Playing with Fire (15 page)

“Just can't decide between the venison and the guinea fowl.”

“Sorry, can't help you there.”

Phil laughed and put his menu down. “I don't suppose you can.” He took out a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air and caught it. “Heads,” he said, looking at the way it had landed. “Venison.”

“How do I know you didn't cheat?”

“Actually, I did,” he confessed. “It was supposed to be heads for the guinea fowl but I realized at the last moment I really wanted venison. Wine?”

“Please.”

Phil chose a bottle of 1998 Chianti Classico. Not too ostentatious, Annie thought, but not cheap, either.

“How's the Turner?” she asked when they had given their orders.

“Still resting comfortably. It should be up for auction soon. The Tate's interested, naturally, but so are the V and A and several private collectors.”

“It's definitely genuine, then?”

“Oh, yes. So the team of experts attests.”

“It wasn't just your opinion?”

“You must be kidding. Not a chance. It would be immodest of me to say my voice doesn't carry some weight, but a discovery like that comes under incredible scrutiny. Any art forger worth his salt wouldn't pick a big-name artist like Turner or Constable to copy. Forgers with any sense stick to less famous artists. Turner's a national treasure. You might as well try and pass off a Da Vinci or a Van Gogh.”

“It has been done, though, hasn't it?”

“Oh, yes. It has been done. Tom Keating, for one, comes to mind. He did Rembrandt, among others. And Eric Hebborn
did all right with Corot and Augustus John. But that was in the fifties and sixties. These days, there are far more forensic tests and, as I said, a battery of experts to get past. This one's been verified through fingerprints, among other things.”

“Fingerprints?”

“I thought that might interest you. They can last a very long time, you know. Prints have even been found on prehistoric cave paintings and pottery unearthed at archaeological digs.”

“But how can you verify them? Turner's been dead for more than a hundred and fifty years.”

“Painting can be a messy business. You get your hands dirty, and as often as not an artist applies his fingers to the paint and the paper or canvas during the process of painting. Especially oils, but even with watercolors like this one. If you examine the surface carefully with a magnifying glass—a bit like Sherlock Holmes, I suppose—you can often find very good fingerprints.”

“But how do you check against the artist's original?”

“That's the problem. It's not always possible, and the results are sometimes dubious, but in the case of Turner, it actually works very well.”

“Why?”

“His prints are on file in the Tate archives.”

“Of course,” said Annie.

“Naturally, you need an impeccable source. A painting with credible provenance leading right back to the artist. But not many other people would have been in a position to get their fingerprints in the paint on a Turner canvas. He was known to work alone, without assistants.”

Annie nodded.

“And it's been done before,” Phil went on. “A Canadian called Peter Paul Biro pioneered the whole technique some years ago. He worked with the West Yorkshire Police to identify a Turner called
Landscape with Rainbow
in 1995. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it.”

“In 1995 I was a mere DC in Somerset and Avon.”

“Well, that explains it.”

“We tend not to notice that much outside our immediate areas,” Annie explained. “You get focused on the job in hand and—”

“I understand,” said Phil.

“How much do you reckon it will go for?”

Phil pursed his lips and thought for a moment, then said, “About three hundred thousand. Maybe a bit more, seeing as it's part of a set.”

The wine came and the waiter first showed off the bottle, then presented the cork and a tiny splash in Phil's glass. “Just pour it,” said Phil. “I'm sure if it's corked you'll bring us another bottle.”

“Of course, sir,” said the waiter. Annie wasn't used to such deference in Yorkshire restaurants, or restaurants anywhere, for that matter. But there was something about Phil that seemed to bring it out in people. Maybe he looked like someone famous, though Annie couldn't think who. Stefan Nowak was the only other person she could think of who had the same sort of aura. She could imagine waiters being deferential around Stefan, too.

Phil sipped some wine and looked around. “Turner actually dined here once,” he said, “on the same tour he did the sketches for that watercolor.”

“Really? I knew the place was old but…”

“Well, I don't think it was the same chef. Mostly he complained about the weather. Bit of a miserable bugger, was J.M.W. Bit of a miser, too.”

“He'd fit in well up here, then.”

“I've never found Yorkshire folk to be anything less than generous.”

