Losing Ground (4 page)

‘Come this way but mind how you go,’ he said, indicating a window that had once held glass. ‘You can see inside from here.’

Sloan clambered over a melange of wet wood, brick and glass to the fireman’s side.

‘Now take a look through there, Inspector,’ Charlie Burton said, jerking his thumb. ‘You may have to wait a moment for the smoke to clear enough for you to see what we saw.’

Detective Inspector Sloan approached the window space and peered into the building. There were no flames to be seen now but amid the swirling smoke he could make out exactly why it was the Criminal Investigation Department of the Force had been sent for by the fire brigade.

In the middle of the floor was a small pile of what were undoubtedly bones.

‘Bones?’ spluttered Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Bones,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘Definitely bones.’

‘What sort of bones?’ demanded Superintendent Leeyes peremptorily.

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, sir. I didn’t get a very good look at them before the roof caved in.’

‘Are you talking about a skeleton?’ asked Leeyes from the comfort of his office back in Berebury.

‘They might have come from one once,’ replied Sloan, choosing his words with care, ‘but what I saw looked like just a heap of bones.’

‘Disjecta membra
, then,’ said Leeyes.

‘Beg pardon, sir?’ Sloan was perched uncomfortably among hoses snaking everywhere.

‘Scattered limbs.’ The superintendent was a regular member of Adult Education Classes. The one on ‘Latin For All’ had left its mark on the man. And on those at the police station, too.

‘Dismembered ones, anyway,’ ventured Sloan. ‘We’ve determined it a crime scene for starters and Dr Dabbe’s on his way over here now.’ He’d left Crosby sealing off the site with
what the constable persisted in calling tinsel tape.

The superintendent’s grunt underlined his ingrained mistrust of professionals. Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe was the consultant pathologist for their part of the county of Calleshire and therefore not sufficiently in awe of senior policemen for the superintendent’s liking.

‘Not that he’ll be able to see any more than we did at this stage.’ Sloan paused to consider how to give his superior officer the unwelcome news that the fire brigade had already staked their claim to make their own investigation, Superintendent Leeyes being strong on the territorial imperative. ‘The whole site’s still very hot.’

‘That won’t stop him,’ forecast Leeyes. ‘Even if you won’t give him the go-ahead.’

‘No, sir. Probably not.’ He could only agree with this. The good doctor had a reputation for getting the bit between the teeth.

‘Go on, man.’ The sound of the superintendent’s fingers being drummed on a desk in Berebury was clearly audible down the telephone line. ‘What next?’

‘I am informed, sir, that the fire people have already initiated their own enquiries…’ Sloan hurried on in response to a low growl down the telephone line, ‘as they naturally have reason to believe that arson is involved, too.’

This was rewarded with another grunt. ‘Do we have any incendiarists on record?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Or pyromaniacs?’

‘I’m looking that up now,’ said Sloan. ‘I shall need to check on missing persons, too.’

‘Missing for quite a while,’ observed the superintendent acidly, ‘if they were down to the bones.’

‘Quite so,’ said Sloan. ‘But I think all we can do at this stage is to wait for everything to cool down.’

‘Tolmie Park,’ Superintendent Leeyes mused aloud. ‘That rings a bell…’

‘It’s the painting of the house out here that I understand has gone missing after the break-in at the Greatorex Museum,’ Sloan reminded him. ‘Or, rather, a painting of one of the family with the house in the background.’

‘Can’t be a coincidence, that, Sloan,’ growled the superintendent.

‘No, sir.’ No matter how much defence counsel could – and usually did – make of the benign statistics of coincidence the police were inclined to a more realistic view, circumstantial evidence being better than none.

‘But there’s something else about the place that I should remember, surely?’

‘That’s right, sir. It was Tolmie Park that the Calleshire and County Bank had all that trouble with two or three years ago. At least they called it trouble – we called it fraud.’

‘If I remember rightly, Sloan, at the time I wanted to call it grand larceny.’ He sniffed. ‘But the bank wouldn’t bring an action, would they?’

‘Bad for business was what they said that would have been,’ pointed out Sloan.

‘Keeping mistakes in the family is what I call it,’ said the superintendent vigorously. ‘Not good.’

‘Banks like doing that,’ said Sloan.

