Playing with Fire (17 page)

Mellor raised his eyebrows. “White. And maybe a bit taller than you. Not a big man, though. Carried himself well.”

“But you didn't see what he looked like.”

“No, I'm only going on the way he walked. It can tell you more than you think, you know, sometimes, the way a man
walks. They do say when you're in the cities to walk as if you know where you're going, no-nonsense and all, and you're less likely to get mugged. That sort of walk.”

“Which direction did he take?”

“Toward the car park off the lane, behind the caravan. It's quite handy, really. There's some waterfalls across Jennings Field. Not more than a trickle, really, but you know what tourists are like. So the council cleared a small car park. Pay and display.”

It was the area of easiest access to the caravan. The SOCOs had taped it off and would be searching come daylight. “Did you see him drive away?”

“I'm afraid not. The exit's on the lane behind the field, behind Roland's caravan. It's hidden by the trees and a wall. I must admit, though, I was a little curious, as I hadn't seen or heard of a visitor to Roland's place before.”

“Did you ever see a dark-colored Jeep in the area?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Thanks anyway,” Banks said. “Did you ask Mr. Gardiner about his visitor?”

“Yes, but he just tapped the side of his nose. Said it was an old friend. You know,” Mellor said, swirling the remains of the brandy in his glass, “when I first got to know Roland, I worried about him a lot.”

“Why is that?”

“He seemed prey to fits of depression. Sometimes he wouldn't leave the caravan for days, not even to come here. When he did come and you asked him if he was all right, he'd shrug it off and say something about taking the ‘black dog' for a walk.”

Black dog.
Winston Churchill's term for the depression that hounded him all his life. “Do you think he might have been suicidal?”

Mellor thought for a moment. “There were times,” he said. “Yes. I worried he might do himself harm.”

Fire wasn't a common method of suicide, Banks knew. The last case he'd come across was of a man chaining himself to the steering wheel of his car, pouring petrol all around and setting it alight. He'd left the windows closed, though, and there wasn't enough oxygen in the interior of the car for a fire to take hold, so when the brief flames had consumed it all, the man died of asphyxiation, with hardly a mark on him. Still, Banks had to consider every possibility. “Do you think he might have done this himself?” he asked Mellor.

“Start the fire? Good Lord, no. Roland wouldn't do anything irresponsible like that. Someone else might have got hurt. One of the firemen, for example. And it would certainly be a painful way to go. No. He had some strong pills from the doctor, he told me once. Sleeping pills. I don't know what they were called. Apparently he had terrible trouble sleeping. Nightmares and so on. If he was going to go, that was the way he would have done it.”

Black dog. Nightmares. Roland Gardiner certainly sounded like a troubled man. Was it all down to him losing his job and his wife leaving him, or were there other reasons?

“Besides,” Mellor went on, “things had been looking up for him recently.”

Banks glanced at Annie. “Oh?”

“Yes. He seemed a lot more cheerful, a lot more optimistic.”

“Did he say why?”

“Just that he'd met an old friend.”

“What old friend?”

“He didn't elaborate on it. Like I said, Roland was a secretive sort of chap.”

“The same old friend who visited him at the caravan?”

“Might have been. It was about the same time.”

“Last summer?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw Roland?”

Mellor thought for a moment. “Last Wednesday, I think it was. He lent me a book.”

“What book was that?”

“Just a history book. We were both interested in Victorian England.”

Banks stood up. “Thanks very much, Mr. Mellor. You've been a great help. Need a ride home?”

“Thank you. Normally I'd walk, but it's late, cold, and I've had a bit of a shock. You've got room for Sandy, too?”

“Of course. No trouble.”

