Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “‘S’cuse me,” says the woman, pushing past to grab a fleeing five-year-old.

  “I’ve got a picture,” she calls to the woman’s back, then she gives up. “Thanks,” she mutters as she meanders off down the street, wondering if she’ll get lucky; wondering if today will be the day the wheels come off her bus.

  The future is also uppermost in Bliss’s mind as he ambles home alongside the ageless Thames and pictures himself as a grandfather. It’s a happy picture: flying kites, riding bikes, hiking, camping, sailing, and swimming. Nothing like the memories of his own grandfather, he tries telling himself, with the image of a greying, wizened old man asleep in the chair in mind — then he makes the mistake of tallying the years.

  “He was only just fifty,” he mutters downheartedly, so he switches focus to his ex-wife and her husband, George, and wonders how they are coping with the news. At least I won’t be the one having sex with a grandmother, he laughs to himself, although his mirth is short-lived with the realization that he won’t be having sex with anyone at all if he doesn’t do something about Daisy.

  “I wonder what she’ll be doing today?” he says as he stares into the murky river seeking Mediterranean blue, and then the sun comes out.

  “Taxi!” he yells excitedly as he dodges the Embankment’s speedy traffic, and seconds later he is on his way to France.

  Why not? he asks himself repeatedly as he speeds homeward for a change of clothes. The Queen is in hospital for the weekend, the Duke has been sent to a doghouse somewhere deep in the country beyond the telephoto lenses of the press, and I can cobble together a protection plan just as easily on a beach in Provençe. All I need is a return ticket for the first flight next week.

  “We’ll get our act together at ten on Monday, Dave,” Commander Fox instructed as the morning’s meeting broke up. “We’ve got an appointment with the Home Office’s man at eleven. Let’s show him who the security experts are, shall we?”

  The price of the last-minute seat to Nice leaves Bliss half-expecting champagne, but he’s not entirely disappointed when all he gets is Evian water. A bottle of Bollinger with his name on it waits for him in an ice bucket at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, and a table for two will be laid on the beach as soon as the sun has dropped into the Mediterranean. And, if Daisy’s mother is able to pull herself together and put aside her fears, he and Daisy will take a second bottle of champagne to a room with a sea view and lie naked in each others’ arms as fireworks burst triumphantly across the indigo sky.

  chapter four

  “We’re just passing Paris on our starboard side,” the crackly-voiced captain explains above the persistent background buzz on the intercom, leaving Bliss crossing his fingers over the rest of the plane’s equipment as he looks down on the City of Lights.

  “Hey, Mum, I wanna see the Eiffel Tower,” sings out the squirmy six-year-old on Bliss’s left, and a child’s boney elbow digs into his groin as he follows the snake of the Seine across the urban landscape.

  “Sorry, sir … just excited,” explains the young mother as she yanks her infant back into his seat, but this is third time, starting with the Channel and the White Cliffs of Dover. “It’s his first trip,” she carries on as she straps him firmly down. “You know what they’re like …”

  Bliss grumbles “Kids” in agreement, but he sees the young boy’s face crumple, and the start of a tear, and is momentarily spun into the future, where he quickly adds flying and patience to his grandfatherly responsibilities.

  “Here — you have the window,” he says with a smile, already unbuckling. But he pauses long enough to peer down at the French capital in time to make out the monstrous Notre Dame cathedral on the Île de la Cité.

  It is a scorching afternoon, and Daphne, under the shade of a broad-rimmed sombrero, also has her sights on a French cathedral, Norman to be precise, built on the marshlands of Westchester in the late eleventh century by the ruddy-faced King William II — William Rufus — when Normandy and England were united against the rest of France.

  “There has to be more to this than meets the eye,” Daphne mutters in puzzlement as she weaves her way around and around the cathedral’s medieval labyrinth seeking some kind of revelation. “It just doesn’t make any bloomin’ sense.”

