Playing with Fire (40 page)

And to cap it all, the bastard had got away.

There was a huge manhunt going on, even now, but Annie doubted they'd find him. After all, he
was
a chameleon. If it had
been a television drama, of course, they would have hushed up Banks's survival, let the world believe he was dead, and Annie would have waited for Phil to get in touch, to come and offer his sympathy and condolences on the loss of her friend.

But the reporters were on the scene almost as quickly as the fire brigade. This was big news. Banks was a well-known local detective with a number of successful cases under his belt. In no time flat, the local news on TV and radio was informing the good citizens of Eastvale and, no doubt, the rest of England, that DCI Alan Banks had been pulled from his blazing cottage by his heroic DI Annie Cabbot and DC Winsome Jackman, and that he was now in Eastvale General Infirmary. There was no way Phil wouldn't hear that, and when he did, he would know the game was up. He would disappear and reemerge as yet someone else.

Annie smelled of smoke, and she wanted to go up and have a shower and get clean. She took her cognac to the bathroom with her. They would go over Keane's cottage with a fine-tooth comb, she thought. Meticulous and fastidious as Phil was—and she had no doubt that he would have cleaned up behind him—the odds were that they would find
something
. A hair. A fingerprint.
Something.

She stripped her clothes off and dropped them in the laundry basket. Already, she noticed, her foot was turning yellow, black and blue. At least it wasn't broken. The doctor had told her that much.

Annie paused at the sink, gripping its edge, again looking at her black face. Like a soldier going into battle. She couldn't understand the expression in her eyes now, didn't know what she was feeling. Just before she turned to get in the hot shower, she noticed the toothbrush lying on the sink. It wasn't hers. She remembered when Phil had stayed a few nights ago she had given him it to use, and it looked as if he had. She knew she hadn't cleaned up the bathroom since.

Taking a plastic bag from the cupboard under the sink, she
dropped the toothbrush in it. You never knew. It could contain Phil Keane's DNA. Because one day they'd catch the bastard, and then they would need all the evidence they could get.

 

It was two days before Banks was allowed visitors at Eastvale General Infirmary, and Annie was the first to go in. Beyond the window, occasional shafts of sunlight shot through the cloud cover. Cut flowers brightened up the drab-olive room.

Banks lay propped up on his pillows, one side of his face bandaged and smeared with antibiotic salve, looking at the rain through his window. He looked spent, Annie thought, but there was still life in his eyes, life and something that had not been there before. She didn't know what it was.

He had lost everything. Banks's cottage didn't exist anymore. She had seen it with her own eyes reduced by fire to nothing more than a roofless shell. Everything he owned had gone up in flames: his CDs, clothes, furniture, stereo, all his memorabilia, family photographs, papers, letters, the lot. He had nothing left except his car and whatever personal effects he kept in his office. Did he know this? Surely someone must have told him.

“How are you doing?” she asked, laying her hand on his bare forearm, near the spot where the needle rested.

“Can't complain,” Banks said. “If I did, no one would listen.”

“Are they treating you well?”

“Fair to middling. Mostly I'm bored. Did you—”

Annie passed him the hip flask. “It's not Laphroaig,” she said.

“Good,” said Banks, slipping it in the drawer. “I'm not sure I could stomach that stuff again.”

“What has the doctor said?”

“I should heal up okay,” Banks said. “But there might be
some scarring. We'll have to wait and see. At least the headache's gone. Worst I ever had.”

“Pain?”

“Pretty bad, but they keep me dosed up. Ever burned your finger?”

Annie nodded.

“Well, multiply the pain by a few thousand and you'll have some idea. Thing is, with second-degree burns the nerve endings stay intact. That's why it hurts. I didn't know that. The hair follicles and sweat glands, too. It's only the upper layers of skin that are burned. You know what the worst thing is, though?”

“What?”

“The memory loss. I can't remember a bloody thing, from the moment I answered the door to the moment I woke up here. Except for the taste of the whiskey. The doctor says it might come back or it might not. Which is a pretty bloody useless thing to say, if you ask me.”

