Burn Patterns (37 page)

Satisfied with her alarm beacon, she left the room, shouting, ‘Fire. Fire. Fire!'

Iris headed down the fire stairwell. It was busy now the lifts were out. Hospital staff were heading up and down. A woman in a hospital caterer's uniform rattled at a door marked exit on the ground floor. ‘It's stuck.'

Iris said, ‘Go out through the lobby. Prop this door to the lobby open so others go that way too.'

Iris continued down. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, but it was somewhere in the basement. At the bottom of the steps was a door marked
MAINTENANCE STAFF ONLY
. It was unlocked. A maintenance worker in tan-coloured clothes lay on the concrete floor inside the room. Iris felt his neck for a pulse. He was breathing.

Across the room was another red door, which Iris tried. It opened to a huge concrete room full of green generators, which sat on concrete risers painted yellow. Pipes painted blue rose to the ceiling where conduits and pipes wound across the fluorescent-lit ceiling. It was like being in the engine room of a vast ship.

Grey cabinets lined the wall where Iris entered. A small sign said electrical. Nearby was the fire alarm system, housed in a red metal cabinet. The cabinet door was open. Iris peered at dials and switches, realised she didn't know how to restore the system.

She made her way through the turbines. They hummed rather quietly, smelt faintly of warm plastic and oil.

She came to more doors.
CHILLER ROOM PLANT. CHEMICAL STORAGE. OVERFLOW BASEMENT LABORATORY. EMERGENCY BACKUP GENERATOR
. Iris found the red pipes with their red wagon-wheel taps and water pressure gauges belonging to the fire sprinkler system. She was about to search for the tap to turn the water flow back on when she saw another body.

She saw his legs first and rounded a generator to find a security guard near the lifts. A fire extinguisher lay next to the body, blood covering the blunt end. The lift doors were propped open. Drums were stacked in the nearest one.

‘Aviation fuel.'

Iris spun to see Paul, behind her, dressed in the tan clothes of a maintenance worker. He wore glasses and a brown baseball cap. He also carried a large set of keys. ‘This fellow here unlocked all the doors. I have locked them again,' he said, annoyed. He tossed the bunch of keys at the security man. They bounced off his body, jangled across the floor. The side of the man's head had been bludgeoned. ‘I'm not ready. It needs to be done properly and you keep rushing me.'

Iris tried to smile.

Paul said, ‘You should be dead.'

‘I'm too smart for you.'

‘No one is.'

‘You know I am. It's why you fear me.'

He met her eyes with a moment of doubt before finding his scorn.

Iris thought about his case, their sessions. She thought about Paul's mother, the glitches in his social interactions, his desire to talk, the possibility every second he could be delayed, more people might get out of the hospital.

‘Aviation fuel? I'm supposing it's not commonly available in most hospitals.'

‘You say things in a stupid way. Do you know?'

‘I hadn't thought about it. Possibly yes?'

‘Not possibly. You try to make jokes. For no reason.'

‘You don't like jokes, do you? It takes too long to work them out, to adjust to the expected response and then deliver it, fake the mirth.'

‘Shut up, Iris.' Paul reached down to a small knife holster on his belt, pulling out a diver's knife. It had a large blade, serrated on top. ‘Come this way.'

He directed Iris into the doorway marked emergency power generator where more drums were on a flat trolley. The drums were marked diesel.

‘It is easier to pull rather than push.' He pointed her to the trolley.

‘You said aviation fuel.'

‘Yes. Don't believe what is says on the packet. See. A joke.'

‘How?'

‘How am I going to burn down the hospital?'

‘I'm guessing the lifts will take the fuel. How'd you get it in here?'

‘I came here while they were evacuating. Confusion, then quiet. While you were at the church, meddling. They use diesel for the emergency generators. Pull.'

Iris manoeuvred the trolley with difficulty, dragging it out through the door and towards the lifts.

‘The lifts connect to four wings, the shaft is the centre of the H shape. If it ignites on level three, it should spread outwards. With no water, and a lot of chemicals and plastics, it should be self-sustaining. If I can generate sufficient initial heat, like the planes in New York. I was going to use diethyl ether, except the experiment at the school proved it too unstable.'

