Rotten Apples (15 page)

‘How on earth do you know it was him?' asked Willow, momentarily distracted.

‘Coincidence, really. One of my colleagues was there. She'd been to meet someone not far away and was on her way to Pimlico tube. She saw and heard what happened, and then she got his name on the off-chance it might be interesting. When we discovered that the heroine was you, it seemed that we'd struck gold. He's quite happy to contribute. He's planning a new expedition for next year and is in the process of raising funds now.'

‘Cynic. I'll think about it and let you know.'

‘But you won't go to anyone else with it?' Jane sounded worried.

‘No, I won't do that,' said Willow, glad to feel even the tiniest bit of power.

‘Thanks, Willow. You're a brick. Oh, er…I've been wanting to ask, but wasn't quite sure how to put it. How's Tom?'

‘Holding his own. Goodbye, Jane.'

Willow cut the connection, not wanting to hear Jane apologising for insensitivity or asking any more questions. Willow would have to accept or refuse the idea of the article within a few days; but even that might be enough to help her regain some of her defences. The thought of making an ass of herself dining with the mountaineer for the benefit of the
Mercury
's photographers filled her with disgust, but, on the other hand, her publishers were always wanting her to accept every scrap of offered publicity.

Willow was surprised at the way her mind divided itself into layers. At the base of them all was her anxiety for Tom; that was there all the time and it could rear up above everything else without any warning. But there were other layers, too: the fears that Harness and Black Jack had raised in her; anger at her own physical pain; curiosity about the fire; sympathy for Scoffer's family; concern about exactly what the minister had expected her to discover; anxiety about Eve Greville's reactions to the book she had just finished writing; gratitude to Mrs Rusham; and even mild amusement at Jane Cleverholme's opportunism.

As Willow thought about it all, the different layers seemed to melt into each other and suddenly give way to nothing, only to reappear an instant later and swoop away before she could grasp them. The painkillers she had taken pushed her into sleep before she understood what was happening.

After An Uncomfortable and anxiety-infested weekend, Willow woke at seven on Monday morning restless and agitated. She got up at once, knowing that she would sink into real depression if she had to lie in bed for any more days with nothing to do but worry about Tom, wonder who might have tried to kill her, and imagine what it would have felt like if she had not managed to climb out of the burning building.

Anything would be better than that. Best of all would be to get back to work and establish exactly what had happened to Fiona Fydgett, whether someone else had been involved in her death, who had set fire to the tax office, and why. Once she knew all that, and whether there had been any connection between Fydgett's death and the fire, she might be able to lay some of her worst nightmares to rest.

Peering under the bandages, she saw that the stretched and wrinkled skin of her hands had blown up into large, fluid-filled blisters, which frightened her less, even though they looked more revolting. Her fingers still did not bend easily, and her palms were sore, but she had begun to believe that the hands might one day work properly again and she was becoming less reluctant to use them.

She had learned to bathe without wetting them at all by dint of pouring a lot of detergent-based bathfoam in the water so that she did not need to use soap. That morning, for her first full day out of bed, she picked clothes with the simplest of fastenings, which her hands could manage. Her eyes were getting used to spectacles again and for most of the time she could see clearly enough.

When she got out of the bath and looked at herself in the mirror, she grimaced at her puffy, reddened face. There was nothing she could do about that, since she could not bear the idea of smearing cosmetics on her skin, but she was determined to have something done to improve her lank and ragged hair.

Her usual hairdressers opened for business at half-past eight, and she persuaded them to fit her in then without an appointment. She spent an hour answering tactful questions about Tom and about her own experiences in the fire as an apprentice washed her hair with as much gentleness as he could manage, and then the owner of the salon cut and styled it. Willow tried not to look in the mirrors until they had finished. She had to admit then that she did look a little better, and she felt as though she might be able to face Kate Moughette and her team.

They had been temporarily relocated in an empty government building south of the river, but Willow wanted to take a detour to the old offices so that she could have a look at the damage the fire had done. She could not imagine what clues she might be able to pick up from merely looking at the building, but she had to try.

A taxi was passing the door of the salon as she emerged and she asked the driver to take her to the Vauxhall Bridge Road. It was not until she had strapped herself into the seat belt with great difficulty that she noticed the driver watching her in his mirror.

Part of his big face was hidden, but she could see from the reflection of his left eye that he was looking at her. When she moved sideways to get out of his line of sight, his head moved, too. He looked at the traffic every so often, but his gaze always came back to her.

It was impossible not to remember Harness's idea that someone might have been watching her. And it was equally impossible not to realise just how easy it would be to follow someone through the streets of London in a black taxi.

Willow stared out of the window at the passing buildings, only occasionally glancing at the driver. Each time, she saw that he was still looking at her. She noticed with relief that there were handles on the inside of both doors so that at least she would be able to escape, and then tried to laugh at her fears.

Before her over-vivid imagination could drive her right out of her wits, the cab turned into the Vauxhall Bridge Road and drew up outside the tax office.

‘Here you are, love,' said the cabbie, as Willow leaned against the seat, waiting until she had got her breath back.

‘It was you, wasn't it?' the driver said as she handed over her fare. ‘In that fire?'

‘Yes, it was.' Willow sighed as she realised that the cabbie was a celebrity spotter rather than a murderer's sidekick. Feeling a complete idiot, she tipped him and turned away.

A surprising amount of the building had survived. There was no glass in the windows of the top three storeys, and ugly black marks defaced the brickwork above them all, but otherwise, from the road, the walls looked solid enough. She could not see the roof, which must have been below the ornamental parapet, but she assumed that much of it had collapsed.

