Crazy Lady

An Inspector Bliss Mystery

James Hawkins

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781554885114
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Littérature policière et sur le mystère

The seventh novel in the popular Inspector Bliss series is another action-packed mystery filled with nail-biting adventures involving religious sects, criminal conspiracies, and the world trade in cocoa.

When an RCMP officer is murdered in Vancouver, suspicion falls upon Janet Thurgood, a woman in her sixties who appears to everyone, apart from Trina Button, to be completely mad. Trina is quick to embroil Daphne Lovelace in her efforts to discover the truth about Janet.

David Bliss, meanwhile, tries to stay out of the way in the south of France, where he encounters problems of his own when, to his utter amazement, he rediscovers his one true love. Can he finally pull the trigger and make a commitment?

CRAZY LADY

A Chief Inspector Bliss Mystery

James Hawkins

A Castle Street Mystery

chapter one

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God."

"Yes, I'm aware of that, ma'am."

"And the Word became flesh and lived amongst us…"

"If you say so."

"… and we have seen his glory."

"Well, you may have seen it, lady. But all I see is a busload of ticked-off passengers who wanna go home to their wives and kiddies. Now have you got the fare or not?"

"The Lord Saviour says it is better to give than to receive."

"Look, lady, I'm a bus driver, not a charity. Now either pay the fare or get off."

"Peace is my parting gift to you. Set your troubled heart at rest."

"Get off! Freak."

Now what? It's pouring and it's getting dark. Oh, God. Mummy'll be cross if I'm late for tea again.

"You'll have to walk," the woman's God tells her. "Do you know where you're going?"

Yes. It's 255 Arundel Crescent, Dewminster, Hampshire, England, The World, The Universe —

"Have you got any spare change?" A voice breaks into Janet Thurgood's musings, and she leaps. The sixty-one-year-old's eyes dart around, seeking escape from Vancouver's near-deserted Chinatown and the dull-eyed, prickly-haired youth who has cornered her in the bus shelter.

"Turn to Our Lord Saviour and he will provide —" she starts, but the panhandler backs her against a glazed advertisement featuring a busty perfume vendor.

"Get a life, lady. I just wanna buck for a coffee, not a freakin' lecture."

The Lord Saviour is my shepherd. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, Janet prays inwardly, saying, "I'm sorry. I haven't got any —"

"Don't give me that crap. I've got a knife."

It's a poor excuse for a knife, stolen, like everything else in Jagger Jones's world — including his name. But the ten-cent table knife, filched from Giorgo's Corner Coffee & Souvlaki, has been honed to a stiletto by Jagger (a Hollywood substitute for Davy, the forename thoughtlessly given by his teenage mother while she had more pressing matters on her mind than registering the birth of an unwanted child).

Janet Thurgood turns to her faith for defence, but her words are hollow as she warns, "The Lord Saviour's sword will protect me…"

"Oy. Punk. Leave the lady alone," cautions a scurrying businessman with his head down against the rain. But he has no more clout than Janet's God, and he's not big enough to step in to ensure that his instruction is heeded.

"I said, don't give me no crap," continues Jones, unfazed by the warning, as his knife goes to his victim's throat.

"My Lord Saviour is with me," chants Janet with the certainty of a televangelist as she is stretched onto her toes. "His rod and staff comfort me…" she continues as her eyes go to the darkening heavens and the palms of her hands join in supplication.

"I mean it," threatens Jones as the sharpened blade hollows a dimple in Janet's neck.

"… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord Saviour forever."

"Shuddup, you crazy old bat. Shuddup and give me the money," spits the young addict as he flattens Janet against the wall on the end of his knife and rubs her down. However, his anticipation turns sour as he realizes that beneath the rain-soaked mackintosh the aging woman is wearing only a flimsy nightdress, and she clearly has no purse. Despite the four decades between them, the youth's hand momentarily idles on Janet's naked thigh, and his face and tone soften as he sneers, "Mebbe you've got something else to give me, eh?"

