Playing with Fire (33 page)

“I told you I'd get your ticket. Security consultant.”

“That's very sweet of you, but it doesn't seem right,” Annie said. “Besides, if I went with you to New York, I certainly wouldn't want to go as your employee.”

Phil laughed. “But that would only be on paper.”

“I don't care.”

The waiter came over with the bill and Phil picked it up.

“See what I mean?” Annie said. “You're always paying.”

“I'll split it with you, then?”

“Fine,” said Annie, reaching for her handbag. The Visa wasn't maxed out, she was certain. How embarrassing it would be, after all her bravado about paying her own way, if that obsequious waiter with the phony French accent trotted back and told her her card had been rejected.

“You don't know what you're missing,” Phil went on. “We could stay at the Plaza. A carriage ride in Central Park, top of the Empire State Building, Tavern on the Green, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Tiffany's—”

“Oh, stop it!” Annie said, slapping his arm and putting her hands over her ears. “I don't want to know, okay?”

Phil held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I'll stop.”

“Besides,” Annie said, “we've still got a major crime investigation on the go.”

“Still stumped?”

“We don't have a lot to go on. Even the rented car turned out to be a dead end. Literally. The man who rented it died six months ago.”

“Oh,” said Phil. “Then how…?”

“Don't ask. All I know is it's a real bloody headache, and it's nice to take my mind off it even for a few hours. Christ, I even had to spend last night in a motel outside Redditch fighting off the attentions of two traveling salesmen from Solihull.”

Phil laughed. “Successfully, I hope.”

“Yes. I had Winsome with me. She can be quite fearsome when she wants.” Annie smiled. “Fearsome Winsome.”

The waiter returned with their credit card receipts to sign. Annie breathed a sigh of relief. When they had finished, they picked up their coats from the rack by the table and walked out into the cobbled alley off King Street, at the back of the police station.

“Ooh,” said Annie, when the cold night air hit her. “I feel
dizzy. I think I've had a bit too much wine.” She linked arms with Phil.

“Come on,” Phil said. “My car's just around the corner. Where did you park?”

Annie was wearing high heels, and it was difficult walking on the cobbles, especially with the effects of the wine and the patches of ice that were forming as the temperature dropped. “Police station car park,” she said.

“Leave it there, then. I'm perfectly okay to drive.”

And he was, Annie knew. She had never seen Phil drunk, never known him to drink more than one glass of wine with dinner. “But what…?”

“Look,” he said, “I'll take you home, if you like. Or, if you want…”

Annie looked up at him. “What?”

“Well, you could come back to my place, if you like.”

“But how will I get to work in the morning?”

“Maybe you won't. Maybe I'll keep you there. My love slave.”

Annie laughed and pushed him.

“Seriously,” he said. “I'll drop you off there in the morning. I have to pick up the Turners to take them to London, anyway.”

“You're going back down?”

“Have to.”

“Pity.”

“Work goes on. Anyway, how about it?”

“You'll bring me back in the morning? You'll do that?”

“Of course. Unless I decide to keep you prisoner.”

“Go on, then.”

“But I'm warning you. I know you've had a bit too much to drink, and I might take advantage of you.”

Annie felt better than she had in a long while about that prospect, but she was damned if she was going to let Phil know it. “I'm not
that
drunk,” she said. “And I'm definitely not that easy.”

“Well, I'm sure we'll find some way of keeping your mind off your work for a few hours more, at least.”

Annie tightened her arm around his and they turned the corner onto King Street.

 

“Dad? I'm sorry to ring so late, but I just got back in.”

Banks glanced at his watch. Almost midnight. “Where've you been?”

“The pictures. With Jane and Ravi.”

“What did you see?”

“The new
Lord of the Rings
.”

“Was it good?”

“Brilliant. But very long. Look, Dad…”

Banks turned down the old Jesse Winchester CD he was playing and settled back in the armchair with his glass of Laphroaig, his used paperback copy of Ambler's
The Mask of Dimitrius
open facedown beside him. The peat fire crackled and filled the small living room with its warmth, the acrid smell harmonizing with the taste of whiskey. He didn't like the ominous tone of his daughter's “Look, Dad.” “What?” he asked.

“I was talking to Mum earlier today,” Tracy went on.

“And?”

“She said she saw you. In London.”

“That's right. I was down there on business.”

“She said she thought you were watching her. Stalking her.”

“I was doing no such thing.”

“Well, she says you were hanging around her house. In the rain.”

“It wasn't raining. That started later.”

