Deadly Sin (10 page)

“Please follow me, Monsieur,” says the portly head waiter as Bliss finally gives in. The penguin-like man in his tailed morning coat waddles across the beach, weaving his way through candlelit tables of picnickers who are slumming it on Beluga caviar, truffled trifles, and lobsters while they swig Cristal champagne at five hundred a bottle.

“Five hundred what?” any ordinary person might ask, but not the Carlton's lofty guests, most of whom will shrug off five hundred as easily as five thousand or even five million.

Bliss's table for two, as requested, is at the water's edge, with an unobstructed view of the island of Ste. Marguerite and, when the time comes, a grandstand seat at the waterborne fireworks display. But now, as he sits alone staring at his bouquet of roses, he has an army of diners looking through him as they studiously survey the armada of mega-yachts manoeuvring into position for the show. Size matters in this bastion of the mega-rich. Reputations rise and fall by the metre.

“He's only got a pokey thirty-metre job,” the owner of a fifty-metre cruiser will sneer. Then a hundred-and-fifty-metre leviathan carrying a chopper and a mini-sub steams majestically into the bay and they all squirm.

Bliss has neither a yacht nor yacht envy. But he does envy the other diners — fashionable newlyweds, elegant mature couples, and flashy short-term cheaters — who can, at least, reach across the table and find reassurance in the kiss of skin on skin. As he sits alone on the very fringe of the sand, he feels like King Canute urging the tide to turn in his favour. “C'mon, Daisy. Where are you?”

The lobster and oysters may be superb, but fish, chips, and mushy peas in newspaper might be more comforting, and as he eats he feels the pitying stares of the other guests and almost expects someone to sidle up and say, “Hello, granddad. All on your own, are ya?”

“It's not what you think,” he wants to say. “She's just a bit late, that's all.” But as ten o'clock approaches and the three gargantuan barges anchored in the bay prepare to launch their exuberant cargo high into the sky, he slips out of his front-row seat and slogs his way up the soft sand beach to the exit.

“
Bienvenue mesdames et messieurs
…” the commentator is calling enthusiastically as she welcomes visitors to the Cannes international fireworks festival, but Bliss keeps his eyes on the ground and makes for the hotel lobby with Daisy's bouquet of roses in hand.

“Messages?” he asks hopefully, not bothering with French, but the concierge shakes his head.

“
Pardon, monsieur. Mais non
.”

“I'll be in my room,” he says as he heads for the elevator.

Daphne Lovelace should be in the cell block, but the Custody Officer hadn't the heart — “She is eighty-five for gawd's sake.” So he has put her in the medical room, complete with a comfortable examination couch and an unmonitored telephone marked, “Strictly For Doctor's Use Only.”

David Bliss is first on her list, followed by his daughter, Samantha. Neither answers, so she tries Trina Button in Canada. It may be midnight in Westchester, but in far-off Vancouver the slanting rays of the sun glint golden on the windows of waterfront condominiums and turn the distant snow-capped peaks into a glittering coronet.

“I tried calling you,” yells Trina as she zips in and out of the afternoon traffic in her Jetta, but Daphne shushes her then puts her in the picture.

“Great — good for you. That'll teach 'em,” cries Trina, but she's only been listening to the best bits. Her mind is on her mother, a woman of similar age to Daphne who acts at least twenty years older. “I'm thinking of putting her into a home,” she explains as her mother sits alongside with a pair of headphones clamped to her ears and a sublime expression on her face. “She keeps stealing things, and she doesn't know what she's doing or saying half the time,” carries on Trina. Then she lifts one of the headphones and yells, “It's Daphne,” above the din of the Smash.

Winifred Goodenow's face clouds instantly, but rapture returns with the headphone. She is deaf to the conversation but would argue vociferously if she knew what her daughter was saying. In her own mind she is coherent, veracious, and very fit. “I'm in training for the El Camino trail,” she tells everyone she meets, but she's spent a lifetime on pointed stilettos and can hardly hobble to the end of the street.

“Gotta go,” babbles Trina as she slams her foot to the floor to beat a light. “I'm taking mum to the chiropodist, then I'm going to yoga. I'll call you.”

