Rotten Apples (11 page)

As the day wore on she felt as though she were getting to know many of the taxpayers who were, or recently had been, in dispute with Kate and Scoffer. Most of them seemed to her to be fundamentally honest, if sometimes rather silly, but every so often she would come across one like Joe Wraggeley, whose letters and tax returns would have aroused plenty of suspicions in her mind if she had been an inspector.

It was not until late afternoon that she found any cases that had ended at all strangely, and then she came across one concerning an architect called Simon Creke. He had got into a mess over an unprecedentedly successful year, during which he had won a lucrative architectural prize, as well as earning far more in fees than ever before or since.

When Kate had written to ask him whether he had had any sources of income other than those listed in his accounts, he had told her at once about the prize, claiming that his accountant (who was not chartered) had advised him that money from prizes was not taxable. Kate had disputed that, writing to explain that prizes from the competitions entered in the course of carrying out a trade or profession were indeed taxable. After an increasingly acrimonious exchange of letters, during which she had told the accountant that she would be imposing large penalties, she had effectively ordered both him and his client to come to her office for a meeting.

Kate's notes of that meeting made it clear that the accountant was sticking by his guns. Then there was an apparent gap in the files, after which there was a letter from a different accountant with plenty of initials after his name, dated seven weeks after the meeting, suggesting a protracted repayment schedule for the original tax demand, but making no mention of penalties that Kate had written about in one of her earliest letters. The file made it clear that Simon Creke was faithfully repaying the tax but it gave no dues as to why Kate should have let him off the penalty.

Willow was still working when Kate walked past the open door of Mrs Patel's office on her way out of the building at seven-thirty.

‘You're very dedicated,' Kate said, stopping in the doorway.

Taking the comment at face value, Willow smiled noncommittally, still determined not to tell anyone in the tax office about Tom or explain why she did not want to go back to her empty house. ‘I haven't very long in which to prepare this report for the Merk, and I want to make it as comprehensive as possible,' she said, using Kate's nickname for the minister partly out of amusement and partly to try to build some kind of bond between them. ‘I imagine the last thing you want is for me or anyone else to have to come back to ask more questions.'

‘You're right there.' Kate also seemed to be making an unusual effort to be pleasant. She produced a smile but it looked more like a grimace than an expression of pleasure or affection. ‘It's considerate of you. But you ought to stop now. I have a settled policy here that the staff work no longer than their contractual hours except in seriously dire emergencies. It's too easy for any group of people to sink into bad habits, egging each other on to stay later and later each day. All that happens is that they do less and less in each hour they spend, and ruin their private lives and mental health. I know you're not staff, but all the same…'

‘I know what you mean, but I want to get this finished. Are you in a great hurry, or have you a moment to spare? There are one or two things I still don't understand, and I'd rather not make a fool of myself in my report.'

Kate looked at her watch, tightened her lips and then shrugged and came into the room, pulling her carefully looped scarf from around her neck. ‘Okay, I can spare about ten minutes.'

‘Well, it's this plumber really,' Willow said.

Kate smiled with a synthetic kindliness that raised most of Willow's hackles. ‘We have quite a lot of those,' she said. ‘Which is the case?'

Willow passed it across the shabby desk.

Kate opened it and quickly read through the first few letters and memos. ‘All right. Wraggeley. Yes, I remember. What's the problem?'

‘I just wondered why you went to the expense of having him under surveillance.'

Kate frowned. ‘There's nothing here about surveillance.'

‘No. But it's perfectly clear that it happened. The list of jobs you sent him and the sums of money you quote for his cash receipts show that you've either suborned someone on his staff or been having him watched.'

‘No comment.'

‘If the latter,' said Willow carefully, ‘it must have cost a great deal more than the extra tax you finally got him to pay. I wondered how much of that sort of thing goes on?'

‘That's hardly within your brief.' All attempts to be friendly had stopped. Kate looked as coldly obstructive as she had been on the first morning of Willow's assignment.

