Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “Don’t worry,” says Bliss, guiding her to a cracked leather armchair. “It happens to us all. Anyway, thank goodness you remembered I was a chief inspector.”

  “So I did,” says Daphne, brightening, and then she sinks. “But they say I forget most things.”

  The visit lasts an hour but is over after three minutes: the weather; the food; Prince Philip; the Queen … all as good as can be expected. Then they start again: the food; the heat; the Queen; Prince Philip …

  Bliss searches for an exit. “Would you like to take a walk?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I could take you out for a little drive,” he suggests bouncily as he starts to rise, but Daphne shakes her head.

  “They don’t like us going out. Worried we might not come back, I expect.”

  “Probably a liability issue,” acknowledges Bliss as he sits down again. “Is there anything you need?”

  Daphne’s face says she has something on her mind, but the thought and the expression vaporize after a few seconds. “No. I can manage, David. You just look after the Queen.”

  “See? You remembered my name.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be the tablets,” she says, then starts at the beginning again. “It’s jolly warm today, isn’t it?”

  Samantha is breathless as she picks up at the first buzz. “Dad,” she blurts, “I just climbed a mountain — my first one.”

  “What?”

  “I just had this incredible urge to climb, so we drove to Wales.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t keep saying ‘what’ like that.”

  “Sorry, Sam. It’s just that most pregnant women want anchovies or a Humphrey Bogart movie.”

  “I know,” she says. “Bizarre, isn’t it.”

  Absolutely terrifying, thinks Bliss, but manages to stop himself from castigating her. He doesn’t want to encourage her to do it again. “I thought I’d let you know that I’ve visited Daphne.”

  “How is she?”

  “Confused,” says Bliss, and realizes that he is also talking about himself. “One minute her memory seemed okay and the next it was fuzzy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t figure her out. I’m wondering if she just got cheesed off always being on her own.”

  “Like you?”

  “I’m not,” he protests, but she laughs over him.

  “Parachuting next week.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he shoots back, but she’s still laughing as she flicks the off button.

  The idea of aging on his own nags Bliss as he drives through Westchester to check on Daphne’s house. The shuffling inmates of St. Michael’s may be only one generation ahead of him, but as he waited in the entrance lobby for a staff member to take him to the visitors’ room, the white-haired Lilliputians who eyed him suspiciously could have been aliens.

  Twenty years — thirty at best, he warns himself as he turns into Daphne’s road, and then he jams on his brakes at the sight of a mob. Ten skinheaded teenagers, led by all three of Rob Jenkins’s sons, swashbuckle their way down the road towards him and force mothers to grab youngsters off the street. Then a small pebble pings off Bliss’s roof.

  Bliss winds down his window. “All right, lads,” he calls as he flashes his police ID to the leaders. “What’s going on?”

  “What d’ya want, granddad?” challenges the eldest Jenkins.

  “Police,” says Bliss, nodding to his card as he opens his door.

  “We ain’t done nuvving,” spits Jon-Jo.

  “Someone just threw a stone —” Bliss starts, but derisive laughter and four-letter words drown him out.

  Ten to one. He’s had worse odds in his twenty-eight years in the Force and fought his way out of them, but he can feel the heat as they swarm in. Just one spark and he will be in the midst of an inferno, so he backs down.

  “Just watch it, that’s all,” he says as he slides back into his seat.

  “Up yours, granny,” sneers a jug-eared lout, and his car takes a beating as they thump and kick their way past.

  A young mother reappears, questioning, “Are you all right, sir?” as the hooligans turn the corner.

  “Shaken,” admits Bliss, as he dials 999. “Do you know who they are?”

  The woman’s face says yes, but she quickly backs off. “I ain’t gonna get involved. I got young kiddies.”

  “I’m police,” says Bliss, offering his card, but it backfires as she lashes out and storms away, yelling over her shoulder, “Then you oughta be locking that damn lot up instead of little old ladies.”

  Daphne Lovelace, he guesses, and a few minutes later he is standing, slack-mouthed, in the remnants of his elderly friend’s front garden, together with the uniformed constable who arrested her.

