Crazy Lady (9 page)

It is winter and the olive-skinned locals have taken back their town, though Bliss sees few of them working. Most of the dark-haired, dark-eyed men and women sit around in the few bars that still bother to open and wait for spring. Their euphoria following the departure of the summer vacationers has waned since the realization that the visitors took off with the money. And with most of the restaurants and clubs closed for the season, and stores cut back to a minimum, there won't be a lot of joy until the conferences and festivals begin. Then, by the end of May, when the International Film Festival in Cannes lights up the whole coast, everyone will paint on smiles, ready for the sun. Christmas comes in August on the Côte d'Azur, when the stores will be laden with glitz and trash and filled with wallet-happy holidaymakers determined to wear the lustre off their credit cards.
Sleep finally catches up with Bliss on a quayside bench. Daisy finds him two hours later.

“Where you been?” she demands, angrily poking him awake. “I look everywhere.”

“Sorry, Daisy.”

“Why you no love me?”

How many times has she asked? How many times has he wanted to say, I do, in a way, but there is someone burnt so indelibly in my heart that I can't escape.

“Because she's dead…” he begins angrily, then stops himself and softens as he explains. “There's someone else, Daisy, but she died. I tried to save her, but I couldn't, and she took my heart with her to her grave.”

The news hits Daisy harshly and she stands with a deeply furrowed brow as she tries to process the information.

“Someone else?” she questions vaguely after a few moments.

“But she's dead,” he reminds her, though knows that won't be enough, that it isn't enough for him either.

“Oh, Daavid. Zhat is terrible,” says Daisy, sitting beside him. “But why you not tell me?”

Bliss shrugs. He knows how unfair it would be to say to a woman, As much as I want to be with you, it is only because my one true love is not here.

“I've tried counselling, therapy, self-talk…” Welling tears stop him as he replays memories neither coloured nor faded by time, perfect memories of a perfect relationship — just a few weeks of sheer ecstasy, a wonderful, magical time when two foreigners in a foreign land found pure love in each other's minds and bodies.

“She was everything a man could ever ask for,” he says quietly, willing himself not to look at Daisy, knowing she has a right to be offended by the insinuation that she is less.

But Daisy is not blind to his words or his sudden coolness. “What happened?” she asks, though she would rather not.

“Long story,” he says, finally relieved that he no longer has to pretend, either to her or himself. “Maybe I'll tell you one day.”

But where does zhat leave me?
questions Daisy silently, with a look of pleading, and Bliss sees what is going through her mind and tries to soften the blow. “Daisy,” he says, gently taking her right hand. “I look into your eyes and I see a beautiful, warm woman and, in a way, I love you.”

“But —”

“There is no magic, Daisy. There never was. We became friends before we were lovers and I… well, I thought I would get over her.”

“But you didn't.”

“No. I could lie. I could marry you and tell you that you are the one I truly love, but that wouldn't be fair. I know, deep down, that I would always wish that you were her.”

Tears are streaming down Daisy's face — tears for herself. “But she is dead,” she reminds him, as if he needs reminding.

“I know. That's the worst thing. I have no way of ever getting my heart back. She took it with her.”

“What about her grave — you could visit,” begins Daisy hopefully. “You could kneel at her grave and say —”

“Cremated, I think,” says Bliss, lightly putting a hand on her arm to stop her. “No grave. I never even saw her body. I was wounded… we crashed… I crashed.”

“A car?”

“A plane.”

“You were flying?”

“Yes… no… not really… I don't know,” he says, and then he stares out over the sea and relives the terrifying moments in a rusty Illushyn cargo plane when he grappled with the controls at the side of a dying woman — the woman who ran off to heaven with his heart and left him in hell.

“I did not hear,” says Daisy once he has given her a sanitized version of the incident when he and Yolanda
rescued a group of Western computer experts from Saddam Hussein's clutches before the Americans slung the dictator in jail.

