Missing: Presumed Dead

by James Hawkins

  “What’s happened?” asked Samantha

  “It seems as though his conscious mind has finally accepted the situation.”

  “That he shot the man he thought was his father?”

  The psychiatrist wagged a warning finger. “Just because he admits killing him doesn’t necessarily mean he did it.”

  Bliss gave the finger a critical stare and winced at the ragged nail-less flesh and raw cuticles. Psychiatrist, analyse yourself, he thought, and pondered what defences the doctor was cooking up for Jonathon: false memories; guilt complex; retaliation for abandonment. Should I tell him not to bother? he wondered. Should I remind him of the age of criminal responsibility? No – let him have his fun.

  Jonathon was a different person on their return. (“Fascinating subject,” said the psychiatrist later. “He’s a nine-year-old in a man’s body.”) The tension had dissolved and his puffy red eyes were lowered in contrition. “I believe I owe you an explanation, Inspector.”

  Bliss knew he should be furious – an entire week chasing a dead pig. But Jonathon’s little-boy-lost expression took the sting out of him. “I’d like to know why you did it.”

  Jonathon’s face lit in a happier memory. “We used to play wars. I was his little captain, he said; even let me wear a cap. I’d set all the soldiers up – just where he told me.” He paused to stare at the ceiling, then corrected himself. “He couldn’t really talk, but he sort of grunted and pointed with his swagger stick until I got it right.”

  The spark in his face faded as a darker memory returned.

  “If I didn’t get them just right he hit me with the stick ...” he was saying when tears replaced the smile and he searched his pockets for a tissue.

  “Here,” said the psychiatrist offering a well-used box.

  “Thanks ...” Jonathon continued, talking to the floor. “Anyway, he’d get me to move his toy soldiers around in battles; manoeuvring battalions or regiments – sometimes entire armies.” He paused, marking time, an alarm sounding in his mind, holding him back, telling him to stop.

  “Go on,” said Bliss, and caught a glare of rebuke from the psychiatrist.

  “Shush.”

  “Each figure represented a hundred or a thousand men,” continued Jonathon after a few seconds, “and the Royal Horse Artillery, his regiment, always had to be in the vanguard, with the gun carriage party leading the way.” Then he froze, his eyes found his foot and the twitching re-started.

  “I thought he was going again,” Samantha had said in the car on their way back to the police station. But Jonathon hadn’t “gone.” He was fighting an ancient battle.

  “One day I knocked over the major and knelt on him by accident,” he began again, his voice faint, his eyes riveted to his foot. “He was very angry – screaming, ‘Bring him here. Bring him here.’ I saw the tears. I’d never seen him cry before. ‘My major – Look what you’ve done to my major,’ he was crying. ‘It’s only a toy,’ I said, but when I gave it to him he grabbed me.” He paused, tears streaming, and a bubble of silence grew around him – pressurising the small office to bursting point.

  “I should have been in bed,” he started again, releasing the valve with a noisy snort. “Mum told me never to go into his room alone.”

  “I’m not surprised,” mused Bliss silently.

  “But sometimes I’d pretend to go to bed then creep to his room to play with the toys. He was my dad ...” His face crumpled in tears once more. “It was all my fault – I’d squashed his favourite toy.”

  “What was your fault?” asked the psychiatrist, anxious not to let the silent tension re-build.

  “I was in my pyjamas,” Jonathon mumbled, focusing sharply on the psychiatrist, barely whispering. “And he pulled them down. It was our little secret. He made me promise never to tell.”

  Horrific remembrances turned his face into a battlefield of emotions and his eyes swam around the room as if trying to escape the images in his mind. “If he was asleep, I would have my own pretend battles,” he continued, finding a lump of dried chewing-gum on the floor as a focal point. “But when he was awake I had to do exactly what he wanted.” He took his eyes off the floor and looked pleadingly at Bliss. “You do know what I mean, don’t you, Inspector?”

  Bliss nodded sombrely.

