Playing with Fire (22 page)

“Okay, Jim,” Banks said. “Thanks very much.”

“Cheers,” said Hatchley. “My pleasure.”

 

By Monday afternoon, Mark was close to Sutton Bank, and starving. He was glad he had gone back into the pub for his lunch the previous day after the shock of seeing Tina's image on the TV screen. The landlord had given him a dirty look, but other than that, his abrupt departure and return hardly raised an eyebrow. That evening he had eaten fish and chips and kipped down in another old barn. He had got up earlier on Monday morning, with only enough money for a chocolate bar left in his pocket. After walking a few miles, he realized he wasn't trying to do the coast-to-coast walk, that was for anoraks, so he might as well at least try to get a lift.

Just outside Northallerton, a man towing a horse box gave him a lift to Thirsk. All the way he had been aware of the horse shifting nervously behind him, and he thought he could smell manure. The driver hadn't said much, just dropped him off in the High Street, and now he was on the Scarborough Road hoping for another kind soul to stop for him.

It was a gray afternoon, the clouds so low and the air so moist it was almost, but not quite, raining. “Mizzling,” they called it in Yorkshire, describing that bone-chilling combination of mist and drizzle. There wasn't much traffic, and most of the cars and vans that passed just whizzed by without even slowing down. If he got to Scarborough, Mark knew, there was a good chance he'd be able to pick up some casual laboring work. It didn't matter what—ditch-digging, demolition, construction—he could turn his hand to almost anything as long as it didn't involve being educated. School had hardly
been more than a mild distraction throughout his childhood and adolescence.

A police patrol car cruised by and seemed to slow down a bit just ahead of him. Mark tensed. He knew the coppers weren't going to give him a lift. Most likely beat the shit out of him and leave him lying bleeding in a field. He must have been imagining things, though, because the car carried on and disappeared into the distance.

Mark trudged on, hardly bothering to stick out his thumb. He must have walked a couple of miles, the steep edge of Sutton Bank looming before him, when he heard a car coming and remembered to stick out his thumb. The car slowed to a halt about ten yards in front of him. It was quite a posh one, he noticed, an Audi, and shiny, as if it had just been cleaned. It would make a nice change from the horse box. For a moment, Mark worried that it might be the killer, but how could anyone know where he was?

The driver leaned over and opened the passenger window. He was a middle-aged bloke, Mark saw, wearing a camel overcoat and leather driving gloves. Mark didn't recognize him.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Scarborough,” said Mark.

“Hop in.”

He seemed a pleasant enough bloke. Mark hopped in.

B
anks grabbed his leather jacket, left by the back door and slipped behind the wheel of his 1997 Renault, thinking it was about time he had a new car, maybe something a bit sportier, if he could afford it. Nothing too flashy, and definitely not red. Racing green, perhaps. A convertible wasn't much use in Yorkshire, but maybe a sports car would do. His midlife crisis car, though he didn't particularly feel as if he were going through a crisis. Sometimes he felt as if his life was on hold indefinitely, but that was hardly a crisis. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was getting older; there was no doubt about that.

A snippet of interesting information about Andrew Hurst had just come to his attention. Annie was showing Roland Gardiner's Turners to Phil Keane, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe having easily agreed to the consultation, so Banks decided to head out to the canal by himself.

He slipped in an old Van Morrison CD to dispel the January blues—not entirely convinced that they were caused by the weather—and drove off listening to “Jackie Wilson Said.” It was just over a mile to the edge of town, past the new-look college, and another couple of miles of mostly open countryside to the canal. The road wound by fields of cows and sheep, drystone walls on either side, an occasional
wooded area and stiles with signposts pointing the direction for ramblers. Not that it was rambling weather. You'd soon catch a chill and probably get bogged down in the mud before you got too far in open country. To his right, he could see the far-off bulk of the hills, like the swell before the wave frozen in a gray ocean.

The landscape flattened out toward the canal, which was why the channel had been dug there, of course, and Banks soon found the lane that ran down to the side of the lockkeeper's cottage. He parked by the towpath and turned off Van just as he was getting going on “Listen to the Lion.”

It seemed an age before Hurst answered the doorbell, and when he did he looked surprised to find Banks standing there.

“You again,” he said.

“Afraid so,” said Banks. “You weren't expecting me?”

Hurst avoided his eyes. “I told you everything I know.”

“You must think we're stupid. Can I come in?”

“You will anyway.” Hurst opened the door and moved aside. The hallway was quite low, and he had to stoop a little as he stood there. Banks walked into the same room they had been in before, the one with Hurst's extensive record collection. Helen Shapiro was singing “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Hurst turned off the record as soon as he followed Banks into the room, as if it were some sort of private experience or ritual he didn't want to share.