“I agree, actually. It's just one of the myths around these parts, and people sometimes seem quite proud of it, the parsimony.”

“They're canny with their money, I'll give them that. But there's no harm in not being a wastrel, as my grandfather always used to say.”

Annie almost asked him about his Yorkshire grandparents, but she held herself back. She didn't feel like getting into family histories and reminiscences tonight. There was something about other people's families that always disturbed her a bit.

The starters arrived and both ate in silence for a while. “One thing I never got around to asking you is why this painting went missing for so long,” Annie said, when she had finished the last walnut. “I mean, seeing as it was a Turner, and part of a set.”

“There are plenty of Turners unaccounted for,” said Phil. “As you know, this one was part of a series of twenty watercolors Turner painted for the
History of Richmondshire
. He delivered the first twelve to the publisher for engraving in spring 1817, and the other eight in December of the same year. After that, the originals were sold to various buyers. The one we saw,
Richmond Castle and Town,
was one of six that the publishers of the history were selling off at cost. Twenty-five guineas. Can you believe it? Previously the only record of it seems to have been at an exhibition of the Northern Society in Leeds in 1822. After that, nothing. Anyway, three of the twenty went missing, two untraced—until last summer—and one destroyed in a fire.”

Annie's ears pricked up. “A fire?”

“Ah, I see. You're thinking about the boat fire you're investigating, aren't you? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but this was decades ago. There's no connection.”

“But there's still one more missing from the set?”

“Yes.
Ingleborough from Hornby Castle Terrace.
Hasn't been seen since the turn of the last century. It fetched a record price when it was sold at Christie's in 1881 to a certain W. Law, Esquire. Two thousand guineas, in fact. It would be nice
to find it and complete the set, of course, but it's not as if they're all collected in one place.”

“Real
Antiques Roadshow
.”

“You may well laugh, but it happens more often than you think. That dusty old frame in the attic. The ugly landscape old Aunt Eunice's grandad hid away in the cellar.”

Annie laughed. “You could hardly call the Turner ugly.”

“Of course not. But somebody thought little enough of it to bury it under a couple of layers of insulation.”

As they ate their meals, they talked about paintings and films they liked, and Annie discovered that they were both fans of Alec Guinness in the old Ealing comedies, though Phil preferred
The Captain's Paradise
to Annie's favorite,
The Lavender Hill Mob
. They both loved
The Horse's Mouth,
though.

When it was time for dessert, Annie decided to hell with her diet—not that she was really on one, but she was always full of good intentions—and went for the crème brûlée. She resisted the cognac, though, and chose café au lait. She was pleased that she had managed to restrict herself to only one glass of wine.

“Have you ever heard of a local artist called Thomas McMahon?” she asked Phil after her first mouth-watering spoonful.

Phil frowned. “McMahon? Can't say I have, no. Why? He any good?”

“I probably shouldn't be telling you,” she said, “but it'll be in the papers tomorrow, and probably on the radio and TV tonight. He's most likely the victim in the boat fires. One of the victims. I just wondered if you'd heard of him at all, come across him in your line of business?”

“I don't come across many living artists, I'm afraid,” said Phil.

“From all accounts, after a promising start he dropped out
of the scene some years ago, made a living painting landscapes for tourists.”

“Then I'd have even less reason to have heard of him. Always the detective, eh, Annie?”

Annie blushed. There was some truth in that. She was slowly and indirectly getting around to what she had wanted to sound him out on. “One thing we found out—my boss discovered it, actually—was that he frequented an antiquarian bookshop on Market Street and that he bought a number of old books and prints.”

“Nothing unusual in that, surely?”

“We don't think he was very well off, and besides, most of the stuff he bought was worthless. Worthless but old.”

Phil looked at her, and she saw the beginnings of understanding in his eyes. “I was just thinking,” she went on, “that—” Right then, her beeper went off. The station. One or two of the other diners gave her dirty looks. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Sorry. I mean, I'd better…I won't be long.”

“Okay. Don't worry. I'll be waiting.”

Annie hustled outside and fumbled with her mobile. “Yes?”

“DI Cabbot?”

“Yes.”

“DCI Banks said to tell you there's been another one—another fire, that is—and he wants you to get out to Jennings Field ASAP. You know where it is?”