  “She would slash her wrists …” Bliss says, shaking his head in dismay at the hacked-down shrubs, trampled perennials, heaps of garbage, and graffiti-sprayed walls.

  “I bet I know who did this,” muses the constable, Roger Ingliss, with an eye on the Jenkins household, as they approach Daphne’s front door.

  Bliss’s hand goes to his nose. “What the hell …”

  “Shit,” says the constable pointing to the excrement smeared over the doorstep and crammed through the letterbox.

  It is nearly midnight by the time Bliss arrives home, and he rips off his clothes inside the front door and heads for the bath without checking for missed calls.

  “Sporadic gunfire was reported across a number of cities this evening,” the nighttime newscaster is trumpeting as Bliss finally slumps in front of the television in his dressing gown, then his phone buzzes.

  It is Daisy. “I’ve been calling …” she sobs, and he explains that he put his cellphone in his car while he climbed through a smashed window into Daphne’s house, then forgot it as he spent the rest of the evening cleaning up and making good.

  “Daavid, I want to see you,” she insists, and with Prince Philip tucked safely away on the Scottish moors for another week, he makes a vow. “Next Friday. I promise.”

  “Please, Daavid. I love you.”

  “Much of tonight’s violence appears religiously based,” the reporter continues as Bliss’s mind spins. “Mosques, temples, and churches have been fire-bombed — several destroyed …”

  “Daavid?”

  I love you, too, is the response he is looking for, but with the memory of a lonely weekend in Cannes still gnawing at him the best he can do is, “We’ll talk on Friday.”

  “Put everything on hold. The balloon’s gone up,” says Commander Fox as Bliss walks into a wall of activity Monday morning: men and women rushing around with folders; canteen staff laying out coffee cups in the conference room; technical staff setting up monitors and computers; secretaries polishing their nails.

  “The rioting?” questions Bliss, but Fox shakes his head sombrely.

  “No. The f’kin palace has rescheduled — Friday after next.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” moans Bliss as the conference room fills with unit commanders and support staff. “That’s all I need.”

  “Have you got problems at home?” queries Fox with a knowing lilt, but Bliss shrugs it off as a stone-faced assistant commissioner shuffles papers with his head down, preparing to announce the bad news officially.

  Thirty-two officers and staff but no sign of Edwards or the CIA, Bliss tallies quickly as the assistant commissioner clears his throat to bring the meeting to order.

  “Whose bloody bright idea was that?” demands a special ops superintendent above the rumble of disbelief, and the assistant commissioner sternly jumps on him.

  “Her Majesty the Queen, officer. She thinks it the best way to bring an end to the riots, but maybe you’ve got a better plan.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” he says, deflating, then questions, “And what about Prince Philip, sir?”

  “She can’t go without him, can she,” strikes back the A.C.
“It would look as though she’s keeping him in the Bloody Tower.”

  “It’s a bit like dragging a four-year-old party pooper back to say sorry to the red-eyed birthday girl,” suggests Bliss. “I just hope he doesn’t try it again.”

  “It’s your job to stop him, Chief Inspector,” says the A.C., and then he passes the floor to Commander Fox, who offers an olive branch to the assembly by pointing out that nothing needs to be changed from the original plan, other than names of officers on leave or off duty through sickness.

  “Another meeting Wednesday,” concludes Fox, “and we’ll have it sewn up.”

  The rumble of dissent returns as officers begin to leave the room, but Fox grabs Bliss’s arm. “Michael Edwards is on his way over from the Home Office with the Duke’s trick-cyclist.”

  “Just what I need to start the week off,” mutters Bliss sotto voce, but Fox lets it go.

  “The event shouldn’t cause us any problems,” begins Fox, explaining that Prince Philip’s clumsy antics may actually have taken some sting out of the rescheduled visit. Al-Jezeerah and the other Arab stations have repeatedly run clips for the amusement of their audiences, and every comedian and cartoonist in the world has lampooned the royals. “The whole thing has become one huge joke,” Fox is saying as Michael Edwards and Professor Morteson arrive to review the video of the original incident and to strategize.

