Crazy Lady (33 page)

“Yes. And get fined a hundred quid, get a slap on the wrist from the beak, and be back at his desk in a week with an even longer list of people to crap on.”

Including you, Chief Inspector
, thinks Schwartzberg lifting his spectacles for the final time.

Bliss's cellphone rings as he walks out of the terminal at Heathrow with his eyes on the Hertz office.

“Dave, I need your help,” says his son-in-law, wasting no time on pleasantries.

“You'll have to wait your turn,” Bliss replies before explaining his mission on Daphne's behalf.

“Hey. She could be onto something,” agrees Bryan, brightening momentarily before sinking again.

“Oh, Christ!” exclaims Bliss once he's heard the dismal prognosis. “What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Just give me a few days, Dave,” pleads Bryan. “No. I've got to get back to my book. I'm down to the last forty or fifty pages.”

“Please… Dad. It's for a good cause.”

“This isn't bloody fair. And cut out the ‘Dad' crap.”

Amelia Drinkwater has visibly shrunk by the time that she opens her front door to Bliss the following morning. Three anxiety-filled days have weighed heavily on the sixty-something widow, and the state of her hair tells Bliss that she is losing her grip.

“Come in…” she says, opening the door before he has a chance to knock.

“David,” he reminds her.

“Yes, David… Come in,” she carries on and, as he follows her through the gloomy entrance hall towards the sitting room, Bliss realizes that most of the gloominess is emanating from the deflated woman herself.

“I've been thinking about what you told me,” she says, waving him to a soft armchair. “And I just wanted to let you know that you're obviously confused.”

You didn't bring me all this way just to tell me that
, he thinks as he perches on the edge of a chair, but he knows that she will take her time.

“I'm not sure,” he says, on safe ground. “Only I understand that there are only two children's coffins in the family vault, but my mother… Janet lost three children.”

“How do you know that?” she questions, rising quickly.

“Sources,” he says.

Then she picks up a degree of defiance. “And what else do your sources tell you, David?”

Bliss has an ace in his pocket and he nearly draws it out, but his hand closes as he decides to play her a little further. “Do you think I look like my… like Mr. Creston?” he asks, knowing that physically he is not far away from the tall, manicured executive whose permanent tan marks him as a well-travelled man.

Amelia Drinkwater looks deeply into his face, and he can tell from the softening of her eyes that she sees what he wants, but she holds back. “Not particularly,” she lies, but the wobble in her voice gives her away.

Now for the coup de grace
, he thinks as he rises with deliberation and peers out of the window into the garden.

“Actually, there is something else,” he says slowly, building the moment, and then he draws the document examiner's report from his pocket together with Doctor Symmonds' bogus medical record and spins on her.

“This can't be true…This can't be true,” she mutters repeatedly as she reads the report, but Bliss keeps prodding.

“You see — Doctor Symmonds just copied the symptoms from Giuseppe's death.”

“But he was dead. He was dead.”

“No.”

“He was, I… I…”

“You what, Amelia?”

“I…”

“What?”

“It was in the paper.”

“Was it? Are you sure? Do you have it?”

“Yes… No… You're confusing me.”

“How do you know I was dead, Amelia? How can you be certain?”

Fifty years of guilt finally sink her and loosens her tongue. “Because I kill—”

“You killed me,” he prods, and she realizes with a jolt that she's gone too far.

“Obviously not,” she says, relaxing with a touch of a smile. “I obviously did not,” she adds and a flush of colour rushes back to her cheeks as she believes that the burden she's carried most of her life has been lifted. “I couldn't have done, or you wouldn't be here would you?”

“Correct,” says Bliss sitting back down and eyeing her critically. “But you thought you had, didn't you?”

The colour drains again as a dark memory drags her back more than forty years to the warm August night she crept past Creston Hall to Janet's house and slipped through an open window into the baby's room, but now,
faced with apparent evidence of her failure, she has no choice but to question what happened.

“I think my father… Joseph Creston… knew that someone wanted to hurt me,” answers Bliss without pointing at the woman in front of him. “So they got me out of the way and pretended I was dead.”

