No Cherubs for Melanie (11 page)

The man who shot the videotape had not been impressed with
L'Haute Cuisinier
, even before the episode with the owner. Bliss, anxious to view the tape, found himself standing on the threshold of George Weston's apartment listening to a catalogue of complaints about the restaurant, which included the prices, the parking, the service and, amusingly, the height of the food.

“Why is it,” the man demanded, fiercely stretching his bright red suspenders in a show of annoyance, “Why is it, that some chefs believe indifferent food can be improved by giving it a vertical aspect?” Weston strongly suspected that they were pandering to the American tourists, whom, he believed, were far more likely to applaud an audacious culinary balancing act than a subtle gastronomic conjuring trick. “Even the names signify loftiness,” he whined nasally, his affected Oxbridge accent overlaying a Cotswold twang. “Gateau Mont Blanc, Mile High soufflé; A stack of… Whatever.” The
only thing higher than the food was the price, he moaned. “Even the name of the place,
L'Haute Cuisinier
…”

Bliss managed to stop him momentarily by suggesting they should go inside, but Weston's griping began again as soon as the door was shut. “Why?” he continued loudly, thumbs still tucked into suspenders. “Why is it so necessary to set fire to everything in front of the customers?”

At this point Bliss cut him short and more or less demanded he hand over the tape. But he was determined to have a final all-encompassing grumble and, sounding like a newspaper's restaurant critic, he summed up
L'Haute Cuisinier
as, “A high class brothel for gourmands: piles of trashy food plastered in cheap perfumes and tarted up with gaudy cosmetics to make it appealing.”

Finally consenting to get round to the tape, he apologized that he only had a copy. The original, he claimed, had been given to a television reporter who had called earlier. Bliss's black look left Weston in no doubt that he should not have disposed of the original, especially to a reporter.

“You should have come first thing this morning, when I called, if you wanted it that badly,” he said defensively, leaving Bliss stumped for a reply.

Bliss would have viewed the tape there and then, but felt a visual reminder of the restaurant would only be inviting a further critical tirade. “Thank you very much, Sir,” he said quickly, as he headed toward the door.

“I say. Could I have a receipt?”

“I'll mail you one,” replied Bliss over his shoulder, with absolutely no intention of doing so.

“I've picked up that video of Gordonstone kicking the bucket,” Bliss said lightly, poking his head into Detective Chief Inspector Bryan's office following a pub
lunch and a whole packet of Polo mints. “Do you want to have a shufty?”

Bryan appeared taken by surprise. “Oh! Hang on, Dave. Come in a second will you, I need to have a word.”

Bliss strolled in, noticing a recent addition to Bryan's already extensive assortment of houseplants. “It's beginning to look like a greenhouse in here.”

The chief inspector idly fingered the leaf of a plant that, to Bliss, may just as easily have been a rose as a rhododendron. “I'm thinking of starting a gardening club. Interested in joining?”

“In my poky place — you're joking. I couldn't grow a decent-sized bacteria.”

The DCI forced a laugh. “It looked as though you were trying.”

“I've had a good clean up since then,” Bliss replied sheepishly.

DCI Bryan picked up a wire paper clip he'd been using as an earwax remover and began fiddling with it, flexing it back and forth. “Dave, there's no easy way to say this,” he began, his eyes glued to the paper clip. The wire snapped with a click; Bryan flicked the bits toward a waste bin and looked Bliss in the eye. “I've decided to take you off the Gordonstone case. I'll find you something else.”

“What's going on, Guv?”

“It was my mistake. I think it would be better if we eased you back in with something smaller. A burglary or fraud perhaps.”

“This is crap. The day before yesterday you were pleading with me to take it. Now you want me off it?”

“It's Edwards,” the chief inspector admitted.

“What?”

“He wants you off the case. Right now.”

“Why?”

“This isn't a murder enquiry, Dave; this is politics. I warned you to play it quietly; you went in like a bull in a china shop; now the press are onto it and he's furious.”

