the television editors run out of sensible ideas and turn to the ramblings of the Internet, where conspiracy theorists have nicknamed Prince Philip “Osama bin Windsor.”

  “The Duke of Edinburgh has been electronically implanted and is being remotely controlled by Islamic fundamentalists,” claims one of loonier sites, retaliating for an earlier suggestion that Christian fundamentalists were responsible for the earthquakes and tsunamis that annihilated Muslim communities in Asia. (The Christians were quick to hit back, irrationally bolstering the Muslims’ egos by accusing them of prayerfully invoking devastating droughts, hurricanes, and tornadoes in America.)

  “Prince Philip — Victim of Heat?” queries the Guardian on Saturday’s front page as Bliss blearily checks out the headlines on his way to the Yard, though less charitable rags lead more enigmatically, loudly asking, “DID HE?” or, more paradoxically, “DUBBED by the DUKE!”

  Bottom-feeding paparazzi should be having lobster lunches today, but so many staffers snapped the royal visit that newsrooms are knee-deep in cuttings, and despite a flurry of passionate pleas from the Home Office and the palace, most editors have opted to show a puzzled woman cowering under her husband’s sword.

  Feminist organizations and abused women’s groups are vitriolic in condemnation of Prince Philip, and more than one call for his immediate arrest.

  “What happened to the government’s zero-tolerance policy on spousal abuse?” demands a political correspondent in the Times.

  Big Ben’s clock is winding itself up to strike eight as Bliss arrives at New Scotland Yard. A few hardy pressmen have camped out on the footpath in the hope of scooping a quote from a dozy copper, but Bliss is sharp enough to keep his head down as he makes for a rear door.

  “Peter Roberts, the assistant commissioner, is chairing the meeting,” says Commander Roger Fox chattily as he leads Bliss to the almost deserted top floor, then he stops with his hand on a door and puts on a straight face. “Official Secrets Act, Dave,” he says, and waits momentarily for the threat to sink in before opening the door.

  “Ah. Chief Inspector. Good of you to come,” starts Roberts, rising from the head of the table with a smarmy smile, and numerous sympathetic eyes turn silently on Bliss, leaving him wondering if he has been involuntarily volunteered for something nasty.

  “Pleasure, sir,” says Bliss guardedly as he scrutinizes the half-drunk coffees, the croissant crumbs, butter wrappers, orange peel, and apple cores, and the rolled sleeves and furrowed brows of six men and two women.

  A moment’s awkward silence is broken by the assistant commissioner as he quickly encompasses the room with a sweep of his hand. “Paulson, royal protection; Commander Fox — you already know; Mr. Michaels — Home Office; Mr. Simpson …” Roberts hesitates, then changes tune. “Coffee, Chief Inspector?”

  Bliss pours himself a cup as he scans the room and comes up with several familiar faces. The pinstriped pair who were not introduced at their previous meeting are still not being introduced, but they’ve lost their business suits and are looking more sheepish than smug.

  “The Home Secretary is appointing an independent security expert, Chief Inspector,” announces Roberts unenthusiastically as he pulls Bliss into the conversation. “But, pending his evaluation of the situation, your job is to protect the Queen.”

  “From her husband?”

  “Chief Inspector,” says Commander Fox, stepping in. “As difficult as this may seem, we have to divorce the two.”

  “That won’t go down well with the Archbishop …” starts Bliss, deliberately misconstruing, and Fox bites back.

  “Be serious, Chief Inspector; divorce the woman from the Crown. Ignore the fact that she’s just a grey-haired old biddy with a plum in her mouth. You are charged with defending the Queen from a very serious threat.”

  “That’s impossible, sir,” says Bliss as he sits, realizing that he’s being handed a live grenade “He’d only need a table knife. We’d have to chop the blades off all his swords and blunt his razors. What if he smothers her with a feather pillow in the middle of the night? What am I supposed to do — take a sleeping bag and kip on the floor between them?”

