Deadly Zeal

by Jean Chapman

  He kept to the trees and walked along the side of the house towards the front, all the time scanning windows and ground for signs that anyone else was there.

  He was surprised to find the house was nearly as deep as it was long, a square perhaps with a central courtyard.

  He moved in to the side of the house, and tried his mobile once more, but now it was perhaps the trees that blocked the signal. He could neither let anyone know where he was, nor summon assistance. He began to walk round to the front of the property. He turned the corner and drew in a quick gulp of frosty air as he saw another set of footprints coming from the opposite direction, straight towards the front door. He also noted the odd pieces of snow which had fallen from the shoes of the other caller as he crossed the tiled portico. One of the double doors stood ajar.

  So Bliss was here in this house. Cannon had somehow to stop him leaving to kill again.

  Cautiously he edged his way towards one of the tall, elegant windows flanking the front doors and peered directly into the hallway. Bliss had evidently inherited the house and the contents, for it looked as if nothing had been moved or cleaned since the owner had died. There was a large chandelier above a sweeping staircase, two walking-stick stands, one each side of the double doors, each with a good number of sticks in. Was this why Bliss liked buying and selling walking sticks? Then there was a heavily carved hall table, chairs – and in the bright triangle of light from the open door he could see wet marks where the other caller had gone straight towards the stairs.

  Cannon paused, thinking the last time he was in this kind of situation he’d had to hand either the resources of the Met, Liz or Betterson, or Paul Jefferson, or even Hoskins nearby. Any of these would have been a comfort. He would have felt easier if someone knew where he was.

  Then echoing like a thunder-clap through the silent house came the unmistakable sound of a shot.

  Chapter 23

  Cannon was in the hallway before the echoes of the shot had died away. Then he almost felt Liz’s hand on his arm, heard her caution, hold on, take stock.

  He stood until the silence became complete, stood looking at wet smudges of footprints that went straight across the hall and up the stairs. He raised his eyes to the landing, the smell of cordite stronger now as it drifted downstairs. There was little doubt where the shot had come from.

  Bliss had, it seemed, known exactly where he was going. Had he also known what for? To find a gun secreted here to kill himself with? Had he come back to the place where his childhood had been happy, and unfettered by parents who seemed unable to take their eyes or attention from their disabled child? Did that man now lie dead upstairs? Were Liz and Higham going to be safe after all?

  Cannon moved to the bottom of the stairs and put his weight on the first tread. It creaked like an un-oiled door to a dungeon. He stood for a moment, one foot poised, then moved it over and placed it carefully as near to the wall as he could, putting his weight down gently. The squeak was minimal but he paused again, holding his breath, as sounds came from above. It was as if someone had laid an object down, something metallic on to a hard surface. Then there were quieter sounds, perhaps of things being sorted, moved around.

  Had Bliss shot himself and his body was sprawling and settling over a table or desk – or was there someone else in the house, someone who had entered by a different door?

  Cannon took the rest of the stairs three at a time. If surprise had gone then speed might help. The landing went to the right across the gallery open to the hall and to the left down a corridor with many doors. The third one along was open and as Cannon turned his head in that direction, the smell of cordite was stronger. and there was a draught of icy air.

  ‘John Cannon!’ he called. ‘Coming in. Can we talk?’

  He went forward, wondering if these were his last few steps on this earth. He moved partially, then fully, into the doorway. He could see no one but noted that the glass doors were open on to a veranda. The smell of cordite lingered; there was no doubt this was the room in which a gun had only just been fired.

  He moved fully into the room and seeing no one standing, or sitting, walked in so he could scan the whole of the floor space. No stains, no blood splatter on walls or ceiling. He went out on to the small veranda and looked into a central courtyard; it was completely deserted. There were no footprints and no signs of any violence on the veranda.

  He noted a roll-top desk had been opened and on it lay an empty cartridge box. There was a large cupboard, which he saw with mounting interest had clips like those used for billiard cues but were instead holding a fine collection of yet more walking sticks. He wondered if Bliss had visited this place when he first came to Norway. He could have collected a sword-stick from here. Cannon had always had difficulty believing it was possible to smuggle one through customs.