He was fastidious in his movements. He lifted the needle off gently, then stopped the turntable, removed the disc and slipped it lovingly inside its inner sleeve. It was an LP called
Tops With Me,
Banks noticed, and on the cover of the outer sleeve was a picture of the smiling singer herself. Banks had forgotten all about Helen Shapiro. Not that he had been much of a fan to start with, not enough to know about her LPs, at any rate, but he did remember buying an ex-jukebox copy of “Walkin' Back to Happiness” at a market stall in Cathedral
Square, Peterborough, when he was about ten, before the covered market opened. It was one of those 45s with the middle missing, so you had to buy a plastic thingamajig and fix it in before you could play it.

Banks perched on the edge of an armchair. He didn't take his leather jacket off because the house was cold, the elements of the electric fire dark. Hurst was wearing a thick gray, woolly polo-neck sweater. Banks wondered if he was too poor to pay the electricity bills.

“You should have told us you had a criminal record,” Banks said. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble. We find out things like that pretty quickly, and it looks a lot worse for you.”

“I didn't go to jail. Besides, it wasn't—”

“I don't want to hear your excuses,” Banks said. “And I know you didn't go to jail. You got a suspended sentence and probation. You were lucky. The judge took pity on you.”

“I can't see what it has to do with present events.”

“Can't you? I think you can,” said Banks. “You were charged with conspiracy to torch a warehouse. The only reason you got such a soft sentence was because the person who co-opted you was your boss, and he was the one who actually lit the match. But you helped him, you gave him a false alibi, and you lied for him throughout the subsequent investigation.”

“It was my job! He was my boss. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Don't ask me to solve your moral dilemmas for you. In any situation, there are a number of possible choices. You made the wrong one. You lost your job, anyway, and all you gained was a criminal record. When the insurance company got suspicious and called the police in, the company went bankrupt. Since then you've had a couple of short-term jobs, but mostly you've been on the dole.” Banks looked around.
“Lucky you'd paid off most of your mortgage. Was that with the cash your boss gave you for helping with the arson?”

Hurst said nothing. Banks assumed he was right.

“Was that where you got your taste for fire?”

“I don't have any taste for fire. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The narrow boats, Andrew. The narrow boats.”

Hurst shot to his feet. “You can't blame that on me.” He stabbed his chest with his thumb. “I was the one who called the fire brigade, remember?”

“When it was way too late. You've been seen skulking around in the woods, probably spying on Tina Aspern. You have no alibi. You washed your clothes before we could get a chance to test them. Come on, Andrew, how would it look to you? Why did you do it? Was it for the thrill?”

Hurst sat down again, deflated. “I didn't do it,” he said. “Honest, I didn't. Look, I know it
looks
bad, but I'm telling you the truth. I was here by myself all evening watching videos. It's what I do most evenings. Or sit and read a book. I hardly have an active social life, and I don't have a job. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Do you feel inadequate, Andrew? Is that what it's all about? Do the anger and rage just build up in you until they get so strong that you just have to go out and burn something?”

“That's ridiculous. You're making out that I'm some sort of pyromaniac or something.”

“Aren't you?”

“No. Of course I'm not. That other fire, which I
didn't
start, by the way, was purely a business thing. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got any weird gratification in setting it. It was just a way of dealing with a financial problem.”

“Maybe this one was, too.”

“Oh? Now you're changing your approach, are you? Now I'm not a drooling pyromaniac but a cold, practical business
man dealing with a problem.” He folded his arms. “And what problem might that have been?”

“Maybe Tina Aspern was your problem.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Perhaps she was going to tell on you. You used to spy on her, didn't you?”

“No.”

“Where were you on Saturday evening?”

“Saturday? Same place as usual. Here.”

“Watching another war video?”

“
Force Ten from Navarone,
as a matter of fact. Very underrated film.”

“Andrew, get this clear: I don't care about your fucking film reviews. All I care about is that three people are dead and that you might be responsible. Ever heard of a man called Gardiner? Roland Gardiner?”

“No.”

“Leslie Whitaker?”

“No.”

“What kind of car do you drive?”

“I don't. I can't afford to run a car, and I don't need one.”

That would have made it very difficult for Hurst to have got to Jennings Field and back on Saturday night, Banks realized, but there were buses. “In all your nosing about the area,” he asked, “have you ever seen a car of any kind parked in the lay-by closest to the boats?”

“A few times. Yes.”

“What kind of car?”

“Different ones. Picnickers in summer, mostly.”

“And more recently?”

“Only once or twice.”

“What make, do you remember?”

“A van of some kind. You know, a Jeep Cherokee, Land Cruiser, or a Range Rover, that sort of thing. I'm not very well up on the latest models.”

