LITMIR.BIZ

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Guv,” lied Bliss, knowing he was laughing at himself for all the times in his life he’d thought everyone else knew more than he and worried about the day he might be found out.

      “You look the part,” Richards continued, as if reciting a prepared list. “Distinguished, mid-forties — old enough to be wealthy, young enough to be a playboy.”

      “Plus the fact that it will keep me nicely out of the way while that bastard Edwards does his Houdini impersonation.”

      “Chief Superintendent Edwards will get what he deserves,” Richards replied calmly. No outburst of refutation; no denunciation of Bliss for insubordination; no pulling of rank.

      With the realization that Richards was bending over backwards, and figuring he had little to lose, Bliss lounged back in his chair and tried a hot button. “He’ll probably get promoted again — but isn’t that the way he always gets on? Stirs up enough shit to be a pain in the ass until someone recommends him for promotion, then he climbs on someone else’s back and bites their bum.”

      “And finally — you’re single,” Richards said, pretending not to have heard, sticking to his script.

      “That’s not an achievement, Guv.”

      “I didn’t say it was, but for an operation of this kind it’s a definite advantage.”

      This is a misuse of police resources, Bliss thinks, as he dangles his legs over the harbour wall. Cracking down on drug dealers in suburban Surrey might make sense, but sending him to stake out a high-rolling renegade in the South of France only confirms his suspicions that they want him out of the country while Edwards slips his noose.

      I bet Edwards orchestrated this whole thing, he reasons, knowing that where other people pull strings, Edwards twists testicles. He must have his hooks into somebody close to the top of the tree for a commander to get the authority to approve this, he is thinking, when he is struck with a mind-blowing realization. What if Richards hasn’t got anyone’s authority? What if I am actually on convalescent leave? Maybe this important and totally secret undercover job is just a cover; maybe no one really wants Morgan Johnson and no one is going to swear out a warrant for his arrest and extradition; maybe his name has simply been picked out of a hat of international villains for no other reason than he’s known to be out of the country.

      No wonder Richards was so adamant that no one else should know what I was doing. It had nothing to do with security or the possibility that someone might tip off the suspect; Richards’s only concern was that someone might tip off the commissioner — the Grand Vizier of London’s metropolitan police force — that one of his most senior commanders was playing hide and seek with a lowly detective inspector.

      In that case, who’s paying for all this? he asks himself. At the briefing, Richards gave him a shiny American Express card with an unlimited credit balance in the name of John Smith. And the apartment he is staying in is already paid for.

      So, how far will Edwards and his cronies go to keep me out the way — assuming that is the plan? he wonders, and considers sticking a hundred-thousand-euro motor yacht on the card as a tester. He could always sell it if the balloon went up.

      Wake up, he tells himself. It would be cheaper to have you bumped off.

      Would Edwards do that?

      He might.

      The certainty of the realization stings with the sharpness of a paper cut, then he shakes his head. No, he wouldn’t … I don’t think.

      With many more questions than answers, he strolls the town streets half-heartedly seeking Johnson, though concentrating more on gathering ideas for his book. It’s the contrasts here that make it interesting, he realizes, seeing a shrivelled grey crone, cross-legged on the pavement, with her hand out to an expensively designed woman whose lipstick allowance would feed her for a year. Though it’s not just the disparity between rich and poor, he decides, it’s the beauty and the beast.

      Everything and everyone has a front, he is thinking, as he tours a smelly, garbage-littered back alley and sees a sleek-haired Madonna, sporting breast implants and slinky leather, emerge from a house with peeling paint and sagging brickwork. Then the clack of her Italian stilettos on cracked flagstones echo off the abandoned dust-filled stores where the faded signs of boulangers, traiteurs, and charcutiers are epitaphs to their stolen dreams. Hurrying past abandoned cars with smashed windows and bicycle wheels chained to posts, she turns onto the glitzy shopping street and picks up her head as she passes the storefronts of purveyors and designers whose names and logos fill the glossies of the world.

      “It’s not exactly Hollywood,” Bliss muses, looking around and realizing the streets and stores are filled with local people going about their daily chores. How confusing it must be for them, he thinks, living out their lives in a land of vice-versa, where international villains are lauded and pampered while the odd unemployed bum, unfortunate enough to be of no fixed abode, is roughly rounded up and thrown in jail; where giant yachts, costing more than the Madonna girl could earn in ten lifetimes, sit idle in the harbour, their owners preferring the comfort of their villas after a night at the casino, club, or bordel, while the crews busy themselves preparing for another day of idleness.

      Rich and poor, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, greed and compassion, all co-exist here in equilibrium, but overall it’s the obsession with possession that strikes him most. Flashy yachts, cars, motorbikes, and jewellery may be the preserve of the rich, but even the poorest shop workers and student waiters race around on motor scooters; the girls, with their skirts and hair flying, sit boldly upright for all to see, while the young men, revving their aggressively black 50 cc machines up to 250, crouch low over the puny fuel tanks and dream.

      Trapped by indecision, absent-mindedly plucking at his nose hairs, Bliss spends the afternoon on his balcony picking up and putting down the phone. But whom to call? Who would not only know the truth about his assignment, but be prepared to put him in the picture? Any of his regular colleagues at HQ will know only the official line. “You’re on convalescent leave, you lucky devil,” they’ll chirp, and if he pushes them to check in his personal file he’ll get the same reply. “Yup. You’re on leave all right.”

      He could try Commander Richards, but to what end? “I thought I made myself clear, Inspector …”

      Only the commissioner himself might be privy to his true status, and he smiles at the thought of calling the Yard and demanding to be put through to him — a man commanding a force of thirty thousand, with an entire division of administrators and lackeys whose sole purpose is to isolate him from the riff-raff on the front line.

      OK. Just supposing he takes your call — then what? You probably don’t remember me, Sir, he mentally practises, but I just wondered if you happen to know that I’m in the South of France chasing a drug smuggler.

      And what if the case is genuine? What if his suspicions are totally unfounded and the commissioner is not only well aware of his mandate, but receives a daily progress report from Commander Richards in person?

      “Weren’t you specifically ordered that under no circumstances were you to reveal your involvement in this case, Inspector?” the commissioner will bark and slam down the phone. Fifteen minutes later he’d be relieved of duty and ordered home pending disciplinary charges for disobeying a lawful order, breach of confidence, and jeopardizing a major investigation. Not to mention the fact that Edwards’s defence team will make mincemeat of him on the witness stand at the upcoming hearing.

      “Isn’t it correct, Mr. Bliss,” Edwards’s smarmy lawyer will jab, pointedly refraining from using his rank, “that you yourself are currently facing numerous disciplinary charges?”

      Then what?

      Though, if Edwards’s defence team is as devious as their client, they’ll apply for a deferment of the charges against their man, pending the outcome of the trial against the key witness. By which time the civilian address of “Mr.” might be entirely appropriate.

      Picking up the phone eventually, he decides the only person

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