Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “Oh, Daffy.” laughs Amelia. “There’s only one God.”

  “Really,” says Daphne. “And is that the same one that Mrs. Fitzgerald worships before she hits people around?”

  “Yeah. I s’pose so.”

  “And the same one that all these riots and church burnings are about?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well. Maybe you should make up your own mind, dear. I’m not sure I’d trust someone who wants his followers to do things like that.”

  Amelia drops her voice to a whisper and even checks out the ceiling to make sure no one is watching before she asks, “Don’t you believe in God, Daffy?”

  “Ah. Now that is a very good question,” sighs Daphne. “But if he is up there somewhere, I wish he’d hurry up and get down here and stop all the fighting and killing.”

  “Oh, Daffy. You’ll never go to heaven if you say things like that.”

  Stone angels and archangels ascend heavenwards on the façade of Westchester cathedral, but Bliss takes no notice as he scours the grounds in search of Daphne. The bells are ringing for Evensong, and tardy congregants clasp their Sunday hats to freshly washed hair as they scurry towards the fifteenth-century carved doors.

  Mavis Longbottom is there, together with Angel Robinson in her flounciest printed cotton, but not inside the cathedral.

  “I bet she’ll be walking the labyrinth at the cathedral if she’s still alive,” Mavis loudly pronounced to Anne McGregor when the search of St. Michael’s was winding down without a trace of her missing friend. And the superintendent gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean, if she is still alive?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Mavis. “It’s this lot you should be looking at. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s something funny going on here.”

  Blood on the floor in Room 27 is the best, albeit most alarming, verification of Mavis’s claim, notwithstanding Hilda Fitzgerald’s efforts to wash it away, but it will take a few days for the Home Office’s forensic science laboratory to analyze the samples and several more to match the DNA with Daphne’s.

  “Chief Inspector?” queries Mavis in surprise, spotting the familiar figure of David Bliss as he stops to wonder at the sight of twenty people walking in circles with their eyes on the ground. “You’re Daphne Lovelace’s friend, aren’t you?”

  “Umm …” hums Bliss as he tries to come up with a name.

  “Mavis Longbottom. Christmas at Daphne’s a couple of years ago. You’d been shot … she disappeared … ”

  “I remember,” says Bliss. Then his face darkens worriedly. “Do you know she’s missing again?”

  Mavis nods. “It’s my fault. She was all right until I brought her here.”

  “Here?” queries Bliss, then Angel Robinson jumps in. “It’s the labyrinth,” she explains. “Daphne was having a few problems at home, then she came here and was energized to action.”

  “Hang on,” says Bliss skeptically, watching the slump-shouldered devotees shuffling their way around the meandering paths. “What do you mean, energized?”

  “It’s all my fault, David,” Mavis continues muttering in the background.

  Bliss’s face screws in confusion, and he focuses on Angel. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “How was she energized?”

  “The labyrinth is one of the most powerful symbols on earth,” lectures the flowery woman. “Examples can be found from ancient Greece to Peru and Scandinavia …”

  But Bliss doesn’t want history. He wants facts. And he stops her with a hand. “What do you mean — energized?”

  “Well,” says Angel. “It’s like this powerful bolt of energy that rises up from the core of the labyrinth — it sort of zaps your mind.”

  “Say that again,” says Bliss.

  “It rises up out of the ground and zaps your mind?”

  chapter thirteen

  The sandstone Georgian façade of the Mitre Hotel, complete with its fluted columns, balustraded balconies, and mullioned windows, has changed little in nearly three hundred years, but the lobby has suffered at the hands of several owners.

  Isabel Semaurino, with suitcases packed, is wearing a linen suit and a simple pillbox travelling hat as she takes a final wander around the laminate-panelled foyer, idly checking out the magazines in a plastic display rack. The desk clerk is arranging for a cab to take her to the railway station as she leafs through a three-year-old copy of Horse and Hounds , when the front door bangs open.

  “Papers,” sings out the perky pigtailed delivery girl, tossing a bundle of Gazettes on the desk and sneaking off with a handful of mints.

