glass-enclosed roof. “St. Ives!” he shouted.
Ivan St. Ives had just bent to give Daphne a good-bye kiss. He turned suddenly at the sound of his name and saw Rand approaching. “What is this?” he asked.
“Get away from him. Daphne!” Rand warned.
“He just came to see me off. I told you I was visiting—”
“Get away from him!” Rand repeated more urgently.
St. Ives met his eyes, and glanced quickly away, as if seeking a safe exit. But already the others were moving in. His eyes came back to Rand, recognizing him. “You were at the store, in line for Father Christmas! I knew I’d seen you before!”
“We broke the cipher, St. Ives. We know everything.”
St. Ives turned and ran, not toward the street from where the men were coming but through the gate to track six. A police constable blew his whistle, and the sound merged with the chiming of the station clock. St. Ives had gone about fifty feet when the railway car to his left seemed to come apart with a blinding flash and roar of sound that sent waves of dust and debris billowing back toward Rand and the others. Daphne screamed and covered her face.
When the smoke cleared. Ivan St. Ives was gone. It was some time later before they found his remains among the wreckage that had been blown onto the adjoining track. By then. Rand had explained it to Hastings and Parkinson. “Ivan St. Ives was a truly evil man. When he was hired to plan and carry out a terrorist bombing in London over the Christmas holidays, he decided quite literally to kill two birds with one stone. He planned the bombing for the exact time and place where his old girlfriend Daphne Sollis would be. To make certain she didn’t arrive too early or too late, he even escorted her to the station himself. She knew too much about his past associations, and he wanted her out of his life for good. I imagine one of his men must have ridden the train into Charing Cross Station and hidden the bomb on board before he left.”
But he didn’t tell any of this to Daphne. She only knew that they’d come to arrest St. Ives and he’d been killed by a bomb while trying to flee. A tragic coincidence, nothing more. She never knew St. Ives had tried to kill her.
In a way Rand felt it was a Christmas gift to her.
INSPECTOR TIERCE AND THE CHRISTMAS VISITS – Jeffry Scott
Choppers are only human, Jill Tierce told herself, without much conviction, after Superintendent Haggard’s invitation to a quiet drink after work. Actually he’d passed outside the open door of her broom-closet office, making Jill start by booming, “Heads up. girlie! Pub call, I’m buying. Back in five...” before bustling away, rubbing his hands.
Taking acceptance for granted was very Lance Haggard, and so was the empty, outward show of bonhomie, but there you were.
Unless forced to behave otherwise, Superintendent Haggard generally did no more than nod to Inspector Tierce in passing. This hadn’t broken her heart. He had a reputation: it was whispered that he pulled strokes. Nothing criminal, he wasn’t bent, but he had a knack of pilfering credit for ideas or successes, coupled with deft evasive action if his own projects went wrong.
Refusing to waste time on Jill Tierce owed less to sexism than to the fact that she was of no present use to him. Leg mangled on duty, she was recovering slowly. Fighting against being invalided out of the Wessex-Coastal Force, lying like a politician about miracles of surgery and physiotherapy, and disguising her limp by willpower, she had won a partial victory. Restricted to light duties on a part-time basis, she was assigned to review dormant cases —and Lance Haggard, skimming along the fast track, wasn’t one to waste time on history.
It wasn’t professional, then, and she doubted a pass. Superintendent Haggard was a notoriously faithful husband. Moreover, Inspector Tierce was clearsighted about her looks: too sharp-featured for prettiness, and the sort of pale hair that may deserve the label but escapes being called blonde.
What was he up to? Then she’d glanced out of the smeary window at her elbow and seen strings of colored lights doubly blurred by the glass and another flurry of snow. There was the explanation, Christmas spirit. She smiled wryly. The superintendent probably kept a checklist of seasonal tasks, so many off-duty hours per December week devoted to stroking inferiors who might mature into rivals or allies. She supposed she ought to feel flattered.
A police cadet messenger tapped at the door and placed a file on Jill’s desk without leaving the corridor, by leaning in and reaching. He had a lipstick smudge in the lee of one earlobe. Mistletoe had been hung in the canteen at lunchtime, only five days to the twenty-fifth now.
Big deal, she thought sourly.
The new file was depressingly fat. She transferred it from the in tray to the bottom of the pending basket, noting that the covers were quite crisp though the buff cardboard jacket had begun to fade. More than a year old. Inspector Tierce estimated. Then Superintendent Haggard was back, jingling his car keys impatiently.
He drove a mile or so out of town, to a Dickensian pub by the river. The saloon bar evoked a sporting squire’s den. Victorian-vintage trophy fish in glass cases on the walls, no jukebox, and just token sprigs of non-plastic holly here and there. “Quiet and a bit classy,” Lance Haggard commented. “I stumbled on this place last summer, thought it would suit you.”
Sure you did, she jeered, not aloud. Apart from an older man and younger woman murmuring in a snug corner (boss courting a soon-to-be-even-more-personal assistant, Jill surmised cattily) they had the bar to themselves. “Done all your Christmas shopping?” Haggard inquired. “Going anywhere for the break, or spending it with Mum and Dad?”
Satisfied that small-talk obligations were discharged, he continued before she could match banality with banality, “I’ve had a file passed to you, luv. Before you drown in details, seemed a good idea to talk you through it.”
Despite a flick of irritation, Jill Tierce was vaguely relieved. It was upsetting when leopards changed their spots. Superintendent Haggard’s were still in place, he wasn’t dispensing Christmas cheer but attempting to spread blame; if she reviewed one of his setbacks, she assumed part of the responsibility.
“I’m listening,” she said flatly.
To her surprise, Haggard was... what? Not hangdog exactly. yet defensive. Obviously shelving a prepared presentation, he said, “Forget so-called perfect crimes—untraceable poisons, trick alibis, some bright spark who’s a master of disguise,
“There’s a surprise.”
He didn’t rise to the sarcasm. “Dorothy Field on the death certificate but we’ll stick to Mitzi, that’s what she was known as, to the few who did know her.”
“She was found in Grand Drive ten days before Christmas three years ago. Dead of repeated blows from something with sharp angles, most likely a brick. I see her getting into some curb crawler’s car, and he drove her to where she was attacked. Saw red—wanted what she wouldn’t provide, she tried ripping him off, plenty of possible reasons—snatched the nearest weapon, bashed her as she turned to run, kept bashing.” The theory was delivered with pointed lack of emotion, Superintendent Haggard back in full control.
“Drove her there... the car was seen?” Jill held up a hand. “Sorry, not thinking straight.” Mount Wolfe was one of the city’s best quarters, Grand Drive its best address.
“Exactly,” said Haggard. “Mitzi had started living rough, so she looked tatty. She’d had a mattress in a squat, that old factory on Victoria Quay, but the council demolished it the week before her death. The docks were her beat. She was wearing those big boots, like the movie—”