‘I'm just interested,' said Willow, adding in an attempt to retrieve Kate's co-operation, ‘I ought perhaps to say unequivocally that I entirely agree with you that people who owe tax ought to pay it. I'm merely exercised about the budgeting and costing of an operation like this. I wonder if it can ever be cost-effective.'

‘So far, it looks as though it will be,' said Kate, sounding a little less annoyed. ‘There's been an element of
pour encourager les autres
about it. Almost as soon as he realised that we had collected hard information about the black-economy parts of his business, we had a trickle and then a flood of revised accounts from other people in his and related trades.'

Willow could not help smiling at Kate's apposite choice of words for the group of repentant plumbers. ‘I see. That makes sense. I was mildly concerned that you'd been going after him out of expensive rage. Now, turning to the architect…'

Kate visibly twitched and covered the movement by reaching across for the file Willow was holding out to her. ‘Well?'

‘I don't quite understand why you should have let him off the penalties you wrote about in this letter.'

‘Surely you're looking for instances of Revenue brutality rather than solicitude,' said Kate, her neat eyebrows meeting across the top of her small nose.

‘To be frank, I'm not absolutely certain exactly what I am looking for, except that it must lie in oddities.' Willow paused in order to smile. ‘This definitely seems to me to be one of those.'

Kate leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, the picture of ease and confidence. Willow thought the picture might be as untruthful as her own smile.

‘It's perfectly simple, although several people in this office have been whispering about it. No doubt you've heard some of the tittle-tattle.' Kate's little nostrils flared in disdain. ‘The man was badly advised by his accountant—exceptionally badly advised—and since he himself was more than willing to provide every bit of information I asked for and pay everything he owed, it seemed inappropriate for me to impose penalties. He is paying the interest on the original sum without demur.'

‘Are you really allowed that much discretion over penalties?' asked Willow almost involuntarily.

‘Certainly,' said Kate coolly as she looked at her watch again. ‘Now, if there's nothing else, I must be off.'

‘Nothing,' said Willow.

Kate redraped the fine silk scarf around her neck, tucked the ends into the collarless neck of her pale sage-coloured suit, picked up her briefcase and left, shutting the office door behind her.

Wondering how many more of the expensive-looking pastel summer suits Kate must have hanging in her wardrobes, Willow went back to her files. She had already called the hospital and heard that there was still no change in Tom's condition, and the last thing she wanted was to spend an evening alone in the rooms she had furnished with him, trying to keep her thoughts under control. Work was more likely to do that than any book, piece of music or television programme. She did not even consider trying to see a friend; it would be impossible not to talk about Tom and anything that was said could only make her terror worse.

By ten o'clock her back was aching, her eyes were smarting, her nose was blocked, and smells of burning exhaust from the road outside seemed to have invaded every inch of her office. Blinking, she pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and blew her nose vigorously. It helped a bit, but there seemed still to be something wrong. After a second she decided that the burning smell was worse than just exhaust fumes and got up to investigate.

Opening her door, she saw to her horror that the whole of the wall at the far end of the long general office was on fire. Flames were licking around the doorjambs of Kate's office and Len Scoffer's, crawling up the wall and eating away at the ceiling. The grubby greenish carpet of the main office was smouldering in long patches that seemed to stretch out towards Willow like the fingers of some malevolent creature.

Transfixed in shock, for a moment she simply stared, choking in the acrid smoke with its foul smells of burning varnish, rubber, dirt, wood and plastic. Then she looked the other way towards the stairs and cried out.

Already her exit was blocked by a thick barrier of blackish grey smoke through which bright orange flames were shooting. She was caught between two advancing fires. Her eyes were streaming and the choking in her throat was threatening to make her sick as well. Desperately looking round the big room, trying to think what to do first, she noticed that the heavily sprung fire doors were hooked open in the passage between her and the stairs fire. Seizing her jacket from the back of her chair, she held it around her nose and mouth and tan forwards to unhook the doors. The brass was already hot and she swore, pulling back from it.