“But it was definitely that kind of vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“Color?”

“Dark. Blue or black.”

“Ever see the driver?”

“No.”

“Okay. Let's get back to the fires. Why did you hang around the boats so much? Was it the girl?”

Hurst looked away, scanning the rows of his LP collection, lips moving as if he were silently reading the names off the covers to himself. Banks's mobile rang. He excused himself and walked outside to answer. It was DC Templeton calling from headquarters. “Sir, we've identified the owner of the boats.”

“Good work,” said Banks.

“It's some bigwig in the City. Name's Sir Laurence West. Merchant banker.”

“Can't say I've heard of him,” said Banks, “but then I don't exactly move in those kinds of circles.”

“Anyway,” Templeton went on, “I've already been on the phone to him, and he's agreed to grant an audience at his office tomorrow, but you'll need to make an appointment.”

“Good of him.”

“Yes,” said Templeton. “I think he also believed he was being magnanimous about it.”

“I see. Okay then, Kev, thanks. I'll go down there myself tomorrow morning, seeing as he's so important.” Besides, thought Banks, it would be nice to get away, if just for a day. He'd take the train, if the trains happened to be running. It was actually faster and far less hassle than driving to London, and train journeys could be relaxing if you had a good book to read and some CDs to listen to. “Make an appointment for one o'clock, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any first impressions?”

“Only that this is all a terrible intrusion into his valuable time, and he needed reminding he even owned the boats.”

“Okay,” said Banks. “I don't suppose we can expect much from him, then, but it's got to be done.”

“And, sir?”

“Yes.”

“A woman called.”

“Which woman?”

“Maria Phillips, from the art gallery. Wants to talk to you again. Says she'll be in the Queen's Arms at half six. I think maybe she fancies you, sir.”

“I'll deal with her. Anything else?”

“DS Nowak wants to see you as soon as you can make it.”

“Where is he?”

“Here, in his office.”

“Right. Tell him to hang on. I'll be back in half an hour.”

“Will do, sir.”

Banks hung up and went back to Andrew Hurst, who was in the same chair, chewing on a fingernail. There was no point pursuing the peeping angle. If Hurst had been trying to get a peek at Tina naked, then he wasn't going to admit it. And even if he did, what could Banks do about it? It wasn't as if Tina were still around to press charges. But if she'd noticed and had threatened to tell on him…? No, there was scant enough evidence to link Hurst with the first fire, and none at all with the second. Besides, the fire had definitely been set on McMahon's boat. Why risk tackling a grown, fit man when you could set fire to a junkie on the nod?

Banks thought Hurst was weird, and probably a peeper, but he was quickly coming to the realization that there was nothing he could do about it. The only obvious motive he might have had was revenge at McMahon's treating him so badly when he paid his neighborly visit, but that didn't seem a strong enough motive for murder unless Hurst had more than
just one screw loose. Still, there were enough questions about him that needed answers to keep him on the list.

“Why did you wash your clothes, Andrew?” Banks asked. “Including the anorak. You must admit that looks suspicious.”

Hurst looked at him. “I know it does. It's just…” He shook his head. “I don't know. Maybe I wasn't thinking straight. I mean, yes, of course I knew you'd find out I'd been arrested in connection with a fire. I don't think you're stupid. I just thought maybe that by the time you did find out about me you'd have caught whoever did it, so you wouldn't need to look at me as a suspect. I'd been close enough to the fire for my clothes to pick up traces. They stank of smoke and turpentine. I've heard how good your forensic tests are these days. I didn't want to spend a night at the police station.”

“You smelled turpentine?”

“Yes. It was in the air.”

“You didn't tell us at the time.”

“I didn't want to get involved.”

If Banks had a penny for every time he'd heard that from a member of the public, he would be a rich man. He stood up. “You're bloody lucky you don't get to spend a night in the nick,” he said, “for wasting police time.” He tossed Hurst a card. “Don't go on any holidays just yet, and if you think of anything else that might help us, give me a ring.”

Hurst nodded gloomily and put the card on the table.

“You can get back to your Helen Shapiro now,” Banks said, and left.

 

Annie was always amazed when she stepped inside Phil's cottage at how spick-and-span everything was. It wasn't as if all the men she had ever known were slobs—Banks's place was generally quite neat except for the CD cases strewn around the coffee table, usually next to an empty whiskey
tumbler and an overflowing ashtray, when he used to smoke—but Phil's cottage had an almost military sparkle to it, along with the scent of pine air freshener. Still, it wasn't his main home and he didn't spend all that much time there. She wondered what his London flat looked like. Chelsea, he'd said. Maybe soon they'd have a weekend in London. Expensive as it was, it would be a hell of a lot more affordable than NewYork, especially if she didn't have to stop in a hotel.