The Fish Kisser (28 page)

Leaving George on the front doorstep, the two detectives fought their way to the rear of the house over the unofficial waste dump. Clambering through the garbage and debris they forged a path through the stringy vegetation, Jackson scything wildly at a patch of nettles with a length of rusty guttering, disturbing a frenzy of flies.

“Ugh. Want something for lunch,” he called to his partner, finding the fly-blown carcase of a rat and poking it with his lance.

“Disgusting sod,” replied the other as he climbed over the rubble of the dividing wall into the wilderness of Roger's backyard.

George Mitchell greeted him as he rounded the back of the house. “Bloody eyesore that mess is—council should get it cleared up.”

“How the hell did you get here?” he enquired, astounded at the appearance of the old soldier.

“I came through old Daft Jack's next door,” he replied, using his thumb to point at the gap in the decayed wall between Roger's house and his next door neighbour and, following the thumb, the detective found himself looking at the scarecrow figure of an old man, with wispy grey beard and antiqued leather skin. Jack grinned, and all three of his teeth shone green in the morning sunlight.

“He's not really daft,” said George as if Jack were not there. “It's just that he's deaf, so the kids make fun of him.”

Jack remained on his side of the dilapidated wall, fascinated by the unusual activity.

“Can he hear anything?” whispered Jackson.

“Oh yeah. When he's got 'is deaf-aid on. He 'as it off most of the time to save on batteries, so you have to tell him.” He turned to the old man, put his right hand to his own ear and, with a twisting motion, yelled, “Earring aid.”

Jack fiddled with the device until it let out a shriek that made him jump, spent two minutes adjusting it, and ten seconds saying he'd never heard or seen Roger. The excitement over, he promptly clicked it off and disappeared back inside his house.

The two detectives turned their attention to Roger's back door—still firmly locked.

“We really should get a search warrant,” said Jackson for George's benefit, though he had already made up his mind not to bother.

“If it's empty we won't have a problem,” replied his partner.

George overheard. “There's nothing in there, I can tell you that for now.”

“How do you know?”

“One of your sergeants came by after you left yesterday
and I let him in,” said George, failing to mention that he too had been in the house.

“How?”

“With a key.” Then he added sarcastically, “How do you think I let him in?”

Jackson's partner ignored the sarcasm. “Oh great, now you tell us—c'mon let us in then.”

George carefully examined the highly polished toecaps of his boots for several seconds. “I let 'im take the key,” he mumbled, feeling guilty for some reason, as if he had been personally responsible for its safe-keeping.

A few minutes later they stood in the front hallway, just inches from the cupboard under the stairs, directly above Trudy's dungeon. The “accidentally smashed” kitchen window was letting in a welcome breath of fresh air.

“Sewer,” said Jackson with a sniff, as his partner shuffled through the heap of mail squashed into a pile behind the front door.

“This one's undone,” he lied, as his finger prised open the flap of an envelope that appeared to contain more than junk mail. Slipping out the contents, he recognized the letterhead from a furniture store. “According to this, LeClarc had a new bed delivered here back in May,” he announced. “Phew, look at the price.”

Jackson peered over his shoulder. “Well where is it then?”

George unintentionally gave away his previous incursion. “There's no bed in here.” But the detectives overlooked his remark, intent on searching for more documentary evidence.

A letter from British Telecom fell open with some assistance. “There should be a phone here somewhere,” said Jackson, skimming the printed page. “Here's the number. This was May as well—the fourth apparently.”

His partner flipped open his cellphone and tapped in the number. The distant phone rang twice in his ear but no one in the house heard it, then a string of high pitched bleeps alerted him to the fact that he was trying to communicate with a machine.

“It's a fax or a computer modem,” he said, with a confused look.

The computer screen, just ten feet below, leapt silently into life “STANDBY—MODEM CONNECTING.”

The sudden movement caught Trudy's eye and, with only a moment's hesitation, sent her scrabbling across the room, oblivious to the pain in her hands and knees.

