Deadly Sin

by James Hawkins

  “Arizona,” admits Cindi Langdon, a petite college girl with a blond ponytail and a disarming smile.

  “Really?” he says.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I was expecting a cockney gorilla with a hyena,” admits Bliss as he follows her pert figure into the security office and accepts the offer of coffee.

  “We’ve got a few of those too,” she laughs, handing him a cup. “But they’re just teddy bears beneath the skin.”

  “Grizzlies,” he mutters under his breath, reflecting on the monster he and Peter Bryan spotted yesterday, then he turns with a quizzical eye on the perimeter surveillance monitors. “Imports and exports,” he muses aloud. “You must handle some pretty high-end stuff to warrant this.”

  “Nah,” laughs Cindi. “It’s just a garage and workshop for our embassy vehicles. We just don’t advertise the fact.” Then she drops her tone to a conspiratorial whisper. “We don’t know who the good guys are anymore.”

  That explains the tight security and the classified licence plate, he tells himself, scanning the rows of parked vehicles inside the hangar until he spots the pickup. But it doesn’t explain why an official American vehicle was being used by a couple of pavement artists.

  “So, what exactly were you searching for?” inquires Cindi with her hands on the controls.

  Mavis and Trina’s search for the missing envelope has led them to the municipal dump, but they’ve run into a road-block. “You’re joking,” laughs the gatekeeper as truck after truck rumbles past on the dusty approach road. “I’ve had ten loads from the Council already this morning. Anyway, it’s more than my job’s worth to let you in.”

  On the other side of the city, Anne McGregor and Joan Joveneski have no problems getting in the front door of St. Michael’s, but they run into a gatekeeper at the front office.

  “Sorry,” says Davenport. “She’s just not up to having visitors.”

  “We’re not visitors,” insists McGregor. “We’re police officers, and we want to talk to her about allegations she made regarding her neighbours.”

  Davenport stands firm. “Sorry,” he repeats. “She won’t be able to help you at present.”

  “Now look here …” starts Joveneski, but the superintendent pulls her back, saying, “In that case we’ll talk to her daughter. Is Mrs. Semaurino here?”

  “No. She’s gone.”

  When is she coming back? Address? Telephone number? Full name? are all questions that leave St. Michael’s manager dancing with a red face.

  “Hold on,” says McGregor with a wary eye. “Are you trying to tell us that you have absolutely no information about Miss Lovelace’s next of kin?”

  “Well …”

  “What about in her file? I assume you keep patients’ records.”

  “File …” he echoes vaguely, not daring to open his desk drawers, and then the front door flies open and Amelia Brimble walks in with her mother.

  “I wanna word with you,” snorts Betty Brimble, going for Davenport’s jugular, and his legs give way.

  “Hi, Daffy. It’s me, Amelia,” the young girl tries a few minutes later while the others stand over the inert figure seeking signs of life.

  The youngster’s cheerful voice breaks through the protective layers and touches Daphne, but this is another of Davenport’s tricks that she has been expecting ever since her so-called daughter showed up, and she refuses to be drawn.

  “Daphne … Miss Lovelace …” tries Anne McGregor gently, moving in for a closer look. Then she turns to Davenport. “How did she get the bruises on her face?”

  “She fell,” insists the manager, finding his feet and stepping in quickly, but Amelia is right behind him.

  “Hilda smacked her in the gob,” says the girl defiantly, and then she spins accusingly on Davenport. “An’ he chucked me out when I tried telling you yesterday.”

  It is no great surprise to David Bliss to find that the CIA’s Lefty and Pimple are at the centre of things when he arrives for Edwards’ eleven o’clock meeting.

  “This is Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones from Homeland Security,” says Edwards by way of introduction, and Bliss barely controls himself.

  “Something funny, Chief Inspector?” questions the ex-superintendent, and then he turns the tables. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told them that you would be happy to help demonstrate —”

  “I certainly will …” cuts in Bliss, but he hits the floor before he can say “not.”

