Law pulled him closer and bent to his ear. “This is absolutely confidential, off the record. We’ll deny ever saying anything. We’ve no idea — Jonathon Dauntsey doesn’t stand to gain anything at all from the will.”
“That’s interesting,” said Bliss, then he put in a word for the church. “I’m not asking you to betray any confidences but I’ve just had the Vicar of St. Paul’s here. He seems to think he’s going to get a new roof.”
The solicitor was shaking his head. “He might need to invest in an umbrella then — if you get my drift.”
Bliss sloped off at 4 pm. and returned to the Mitre — exhausted. He hadn’t seen a proper bed for two nights and promised himself a nap before meeting Daphne for dinner. The excitement of discovering the body and the attendant work had edged Mandy to the corner of his mind and put her killer back in his box. Even the sight of the boarded up tea shop didn’t disturb him — sleep was all that interested him. He stopped at the reception desk. The smiling Swede had been replaced by a friendly local girl with wavy dark hair.
“Any messages for me?” he asked tiredly, forgetting that she’d never met him.
“Your name, Sir?”
“Sorry. Bliss — 203.”
“Oh yes, Sir. Your hire car has been delivered. Here are your keys and the papers. I told them to leave it in the car park at the back.”
“Thanks,” he took the keys. “Nothing else?”
She checked the pigeon hole. “No — nothing there.”
“Thanks,” he said, turning away.
“Oh — someone was asking about you though.”
The Volvo was back. The killer was out of the box. Keep calm, he said to himself, trying desperately to sound conversational. “When was this?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
Don’t be pushy, don’t scare her. Shrug as if it doesn’t matter. “A friend, I expect. Did he leave a name?”
“No. He said he’d catch up with you sometime.”
The veiled threat — he’d done it before, in the letters on the phone. “One day — when you least expect it … I’ll catch up with you.”
Bliss swallowed. “Was he tall?”
“No — very short. Funny little man … sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude …”
“That’s alright,” cut in Bliss, confused. “Old or young?”
“Thirtyish.”
Medium height and forties would have been nearer the mark — but she could have been mistaken. “Do you recall exactly what he said?”
“Well … he said he thought he knew you. Wanted to know if you came from London.”
That’s the clincher. “You didn’t tell him did you?”
“No, Sir, I told him he’d have to leave a note for you — even offered him some paper and a pen, but he wanted to talk to the manager. I went into the office to ask Mr. Robbins but when I got back he’d gone.”
There was something she’d omitted. Bliss saw it in her face. The mental vacillation — to tell or not to tell — making her eyes repeatedly flick away, unable to hold his gaze for more than a blink. The hotel register, the divorce lawyers best friend or deadliest foe, had lain open on the desk as she had readied to invite the visitor to sign in.
“The register was closed when I got back — I was only gone a few seconds …” she began nervously.
“And he could’ve looked …?”
“Possibly.”
Thank God no-one ever checks for phoney addresses, he thought, only vaguely remembering the one he’d made up. But, combined with the Volvo, this was sobering news. “Never mind, Luv. Not your fault. Just let me know if anybody else asks for me or if you see him again would you?”
Bliss made his way to his room, his tiredness overcome by concern. Would the killer ever come into the open and put him out of his misery or would the torment continue ad infinitum unless he were caught and shipped back to jail? You will never escape this, he said to himself poking under the bed, then, in the dusty shadows, he saw the image of a man — a man forever scrabbling under beds, checking behind wardrobes and eyeing the postman with trepidation. This will be with you forever unless you get a new face and a new name. But a new face was out of the question, he’d already ruled that out. A new name was a possibility, although it certainly created problems, especially if he were to remain in the police force. How could he suddenly pop up as Inspector Joe Blow without a background; qualifications; a family; previous addresses; credit cards; driving licence? So many people would need to know that the risks outweighed the advantages.
Chapter Nine
“Would you mind if we didn’t go back to The Limes?” petitioned Daphne, fearing it to be Andrew’s regular stalking ground. She needn’t have worried. Land’s End wouldn’t have been far enough for Bliss.
“I thought we’d drive over to Marsdon,” he replied, chivalrously opening the hired car’s passenger door and sweeping her in. Her sleek cocktail dress of the previous evening had given way to flouncy printed cotton, its huge tangy-yellow flowers crying out for a picnic on a grassy river bank. A parasol wouldn’t have gone amiss, but she had stuck with the broad-rimmed straw hat, merely switching the crimson ribbon for lemon.
“It seems a long way to go for dinner.”
“Do you mind?”
“Oh no. Not at all. It’s a lovely evening for a drive.”
It wasn’t — not for him anyway. He was on the run again. Instead of the badly needed nap, he’d spent the first hour in his room at the Mitre poking into every conceivable hidey-hole and pacing with worry, and the next hour packing. Whoever had been making enquiries about him would be back — probably. But why hang about to find out. The strain, and the degree of powerlessness in the face of such an ethereal adversary, had worn him to the point where he was almost ready to bolt back to the safe house.
He had been sneaking out of the hotel when the Swedish receptionist spotted him loading suitcases in the car park. “Is it that you are leaving, Mr. Bliss?” she smiled, her glow-white teeth bringing a moment’s brightness to an otherwise gloomy day.
“I’ve been called away.”
“But you have already paid have you not?”
He had — two weeks in advance, twenty percent discount. “It doesn’t matter — I’ll probably be back in a day or so.”
The High Street seemed jammed with blue Volvos, both driven by short, funny looking, thirty-year-olds, and he was glad to have got away from the Mitre hotel and his Rover. But was this the future? Trailing his suitcases around in the boot of a rented car — finding a different hotel and switching every couple of days. Was he being forced to follow the blueprint of retribution drawn up by the killer? Had the threatening letters and menacing phone calls been just a tightening of the screw, dragging out the agony in the torture chamber of his mind?
“I did eighteen years for my part,” the killer was telling him. “Now it’s your turn.”
Even the bomb through the letterbox had been halfhearted — little more than a handful of powerful fireworks packed into a cardboard tube. If he’d wanted to kill me, couldn’t he have done that already? Shoot a single bullet from a silenced.44, then walk calmly away and melt into the crowd before anyone has even realised what’s happened.
“Marsdon,” said the sign, taking him unawares and making him question where his mind had been for the past twenty minutes.
He baulked at the first restaurant, a pushy place with fluorescent green shades and an egocentric sign plastered with recommendations and affiliations.
“Too busy,” he complained, with hardly more than a peep through the lace curtains. Too many nooks and crannies, was what he really meant; too many cozy romantic niches where who-knows-what could be going on under the tables, and who-knows-who could be hiding, waiting to pounce; too many candles and not enough light to spot a killer. Don’t be ridiculous, he said to himself, how could he possible know you were coming here? He could have followed us … The way you’ve had your head stuck in the mirrors — you must be crazy. You’ve smacked the kerb three times — good job it’s a hire car.