“I know it,” said Annie. “Thanks. I'm on my way.”

Bollocks, she thought, putting her phone away and reentering the restaurant. Inconsiderate arsonist, spoiling her evening. She just had time to make a quick apology to Phil before heading out.

“Can I give you a lift?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” said Annie. “I'll go in my own car.” She could just imagine the expression on Banks's face if she turned up at a crime scene in Phil's BMW. She wasn't even
dressed for standing around in an open field on a cold night, she realized, as she threw on her elegant but lightweight black overcoat.

Just to end their evening together on a perfect note, Annie found herself unable to get her handkerchief to her mouth fast enough to stop a sneeze and ended up spraying the entire table with germs. Phil just smiled and gestured for her to go. Red-faced now, as well as red-nosed, Annie went.

J
ennings Field lay on the eastern outskirts of Eastvale, beyond the East Side Estate and the railway lines, where the landscape flattened out toward the fertile vale that lay between the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. It was a clear, cold night; the day's light mist had completely dissipated. The stars shone icily bright, and lights twinkled from distant villages, where the good citizens would all be sitting nice and warm in front of their tellies watching Des Lynam. A half-moon dripped its milky light on the far woods, silvering the bare lattices of the treetops.

The call had disturbed Banks partway through
Goldfinger
—the bit where the laser is slowly creeping up toward Bond's privates—takeout chicken fried rice and his second can of lager. He stood with his hands in his pockets breathing out plumes of air and watched Annie get out of her car and sign in with the uniformed officer at the perimeter. A couple of reporters shouted questions at her, but she ignored them. One of them whistled as she ducked under the police tape, and Annie froze for just a moment, then carried on walking. She was nicely dressed, Banks noticed when she got in range of the lights the fire department had erected, and was she wearing a bit more makeup than usual? Out with her new boyfriend, then? Well, it
was
Saturday night, after all.

She caught him looking and blushed. “What?”

“Nothing,” Banks said. “You look nice.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “So what have we got?”

The remains of a caravan, the sole dwelling in the field, parked at the far end, just under the shelter of a couple of beech trees, still smoldered, and an acrid stink of burned rubber and plastic wafted their way. There was nothing left of the roof and sides; only a skeleton of soot-blackened metal struts remained, and the innards lay open to the elements. Water from the fire hoses dripped to the ground and puddled.

“Anyone inside?” Annie asked.

“We've got one body,” Banks told her. “And luckily this time we think we know who it is.”

Annie blew on her bare hands. She was wearing simple black court shoes, tan tights and a long black coat, elegant rather than practical, Banks noticed. Going-out-for-a-meal clothes. Her feet must be cold.

Banks pointed to a man talking to DC Winsome Jackman over by the group of parked cars and two gleaming red fire appliances. “That's Jack Mellor. He's a regular at the Fox and Hounds, about half a mile down the road, in the nearest village, and he reported the fire. He's still pretty shaken. He says he saw the flames as he was walking his dog down the road at about nine o'clock for a couple of pints and a chat with his mates as usual.” Banks pointed away from the village lights. “He lives in Ash Cottage, about two hundred yards in that direction. Says the chap who lived in the caravan was another Fox and Hounds regular. Quiet bloke, by all accounts. Harmless. Name of Roland Gardiner.”

“He lived alone in the caravan?”

“Yes. Been there at least a couple of years now, according to our Mr. Mellor. There's no car in evidence. Not even any wheels on the caravan. See the way it's propped up on blocks? Anyway, this field's common land, despite its name. Nobody knows who the hell Jennings was. I'm sure the local
council's been trying to squeeze Gardiner out, just like British Waterways was trying to get rid of the barge squatters, but for better or for worse…this was Gardiner's home.”

“What the hell's going on?” Annie said. “Is someone trying to set fire to all the eyesores and down-and-outs in the area?”

“It certainly looks that way, doesn't it?” said Banks. “But let's not jump to conclusions. We've no evidence yet that there's any connection between the fires. And they weren't down-and-outs, despite their living conditions. Don't forget that Thomas McMahon was an artist who managed to make a living painting local landscapes for the tourist trade. I think he
chose
to live the way he did. Even Mark Siddons works at the Eastvale College building site. None of the victims were really spongers or bums.”

“The girl was a junkie, though.”

