Deadly Sin (32 page)

“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 invisible.”

“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.”

“Daphne, dear. Can you hear me?” asks Trina as she gently mops the old lady's brow, but the cold flannel is a blade of steel in the tormented woman's mind, and she sees it gouging into Michael Kent's left eye and lets out a strangled scream.

“Oh my God,” says Davenport as he races off to phone for an ambulance, while inside Daphne's head blood-gushing parts of Michael Kent's body are chasing her down blind alleys.

“Daphne,” calls Trina, but the anguished woman is deaf to the outside world as the torture continues.

“Who are you working for?” yells the interrogator as he fiercely grasps one of her lover's ears. “Tell me now or …”

“Daphne … Daphne …” voices are desperately calling as she writhes and thrashes in the bed.

“Tell me! Tell me!” shrieks the maniacal sadist as he slices through cartilage and flesh, then sticks the dismembered ear into her face.

“Miss Lovelace … Daphne …” tries Brenda.

“Look at it, Miss Masterson,” demands the guard, wrenching back her head until her neck cracks. “Look at it and tell us who you are working for.”

“Go and get a doctor,” shouts Anne McGregor to Brenda while Daphne's body is jerking in spasms of agony, and the terrified woman is yelling, “No … No … No …” as she watches Michael Kent's nose, lips, and tongue drop into the blood-spattered bucket.

“Daphne. Wake up. Wake up. It's me, Mavis,” calls her friend, and the lights finally go on in Daphne's mind.

“Mavis?” she questions as she opens her eyes to the searing light for the first time in two days. “Curtains,” she says, holding a hand over her face, and Trina rushes to close them.

“I've called for an ambulance and the doctor,” says Davenport, returning, but Daphne is already pulling herself up in bed.

“Well, you certainly gave us a scare,” says Geoffrey Williamson, once he has checked her over and sent the ambulance away, but Patrick Davenport's pallid expression suggests that, for him, the scare is not yet over.

“The Jenkinses stole Phil and Maggie's house,” proclaims Daphne, aware that she now has an attentive audience, but Trina shakes her head.

“No, they didn't, Daphne.”

“Don't you remember Misty Morgan?” steps in Mavis. “It's Phil's brother's little girl.”

“No, I don't.”

“Oh, dear. Perhaps you are losing your marbles,” suggests Mavis a touch acerbically, and Daphne stomps on her.

“No, I am not, Mavis. I'm well aware of who you mean. But I haven't seen Phil's brother for donkey's years.” However, despite a minute's concentration, she can't place
a daughter and ends up confessing, “I suppose my memory really is going.”

“That's what happens when you get older,” agrees Mavis, and then Anne McGregor steps into view. “Remember me?” she says, holding up her index finger.

Daphne flushes pink around the edges of the bruise. “Sorry about that,” she says. “I was just so cross that no one would listen to me, and they were driving me round the bend.”

“Never mind. That's all in the past. I'm more interested in your daughter, Isabel, right now.”

“But I thought I told you. I don't have —”

“Think carefully, Daphne,” says McGregor, while Patrick Davenport's knees are beginning to buckle in the background.

“What's she talking about, Mavis?” asks Daphne.

“Someone was here,” says Mavis, not linking Isabel Semaurino with the woman she saw at Daphne's house. “And she reckoned she was your daughter …”

“She certainly told me she was your daughter,” chimes in Williamson, and all eyes turn on him. But the doctor has little to offer other than the apparent sincerity of the mysterious woman. However, the news that Daphne is about to become a great-grandmother certainly adds to the mystique — especially in the elderly spinster's mind.

“Now I really am worried that I'm going cuckoo,” she laughs — the first time she has laughed in weeks.

“Isabel Semaurino. The name rings a bell,” admits Bliss to Trina when she phones to give him an update on Daphne's condition, but he has too much on his mind to recall the woman he met in the bar of the Mitre. It's already Tuesday evening. Only two clear days before Friday's rescheduled mission to the mosque — the first public
appearance of the royal couple since the ill-fated visit — and the video recording of the men and their pickup truck has disappeared.

“It's been wiped,” Hoskins the videographer explained when Bliss went back for a closer look. “Commander Fox told me to …” then the technician paused, “… actually, he ordered me to get rid of everything I had from the mosque.”

“When?” asked Bliss and wasn't surprised that it occurred while he was out cold.

The transceiver is the best physical evidence remaining from the day that Prince Philip went berserk. At least it would be the best evidence if it was still in Bliss's possession.

“Somebody smashed the lock off my bloody cup-board,” he complains angrily to his son-in-law as they meet for a strategy session in the back bar of Peter Bryans local pub, the Pheasant.

“Who the hell?” asks Bryan as he cues up for a game of snooker.

“Fox … I bet Edwards has got the black on him.”

“Edwards has got the black on most people, Dave. But what's his game?”

“What's the Yanks' game? They're the ones who bother me most.”

“I guess we might find out in the morning,” says Peter Bryan as he slams a red ball into a pocket.

“One for you,” says Bliss as he keeps score, and then he questions, “How's your interest in American cars coming along?”

“Hi Cindi. It's me again, Chief Inspector Bliss,” he says as he and Bryan stand at the gates of the security compound on Wednesday morning. “I've brought a colleague to go over those tapes.”

The momentary silence from the bubbly young American indicates a problem. “I'm sorry,” she says once
she drums up the courage. “But I got shit for letting you in yesterday.”

“But I'm a senior police officer.”

“I'm real sorry,” says Cindi. “The cameras are linked to the Embassy, and I guess someone saw you.”

“Lefty and bloody Pimple,” Bliss mutters under his breath. “I bloody knew it.”

“You'll have to get clearance from the Embassy to come in again. Sorry.”

“What now, Dave?”

“At least they didn't come after me with machine guns this time,” says Bliss as they walk back to their car under the nose of one of the tower-cameras.

“So, Michael,” says Lefty, stabbing at Bliss on the screen of a laptop in front of Edwards. “I thought you said you had a leash on him.”

“Maybe he should have a little accident,” says Pimple, pumping his right fist into his left palm. “Just enough to keep him out of the way on Friday. The President sure ain't gonna be happy if there's another screw-up.”

“Leave him to me,” says Edwards. “You just concentrate on what you have to do.”

Superintendent Anne McGregor starts the daily service with a prayer of thanksgiving for the blessed news that no prisoners died overnight in custody, no murders or riots were reported, and the only complaint against an officer was made by a certifiable lunatic.

“So. What's on the agenda?” she asks, and Matt Roberts brings up Daphne Lovelace.

“From what we've got so far,” the detective chief inspector explains as he flicks through his officer's reports, “she sounds as though she's our second loony of the day.”

“Really?” says McGregor, brightening at the thought that she may have been right about Daphne all along.

“Nothing the old faggot claims holds water,” carries on Roberts, and then he summarizes. “Rob and Misty Jenkins are the lawful occupiers of her uncle's place. Recent deaths at the home … nothing suspicious and, considering the heat, not out of line with what you would expect. No complaints from other residents — apart from the food.” Roberts stops to look up and laugh. “Apparently the woman who usually does the cooking — a Hilda Fitzgerald — is a bit of a butcher in the kitchen.”

“What about the bruising on her face?” asks McGregor, and Roberts goes back to the reports.

“There's no eyewitnesses. They say she fell. She says she didn't. But I know who a court would believe.”