No Cherubs for Melanie (7 page)

Every day she had the same inviolate routine. Every action, every movement, was choreographed; she was like a one-woman film noir destined to run eternally. One character going through the same motions, wearing the same costume, saying the same lines, moving to the same blocking. A solitary pitiful character played with passion and energy, but played without any desire for acclaim.

Betty-Ann had broken her routine on very few occasions, and then only for a specific purpose. Once, not long after Melanie's death, before being fully committed to a lifetime of self-immolation, she had left her room to stand on a railway station platform, fully resolved to commit suicide. Twenty or more trains had passed and each time she pledged that the next would be her executioner. But when each train arrived, she shrank back from the edge of the platform, promising herself that the next one would be the one. Eventually she was harassed by an elderly shrew of a ticket inspector who nastily told her to either buy a ticket or leave. “What a country,” she had mumbled. “You even need a ticket to die.”

But she couldn't kill herself — it was too easy. Death is not a punishment, she convinced herself. Death is an escape from punishment.

Punishment for what?

For what you did.

No. Not what I did. What I didn't do.

Bliss's eyes were still rivetted to the chandelier.

“How did it happen?” he asked the chef without looking around.

“Suicide they said. Something official like… ‘The balance of her mind was disturbed.'”

That's possible, thought Bliss, recalling the frail frightened woman whose obvious good looks were marred by the ravages of grief following her daughter's death. But something in the chef's tone suggested he thought otherwise.

“When?”

“It must have been almost ten years ago; could have been more. She kept herself to herself, never came down to the restaurant. Stayed in the apartment all day. Apparently she had one of those phobias… What do they call it?”

“Agoraphobia,” suggested Bliss.

“Something like that.”

“What about her daughter?”

“Lumpy girl…” the chef stopped and thought. “Young woman really, I suppose. She was about twenty but you wouldn't have thought it. Always bouncing around the place bumping into things. Used to bring half-dead animals and birds into the kitchen asking for food for them. I soon put a stop to that. Health regulations, and all that.”

“So tell me about the suicide.”

“From what I could make out it happened in the middle of the night. She came down and tied the end of the chandelier's rope around her neck. Then she must
have unhooked the rope from the cleat and the weight of the chandelier…”

Bliss stared up at the monstrous silver and crystal bauble, trying to gauge its weight. “And it was definitely suicide?”

“So they said, although more than one person thought he'd done her in. You see there was no note or anything, but she'd been funny for years. Her other daughter drowned you know, when she was three or four.”

“Six actually.”

“So you knew about that then?”

“Done my homework.”

“Well, apparently she was never right after that. Round the twist they said, that's why the old man kept her out of the way. Some people reckon he kept her locked in her room from that day on.”

Suddenly everything became clear and Bliss swore under breath, “Shit.”

“Inspector, are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, but inwardly he was feeling some of Betty-Ann's pain. She had known all those years, he realized. Known her husband killed her youngest daughter and lived with that torment every day. No wonder her body language was wrong when I interviewed her, he thought. That's why she couldn't look me in the eye, why she couldn't answer any questions without checking with her dear husband. It wasn't surprising he kept her out of the way all those years. He didn't want her breaking down in front of the staff or the guests, saying, “Oh by the way, did I mention my husband drowned my little girl?”

The Grand Marnier in the gateau had started him drinking early, and the chef's revelation that Gordonstone's wife had committed suicide didn't help. If ever there was a woman with a reason for murdering her husband, thought Bliss, she was it; but being dead and buried for ten years gave her a fairly convincing alibi. He would just have a single scotch he kidded himself. The news about Betty-Ann's death gave him a convenient excuse, as if he needed one. A toast to a woman he'd met briefly twenty years earlier — a woman with whom, in some ridiculous way, he suddenly felt an affinity.

He selected a pub as opposed to a liquor store. Home held too many bad memories, and he didn't fancy drinking alone there. Anyway it was early, very early. Too early to start in earnest; he would have to drive home from the pub, so he couldn't afford to risk drinking much.