"Help me, my Lord Saviour," intones Janet as she feels the hand sliding between her legs. "Help me resist this," she is saying as the brake lights of a passing police cruiser shimmer brightly on the rain-slick asphalt. Jagger Jones, ever-watchful, spies the slowing vehicle, pockets his knife, and melts into the gloom, leaving barely a pinprick on his victim's neck. Janet slowly opens her eyes with the realization that she has been spared, spots the police car, now quickly reversing in her direction, and scurries out of the shelter.

"Are you all right, ma'am?" shouts Constable Montgomery from the dry comfort of his cruiser, but Janet slips into a laneway and wades through a mud puddle, while constantly reminding herself of her intended destination. "255 Arundel Crescent, Dewminster, Hampshire, England," she mutters repeatedly as she runs barefoot through the garbage-strewn back alley.

The flashing red and white lights of the pursuing cruiser spur her on as she jinks through the labyrinth of Chinatown's narrow lanes. However, as Constable Montgomery catches glimpses of the fleeing woman, he questions his motives. Was that a knife at her throat? It was just a glint of streetlight — perhaps a cigarette lighter that Jones was holding up for her to light a toke. And knowing Jones as well as Montgomery does, it would certainly have been a toke.

She's probably just another hooker working for a fix, the street-hardened cop wants to believe, but he can't escape the feeling that something is different. The lack of stiletto heels — of any heels — is certainly unusual for a sex worker, as is her drab raincoat, but there is more, although Montgomery can't put his finger on it and would be loath to admit it to his colleagues. It was a feeling of fear — vibes coursing through the ether — that had alerted him to the woman's plight. But now she is running.

"Wait a minute," yells Montgomery as he skids to a halt and cuts Janet off at the exit from a narrow lane, but she spins and is headed back down the lane as he leaps from his cruiser while calling into his radio for a missing person's check.

"Five foot, six inches… Caucasian… late fifties… no shoes… grey raincoat and brown head scarf…"

Blood pours from Janet's shredded feet, but she feels no pain. She's an adrenaline-driven vixen with a baying pack on her tail as she streaks through the maze with Montgomery's laboured footfalls pounding through the mire in her wake.

"255 Arundel Crescent, Dewminster, Hampshire, England," she incants continuously as she runs blindly through Vancouver's tight laneways, but she is nearly five decades and an entire continent from her childhood home. However, Janet views the foreign landscape through the eyes of an eleven-year-old and seemingly recognizes familiar features through the miasma of rain and murk.

Not far now, she thinks, mistaking a dark alleyway for the overhung Dewminster lane where, it was rumoured amongst her pre-teen peers, Jack the Ripper kept a spooky cottage and lay in wait to deflower young virgins.

"Don't be silly. Mr. Smeeton is a very nice man," Janet's mother told her when she tearfully insisted on taking the long way home from school to avoid passing the disabled soldier's thatched cottage. "And he always goes to church," her mother added to bolster her assertion, but she sidestepped the question of "deflowering," and for several years Janet had an image of herself as Red Riding Hood creeping past the veteran's front gate with a basket of roses, desperately praying that the old man wouldn't leap out and steal them.

Latent fear of the lane drives Janet blindly into a tight cul-de-sac, and she's taken a dozen steps before she realizes her blunder. She hesitates momentarily as she seeks an escape route, but Constable Montgomery is gaining ground and his bulky figure is already filling the narrow passageway behind her.

"Wait up," he wheezes after the fleeing woman, but he's conscious that his words barely carry from his lips. However, the prospect of being outrun by a barefoot, middle-aged woman spurs him on, though his rain-sodden clothing and beer belly are weighing him down — so is the pack of Marlboros in his pocket. "I'm getting too old for this," he gasps as he's forced to a walk by an iron band clamped around his chest, but the end of the alley is in sight and he has his quarry backed against a high brick wall.

I just want a few words, dear, he is practising mentally as he advances slowly on the cornered woman, but five more paces and he's wading through treacle. What's going on? he questions when a pain as incisive as lightning courses up and down his left arm. Comprehension comes when the blade of a red-hot poker stabs through his chest and enters his heart.

"Help," he cries, lurching to a halt and doubling in agony, but Janet takes advantage of the hiatus and tries to squeeze past in the gloom. Montgomery reaches out and gets a desperate hold on her coat.

"Vengeance is mine. I will repay," screams Janet as she frees herself by scything the officer's hand with her fingernails.

