No Cherubs for Melanie (32 page)

“Dad was a bit tough to take at times, being a cop and all. George is pretty soft. I suppose it's easier to digest soft food as you get older.”

“Your dad's not so tough at the moment.”

She looked up, tapping her arm meaningfully. “I don't know if Edwards would agree with you.”

“True.”

“Mum's leaving hit him hard. That's the trouble with steak — overdo it and it falls to pieces eventually. Pasta just goes on soaking up more and more and gets softer and softer until you can mould it into any shape you want.”

“This is it,” he said, sliding the electronic key through the magnetic strip reader and opening the door.

Bryan had presumed little and was consequently not at all disappointed when, following dinner, Samantha flopped onto one of the beds, pulled herself into a fetal position and said, “I hope you don't mind Peter…I'm really tired… The flight… You understand.”

He understood. Anyway there was something deliciously teasing about sharing a bedroom with a virtual stranger, especially an attractive one. “We've got a very early start,” he reminded her, wondering what she was like about getting up, hoping she was not a morning monster. He kissed her cheek lightly as she drifted off.

Bliss had been about to leave the fly-infested clearing when a thought struck him. Bo would scent him out easily
when Margaret returned, but maybe he could evade the dog by confusing the animal with a stronger smell than his own. The stink of a dead bear, perhaps. He steeled himself and, armed with a stout stick, snaked forward rodding the earth. He wasn't surprised when the stick seemed to melt into the ground just ahead of him. Another bear pit, he guessed, and a new fear entered his mind: what if a wounded, enraged male were to leap out snarling and ripping?

He shrank back, mentally testing the wisdom of his actions. Wait, he thought, common sense prevailing. The animal, whatever it is, must be dead. It couldn't have replaced the cover by itself if it had fallen into the trap. There would be a hole where the branches had given way, and there was no sign of a hole. A human had recovered the trap. Clenching his teeth with renewed vigour he gradually eased the latticework of branches apart and was almost on the point of seeing into the pit when a swarm of insects, startled by the sudden light, darted angrily out and caused him to jerk back in alarm. He was covered in seconds, a stream of black, biting bugs, attacking his eyes, and filling his nostrils, mouth, and ears. He rose and wildly smashed himself around the face and head, but his frenzied activity lured even more of the creatures from the hole. Then he looked down at his leg in horror — the bulk of the insects had been attracted like vampires to the blood seeping through the bandage. Stooping to swipe them away he lost his balance and barely avoided falling into the pit. So much for that, he thought, retreating hastily into the forest, beating away the insects and exhausting himself in the process. It will have to be plan “B” then, he thought, making his way carefully through the rapidly darkening forest in search of the cabin, food, and a night's sleep.

Four-thirty Tuesday morning and Samantha's world was dizzyingly out of control as she woke to Peter Bryan's gentle prodding. “Samantha, we've got to get a move on.”

“What?” Who is this man? “Where am I?” This is a dream — right? Where's Dad?

“We've got to be ready in twenty minutes,” Bryan added.

It all came back in a rush and she leapt out of bed and headed to the bathroom. Peter Bryan was already dressed, ready to roll, but she caught up in ten minutes and they were whisked back to the airport police office in a waiting police car. Then their troubles began.

“Who the fuck authorized this?” Detective Sergeant Phillips of the RCMP demanded, angrily slamming down his beaker of coffee when he learned that he was to be accompanied by Bryan and Samantha.

“Authorized?” murmured Bryan, feeling slightly cowed under the onslaught from a man who looked capable of eating little boys for breakfast.

The plane's pilot chimed in to make matters worse. “I can't take a civilian, I'd get shot.”

Bryan shrugged. “It was all approved last evening by Sergeant Gdowski.”

“Gdowski… I might have known. I'm sorry, Sir,” said the detective, “But he had no right…”

Bryan headed him off. “Well, he made several phone calls, he obviously got clearance from someone.”

The detective raised his eyebrows. “In writing?”

