Playing with Fire (34 page)

“It's worth a try,” said Annie, getting to her feet. “Come on, let's do it.”

 

The interview room was the same as just about every interview room Banks had ever been in: small, high window covered by a grille, bare bulb similarly covered, metal table bolted to the floor. The institutional green paint looked fresh, though, and Banks fancied he could still smell traces of it in the stale air. Either that or the Scotch he had drunk with Ken Blackstone the previous night was giving him a headache. He massaged his temples.

Frances Aspern sat opposite Banks and DI Gary Bridges, who was not only wearing the same suit as he had last night, but looked as if he'd slept in it, too. Dressed in disposable navy overalls, Frances Aspern seemed listless and distant, and much older than she had when Banks first saw her. The dark circles under her eyes testified that she hadn't slept, and she was fidgeting with a ring. Not her wedding ring, Banks noticed. That was gone.

“Are you ready to talk to us?” Bridges asked, when he had issued the caution and set the tape machine rolling.

Frances nodded, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Can you speak your answers out loud, please?” Bridges asked.

“Yes,” she said, in a small voice. “Sorry.”

“What happened last night?”

Frances paused so long before answering that Banks was beginning to think she hadn't heard DI Bridges's question. But eventually she began to speak. “We were asleep. Patrick heard a noise downstairs. He took his gun out of the cabinet and went down.” Her voice was a monotone, disconnected from her feelings, as if the things she was saying were of no interest to her.

“What happened then?”

“I waited. A long time. I don't know how long. Then I went downstairs. He was going to hurt the boy. I picked up his gun and shot him, then I cut the boy free and told him to go.”

“What about the fire?” DI Bridges asked.

“Fire cleanses,” she said. “I wanted to purify the house.”

“What did you use to start it?”

“Rubbing alcohol. It was on the table.”

“What happened?”

“The boy came back and put it out. I told him not to, but he didn't listen. Then he made me sit down and he rang the police. I just felt so tired I didn't care what happened, but I couldn't sleep.”

“I'm trying to understand all this, Frances,” Bridges said. “Why did you kill your husband?”

Frances looked at Banks, not at Bridges, her eyes burning with tears now. “Because he was going to hurt the boy.”

“He was going to hurt Mark?” It was DI Bridges who spoke, but Frances continued to look at Banks.

“Yes,” she said. “Patrick is a cruel man. You must know that. He was going to hurt the boy. He was tied to the chair.”

“But why did he want to hurt Mark?” Bridges asked.

Slowly, Frances turned to face him, still fiddling with her ring. “Because of Christine,” she said. “The boy took Christine from him. Patrick couldn't bear to lose.”

Banks felt a chill ripple up his spine. Bridges turned to him, looking confused. “DCI Banks,” he said, “you're familiar with the background to this case. Is there anything you'd
like to ask?”

Banks turned to Frances Aspern. “You're saying that your husband was going to harm Mark because Mark lived with Christine on the boat, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did Patrick go to the boat last Thursday evening? Did he start the fire?”

Frances looked up sharply, surprised. “No,” she said. “No, we were at home. That much is true.”

“But was your husband sexually abusing Christine?”

The tears spilled over from Frances's eyes and rolled down her cheeks, but she didn't sob or wail. “Yes,” she said.

“For how long?”

“Since she was twelve. When she…you know, when she started to develop. He couldn't stop touching her.”

“Why didn't she stop him? She must have known what was happening, that it was wrong? She could have gone to the authorities.”

Frances wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks with the sleeve of her overalls and gave Banks a what-do-you-know look. “He was the only father she had ever known,” she said. “He was strict with her when she was growing up. Always. She was terrified of him. She never dared disobey his demands.”

“And you knew about the sexual abuse from the start?”

“Yes. From very early on, at any rate.”

“How did you find out?”

“It's not hard to recognize the signs, when you're around all the time. Besides…”

“It happened with you, too?”

“How do you know?”