“Tracy's been by a couple of times,” Annie said, “and she'll be back. Brian rang. He's in Amsterdam with the band. Wants to know if you need him.”

“I shouldn't think so,” said Banks. “I'll be home in a day or so.”

Christ, thought Annie, the poor sod. He
didn't
know. “Alan,” she said. “Look, I wouldn't…you know…the cottage, I mean. The fire caused quite a lot of damage.”

Banks looked at her as if she was confirming what he already suspected, and nodded. “Well, I'll be out of
here,
at any rate,” he said.

Annie handed him a gift-wrapped package. “Everyone in the squad room put together for this.”

Banks opened it and inside found a new personal CD player and a copy of Mozart's
Don Giovanni.

“We didn't know what you'd want,” Annie said. “It was Kev's idea. I think it's the only opera he's ever heard of. There's batteries already in it.”

“It's fine,” said Banks. “Thank everyone for me.”

“You can do it yourself soon.”

Banks turned the CD player over in his hands for a few moments and looked away, as if the emotion were too much. “Have you caught him yet?” he asked.

“No,” said Annie. “Not yet. But we will. It's just a matter of time.”

“Tell me what you've found out.”

Annie sat back in her chair. “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “Greater Manchester Police found his BMW parked at the airport, which means he could have gone anywhere. We're pursuing inquiries with the major airlines and at the railway stations, but nothing yet. And the cottage hadn't been in his family for generations. It was leased from a couple who live in south London. We've got fingerprints and DNA, but there are no matches with anything on record yet.”

“So he's clean?”

“Not quite,” said Annie. “Spectral analysis matched the petrol in the BMW's fuel tank with that used at the Gardiner scene and…”

“And?”

“And at your cottage.”

“So he used his own car to visit Gardiner, too?”

“Had to,” Annie said, looking away. “He was having dinner with me at The Angel when the fire started.”

Banks said nothing for a moment. “Anything else?” he asked finally.

“His prints match a partial the SOCOs found on the rented Jeep Cherokee, which confirms what we already suspected.”

“That the killer was using Masefield's identity?”

“Yes. The accountants digging into Masefield's investments have discovered that he was dealing with someone called Ian Lang of Olympus Holdings, registered in the British Virgin Islands, but they're not having a lot of luck tracing Mr. Lang or his company.”

“They wouldn't have, would they?” said Banks. “Any more on Masefield?”

“All we know is that he was at university in Leeds at the right time, so I assume ‘Giles Moore,' if that's who we're looking for, must have known him somehow and kept in touch. There's every chance that Keane had something to do with whatever lost Masefield all his money, and that he killed him. But we can't know for sure. Maybe it was just opportune. Maybe Masefield did commit suicide—everyone said he was depressed and drinking too much—and Keane found him dead, stole his identity and started the fire. But one way or another, he was involved in the death.”

“Yes,” said Banks. “And it would have been easy for him to pass himself off as Masefield if the two of them had a passing resemblance. It's amazing what you can do with a pair of glasses, a different hairstyle or coloring, maybe a slight stoop and a little paunch.”

“Anyway,” Annie went on, “I talked to Elaine Hough again, and she reluctantly dug out a couple of old letters Giles Moore had written to her. She said she hadn't wanted anyone else to read them. No detectable prints, unfortunately, but we do have samples of Keane's handwriting, and our expert cautiously admits they might match. But they're years apart, so it's hard to be certain. Nothing that would stand up in court, at any rate.”

“It's a start,” said Banks. “Can you show her Keane's picture?”

“We don't have a picture,” Annie said. “Another problem is that we can't seem to dig up any background on Giles Moore. He definitely existed for Elaine Hough, and for McMahon, Gardiner and Masefield, and whoever else he hung around with in Leeds, but outside that, we have no record of him. You do realize we might never find out?”