“No idea,” replied Bryan, who now realized that without triplicate or quadruplicate memorandums, each signed by the right person, they were unlikely to get off the ground. Damn regulations, he thought, recalling the fuss that Edwards had made the previous day when he had requested taking two weeks leave to which he was entitled.

“Fourteen days prior notice in writing, Chief Inspector, you know the rules,” he had said.

“It's an emergency, Sir,” Bryant had riposted, and thinking at a gallop he'd invented an ailing relative. “It's my Aunt Maud, Sir. She's had a nasty accident.”

“Call an ambulance then, that's what they're for.”

Bryan had whipped up the pace. “I can't do that, Sir, she's somewhere in the mountains.”

“Where, for God's sake?”

He'd taken a deep breath. “Everest. Well the foothills anyway. I said I would go to co-ordinate the rescue. I knew you would understand.” Then he had flown out of the superintendent's office, saying, “Thank you very much, Sir,” before the other man had got his mouth into gear.

“Something like this should be cleared through Interpol anyway,” the detective sergeant continued,
adding weight to his argument, his mind clearly made up. They were not going.

Samantha started to cry. Softly, more of a whimper at first, but building to a crescendo of snotty sniffles. Bryan cradled her, “C'mon, Sam, he'll be alright.”

“He's dead, I know he is,” she bawled.

“He's not. He's just lost…I expect.”

She turned on him, blubbering. “How can you say that? He's been missing nearly a week.” Then she spun on the troublesome sergeant. “He's a detective the same as you. How would your family feel if you were missing in a foreign country and nobody would help find him?”

That did it. “OK. You win.”

But the pilot had other ideas. “Sorry, Sir,” he addressed Bryan. “Even if I took you, as a visiting police officer, I couldn't possibly take the young lady.”

Samantha's anguished cries filled the small room and Bryan was inclined to tell her to shut up before conceding that she'd been successful before. But it didn't work on the pilot.

“Sorry, Miss,” he said, “But that's final; I've gotta cover my ass. Service personnel only.”

Peter Bryan leapt into action. “Have you got a Bible?”

They had — a Gideon's. Placing it firmly in Samantha's right hand and ad-libbing like crazy he declared, “In my capacity as a DCI in the Grand Metropolitan Police Force, I hereby appoint you to the rank of special constable. Do you swear to protect life and property and to serve Her Majesty the Queen?”

“I do,” she replied, hardly thinking.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” said Phillips, and they all laughed, including the pilot. “Let's go then,” he said, easily satisfied.

“Can you really do that?” whispered Samantha on the short walk across the tarmac to the small plane, which was equipped with both wheels and floats.

He shook his head and stuck a finger to his lips. “Shhh. They don't know that.”

Bliss had spent Thursday night somewhat uneasily back at the cottage; fearing he might die of exposure without shelter. Although he'd not heard Margaret's boat returning, he had blocked the door with his bed just to be on the safe side.

Friday morning dawned with a foretaste of the rapidly approaching winter: a crust of frost as thick as snowfall brightened the dreary trees. He awoke shivering in the unheated house and was horrified to find his wounded leg had become paralyzed during the night. The muscles strained painfully to move but nothing happened and he lay staring blankly at the ceiling, his mind tortured by wartime stories of men who had amputated their own limbs. It's one thing to chop off a few mangled fingers in the heat of the battle, he reasoned, but a whole leg! But his hysterical mind was already working out the details: a saw, sharp knife, boiling water, alcohol. Then he reigned back on the hysteria, telling himself that amputation was out of the question. There was no alcohol left, no hot water unless he rekindled the fire, and, with the wound high up the thigh, the leg would have to come off from the hip joint — clearly impossible.

“So, what's the alternative? What are you planning to do, lay here and die?” he said to himself. He threw back the blankets and, trying harder, willed his leg to move with all his might. His toes wriggled inside his socks, he saw them moving, although for a second thought he was looking at the wrong foot. He tried even
harder, cold perspiration trickling down his forehead. If he couldn't move he was a sitting duck and was already regretting that he had returned to the house; not that he'd had much of an alternative choice. It's the first place she'll look, he realized. Finally his leg moved — stiffly and not far, but it moved. With an audible sigh of relief, he realized it wasn't immobilized at all, it was glued to the mattress by the congealed blood and pus that had saturated through the dressing.