Lights from the basement kitchen of the Mandarin Palace restaurant offer the ailing constable sanctuary as Janet runs off, but as he reaches for the banister of a steep iron staircase, the lights fade, and he knows that he is falling into an exceedingly deep hole.

"255 Arundel Crescent, Dewminster, Hampshire, England," Janet reminds herself as she streaks back towards a busy road and charges into the path of a zippy Volkswagen Jetta.

"What the…?" questions the driver, Trina Button, as she spies the ghostly grey apparition through the murk and slams on her brakes. The car fishtails on the slick surface, and the fleeing woman throws herself to the ground to avoid the skidding vehicle.

Oblivious to the blaring of horns, Trina leaps from her car to aid the sprawled woman, but Janet sees only another persecutor and is quickly on her feet, readying to take off.

"Get thee behind me, Satan," she cries out as Trina tries to grab her, but the young driver manages to snag the sleeve of the woman's raincoat.

"My Lord Saviour will protect me," claims Janet as she slips out of her coat and runs.

"Rats," says Trina as she drops the coat to take up the chase. The young homecare nurse may be fitter and fresher than the escapee, but Janet, wearing only a saturated night-dress, seems to have God on her shoulder as she flies fearlessly through three lanes of speeding traffic. Trina is more judicious and waits for the semblance of a gap before racing across the road in pursuit. Behind her, the abandoned Jetta is clipped by a heavyweight truck and is spun into the path of a taxi. "Shit!" exclaims Trina at the crunch, and she dances in deliberation for a few moments before continuing the chase.

"What do you mean, you've lost the car again," sighs Rick Button, Trina's husband, twenty minutes later when she phones breathlessly from a pay phone. "You were only taking the guinea pig to the vet."

"Oh no. I forgot the guinea pig —" Trina is saying as Rick cuts her off to answer another call. Seconds later he's back with Trina.

"That was the police," he says sternly. "They want you at the police station to talk to you about a pileup."

"Oh dear…"

However, the multi-vehicle accident on Hastings Street has taken second place to the discovery of a body in the basement courtyard behind the Mandarin Palace.

Most of the patrons of the restaurant have no idea of the ruckus going on in the kitchen as Charley Cho, the head chef, together with the rest of the staff, clamours for a view out of the basement's condensation-misted window. Outside, the shabby yard is ablaze with emergency lights and jammed with officers readying to raise the body of Constable Roddick Montgomery from the giant fish tank into which he has crashed head first.

"He kill half the fish," complains Cho bitterly as a rope is looped around Montgomery's ankles; two members of the police team, together with a burly fireman, stand in the laneway above, preparing to haul.

"Christ he's heavy," mutters the fireman and receives black looks from the others as the waterlogged body begins to rise from the tank. The blue-faced cadaver begins to slowly rotate as it's hoisted into the air, then a stupefied trout slips out of the officer's tunic and plops back into the tank, making everyone jump.

Sergeant Dave Brougham's face falls as Trina Button rushes the inquiry desk at Vancouver's central police station.

"I might have guessed," grumbles the officer, recognizing the bouncy homecare nurse from a previous encounter, but Trina recognizes him as well and grabs him by the lapels, demanding, "Where's my guinea pig? What have you done to him?"

"He's all right," says Constable Hunt, stepping forward with a battered cage. "I rescued him. You're lucky he wasn't flattened in the wreck. He's just a bit shaken up."

"Leaving the scene following an accident is a serious offence," cautions the sergeant as Trina lifts the shivering creature from the cage, but Trina launches at him boldly.

"I didn't leave after the accident," she protests. "You should get your facts straight before you accuse innocent people."

"But you dumped your car in the middle of Hastings Street."

"Give me a parking ticket then. Anyway, I only went to help the poor woman."

The question, "What woman?" leaves Trina without an answer. Janet's wraithlike figure somehow dissolved by the time the concerned nurse worked her way to the far side of the street and scoured the numerous laneways and potential hidey-holes.

"So you did have an accident then," persists the sergeant, once Trina has explained the incident.

"No. She was the one who had an accident. I didn't hit her," explains Trina precisely. "I just stopped to help her."

"Help who? No one mentioned a woman," continues the sergean...