Detective Constable Jackson had shut the lid on his phone and cut the connection before Trudy even reached the machine. “CONNECTION—ABORTED,” flashed three times before the screen went blank. Tears streamed down her face. “MUM, MUM, MUM,” she typed frantically, then sat sobbing and coughing, staring at the screen, begging it to try again. “MUM HELP.”

“There should be a phone jack somewhere,” said Jackson's partner as he probed around the hallway and on into the front room where he discovered the recently installed socket. “It's here, and there's no phone plugged in,” he called, as if that somehow explained the modem's response.

D.C. Jackson, rifling through the mail, needed more light and tentatively toyed with the ancient brass light switch before finally giving it a flick—whipping his hand quickly away as if it might bite. “The powers on,” he pronounced unnecessarily, when they were bathed in the sepia glow of an ancient bare bulb, then he dropped to the floor and swept up a number of long black hairs.

George Mitchell took once glance and brushed them off, saying, “Mrs. Papadropolis,” as if she'd lived there the day before.

“What colour was Roger's hair?”

“Almost white, sort of straggly and thin.”

“Couldn't be his then,” he said, dropping them carelessly back on the floor.

Some newly made scratch marks on the hallway walls caught his attention and he traced them. “Probably where they brought in the bed,” he mused. “ There's not a lot of room.”

Five minutes later they'd searched the entire house, confirmed the bed was not there, and stood in the cramped hallway wondering what to do next. D.C. Jackson expressed his thoughts aloud, seeking ratification from the others. “There's no phone but the number works; the power's on; there's no bed but there should be; there's no furniture or belongings, yet LeClarc was living here—the Met. Team saw him, so did George.”

“Sort of living here,” corrected his partner.

“Yes. Sort of,” Jackson reiterated. “It's as if he was living here but he wasn't. Like he's in another world, another dimension.”

“You've been reading too many weird books,” said George, steadfast in his belief that there was a rational explanation for everything.

“Hello,” shouted Jackson, as loud as he possibly could, startling both his partner and George. “Is there anybody there.”

“Don't piss about,” hissed the other detective, mindful of the presence of a member of the public.

“I'm not,” he replied, jumping up and down, his size 11 shoes thundering on the bare wooden boards. “C'mon out wherever you are,” he continued, his loud voice filling the entire house. “C'mon—we know you're here.”

“I shouldn't do that if I were you,” said George worriedly, recalling the sergeant's demolition of the old chair.

The raised voices and banging easily penetrated Trudy's dungeon and, finding a hidden reserve of energy, she rushed the door and tried thumping. Her blistered and bloated hands were like water-filled balloons thwacking a target at a village fête. She screamed, nothing happened. Pulling herself up to the keyhole, pressing her lips hard against the metal plate, she willed her vocal chords into action. A series of squeaky sounds leaked out.

D.C. Jackson, nearest to the cupboard, heard. “Listen,” he said. “What was that?”

“Mouse,” said George, dismissively. “There's plenty of 'em around here.”

“Or a rat,” suggested his partner, remembering the dead animal outside.

No one thought it was Trudy and the detectives left the house by the front door a few minutes later, deciding that a photograph of the real Roger LeClarc, from his parents, would be useful; George volunteered to clean up the broken glass.

“Don't worry, Mr. Mitchell, we'll get someone to mend the window,” said Jackson on his way out. “Not that there's anything of value in there.”

The voices had stopped for Trudy and she rushed hysterically back to the computer on the other side of the room, some inner strength taking control, her dead nerve endings no longer registering pain. Still panting frantically. her fingers flew across the keyboard.

“MUM I CAN HEAR YOU. I'M DOWN HERE.

MUM PLEASE HURRY.”

Dragging herself back to the door she put her ear to the keyhole and heard nothing. “Please Mum,” she sobbed. “Please Mum.” Then exhaustion took over and she gradually collapsed back to the floor.

“Detective Constable Bliss,” hollered Superintendent Edwards, his voice booming the length of the station corridor, as Bliss emerged from his meeting with Nosmo King more than two hours later.