Bliss could have laughed, but freeing the bandage and unpeeling it from his thigh revealed a situation as distressing as paralysis. Livid tentacles of infection were spreading in all directions from the ugly crater like the radials of a spider's web and he panicked, speculating that the wound might also be infested from the insect attack. The thought that his flesh could soon be crawling with maggots made him shudder and he hustled to the bathroom in desperation, stinging the wound with a deluge of icy water and wrapping it in the cleanest towel he could find. He knew he needed antiseptic and antibiotics quickly if he were to survive. He also knew he wouldn't get any on the island.

The flight to the scene of the crash would take five hours, the pilot informed Samantha and Peter Bryan as they clambered into the rear seats of the small twin-engine plane.

“Wait,” cried Samantha, worming her way back out. “I can't go five hours without a loo.”

“Don't worry, Miss,” said the pilot, patting her backside with unnecessary familiarity as he urged her forward. “We've got to land a couple of times before we get there. We'll stop for breakfast and fuel in an hour or so.”

Offended by his wayward hand, but not anxious to upset the pilot lest he should change his mind about taking her, she joined her compatriot in the back of the plane. “Here goes,” she said, as the engines roared to life and the two men in the front chatted to each other through their headphones.

“Samantha,” started Bryan, with a look of seriousness. “Don't get your hopes up too much. He might not be there.”

“What d'ye mean? How can you say that? Of course he's there.”

He was shaken by her determination and backtracked a little. “I'm not saying he isn't. I just think you should be prepared. I don't want you to be devastated if there has been some sort of foul-up and we don't find him today.”

The little plane roared into the pre-dawn sky. Samantha gave Bryan's concerns some thought before dismissing them lightly and without explanation. “Of course he's there.”

“But why would the bank and that man Stacy lie?” he said, hoping to plant a seed of doubt.

“Why are we going then?” she challenged, to which he had no answer.

Bliss was expecting Samantha to come to his rescue, although not in person. She'll probably call Stacy, he thought, working out the scenario that would most likely follow his failure to pick up the promised money. Samantha will call Stacy and badger him or Jock to take a trip to the island to find me. All I've got to do is stay alive long enough to be rescued. Dealing with Margaret will come later. And he
would
deal with her, he decided, feeling solace that fate had granted him an opportunity to right such a significant wrong.

What will Edwards' face be like, he wondered, when I return with Margaret and the evidence to show she also murdered her mother? “He'll be sick as a dog,” he mused, already drawing up Margaret's extradition papers in his mind.

“Damn,” he thought. Where's the evidence? I've only got her word for the whole thing. I don't even have any proof she killed Melanie. Even the scrapbook full of photographs had gone missing

With his spirits somewhat dampened he turned his attention back to hopes of rescue. So, when would Samantha call? Friday…today! No, she'll probably wait until Saturday or even Sunday. “Survive until Sunday then; maybe Monday, just to be sure,” he told himself and set about making preparations.

He already knew where to hide for the weekend. His biggest dilemma was that Bo could easily track him wherever he went on the island. But he already knew the solution to that problem as well. All he needed was to distract the huge hound with a smokescreen of scent more potent and compelling than his own. And he knew exactly where to find that.

A few minutes later, his wound bound with a strip of fairly clean shirt, and his suitcase hastily re-stuffed with blankets, sheets, canned foods, and a selection of cutlery, he left the house and painfully hauled himself toward the stinking clearing.

Keeping to well-worn trails, hugging the trees and tiptoeing across clearings as if they were minefields, he dragged his damaged leg and battered case through the freshly fallen leaves, plowing a trail like a giant slug. “Shit,” he muttered glancing behind him at the scraped furrow. Even a seven-year-old Brownie would be able to track him, yet he could only press on with his ears constantly pricked for sound of the
returning launch and his eyes alert to the possibility of a canine ambush.