Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. (2 page)

The young counter assistant sees the despair in Minnie's eyes and softens. “Of course you can, dear. You just find a seat and I'll bring it over.”

As Minnie pulls a chair from under a table, one of the teenage Web gamers, Ronnie Stapleton, sizes up the smartly dressed aging woman and tries to amuse his group of peers by snobbishly sneering, “Oh. I want a proper teapot like madam-f'kin' la-di-da over there.”

“Cut it out, Ron,” says Krysta, the fifteen-year-old love of his live, sensing Minnie's discomfort, but Stapleton's narcotic-addled brain blanks out his girlfriend as he continues to mock.

“Oh. Why don't you lick my f'kin boots?”

“Ron…” warns Krysta and he eases off.

“Aw'right; aw'right. Leave it out, girl; you ain't me muvver. Just get me some water will ya. I'm skint.”

In London, in the elegant reception suite at the Berkeley Hotel on the south bank of the Thames, the father of the bride, Detective Chief Inspector David Bliss of London's Metropolitan Police, is about to make a similar request on behalf of Daphne Lovelace.

“I brought my own tea bag. It's Keemun — the Queen's favourite,” Daphne explains conspiratorially as she squirrels it out of her bag while they wait for the remainder of the guests to arrive. “Would you mind asking one of the waiters to fetch me a pot of freshly boiled water and a nice china cup?”

“You can't do that here,” explains Bliss, but her expression clearly says she can, and will, so he changes tack and starts, “There's champagne…” but he gets nowhere as Daphne fiercely points to her watch.

“It's four o'clock in the afternoon, David.”

“Oh. Right,” he says, and then collides with his previous boss, now his son-in-law, as he makes his way to the bar.

“David. A word…” Peter Bryan begins as he drags Bliss aside and drops his tone. “Did you see Edwards at the church?”

“No. Don't worry, son. I don't think he showed up,” laughs Bliss, knowing that while a general invitation went out to all the senior officers at the station, everyone was praying that Chief Superintendent Edwards would send his apologies. However, Edwards hasn't offered an apology — ever. He is an officer, with Brylcreemed hair and burnished boots, still marching in the past, who, on a good day, might apologize for being surrounded by incompetent idiots. He is a man whose pin-stuck effigy hangs in many junior officers' lockers. And he's a man who has stood on the gallows more than once, yet has always managed to somehow slip the noose and sling it around his accuser's neck just as the lever was pulled.

“Thank Christ…” says Bryan, fearing that Edward's presence would curdle the champagne. Then he gives Bliss a quizzical look. “Hey! What's with the ‘son' thing?”

“Serves you right for marrying my daughter, Detective Chief Inspector.”

“You can cut that out, too, Dave,” Bryan replies with mock shirtiness as he stalks off. “And don't expect me to call you ‘Dad,' either.”

“One pot of tea without the tea, please,” Bliss orders nonchalantly as he turns to the barman, and he watches with amusement as the young man tries to work out whether or not he might be dangerous.

In Westchester, Minnie has scurried from the café, leaving the teapot half full, and is pushing on towards her goal when a Georgian mansion at the bottom end of the High Street solidly blocks her path. Westchester's old general
hospital was her birthplace, at a time when few families could afford the luxury of a doctor-attended birth, but Minnie stops briefly and considers detouring to avoid painful recollections of the soot-encrusted stone building. There are no joy-filled births for her; only deaths. First her younger brother who never made it out of the aediculated front doors; solid lacquered doors fiercely barred with a sign declaring, “All accidents, admissions and enquiries
must
use side entrance.” The double front doors were always kept well oiled, but were for the exclusive use of the Matron, together with consultant surgeons (not the riff-raff of general practitioners and interns) and mothers, with their perfect little newborns, who were ushered out through them and encouraged to pose for photos with the beaming sisters and nurses — like car builders touting their latest model to the press.

“They might let you into the world through the front door,” the crusty ambulance driver had explained as he'd rushed Minnie's dying mother to the side entrance. “But Gawd help anyone who tries to get out through there.”