  “I suppose they could travel separately this time,” suggests Edwards as they watch the motorcade approaching the mosque, and then the videographer narrates as the Queen alights from the car.

  “Commander Fox salutes and spins to escort her up the steps to the waiting dignitaries,” he says as the cameras follow the Queen up the steps. “Prince Philip, in his military uniform, catches up —”

  “Wait a minute,” says Bliss, reaching over to hit the pause button. “Why did it take him so long?”

  “’Cos he had to get out the other side of the car and walk round,” says Fox.

  “Do we have a recording of that?” Bliss calls to the videographer, and the man begins checking his logs.

  “Forget it. Let’s get on,” says Edwards irritably. “It doesn’t matter how he got there. He got there.”

  “Right, sir,” says the technician and he starts the show again.

  “Here Prince Philip is following Her Majesty up the steps —”

  “Cut, cut, cut,” interrupts Bliss with something on his mind, but Edwards steps in and grabs the remote.

  “Just watch the f’kin film, Chief Inspector. Christ, you sound like Cecil B. DeMille.”

  “Who was that, sir?” asks Bliss, feigning ignorance.

  “Before your time. Now just shut up and watch.”

  The Queen is shaking hands with the first of the grey-robed dignitaries when the shot widens to include the Duke as he unleashes his sword. Now Edwards hits the pause button.

  “So. What do we see?”

  “He looks angry,” says Bliss. “See the way he threw off his protection officer.”

  “Professor?”

  “Frustrated more than angered, I would say, Michael. It looks to me as though he somehow got entangled with his scabbard and momentarily lost his composure.”

  “Any response, Chief Inspector?”

  The whitewash continues, thinks Bliss as he wonders what to have for his dinner. “No, sir. Fine with me.” But, as the meeting breaks up, he sidles up to the videographer, asking, “Can you make me a copy?”

  “Here,” he says, “take this one. It’s all on memory cards. I can make as many copies as I want.”

  “I’d still like to see if we’ve got him getting out of the car.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m going to be in Washington for a few days,” Edwards loudly brags as he picks up his briefcase. “The Home Secretary thought I should sit down with the top brass at the Pentagon. See what they’ve got to offer.”

  “Absolutely, sir. Good thinking,” says Bliss with undisguised sarcasm, knowing exactly whose idea it would have been to pick the taxpayers’ pockets for a first-class junket to America.

  Edwards scowls, but he balks at taking on Bliss in the presence of Professor Morteson.

  By the time Bliss has returned to his office to take another look at the video, Daphne is back, circling her imaginary labyrinth in the noonday sun, muttering, “Here kitty-kitty-kitty … Here kitty-kitty-kitty …” fifty times a minute.

  Amelia chuckles as she stands in the shade of the oak by the side of John Bartlesham’s wheelchair. “She’s just like a little clockwork mouse.”

  A distinguished voice says, “Amelia. Is that Miss Lovelace out there?”

  “Oh. Hello, Mr. Jameson, sir,” says the girl, turning to the stately figure behind her. “Yeah,” she says, laughing, “that’s my Daffy.”

  Robert Jameson of Jameson and Fidditch, Legal Services, distinguishes himself by his ability to withstand all weathers in a three-piece worsted suit, complete with a starched pocket handkerchief, a white rose boutonniere, and, in summer, a Panama hat.

  “Miss Lovelace,” he says, doffing his hat as he walks onto the field and stands in her path, but she swerves around him and picks up her labyrinth without missing a step.

  “Here kitty-kitty-kitty … Here kitty-kitty-kitty …” she continues, with her eyes on the ground, as Jameson stands and wipes perspiration from his brow and hat band.

  “You won’t stop her, Mr. Jameson,” laughs Amelia from the boundary. “Not till her spring runs down.”

  “Miss Lovelace,” Jameson tries again solicitously, as Daphne’s circuit brings her close, but this time he falls in step. “I wonder if I might have a few words with you about your will.”

