No Cherubs for Melanie (2 page)

Bliss saw the look. “The wife cleaned me out,” he protested, making no attempt to clear a space for his senior officer to sit.

“Thank God for that. I thought you'd had burglars,” said DCI Bryan, dropping the telephone onto the table. He checked his fingernails for dirt and selected his most serious expression. “Murder, Dave. It's murder.”

Bliss relaxed into the enveloping security of the well-worn padded chair and felt the tension drain from him. This was not exactly what he'd been expecting and he joked in relief, “That's the trouble with Sundays, Guv. Wife, kids, gardening, traffic, being polite to the neighbours. It's murder. Bloody murder.”

Bryan let him finish. “Very funny Dave. But this is a real murder and I think you'll be interested.”

Randomly selecting a glass from several on the floor by the side of his chair, Bliss drained the syrupy dregs then stared into the empty vessel, puzzling. Where did that go?

“I've decided to quit,” he said finally, as if the DCI had not spoken — as if murder no longer intrigued him.

Peter Bryan studied Bliss's face for the first time since entering the apartment and shuddered at the realization that only six years separated them. You can count me out if this is what marriage and divorce does to you, he thought, seeing the chaos of the unkempt room mirrored in the older man's face — unshaven, unwashed probably, and sagged under the twin weights of middle age and carelessness. The sad glaze of hopelessness in Bliss's eyes startled Bryan. He'd seen the look before: prisoners, lifers usually, resigned to their fate, with nothing worth anticipating beyond the possible introduction of in-cell flush toilets and the certain visit of the HIV nurse.

“Why quit?” Bryan ventured with an upbeat lilt. “You've got at least ten good years in you for a full pension, and you are — well, you were — a damn good detective.” Bliss gave a ‘couldn't-give-a-shit' shrug, and slumped fully into the chair. “I wanna get on with my life.”

“I didn't know you had a life to get on with,” Bryan retorted, immediately trying to bite back his words.

But Bliss took little notice. “You said I'd be interested in this case. Why?”

Did Bryan detect a glimmer of curiosity in the other man's dark brown eyes? “Have you seen the papers?” he asked, but one glance round the room told him,
Not
.

“Guv, is this some sort of party game or did you bugger up my Sunday afternoon for a reason?”

“Inspector!” the DCI began, then checked himself. What is there to bugger up, he wondered. If this is life, it can only improve. But, Bliss was off duty after all. “OK, Dave. I'll be straight with you.” He stabbed a finger at the whisky glass. “Word has come from above that unless you stop pissing away your life on gut-rot and get back to work, you're finished.”

Bliss sneered, “I was right. That's what I thought you came to tell me. So why give me the whole spiel about a murder?”

“Huh! Well, you were wrong. I was only supposed to tell you about the murder, to see if you had enough bottle to pull yourself together long enough to take the case.”

He's lying, thought Bliss, but couldn't avoid looking sheepish. “Try me then — let's see if I've got any bottle left.”

“Does the name Martin Gordonstone mean anything to you?”

“Yeah. He's that posh geezer who owns a fancy restaurant. Usually pissed as a rat, swearing at customers, chucking them out if he doesn't like 'em, that sort of thing.”

“
Was
that posh geezer,” corrected Bryan. “Anything else?”

Bliss missed the innuendo. “Are we back to twenty questions?”

“Sorry Dave. I was hoping you'd remember.”

“Remember what for Chrissake?”

“Nineteen seventy-seven. You dealt with the death of his daughter.”

Bliss's face went through a contortion that could have been mistaken for heartburn as his mind exploded with memory. “Melanie Gordonstone?” he queried in a disbelieving whisper, “You mean…”

The other man, eyes wide in agreement, nodded quickly. Bliss got the picture, found himself sinking into his mind, and his eyes blanked as he focused on the images that sprang up behind them. A child's white, lifeless body drifted into view, floating face down in a pond, like a scuba diver scouring a reef. Only this diver was wearing neither a snorkel nor a mask. Time hadn't diminished the memory. His first child fatality as a policeman. His first child fatality, period.

