Playing with Fire (27 page)

He hadn't got very far when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He shook it off and kept going, but it was no use. Within seconds, his legs went from under him and he fell onto the hard surface, smashing his cheek against the stone. He felt a knee between his shoulders and his arm twisted up his back. The pain was excruciating, and he thought he screamed out, then he lay still. He could hear them talking but still couldn't grasp what they were saying, what they wanted. Mark could taste blood and salt on his lips and his tongue as they hauled him to his feet and back to the car. He cried out, but nobody came to help. One final, magnificent wave smashed against the seawall and drenched them all from head to toe before they got him inside the Vectra.

 

The garage was a mere stone's throw from the Askham Bar Park and Ride, off the outer ring road just west of York city center. Owner's name, Charlie Kirk. Handy place for a car rental agency, Annie thought. You could arrive at the train station and take the bus out, then you never had to worry about the murderous city center traffic, or the parking.

As it had done so many times before, legwork had paid off once again, and it looked as if this was the place where the killer might have rented his Jeep Cherokee. At least, the same person had rented the same vehicle on several occasions since the previous summer, including the past weekend. They had got lucky because not many local outfits had Cherokees for hire, but Charlie Kirk did. Now Annie was about to question the owner, with Stefan and his impressions expert in tow. They went off to the car park around the back with the mechanic while Annie went to talk to the clerical staff.

The small office was overheated and stuffy. Three people worked there, one up front, to deal with customers, and the other two, a young girl and an older man, farther back. The office was full of the usual stuff—computers, filing cabinets,
phones and fax machines—and the walls were covered with posters of cars.

Annie slipped her overcoat off, laying it on a chair, and offered her warrant card to the woman at the front desk.

“I've been expecting you,” the woman said, standing up to shake hands. “I'm Karen Talbot, office manager.”

Annie put Karen Talbot at about thirty. She had blond highlights, glossy red lipstick and eyes so blue they had to be contact lenses, and she was wearing a black silk blouse, showing plenty of cleavage, and a short, tight red skirt. The effect was lost on Annie, but she imagined it wasn't on most of the male customers.

Karen sat down again, pulling her skirt as far over her thighs as it would go, which wasn't far.

“Is the owner around?” Annie asked.

“The captain isn't in today. This isn't his only outpost, you know. Quite the empire builder, our captain is.”

“Captain?”

“Kirk. Captain Kirk. Our little joke. Only when he's not here, of course.”

“I see,” said Annie. “We'll talk to him later, then. Maybe you can help me for now?” She sat down opposite Karen.

Karen patted her hair. “I'll do my best. As a matter of fact, the captain wouldn't be able to tell you much, anyway. It's not as if he actually
works
here, if you know what I mean.”

“So it's you who deals with the public?”

“Mostly, yes.” Karen glanced behind at the other two. “But we take it in turns. That's Nick and Sylvia.”

Annie said hello. Nick returned her greeting with a broad salesman's smile and Sylvia smiled shyly at her. Annie wondered how Nick, who must be well the wrong side of forty, felt working for a young upstart like Karen. She also found herself rather uncharitably wondering how Karen had got the job and what her relationship with the owner was. But such
thoughts had little to do with the business on hand, so she pushed them aside and got down to business.

“We've been told that you've rented out a dark blue Jeep Cherokee, or a similar vehicle, to the same person on five different occasions since last summer. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Karen. “Three times it was the Jeep, and twice we had to substitute a Ford Explorer.”

“Did that cause a problem with the customer?”

“Not that I remember. He just wanted the same type of vehicle.”

“Did you deal with this customer yourself?”

“Not every time.”

“I did, twice,” said Nick. “And Sylvia did once.”

“First off,” said Annie, “what were the dates?”

Karen went to the filing cabinet by her desk, flipped through the folders for a few seconds and pulled one out. Then she reeled off a string of dates in September, October, November and December, ending with the previous weekend.

“When did he take it out?” Annie asked.

“Thursday morning.”