“I'm just guessing.”

She looked away. “I tried to tell Daddy, but I couldn't. He wouldn't have believed me, anyway, and if he had, it would have broken his heart.”

“So you did nothing about Christine, either?”

“How could I? I was terrified of him.”

“Even so, after your experiences, your own daughter…”

She slapped the table with her palm. “You've no idea how cruel Patrick could be. No idea.”

“Why? Did he hit you? Did he hit Christine?”

She shook her head. “No. What he did…it was worse than that, much worse. Cold, calculated.”

“What did he do?”

Frances looked away again, at a spot on the wall above Banks's head, her eyes unfocused. “He…he knew chemicals.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Of course he did, he was a doctor, after all, wasn't he?”

“What do you mean, Frances?”

She looked directly at Banks, her expression unfathomable. “Patrick knew drugs. Not illegal drugs. Prescriptions. What made you sleep. What made you stay awake. What made your heart beat like a frightened bird inside your chest. What made you sick. What made you have to go to the toilet all the time. What made your skin burn and your mouth dry.”

Banks understood. And wished he didn't. He looked at Bridges, who seemed to have turned a shade paler. Just when he thought he'd seen and heard it all, dug about as deep as anyone can into the darkness of the human soul and remained sane, something else came along and knocked all his assumptions out of the window.

“Now you understand,” Frances Aspern said, a note of shrill triumph in her voice. “But even that wasn't it. I could have stood the pain, the cruelty.”

“What was it, Frances?” Banks asked.

“My father. He worshiped Patrick. You know he did. You've talked to him. He rang us after you left. How could I tell him? It was like before, like I told you. Even if I could have made him believe, it would have broken his heart.”

“So for the sake of your father's trust in Patrick Aspern you let your husband abuse both you and your daughter? Is
that what you're saying?”

“What else could I do? Surely you understand? If it came out what kind of man Patrick was, what he
did,
it would have destroyed my father. He's not a strong man.”

He had looked healthy enough the other day, Banks thought, though appearances could be deceptive. But there was no point in pursuing this line of questioning. Whatever her reasons, Frances Aspern knew the enormity of what she had done, and she knew she had to live with the consequences.

“What about Paul Ryder?” Banks asked.

“Who?”

“Paul Ryder. Christine's birth father, remember? We haven't been able to find him.”

Frances looked down at the scarred tabletop and ran her fingertips over its rough surface.

“There was no Paul Ryder, was there?” Banks said.

She responded with a barely perceptible shake of the head.

“Patrick was Christine's real father, wasn't he?”

“Yes,” she said, still looking down at the table.

“Remember when we first met, when Patrick wanted to drive you to Eastvale to identify the body?”

Frances just looked at him.

“You said, ‘She's
my
daughter.' I took it to imply that you were putting him in his place, reminding him that he was only Christine's stepfather, but that wasn't it, was it?”

“When you live a lie for long enough,” Frances said, in little more than a whisper, “you come to believe it.”

Banks let the silence stretch, with only the hiss of the tape and muffled sounds from the station in the background, then he looked at Bridges, who shook his head slowly. “Let's suspend this interview for now,” Banks said. Bridges nodded and turned off the tape machine.

 

“Alan out again, is he?” asked DS Stefan Nowak, popping his
head around the squad room door close to lunchtime that day.

“Another fire,” Annie said. “In Leeds, this time. I've just been on the phone with him, and it seems that Mrs. Aspern, the doctor's wife, has killed her husband and tried to set fire to the body.”

Stefan whistled between his teeth.

“Indeed,” saidAnnie. “Have you got anything new for us?”

“I might have.” Stefan walked into the room and sat down opposite Annie. He looked as handsome and regal as ever, and just as remote and unreadable. Not for the first time, Annie wondered what sort of private life he had. Did he have friends outside the force? Family? Was he gay? She didn't sense that in him, but she had been wrong before.