“You'll always remember your first dead 'un,” the training school instructor had said. “'Specially a kid.” How true, Bliss thought, how true.

He pulled himself back to the present and stumbled over his tongue. “I… I didn't realize it was him… I had no idea it was the same bloke. I… I didn't think he was into restaurants.”

“He wasn't back then,” replied Bryan. “He was a stockbroker. Made a mint and got out years before everyone else lost their shirts on Black Monday. Very lucky or bloody good timing, who knows?”

DCI Bryan was still talking, unaware of the maelstrom raging in Bliss's mind as he fought to disengage his thoughts from the image of the dead six-year-old, arms akimbo, embracing the water, while a halo of dark auburn hair floated around her head and a school of koi carp curiously inspected the newcomer to their world.

“Accidental drowning wasn't it?” Bliss looked up. “Sorry?” he said, realizing he'd missed the question; the haunting image was still there, overpowering all his thoughts.

“His daughter's drowning. Accident wasn't it?”

“That was the coroner's verdict.”

“It
was
an accident wasn't it?” Bryan asked, his tone lifted a half pitch in surprise.

Bliss pondered for a second then nodded firmly. “Yes.” But his expression wouldn't have fooled a social worker and he knew it.

Bryan caught the look and tried to make eye contact. Bliss quickly dropped his head for a close study of his left thumbnail but only found the deadpan features of a lifeless little girl. “Was it an accident?” he began quietly, hiding behind the softness of his words. “I don't know. It was just a bit suspicious at the time, but I couldn't put my finger on it.” Bliss paused, then added with calculated casualness, “I've often wondered if her father did it.”

“Why?”

“It's difficult to explain, but he was sort of funny, uncooperative almost.”

“No. I meant, why would he have done it? Why would he have killed his own daughter?”

Bliss levered himself out of the chair, fighting against the images in his mind, needing space to think. “Do you want a drink, Guv?”

“Tea would be fine.”

“There's no milk,” Bliss explained, not apologizing. “I've got some of that powdered stuff.”

DCI Bryan pulled a face. “I'll take it black. So tell me about the daughter.”

Bliss reached the kitchenette in two strides and fiddled unnecessarily with the kettle. He would have been out the back door, if he had one, gulping lungfuls of fresh air and searching the sky for a bird or aeroplane's contrail, anything to take his mind off the dead little girl. Both hands shook — it could be the whisky, he reasoned, but knew different as he hunched over the sink and stared out the window at his bleak concrete neighbours. Seconds later, dark images of Melanie Gordonstone blotted out the September sun and dragged him down into
the sink of scummy washing up water. Plunging his hands in he hoped to find a cup, but felt only a clammy child's body with stiff matchstick arms and legs — all the elasticity of life gone. Suddenly, the water seemed to boil; he whipped out his scalded hands and found himself confronted with an image of her body, her wet summery dress clinging opaquely to her skin, the thin fabric creased into a fold between her spindly legs. Twenty years later, but he could almost feel the wetness on his mouth as it enfolded her unresponsive lips in a desperate fight to revive her.

“Breathe please,” he had implored, and a bubble of snot had inflated from one of her tiny nostrils.

“Breathe,” he had shouted, as he frantically compressed her androgynous chest, willing the heart to beat, the lungs to inflate, the mouth to suck.

“Where's your keyboard, Dave?” the chief inspector called, still scouting around the small flat looking for signs of life. “You do still play don't you? I hope you haven't given that up…”

But Bliss couldn't hear. The images in the murky sink water wouldn't let him go, trapping him in a whirlpool of images that rekindled the panic and fear and left him feeling as helpless as he did at the time.

“Breathe damn you, breathe,” he was still yelling inside when the singing kettle eventually broke the spell. Swiping his hand across his forehead he swept the images away and smeared beads of sweat into his hair, but his voice cracked with emotion as he tried to continue the conversation. More than twenty years and he still choked up at the thought of that floppy little body lying in the sunshine on the pond's grassy bank.