D
aphne Lovelace is wearing her flounciest hat a couple of hours later as she and Bliss meet Ted Donaldson for lunch at the Mitre Hotel in Westchester.

“Nice to see you again, old chap,” cries the superintendent as he jubilantly claps the London officer on his back, and then he bends under Daphne's feathery creation to give her a peck on the cheek. “God, I'm starving,” he carries on as he sits and picks up the menu. “So, what's this all about, you two? Daphne was so excited when she called I couldn't keep up with her.”

“Revenge,” suggests Daphne once Bliss has put the local superintendent in the picture, but Bliss goes deeper.

“I think Amelia was hoping that if Janet lost a third child, and a bouncy little baby at that, Creston Sr. would insist that his poncy son should turn his todger on someone with a bit more class.”

“Not that Miss Airs-and-Graces Drinkwater has much of that,” sneers Daphne. “Although I suppose she was a step up from Janet.”

“I just think the old man wanted a grandson to keep the line going,” suggests Bliss. “These aristocratic families are like that,” he adds, realizing that he is also talking about the political pressure applied to Anne of Austria to produce a male protegé for the House of Bourbon, with or without the aid of her husband, Louis XIII.

“What about evidence, Dave?” asks Donaldson between the stuffed olives and the cream of mushroom soup, and Bliss shakes his head.

“Not good at the moment. She'll probably clam up if she gets herself good counsel, but I think the doctor is the one to go after.”

“Peter Symmonds changed the records,” explains Daphne pointing to the examiner's report. “He obviously knew that the sudden death of a healthy baby would raise a flag at the coroner's office so he rewrote his father's notes.”

“But what was in it for him?” asks Donaldson, before realizing that he already knows the answer. “OK,” he says. “Money talks. But why would Creston want to protect Madam Drinkwater?”

“He didn't,” responds Daphne confidently. “He thought Janet had done it.”

“And he loved his wife,” chimes in Bliss.

“And still does, in a way,” adds Daphne. “That's why she was smartly shipped abroad after the funeral and locked away with a lunatic so that she could spend the rest of her life in penitence.”

“She would've been better off in jail,” muses Donaldson as he starts on a second bowl of olives. “At least she would have been out in twenty-five. But,” he wants to know between bites, “what happened to the first two kids?”

“I've got a feeling that Lovelace and Button, International Investigators, are going to crack that as well,” says Bliss, raising his glass to toast Daphne.

“What are your plans now, Dave?” asks Donaldson in the parking lot after lunch. “I could always use a real
detective. All I get is bloody carrot crunchers and God's gift to the fairer sex down here.”

“Not me,” laughs Bliss, “on either count. But I'm trying to get back to writing my novel. I've only got half a chapter left.”

“Daphne tells me it's going to be a huge bestseller. She says you're going to be very successful.”

“One way or another,” he admits, although he knows that his idea of success may differ from Donaldson's. “Anyway, my son-in-law wants me in London for a few days, though God knows why he can't manage without me.”

“Oh to be so popular,” laughs Donaldson as he drives away.

D.C.I. Peter Bryan is not high on Bliss's popularity poll the following morning when they meet in London for breakfast.

“I could be sunning myself over an onion tart and a croissant in the Med,” complains Bliss as he peers through the café's grimy window to the grey of a January day. Peter Bryan isn't particularly happy either. He is still frowning over the possibility that Edwards might already be planning a triumphant return.

“Just a few days,” Bliss reminds his son-in-law as the waitress slaps a couple of cups of instant coffee on the table, asking brusquely, “Somefink to eat?”

Bliss looks around at the backstreet café, at the smoke-stained, grease-engrained walls and the finger-smeared display cabinet containing the remnants of yesterday's lunch, and thinks,
Eat — in here? Are you kidding?

“No, that's all,” he says without consulting his sonin-law.

“Three quid,” says the plump woman with her hand out.

“Keep the change,” he says, giving her exactly three pounds and watching her smile fade halfway to the cash register.

“Frickin' funny,” she spits over her shoulder.

“Shoot,” says Bliss trying to take away the coffee taste with several spoonfuls of sugar. “What have you got in mind for your dear old dad?”