  “Right,” says Edwards, casually stepping over Bliss’s slumped body to address Fox and the other commanders. “The full effect lasts from ten to fifteen minutes depending on the amount of agent administered, as well as the age, weight, and general physical condition of the victim.”

  “S’cuse me, sir,” pipes up Pimple as he puts the lid on the aerosol can. “But we prefer the term ‘Temporarily disabled person’ or simply ‘TDP’ rather than ‘victim.’”

  “Sorry,” apologizes Edwards. “I suppose it’s like calling a freedom fighter an enemy combatant. It just depends whose side you’re on.” And then he is barraged by a dozen questions about the gas and its after-effects.

  “Gentlemen,” he says, holding up his hands. “By the time we’ve had coffee and a bite to eat, Chief Inspector Bliss, our TDP of the day, should be in a position to answer for himself.”

  “So, precisely what is the CIA’s role in all this?” Bliss demands of Edwards, once he’s shaken off the grogginess and the meeting has broken up.

  “That’s highly classified information, Chief Inspector,” says Edwards. “I’m quite surprised that you would even ask.”

  “Classified?” says Bliss, then he tosses a firecracker. “Do you mean ‘Classified’ as in the licence plates on a certain American embassy pickup truck?”

  “How the hell d’ya know that?” demands Edwards in a single word.

  “I didn’t,” lies Bliss with a deadpan face. “But now I do.”

  “Leave it alone, Bliss. And I’m not gonna warn you again.”

  “I’m warning you,” says Trina Button to Patrick Davenport, as she stands at St. Michael’s front door with Mavis and Angel as backup. “Either let us in to see her or I’ll call the police and tell them you’re keeping her prisoner.”

  “Look, she’s just very tired. Her daughter was here —”

  “What do you mean, her daughter?”

  “Miss Lovelace’s daughter, Isabel …” starts Davenport, although the look on Trina’s face tells him that he is horribly off track, and he grinds to a halt.

  “I don’t know what you’re playing at, young man,” steps in Mavis. “But I’ve known her since we were at school together, and I know for certain that she doesn’t have a daughter. So you’d better let us in this instant or I’m going to the police.”

  “The police are already aware,” says Davenport, on firmer ground, but, as for Daphne’s daughter, he is quickly coming to the realization that he may be on quicksand. “You’d have to ask Mrs. Semaurino about that yourself,” he says, with an uneasy feeling that he too should be asking questions about the missing woman.

  “So where is she?” demands Trina, but she draws a blank from the confused man as he stands firm and turns them away.

  The identity and whereabouts of Isabel Semaurino are also high on the agenda for Superintendent Anne McGregor as she calls a detective inspector and half a dozen officers into a huddle for a late-morning briefing.

  “I think someone’s trying to pull a fast one,” admits the senior officer once she has recounted the highlights of Daphne’s dash for freedom. “She was yelling that they were going to kill her and give her house to her daughter. So what happens when I turn up and want to speak to the daughter? She’s vanished and they have no record of her. And this is the interesting bit: everyone, apart from the high priest in charge of the place, tells me there is no daughter. I’ve even checked with D.C.I. Bliss at the Yard, and he’s known the old lady for years.”

  “I’ve known her for
years too,” chips in one of the detectives. “And I never knew she had a daughter.”

  “David,” Trina yells into her cellphone as soon as Bliss answers. “You’ve got to get down here right away.”

  “Trina …”

  “They won’t let me and Mavis see Daphne, and they’re lying about her having a daughter.”

  “I just heard that from the local police,” admits Bliss. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

  “Arrest them or get a court order or something …” she starts, but he stops her.

  “You don’t need a policeman, Trina. You need a lawyer.”

  The sudden and seemingly mysterious disappearance of Isabel Semaurino has Davenport frenziedly quizzing patients and staff for any details that may help him find her. And then his phone rings.

  “I am the lawyer representing Miss Daphne Lovelace,” says Samantha Bliss, once she has been briefed by Trina, and Davenport is momentarily off balance.