“Well,” said Banks, watching Geoff Hamilton guide the SOCO in packaging debris from the caravan, “there might be any number of reasons for that.” He was thinking, as Mark had been thinking earlier that evening, about Dr. Patrick Aspern, with whom he was far from finished. “Besides, in my book, that makes her ill, not criminal.”

“You know what I mean,” Annie said. “And you also know that I agree with you. All I'm suggesting is that a junkie loses a certain…strength of will, that someone who needs something so much will do whatever it takes to get it, sponging being the least of it.”

“Point taken,” said Banks.

The local constable, PC Locke, came over to them. “Mr. Mellor wants to know if he can go to the Fox and Hounds,” he said. “Says the dog's freezing its balls off—if you'll pardon my language, ma'am—and he needs a pick-me-up.”

“I can understand that,” said Banks. “Look, this isn't exactly kosher,” he went on, taking Locke aside and lowering
his voice. “Strictly speaking, we have to consider Mellor a suspect, but why don't you accompany him to the Fox and Hounds and wait for us? We've got to talk to him somewhere, and it might as well be there. At least I suppose it'll be warm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep a sharp eye on his alcohol intake. He's allowed one, a small one, for the shock, but no more. I don't want him pissed when we get there to question him, okay?”

“Understood, sir.”

“And one more thing.”

“Sir?”

Banks gestured over to the road, where the phalanx of media people jostled for space and pointed cameras. “Avoid them. Mum's the word.”

“I think I can manage that, sir. We'll go the back way.”

PC Locke walked over to Mellor and they headed toward the back lane, the dog on its leash trotting along beside them, and before they had got very far, they vanished over a stile into the darkness. Banks hoped that no bright spark of a reporter decided to go and check out the local pub. They'd get there eventually, he knew, but they wouldn't leave the scene yet, not while there was still some action.

“Are you sure that was wise?” Annie asked.

“Probably not, but I don't think Mellor started the fire. Let's have a look at the damage.”

They walked closer to the burned-out caravan. In the bright artificial light, it was easy to spot the pooling at the center of the floor, one sign of accelerant use, and Banks fancied he could even smell a whiff of petrol on the air. Geoff Hamilton's electronic “sniffer” had already detected something and confirmed that some sort of accelerant had been used. The damage to the caravan was far worse than that to the boats. It was also such a small scene, and the remains of the floor were so unstable, that Hamilton and DS Stefan
Nowak were trying to do the best they could by working their ways in from the outside edges, not trampling on the flimsy caravan floor at all. Peter Darby was videotaping their progress, occasionally swapping his camcorder for his trusty Pentax and taking a flurry of stills.

At the center of it all, by the pooling that marked the seat of the blaze, lay a blackened body, this one on its side, curled in the familiar pugilistic pose. It had been hard to spot at first among the charred furniture and fixtures, but once you managed to separate it from its context, you couldn't miss it. Hamilton said that the warped and cracked object beside the body was a glass. There had been a glass lying beside Tom McMahon's body too, Banks remembered, wondering if it was relevant. He noticed Annie give a little shiver, and he didn't think it was caused by the cold.

Hamilton and Stefan Nowak came walking toward them.

“Anything?” Banks asked.

“Pooling, traces of accelerant,” said Hamilton.

“Same as before?”

“Looks like it.”

“Anything to connect the two?”

Hamilton shifted from foot to foot. “Well,” he said, “apart from the fact that we've had two suspicious fires in out-of-the-way places in two days, when we're usually only unlucky enough to get two a year, I'd say no.”

It was an important point. Banks needed to know whether they were now running two separate arson investigations or just one. “How long would it take for a caravan that size to be reduced to that state?” he asked.

“Half an hour or so. Whatever caused it, it was hot and fast.”

“What about the accelerant used?”

“This one smells like petrol to me—you can smell it yourself—though I'd rather wait for the chromatograph results and the spectral analysis, just to be certain.”

“The previous victim, or one of them, was an artist,” Banks mused aloud. “So it was reasonable to assume that he'd have turpentine somewhere around. We don't know what Mr. Gardiner was yet, but the killer clearly brought his own accelerant this time. Maybe he
knew
both victims, knew that McMahon would have turpentine handy to start the fire, but also knew that he had to bring his own to Gardiner's caravan. But why bring petrol instead of turps?”