  “May I?” asks Isabel, dropping the magazine and picking up the top copy of the daily newspaper as the desk clerk comes out of the back office.

  “Certainly, madam,” says the girl. “And your taxi will be here in five minutes.”

  The police mug shot of Daphne, front and centre under the one-word headline “Kidnapped?”, was snapped when she was still boiling over the iniquity of her treatment compared to the real offenders and could have been culled from the “Britain’s most belligerent” edition of Twentieth-Century Villains.

  “Riddle of eighty-five-year-old dementia patient snatched from seniors’ home …” begins the story, and it is a full ten seconds before Isabel reaches the name of “Ophelia Lovelace, better known as Daphne.” Then she lets out a startled shriek and rushes back to the desk clerk, saying, “I need to phone the police.”

  “The officer in charge of the missing woman’s case, please,” she blurts the moment she’s connected.

  “Can I ask who’s calling, ma’am.”

  “Yes,” she says. “My name is Isabel Semaurino. I am Ophelia Lovelace’s daughter.”

  “Mavis — it’s me,” whispers Daphne the moment she hears the front door slam behind Amelia and her parents.

  “Daphne. Where on earth are you? Everyone’s worried to death.”

  “Shh …” hisses Daphne. “Has the postman been?”

  “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “Mavis. Just shut up a minute. Have you got the post?”

  “Yes. The blasted man was banging on my flippin’ door at seven o’clock this morning, demanding money for a parcel with no stamps. Not blinking likely I said —”

  “Oh, no,” breaks in Daphne.

  “Well it was probably just advertising junk …” Mavis is nattering on as Daphne tunes her out and flops backwards on Amelia’s bed. The envelope, full of documents from Davenport’s private files, didn’t have a stamp. She searched for one for several minutes, but finally gave up and stuffed it in the residents’ outgoing mailbox in the early hours of Friday morning assuming Mavis would pay.

  “Was it important?” questions Mavis.

  “Of course it was.”

  “Well, I didn’t know,” shouts Mavis in frustration. “You should’ve put a stamp on it. I thought it was junk …”

  “All right, don’t panic,” Daphne is saying, as much to herself as to Mavis, fearing that, without documents to back her claims, any accusations she makes will be labelled by Davenport and his sister as the incoherent ramblings of a confused old lady. “Where is it now?”

  “How should I know? The postman just took it back. If you’d put your name on it I would have known.”

  And so would Davenport, thinks Daphne, if it occurred to him to check the mailbox when he was looking for his lost papers. “All right,” she says. “Just run to the post office — tell them it was a mistake and you want it back.”

  “But where are you?”

  Michael Kent springs to mind, warning her never to compromise a partner by giving them information. “It’s always easier for them to tell the truth than to lie,” he explained, “especially when there’s an electrode clamped to their tender bits. So, what they don’t know can’t hurt them.”

  “I’ll call back in an hour,” she says. “Just make sure you get it.”

  The buzz amongst pati
ents and staff at St. Michael’s has the nervous intensity of a lockdown in a maximum-security wing following a breakout.

  A dozen newly awakened inmates have been jammed up against the television in the common room since 6:00 a.m., spotting themselves time and again as news cameramen focus on the line of policemen searching the grounds, while a couple of early birds have been hovering by the front door since six-thirty for the morning’s papers.

  Amelia Brimble slips in through the back gate on her bicycle at eight-forty and slides in the kitchen door with her head down.

  “What time d’ye call this, young lady?” grunts Hilda Fitzgerald, slamming a frying pan onto the stove with enough force to shatter an eardrum.

  “Sorry, Hilda,” replies Amelia, while her twitchy fingers refuse to tie her apron strings. “My alarm didn’t go off.”

  “Heard that before,” scoffs Fitzgerald as she dollops porridge into bowls. “Hurry up with that apron.”

  “I got it,” says Amelia as she finally succeeds, but she is still dithery as she picks up a laden tray.

  “Be careful,” shouts the curmudgeon. “What on earth’s the matter with you this morning, girl?”