‘You want the numbers.'

‘Five floors multiplied by four wings. Incapacitated. Beds, wheelchairs. Only narrow steps clogging. They are still confused and tired from leaving and coming back.'

‘You're going for a record. You want the glory.'

Iris stopped at the lift. James was inside, dead or unconscious, his arms taped to a wheelchair next to some drums already loaded.

Paul said, ‘Stupid thing.' He was looking at James in the lift. He still held the knife.

‘They know it's you, Paul.'

‘Who?'

‘The police. I told them.'

‘We don't have to worry about him.'

‘James?'

‘The fat one. The one with the limp.'

‘Charles?'

‘My name was on his list. He asked questions about the old fires. He had no idea. He wasn't even armed. He came to the
house. I put him down. Quite quickly.'

Iris took a big breath. Forced herself to stay sharp, not think about Chuck.

‘With you gone too, and this thing, it can be neat again. Lift the drum and put it in the lift.'

‘You're kind of stuck on the one plan aren't you?'

Paul's eyes flashed but the anger was gone in an instant.

Where were the fucking fireys? Where was security? Why were they taking so long?

‘Move the drums into the lift,' he ordered calmly.

Iris tried to wrestle with one of the drums. She couldn't even budge it.

‘You're not strong. You're useless. Stupid. They won't come yet. They are too busy searching for the Martian and dealing with the escaped criminals, getting in each other's way. Guinea pigs squeal in a special way when there is a fire in their cage.' Paul stood looking towards the basement ceiling as though listening for squeals.

Iris took a step away and he reacquired her. He put the knife in his holster. He said, ‘You wouldn't get halfway to the door before I would catch you.'

‘I'm trapped. I can't escape.'

He studied her. Iris guessed he was imagining hurting her, in quite specific detail, but he shook the thoughts off, grabbed the top of a drum, twisted it off the trolley. He half-rolled, half-walked it into the lift, pushing it in next to James.

Iris glanced down to the dead security guard. She didn't dwell on his face. He wasn't armed. She said, ‘I have told other police it is you. I've given them your name.'

‘You're lying.'

‘You may as well let it go. You won't hide anything. We know. We know it's you. You're too fancy, Paul. Too set in your ways. You over-think it. There's too much foreplay and masturbatory self-touching as you set the fire up. It takes too long. You fuck like a Chinaman.'

‘What?'

‘A joke. You don't like jokes, I know. This one is about you. You. It was in a film.
Chinatown
. The detective, Jack Nicholson, tells
about this man who has a problem. He's a premature ejaculator.'

‘I'm not. I can control that.'

Bingo. ‘It's a joke. It's not about you in that way. I'm sure you're a magnificent lover, Paul.'

Paul stood in the lift, staring at her, trying to work out what she was doing while also assimilating having multiple buttons pushed. It was like he was being nipped by tiny ants.

James moved behind him. It was done so quickly Iris wasn't exactly sure what happened. He moved, then he was still again, slumped in the wheelchair in the lift.

Paul saw her glance. He turned to look at James before stepping out of the lift.

Iris said, ‘So, he goes to his friend and he says, I can't satisfy my wife.'

‘I can. You are being annoying, Iris. You need to move on.'

‘His friend says, well what the Chinese do is they, you know, get down to a bit of in and out, but when the man feels like he's about to …'

‘Orgasm,' said Paul. It was a strange thing, the way Paul said the word, perhaps too devoid of feeling.

‘He withdraws from her vagina. Excuse my rude language, Paul. And my racism. Not my joke. He withdraws from her vagina and he goes outside to contemplate the stars, the garden. He returns to his wife and he enters her again. Once again, when he feels he's about to … orgasm, he withdraws to calm down.'

‘You are completely off track, Iris. Again, you're obsessing over textbook inventions. If I was once a premature ejaculator, I am not now. It is merely a matter of control.'

‘That's not the point of this joke.'

‘It's not funny.'

‘I haven't finished. Ha.'

‘You are delaying me.'

‘Yes. Exactly.'

‘Are you trying to disorient me with dirty talk?'