“And when did he return it?”

“Saturday morning.”

So he had the Cherokee before the narrow-boats fire, but he took it back before the Roland Gardiner fire. Annie wondered why he would do that.

“Ever any problems when he brought it back?”

“No. It was always in excellent condition.”

“Did he return it full or empty?”

“Empty. It costs a bit more, but it saves the customer having to search for a garage himself.”

“You fill the cars here?”

“Yes. Of course.”

That was a piece of luck, Annie thought. They could take samples from the garage's tank and from the Cherokee's. Banks had told her that forensics could identify the tank from
which the petrol used in the Gardiner fire came. Whoever had rented the Cherokee would most likely not have needed to refill the tank anywhere else. If they came up with a match, that was solid evidence to use in court.

“What's the customer's name?”

“Masefield. William Masefield.”

“What did he look like?”

“Ordinary, really.”

“Let's see if we can improve on that, shall we?” said Annie with a sigh. She hated trying to get descriptions out of people. Most witnesses, in her experience, were neither observant nor good at expressing themselves in words. This time proved no exception. After about ten minutes, the best the three of them could come up with was that he was a little above medium height, generally in good shape though perhaps just a tad overweight, a little stooped, gold-rimmed glasses, graying hair and casual clothes—jeans, blue Windcheater. Nick thought he'd been wearing white trainers on at least one occasion, but didn't know if they were Nike or not. At least Annie ought to be grateful there were no glaring contradictions about height or hair color. It could have been the person Mark Siddons had described visiting Thomas McMahon, but it could have been a thousand other people, too.

“Any closed-circuit TV here?” Annie asked.

“Only out back, where the cars are,” said Karen. “And it's only turned on at night, when no one's here. Otherwise we'd be changing the tapes every five minutes.”

Too bad, Annie thought. But it was worth a try. “Was there anything else you remember about him?” Annie asked.

“No,” said Karen.

“How did he pay?”

“Credit card.”

“Can you give me the details?”

Karen quickly made a photocopy of William Masefield's file and passed it to Annie. The address, she noticed, was
Studley, a Midlands village in Warwickshire, not far from Redditch.

“Did he have any sort of accent at all?” she asked.

“Just ordinary,” said Karen.

“What do you mean? What's ordinary? Yorkshire? Birmingham?”

“Sort of no accent, really. But nice. Educated.”

Annie understood what she meant. They used to call it “Received Pronunciation,” and it was what all the radio and television presenters spoke before regional and ethnic accents came into fashion. RP was generally regarded as posh and related to public schools, Oxford and Cambridge, and southeastern England, the Home Counties. Most accents tell you where a person comes from; RP only told you social status.

Stefan poked his head around the door and Annie noticed Karen immediately start to preen.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“It looks like the same vehicle,” he said. “The measurements are the same, as are the tires, and there's some distinctive cross-hatching on the casts we took from the lay-by that appear to match this specific Jeep Cherokee. Mike's still working on it, and we'll be taking soil and gravel samples, but I thought I'd give you the breaking news.”

“That's great,” Annie said, tapping the sheet of paper in front of her. “William Masefield. We've got his details here. We've got him.” In her mind, she could see them swooping in and making an arrest even before Banks got back from London, unrealistic as that was. Still, she
felt
jubilant. She could even see a possibility of that weekend in New York with Phil.
If
she could afford it, because she would insist on paying her own way.

“There's only one problem,” Stefan said.

“Oh?”

“It's been thoroughly cleaned, inside and out.”

Annie looked at Karen, who shrugged. “We always get the returns cleaned up as promptly as we can,” she said.

“Shit,” said Annie. “No forensics.”

“Most likely not,” Stefan agreed. “Though we can certainly take it in and try. We might pick up a print or a hair the cleaners missed.”

“Wait a minute,” said Karen. “What do you mean, ‘take it in'? Take it where?”

“To the police garage,” Annie said.

“But you can't take the Jeep. It's booked.”