“The press were bound to find out sooner or later. Anyway, it would have looked funny if the first time the public knew it was murder was when we announced it at the inquest. There must be more to it than that.”

Bryan fidgeted with his fingers. “There is. I told you to leave the past alone. He doesn't want to get involved —”

Bliss cut in with irritation. “But he was involved. He was in charge of Gordonstone's wife's case.”

“Quite.”

“So why does he want me off the case?”

“Think about it, Dave. If you proved Gordonstone killed his wife it would make him look a fool.”

“He doesn't need me to make him look a fool. In any case, whoever takes over is just as likely to come to the same conclusion.”

“Leave it alone, Dave.”

“Damned if I will,” shouted Bliss, starting to rise.

Bryan switched tack and attempted persuasion. “Dave, don't do anything rash. If Edwards had his way you'd be off the force.”

“On what grounds?”

“He mentioned psychological unfitness.”

“The psychiatrist gave me a clean bill.”

Bryan spread his upturned hands in a throwaway gesture, which was reflected in the nonchalance of his tone. “You know what psychiatrists are like, Dave. They blow with the wind. One day they'll say you're as sane as…” he shrugged but couldn't think of anything sufficiently sane to prove his point. “And the next you are only fit for the loony bin.”

“You mean they'll say what they are told to say.”

“Something like that.”

“They wouldn't do that,” cried Bliss, then added somewhat uncertainly. “Would they?”

Bryan's sly look implied that they would. “Don't take it personally…” he began, leaving Bliss thinking that whenever anybody said that he could be sure they were about to be exceedingly personal.

He wants me off this case for his own bloody reasons, Bliss thought, and shot out of the chair. “It's too late. You gave me this case and I intend finishing it,” he said as he made for the door. “If he wants me off the case he can damn well tell me himself.”

Bryan tried to mollify him. “Look Dave. He told me that if you didn't drop the case I should suspend you pending a full psycho—”

“I'll see about that,” he shouted, clipping the chief inspector off mid-sentence.

Bliss's footsteps pounded down the corridor, shaking furniture and rattling ornaments in adjacent offices. His face, set firmly in Edward's direction, was growing angrier by the second and he burst into Edwards' office, fuse lit and primed for detonation, but was unprepared for the salvo of verbal shrapnel fired in his direction by the expectant senior officer.

“How dare you just march into my office? You're an incapable lout, not fit to scrub the shithouse.” Scruffy, drunken, and stupid entered into the tirade, each preceded by a liberal assortment of foul expletives and he climaxed with, “You incompetent bastard.” Edwards wound down with, “You even lost your car,” as if that were Bliss's own fault and stabbed in a final, deeply wounding, sneer. “No wonder your wife left you,” as if that were Bliss's own fault as well.

Some clerical workers in surrounding offices found themselves physically ducking the barrage, while other police officers pulled embarrassed faces at each other and winced in mock pain.

Bliss started to leave. “I'm not going to listen to this.”

Edwards was at the door in a flash, stretched to his full height in his built-up shoes and puffed out like a predatory beach bum.

“Sit down!” he yelled with vehemence just short of hysteria. His booming command energized the atmosphere and deluded Bliss into believing that the substantially shorter officer was towering over him. Losing both his momentum and his nerve, Bliss sat. But his firing pin had been pulled, the fuse within him was burning — the fuse which had smouldered for ten months now fanned into flames by anger, resentment, guilt, and fear. Anger against Edwards, the world, and whomever had stolen his car; resentment against Gangly George for usurping his wife; guilt for letting Gordonstone off the hook; and finally — the fear of an uncertain future.

Edwards reached his chair on the other side of his leather-topped mahogany desk and sat, incognizant of the explosion building in the man opposite. He completely misdiagnosed the symptoms of Bliss's pent-up frustration, mistaking his angry fixed stare for insolence and his tensed posture for defiance. Three words from Edwards, delivered quietly but with meaningful venom, were all it took. “You fucking disgrace.”