“Dad, she's worried about you.”

“I don't see why.”

“She thinks you're becoming weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yes. Hanging around her house and all. It
is
pretty weird. You must admit.”

“I had a few questions I wanted to ask her.”

“About a case?”

“As it happens, yes. About an artist she once knew when she worked at the community center. It's part of a case I'm working on.”

“The burning boats. Yes, I've read about it in the paper.” Tracy paused. “She didn't tell me that.”

“Well, it's true. What? Don't you believe me? Do
you
think I'm getting weird in my old age?”

“Nobody said anything about old age.”

“Still…my own daughter grilling me.”

“I'm not grilling you. Can't you see, she still cares about you?”

“She's got a funny way of showing it.”

“You scare her, Dad. She just can't cope with you. You always seem so angry with her. She thinks you hate her. All she can manage is to go cold when the two of you talk to one another.”

Banks remembered that from their marriage. Whenever Sandra couldn't deal with a situation emotionally, she would just sort of turn off. Sometimes she would even fall asleep in the middle of an argument. It used to infuriate him. “I don't hate her,” he said.

“Well, that's how she feels.”

“It's a funny turn of events, isn't it, my own daughter giving me advice on marital relationships?”

“I don't have any advice to give. And you're not married anymore. That's the problem. How's your girlfriend?”

“Michelle? She's fine.”

“Seen her lately?”

“No. We've both been too busy.”

“There you go, then.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“Dad, you've got to make time to have a life. Stop and smell the roses. You can't just…Oh, I don't know. What's the point?”

“I stopped to smell the roses last summer,” Banks said. “But it didn't last.” He remembered the two weeks of bliss he had spent on a Greek island, the sun, the light on white and blue planes of the houses straggling down the hill, scents of lavender, thyme, oregano, a whiff of dead fish and salt spray. He also remembered how restless he had felt and how, though it seemed a great wrench at the time, he was secretly pleased to feel himself being called back home to a case. And to the lovely Michelle Hart. How he wished she were with him tonight, but he wasn't going to let his daughter in on his longings.

“That was because you came running back to get involved in another case,” Tracy said.

“Tracy, Graham Marshall was an old friend of mine. How could I—”

“Oh, I know. I'm not saying you shouldn't have come back. Of course I'm not. But remember the time before, when we were supposed to be going to Paris for the weekend, and you went off searching for Jimmy Riddle's runaway daughter instead? There's always something. Always will be. You just have to…I mean, you can't solve the world's problems single-handedly. You're not the only detective in the country, you know. Sometimes I think you just use your job to hide yourself from yourself. And from everybody else.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, it's too complicated to go into right now.”

“Quite the philosopher you've become. And here's me thinking you were a history student.”

“You know what Socrates said: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.' ”

“Well, I wouldn't examine it
too
closely, if I were you. You never know what you might find.”

“Oh, Dad. You're just playing word games now.”

Banks felt the urge for a cigarette peak and wane. He took another sip of whiskey. “Look,” he said, “I'm sorry for being facetious. It's just been a long day. A long week, as a matter of fact. I haven't had much sleep, and I've got a lot on my mind.”

“When was it ever any different?”

“Tell your mother I don't hate her.”

“Tell her yourself. Good night, Dad.”

And Tracy hung up.

Banks held the phone in his hand for a few moments and listened to the buzzing sound. He'd been about to tell Tracy that seeing the baby for the first time had been a shock, that he hadn't been prepared for the way it made him feel. But she'd hung up on him.

He put the phone down and went into the kitchen to top up his glass. As he stood there pouring the Laphroaig, he felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy envelop him. But it came from the
outside,
not the inside. Though he didn't generally believe in the supernatural, he had long believed that the kitchen contained some sort of spirit. It usually gave him a strong sense of well-being, and he had never felt its sadness before.

Banks shuddered and went back to the living room, turned up Jesse Winchester singing “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz” and settled down gloomily to get drunk. He knew he shouldn't, knew that tomorrow would be just as busy as today, and that the hangovers only got worse as he got older. But his daughter had hung up on him. He thought of phoning her back, but decided against it. He didn't feel he had the emotional energy to deal with the sort of discussion Tracy seemed to have in mind tonight. Best wait till they'd both slept on it. He was sure she would ring him again tomorrow and patch things up. Still, it was a sour note to go to bed on, which was why he had refilled his glass.