  “I was ashamed. I knew it was wrong, but he was my dad,” he continued, covering his eyes with his hands, trying to block out the images. “I couldn’t tell Mum. He said it was our little secret. Then one day I said, ‘Stop, Dad – I don’t like it. You’re hurting me. Stop. Please stop.’ But he wouldn’t stop ...”

  Jonathon was back in the turret room – a frightened nine-year-old with his pyjamas round his ankles. “I picked up the gun ... Please stop, Dad ... Stop, Dad ... Stop it ... Stop it ...”

  The gun went off inside Jonathon’s mind and the whole room jumped as he screeched. “I shot him.”

  Nobody spoke. What to say?

  “What happened afterwards?” asked Bliss, once the air had settled, hoping to establish Doreen’s involvement – just for the record.

  Jonathon dabbed his eyes. “Nothing really. It was as if nothing had happened. His room was always locked and Mum told me he’d gone to live in Scotland where he wouldn’t be able to hurt any other little boys. I felt so sorry for him. I think he was lonely – he just wanted someone to love; someone to love him back; someone warm and soft to touch; someone warm and soft to touch him back.” He blinked back the tears for a few seconds before adding bitterly. “Loneliness is a straight road that leads you nowhere, Inspector.”

  Bliss looked at Samantha, but she was staring out of the window, seeking sanity in the stubby branches of a loppy tree.

  “Sometimes I used to believe he was still there and Mum only said he’d gone to Scotland so he couldn’t play with me. I used to call through the keyhole, ‘Dad – are you there?’ I was sure I could hear him crying at night when I was in bed. I wanted to say sorry. I only ever wanted to say I was sorry. But I never did.”

  “Did you tell your mother you’d shot him?”

  “She said I’d missed, and that it wasn’t a real bullet anyway. It was only like my potato gun ...” Pausing, he looked at Bliss. “Did you have one of those?”

  “Yes,” nodded Bliss, “I think everyone did,”

  “I only ever wanted to say sorry, but I never could – he was gone forever.” He looked at Bliss. “Isn’t that a terrible thing, Inspector – never having the chance to say sorry?”

  Mandy Richards flashed into Bliss’s mind. “Yes, Jonathon, it’s a terrible thing,” he mumbled, seeing a picture of himself leaning over her on the floor of the bank, his ear pressed to her mouth, listening for the faintest trace of a breath, as he whispered, “I’m sorry.” But it was too late, she’d gone.

  “I went to the estate in Scotland to beg Dad for money so I could take mother to Switzerland,” Jonathon continued, without expecting a reply from Bliss. “There’s a Doctor in Lucerne who could cure her,” he explained enthusiastically, oblivious to the scepticism in the faces surrounding him. “I needed twenty thousand pounds for the treatment alone – plus the expenses, but the farmer said he’d never seen my father, only my mother. He said my father had never lived there. I told him he was mistaken.” Then his face and voice dropped, his eyes went back to his foot. “There was no mistake. Mum had been lying to me all those years, making excuses whenever I said I wanted to visit him. She said it would be too painful for him to see me, that I would remind him of what he’d lost.”

  He paused, glancing from face to face as if mystified by their presence, then focused intently on Bliss and looked straight through him. “Once I knew he wasn’t in Scotland the only alternative was that Mum had killed him – Why else would she have lied to me? But I couldn’t ask her could I?” He paused to look at the psychiatrist, pleading for understanding. “What on earth should I have said ...?”

  The young doctor shook his head. He had no answers, only questions.

 
; Jonathon had an answer of sort. “I thought I’d just sell the estate, or get a mortgage on the house, but when I went to a solicitor I found I couldn’t. Both properties were still in Dad’s name alone. Only he could sell them – unless he was dead.”

  “So he had to die, and be seen to be dead,” said Bliss, pleased he’d been right almost from the start, “And I assume the blood on the duvet was yours. You must have bled yourself dry to get enough.”

  “You knew?”

  “You shouldn’t have thrown the syringe in the stove.”

  “You found it?”

  Bliss nodded, with no intention of ever admitting that Patterson had disregarded it.

  “I knew I should have got rid of it properly. I worried about it when I was in the cells.”

  “And the pig?” prompted Bliss.