  “Here kitty-kitty-kitty …” she starts anew, then stops, gives Jameson a fierce look, and starts again. “Here kitty-kitty-kitty …”

  “You might as well come in an’ ’ave a cuppa tea, Mr. Jameson,” calls Amelia. “She won’t stop till she’s done.”

  Daphne is done ten minutes later and, as she sips her warm tea in the supervisor’s office, she explains that she has no family as far as she can recall.

  “Of course, I may have forgotten,” she adds with a faraway look. “They say I forget things.”

  “What about children, Miss Lovelace? I think you’d remember them.”

  “I lost the only one I ever had,” she says, without explaining that the baby she has in mind wasn’t hers. It was the child a critically wounded Frenchwoman entrusted to her in the heat of battle, and it became one of Hitler’s victims.

  “All right then,” says Jameson, as he stems a flood of perspiration from his brow with his sopping handkerchief, and she focuses intently on his blue eyes as he explains in considerable detail the legal difficulties that her beneficiaries might encounter should she die intestate.

  “So, I’m sure you understand how important it is,” Jameson concludes with a flourish, and Daphne slowly puts down her plastic mug, wipes her lips with a napkin, and sits back as if she is finished.

  “Miss Lovelace?” queries Jameson, leaning expectantly into her after a prolonged pause.

  “Yes?” she says.

  “Did you understand everything?”

  Daphne’s face slowly metamorphoses from wide-eyed interest to scrunch-faced concentration, and Jameson sighs in disbelief when she eventually scratches her head and says, “Would you like to try again?”

  Doctor Williamson pokes his head into the office five minutes later, just as Daphne finally seems to be grasping the benefits of tidying herself up before she trots off to the cemetery in the back of a black Bentley.

  “Won’t be a minute, Geoffrey,” calls Jameson, then he turns back to Daphne and changes tune. “Maybe I can make it easier for you,” he offers helpfully. “Maybe you should give someone power of attorney over your affairs. Then you wouldn’t need to worry about a thing.”

  The doctor is examining Emily Mountjoy in her room by the time Daphne has given Jameson tacit approval to draw up n
ecessary papers, and she is blocked at the door by Hilda Fitzgerald.

  “Emily’s not at all well,” says Hilda. “Maybe you should take a little walk while we sort her out and take her to the sickroom.”

  “She seemed all right earlier,” protests Daphne, but Hilda’s face isn’t promising. “It’s her heart,” she confides with a grimace of distaste, depicting Emily’s heart in the same vein as the Antichrist, leaving Daphne no choice but to return to her labyrinth.

  By mid-afternoon the videographer has dug deep into the digitized mind of his computer and uncovered the images Bliss requested. But after ten viewings of Prince Philip leaving the royal limousine and walking to the mosque’s steps, Bliss still has questions and seeks a second opinion.

  “Can you spare a minute?” he asks, phoning his son-in-law, D.C.I. Peter Bryan, and a few minutes later they sit together in front of Bliss’s computer screen.

  “He gets out of the car on the offside, straightens himself up, brushes off his collar, and walks around the back,” narrates Bliss. “Now watch carefully,” he carries on, stabbing the screen with a finger. “He reaches the pavement and stops. Now look at his face.”

  “He looks as though he’s crapping his pants,” says Bryan; Prince Philip stands rooted to the spot while his face puckers in strain.

  “Indelicately put, but absolutely true, Peter,” says Bliss, adding, “Then he pulls himself together and heads for the steps to the reception party.”

  “Gas,” suggests Bryan as Bliss stops the disc and repositions Philip onto the pavement. “The old boy didn’t want to desecrate the mosque with a raspberry and be damned in Hell for eternity, so he just stopped to give his head a squeeze and clear himself out before he went up the steps.”

  “There goes my chance of heaven,” laughs Bliss, recalling his days as a young choirboy, but Peter Bryan isn’t so sure.

  “I bet you could get in on appeal.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Let’s face it, they’re all the same. They all want you on their team. It’s the emperor’s new clothes syndrome. And what else have they got to offer apart from absolution for sins, bingo, and a shot at heaven?”