“Hey, don't you start,” says Bryan, laughing, then he pulls out a couple of legally signed warrants. “Wiretaps,” he says flourishing under them Bliss's nose. “One for Edwards and one for Creston.”

“How the hell —” starts Bliss, but Bryan cuts in.

“Friendly judge, hates bent cops more than he hates villains. ‘At least villains are honest about what they do,' he says to me as he signs Edwards up.”

“So what do you need me for? Just listen and learn.”

“That might work,” admits Bryan. “But I doubt if either of them will be stupid enough to sew themselves up without a little encouragement.”

“And you expect me to encourage them?” questions Bliss.

Bryan nods in agreement, saying, “I'd use one of my crew, but I'm not sure who I can trust.”

“Because,” starts Bliss, but he doesn't push the point. He's well aware that few of his colleagues are completely fireproof; that no one can be certain that Edwards' lawyer won't spring out of the defendant's box with a trial-stopping revelation that will leave them without a pension while Edwards paints on a broad grin and walks free.

“The taps are going in as we speak,” carries on Peter Bryan. “It's going to take all day — Edwards' place; Creston's home, apartment, and office.”

“Cellphones?” queries Bliss.

“The works.”

“So like I said, what do you need me for?”

“Hey, are you two finished?” yells the stubby waitress from the cash desk. “People are frickin' waiting you know.”

“Couple of minutes, luv,” replies Bryan, then he leans in to Bliss. “What I need is an undercover man in Creston's office.”

“That could take weeks —” Bliss is starting when Peter Bryan stops him.

“No. I want a really clumsy one. Someone who'll be sussed in ten minutes flat, someone so dense that a ten-year-old would catch on.”

“I'm sure we've got a few of them,” laughs Bliss, but his son-in-law isn't laughing. “I want you in there, Dave, in Creston's face, bumbling around like a greenhorn, asking stupid questions, dropping hints, offering backhanders. He's already jumpy. He knows Edwards has been lifted. Plus, he's snowed under trying to keep his wife quiet, and he's got a war on his hands in West Africa.”

“It doesn't sound as if he's having fun.”

“Oy,” shouts the waitress with a tone of finality. “I need that frickin' table for real customers.”

“Nice lady,” mutters Bliss, but he's got all the information he needs. “Give me a couple of hours to think it over,” he says as they leave. “I really want to get back to my writing. I'm scared she'll think I've forgotten her.”

“Not much chance of that, Dave,” jests Peter Bryan as he throws an arm around his father-in-law's shoulders. “I'd never forget you and I've never even slept with you.”

George McMahon, the manager of the janitorial company responsible for cleaning the Creston tower, is a pushover for Bliss two days later.

“Are you really sure you want this?” queries the softly spoken Liverpudlian, eyeing Bliss's bronze skin and sharp jeans. “Only you ain't the usual type.”

“Need the bread,” says Bliss pushing his cockney accent as far as it will go. “I got the trouble and strife on me bleedin' back to get off the dole.”

“Well, sign here, then. Start at six Monday mornin'. Amy's the boss over there. She'll be right chuffed. She's always bendin' me ear about not having anyone to do the liftin'.”

“I can do that all right, guv,” says Bliss, flexing his biceps as he prints the name and social insurance number that Peter Bryan provided for him. “What about uniforms?”

“Blue overalls — pick 'em up from Amy. You wash 'em.”

“Right-oh, guv.”

“And make sure you do. Creston gets real foony about things like that.”

“'kay.”

“An' watch yer language. They're a bunch of bleedin' Bible punchers. No fookin' swearing, awl right?”

“Awl right,” agrees Bliss.

“I should have brought my manuscript with me,” grumbles Bliss to himself as he whiles away Sunday afternoon feeding ducks in St. James's Park after watching the guards at Buckingham Palace, and he's tempted to pick up a notebook and carry on. But he knows he'll be wasting his time. He knows that he needs a completely clear mind to focus on his writing. He knows that what he has to write is too crucial to his plot to be picked at between the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey like a backpacker's travelogue.