He wanted to talk to Michelle. The way things had turned
out, he hadn't called her from London, hadn't spent the evening in Peterborough. It was after one o'clock, but he would ring her anyway, he decided, reaching for the phone. But before he could pick it up, it rang. He thought it might be Tracy ringing back to apologize, so he answered it.

“Alan?”

“Yes?”

“Ken Blackstone here. Sorry to bother you at this hour, but I thought you might be interested. I just got a call from Weetwood.”

Banks sat up. “What is it?”

“Another fire. Adel. Patrick Aspern's house.”

Banks put his glass down. “I'll be there as soon as I can,” he said.

“I'll be waiting.”

Banks took stock of the shape he was in. Luckily, he had only taken a sip or two of his second drink, and he knew he wasn't over the limit. He put the kettle on and poured plenty of fine-ground coffee into a filter. While the water was coming to a boil, he stuck his head under the tap and ran cold water over it for a couple of minutes. Then he poured the boiling water into the filter and watched it drip through, filled it once again and brushed his teeth and sucked on a breath mint. Just before he left, he filled a travel mug with hot black coffee and carried it out to the car. The night was cold and hoarfrost had formed on the trees and drystone walls, giving them a ghostly white outline in the night. The sky was studded with stars.

There was no time for Jesse Winchester's bittersweet musings now. Banks flipped through the CDs he carried in the car and went for The Clash's
London Calling
. If that and the hot, strong coffee didn't keep him awake all the way to Adel, nothing would.

T
he fire engines were gone when Banks arrived at Patrick Aspern's house shortly after two in the morning, and two police patrol cars were parked diagonally across the street, blocking it to all traffic. He hadn't known what to expect in terms of damage, but from the outside, at least, the house seemed intact. The local police had sealed off the path, and a line of blue-and-white tape barred the gateway, where a young constable, who looked to be freezing his bollocks off, even in his overcoat, was logging everyone who came and went. Banks went up to him and asked for DI Ken Blackstone.

The PC wrote something on his clipboard and gestured with his thumb. “Inside, sir,” he said with a wistful tone.

Banks walked down the path. The front door was closed, but not locked, and there were signs of forced entry. The firefighters, or someone else?

Banks found Ken Blackstone and the local DI from Weetwood, Gary Bridges, in the living room. DI Bridges presented quite a contrast to Banks and the elegant, dapper Blackstone. In some ways he resembled DS Hatchley, though he was in far better shape. He was a big man in a baggy creased suit, an ex–rugby forward with arms and legs like steel cables, a head of thick sandy hair and piercing green
eyes. The traces of his Belfast accent were still in his voice, even though he'd spent most of his life in England.

Banks looked around the room. There was no trace, or even smell, of fire or smoke damage anywhere. Sitting on the sofa, where he cut a slight and lonely figure indeed, was Mark Siddons. The room was warm, but Mark had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and was trembling slightly. He looked over when Banks walked in, then quickly averted his eyes. What looked like streaks of dirt, or blood, stained his face and the hands gripping the blanket. There was also blood on the side of his head.

“What's going on?” Banks asked, after greeting Blackstone and Bridges. “Where's the fire?”

“Gary here rang me at home as soon as he heard the location,” said Blackstone. “His lads had been helping us check up on Aspern, so he knew I had an interest.”

“It started in Dr. Aspern's surgery,” Bridges said. “At the back. An addition, really. The damage isn't serious, and it's pretty well contained.” He gestured toward Mark. “Seems this lad here snapped into action with the extinguisher real sharpish.”

Banks looked at Mark. “That right?” he asked.

Mark nodded.

“Was it you who broke in?”

Mark said nothing.

“Sure you didn't start the fire yourself?” Banks went on.

“I didn't start it.”

“I warned you to stay away.”

“I didn't do it.”

“What makes you think he did?” Bridges asked. “What's going on here? DI Blackstone said Dr. Aspern was involved in a case you're working on, but that's about all I know. Do you think this might be related?”

“The personnel's the same,” said Banks, then he explained about the other fires and Mark's problems with Patrick As
pern. Mark said nothing. He seemed to be lost in his own world, still trembling.

“So what happened?” Banks asked.

“We're still not clear yet,” Blackstone said. “But the fire's not the main problem.” He looked at Mark. “And the leading firefighter told me the front door was already open when they got here. Do you want a look at the scene?”

Banks nodded. Blackstone glanced at Bridges. It was a courtesy to seek his permission because they were on his patch. “It's okay,” Bridges said. “Looks like we'll be working together on this one, anyway. I'll take the lad here down to the station.”