“All right,” whispers Daphne. “Just don't make a fuss and don't come rushing over. But I might need you to bail me out later on.”

“Roger wilco,” trills Trina, still unaware of her friend's plight. “Just give me a shout. Trina Button, international investigator, to the rescue.”

However, Daphne shouldn't need help. “Lock the old cow in solitary for a few hours to teach her a lesson,” Anne McGregor instructed as she left for the day, “then give her bail.”

But it's only half a dozen years since Daphne swept the halls, cleaned the toilets, and made the tea, and she still has friends.

“Hello, Daph. How'r'ya doin'?” inquires one officer after another as they pop by to show concern. And, each
time, Daphne puts on a brave smile that fades as soon as the door closes.

And then Sergeant Martin Paulson, the Custody Officer, returns with the news that she is free to leave.

“No thanks,” says Daphne, turning her head against the wall and burying her face in the pillow.

“I'm not asking you, Ms. Lovelace,” says Paulson, putting on his policeman's voice. “I'm telling you. I'm granting you bail in your own recognizance …” Then he pauses. “What do you mean, no thanks?”

“I don't want to go home,” starts Daphne, and she sniffles loudly into the pillow as she holds back the tears. “I never want to go home again. I have nothing to go home for…. All I had was Missie Rouge. I just want somewhere quiet where I can die in peace. A cell will do fine.”

Paulson laughs. “As much as I'd like to accommodate you, I can't. We're full up. Anyway, our cells are only for real villains and persistent offenders.”

“Okay,” says Daphne, rising in apparent resignation, then abruptly turning, picking up a heavy glass jug, and throwing it through the window. “There,” she says defiantly as Paulson stares in disbelief at the shattered glass. “Can you keep me in now?”

The stupefied officer hesitates, but Daphne already has her hand on a stainless steel bedpan and her eye on another window.

“I'll charge you with criminal damage,” he cautions with a warning finger.

“Naturally,” says Daphne with glee as she brings back her arm.

“What are you — crazy?” he asks, catching hold of the bedpan.

A crazy old lady
, muses Daphne thoughtfully to herself.
Maybe that's exactly what I should be
. “All right,” she concedes as she slowly relinquishes her hold on the bedpan. “I'll take bail.”

“Heat-related disturbances spread across the country for the third weekend in a row …” the breakfast-time television presenter is saying as Anne McGregor fries bacon for herself and her husband, Richard, in the pseudo-rustic kitchen of their swankily spruced-up thatched hovel in Moulton-Didsley.

“Not again,” groans Anne, as global warming is blamed for riots in Glasgow and Birmingham and outbreaks of violence nationwide. “But thank God it's not religion this time.”

Torched cars, firebombed public buildings, and attacks on innocent bystanders all get reported. “While, around the world,” continues the presenter, taking a wider view to dissipate blame, “super-hurricanes and super-typhoons are in danger of spiralling off the Saffir-Simpson scale, tornadoes are repeatedly topping F5, and storm-driven tsunamis lash low-lying coasts.”

“I bet that was the problem with the old crumbly who took a fancy to your finger last night,” laughs Richard, pouring himself a coffee and picking up the
Guardian
.

“For gawd's sake don't suggest that,” says Anne. “I can just see the crafty old crone now — standing in the dock, saying, ‘It were the heat, M'lord …'”

The buzz of the phone stops her. It is Ted Donaldson, the man whose expansive backside warmed her chair for fifteen years. “Lunch at the Mitre?” he inquires.

“Sure, why not,” she says, and doesn't bother to ask the occasion.

“The silly old bat thinks she can pull strings to get off,” says McGregor as she puts down the phone and aggressively flips the bacon.

“Well, I bet that'll work for old Phil,” says Richard, pointing to the headline: “Archbishop to Counsel Prince.” Then he mocks the Duke as he whines, “I do have friends in very high places you know.”

Daphne isn't pulling strings. She is being rousted off a wooden bench in the railway station's deserted waiting room by a uniformed ticket inspector. She has been there since six o'clock, following several hours aimlessly wandering the dark streets calling out for Missie Rouge and a stop for a tea and a pee in a transport café off the main London road from which she called Ted Donaldson.