  “Chief Inspector,” admonishes Roberts with an embarrassed eye on the pinstriped duo. “The palace is fully co-operating. Mr. Paulson and Mr. Simpson will make sure that he doesn’t have access to weapons. Anyway, they’ve slept in separate rooms for years. Your job is to come up with strategies to ensure her safety in public.”

  “I still don’t get it,” complains Bliss. “This sounds like a job for a trick-cyclist with a straitjacket, especially if he’s likely to try again.”

  One of the pinstripers comes to life, and Bliss hears an American Midwest accent. They look like a couple of evangelical Bible-thumpers, he thinks as he evaluates the shiny-shoed, short-haired, smooth-shaven college boys, and the one on the left pulls himself forward in his chair and focuses on Bliss. “Chief Inspector. I am authorized to advise you that the President is very concerned about the security of the royal family.”

  “And you are …” starts Bliss, guessing CIA rather than Mormon, but Fox slaps him down.

  “You don’t need to know that, Chief Inspector.”

  Lefty holds up a hand. “No. Fair question, Commander,” he says, though doesn’t answer as he paints on a sickly smile and replies, “We are merely observers and advisors, Chief Inspector.”

  “Isn’t that what you called your people in Vietnam?” snipes Bliss, and he is pleased to see several faces redden.

  “Yes, Chief Inspector,” snarls Lefty’s running mate, rising heatedly. “And if we’d gotten support from certain other countries we would —”

  “Gentlemen,” steps in the assistant commissioner as he waves the man back to his chair. “Can we please deal with the issue at hand.”

  Lefty’s partner is puce with rage and gets christened “Pimple” by Bliss, but he climbs down a few notches once he’s paused for breath. “Chief Inspector,” he says, as if he’s dealing with an obdurate minion, “this is FYI only, but I can inform you that the President had good reason to suspect an attack on the Queen was imminent. He’s concerned, as we all are, about the effect this could have on the security of the nation.”

  “Which president? What nation?” Bliss questions with deliberate obtuseness, and he is pleased to see Pimple’s cheeks flush back up.

  “The United States has a vested interest in global security, Chief Inspector,” preaches Lefty, a
dding, “And the President has tasked us to take whatever steps necessary to guarantee freedom from terrorism wherever it may occur.”

  The idea of the CIA labelling the Duke of Edinburgh as a terrorist stings, but Bliss is still smarting from a previous encounter with America’s Big Brother, so he forces a smile, saying, “Well that’s jolly nice of your president,” and then he mentally prepares for war.

  Daphne Lovelace is also on the warpath. Her dreams of a quiet weekend were dashed when her neighbours roared home at the head of a motorcycle mob at 2:00 a.m. They were still partying when she was finally driven onto the streets around six. Missie Rouge has been astray for more than a week now, and, despite her protestations that the cat was snacked on by the pit bulls, she still combs the neigh-bourhood daily for several hours, morning and night, with a scraggy photo in hand.

  “Have you seen my kitty?” She repeatedly questions neighbours and their children, but many of the strangers look upon her warily. Not long ago she could have named every resident and most of their offspring, but now she is a foreigner — not by nationality; by age. She is a lone passenger on a runaway bus after everyone else has bailed. Most of her long-time neighbours and friends got off at the cemetery, while a few still wait patiently in hospices and nursing homes for a passing hearse.

  Daphne knows that one day soon there will be a bend in the road that’s just too sharp, a wall too high, a ravine too deep, and sometimes, when she looks at all the empty seats surrounding her, she wishes that it would be today.

  “I’m looking for my cat,” she explains to the young couple who bought Hilda Marshall’s place after the spry octogenarian fell off a camel at Moulton-Didsley’s annual Cabbage Fair, but the young man shrugs her off as he herds a pack of fractious children into their minivan.

  “She’s called Missie Rouge.”

  “Sorry, luv,” says the mother as she struggles to strap down a squirming, sleep-deprived four-year-old. “Try the RSPCA.”

  “She’s ever so pretty,” carries on Daphne determinedly with the photo in hand. “Sort of a reddish colour.”