“No one heard, Daisy. In fact, officially, I think I'm supposed to kill you now that I've told you.” The Frenchwoman shrinks back in concern, but Bliss cracks a wan smile. “Just joking. Although you probably shouldn't tell anyone. We shouldn't have been there.”

“What is her name?”

He wants to correct the tense but doesn't, and he knows why; he knows that she is still alive in his mind, that she will always be alive, that she will outlive him. “Her name is Yolanda… Yolanda Pieters,” he says, and finds himself going off into the distance again searching for an image. It's an easy search. Her face, sheer unadorned beauty — the most beautiful face he ever set eyes on, with just a single imperfection that he found intriguing — is dreamlike today, though it isn't always that way. Sometimes, when he's feeling the loss most, it's nightmarishly marred by the agony of her death throes.

“Daavid. You must move on,” Daisy tells him as she sits beside him and tries to comfort him.

“I've tried. God, how I've tried.”

She reaches out to stroke his cheek. “Now I understand,” she says, as tears stream down her face.

“I wish I understood,” mutters Bliss. “It's been more than three years. How long will it last?”

“Forever, Daavid,” she says, knowing that her tears are not only for him and his lost love, they are for those who took a piece of her heart when they departed. And she turns to the Château Roger, where, along with memories of her grandfather and several other relatives who were swept up by the Nazis during the war, she too can find an image.

Roland was his name, and Daisy closes her eyes as she reruns the painful image of the young Parisian boy — a city sophisticate with a Beatles haircut and Daddy's souped-up
British Mini — who was the first to sample her tender young flesh. She was a pretty fifteen-year-old schoolgirl at the time, in the mid-sixties, and was diving after a shoal of sardines in the bay one sunny summer's day. Roland was diving nearby with an entirely different kind of fish on his mind. He struck, and landed his virginal catch in a little hidden cove where the tunnel from the château's basement comes out onto a golden beach. Forty-five seconds later Roland hit his stride, and with a triumphant yelp and a premature ejaculation he left Daisy in the sand while he shot off up the château's tunnel in search of another adventure.

“It is
très dangereux
. You cannot go zhere,” Daisy yelled after him, but his motor was running so fast he didn't care if he was coming or going.

Daisy shudders at the memory of Roland's dead body being washed ashore a couple of days later — minus his
zizi
— but at that time she was still scared of the château's legendary ghosts and kept silent about their tryst, worried that a vengeful resistance fighter in the basement mistook him for a Nazi storm trooper.

She shakes off the unhappy memories of her loss, realizing that she is facing another, and asks, “But why you in Iraq?”

“They did have weapons of mass destruction,” replies Bliss. “Cyber-weapons. That's why the inspectors never found them.”

“Cyber-weapons.”

“A computer virus to attack our systems.”

“What will happen?”

“Maybe nothing,” he says, not wishing to alarm her with the prospect of a super-virus kicking in and screwing up the world. “Although I think we've seen the signs: major power outages in America; bank computers on the blink for a week; the internet crashing.” He pauses, knowing that the big one is still out there, that everything to date has been small fry. But he knows that it is like waiting for the
earthquake that will one day kill Los Angeles. “It's coming… it's coming,” everyone warns, then
bang
, the bottom falls out of the Indian Ocean and swallows a quarter of a million people in Asia.
And all you have to do is constantly worry about one dead woman
, he chastises himself, but then admits that it's not constant, only when it's triggered — similar hair, voice, colour, eyes, shape.

Stop it… stop it… she's been dead for years
, he tries telling himself, but the more that time has gone on, the worse it has become.
You need closure
, says the voice in his mind, but he disagrees.
I need Yolanda. Need to know that I didn't kill her.

You didn't kill her. You would have died for her — you wanted to die for her.

And still she left me.

She didn't want to. It wasn't her choice.

“Daavid,” breaks in Daisy from outside.