Annie's car was still back at Jennings Field, so they all crammed into Banks's Renault, Sandy curling up beside Mellor on the backseat, and headed toward Ash Cottage, the heater on full. In a few minutes the interior of the car was warm and Banks found himself feeling sleepy from the brandy. He knew he wasn't over the limit, just tired. They dropped off Mellor and Sandy, and Banks handed over his card. “In case you remember anything else.” Then Banks drove Annie back to the field. They sat a moment in his car, the engine running and heater still on, watching the activity around the burned-out caravan. Things were definitely on the wane, but Stefan was still there, as were Geoff Hamilton and a group of firefighters. Both appliances had gone.

“Christ, I
hate
fires,” said Banks.

“Why? Have you ever been in one?”

“No, but I have nightmares about it.” He massaged his temples. “Once, way back when I was on the Met, I got called to an arson scene. Terraced house in Hammersmith. Some sort of arranged marriage gone wrong and the offended family pours petrol through the letter box of the other lot.” He paused. “Nine people died in that fire. Nine people. Most of the time you couldn't tell the bodies from the debris, except for one bloke who still had a boiling red blister on his skull. And the smell…Jesus. But you know what stuck in my mind most?”

“Tell me,” said Annie.

“It was this little girl. She looked as if she was kneeling by her bed with her hands clasped, saying her prayers. Burned to a crisp, but still there, stuck forever in that same position. Praying.” Banks shook his head.

Annie touched his arm gently.

“Anyway,” Banks went on, shaking off the memory. “What do you think?”

“I don't know what to think, really. I've got to admit it seems to be stretching coincidence to have two similar fires so close together. But where's the link?”

“That's what we have to find out,” said Banks. “Unless we're dealing with a pyromaniac, a serial arsonist who likes starting fires in out-of-the-way places, then there
is
a connection between the victims, and the sooner we find it, the better. We'll get Kevin Templeton on it. He's good at ferreting out background. I'm going back to the station.”

“I'll follow you.”

“Okay. It's late, but I want to set a few things in motion while they're fresh in mind. For a start, I want to know about Mark Siddons's and Andrew Hurst's alibis for tonight. And Leslie Whitaker's. I'm not at all certain about him yet. Then we'll have to track down Gardiner's ex-wife. And let's not forget Dr. Patrick Aspern, Tina's stepfather.”

“Surely you can't think he had anything to do with all this?”

“I don't know, Annie. Serious allegations were made, at least as far as his conduct toward his stepdaughter is concerned. And neither he nor his wife have solid alibis for the boat fires. He's not off my list yet. I think I'll send Winsome down to talk to him in the morning, ask him for an alibi. That should be interesting.”

Annie sighed. “If you think it's necessary. It's your neck.”

“And I want to put a rush on toxicology, too. These people didn't just lie down and let themselves be burned.”

“Alan?”

“Yes?”

“I was talking to a friend of mine earlier, a chap called Philip Keane. He operates a private art authentication company, the one that was involved in the Turner find up here last July. I think he might be able to help, at least as far as the art angle is concerned. I'm sure he'd be happy to have a chat with you.”

Banks looked at her. He knew she was seeing someone, but not his name. Was he the one? Was this why she had dressed up specially tonight and put a little extra makeup on? The timing was right, and he knew she'd helped the local gallery out with security for the brief period the Turner was housed there. “Did he know McMahon?”

“No, nothing like that. It's just something that crossed my mind earlier, and Phil might have some ideas, that's all.”

“All right,” said Banks. “Tell him to come to the station tomorrow.”

“Oh, come on, Alan. He's a friend, not a suspect. How about the Queen's Arms? Lunch?”

“If we've got time. Tomorrow might be a busy day.”

“If we've got time.”

“Okay,” said Banks.

Annie opened the door, and when she moved, Banks caught a whiff of her Body Shop grapefruit scent, even over the fire smells and the smoke from the pub that lingered in her hair and on her clothes. Annie stepped over to her own car. Banks slipped Tom Waits's
Alice
in the CD player and headed back through the dark lanes to the station listening to the croaking voice sing about shipwrecks, ice and dead flowers.