“Why are you arresting me?” Mark asked. “I haven't done anything.”

“Where else would you go at this hour?” Banks asked.

Mark just shrugged.

Bridges looked over at Banks. “Breaking and entering?”

“That'll do for starters. And see if you can get a doctor to have a look at him, would you? We'll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Bridges. “Be careful in there. The doc's been and gone, but the photographer's not finished yet, I think, and the SOCOs haven't done their stuff. Can't seem to get the idle buggers out of bed.”

“It's pretty grim,” Blackstone said as he and Banks walked down the plush-carpeted hall to the back of the house.

Banks remembered the scene on the boats and in Gardiner's caravan. He didn't imagine it could be much worse than either of those. And it certainly couldn't be worse than what he had witnessed in that tall, narrow terraced house all those years ago.

“There's just one connecting door through from the main house,” Blackstone said, turning the handle. “And there's a separate entrance from the outside into a small waiting room for the patients. They're mostly private, and I expect they pay
a little bit extra for the olde worlde charm. I'll bet the doctor paid house calls, too.”

There wasn't much olde worlde charm in evidence when Blackstone opened the door to Aspern's surgery, but whatever damage had been done there hadn't been done by fire. Even with the slight charring and spray of foam from the extinguisher, it was plain to see that the walls and floor were covered in blood, and that the blood came from the body of Patrick Aspern, well beyond the help of any doctor now, spread-eagled on the floor, the entire front of his body ripped open in a glistening tapestry of tissue, organ, sinew and bone.

Banks glanced at Blackstone, who was looking distinctly peaky. “Shotgun?” he said. “Close range? Both barrels?”

“Exactly. Gary's bagged it and tagged it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Banks said under his breath. In such a small room, the impact must have been tremendous. Even now he could still smell the powder mingled with burned rubber, surgical spirit and blood. Banks could only imagine the deafening noise and the spray of arterial blood, the gobbets of flesh blown clean off the bone, leaving dark slimy trails on the walls. Even the eye chart was splattered with blood, and so was the hypodermic syringe on the floor by the chair.

“Who did it?” Banks asked.

“Looks like the wife,” said Blackstone. “But she's not talking yet.”

“Frances?” Banks said. “Where is she?”

“Station.”

“And the boy was in the room, too? Mark?”

“Yes.”

“What does he have to say for himself?”

“Nothing. You saw for yourself. I think he's still in shock. We'll have to wait awhile before we get anything out of him.”

Banks kept silent for a few moments, looking around the room. A shambles, in the original meaning of the word. He noticed several strands of cord on the floor by the doctor's
chair. “What's that?” he asked.

“We think the boy must have been tied to the chair.”

“Why?”

“Don't know yet. But Mrs. Aspern must have cut him free.”

“And the fire?”

“Hardly got started before the kid turned the extinguisher on it. As you can see.”

He pointed to a burned patch on the carpet, which had spread as far as the cubbyhole used to store patient files and singed the crisp white sheets on the examination table.

“Who set it?”

“Again, it looks like the wife.”

Frances Aspern. Well, maybe she had reached a snapping point, Banks thought. If what he suspected had been going on, and if she had known, then he could only guess at the power of the emotions she had suppressed, or how warped and dangerous they had become under the pressure of the years. But something must have happened to make her snap. A trigger of some sort. Maybe they would get something out of her or Mark later.

The outside door opened, letting in a draft of icy night air. “Sorry, lads,” said the photographer, tapping his Pentax. “I finished the video, then I had to go back to the car for this.”

The young photographer didn't seem at all fazed by the scene of carnage in front of him. Banks had seen the same lack of reaction before. He knew that photographers often managed to distance themselves through their lenses. To them, the scene was only another photo, an image, a composition, not real human blood and guts spilled there. It was their way of coping.

Banks wondered what his way of coping was and realized he didn't really have one. He looked upon these scenes as exactly what they were—outbursts of anger, hate, greed, lust or passion, which left one human being mangled and split open,
the fragile bag of blood burst, and he didn't have any way of distancing himself. But still he slept at night, still he didn't faint or puke his guts up over someone's shoes. What did that say about him? Oh, he remembered them all, of course, all the victims, young and old, and sometimes his sleep was disturbed by dreams, or he couldn't get to sleep for the images that assaulted his mind, but still he lived with it. What did that make him?

“Alan?”

Banks turned to see Ken Blackstone frowning at him.

“All right?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“My sofa?”