  But life itself no longer makes much sense, and as she plants herself in the centre of the labyrinth and peers up at the cathedral’s crucifix-topped spire, she is more certain than ever that she has been deceived. Despite her age, she still vividly recalls a time of childhood innocence when loving thy neighbour, turning the other cheek, and being nice to your snotty little brother would ensure a life of peace and happiness; a time filled with the syrupy mantras of rosy-faced Sunday school teachers and rosy-nosed village parsons who cherry-picked the Bible and dusted the carefully chosen fruit with their own particular sugary glaze. But as a twenty-year-old at the outbreak of war in 1939, the frosting was cracking and turning sickly as she watched newsreels of straight-faced chaplains blessing the deadly munitions while petitioning the Almighty to annihilate the enemy in His name.

  I suppose it’s a waste of time asking you to vaporize the Jenkinses, she thinks angrily as she stares skyward. You’d rather take nice quiet people like Phil and Maggie, and Minnie and —

  “Hello. Are you still looking?”

  Daphne snaps herself back to earth and spins to find Angel Robinson on her shoulder.

  “You won’t find the answers you seek here, Daphne,” continues the flowery woman with a psychic’s conviction. “But I could lead the way for you.”

  The certainty of Angel’s tone, and the strength of her gaze, root Daphne to the labyrinth’s core, while one invisible hand brushes the hairs on the nape of her neck and another squeezes her chest.

  “I … I … really should … um … should get going,” stammers the uneasy woman as she tries to unglue her feet.

  “You’re not alone,” continues Ms. Robinson with a soothing hand on Daphne’s forearm. “You’re surrounded by kind spirits.”

  “I’m sorry, but I really must go — lots to do,” jabbers Daphne, breaking the gaze. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I do have to get some food for my cat.”

  “Really?” the other woman questions with a raised eyebrow, and Daphne turns pink as she looks for a quick exit. But she is in the centre of a web, and the only way out is the narrow winding path that brought her in.

  “Excuse me,” says Daphne, fiercely pulling her sombrero over her eyes, but Angel’s face says that she isn’t moving.

  “What are you afraid of, Daphne?”

  “Afraid of something?” she says, and is equally torn between life and death as she looks for a way to escape. But it took her a long time to wind her way into the labyrinth, and Angel blocks her only means of retreat.

  “We all have to die, Daphne,” carries on Angel, reading the old woman’s mind — every old woman’s mind. “It’s just a transition to the next world — a better world. It’s like taking the bus to Bournemouth.”

  “I never liked Bournemouth much,” snorts Daphne, lifting her hat and standing her ground. “Full of snobby old fogeys and toffee-nosed twits. So, if that’s what heaven’s like, I’d rather pass, thank you very much.”

  “I’m not talking about heaven —” starts Angel, but Daphne has heard enough, and she clamps down her hat and barges forward.

  “Sorry. Must go.”

  “I’d really like to be your friend,” claims Angel as she is swept aside.

  “I’ve got lots of friends, thanks,” calls Daphne over her shoulder, and in desperation she short-circuits the labyrinth by crashing through the invisible barriers segregating each loop of the path, while moaning, “Fat lot of good this bloomin’ thing is. I’d get more answers from a phone book.”

  But Angel’s parting words bite as Daphne takes the bus into the town centre and fails to recognize any of the thirty or so other passengers.

  “I do have lots of friends,” she angrily insists to herself, alth
ough it is unfortunate that both the cemetery and the crematorium lie on the same route. And she sinks further when she passes the seniors’ nursing home where her neigh-bour, Maggie Morgan, died.

  “I’ve still got Mavis,” she tries consolingly, but inwardly she admits that since the younger woman discovered the sexual side of the Internet she has become completely undependable.

  “You should give it a try,” Mavis enthused when Daphne complained of being dumped from a Paul McCartney concert in favour of Gerald Swain, a wig-wearing geriatric who called himself Buzz online and claimed to be a retired rock star living in Clapham under an assumed name. “You can meet some really interesting fellas.”

  “I don’t —” Daphne started, but Mavis was on a roll.

  “You really should make more of an effort to keep up with modern technology, Daphne,” she insisted, determinedly shaking the older woman by the shoulders and peering intently into her eyes. “It ages you terribly if you don’t.”

  “Modern technology,” Daphne echoed thoughtfully, as if seriously contemplating the notion of dragging herself out of the Dark Ages, but then she scratched her temple and put on a bemused look. “That’s funny, Mavis,” she said, “and I may be entirely wrong, but didn’t they invent the telephone so that people wouldn’t have to waste endless time typing letters and waiting for a reply?”