  Then he noticed there was a door in the panelling near the cupboard, which presumably led through to another room. It was closed, but must have been the way Bliss had gone. He moved towards it and had his hand on the handle when a voice behind him said, ‘Stop where you are.’

  He span round and faced a man he did not recognize – at first. The man he had known from The Trap quiz team, the mild academic, who had known the answers to the more obscure questions, was no more. This man’s own grey hair grew thinly just on the area of his head not covered with scars, which was not large. He looked at Cannon as if he had never seen him before and his expression was hard, uncompromising. The walking stick he carried was aimed like a gun at Cannon’s middle. Bliss flicked the gold ring at the top of the cane and a thin straight trigger sprang out. He hooked his finger around it.

  ‘John Cannon,’ Cannon heard himself saying as if he was introducing himself to a stranger. ‘Liz and I were—’

  ‘On the boat, interfering,’ Bliss said, then accused, ‘Now you have followed me here! I don’t like people who interfere.’ He raised the stick a little higher. Cannon had never seen such a weapon before but he had no doubt he was looking straight down the barrel of a weapon that could send a fatal spread of shot into and through his body at that range.

  ‘Liz would only want to help,’ Cannon said. ‘She always wanted to help you.’

  ‘Turn round. Don’t look at me!’ Bliss shouted.

  ‘I was looking at your stick. I’ve seen sword-sticks but never seen a gun-stick before.’

  ‘They’re always here,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Did your grandmother collect walking sticks?’ he asked, trying to buy time, trying to assess how much or how little pressure Bliss had to put on that trigger to fire.

  ‘My grandfather. My grandmother just looked after them. I always helped her.’

  ‘You did a good job,’ Cannon commented.

  ‘Oh yes, it still works well.’ Bliss’s words were matter-of-fact.

  ‘It’s a wonder you can get the cartridges,’ Cannon replied as conversationally as he could, ‘or do modern ones fit?’

  ‘I have enough for my purpose,’ Bliss replied shortly, ‘and we need to go downstairs. I don’t want you up here.’

  With the gun aimed at his middle and Bliss’s finger on the trigger of a gun that had to be over a hundred years old, Cannon turned and walked ahead of him. He wanted to tell him to hold the stick steady, watch it as they went downstairs Instead he said, ‘I met an old friend of yours …’

  ‘No talking,’ Bliss said as dispassionately and authoritatively as any headmaster.

  ‘Tomas Midvinter,’ Cannon added.

  ‘To the left, the door in front of you,’ Bliss ordered as they reached the hall.

  Cannon turned towards the door and thought, Below stairs – he doesn’t want a mess in the house proper.

  ‘He wished to be remembered to you,’ Cannon added.

  ‘Stop talking!’ The tone was impatient now.

  Cannon half-turned to glance back at him. An icy chill thrilled up his spine. Bliss was now looking at him with dark, concentrated intent: his eyes held the look of a predat
or before the fatal pounce, the contained, pent-up energy before the kill, the intended action wiping out all other thoughts or emotion.

  Cannon used the only weapon he had. ‘Liz …’ He paused to try to swallow. ‘Liz,’ he repeated.

  ‘Open the door,’ Bliss ordered.

  Cannon opened the door, wondering if he could throw himself inside out of range, make Bliss shot at an angle, so he did not take the full force of the spreading shot. He glanced behind himself to assess the prospects, and saw only a steep flight of wooden steps, no more than a broad ladder down to a cellar.

  ‘Liz …’ he began talking again for his life. ‘Liz wants to thank you for the easel you sold her, and you remember she did not tell when you hid your swimming trophies …’

  Cannon saw the click, the off-switch thrown, the electricity cut off as if by a lightning strike, the murderous intention thwarted by a memory – to be replaced by a look in Bliss’s eyes of incandescent fury.

