The Fire Man (14 page)

The sun felt warm on his cheeks as he squinted, adjusting his eyes to the brightness of the morning. He half-turned as he sub-consciously glanced upwards towards the source of the warmth, noting with resignation that though the sun was undoubtedly hot, it appeared to be fighting a losing battle with a bank of fearsome grey cloud approaching from the East.

For a brief second he contemplated returning to his flat for a coat of some description, before deciding that he would rather risk the weather than climb the stairs. He wasn't quite as lazy as the avoidance of the stairs implied, though; he knew he'd be at Lime Street within twenty minutes and was pretty sure the clouds wouldn't catch him.

His calculation was correct. He had been in the office for more than an hour before he glanced up on hearing the first spattering of heavy drops against the skylight above his desk. It wasn't yet nine, but already John and Suzanne had arrived and he could hear them gossiping on the other side of the flimsy partition wall. Sandra hadn't arrived yet, but then she was almost invariably a few minutes late. Strangely enough, it never bothered McRae because it was so totally consistent. The woman was reliable in her own way. While she would never be able to compete in McRae's affections with the sainted Karen, she didn't need to; Karen was continuing to work with him, albeit at a distance.

The arrangements had worked out pretty well. Karen handled all Drew's personal work, prepared the company's business proposals and maintained the accounts. Sandra, for her part, looked after the other two adjusters and answered the phone. The arrangement was incredibly economical for Wyndham Adjusters and yet it enabled Karen to make a good additional income. Of course, what both McRae and Karen had also come to appreciate was that the arrangement allowed them to stay in contact. In many ways, they were now closer than ever.

The last few years had been a tough slog.

For quite a while McRae had been unable to employ anyone else, but eventually a corner had been decisively turned. So much so that the fateful decision had been made: the serviced office had been abandoned and a top-floor, unfashionable but atmospheric, permanent base had been acquired on a five-year lease, only fifty yards further along Lime Street. A little later, John and Suzanne (and Sandra, of course) had joined him. He was still running the old Volvo, but perhaps he would have a chance to change it soon.

Slowly, almost glacially, Wyndham's had achieved a degree of acceptance by Lloyd's Underwriters. God only knew how many lunches, football matches, horse races and drinks it had taken, but, little by little, a handful of claims managers had become clients. By the end of the third year, it had become apparent that McRae would, quite simply, no longer be able to manage on his own.

For some totally unfathomable reason, McRae had become a good friend of Matthew Ebel, who was a classic Essex Man if ever there was one. Ebel ran his own up-and-coming syndicate. He was quick-witted, loud and extremely brash. He appeared to have little in common with the dry and restrained McRae; nonetheless, when Matt had acquired a significant new book of commercial property business, it turned out to be highly beneficial for Drew.

The scheme involved a huge portfolio of independent pubs and restaurants distributed throughout southern England. Matt had wanted, nay insisted, that Wyndhams be the nominated loss adjusters for all claims, which meant that McRae could no longer cope. He simply had to recruit –and so it was that John and Suzanne had appeared.

John Godwit was a bright, cocky, keen, but rather raw young man from Romford. The vital thing, however, was that Matt Ebel absolutely loved him; they got on like a house on fire, which was an unfortunate simile but apposite. John, with his sharp almost “dandified” Hackett suits and pointy shoes, was not really McRae's idea of a conventional adjuster, but he was intelligent and personable and just what certain clients ordered.

Suzanne was a rather different proposition. With a good law degree from Edinburgh University, Suzanne Delacroix was one of many graduates who had found that the major London law firms were a tough nut to crack. Not prepared to settle for a life of conveyancing with a provincial practice, she had somehow drifted into a multi-national insurance broking firm where she had, somewhat to her surprise, acquired a taste for the intricacies of public and employer's liability claims. She dressed severely with a taste for unflattering trouser suits, wore her chestnut hair cut short and little make-up. Her accent was pure Home Counties; her manner was abrupt, though behind the brusque, uber-sensible, carapace was a great sense of humour and genuine ability. In short, Suzanne had the makings of a star.