“Mr. Masefield again?”

“No. But they're good customers. Regular.”

“It's evidence,” said Annie. She turned to Stefan. “Tell Mike to take it to the police garage, but to make sure he gets that petrol sample first, along with a sample from the underground tank here.”

“But the captain will—”

“Don't worry, Karen,” said Annie, picking up a pad from the desk. “We'll give you a receipt. And you can always rent them the Explorer instead. I'm sure they'll understand.”

 

“
Commander
Burgess? Well, bugger me!”

“Watch it with the vile language, Banks. And why such surprise?”

“The last time I saw you, you were a detective superintendent in National Criminal Intelligence. I thought they'd put you out to pasture for good.”

“Things change. I'm resilient, me.”

Not only that, Banks remembered, but “Dirty Dick” Burgess had been sent somewhere he could do little harm because he was accused of dragging his feet over a sensitive race-related investigation. The two had known each other for many years, and their relationship had changed significantly
over the course of time. At first they had been like chalk and cheese: Burgess brash, right-wing, racist, sexist, cutting corners to get results; Banks trying his damnedest to remain a liberal humanist in a heartbreaking job, in demoralizing times. Now Banks cut more corners and Burgess toed the line more closely. They both came from a working-class background, and both had worked their way up the hard way, through the streets. Burgess was the son of an East End barrow boy. He had thrived in the Thatcher years, lain low during John Major's reign, and now he was thriving again in the Blair era. It just went to show what Banks had always believed; there wasn't much difference between Thatcher and Blair except for gender, and sometimes he wasn't too sure about that.

They were about the same age, too, and had managed to find a certain amount of common ground over the years. It was fragile ground, though, thin ice over a quagmire. Banks had phoned Burgess from the train, with an idea in mind, and Burgess had suggested that Banks buy him lunch. Thus they stood at the bar of a crowded pub near the Old Bailey, washing down the curry of the day with flat lager and rubbing elbows with barristers, clients and clerks. At least Burgess hadn't changed in one respect; he still drank like a fish and smoked Tom Thumb cigars.

What had changed most, though, was his appearance. Gone were the silver pony tail and the scuffed leather jacket; in their place a shaved head and a dark blue suit, white shirt and paisley tie. Shiny shoes. Burgess had also put on a few pounds, and his complexion was pink, the nose a little redder and more bulbous. The world-weary, seen-it-all look in his eyes had been replaced by one of mild surprise and curiosity.

“I can see you're doing all right for yourself,” Banks said, pushing his plate away. He'd only eaten half of the curry, which wasn't very good. The sign read lamb, but he sus
pected it was mutton. And the spicing was so bland as to be immaterial.

“Can't complain. Can't complain. My old oppos at Special Branch didn't forget me, after all. I managed to pull off one or two coups that pleased a number of people in high places. I tell you, Banksy, this post-nine-eleven world is full of opportunities for a man of my talents.”

“On whose side?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“So where are you now? Back in Special Branch?”

Burgess put his finger to his lips. “Can't say. If I did, I'd have to kill you. Top secret. Hush hush. Actually, we're so new we haven't even got our acronym sorted yet. Anyway, what brings you down here? You were all mysterious on the phone.” He offered Banks a Tom Thumb. Banks refused. Burgess's eyes narrowed. “What is it, Banksy? Have you stopped smoking? I haven't seen you light one up yet. That's not like you. You've quit, haven't you?”

“Six months now.”

“Feel any better?”

“No.”

Burgess laughed. “How's that lovely wife of yours? Ex, I should say.”

“She's fine,” said Banks. “Remarried now.”

“And you?”

“Enjoying the bachelor life. Look, there was something I wanted to ask you. In complete confidence, of course.”

“Of course. Why come to me otherwise?”

One thing Banks did know about Burgess was that he could be trusted to keep quiet and be as discreet as necessary. He had a network of informers and information-gatherers second to none, no matter who, or what, it was you wanted to know about. That was why Banks had rung him.