  Without warning the man lunged at Cannon with all his force. The end of the gun barrel caught Cannon in the ribs – the pain was excruciating – then again, winding him, and again pushing him off balance. Cannon tried to grab the stick but it was too slender, too smooth and it slipped through his fingers as he fell.

  Chapter 24

  He must have lost consciousness for a time, came to in complete darkness, disorientated, caught somehow, hanging, head down, but what he could still picture was the vehement hatred in Bliss’s eyes, and the smell in his nostrils was blood and dust.

  Cannon knew he had distracted the man, thwarted his capacity to assassinate – for that moment. The story of the shared moment of secrecy when Bliss and Liz had been children had saved his life.

  He half lifted his head. Everywhere hurt. Gingerly he lifted his arms, felt his head, wondered how long he had been out. There was a sticky patch of blood where the back of his head must have struck the floor; only he had not quite finished falling. His right foreleg had gone through the rungs of the ladder and he was hanging from it. Surely it must be broken, he thought, with a groan.

  It was the sound that broke from his own lips that startled him back to reality, so loud in the silence. Bliss could still be above, could have recovered his will to kill. Cannon at that moment was unable to help himself, or anyone else, let alone do anything to thwart Bliss from going on to kill his long-tormented victim, Higham.

  He flexed his stomach muscles, catching his breath as the effort pinpointed exactly where the gun-stick had been pushed at him with full force, but thoughts of Bliss catching up with the Nordsol, getting back on board in some disguise or other, made him draw himself up, but not far enough. The steps were broad and to free his leg he must grasp the rear of a tread. He lay back, rested, waited for the screaming muscles to recover and wondered if Bliss might not go straight on to Kirkenes and wait for Higham and Liz and Cathy there.

  Once more he clamped his teeth and forced his stomach muscles to contract, curl up, lift him. He grasped the back of a step with one hand, and knowing he probably would not be able to do this again he desperately made a final muscle-jerking, pain-searing grab and caught it with his other hand. Balled up, he knew he was grasping the step below his leg. To free himself he must get his hands on the same level as the leg which was trapped, the wooden tread of the step above, straight across the middle of his shinbone.

  His arms were trembling now and silently he mouthed, ‘This is for Liz.’ He released his right hand and, thrusting it alongside his trapped leg, grasped the back of that step. The other hand was a fraction easier. He angled himself sideways until he could feel his shoe was touching the back of the step. A final pull upwards and, as he turned his foot sideways with his shin no longer pressed against the step anchoring him there, he fell, this time in a heap on the concrete floor.

  Gingerly he gathered himself together and finally made it to his feet. His leg felt as if every muscle and tendon had been torn, but he could feel no shattered bones. Supporting himself on the side of the ladder, he could just bear to put his weight on it. Slowly he made his way back up to the door, lifted the old-fashioned latch very slowly, but the bolts on the other side had been shot into place.

  Now what? He thought of the Nordsol sailing for Tromsø, of Bliss turned predator, and felt his way back to the bottom of the steps and held on to them while reaching out his left hand for a wall he could follow. There might be another way out of this basement cellar. He released the steps and took a step to his left. Nothing. Another step and his fingers touched brickwork.

  He immediately began to feel his way along the wall, pushing his feet out carefully to ensure there was neither obstacle nor pit, and thinking, ironically, he could do with a walking stick. Just as he felt the wall was endless, his hand moved into space. He turned left and went on, reassuring himself that at least if he followed it all the way the worst that could happen would be that he was just back at the steps.

  As he went in this new direction he began to wonder if the darkness was less intense. He tried to assess what part of the Christofferson Huset he might be under, whether there was a chance of a light source and the possibility of another way out.

  He moved quicker as he realized he really could see more. The darkness was fading to a gloom. He could see that the basement he was in was vast and empty, and that the light was filtering down from a series of square skylights made of thick glass bricks interspersed with gratings, and all between great girders some three metres above his head. There was no possible way he could get up there, and not much he could do if he did. He calculated from the little he had seen from the upstairs veranda that he could be under the central courtyard.

