The Dave Bliss Quintet Read Online Free PDF

me?”
    â€œAren’t you …?” she begins, her eyes questing deeply.
    â€œAren’t I whom?” he demands, determined to force her hand, mindful of Richards’s warning to give away nothing without the password.
    Marcia, looking confused, starts to turn away. “Sorry, I —”
    â€œHang on,” says Bliss, and the expectancy in his look gives her a clue.
    â€œBingo,” she explodes, almost shouting the prearranged codeword.
    The meeting is brief, leaving Bliss with more questions than answers. Marcia will say little beyond the fact that the man he seeks has suddenly upped anchor. “He’ll kill me,” she repeats several times, her eyes as skittish as a doe’s on a freeway verge.
    â€œLet me help,” he starts, taking a firm grip on her arm to stop her from running.
    â€œTonight,” she says, pulling free. “Go to the same bar tonight and if it’s safe I’ll talk to you.”
    â€œIt was you!” he exclaims, but she’s gone, walking purposefully away.
    A couple of sixty-year-olds skip along the promenade with the agility of teens, rejuvenated by the newly risen sun, their years whisked away on the sea breeze, and Bliss smiles. But his smile is in relief that, after two weeks of soaking up the sun and ridiculously cheap
vin rouge
at the taxpayers’ expense, there is finally some substance to the case.
    His customary morning stroll to the
boulangerie
for
un petit pain au raisins secs —
a sticky bun shaped like an escargot and stuffed with soft raisins — takes him along the beach road, and he walks in a daze, meditating over his meeting with Marcia. She’s scared shitless, he is thinking, when a car skims by, close and fast, andstartles him. “That’s Edwards,” he breathes in disbelief, instantly recognizing the driver. Or was it? The car, speeding like all others, has rounded the bend before he’s pulled himself together sufficiently to take the number. Disorientated by concern, he passes the bakery and heads directly for the supermarket.
    The cart finds it own way as he idly plucks groceries from shelf and bin. Three jars of salted anchovies end up exchanged for a tub of caramel ice cream, and four varieties of Camembert all make it to the cart when he can’t choose between them. Several inviting packets with unknown contents seem to select themselves, but he’s careful to pick a twelve-pack of fat-free yogourts. His mind should be on Johnson, but what is Edwards doing here? This is serious, he thinks, putting back the yogourts and taking the crème brûlée instead. Was it him? he wonders, adding a second pack.
    Why didn’t Richards warn me that Edwards was here? he worries, and, searching for something sweet, he wanders away from his buggy. Later, reaching the cash desk, he comes to his senses when the young assistant gives him a quizzical look as she scans a pack of incontinence pads.
    â€œWhat the —” he starts, catches on, grabs the package, buries it deep in the cart, and scurries out of the lineup.
    Further back in the store, an elderly spinster stands next to Bliss’s cartload of comfort food with a tube of hemorrhoid cream in her hand and a lost look on her face. Bliss rounds the corner of the pharmacy aisle, sees her, and scoots off. Try explaining that in Safeway let alone
Le Supermarché Géant
, he reasons, dumping her buggy in the wine department, and, empty handed, he hurriedly makes for the bar next door.
    The possible presence of Chief Superintendent Edwards is enough to drive him to order a double Scotch as he deliberates on the suspended officer’s motives.
    He could be on holiday, says his inner voice.
    He’s suspended, facing dismissal — for what? Abuse of authority and neglect of duty. Doesn’t sound like much, but he nearly got me killed trying to protect his own backside.
    So … he could be on holiday.
    He’d only be