“Why not,” said Banks, with a sigh. “It's a bloody long way home, and I'm knackered. Got any decent whiskey?”

“I think I could rustle up a dram or two of Bell's.”

“That'll do nicely,” said Banks. “Let's leave it to DI Bridges and go. We'll sort this mess out tomorrow.”

 

Annie was in the office early, despite a mild hangover and a mostly sleepless night. Phil had picked up the Turners and set off for London after dropping her at the front doors of Western Area Headquarters. She made a pot of strong coffee in the squad room and settled down to some much neglected paperwork. She was just starting to enjoy the relative early-morning peace and quiet when the place started springing to life. DC Rickerd was first in, followed by Winsome. Then Kevin Templeton and the others came and went, attending to the varied tasks and minutiae of a major investigation. Annie felt embarrassed to be wearing the same clothes she'd gone to dinner in the previous evening, but nobody noticed, or at least nobody said anything. Banks wasn't there, anyway. She could only imagine the kind of look she'd get from him. Sometimes she felt as if he could smell the sex on her, no
matter how long she had showered.

It wasn't long after nine when an excited DC Templeton came up to her waving a sheet of paper. “I've got it!” he said. “I've got it.”

“Alleluia,” said Annie. “What have you got?”

“McMahon and Gardiner. The connection.”

Annie felt the excitement of a big break spread around the squad room like the first breath of spring. Everyone put in hard and long hours on a case, and something like this was payday for them all, whether they'd worked that particular angle or not.

“Come on, then, Kev,” she said. “Give.”

“They were at university together,” said Templeton. “Well, it wasn't actually a university back then, but it is now.”

“Kev, slow down,” said Annie. “Give me the details so they make sense.”

Templeton ran his hand over his wavy brown hair. He had some sort of gel on it, Annie noticed, which made it look wet, as if he'd just walked out of the shower. He always did fancy himself a bit, did Kevin Templeton, she thought, and he was a good-looking, trim, fit lad who probably did really well with the girls. He had a touch of the Hugh Grant boyish charm about him, too, the sort of quality that called out for a bit of mothering, but just enough to make it an attractive proposition for the right type of woman. Not Annie. She wasn't the mothering kind.

“Okay,” he went on, reading from the sheet. “Between 1978 and 1981, both Thomas McMahon and Roland Gardiner attended the former Leeds Polytechnic, since 1992 known as Leeds Metropolitan University. Back then it was made up of the Art College, the College of Commerce, the College of Technology and the Cookery School. Thomas McMahon attended the Art College, obviously, and Roland Gardiner went to the College of Commerce.”

“Did they know one another?”

Templeton scratched his forehead. “Can't tell you that, ma'am. Only that they were both there at the same time.”

Winsome shot Annie a glance. Annie smiled at her. One day she'd get Kevin Templeton out of the habit of calling her “ma'am,” too. Coming from a handsome young lad like him, it really did make her feel like an old maid.

“In my experience,” Annie said, “it's pretty unlikely that art and commerce students shared the same interests. I doubt they'd ever mix.”

“Not the same subjects, maybe,” said Templeton, “but that's only a part of what college is all about, isn't it? There's the pub, student politics, the music scene. Leeds Poly always had great bands. They could have met through something like that.”

“ ‘Could have' isn't good enough, Kev. If we're to make any sort of link, we need to know for certain. And we need to know who else they hung out with. There's a fair chance that whoever killed them met them back then, was someone who was maybe part of the same scene. I certainly don't believe it's a coincidence that two men who were murdered so close together and in much the same way just
happened
to go to the same poly at the same time. But we need a definite connection, if one exists. And there's the late William Masefield to consider, too. How was he linked with the others, if he was?”

“Well,” said Templeton, “I could always get on to the authorities in Leeds. I'm sure their records go back that far.”

“And what do we do then? Check up on every student who attended Leeds Poly from 1978 to 1981? It'd be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Can you think of any other way?”

“I've got an idea,” said Winsome.

Annie and Templeton looked at her. “Go on,” Annie said.

“Friends Reunited dot com. I'm a member. I've used it before to locate people. I admit it's a short cut, but it might help narrow things down a bit. Of course, you've only got
the people who have taken the trouble to register on the site, but there's a chance one of them might remember McMahon or Gardiner. We can send out an e-mail to everyone on the list who left Leeds Poly in 1981, asking if they knew a Thomas McMahon and a Roland Gardiner, and see what kind of response we get back. Plenty of people are constantly online these days, so if we're lucky we might even get a speedy reply.”