  Then staring upwards he started violently, raised an arm as if to protect himself, as the sole of a man’s shoe landed on and moved across one of the glass panels and on to the next.

  ‘Hi!’ Cannon yelled. If it was Bliss – and who else could it be? – he might delay him, might divert him again. ‘Hi! Stop! Stop!’

  The feet stopped, both together on the next glass section, then they disappeared, but Bliss’s answer came startlingly loud. Cannon realized he must be stooping down to the grating almost immediately above his head.

  ‘You intrude and interfere too much.’ The voice if not the words sounded calm, much like the man Cannon had known in his public house.

  ‘So perhaps Liz next then …’ Bliss’s voice fell to a level of quiet satisfaction. ‘And then, oh, then Mr Higham.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Cannon begged. ‘Why Liz?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Listen! Listen!’ Cannon demanded. ‘I understand Higham but why Liz? She was always on your side. That’s not fair, not justice!’

  ‘She told my secret – and – and you’re dealt with, dead really, so … she’ll come to you.’

  There was bitterness in those last words, ‘she’ll come to you’, and even as he spoke Cannon could hear he was moving away; he yelled again and again, then had to resist the urge to punch anything in range – wall, floor. But he had been brought up in a school that did not lose control easily. He had been taught by the hard knocks his family had gone through that, as his father had said, there was only one way for everyone, and that was forward, however hard it was. He remembered when things changed dramatically in the London fruit and veg trade and his father’s health had begun to fail, the old man had sung the Scottish ballad, ‘Keep Right On To The End Of The Road’, and had added, ‘And I’ll make it as good an end as I bloody can.’ And he had.

  ‘And I’m not there yet,’ Cannon muttered, ‘not by a long bloody way.’

  With a new reckless determination, he limped rapidly on his journey around the walls, realizing as he went he must be describing a large L-shaped basement – but there was no sign of another way out.

  Back at the steps he knew his only escape was through this door somehow. Could he work at the hinges? What had he in his pockets? Years ago men would have had useful things like penknives with gadgets, but
now he had money, cards, a mobile phone, which he tried automatically once more – it did not even light up. His cards seemed the best bet – he had seen a Yale lock opened in seconds with a bank card but bolts and hinges were a different matter. Beggars could not be choosers, however; desperate beggars at that.

  He was carefully fingering through the plastic cards in his case, trying to find which felt the strongest without dropping any of them, when he thought he heard something from the other side of the door. Was Bliss still in the house?

  Surely what he could hear was someone calling, shouting a name. He pressed his ear to the door, held his breath and listened intently. Faintly and moving away, he heard, ‘Michael! Michael Evan! Are you here?’ A silence then a little more uncertainly the voice called, ‘It’s Tomas, Tomas Midvinter.’

  ‘The fisherman!’ Cannon exclaimed and began hammering on the door with all his strength and shouting his own message. ‘Tomas! Let me out! The door in the hall, the cellar. Tomas! Tomas Midvinter!’

  He could have sobbed with relief as he heard the noise of the bolts being pulled back and, hardly waiting for the second one to be fully drawn, he burst out.

  ‘What is this?’ Tomas Midvinter stepped back defensively, pulling a walking stick from the stand next to him, raising it to fend off this dust-covered dishevelled man leaping out at him. Then he recognized the man he had met earlier, lowered the stick and stood back to view Cannon more closely.

  ‘What’s happened? Why are you locked in the cellars? Have you seen my friend, Michael? It smells as if someone has let a gun off in the house.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cannon agreed, then asked, ‘Is my car still on the bottom road?’

  ‘Yes, I parked my Land Rover next to it,’ Midvinter said, then asked quite as sharply, ‘Is Michael safe?’

  ‘He’s left,’ Cannon said brusquely. ‘I must get to my car. I’ll tell you as we go. This is a matter of life and death.’ He took a step forward and his leg gave way.