“Probably had some on hand,” said Hamilton. “Most people do, if they've got a car. It'd be easy enough to siphon a little off. And safer than going to a shop to buy turpentine. Someone might have remembered him.”

“Good point,” said Banks. “What about the victim?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he didn't just lie there and let himself burn to death, did he?”

“How the hell would I know what he did?”

“Speculate. Use your imagination.”

Hamilton snorted. “That's not my job. I'll wait for the test results and the postmortem, thank you very much.”

Banks sighed. “Okay,” he said. “If the victim had been conscious, and capable, might he have been able to escape this fire?”

“He might have been,” Hamilton conceded. “Unless he was overcome by smoke or fumes. They can disorient a person very quickly.”

“Whoever set the fire had to have been inside the caravan at the time, hadn't he?”

“It looks that way from the pattern of pooling. If he'd poured it through the window or tossed it through the door, for example, you'd see evidence of that in the trail, and in the charring.”

“And there isn't any?”

“Not that I can see.”

“And whoever set the fire got out?”

“Well, there's only one body.”

“What about access, escape route?”

“There's a lane runs by the back, behind the trees and the wall.”

“Okay,” said Banks. He turned from Hamilton and looked at the charred, smoking caravan again. There wasn't much more they could do at the scene. Best leave it to Stefan and his team, see what they could turn up, if anything.

Banks turned to Annie. “Let's go and talk to Mr. Mellor,” he said. “I could do with a bloody stiff drink.”

Annie looked at her watch. “It's after closing time,” she said.

Banks smiled. “Well, I think being a copper ought to have
some
advantages, don't you?”

 

Mark ran fast, away from the fire, until he was exhausted, and then slowed to walking speed. All the time his mind was filled with echoes and rage. The voices of Lenny and Sal became those of his mother and Crazy Nick as they argued about him drunkenly downstairs, getting louder and louder until they ended in blows and screams.
Get rid of him! Get rid of him! Get rid of him! He should have been drowned at birth!

Mark put his hands over his ears as he ran, but it didn't do any good. The voices went on, from inside.
Always in the bloody way. Can't you do something about him?
He remembered the nights spent locked in the dank, spidery cellar alone, with no light, no warmth, no human company. And he remembered the time when he was sixteen and got brave enough to fight back, how he had smacked Crazy Nick right in the mouth and how both of them were too stunned to do anything when they saw the blood start to flow.

You little fucker! Look what you did.

Mark knew right there and then that he was fighting for his
life, so he laid into Crazy Nick with all he'd got, punching and kicking until Nick was on the floor gargling blood, and Mark's mother was beating on his back with her hard little fists. He smashed a chair over Crazy Nick's head and that was it, the last night he spent at home, the night he ran, with his mother's screams of revenge and hatred burning in his ears. Just as he was running now.

He stopped for breath and looked around, realized he didn't have a clue where he was. He had headed east from Lenny's, he knew that much, beyond the town limits, so he was out in the country now. If he looked behind him, he could see the lights of Eastvale, even hear a distant train going by. He wished he had enough money to take a train somewhere. Or a plane. That would be even better.
Ulan Bator
. But then he realized he didn't even have a passport, so he was stuck here. Stuck here forever. But not in Eastvale. He was never going back there. Not if he could help it.

He was on a dark country road with trees and drystone walls on either side. The flames were well behind him now, and he thought he could hear the sirens of fire engines. Good luck to them. They didn't do Tina much good. He thought of her fragile, pretty face, her slight form. Tina hadn't had a chance. Tears stained Mark's face as he felt the waves of guilt tearing him apart for the hundredth time. If only he hadn't gone chasing after Mandy; if only, if only, if only…

Dark winter fields stretched away from him on both sides of the road, bare branches clawing like talons at the starlit sky, and now and then he could make out the lonely glow of a distant farmhouse or the clustered lights of a small village. For a moment, Banks's words of warning came back to him, that he might be in danger, that he might be the next victim, and he felt a tremor of fear. Shadows moved and rustling sounds came from behind him. But it was only the wind in the trees. Why would anybody want to kill him? He didn't know anything. But Tina hadn't known anything, either.