What really surprised McRae was just how well John and Suzanne had hit it off; they had become inseparable. McRae sometimes suspected that their unlikely friendship might develop into something more.

Idly, McRae clicked onto the BBC website and, after absorbing the headlines in a half-hearted way, he glanced at the sports news before deciding that he had better get on with his email. As usual, the inbox was cluttered with spam, but he was pleased to see amongst the dross a couple of new case notifications, a cheeky little note from Karen chasing up some invoices and a welcome new message from Grim, containing his regular update on internal Fairclough developments.

Reading Grim's mail quickly, McRae found himself suppressing a shiver of irritation as he read that the inevitable had happened. Terry Donoghue, his old friend and rival, was in the running to head up a new office for Fairclough.
Obviously he's done a decent job in Brum
, he thought, though it was without any real bitterness. Reading quickly on, he stopped abruptly as it dawned on him that Fairclough's intended new office would be in London.

He was a little surprised that his resident spy, Karen, hadn't picked up on this news; after all, she worked in Terry's office and had the most acutely sensitive antennae he had ever come across. Clearly, the new London office plan was board level only.

Anyway,
he concluded,
Fairclough won't make much headway in the Lloyd's market, so they aren't likely to impact on me. Despite all, it would be good to see Terry again – the stuffy bastard!

He rattled off a sharp reply to Grim, thanking him for the information and suggesting that Terry's promotion (if indeed it came off) might result in another opportunity for Grim, before deciding to nip out for a coffee.

Pausing to chat briefly with Suzanne, McRae descended the six flights of stairs, emerging into the warmth and bustle of the narrow street, and made his way towards Leadenhall Market. He was heading for Marco's Café for a decent Americano and found himself whistling, which was something he never did, as he went. Life was improving by the day.

Finishing his leisurely coffee and stubbing out his Camel, McRae strolled back to the office. As he started to climb the first flight of stairs, he was met by Suzanne, clattering in the opposite direction.

She was excited. ‘I was just coming to get you. Guess what? We've just got a new pub case from Matt. It looks pretty decent, and Matt was asking whether we could get onto it today?'

‘What's it about?'

‘Theft, I think, but quite a decent loss. It's estimated at £35,000 apparently – some gastro-pub in the East End.'

Thinking it sounded pretty trivial to him, McRae managed to simulate a degree of enthusiasm; he didn't want to dampen Suzanne's obvious pleasure. Anyway, the fact was that every case was important these days and it was probably a useful job to give Suzanne a bit more general experience.

‘Fancy coming with me on it?' he asked.

‘Yes please, I haven't handled many thefts. It would be good,' she responded with alacrity.

‘Okay, why don't you fix the appointment and we'll get over there this afternoon?'

She smiled in acknowledgement, turned and skipped up the stairs, leaving him to make his own more stately progression.

* * *

The Squatter's Rights proved to be a rather typical Victorian corner pub that faced onto the Whitechapel Road. It was a big place with a beer cellar in the basement, as well as a modern kitchen and function room on the first floor, with the manager's accommodation on the top floor.

Someone had spent a fortune on Farrow and Ball paint. The place had been tastefully, although unimaginatively, converted from a working-class East End boozer into a formulaic hipster gastropub, decorated in muted shades of grey.
Grim would despise the place
, thought McRae as soon as they walked through the bar door.

Carefully distressed old wooden settles had been lined up along one wall in ranks to form cosy cubicles and the floor had been relaid in old oak planks. Still, it was undoubtedly an improvement on whatever kind of rundown dump had preceded it. They even had fresh flowers in used jam jars on the bar tables, which would have been a nice touch if several tables hadn't been hurled onto their sides by the intruders.

The landlord introduced himself. He was a quiet, studious-looking young man with the somehow inappropriate name of Dwayne Montague. He had a goatee beard and long hair in a ponytail. McRae liked him immediately.

It transpired that the thieves, who had forced an entry by way of the unprotected ground-floor ladies' toilet window, had subsequently used two of the bar tables in order to gain access to the glazed transom window above the door leading to the stairs. Unfortunately, while the door itself had been well-protected and even alarmed, the glass above it had been unprotected due to somebody's failure of imagination.