“I thought I'd got over her,” he says, but he can't help comparing her to the château's victims as he sits looking towards the old building. Sixty years on and many of the town's widows still dream that their lovers were sent to a remote concentration camp and will one day march home, strapping young men.

Daisy's grandmother was amongst those who stayed awake night after night when the war ended, but the pain was always still there the following morning: the gnawing, insidious pain of hope, watching the door for hour upon hour, begging, praying, screaming, pleading. “Come back. Please come back. I love you — I love you more than you can possibly know.”

“Daavid. You have to move on,” Daisy tells him, and he wants to say he'll try, but he finally gives up.

“So do you, Daisy,” he says as her tears continue to stream. “I'm sorry, but I can never take a chance with you or anyone else. I can never look into your eyes and say with honesty, ‘You are the only one for me.'”

D
aphne Lovelace has dug out a serious-grey pillbox hat for her lunch meeting with Superintendent Ted Donaldson at the Hole-in-the-wall.

“The buffet looks good,” starts Donaldson with his eyes in that direction, but Daphne is all business as she flips open a notebook on the table and readies a pen.

“The files are missing — well, not exactly missing,” Donaldson admits as soon as he has stacked his first plate.

“Where are they then?”

“There never were any.”

“Three dead babies and no files?” questions Daphne skeptically, wondering if her old friend is just being diplomatic about sensitive documents.

“All natural causes — death certificates duly signed by two doctors — so no police investigation or inquest. The coroner seemed satisfied; just a coincidence.”

“Three is one more than a coincidence,” says Daphne sharply. “Two is a coincidence, Ted. Not three.”

“Daphne. If we investigated every natural death we'd never do anything important.”

“And three deaths in one family isn't important?”

“Suspicious,” he confesses. “But it was before my time.”

“You're not hiding anything, are you?”

Donaldson's seat is a little uncomfortable as he admits that his predecessor wasn't always as straight as he should have been. “Old Bob Hinkey could bend the rules a bit at times.”

“So who bought him off?”

“I'm not saying that,” protests Donaldson, though knows that Daphne well understands the local politics. “Put yourself in Bob's place. He probably spent his weekends shooting and fishing over at Creston's estate. Have you seen the place? Bigger than Buckingham Palace, choppers flying in and out, more security than the padlock on the prisoner's pee bucket down at the station.”

“So what's he scared of?” questions Daphne. “Nothing ticks off a villain more than the prospect of being done over by another one,” suggests Donaldson.

Daphne queries, “Creston — a crook?”

Donaldson shrugs. “I've got no proof, but that's how most of these bigwigs make it — either them or their ancestors. It ticks me off that we waste time nicking some unemployed jerk for pinching a bar of chocolate when people like Creston are siphoning millions out of their companies.”

“If Creston is as pious as he claims he'll have to get off his camel sooner or later or he'll be going downstairs with the rest of us.”

“Nice idea,” laughs Donaldson. “But he's already working on that. According to someone — let's say a friend of mine — Creston shovels money into religious organizations all over the place. Mind, I take a less charitable view. I reckon he does it for the PR and the tax write-off.”

“Trina said they think Janet was involved in a religious group,” begins Daphne, then questions, “I don't suppose
you could find out from your friend if any of Creston's largesse reaches Canada.”

“You'll get me shot… aiding the enemy.”

“What enemy?”

“David told me that you and Trina had cooked up some crazy notion about being private eyes.”

“And PIs are the enemy?”

“Competition… definitely not privy to classified information.”

By the time Ted Donaldson has persuaded himself that a second helping of bread and butter pudding would round him off nicely, Daphne figures that he is sufficiently softened to try another tack.

“D'ye know anything about Amelia Drinkwater?” she asks with blank-faced innocence.

Donaldson puts down his spoon. “You mean the venerable Mrs. Drinkwater, Chairman of Dewminster Magistrates…” he begins, then lowers his tone. “I didn't know she qualified for a Christian name. I could tell you one or two things…”