‘They caught a nasty cold, though, if their figures were
correct. And one, I may say, that they kept very quiet about.’

‘Banks do. I expect they just called it a loan that went wrong,’ said Sloan, ‘and adjusted their books accordingly.’ The finances of the Sloan
ménage
were straitened by a mortgage that was just – but only just – manageable.

‘Call it whatever you like,’ responded the superintendent briskly. ‘Me, I still say it was larceny.’

‘A money matter, anyway,’ conceded Sloan.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me a hill of beans if this fire was, too,’ prophesied the superintendent. ‘Most trouble is.’

Somewhere where the news of the fire was received with shock mingled with disbelief was at the council offices in Berebury.

‘Fire?’ squeaked Melanie Smithers, the conservation officer there. She was young, plump and earnest. She was also dedicated to her job. ‘Are you saying Tolmie Park is on fire?’

‘Too true, I am,’ said Jeremy Stratton coolly. He worked in the council’s planning department. ‘Someone’s just rung in to tell us and accuse the developers of designer vandalism.’

‘But,’ she stammered, ‘they didn’t need to do that.’

‘I’m not saying they did,’ said the man from planning patiently. ‘I’m just saying that someone else is saying so.’

‘Who?’

‘Anonymous call.’

‘Vandals, I expect,’ she said.

Jeremy Stratton leant negligently against the door post and drawled, ‘Now who exactly are we talking about when we use the word vandals? Developers or the local yobbos? Personally, as far as the damage they do to the environment, I find it hard to tell the difference.’

‘But,’ wailed Melanie Smithers, ‘they’ve only just put in for enabling planning permission. You must know that.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said sardonically, ‘we know that all right.’

Melanie Smithers reached for her hard hat. ‘How big a fire?’

‘They didn’t say that either,’ said the planning officer. The planning and conservation sections of the council were often at odds. This time he felt he had the edge. ‘They might have put in for enabling development all right but they haven’t got it yet, have they?’

‘There were no delays in my section,’ she retorted hotly. ‘Tolmie Park is part of Calleshire’s built heritage and we want it restored and kept safe.’

‘It would seem that somebody doesn’t,’ he said pointedly.

‘And granting permission for enabling development is the only way you can be sure these days,’ said the girl. ‘Unless you find a genuine benefactor prepared to do the restoration for love.’

‘But you don’t need enabling development if there’s nothing to preserve, do you?’ he grinned, starting to withdraw to his own office.

‘There’s that beautiful old house,’ said Melanie Smithers as she struggled with difficulty into her high-visibility yellow jacket, ‘just waiting for the right people to come along.’

‘There’s all that land, too,’ said Jeremy Stratton.

‘We at Conservation don’t mind so much about that,’ she said, grabbing her files and making for the door.

‘Somebody does,’ he said softly to her departing back. ‘They mind very much.’

*    *    *

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ cried Wendy Pullman in anguish. She put down the telephone and turned to her husband. ‘Oh, Paul, that was Jonathon Ayling.’

‘What’s that maniac gone and done now?’ sighed Paul Pullman.

‘No, you don’t understand. Jonathon hasn’t done anything. It’s awful. He says he’s just heard that the developers have done exactly what we said they would do and set Tolmie Park on fire.’

Wendy Pullman was the chairman of the Berebury Preservation Society. It had been founded on a rising tide of enthusiasm after the successful rescue of an endangered windmill in Larking village. Although even their best efforts had not been enough to save the last working forge in Calleshire over at Cullingoak – the giant leather bellows were now in the hands of a private collector – undeterred, they had proceeded to take up the cudgels in the cause of saving Tolmie Park from the developers with undiminished vigour. Their society’s motto was ‘Rebels With a Cause’.

‘Is Jonathon sure it’s them?’ asked Paul Pullman reasonably.

His wife brushed this aside. ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Nobody else has anything to gain.’ She paused and then said ‘He sounded quite – well, het-up. You know how excited Jonathon gets at the least little thing as far as preservation is concerned. But a fire…’

Paul Pullman, a preternaturally serious young man, nodded sagely. ‘It was always on the cards that something like this would happen. We all knew that. The developers must have been looking for a quick way out of their planning troubles and taken it.’

‘But they go and do it after all we’ve done to try to save that beautiful building,’ said his wife tearfully. ‘It’s not fair.’