From where she was standing, none of the hand- or footholds that she had relied on as she climbed down the huge wall looked large enough to have supported her. It seemed astonishing that she had not fallen and smashed her skull open on the pavement Sanity-saving fury surged through her. If the fire really had been caused deliberately, she wanted the arsonist behind bars for a long time, whoever he—or she—might be.

What had been simply a calm investigation of the goings-on of a group of possibly over-zealous tax inspectors had been transformed into something urgent and personal. Willow knew nothing whatever about arson, but she had tracked down murderers before; and she could do it again.

‘Please keep back, miss,' said a young policeman in uniform as she reached the steps. ‘You can't come in here.'

She unclenched her teeth, held out her hands in their gauze bandages and smiled. ‘It was me who climbed out. You must have seen it in the papers.'

‘That's as maybe, but I can't let you in. If you left any property and it's survived the fire it will be returned to you in due course when the experts have finished,' said the constable looking over her head as though he was afraid the anger in her face might infect him.

‘It's not that,' she said humbly. ‘I had no property except notes and I suspect they all went up in flames. I just wanted to know how badly the building's been damaged.'

‘Couldn't say, miss.'

‘But there are people in there, aren't there? I can hear them. Couldn't I talk to some of them?'

‘My instructions are that no one's to go in. It's not safe.' The constable was still making certain that he could not catch her eye. ‘I must ask you to move on.'

‘Very well,' she said, resigned.

It was not his fault after all that he had been put on the steps to keep out all comers, but it was a pity that he had not let her talk to whoever was assessing the evidence inside. Somehow she would just have to persuade Blackled to pass on anything he learned.

Having hailed another taxi, she gave the address of the temporary tax office. The route took the cab almost past the door of Dowting's and for a moment even her determination to track down the arsonist was overtaken by anxiety for Tom.

He had still been unconscious when she had been to see him the previous afternoon, but she thought she had detected a slight improvement in the colour of his skin. Her eyes closed and she whispered his name over and over again until the taxi stopped outside the half-renovated office block.

‘I could never stand that yoga stuff,' said the cabbie as she handed over three pound coins.

‘Sorry?'

‘You know, all that “om, om” chanting you were doing. The wife did it for an evening course once and tried to make me have a go. Thought I'd look a right charlie standing on me head, chanting “om, om, om”. Does you good though, does it?'

‘Sometimes. Thanks,' she said, taking her change and giving him a fifty-pence tip, which was really far too much for the two-pound-twenty fare. But the moment of amusement he had given her was worth at least that.

She remembered seeing a note on the desk of one of the tax officers that taxi drivers should be assessed as earning twelve-and-a-half per cent of their fares in tips, and thought of all the times she had handed over a bare ten per cent. The affronted expressions of the drivers had often annoyed her, but knowing that they might have been taxed on some much greater notional sum, she felt she ought to make some kind of reparation.

‘Thanks, love. And don't mind me: you keep on with the “om, om”. Did the wife good, or so she says. And I must say, it did make her quite supple, know what I mean?' He leered at her theatrically.

‘Thanks,' said Willow again, still more amused.

Kate Moughette was sitting at her desk, staring at a piece of paper in front of her, when Willow looked into her office a few minutes later. She looked desperately worried. When Willow greeted her, Kate seemed to gather herself together and managed to produce a smile of a sort, even though her eyes did not change at all.

‘Thank goodness you're all right,' she said with unusual slowness. ‘Is it agony? Your hands, I mean.'

‘They're not exactly pleasant, but not torture either. May I come in?'

‘Yes, of course. D'you want some coffee?'

‘That would be nice, if you've got time,' said Willow, not wanting to waste Kate's unusually co-operative mood. ‘Although, come to think of it, if it's another of those machines, I'd rather have tea.'

‘It's not,' said Kate, still talking slowly. Willow thought that she looked awful, ill and tired, almost as though she had not slept since the fire.

‘There hasn't been time to get one. We've rigged up one of those dripping machines—you know, a filter thing.' She got up and left the office, to return a moment later with two cups of coffee.

Willow noticed that there was a long smear of greasy dust along the back of her jacket. It looked as though, unaccustomed to the dust pockets of her new office, she had leaned against one and spoiled the pearl-pink linen in a way she would never have done in the familiar surroundings of the old building.

‘There,' she said, handing a cup to Willow. ‘You do have milk, don't you?'

‘Sometimes. Kate, are you all right?'

‘Perfectly,' she said more crisply and then shrugged, adding, ‘At least as much as anyone could be, knowing that Len's dead—and that most of the work we've all been doing for the past year and a bit has gone, though that's less important, of course.'

‘Didn't they rescue any of the files?' asked Willow, frowning. ‘They must have done. The building didn't look as though it had been that badly burned.'

‘They salvaged some—quite a lot of the stuff in the presses actually. And a team of paper conservators are working on some of the rest now,' She looked at Willow, who, still not quite accustomed to the way her glasses made her see, thought that there was both anger and despair in Kate's small dark eyes. ‘But a hell of a lot's gone. The investigation files that had been got out for you have been almost completely destroyed.'

‘What do you mean, destroyed? The data must all be on computer somewhere. Don't you have some kind of off-site back-up?'

‘We're not fully computerised yet.' Kate sounded exhausted. ‘Didn't you know that? A lot of our stuff's still only on paper. The staff are reconstructing what they can, and we've been… The Collector's office is sending all the information they've got, but there are still going to be some hideous gaps. We're going to have to write to all our taxpayers to get copies of this year's tax returns all over again, and—'

‘But we're only in July, months from the October deadline. Surely no one's sent a return back yet?'

‘You'd be surprised,' said Kate, frowning, ‘how many people actually read the instructions on the form to return it within thirty days. We'd had lots in, but now we've no record of how many. We'll just have to write to everyone and we're working on the letter now. It's a nightmare. And all the investigative work…' Her voice died.