  “Well, I suppose —”

  “And didn’t they reckon that computers would do everything by the turn of the century so no one would ever have to work?”

  “Yes — all right. You made your point.”

  Trina Button is someone else who is still wedded to the phone, although in Trina’s case, “welded” would be more appropriate. Trina is perhaps Daphne’s most reliable, but also unlikeliest, friend. The zippy Vancouver homecare nurse with streaky blonde hair and a fire-breathing dragon tattooed on her bum is, in so many ways, worlds away from the aging Westchester spinster. She is in her early forties, with a long-suffering husband, two teenagers, and a guinea pig, and she is so attached to her cellphone that she anxiously awaits the day she can have one implanted.

  “C’mon, Daphne, pick up,” she is muttering into her hands-free microphone as she scoots across the Lions Gate Bridge into the centre of Vancouver. It is barely seven o’clock on the Pacific coast of Canada. Saturday. Schools aren’t in, offices are closed, and the city’s roads are almost deserted. A native bear, cougar, or elk could safely cross today, but it’s many decades since anything larger than a racoon or an escaped domestic goat has dared Vancouver’s traffic. Survivors long ago retreated from the smoggy jungle of concrete and glass to the surrounding mountains, followed by many of the tourists, while others have sought solitude on one of the numerous forested islands that dot the coast.

  Trina’s Volkswagen Jetta is on autopilot as she gives up on her English friend, balances a pad on her knee, takes a swig of coffee and a bite of muffin, and phones her dispatch office.

  “I lost old Mr. Darnley yesterday,” she admits as she asks for a new assignment.

  “I’m not surprised,” says Margaret.

  “I was,” bitches Trina. “First visit — ten minutes. I just pulled down his underpants and stuck him on the loo and plop he was gone. He didn’t even touch the stewed banana I did for his lunch.”

  “Stewed banana?” queries the dispatcher.

  “With bacon,” stresses Trina, sensing her culinary arts are being challenged.

  “Oh, well. At least you didn’t get personally involved this time,” says Margaret cheerily, recalling occasions when Trina’s heart burned at the iniquities of life and she turfed her own children out of bed in favour of some broken-down geriatric. But Trina’s patients are often nearing the end of the road. It is an unspoken rule amongst the dispatchers. Not because of Trina’s great nursing skills or exemplary compassion, but because, at that stage of their life, the medical professionals have already inflicted the bulk of the damage. “Sorry, Trina,” adds Margaret after checking the schedule. “Everyone’s been taken care of today.”

  “Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will remain in the care of …” the BBC newscaster is saying as Bliss watches the satellite television on the back of the aisle seat in front of him, but the picture dies as the captain announces their imminent arrival in Nice.

  The Mediterranean’s Bay of Angels, in the shadow of the snow-capped Maritime Alps, is flecked with sails of every size and hue as the plane swoops low to land. Close to shore, the sweeping bay is an artist’s palette of turquoise, aquamarine, and sapphire, but as the water deepens towards the horizon, the colours slowly meld into a vibrant azure that fuses perfectly with the sky. It is David Bliss’s favourite sight in the entire world, which today is being enjoyed by a Machiavellian six-year-old who is well on his way to a career as a con man.

  “Look at that, Mum … Look at that, Mum …” he shouts excitedly time and again as he thumps against the window, while all Bliss can do is turn his watch one hour ahead and wait for the bump as the sea gives way to asphalt.

  Daisy will be so surprised, he tells himself with a grin as he walks from the terminal to a line of cabs and then is hit by the aromas of the Niçoise August. The fragrances of jasmine, orange blossom, and hibiscus, so reminiscent of Mediterranean springtime, have been zapped by the heat and replaced by the stink of car exhausts and the stench of sewers in the city’s languid summer air.

  “St-Juan-sur-Mer,” he calls to the driver as he leaps in and slams the door against the putrid fumes, then he tries to back out as he spots the cigarette in the driver’s hand.

  “Monsieur?” yells the driver with his foot already on the floor, and Bliss coughs accusingly.