“Someone like him,” Banks said, “is bound to be clever. Keane and Moore are probably only two of his identities.
Maybe he's Ian Lang, too. God knows who he is now, or where, but if I read him right, he'd have an escape route—and a new identity—all set up for an eventuality like this. I'll bet he's overseas already. He's been at this all his life, Annie. Conning people, stealing identities. Maybe this is the first time he's killed, maybe not. But he's been at the game for a long time. Look how he conned
us.
”

Annie produced a cheap pocket-sized notebook bound in stiff cardboard covers and tapped it with her forefinger. “We found this at the cottage,” she said. “One of the SOCOs discovered a false ceiling in the wardrobe. The measurements didn't agree. In it we found the notebook, a passport in the name of Ewan Collins, and about twenty thousand quid in fives and tens.”

“So he didn't have time to get back there and pick them up,” said Banks. “Which means maybe he doesn't have a passport—not one he can use, at any rate.”

“Which means he may well be still in the country.”

Banks looked at the notebook. “What's that?” he asked.

“Roland Gardiner's journal. It looks as if he started keeping it when Keane first came to visit, and it stops on the evening of his death. It's quite touching, really. Elaine Hough told us Gardiner fancied himself as a bit of a writer when he was at the Poly.”

“Does it tell us anything?”

“Not really,” Annie said. “It's more of a personal, poetic record than anything else. Gardiner was taken in by the excitement and romance Keane offered. It does help explain why they had to die, though. It was mostly McMahon's fault. Not only did he get greedy, he also intended to try to pass off the Turner as genuine. According to Gardiner, he was embittered. He wanted revenge on the art world for failing to recognize his great talent, and he thought the best way to get it was to put one over on them. A big one.”

“And Keane?”

“Ever the pragmatist,” said Annie. “McMahon tried to blackmail him into helping authenticate the Turner. Said if he didn't he'd pass on the names of all the fakes he'd channeled through Keane to the press, the police, the galleries, the dealers. It would have ruined Keane, and he'd probably have ended up in jail. McMahon could have claimed that all he did was paint them, not try to pass them off as genuine. Keane obviously realized what trouble McMahon could cause him, so the artist became more of a liability than an asset. And Gardiner was a loose end.”

“Why did Keane hang on to the notebook? Why not burn it?”

“Vanity,” said Annie. “It never names him, but it's all about him.”

“What was Gardiner's role?”

“Forger of provenance, letters, old catalogs, bills of sale. That sort of thing. Go-between for nonexistent owners, dealers and auction houses. McMahon could dash off the paintings, but that's as far as his contribution went.”

“As we thought,” said Banks.

“Yes.” Annie paused. “We've also talked to Keane's wife, who was less than useful, and we've been having a close look at his business. It was clever,” Annie went on. “Very clever. He chose lesser-known artists. Eighteenth-century English landscape painters. Dutch minimalists. Minor Impressionists. And McMahon churned them out in quantity. Sketches. Small watercolors. Nothing big enough to draw too much attention to itself. Ten thousand quid here, fifty thousand there, twenty, five. It all adds up to a tidy sum.”

“Christ,” said Banks. “Keane
told
us all this, you know. He told us everything we needed to know. He was toying with us. We just weren't listening.”

Annie said nothing.

“Anything more from Whitaker?”

“I've talked to him again. He admitted supplying the paper and canvas for a small cut, most likely from McMahon's take. He knows nothing about the real magnitude of what was going on, knew nothing about Keane, but he
did
know why McMahon wanted the materials and what he did with them. He also confirmed what Gardiner wrote, that McMahon was bitter and bragged about ‘showing them all.' ”

“Are we charging Whitaker?”

“What with? Being an arsehole?”

Banks managed a weak smile, but Annie could tell it hurt. “Have you seen or heard anything of Mark Siddons?” he asked.

“No,” said Annie. “We've no unfinished business with him, have we?”

“No,” said Banks. “I was just wondering, that's all.” He glanced toward the window again, and Annie could see he was looking at the scaffolding around the church tower.

Annie tapped the notebook again. “It really is odd,” she said, “the way Gardiner seemed to look up to Keane, hero-worship him, as if their scam was all that made life bearable, and when it was over…” She dropped the notebook on the bedsheet. “Well, you can read it for yourself.”