Minnie's mother had been followed to the side door by various aunts, uncles and other family members, and finally Alfred, her husband. But apart from the time when she was first cradled in her mother's arms, a triumphal exit through the hospital's front doors has eluded Minnie and has been added to her lifelong list of unfulfilled dreams along with bridesmaid, ballerina and Princess Margaret.

After the opening of a new medical facility in 1970, the old hospital was converted into a home for the elderly infirm, and Minnie resolutely keeps her eyes on the pavement and sticks to the curbside as she passes. She pays a penalty as a car swishes by and douses her stockings and shoes.

She'd spent a long time choosing today's shoes; comfortable enough to carry her across town while stylish enough for her engagement. She would have preferred the stilettos of her fifties, when she'd still had Alfred to tango with, but age has whittled away her ankles and she had feared tripping and failing in her assignment. So she's settled for a clumpy pair of lace-ups with a heel low enough to make falling unlikely.

Bliss's ex-wife's wedding shoes have also been carefully selected, though not from her existing collection.

“Hah! Of course I have to have new shoes,” she'd cried when George, Bliss's replacement, had timorously suggested that she might find something suitable amongst the fifty or so pairs already clogging several wardrobes.

Bliss is watching his ex-wife as she basks in the glow of their daughter, and he is weighing up the probable cost of her outfit when a familiar voice brings him back to earth.

“David… Proud day… How'r'ya feeling?”

“About as useful as a double-ended condom, to be honest, Mick,” replies Bliss. “I wasn't even allowed to give Samantha away at the altar. She reckoned it was demeaning to be offered up like a sacrificial cow. So far, all I've had to do is get Daphne a pot for her tea.”

“I dunno why we blokes bother with weddings,” complains Inspector Williams, and Bliss is on the point of agreeing when he realizes that Daphne has found another reluctant ear.

“… and then we're going to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock.”

“So how much is this little jaunt costing exactly?” asks Bliss, taking the spotlight and allowing a fellow chief inspector to escape.

“Nearly thirty thousand pounds,” replies Daphne smugly. “And Minnie insists on paying for everything. ‘You can't do that,' I told her, but she's adamant. And it's hardly a jaunt, David. We're doing seven great rivers; the Zambezi, Niagara Falls, the Amazon…”

Minnie gives a wide berth to Maplin's Travel on Market Street, where Sandra Piddock shuffles longingly through a large stack of tickets as she peers out into the October murk. “Hawaii, Bali, the Seychelles, the Pyramids and the Great Wall,” she muses, then picks up the phone and listens to Minnie's recorded voice inviting her to leave a message.

“It's Sandra at Maplin's, Mrs. Dennon. Thursday afternoon. Just reminding you that we've got all the tickets ready for you and Ms. Lovelace. You'll have to collect them by tomorrow afternoon or we'll have to cancel them and you'll lose your deposit. If you have any queries…”

Minnie has no queries. She has a meeting to attend and hurries on towards the city's Norman cathedral.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Bryan is making the rounds alone as his new wife powders her nose, with the help of her mother and three of her bridesmaids.

“Gawd knows what they're doing in there,” he says to his father-in-law with a nod to the washroom.

“Twenty-five years with her mother and I never worked it out,” mumbles Bliss before changing the subject. “Young Daphne here is taking a trip around the world with her friend, Minnie.”

“Wow! That's amazing,” says Bryan with imprudent enthusiasm.

“Yes. First we're taking the Orient Express across Europe; then we're sailing the Aegean to Istanbul…”

“That sounds absolutely fabulous. I'd love to hear about it sometime, but —” starts Bryan, with a couple of hundred guests waiting to congratulate him, though he can't escape so lightly.

“… then on to Cairo; we'll be cruising up the Nile to the Pyramids…”

“I really ought to —”

“… then there's the safari in the Serengeti…”

“Great, but —”

“… the Seychelles…”

“Peter,” cuts in Samantha, appearing from nowhere. “They're calling us to start the buffet — oh. Hi, Daphne.”

“Hello, Samantha. I was just saying to your husband — oh! They've gone.”

“Never mind, Daphne,” comforts Bliss. “She completely ignored me, and I'm her father.”

Daphne shakes her head knowingly, laughing, “Children,” as if she's had a lifetime's experience.