  “Le cigarette.”

  “Bof!” spits the driver with a shrug and winds down his window as he drives off.

  Bliss sits back in resignation as the hot, smoky stench blasts into his face. Tonight will be different. Tonight he will bask in the moonlight on the Carlton Hotel’s private beach in Cannes. He will breathe the ozone-fresh Mediterranean air, scented only by Daisy and her bouquet of roses, and together they will dine on foie gras, oysters fin clair with a dash of Tabasco and a squirt of local lemon juice, and Côtelettes à la Provençale. They will sip mimosas made with Bollinger champagne and swim in a pink rhapsody of seductive words set to the gentle swish of wavelets on the golden sand. And afterwards — there will be fireworks.

  While a smiling Bliss heads for St-Juan-sur-Mer with little more than his birthday suit and a pair of swimming trunks in a carry-on bag, Daphne Lovelace rounds the corner from Sheep Street with a nice cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge on her mind. Then her heart sinks and her inner voice yells, “Run.” Half a dozen motorbikes are herringboned against the curb outside her neighbour’s house, and a tattooed mob litters the sidewalk. She has options: she could take to the roadway; she could have tea at the Mitre or with Mavis; she could even walk around the block and cut through the copse to approach from the other end of her street.

  “I’m buggered if I will,” she mutters determinedly, and for the second time in a day she sets her sombrero to “attack.”

  “Hello, Daph, me old duck,” shouts Bob Jenkins as he dangles his legs from the windowsill of what was once the Morgans’ front parlour. “How’r’ya doin?”

  Daphne cringes and fights the temptation to tell him to get down, that Phil and Maggie will be furious. “Nice motorbikes,” she says, swallowing hard and painting on a smile as she keeps walking, but she is carefully measuring her pace, choosing her moment. One “accidental” nudge and the whole lot will topple like dominoes.

  “Fancy a spin?” laughs Jenkins, stubbing out his cigarette and slipping off the windowsill in her direction.

  There was a time in her youth when a high-speed chase on a Norton or an Indian would have seemed as tame as the parish church’s annual bicycle picnic: twenty-five giggly teenagers on wide-tired Raleighs, girls riding behind the boys to avoid unseemly sniggers and smutty comments. No skirts short enough to sh
ow knees, no make-up, no visible bra straps, and definitely no trousers — all, according to the vicar at the consecration service, “As the Lord God has ordained in the Bible.” Girls’ underpants were also a matter of interest, but not to the vicar. Mrs. Cloverdale, the organist, was responsible for knickers, discreetly warning of God’s disapproval of anything fancy, frilly, flimsy, or likely to cause unnecessary excitement during the ride. On the other hand, some of the boys’ underpants were, it was strongly rumoured, of very great interest to the vicar.

  “Don’t take any notice of ’im,” says Misty Jenkins as she emerges from the house with a case of beer. “He’s pullin’ yer leg.”

  “No I ain’t —” starts her husband, but she stops him with a scowl and turns to Daphne.

  “We’re off to the beach in Bournemuff for a bit of a rave, luv. Give ya a bit of peace for a few hours. Though we had to leave the dogs out — they’d rip the friggin’ place to shreds without us — just yell at ’em if they get on yer nerves.”

  “I’ll probably shoot them,” snarls Daphne under her breath, but Jenkins reads her lips and his face instantly darkens.

  “Touch my dogs an’ I’ll beat the fuckin’ —”

  “Rob!” screeches Misty. “Leave the old biddy alone. She ain’t worth it.”

  “Well —”

  “I said leave it.” And then she turns to Daphne with half a smile. “Sorry, luv. He can be a bit touchy at times.”

  David Bliss is also experiencing touchiness at Daisy’s home in St-Juan-sur-Mer.

  “Ah, Madame LeBlanc, bonjour,” he trills, with a supermarket bouquet and an exaggerated bow. But his fiancée’s mother recoils and tries to shut the door.

  “Madame,” he calls confusedly, but the door is still closing.

  “Madame,” he repeats, and sticks out a foot. The door stops, but Geneviève Leblanc uses it as a shield while she eyes him as if deciding between the Grim Reaper or a door-to-door Bible puncher.