‘Is that what your mother did? Talked dirty, while she …'

‘Enough.' Paul moved with sudden speed. He pushed her back to thump against the side of a generator.

She gasped at the sudden pain in her shoulder. Wheezed, ‘Did
you kill your mother?'

‘Yes.' He stood over her, his eyes cold.

‘Why?' she whispered.

‘She was bad.'

‘December, two thousand.'

He looked at her, appraising. He was a little frightened of her again. Perhaps he always had been, possibly because of his mother.

‘Why the can of Passiona? Was it her favourite? Or yours. After.'

‘Stop.' He raised his hand, but only in warning. He didn't strike.

Iris wondered whether it might be possible to confront someone with their darkest issues to such an extent you could actually talk them into catatonia. The talking cure as talking weapon. Cause a kind of loop or brain freeze while the mind couldn't keep up with its own defences so started fighting itself.

‘Sex with your mother was wrong but it wasn't your fault. You were a child.'

He sneered. His hand dropped. ‘Stupid thing, Iris. Fault. I didn't come to you to be cured. You have no idea. I told you I blew up the school and you thought I was talking about binge drinking. You stupid fool. Under your nose. My … she … we never had sexual intercourse. Wrong again.'

‘Your mother did things to you. When you wet the bed. After you wet the bed she washed you, didn't she, and she ridiculed you for wetting your bed. She washed your penis and you got hard. It wasn't sex but it was confusing. She laughed at you, berated you. She washed you a lot.'

His hand shot forward, his fingers wrapped around her throat. One hand seemed sufficient to pin Iris against the generator, his fingers squeezing, his face twisted.

Her shoulder hurt again.

Iris had guessed close enough to cause him pain. She'd lit a fire, a blaze back behind his eyes, twisting on itself, sparking and burning up his own neural pathways.

Yet his hand kept squeezing, Iris could feel herself going. If she died, she'd go down swinging. Maybe it would be okay. A decent sleep, finally.

Paul stopped strangling her. He stepped back, started to twist around, twisting to get at his back as if trying to get at an itch. He turned and Iris saw a knife sticking into his back. His fingers got the handle, pulling it out.

Iris bent, grabbed the fire extinguisher from next to the security guard. As Paul rotated towards her, half-bent, with the knife, she brought the extinguisher down on his head. She felt it crunch into him, but it bounced back, got slippery in her hands so she had to grab it to her chest in a kind of hug. Paul was still standing in front of her, his head bent. She raised it again and brought it down on the side of Paul's head with all her might, falling with it as she did.

Iris twisted as she fell, landed heavily on her arse. She sat, panting on the cold, vibrating concrete floor of the hospital basement.

James was standing in front of the wheelchair in the lift, his bandaged left hand still taped to one side of the armrests.

Paul lay bleeding next to the security guard on the floor. Iris still held the fire extinguisher. She raised it above her head, ready for any movement. Wood splintered somewhere, doors cracked open.

Detective Pavlovic arrived first, his gun drawn. Firefighters followed, axes waving in vague threat.

He looked at James standing in the lift full of drums, taped to the wheelchair. He looked to Paul, his face covered in blood, then to the bloody fire extinguisher held above Iris's head. Iris watched him process the clues. She watched him raise his gun and point it at her. ‘Put the extinguisher down please, Mrs Foster.'

Iris dropped it with a frightening hollow clang.

She said, ‘For Christ's sake, Stuart.'

They found Charles's body in a workshop at Paul's hills home. The workshop was filled with timing devices, drums of fuel, electronics. Paul's wife claimed she had been forbidden to enter and never had. She had no idea Paul was a serial killer, she said rather blandly. He had been a wonderful father to his children, she said. Charles never received Iris's call of warning about Paul Hampton. He was already dead. He had been working his way through the list of fifteen year olds he'd finally gained from the Child Services department; working the case.

The map proved somewhat banal. All the fire sites covering ten years of increasing destruction and suffering were on a direct route from Paul's house in the hills to his veterinary clinic in a suburb ten kilometres away. He'd spot his next project and plan it on his way to and from work. It was simple, if you knew what and who were at each end of the line.