A sullen twenty-year-old in a baseball cap and Grateful Dead T-shirt was attempting alcoholic suicide
at a nearby table. “I wuz up all night, thinkin' about my life,” he said to a similarly dressed companion. “Where I am? Where I'm going? What I'm gonna do?” he added, with the rhetoric of a depressed pop singer. As if he had a choice, as if fate had not already laid out its plan. “That's the story of my effin' life.”

Bliss was tempted to tell him, from experience, that he may as well get used to it, when a fierce-faced young woman stormed up to the young man and casually dumped his beer in his lap. Punch-up, thought Bliss, readying to leave. But the man didn't flinch; just turned to his companion with his voice so full of controlled anger his jaw was quaking, and said, “I guess it's over then.” Bliss sat back, wishing he could have ended his relationship with Sarah so succinctly.

An hour and three drinks later he sat contemplating the smoke-stained ceiling, trying to make out familiar images in the dirty brown tar. Mother Teresa's profile swirled into view, but vanished as a commotion at the bar attracted his attention. The landlord had grabbed the phone and was semaphoring to Bliss with his free arm. “Excuse me mate someone's just stolen your car,” he called across the bar as the emergency operator answered.

Bliss spun to look out of the window. His car was gone. “What? Who the hell would want my car?”

“Joyriders,” the landlord replied, after he asked for “Police.”

“How did you know it was mine?”

“I saw you drive in. Anyway, that's the spot they usually pinch 'em from.”

Bliss put on a crestfallen look. “It'll probably be wrecked.”

The landlord gave him a look which said, I've seen your car, then spoke into the phone as he was connected to the police operations room.

Catching the bus to work the following morning, Bliss was grateful the rain had eased. In the circumstances he would have been justified in asking the duty officer to send a car, but he didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of having a laugh at his expense. The early shift are probably pissing themselves already, he assumed, rightly.

“Did you hear about poor old Dave Bliss,” one of them had said, “Someone nicked his wife, he gets into a plane crash, goes sick for nearly a year, then someone half-inches his car.

“When?”

“Last night outside the Four Feathers up Dalton Road.” They laughed. “I'd rather someone nicked my missus than my car,” said a wag.

“I wouldn't go sick for ten minutes if someone nicked my missus,” said another.

“Who would want to nick your missus?” asked a third with a malicious twist…

“She's not that bad,” he replied, paradoxically defending her.

There was a message waiting for Bliss on his desk; a response from a George Weston to a small article in the morning papers revealing that a police spokesperson had refused to confirm or deny that the death of Martin Gordonstone was now being treated as suspicious. But first he had to deal with another note — hand scrawled in an obvious attempt to disguise the writer's identity. “This is the best we can do but it's worth more than your old one,” a joker had scribbled, and left it attached to a battered dinky toy, hurriedly borrowed, Bliss guessed, from the lost property office. Dropping
the toy and the note straight into a waste bin, and ignoring the guffaws of the assembled pranksters, he read the other message. It advised him that Weston had phoned to say he made a videotape of Gordonstone collapsing in the restaurant the night he died.

The vultures drifted away after one of them fished the toy out of the trash bin, leaving Bliss to contact the videographer and arrange to collect the tape.

A succinct third message awaited him in his pigeonhole.
Report to Superintendent Edwards at 11:30 a.m. today
.

A pep talk, assumed Bliss, immediately feeling more depressed than ever. He could guess the format if not the actual words. Welcome back, tidy yourself up, pull yourself together, lay off the booze, and stop farting about.

Central records opened at eight-thirty. Bliss strolled in at nine-fifteen and found the three clerks still clustered around a copy of the daily nude.

“Not disturbing you, am I?” he asked as sarcastically as possible. Two of the three men drifted languidly in different directions without comment, leaving the third to carefully fold the newspaper as if it were a precious manuscript.

“Yeah Mate. What d'ye want?”