Taking the jacket from her face, and trying not to breathe in, she wrapped it round her hand. Choking in the smoke, despite holding her breath, and flinching from the heat that seemed strong enough to peel the skin from her face, she managed to force one stiff hook out of its brass eye. The door swung heavily towards her, almost knocking her off balance. She struggled across the wide corridor to the other door and repeated the operation. Just as the door was released from its anchorage, a rolling wave of fire uncurled itself along the ceiling towards her. Intense heat pushed her behind the swinging door and frightened her back into her wits.

She ran for the nearest telephone and punched in 999, knowing that she should have done that first. As she pressed the buttons, she saw that something had happened to the skin on the fingers of her right hand. It looked like crumpled cloth that had been pushed up in ugly wrinkles and somehow glued into place.

‘Emergency. Which service are you calling?' said an efficient male voice, forcing her attention away from the horrible sight of her own hand.

‘Fire,' gasped Willow.

‘What's your telephone number?' asked the voice coolly.

Willow looked down at the telephone only to see that the card with the number was so old and scuffed that she could not read the figures. She craned towards the next telephone but could not see it.

‘I'm not sure,' she sobbed. ‘Hold on. I'll find out.'

‘Too late,' said the voice irritably. ‘You're through.'

‘Fire brigade,' said an even more efficient voice.

‘Thank God!' said Willow, wasting crucial time. She gave the address of the building, explained what had happened and what she had done so far. Her voice was almost calm for most of the time but every so often it wobbled or was overtaken by a cough.

‘We're on our way,' said the fire brigade officer and gave her instructions to get to the fire escape without waiting to collect any belongings.

Willow replaced the receiver and prepared to run, realising with a sickening lurch of fear that she did not know where the fire escape might be. There seemed to be no signs on the walls of the office that were not already on fire. The choking, vile-smelling smoke was getting worse. The sullenly smouldering carpet was alight, and the flames had reached more than half the way to her office. She could not see the wall that divided the inspectors'rooms from their staff. The noise was appalling and to her horror she saw that chunks of the ceiling were sagging down through the rolling, threatening flames.

Sobbing, Willow turned into her own small office and banged the door shut as though its varnished, veneered chipboard could keep out flames. Aware that she was disobeying the Fire Brigade's instructions, she seized her suede shoulderbag, stuffing into it the black notebook in which she had been writing, hung the bag crosswise over her back, and leaned out through the open window. The air smelled fantastically sweet, as though the dust and fumes pumped out by the incessant traffic had been miraculously cleaned. A streetlamp cast a wonderfully serene, unflickering light over the whole scene.

Suddenly hopeful, Willow got one knee on the sharp metal edge of the casement window and looked down to try to work out how she could climb to safety. The forty-foot drop seemed so much less frightening than the fire that she hauled herself up so that she was balanced on the narrow metal frame. She hardly noticed that it bit into her knees. ‘Fires go up,' she said grimly. ‘I'll have to get down.'

Hanging on to the sides of the window frame, she put one leg out over the sill and realised at once that she would have to go down the other way. Turning awkwardly half in and half out of the window, she saw that flames were already licking around the edges of the door, and the sight forced her to move.

With her back to the street, she re-clamped her hands on to the narrow metal window frame and gingerly launched herself down the wall. It was clear that her shoes were going to be a dreadful encumbrance and so she kicked them off. It seemed a long time before she heard them hit the pavement.

Keeping her mind deadened to the length of the drop, she felt around with her Lycra-covered feet for some kind of toe-hold. There seemed to be nothing. Her tights ripped against the brickwork and the skin of her big toes was scraped raw. Her hand, already painful from the burns on the palms and fingers, began to hurt seriously, and she knew that she would not be able to hold on for much longer.