  “Nothing,” she sings out as she heads to the common room, but she is well aware of the hullabaloo over Daphne’s disappearance and guesses that Patrick Davenport will be lying in wait. And she has been awake since dawn, terrified that Daphne’s snores would alert her parents.

  “You’re gonna be late for work,” her mother called at seven-thirty, and Daphne woke and silently urged her to go. But the risk of her elderly guest’s discovery held the young girl back, and she stalled in the bathroom until her parents were ready to leave a few minutes after eight, following the local radio news.

  “Isn’t that the place where you work?” said her father, but she pulled a face and ran back to the bathroom.

  “I just feel a bit sicky this morning,” she told her mother, not untruthfully, when she reappeared, but she declined the option of a day off, fearing that her absence from St. Michael’s would heighten suspicion.

  “You missed all the excitement, dear,” whispers John Bartlesham as he catches Amelia on her way to the common room and pulls her down to wheelchair level. “Someone’s stolen your little clockwork mouse.”

  “Do you mean Daffy?” questions Amelia with feigned surprise as an inmate sights Anne McGregor arriving and yells, “Put out your reefers, girls, the fuzz are back.”

  Amelia feels her face draining as she checks the wall clock. It is only 8:45.

  “I don’t want you to have to tell lies for me,” Daphne told her. “But I need you to stall them until at least nine.”

  It is the middle of Monday morning rush hour in Whitechapel and the habitual snarl-up is being worsened by the presence of a cherry picker parked in the road opposite the new mosque.

  “Sorry, guv,” the owner/driver said when Bliss approached him about doing the police a favour later in the day. “But I’ve got a job startin’ at nine. It’s now or never.”

  “What can you see?” hollers Bliss to his son-in-law, who is in the swaying bucket fifty feet above him.

  “Fox and Edwards at six o’clock,” Peter Bryan yells down, and Bliss whips around in time to see the two men standing on the mosque’s steps with puzzled expressions.

  “Don’t say a word,” Bliss quietly warns the driver, before putting on a wide smile as Edwards and the commander dodge the slow-moving traffic.

  “G’mornin’, sirs. You’re up early on this beautiful …”

  “Cut the crap, Chief Inspector. What’s going on?” queries Fox. “You’re gumming up the works.”

  “Looking for the best place to site another camera, guv’nor,” Bliss says as he takes a bead on the front of the mosque with his index finger and yells up to Peter Bryan. “What coverage do you get from there, Peter?”

  “No one told me about additional cameras,” complains Edwards. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Just using my initiative,” says Bliss, turning to the Home Secretary’s man. “We don’t want anymore foul-ups, do we, Mr. Edwards, sir?”

  “Right,” says Fox skeptically as he turns to leave. “Just hurry up and clear the road before Traffic shows up and books you for obstructing the highway.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t waste any more money on that. We’re advising the palace to cancel. It’s just too much risk with all this unrest. Birmingham got hit again last night.”

  “Right, sir,” says Bliss with a touch of relief, while a voice from above sings out. “Oy, gramps. Are you asleep down there or what?”

  “I’ve got to get some kip,” moans Bliss as Bryan returns to earth. “I was up most of the night looking for a damn woman.”

  “They’re twenty quid apiece in Piccadilly,” jests Bryan. “All sizes; all colours. And you can have as many as you can handle.”

  “Very funny, Peter. But I’m worried about Daphne.”

  “She’ll turn up. She always does,” laughs Bryan, but he has something behind his back as he questions, “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

  A miniature satellite dish was strapped to the top of the light unit. “You couldn’t see it from down here,” explains Bryan as he gives the contraption to his father-in-law. “It was camouflaged to blend with the colour of the lamppost.”

  “Are you sure it’s not part of the light?” questions Bliss, turning the parabolic reflector and its box of circuitry over in his hands.

  “Definitely not,” says Bryan, struggling out of his overalls and checking his watch. “Although the cheeky beggars had wired it into the system to draw power.”