Stefan opened the folder he had brought with him. “What do you want first,” he asked, “the good news or the bad news?”

“I don't care,” Annie said.

“Well,” Stefan went on, “apart from the soil and gravel samples, which do match samples from the lay-by, we drew a blank with the Jeep Cherokee. The car rental company had done a bloody good job of cleaning it, inside and out. We did find some hair, fibers and a partial print under the front seat, but it's not much more than a smudge. We might be able to do some computer enhancement, but don't expect too much.”

“That's pretty well what I figured,” said Annie. “I wouldn't be surprised if our killer gave it a good going over, too. He seems to be the meticulous type.”

“And we checked a sample of petrol from the fuel tank of Leslie Whitaker's Jeep Cherokee with the accelerant from the Gardiner fire.”

“And?”

“It doesn't match.”

“Shit,” said Annie.

“We do have the Nike trainer impression, though. That's pretty distinctive. If he hasn't ditched them, we can match
them when we find a suspect.”

“Was that the good news or the bad news?”

Stefan smiled. “It might be nothing, but one of our lads found traces of candle wax puddled near the point of origin in Roland Gardiner's caravan.”

“You mean he'd been having a romantic evening?”

“No,” said Stefan, “that's not what comes to mind. Not my mind, anyway. Call me a cynic, but I see it in a different light altogether.”

“Joke,” said Annie. “Never mind. Wasn't there also a candle beside the girl who died on the boat?”

“Yes,” said Stefan, “but that's different. The fire didn't originate on the boat, and it was pretty clear she'd used the candle to prepare the heroin she'd injected. Also, the boyfriend said in his statement that he made sure the candle was out before he left.”

“Mark Siddons? I can't understand why everybody is so quick to believe anything he says. He could easily have been lying.”

“No, this is something else.”

“I think I know what you're getting at,” said Annie.

“Yes. It looks as if it was used as some sort of primitive time-delay ignition device. It's not unusual in arson cases.”

“So the killer makes sure Gardiner's fast asleep, pours out the petrol, then lights the candle and leaves?”

“And an hour, or two hours later, the candle burns down, meets the petrol, and
puff!
Up it goes.”

“Can you estimate how long?”

“If we can discover exactly what make and length of candle it was, and if we assume it hadn't been used previously, was still whole, then yes. But don't hold your breath. We don't have a lot to go on.”

“An estimate?”

“Well, an ordinary household candle is seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, and it burns one inch every fifty-seven
minutes in a draft-free environment.”

“The caravan could hardly have been a draft-free environment, could it?”

“Agreed,” said Stefan. “But there was hardly any wind that night. Anyway, let's say you've got a six-inch candle, that gives you nearly six hours of burn time before ignition, all factors being equal.”

“How could the killer rely on Gardiner's remaining unconscious for that long?”

“He couldn't. Look, Annie, it could have been just a candle stub. Half an inch, an inch. Half an hour, or an hour at the most.”

“Or it could have been two hours, or three?”

“Afraid so. It could even have been one of those fancy thick candles, which would burn much more slowly. We're doing what tests we can on the wax, but as I said, don't get your hopes up.”

“What about Thomas McMahon's barge? Anything there?”

“No signs of candle wax. It looks as if that fire was set directly.”

“But not the Gardiner fire?”

“No.”

“Isn't using a candle like that unreliable?”

“Extremely. Very crude and unpredictable. Not to mention dangerous. Any number of things can, and do, go wrong. You could accidentally ignite the accelerant when you're lighting the candle, for example. Or you light it and leave and a draft blows it out. Or it topples over and sets the accelerant off sooner than you'd hoped. It's amateur, but it can also be very effective, if it works. I'm sorry it's not very much to go on,” Stefan apologized, “but it does tell us one thing, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” said Annie, already turning over the implications in her mind. “It tells us that whoever set the second fire needed time, most likely time to arrange for an alibi. And which of
our suspects seems to have a watertight alibi?”