“I tried mouth-to-mouth…” he called from the kitchenette, his voice trailing off, then, after a moment, he turned abruptly and demanded. “Have you any idea
what it's like, Guv?” He knew the answer and didn't wait for a response. “How
could
you know? She was only six for God's sake. Only a year or so older than my girl at the time.”

DCI Bryan put on a reassuring voice. “Kids are always the worst, Dave. You know that. Give me some clapped out old beggar who kicks the bucket and it doesn't put me off me steak and kidney; but a kid… ”

Tea in hand, Bliss returned to the main room, shaking his head, interrupting. “No. This one was different. She wasn't just any kid. She was so pretty. She looked like a little stone angel. What do they call them?” He delved into his memory, came up with another image of the little girl, and answered his own question. “Cherub. That's what she was like. One of those marble cherubs you see on gravestones.” He paused, and a vision of a stoneless little grave flitted through his mind — a pathetic grave, just a little mound with a numbered marker. But just how big a mound can you make when you're only six years old, he wondered. “She was the first real dead child I'd seen,” his monologue continued, eyes fixed firmly on a carpet stain, the origin of which he'd long since forgotten. “She didn't look dead. Just asleep. I kept thinking, She'll wake up in a minute.” Twenty years worth of guilt bubbled to the surface and his words were hushed as if he were alone with his memory — a memory he would rather not share. “The body was so cold — as cold as marble. She felt like a… like a big plastic doll. Later, much later, I began to think, Why was she so cold? The water was cold but no one ever challenged the time of death.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Bliss looked up sharply, almost caught unawares by he presence of an audience. “I often wondered. What if she'd been dead longer?”

“Why did you think that?”

“According to the parents — her father anyway — she had been missing for no more than ten minutes or so, and his wife backed him up; well, at least, she didn't contradict him. According to them, Margaret had come running, crying, saying she'd lost Melanie.”

The chief inspector cocked his head, “Margaret?”

“Her older sister.”

“So, they called the police. What's wrong with that?”

How many times over the years had Bliss asked himself the same question. What's wrong with calling the police? Nothing. But why not go and look for her first? Why call the police straight away? And, more significantly, why had he never asked those questions of the parents? He had never asked, not really, although Martin Gordonstone had clearly anticipated the questions as he and his wife had greeted Bliss on the front steps of their country retreat, looking like Mr. Snobby Stockbroker waiting to welcome the Porches and Jags of dinner guests.

Bliss took up the conversation again as if the chief inspector was somehow privy to the images in mind. “‘We thought it best to wait for you to arrive,' Gordonstone said, or something like that.”

“So why didn't they look for her?” queried the DCI. Bliss shrugged. “I don't know.” But he was lying. Inwardly he knew only too well — his twenty-year-old conversation with Gordonstone was replaying in his mind with the clarity of a digital tape recording. And he clearly remembered the way that Gordonstone, in doeskin loafers and designer jeans, had lorded over him at the time. “We're absolutely certain she can't be far away,” the stockbroker had pompously whined. “You shouldn't have any difficulty finding her.” Leaving Bliss thinking that the other man felt himself above searching for missing persons, even one of his own.

“It only took me a minute to find her,” continued Bliss. “I remember walking across the lawn into the woods, calling her name, and there she was, face down in the pond. They could have found her if they'd looked.”

“But they didn't look?”

“Obviously not.”

“And you didn't find it strange?”

Strange? His mind shuttled back to the pond and the lifeless little bundle of flesh as he picked at a split nail until it broke off and jerked him back to the moment.

“Strange? Not at the time. Afterwards, sometime afterwards, I started wondering about a lot of things but I didn't know what to do. The coroner's verdict was clear. No hint of foul play. No unresolved issues. Accidental drowning.” Bliss squeezed the remains from a bottle of scotch into a glass and took a gulp before continuing. “Look, Guv. I've never told anyone before but I'm pretty sure he killed his daughter.”

“That's just your imagination, Dave. Time has a way of distorting things.”

“And sometimes it makes things clearer.”

“True. But why the father?”

“You know how it is, Guv. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling something isn't right.”