  “But what’s it for?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” says Bryan as he strides away. “I’m a cop, not a whiz kid. Anyway, I gotta go — we’ve got an appointment with the gynecologist in an hour.”

  “Why didn’t you say —?” starts Bliss, but the driver cuts in.

  “Have you finished, guv?”

  “Yeah. Thanks a lot, mate,” says Bliss, slipping the man a fifty-pound note. “Much appreciated.”

  “This is Miss Lovelace’s daughter,” introduces Anne McGregor as she strides into Patrick Davenport’s office just before nine, accompanied by Isabel Semaurino.

  “She doesn’t have …” starts Davenport as he rises in confusion, then he dries up and starts from a different approach. “We weren’t aware she had any …”

  “… any family,” continues Isabel helpfully as she steps confidently forward, adding, “Don’t worry. You’re not alone in that belief.”

  “Any news?” questions Davenport, looking past the strikingly elegant woman to Superintendent McGregor.

  “As a matter of fact, we believe we have a breakthrough,” she says as she opens her briefcase and extracts a series of photographs from the security camera above the ATM in the wall of the Midland Bank in Westchester High Street. “Last Friday … using Miss Lovelace’s debit card. Do you recognize her?”

  The photographs of Amelia Brimble are not particularly flattering, mainly due to her look of panic, but Davenport identifies his young staff member immediately, and seconds later the girl stands in front of them with tears running down her cheeks.

  “You don’t understand,” she sobs. “I didn’t steal the money. I got it for Daffy.” Then she squirrels into her apron pocket with shaking hands and digs out a crumpled shopping list.

  “Clothes, shoes, ticket to London, and a book of escape methods,” reads McGregor aloud as she tosses her head in relief. “Thank goodness for that.”

  “What do you mean?” steps in Isabel. “What’s happened to my mother?”

  “Maybe Amelia can tell us,” says McGregor, spinning on the snivelling girl. “I assume it was you, young lady, who helped her escape.”

  “Yes,” mumbles Amelia through the tears. “But she’s not really loopy at all. She shouldn’t’ve been here.”

  “So. You’re a trained social worker, are you?” sneers Mc
Gregor, letting her own opinions about the missing woman through.

  “No …” Amelia starts, and then looks up defiantly. “But Hilda shouldn’t a’ hit her.”

  “Hilda?” questions McGregor, and Patrick Davenport pales before trying to hustle the squealer out.

  “You’re fired. Get your things together and I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he says as he pushes Amelia towards the door, but Isabel grabs the girl as she passes.

  “Wait a minute,” she demands. “Where is my mother?”

  The baritone bell of the cathedral’s clock booms the first beat of nine as Daphne slips out of Amelia’s house and heads for the labyrinth.

  “The post office reckoned they couldn’t do anything until the postman gets back from his rounds at twelve,” Mavis told her when she phoned her friend back, but with the near certainty that Amelia will break under questioning, Daphne is on the run in a pair of the girl’s jogging pants, pink running shoes, and an Adidas sweatshirt chosen because of its hood.

  An eighty-five-year-old dressed as a teenager and wearing knockoffs of RayBan mirrored sunglasses wouldn’t attract a great deal of attention in Tampa Bay or even Marbella, but Westchester is a very long way from Florida in every respect and, with the story of Daphne’s abduction and her photograph in all the papers as well as most television stations, more than one person gives her a double take as she half walks, half jogs through the cathedral grounds.

  Mavis Longbottom, on the other hand, is completely in the dark as she stands in the middle of the labyrinth wondering why someone would be silly enough to wear a hood in the heat of the day.

  “Why here?” demands Mavis, once Daphne has got her walking around the labyrinth’s path.

  “No one expects me to be out in the open,” explains Daphne, stopping to check around carefully before confiding, “And I wouldn’t put it past them to be watching your place.”

  “Who?”

  “St. Michael’s mob,” whispers Daphne, as if she is afraid of microphones. “They’ve been keeping me a prisoner.”

  “Don’t be silly …” starts Mavis, then Daphne takes off her glasses and lifts her hood. “Oh my goodness. Did you fall?”