  “Oh … no … no …” he starts, but he quickly recovers. “Actually, she already has a lawyer. Robert Jameson of Jameson and Fidditch.” And then he overstretches. “In any case, I assume her daughter will be dealing with her affairs from now on.”

  “What daughter? She doesn’t have a daughter.”

  chapter seventeen

  “St. Michael the Archangel, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil,” Patrick Davenport prays in a sing-song voice as he clasps his hands in supplication and kneels on the floor of his office with the door firmly closed, and then he risks the ire of his Almighty by asking for a personal favour. “I pray that you always have guided me wisely in the past,” he carries on. “But now I need to be certain that I have made the right decision. Please give me the strength to do what is right and just, irrespective of the consequences.”

  “Brenda said you wanted to see me,” grumbles Hilda Fitzgerald, storming in without knocking as she dries her hands on a tea towel. “I’m trying to get lunch finished up.”

  Davenport rises slowly and eyes his sister carefully before saying, “Daphne Lovelace doesn’t have a daughter.”

  Hilda shrugs. “It weren’t me who said she did.”

  “Hilda …” starts Davenport warily, hoping not to trigger an explosion. “I just want to be absolutely certain that you aren’t involved.” He stops as momentary anger flares in her eyes, but he doesn’t back off. “‘Have faith in me,’ you said. ‘Trust me,’ you said, and I did.”

  “And that’s what I’m sayin’ now. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “But you also promised not to hit anyone again.”

  Fitzgerald shrugs. “She drove me to it. The old bat was just winding me up. Now, unless you want burnt tapioca pudding …”

  Davenport’s face suggests that he is prepared to accept a culinary catastrophe as he pushes one more time. “Give me your word, Hilda. Just to put my mind at rest.”

  “Look, Pat. I ain’t telling you again. Isabel whatser-name is nothing to do with me. I dunno who she is or what she’s up to. I thought she really was her bloomin’ daughter.”

  “Well, she’s not,” he says. “She definitely doesn’t have a daughter.”

  “So what’s her game?”

  “What’s their game?” Davenport muses aloud, reminding himself that it was the police superintendent who first introduced Isabel Semaurino as Daphne’s daughter, and he picks up the phone as Hilda marches out.

  “I’m with a client, Patrick,” snaps Robert Jameson after Davenport has hustled the lawyer’s receptionist. “What’s the panic?”

  “I think the police have put in a plant …” the anxious manager is saying when Jameson stops him with a deliberate cough.

  “Not on the phone. Meet me in the lounge at the Mitre in half an hour.”

  Anne McGregor is also hustling now that she realizes that she may have taken the wrong bus, and she brainstorms with Matt Roberts, the station’s detective chief inspector, once she has expressed her fears.

  “Get a statement from the young girl who was taking care of her,” she says, starting a checklist. “She reckoned that they were knocking her about.”

  “I’ll arrange for photographs of the injuries and get forensics to look for possible weapons,” adds Roberts.

  “You’d better get the police surgeon to take a good look at her. She was fighting fit when she clung on to me. God knows what happened to her once they got her back there.”

  “Done,” says Roberts, nodding. “And I’ll put a small team together to interview the rest of the inmates — see if there’s a pattern.”

  “I’ll have a word with Social Services about shifting her to another home, and we need a handle on the so-called daughter,” continues McGregor. “Who is she? What’s her game? Has she got previous?”

  “I’ll do some digging with the Fraud Squad on that. And I’ll see if the owners or staff have got any form as well.”

  “And get hold of the old duck’s friends, her neigh-bours, and that nutty Canadian woman and her mother who’ve shown up. See what they know.”

  “Will do, ma’am. Anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. I just remembered. She was ranting on about some sort of proof she mailed to her friend. See if you can track that down.”

  “What about putting someone on her door?”

  “We could …” begins McGregor, then she shakes her head. “No. I think they got the message from our visit. They won’t touch her now.”

  “It was definitely a gypsy’s warning,” David Bliss moans to Peter Bryan over a grilled sirloin sandwich in a corner of the Blue Lamp pub. “Edwards set me up and those smug bastards stepped in and zapped me.”