  “You know about the pig as well?”

  They knew all about the pig. They had stopped off to see George, the butcher, on their way to the hospital. The purchase of the stuffed goat had apparently elevated Bliss to celebrity status. “Ah, my dear Chief Inspector,” greeted George, using his barrelling gut to clear a path through a pack of housewives, dragging him and Samantha to the front of the counter. “What a pleasure to see you again. I’ve got a nice leg of lamb ...”

  “Actually, I wanted a few words,” said Bliss, nodding toward the back room.

  “Of course,” said George, yelling for his assistant to take over, ignoring the mumbles of dissent from the waiting customers. “Won’t keep you a moment, ladies,” he said to the crowd, and opened a flap in the counter to usher them through.

  A side of pork lay conveniently on a wooden block in the back room and Bliss used it as a prop. “I was wondering, George,” he pointed. “If I needed a pig in a hurry, where would I get one?”

  “You wanna whole one?”

  “A live one ...” he started, then stopped in memory of his first day at Westchester police station, in the C.I.D. office – D.C. Dowding ragging Daphne about crop circles in the cornfield behind her house. What had Dowding said? Pig rustling? Somebody had stolen a pig from the farm behind Daphne’s.

  “Sorry, George,” he said, turning back to the butcher and changing the question. “What I meant was: If I had a whole pig, how would I get rid of it?”

  “Eat it,” suggested George, scratching his head unnecessarily.

  “That would be a lot of pork.”

  “You could sell it then.”

  “Would you buy it?”

  Turning to the side of pork as if it suddenly demanded his attention, he hacked at the hind leg with a meat cleaver, uttering a requisite with each downward stroke. “Ministry licence; health inspection; quality control ...”

  “So,” said Bliss, catching a quiet moment, “what you are saying is that even at the right price, you wouldn’t buy a pig from someone who wasn’t a bona fide supplier?”

  “I didn’t exactly say that, Chief Inspector ... ” he began, his loyalty clearly torn between someone who would purchase his stuffed goat and whoever had sold him a pig.

  Bliss cottoned on and turned up the heat. “You’d better start getting all your books and records together then, George. And I’ll ask the tax people to come in and do an audit ... ”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said, laying down the cleaver in resignation. “I knew I shouldn’t buy it. Knew I’d get caught. But he assured me it was all above board. Reckoned he’d hand reared it in his back yard. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Who?” asked Bliss, as if he didn’t know.

  “Jonathon Dauntsey, of course. I knew you’d find out sooner or later. He pinched it, didn’t he?”

  “Did he?”

  “I ain’t stupid, Chief Inspector. I should’ve known summit were up when he said he’d bring it round in middle of Sunday night.”

  “So what happened to it?”

  “You ate it. Well some of it, anyhow.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Mrs. Lovelace bought some chops for your dinner. I remember her telling me it was for the new chief inspector. It were on Monday last week. His lordship, Jonathon Dauntsey, had left it in me cold store the night before. He must have had it a few days ’cos it were just ready for butcherin’.”

  “What time did he bring it round?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I always visit me old mum on Sunday evenings: tea, church, watch telly. Got back about eleven, an’ it were hangin’ up in the back just as he promised.”

  “Show me,” said Bliss and George led them out of the rear door along a short red-brick path to an iron shed leant against a high brick wall.

  “What’s there?” asked Samantha, seeing only treetops beyond the twelve-foot back wall.

  “That be the churchyard,” replied George, and pointed to a narrow door let into the wall. “This is where he got in with the pig,” he explained, opening the unlocked door.

  Bliss stuck his head out of the door, saw Colonel Dauntsey’s elaborate mausoleum only a few feet away, and the newly mounded grave where they had found the duvet only fifty feet further on, and everything became crystal clear. “No wonder we couldn’t find the body,” he mused aloud. “He threw the duvet into the grave to put the dogs off the scent, thirty seconds later dropped off the pig, and two minutes after he’d left the Black Horse with a dead body, all the evidence has gone.”

  “But the blood on the duvet was human,” Samantha reminded him.