D
C Winsome Jackman hated Yorkshire winters. She didn't think much of the summers, either, but she really hated the winters. As she got out of her nice warm car in front of Patrick Aspern's house on Sunday morning, she felt a pang of longing for home, the way she often did when the cold and damp got to her even through her thick sweater and lined raincoat. She remembered the humid heat back home, way up in Jamaica's Cockpit Country, the lush green foliage, the insects chirping, the bright flame trees, banana leaves click-clacking overhead in the gentle breeze from the ocean, remembered how she used to walk up the steep hill home from the one-room schoolhouse in her neat uniform, laughing and joking with her friends. She missed her mother and father so much she ached for them sometimes. And her friends. Where were they all now? What were they doing?

Then she remembered the shanties, the crippling poverty and hopelessness, the way so many men treated their women as mere possessions, chattels of no real value. Winsome knew she had been lucky to get out. Her father was a police corporal at the Spring Mount station, and her mother worked at the banana-chip factory in Maroon Town, sitting out back in the shade with the other women, gossiping and slicing bananas all day. Winsome had worked for two summers at the
Holiday Inn just outside Montego Bay, and she had often talked to the tourists there. Their stories of their homelands, of America, Canada and England, had excited her imagination and sharpened her will. She had envied them the money that allowed them to have luxurious holidays in the sun, and the opportunities they must have at home. These countries, she had thought, must indeed be lands of plenty.

And it wasn't only the white folk. There were handsome black men from New York, London and Toronto, with thick gold chains hanging around their wrists and necks, their wives all dressed up in the latest fashions. What a world theirs was, with all the movies, fashions, cars and jewelry they wanted. Of course, the reality fell a long way short of her imagination, but on the whole she was happy in England; she thought she had made the right move. Apart from the winters.

She sensed, rather than saw, a number of curtains twitch as she walked up the path to ring Aspern's doorbell. A six-footone black woman ringing your doorbell was probably a rare event in this neighborhood, she thought. Anyway, winter or not, it was nice to get away from the computer for a while, and out of the office. And she was on overtime.

A man answered her ring, and she was immediately put off by the arrogant expression on his face. She had seen looks like that before. Other than that, she thought he was probably handsome in a middle-aged English sort of way. Soft strands of sandy hair combed back, unusually good white teeth, a slim, athletic figure, loose-fitting, expensive casual clothes. But the expression ruined everything.

He arched his eyebrows. “Can I help you?” he asked, looking her up and down, the condescension dripping like treacle from his tongue. “I'm afraid there's no surgery on Sundays.”

“That's all right, Dr. Aspern,” Winsome said, producing her warrant card. “I'm fit as a fiddle, thank you very much. And I probably couldn't afford you, anyway.”

He looked surprised by her accent, no doubt expecting some sort of incomprehensible patois. The Jamaican lilt was still there, of course, but more as an undertone. Winsome had been in Yorkshire for seven years, though she had only been in Eastvale for two since her transfer from Bradford, and she had unconsciously picked up much of the local idiom and accent.

Aspern examined her warrant card and handed it back to her. “So first they sent the organ-grinder, and now they send the monkey.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Never mind,” said Aspern. “Just a figure of speech. You'd better come in.”

Winsome got the impression that Aspern scanned the street for spies before he shut the door behind them. Was he worried what the neighbors might think? That he was having an affair with a young black woman? Drugs, more likely, Winsome guessed. He was concerned that they would think he was supplying her with drugs.

He showed her into a sitting room with cream wallpaper, a large blazing fireplace and a couple of nice landscape paintings on the wall. A recent medical journal lay open on the glass-topped coffee table beside a half-empty cup of milky tea.

“What is it this time?” he asked.

Winsome sat in one of the armchairs without being asked and crossed her long legs. Aspern perched on the sofa and finished off the tea.

“Where were you last night, sir?” Winsome asked.

“What?” Aspern's superior expression was replaced by one of puzzlement and anger.

“I think you heard me.”