Anticipating an ambush from Edwards, Bliss had spent the final five minutes of the meeting mentally preparing himself, yet immediately went to pieces. The relatively diminutive figure at the other end of the corridor, now beckoning with furious hand movements, exuded such an aura of control he felt his willpower being siphoned away. Everyone, and everything, stopped, like a confrontation scene from a wild west movie. Who would be fastest to the draw?

The superintendent fired the first volley, shouting, “Here!”

Adolf Hitler, who, for all Bliss knew, may have walked this same corridor fifty-odd years earlier, could never have commanded such authority in a single word.

Bliss capitulated immediately. Heart thumping and blood rising, he answered, “Yes, Sir,” and started the lonely walk.

Yolanda fell in step—a henchman in a lemon yellow two-piece that would have been more at home on a catwalk. “I could kick him,” she suggested from the corner of her mouth, and probably would have done had he agreed.

Reaching into his pocket, Bliss pulled out King's handkerchief and slipped it to her. “Thank you,” was all she could think of saying as she grasped it, with puzzled eyes, peeling away just as they reached Edwards.

“In here,” Edwards motioned to an empty room and Bliss fought desperately to get his mind under control in preparation for the string of lies he was about to tell.

Twenty minutes later the white BMW purred restfully as Yolanda concentrated on the face of the figure walking across the car park toward her. She had seen similar expressions before—faces of survivors fleeing the scene of a hostage taking. A vengeful postal worker had been pumping bullets randomly into his colleagues, his supposed tormentors, and the escapees all wore the same mask. Fear, anger, and disbelief combined with just a twinge of relief, producing a deadpan expression that said so little, yet hid so much. Any minute now he'll break into a little nervous smile, just to prove to me, and himself, that he came through it alive, she thought, and, on cue, Bliss' mouth widened, his teeth showed briefly, and he shrugged his shoulders lightly as if to say, “That didn't hurt.”

“Hi,” he said airily, jumping in beside her.

She smiled, genuinely, “Okey dokey Dave?” and dropped the car into gear without adding to his discomfort by asking what happened.

Heading back to her apartment in thoughtful silence she glanced at him a couple of times and recalled how most of the hostage survivors had quickly disintegrated into snivelling, whimpering messes. She guessed he would not.

Yolanda's expensive and well-travelled suitcase had taken her less than three minutes to pack and stow into the trunk of the car. Bliss had spent considerably longer gathering his few possessions. Deep in thought, he had moved around the apartment in a daze. The words, “Suspended from duty,” were uppermost in his mind. Edwards' parting admonition, “Get your ass on that ship and be in my office nine o'clock Monday morning with a full report,” also left a nasty sting that wouldn't go away.

“Have you got everything?” she enquired, creeping unnoticed into the bedroom behind him.

“I think so.”

“What about this?” she held up his toothbrush and made him reach for it. Their fingers met. Neither thought it was an accident. The electric charge that leapt from flesh to flesh was purely imaginary, yet perfectly real. Her heart pounded and she felt an inner tingling sensation. Their eyes locked over their hands and the vivid blueness of her pupils held him prisoner. He couldn't escape; didn't want to escape; didn't even try to escape. Running his fingers along the length of hers, he found the wrist and held it while his other hand took the toothbrush and tossed it onto the bed. Pulling gently, he eased the outstretched hand toward his mouth and pressed the palm to his lips. An instant may have been a minute, or an hour, and neither of them could have guessed with any certainty how long they stood glued together by eye contact alone. Flustered, unsettled, he pulled away, grabbed the toothbrush and shoved it into
his suitcase, saying, “I've got to go,” with unnecessary harshness. “The ship sails in half an hour.” Then they fumbled uncertainly around each other for a few minutes while Yolanda checked the lights, the taps, the answering machine, then locked the front door behind her.

Bliss' half-closed eyes took little notice of the route to the port. The coastal fog had thinned a little but after ten minutes he still could not see the ship. Then rows of humped backed greenhouses replaced the little terraced houses at the roadside and stretched into the murk.