  “Jonathon’s own blood,” replied Bliss, shutting the churchyard door. “That’s what the syringe was for – not to inject an anaesthetic, but to draw out blood.”

  “But why?”

  “Remember what Doreen said: She couldn’t sell the house or estate because it was in Rupert’s name, and she’d lived off his pension for fifty odd years. Jonathon obviously thought that if he could convince everyone that his father had just died, the property would go to his mother and the pension would simply stop – no questions asked.”

  “So he killed the pig and set the whole thing up to make it appear as if he killed Rupert Dauntsey,” said George, hovering inquisitively.

  “So, Jonathon. Can you remember when you first realised you had shot somebody?” asked Bliss, more for tidiness than anything else.

  “He’s going again,” said Samantha with little finesse as Jonathon’s eyes started swimming.

  “I think you’d better leave now,” said the psychiatrist, trying to usher them out, but Jonathon perked up.

  “I don’t think I understood death. People just went away when they got old and I remember thinking that I wanted to get old quickly so that I’d be able to visit Dad and tell him I was sorry.”

  “He wasn’t your father,” said Bliss, offering the information as comfort, but Jonathon already knew.

  “I worked that out a few years ago. Major Dauntsey went to war before I was conceived, but I still considered him to be my father. He was the only father I ever knew, whatever he may have done.”

  Bliss dropped his head into his hands with the realisation that Doreen still hadn’t told Jonathon about Tippen.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this ...” he began, then explained what he knew of Tippen and his relationship to Rupert Dauntsey. “So you see,” he concluded, “not only wasn’t the man you killed your father, he wasn’t Major Dauntsey either.”

  “I couldn’t understand why he would hate me so much,” said Jonathon as he slowly absorbed the information.

  “It was the ultimate betrayal,” explained the psychiatrist later, after Jonathon had been gently guided out of the office, shuffling like a man back on a ledge, his personality a psychoanalyst’s research manual. Then Doreen Dauntsey turned up in her wheelchair, still protesting her guilt.

  “You’d better discuss that with Jonathon.” said Bliss, as he and Samantha scurried out of the room.

  “But I want to confess,” Doreen shouted after them. “I did it. I killed him.”

  “Will she never give up?” asked Samantha as they got to his ca
r, still laughing.

  “We shouldn’t mock,” smiled Bliss. “You can say what you like about Doreen’s morals, but you can’t knock her for trying to protect her family.”

  “So. What happens now?”

  “Well. The case is closed as far as I’m concerned and by the time the lawyers have sorted out who gets the property they’ll be the only ones to benefit.”

  “Isn’t that usually the case?”

  “All I have to do is take my two favourite women out for dinner tonight.”

  “Two?”

  Was that a trace of jealousy in her voice. “Yes, two. And there’s no need to look so peevish. My other guest is Daphne, without whom, as they say, none of this would have been possible.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  _____________________________

  Bliss shunned the elevator and rushed the grand staircase to his room at the Mitre two steps at a time. Pausing for a breath at the top, he looked down on Samantha as she sifted through a magazine pile. “Gorgeous,” he mused. “Absolutely bloody gorgeous.”

  “I’ll wait in the lounge,” she had said as he’d excused himself, saying, “I won’t be a moment ... must change ... same clothes for two days.”

  “No problem, Dave,” she had smiled, recalling he’d spent one night on her couch and the next in her bed, asleep, with only a change of shirt and underwear. “But it’s almost a pity you had to invite Daphne this evening. Without her we could have had a candlelight dinner in your room.”

  “I had to ask her,” he explained. “I owe her. I might never have cleared up the case without her. She was the one who noticed the crop circles; saw Jonathon chasing the pig; she even bought some of it – not that she knew; she put me onto Tippen with the wedding photo and even queried Jonathon’s date of birth.”

  “Alright, Dave ... I get the point.”

  “And don’t forget, it was Daphne who nailed Patterson‘s accomplice in the Volvo. And, in any case, I’m dying to find out how she got the Order of the British Empire.”

  “I said alright,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Maybe we can have a candlelight glass of champagne later instead.”