“Let's say I just didn't believe what I'm hearing.”

“Okay,” said Winsome, “I'll repeat the question. Where were you last night?”

“Has
he
put you up to this?”

“Who?”

“You know damn well who I'm talking about. Banks. Your boss.”

“DCI Banks issues the actions, sir, and I just carry them out. I'm merely a humble DC. I'm not privy to his inner thoughts. As you so accurately put it yourself, the monkey, not the organ-grinder.” She smiled. “But I
do
need to know where you were last night.”

“Here, of course,” Aspern answered after a short pause. “Where the hell else do you think I'd be, with my daughter so recently deceased? Out for a night on the town?”

“I understand she was your stepdaughter?” Winsome said.

“I always thought of her as my own.”

“I'm sure you did. No blood relation, though. Probably a good thing.”

Aspern's face darkened. “Now, look here, if Banks has been putting ideas in your head…”

“Sir?”

Aspern took a few calming breaths. “Right,” he said. “I see. I understand what you're up to. Well, it won't work. Last night Fran and I both stayed in and watched television, hoping for something to take our minds off what's happened.”

“Did you succeed?”

“What do you think?”

“What did you watch?”

“A film on Channel Four. I'm sorry, but I can't remember the title. I wasn't really paying attention. It was set in Croatia, if that helps.”

“Is your wife here at the moment?”

“She's resting. As you can imagine, this has been very hard on her. Anyway, she'd only corroborate my statement.”

“I'm sure she would,” said Winsome. “We'll let her rest for now.”

“Very good of you, I'm sure.”

“But you must admit it's not a very strong alibi, is it? It's
been my experience that wives will often stand by their husbands, no matter what horrors or atrocities they might be guilty of.”

“Well, I'm not guilty of anything,” said Aspern, getting to his feet. “So if that's all, I'll bid you good-bye. I don't have to sit around and listen to your filthy insinuations.”

Winsome held her ground. “What insinuations would those be, sir?”

“You know what I'm talking about. Banks obviously briefed you on his groundless suspicions, and you're here to do his dirty work for him. It won't wash. I'll be complaining to my MP about the both of you.”

“That's your prerogative,” said Winsome. “But you have to understand that our job can be difficult at times, insensitive, even. I really
am
sorry for your loss, Dr. Aspern, but I still have questions to ask.”

“Look, I've told you what I was doing. What more do you want?”

“What clothes were you wearing?”

“Come again?”

“You seem a bit hard of hearing this morning, sir. I asked what clothes you were wearing last night.”

“I don't see how that's relevant to anything.”

“If you'd just tell me. Or, better still, fetch them for me.”

Aspern narrowed his eyes, then stomped out of the room. A few moments later he returned and flung a dark-blue cotton shirt and a pair of black casual trousers over the arm of the chair beside her. “Unless you want my underwear, too?” he said.

“That won't be necessary,” said Winsome. She knew it was a farce, that he could have given her any old clothes and said he'd worn them last night, or that he could have washed and dried them in the meantime, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. The point was to shake him up, and in that she
thought she was succeeding remarkably well. “What about your jacket and overcoat?” she asked.

“What jacket and overcoat? I told you we stopped at home last night. Why would I need a jacket and overcoat?”

“Of course, sir. My mistake.” Winsome stood. “Mind if I take these?”

“Take them where? What for?”

“For forensic testing.”

“And what do you hope to find?”

“I don't
hope
to find anything, sir. It'll just help us eliminate you from our inquiries.”

“I love the language you people use. ‘Eliminate you from our inquiries.' Talk about bureaucratese.”

“That's a very good word for it, sir. Sometimes it does sound a bit overly formal, doesn't it? Anyway, if you could lay your hands on some sort of a bag…Plastic would be best. Bin liner, or something like that.”

Aspern went into the kitchen and found her a white plastic kitchen bag.

“Thanks. That'll do just fine,” Winsome said.