The wet-dog smell of Minnie's saturated woollen overcoat mingles with the ecclesiastical mustiness of the ancient cathedral as she kneels and ponders what to say. Why did you let Dad die before I was old enough to know him? Where were you when Mum fell to pieces? Did you get a kick out of watching her shrivel into a lunatic? And how could you have let Alfred suffer the way he did? Did I ever miss a Christmas or Easter? “Believe,” they said. “Have faith,” they said. I believed; I had faith. Funeral after funeral, I stood with all the others, saying, “I know that my redeemer liveth.” Well, where were you when I needed you?

“What choice have you left me? You've let me down,” Minnie says aloud, her voice rising in a crescendo of anger. “I hate you now.” She pauses and tries to rein in her feelings, but it's too late and she runs down the aisle with tears streaming down her face as she turns to shout at the altar, “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

Ronnie Stapleton, forced out of the Copper Kettle by impecuniosity, is slouching past the cathedral in search of someone to scam for a fix, when the distraught old woman emerges into the rain. The young layabout sums up the situation in three strides and is already high on the proceeds of Minnie's purse when a spoiler steps in.

“Are you okay, ma'am?” asks a concerned young mother, sensing Minnie's distress, and Stapleton is forced to back off.

Minnie scurries away with a mumbled “Yes, I'll be all right.” But the young woman puts Stapleton's rapid retreat in context, and takes careful note of the hand-painted swastika on the back of his jacket as he slinks away.

“Remind me to take Minnie a piece of wedding cake,” says Daphne as the happy couple cross hands and slice into the multilayered confection at the Berkeley. “She'll be sorry she missed this.”

“I doubt it,” replies Bliss as he joins the applause for the newlyweds. “This is pretty small potatoes compared to the adventure you two have cooked up.”

“Did I mention the Orinoco…” starts Daphne, but Bliss shushes her as the groom's brother coughs into the microphone and brings the room to silence.

“It is my duty as the best man at this wedding…” he begins and is met with a concerted groan from the floor. “All right… All I'm going to say is that when the
Commissioner called for better co-operation between his senior officers and the legal profession, I don't think he had bonking in mind.”

The rain has intensified as Minnie sets her sights on her final destination — Westchester's stately railway station with its elegant glass canopy supported on cast-iron pillars — and she is so focused on the journey ahead that she takes no notice of Stapleton's shadowy figure lurking behind her as she skirts the brightly illuminated main entrance and heads for the goods yard.

“So… Chief Inspector. Have I missed the best bits?” asks an unwelcome voice as the speeches end, and Bliss spins to find Chief Superintendent Michael Edwards on his shoulder.

“Oh. You made it, sir,” says Bliss, trying hard to keep disappointment out of his tone.

“I thought I should show the flag, Dave. Esprit de corps and all that. I just hope I'm not too late to toast the happy couple.”

“Esprit de corps,” echoes Bliss sourly as Edwards paints on a smile and makes his way towards the newlyweds.

Inspector Williams creeps up behind Bliss, saying, “He's gotta bloody nerve.”

“Be nice, Mick,” says Bliss. “You know — the way we're supposed to treat villains nowadays.”

“It's easy for you to say that, flying a desk at the Yard. Anyway, you spend so much time out of the bloody country you never have to deal with the bastard.”

“Tut-tut, Mick,” cautions Bliss, though he has no intention of defending the senior officer. Neither is he
going to defend his cushy job liaising with Interpol, though he's conscious of the jaundiced eyes of some of his colleagues.

“So. How do you like shuffling papers, Dave?” asks Williams.

“It's okay,” Bliss says with little enthusiasm, “but I think I'd rather be out chasing scum.”

That's not true,
Bliss acknowledges to himself as Williams wanders away. And he drains his Dom Pérignon, thinking,
The truth is you'd rather be back in France, dancing in the Mediterranean moonlight with a certain Provençal popsy named Daisy. She's still there, waiting for you.

I know.

So, what's stopping you? You're forty-seven now. Your hair's beginning to slip south along with the flab.

It's not that bad.

Give it time.

It's impossible and you know it. She'll never leave there — what about her mother and grandmother?