“Detective Inspector to you,” shot back Bliss, resolving to bring up the question of uncivil civilians at the next divisional meeting.

The Betty-Ann Gordonstone file had been shredded, the clerk pronounced after a brief search through his records.

“Shredded!” cried Bliss.

“That's right, Inspector. It was non-suspicious sudden death according to my records.”

“Suicide,” said Bliss.

“Maybe it were. It don't say here. But it were destroyed in 1999.”

“Why?”

“You should read standing orders, Mate,” suggested the clerk, then he quoted the relevant order verbatim in an affected official voice. “Destruction of documents: non-suspicious sudden death files to be destroyed after seven years, unless the officer in the case specifically requests otherwise.”

“I know that,” replied Bliss untruthfully, but with sufficient conviction that most would have believed he was fully conversant with the standing order on the subject. “But I also know that files often hang around for years before they are shredded.”

“Not this one. Like I said, it's gorn.”

“Are you sure?”

The civilian clerk took the enquiry as an affront. “Ruddy coppers,” he mumbled aloud, but kept the rest of his outrage under his breath. “Think they should be treated like ruddy God. I could run rings around most of 'em.” The phone rang, providing him with an opportunity to make Bliss wait while he took a lengthy message. Undeterred, Bliss waited; there was more to the Betty-Ann Gordonstone case and he wanted answers. Finally, the clerk put the phone down and looked at Bliss as if to say, Are you still here?

“Do you expect me to check my files again?”

His
files? Bloody cheek. “Yes please.”

That wasn't the correct answer; not the answer the clerk was expecting. A polite, “No, that's all right, I believe you,” would have sufficed. The clerk slowly took off his spectacles and made a performance cleaning
the lenses, contemplating various ways of thwarting Bliss's request. In the end he simply opted to make a song and dance about finding the right book and after several false starts eventually slung the open book on the counter between them,

“There you are,” he shouted triumphantly, “See for yourself.”

Betty-Ann Gordonstone

Born 23rd June, 1955

Deceased15th October, 1992

File Location. Destroyed 15th October, 1999

“That's seven years to the day,” said Bliss, more to himself than the clerk.

“Told you,” the clerk replied in a childlike manner.

Someone hadn't wasted much time in destroying the file, Bliss noted, and reread the ‘Cause of Death' column: suicide. Then he spotted the name of the investigating officer in the far right-hand column: Detective Inspector Edwards.

“Is that Superintendent Edwards?” he enquired.

“How should I know?”

“Is there any way of checking?”

“Yeah,” said the clerk, slamming the book shut with unnecessary force. “Go and ask him.”

Superintendent Edwards pretended to be absorbed in a file on his desk when Bliss arrived at his office at 11:30 A.M. “Shut the door,” Edwards shouted, apparently equating brusqueness with authority. “Nice to have you back,” he added, removing his spectacles, although something in his tone suggested he didn't consider Bliss's return to be at all welcome. “I hear you've taken the Gordonstone case.”

“Yes, Sir. Actually I wanted to talk to you about that.” Edwards looked up quickly. “Shoot.”

“Well, it's early days yet, but I suspect the motive may have been revenge. You see I now suspect he murdered his wife in 1992—” Bliss would have continued with his theory but Edwards' dismissive wave made it clear that he should stop.

“Officer, let me put your mind at ease. I can assure you Betty-Ann Gordonstone's death was definitely suicide.”

“Suicide,” echoed Bliss.

“That was the verdict. Do you have a problem with that?”

“You bet I do, Sir. It wasn't suicide. It was murder. He killed her.”

“Inspector…” “Sir…” Bliss tried interrupting, but was silenced by the forcefulness of Edwards' response.

“As I was saying Inspector, it was suicide. You're not questioning my professional integrity are you?”

Now what, thought Bliss, already feeling the senior officer's bite.

“I'm sorry…” he began. “But…”

“Before you answer, just remember, Inspector Bliss, you weren't involved in the case. You probably haven't even seen the file.”