“Eliminate me from
what
inquiries?” Aspern asked.

“What do you mean, sir?”

Aspern sighed. “You said earlier that this would help eliminate me from your inquiries. I'm asking exactly
what
inquiries you're talking about.”

“I'm surprised you haven't heard,” she said. “It's been all over the news. There was another fire last night, remarkably similar to the one in which your stepdaughter died, and not too far away.”

“And I'm a suspect?”

“I didn't say that, sir, but we'd look pretty unprofessional if we didn't cover every possibility, wouldn't we?”

“I don't care what you'd look like; this is discrimination, pure and simple.”

“Against what group? Doctors, for a change?”

“Now, look here, you fucking—”

Winsome raised a finger to her lips. “Don't say it, Doc,” she said. “You know it'll only get you into trouble in these politically correct times.”

Aspern ran his hand over his hair and regained his composure, and his arrogant air. “Right,” he said, nodding. “Right. Of course. I apologize.” He spread his hands. “Take whatever you like.”

“That's all right, sir,” she said, lifting the bag of clothes. “This is all I need. I'll be on my way now.”

“I'm sorry you've had such a wasted journey. It's a long way to come for so little.”

“Oh, I wouldn't call it wasted,” said Winsome. “Not at all.”

She felt absurdly pleased with herself as she walked down the path to her car. Curtains twitched again and Winsome smiled to herself as she hefted the bag onto the seat beside her and drove off.

 

Annie tracked down the ex–Mrs. Gardiner easily enough—she was now Mrs. Alice Mowbray, wife of Eric—and by mid-morning she was knocking on the door of their semi on Arboretum Crescent. The woman who answered the door looked about forty, and she had a hard-done-by air about her. The red cashmere jumper and black skirt she was wearing looked a bit Harvey Nicks, the gold necklace wasn't cheap, either, and her blond hair definitely came from a bottle.

“Who is it, Alice?” a voice from inside the house called. “If it's those bloody Jehovah's Witnesses again, tell them to bugger off!”

Annie showed her warrant card and Alice stood back to let her in. “It's the police,” she called out.

A man came out of the room on the left of the hall, a curious expression on his face. Annie put him at about the
woman's age, or maybe five years younger. It was hard to tell. He didn't have a gray hair on his head and was, she supposed, handsome in a way, the sort of bloke who's full of confidence and tries to pick up women in the better class of pub. Well, some women fall for the brash, sleazy charm, Annie realized.

“What do you want?” he asked. “If it's about that speeding ticket, then—”

“It's your wife I want to see, sir,” said Annie.

“I can't imagine why,” said Alice, “but let's talk in the conservatory. I know the weather's not very good, but it's a nice view, and we've got an electric heater.”

“That'll be fine,” said Annie, aware of Eric Mowbray breathing down her neck as she followed Alice to the conservatory. Well, it wouldn't do any harm to talk to him, too, she thought. He looked the type who would get nervous easily and blab, if there was anything to blab.

They settled in the conservatory, which was warm enough and did indeed have a magnificent view looking west into Swainsdale, the distant hills shrouded in light mist. Alice Mowbray sat down on a wicker chair and tugged her skirt over her plump knees. The skirt was at least two inches too short for someone with her thighs, Annie thought, and in conjunction with the peroxide-blond hair it gave her a definite look of mutton dressed as lamb. Her husband, black hair slicked back with a little gel, jeans too tight over the slight paunch he was already beginning to show, looked as if he didn't mind. Unbidden, an image of the two of them disco-dancing under a whirling glittering globe, Eric waving his hands in the air and doing his best John Travolta imitation, came into her mind, and she had to hold back the laughter.

“What is it, then?” Alice Mowbray asked.

“I'm afraid I've got some rather bad news for you,” she said.

Alice put her hand to her necklace. “Oh?”

“It's about your ex-husband. I don't know if you've seen or heard any news this morning…?”

“Only the Sunday papers,” Alice said.