Wendy moved over to her desk in the corner of the room and searched for a file. The fact that their headquarters were situated in the Pullman’s sitting room did not detract from the importance of the society in the eyes of its members. On the contrary, in fact, as it meant that one or other of the Pullmans was usually on the spot to deal with any sudden threats to existing old buildings.

‘They’re nothing but vandals,’ she wailed.

‘They’re businessmen,’ her husband reminded her. ‘In it for the money.’

‘Don’t they have souls?’ she asked rhetorically.

‘They have shareholders,’ said Paul Pullman.

‘But what can we do now?’ she asked. ‘That’s what Jonathon wants to know. That’s why he rang.’

Paul Pullman stroked a non-existent beard and looked very wise. ‘I’m not quite sure of the best course of action at this particular stage but I would say…’

He was interrupted in the delivery of his carefully considered opinion by the ringing of the telephone.

Wendy picked it up. ‘Who? Ah, yes, of course.’ She leant over and hissed in her husband’s ear, ‘It’s a reporter from the
Berebury Gazette.’
She straightened up and said into the telephone ‘Yes, I’m the chairman of the Berebury Preservation Society. Of course, I’m happy to make a statement for your publication.’

She motioned to Paul to hand her the file from the table and switched her voice into careful public relations mode. ‘Tolmie Park is a very beautiful building, dating originally from about
1620. It was restyled in the early eighteenth century in the time of the fourth baronet,’ although she had the file in her hands, she had the details off by heart, ‘by the architect Colen Campbell – that’s Colen with an “e”. Got that? Good.’

She paused and rolled her eyes at Paul and then resumed her lecturing mode. ‘Colen Campbell remodelled it in the harmonic mode much used by classical architects at the time, which is what makes it so important. What’s that?’

There was another pause.

‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Wendy. ‘Not a lot of it about any longer. Quite so.’ Then she said in a very different tone of voice. ‘Yes, of course, we know all about the house. That is why we are so keen to preserve it for future generations.’

Paul nodded approvingly at what she was saying. She grimaced at him in return but went on addressing the telephone as if she were on a platform.

‘Further landscape work was done at the turn of the nineteenth century by the famous gardener Humphry Repton. That’s Humphry without an
e
. Repton’s got one, of course. Got what? An
e
, of course. In Repton.’ She covered the mouthpiece and hissed at her husband. ‘Don’t these people know anything at all?’

She applied herself to the telephone again, listening rather more carefully when it became apparent that the newspaper reporter knew quite a lot.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said at last. ‘Quite a small fire, confined to the old billiard room by the fire brigade. That’s all right, then.’ There was a pause. ‘Why what? Why is it all right? Because the billiard room’s only Victorian.’ She stiffened and said
coldly down the telephone. ‘Of course our society is interested in the preservation of Victorian buildings, too, it’s just that Tolmie Park is basically an older building.’

There was another pause while Wendy listened rather more attentively.

‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘We know all about the planning application to build all those houses in the grounds – yes, that’s right – they call it enabling development. That’s so they can spend the money they make on those houses on restoring the house. In theory,’ she added richly.

It became evident that the newspaper reporter had not needed having this spelt out for him.

‘Our concern,’ said Wendy loftily, overlooking this, ‘is that Tolmie Park becomes a jewel in Calleshire’s crown once again.’

The telephone crackled.

‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘not even with enabling development. Nobody wants dozens of nasty little houses all over the park spoiling the whole ambience.’

Paul Pullman looked distinctly uneasy as she replaced the telephone. ‘I’m not sure you should have said that, Wendy.’

‘I shall deny that I did,’ she said serenely. She blew him a kiss. ‘And say I was misquoted. Or taken out of context. That’s what they always say, isn’t it? You didn’t hear it anyway, did you, darling?’ She picked up the telephone again. ‘I’d better ring Jonathon back and make sure he doesn’t do anything silly this time.’

Detective Inspector Sloan stepped gingerly over the fire hoses, trying in vain to avoid the puddles of water in between. He heard Dr Dabbe and his perennially taciturn assistant, Burns, arrive at Tolmie Park long before he saw the consultant pathologist’s car come round the corner of the building at a smart pace and screech to a halt.