“C'mon, luv. This place ain't for sleepin',” says the uniformed man as he holds open the door. “You need a ticket to be in here.”

I could always take the Paradise Express like Minnie
, Daphne tells herself dreamily, but she considered that several times during the night as she stood on the platform while speeding trains whistled past. “At least it would be quick,” she soliloquized, but images of her friend's body splattered across the cab of a hundred-mile-an-hour locomotive kept her back from the edge.

“What's the time?” she inquires wearily as she puts on her shoes and plops her moth-eaten beret over her dishevelled mop, but the inspector isn't listening.

“Where's your stuff?” he demands, scouting around the room for a supermarket buggy or an old pram.

“Stuff?” she muses. “What stuff? I don't have any stuff.”

“Stuff,” he repeats. “C'mon, luv. Don't piss me about. Just take all your bloody junk with you or I'll call the fuzz.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” she says as she shuffles out. “Nothing matters anymore.”

It is Sunday morning. Early worshippers seeking Communion scurry past the labyrinth on their way to the cathedral as Daphne seeks spiritual guidance in its looping pathway. “I'm definitely missing something,” she tells herself as she winds around and around, and she would telephone
Angel but she's left the woman's card at home and is fearful of returning in case the Jenkinses are waiting for her.

“I knew you were up to somethin' you old bat,” Rob Jenkins spat nastily into her face as he roughly disarmed her the previous afternoon, adding viciously, “I'm gonna fuckin' screw you for this.” However, he sweetened his tone for the young constable who raced to the scene, siren screaming, at the report of a lunatic going berserk with a crowbar.

“Misty, my wife, worried she'd left the iron on,” he claimed as their reason for returning. But Daphne, still boiling, was in full flight as she was led to the police car while the street looked on. “Ask her where her bloomin' ironing board is,” she ranted. “I bet she's never ironed a bloody shirt in her life. Look at the place. She wouldn't know an iron from the hole in her bum.”

The question of Misty Jenkins's domestic prowess was never tested. Daphne Lovelace, O.B.E., had been nabbed red-handed, and for all the constable cared, the Jenkinses could have curtailed their daytrip to Bournemouth for a game of tiddlywinks or a full-blown sex orgy.

“I knew you'd be here,” a voice says softly in Daphne's ear, and she spins to find Angel. “I heard you calling. I knew you needed help.”

“Really,” says Daphne sarcastically. “If you know that much, how come you never tell me what I'm supposed to get from this damn thing.”

“Answers —” she starts, but Daphne cuts her off.

“All I get is sore bloomin' feet. Anyway, you said I wouldn't find answers here.”

“Okay. So what happened the first time?”

“Well, I invited the Jenkinses for tea, but that was a disaster. All they did was brag about being a ruddy nuisance.”

“But you gave conciliation a try, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. And what happened the next time?”

“I met you. And I met you again the next time.”

“I remember,” laughs Angel. “You rammed your hat down over your eyes and nearly mowed me down. Did you learn anything?”

A lightbulb goes off in Daphne's mind, and she brightens. “Yes. I did. When the Jenkins crowd blocked my way home and I was ready to turn around, I thought,
I'm buggered if I will
, and I did the same thing I did to you.”

“So, you learnt that it was up to you to fight your way through,” insists Angel, but Daphne isn't convinced. She's been fighting most of her life — fighting for independence, fighting for her life, fighting the Nazis and the Communists, and, since she teamed up with Trina Button as part of a crazy crusading duo, fighting drug smugglers from Vancouver and the CIA in Washington State.

“I don't know about that —” starts Daphne, but Angel is in teaching mode.

“You already have all the answers deep inside, Daphne,” she lectures, undeterred, as she takes Daphne's hand and lays it across the elderly woman's breast. “A labyrinth is a metaphor for life itself. You enter in ignorance, then, in its twists and turns, you learn what you need to know. The path takes you in all directions — north, south, east, and west — but it always leads you to the centre … your centre … your core, where you find tranquility and equilibrium. Then, as you weave back out, you pick up solutions along the way and emerge rejuvenated and ready to begin life anew. All the labyrinth can do is lead you on your path of self-awareness and enable you to find the right direction.”