Basically, the thieves had been looking for cash or cigarettes. However, the till had been emptied, there were no gaming machines and the newly gentrified pub no longer sold cigarettes. The thieves clearly weren't wine drinkers, so the net result was that they had got away with only a few cases of spirits.

The Great Train Robbery, it was not, but petty thieves can be pretty vindictive when thwarted.

By turning on the taps in the kitchen and toilets and unscrewing the newly installed plastic wastepipes, the idiots had managed to cause a fair amount of water damage before the landlord, asleep on the top floor, had heard the running water. Although the lounge bar had escaped, the rest of the ground floor had received a pretty good soaking. The water had responded to Newton's immutable law by ending up in the beer cellar. It was, in short, a bit of a mess.

Despite the best efforts of all concerned, the basement, which was reached by a set of ancient stone steps, was still dripping. So, like the gentleman he thought he was, McRae decided to spare Suzanne's kitten-heeled shoes and inspect that part of the premises himself.

The basement included the men's toilets, which were reached by a short corridor, off which there were three doors. The bulk of the floor comprised the beer storage cellar. Fortunately, the alloy beer and lager casks were pretty impervious to damage, but pressure pumps, a couple of elderly chest freezers and miscellaneous cellar equipment had been sufficiently contaminated as to be beyond repair.

‘What's behind that?' asked McRae, pointing at the one remaining door.

‘Nothing, we don't use it. In fact, I'm not really sure it's legally our space,' replied the manager. He unlocked the door, using the key that was already housed in the lock. He pushed it open, groped around to his left and eventually clicked on an old Bakelite light switch.
In view of the amount of water that had been running down the walls, the landlord had been distinctly foolhardy
, thought McRae. But, surprisingly, when the single neon tube eventually flickered into life, it was clear that this part of the basement must have been a little higher than the rest. The floor was basically dry. The room was largely empty apart from a few timber packing cases. At the opposite end was a short flight of steps that appeared to match the ones he had descended from the bar.

He wandered over to the foot of the steps and, looking up, saw light seeping beneath an old timber-framed and ledged door at the head of the stairs. The words “Fire Exit” appeared faintly in black against a white oblong above it. The door was protected by a panic bar, which, unusually, allowed it to be opened from the inside. The panic bar, however, was secured by a chain and padlock – the key to which was clearly visible within a small break-glass case on the wall. It was the weirdest arrangement Drew had ever seen. He started up the steps to test the door.

‘I'd rather you didn't open that, mate,' warned Dwayne. ‘We're technically underneath the factory next door here, so this isn't really our space at all. God knows why it says “Fire Exit” because no one in their right mind would get out that way. I think it's some hangover from the war, but who knows? The factory is more recent than the pub and I think it was built partially over the old cellars. It doesn't matter to us anyway; we keep the door from the corridor locked with the key on our side anyway, and, as you can, see its steel plated'

Thinking again that it was a distinctly curious arrangement, but not detrimental to the overall security of the pub, McRae made his way back up to the bar.

Having obtained a reasonable overview of the damage, McRae left Suzanne to take the remaining particulars from the landlord while he took a look around with a view to seeing how the pub could improve its security.

Standing in the kitchen on the first floor, he gazed down into the pub's rear yard. It had been converted into a kind of urban beer garden with a couple of heavy-duty trestle tables, a gas heater and a few umbrellas.
The smoker's last stand,
he thought, noting the overflowing ashtrays on the tables.

To the right of the yard was an ancient, visibly crumbling brick wall, almost the height of a double-decker bus, which separated the yard from a similar yard serving the adjacent premises. The wall, which incorporated a narrow wooden gate, was listing alarmingly towards the pub. The property next door appeared to be a small factory of some kind. As he stared down into the factory yard, he noticed a number of used pallets stacked on their edges. Stapled to the edges of the pallets were a number of labels which looked somehow distantly familiar. He pulled his camera from his pocket and, gazing through the viewfinder, adjusted the zoom setting until he had a close-up.