The fuse torched the detonator, the detonator blasted the dynamite and Bliss erupted with a ferocity few would have believed possible of the usually mild man. Leaping to his feet and shouting, “You bastard!” he hoisted the immense desk and hurled it in Edwards' direction. Edwards fell from his chair as he scrabbled to get out of the way and was hit by a storm of paper cascading
from the drawers as hundreds of heavy files burst open. A computer screen imploded as it crunched on the floor. Telephones, lamps, photographs, and an assortment of stationery flew all around him. Edwards, on his back on the floor, disappearing under the flying debris, flung out his hands in defence and there was an audible
crack
as his right wrist gave way under the weight of the heavy wooden desk.

For the briefest of moments there was calm in the turmoil, like the patch of clear blue sky in the eye of a hurricane, and then, in a kind of delayed reaction, a weighty onyx ashtray slid slowly down the inclined leather surface of the desk and smacked Edwards firmly between the eyes.

No one rushed to investigate. Herd instinct cautioned against involvement in a solitary victim's struggle for survival. In any case, violent noises from the direction of Edwards' office were not uncommon. He was frequently heard angrily stamping around, raging about this or that, and viciously lashing out at the furniture. Rumour had it he'd even kicked the odd policeman, although none had ever put his masculinity on the line by publicly complaining.

Bliss, stupefied but not wholly unimpressed by the result of his action, stood back for a fraction of a second, examined his hands in disbelief, and seriously wondered, Did I do that? Life changed so radically in those few seconds that his brain initially refused to comprehend the consequences, then he found himself sharing the desire of a million other victims of self-inflicted suffering: the desire to go back in time just one minute and select a different route. But the deed was done; there was no going back.

Edwards pulled his thoughts together, struggled unsuccessfully to release himself from the weight of the
desk using his undamaged arm, then reached for the phone which had fallen beside him. Bliss made a grab for it, got there first, and yanked the cord out of the wall. He fought the instinct to run and actually bent with the intention of raising the heavy desk off his senior officer. He would have continued had Edwards not started screaming, “Help, help!” like a drowning man.

Bliss was out of the door in a flash.

“Stop that man!” The cry followed him out of the room.

“I've just resigned,” he explained to several heads poking cautiously out of adjoining offices, and he slammed the door on the helpless superintendent.

Heads nodded with sympathetic understanding.

“Stop that man,” yelled Edwards.

Bliss walked quickly down the corridor. “I don't think he wants me to leave really.”

The understanding nods broke into smiles.

“Stop him!”

“I never knew he cared so much.”

Smiles turned into laughter as Bliss boarded the world's slowest elevator and descended to the lobby, expecting at any moment that the building would crash on top of him.

The story streamed through the grapevine at Internet speed, reaching the divisional commander and the constable's locker room simultaneously. However, the furrowed frown of the commander contrasted sharply to the buzz of delighted excitement in the lower ranks. Any poke in the establishment's eye was cause for celebration among the grunts and, according to several wildly exaggerated accounts, Bliss had certainly poked Edwards' eye.

An ambulance had, strictly speaking, been unnecessary for a broken wrist and a bump on the forehead, but Edwards insisted. This was one molehill he was determined to turn into a mountain.

“Dad, where are you?” asked Samantha in response to Bliss's call.

“Sam, I can't talk, they may have bugged your phone.”

“Can they do that?” she asked with a sudden chill.

“Legally… no. But I wouldn't put it past them.

“You only broke his wrist for Christ's sake. It's not murder.”

“There's more to it than that.”

“Don't be silly, Dad. You're being paranoid.”

“They want me off the case.”

“I know…” she paused. “Dad,” she continued kindly, “Maybe they're right.”

He couldn't believe it. She was on their side.

“What d'ye mean… Maybe they're right? Edwards has been on my back for years. He'll love this. Broken wrist, that's GBH you know: grievous bodily harm. An indictable offence in case you've forgotten.”

“But Dad, I hear you were provoked.”

“How do you… Who told you?”

“Chief Inspector Bryan was here looking for you. Said you should turn yourself in. He gave me the usual crap about making it easy on you.”