  “But what are they up to?”

  “We’re talking CIA, Peter,” Bliss reminds him with raised eyebrows, and then he heads a list of illegal stunts pulled by the American secret service with the abduction of Manuel Noriega, the Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin, and Saddam Hussein’s nightmarish, but entirely non-existent, stockpile of weapons. “They’ve been kidnapping, torturing, and murdering inconvenient people for years.” Bliss continues ranting. “And don’t forget, they tried warning me off with machine guns when Daphne and Trina rumbled their organ transplant scam in Seattle a couple of years ago.”

  “I’d forgotten …” starts Bryan, but Bliss is in full flight.

  “What gets me is that they’re so bloody self-righteous. They actually believe that God is on their side. They think he’s given them permission to rule the bloody world.”

  “Keep your hair on, granddad,” laughs Bryan, and he gives his father-in-law a few seconds to cool down before asking, “Where do you go from here?”

  “We, Peter. It’s where we go from here. We take the fight to the enemy’s door. You’ve always been interested in American automobiles, haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you are now. So let’s just hope that Miss Arizona is on duty again tomorrow morning. Right now I’m going back to the videographer to try to get a better close-up of the pickaxe squad.”

  “The Mahabharata is about the way that really religious people, called Brahmans, kill each other in India,” says Trina Button, standing on her head in the salamba sirsasana pose in front of a totally bemused Kevin Scape, trying to explain the Bhagavad-Gita as she waits for a meeting with Anne McGregor.

  “Krishna, the eighth avatar of the god Vishnu, teaches that yoga protects you when you go into battle,” claims Trina, but Scape is just saying that he would prefer to rely on his truncheon and bulletproof vest when the superintendent arrives.

  “Ms. Button,” calls Anne McGregor, as if the sight of a woman on her head in the foyer of Westchester Police Station is commonplace.

  “They’re keeping her a prisoner,” yells Trina without losing her pose. “I told you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Ms. Button —”

  “No one ever listens to me.”

  “Ms. Button —”

  “Sometimes I think I’m i
nvisible.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ms. Button. Will you please stand up and talk to me.”

  “Good,” says Trina springing to her feet. “I thought that might work. Now perhaps you’ll listen.”

  “Daphne, love,” coos Trina, once Anne McGregor has opened the door for her. “It’s Trina. I’m here with Mavis. Can you hear me?”

  Daphne hears the words, and even recognizes the voice, but the labyrinth she has been following for the past few days has become a maze of dark tunnels — no matter which way she runs she isn’t able to find her way to the surface. The spirit of Michael Kent is still with her, but his handsome image is turning ghoulish as she reruns the past while searching for the future.

  “I’ve brought a policewoman to talk to you,” carries on Trina, but deep in Daphne’s mind it’s 1946, and a barrel-chested sadist presses a knife into the flesh of Kent’s little finger, demanding, “Who are you working for?”

  The English agent isn’t expected to answer — the rubber gag biting into his mouth makes certain of that. Daphne is the one in the hot seat, pinioned to the chair by a foul-smelling guard with iron fingers.

  “I ask you a question, Miss Masterson,” spits the leering torturer as a trace of blood oozes from Kent’s hand. “Who do you work for?”

  “No one. I don’t know what you mean,” cries Daphne. “Please don’t …”

  “So again, I ask,” he says as he calmly drops the severed finger into a bucket and readies the bloodied knife on the next joint.

  “No … No … Please don’t …”

  “Then you must tell me.”

  “But I don’t … No … No … Please don’t … Oh, no!”

  “Miss Masterson. You don’t understand. First his fingers, then his toes, then … well, let us hope that your memory has returned before then. So, ready again,” he says as the knife goes to a third finger.

  Sweat pours off Daphne’s face, and Trina grabs a Kleenex and looks to Mavis. “Get a cold flannel,” says the homecare nurse as Daphne’s body begins to heat up. “She’s got a fever.”