Some by Fire (17 page)

‘I didn’t quite catch that, sir.’

‘I said
ck ck
six inches long and
ck ck
six inches wide.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m only getting the six inches.’

‘Ooh! You should be so lucky!’ I told him and he called me a fucking wanker and we slammed our phones down more or less simultaneously.

Agent Kaprowski rang just after nine, while I was still basking in the warm glow of success. ‘According to Officer Sparkington you’re interested in a lady called Melissa Youngman,’ he said, after the introductions. ‘I’d be appreciative if you could tell me what your concern is, Inspector Priest.’

‘Right,’ I told him. ‘First of all can I say thanks for ringing, Agent Kaprowski. Do I, er, have to keep calling you Agent Kaprowski? I answer to Charlie.’

‘Pleased to have your acquaintance, Charlie. I’m Mike.’

‘That’s better. OK, Mike, here we go.’ I told him briefly about the fire and Melissa’s possible involvement. I made it vague and general, and said we thought there might have been a political motive.
I suggested that it gave us a window on to a much bigger picture, but at the moment it was dark out there. He made
uh-uh
noises at appropriate intervals. I finished by asking why the FBI had a file on her.

‘Routine,’ he replied. ‘It was opened in ‘73 when she came to UCLA, presumably because of her drugs conviction. They were heady days back then, and all sorts of cuckoos were coming in and causing trouble. Miss Youngman, it says here, had friends in Paris who were believed to be attached to the Red Brigade. They were a bunch o’ left-wing loonies based in Italy. She left the US a year later, re-entered in 1989 and immediately made contact with a militia group in Tennessee. That’s about the size of it. Did you say this fire was back in ‘75?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gee! Don’t you guys ever give up?’

‘Just catching up with my workload, Mike. I thought these militia groups you have were
right
-wing.’

‘Right-wing, left-wing, what’s the difference? Do you subscribe to the theory that the world is round, Charlie?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘That’s a concept that a farm boy from Iowa like me has difficulty grappling with. Apparently if you walk far enough in one direction you’ll find yourself coming back the other way. It’s just the same with
these groups; they all widdle in the same creek. If the guns are big enough and it messes with the government, they’ll join.’

‘I get the message. Do you know where she is now?’

‘Youngman? No, but I reckon we could find her without breaking a sweat. You want her back?’

‘I’m not sure. We might one day, but at the moment we’re only gathering background, acquaintances, you know the thing.’

‘Well, just let me know if you do, and I’ll put her on the next plane with a liddle label around her neck.’

‘She sounds a delightful lady, I can hardly wait. Thanks for your help, Mike, and I’ll be in touch.’

‘My pleasure, Charlie. Adios.’

‘Adios.’

Adios. I liked that. I replaced the phone and said it again. ‘Adios. Adios. Adios,
amigo
.’ So Melissa was in America, running through the woods with a bunch of rednecks whose wives had backsides bigger than their pickups and whose idea of entertainment was
arm-wrestling
with a bear. Should be right up the street of an ex-head girl of Beverley Cathedral Grammar School, I thought.

The anticyclone re-established itself over the Bay of Biscay, pushing the threat of unsettled weather back over Russia, where it belonged. Dave finished his painting, the M62 was closed for two hours by grass fires, and I mowed my lawn. A judicious grass fire would have saved me the bother. Once again the bright tables and umbrellas sprang up all over the precinct, like toadstools in a book of fairy stories, and commerce slowed to a standstill. Crime didn’t. Lust is mercury-filled; it rises and falls with temperature. Hot afternoons, scant clothing, walks in the meadows; it’s a potent mixture. Add lunchtime drinking outside the pub with the new girl from Telesales and you have all the ingredients for rape, and we had several. Not by the inadequate loner, waiting for a victim, any victim, and striking violently. These were between semi-consenting couples who were carried away by
the moment. Two of them were mothers complaining about the boys next door and their daughters, and one housewife thought that inviting the builder in for a beer was normal behaviour, even if she was wearing a bikini and had spent all morning sunbathing topless. We had a rubber stamp made that said: ‘She was asking for it,’ to speed up the statements.

The druggies changed their
modus operandi
, too. Open windows facilitated the taking of tellies and videos, but demand was down. Garden tools, barbecue furniture and big chimney pots, plants for growing in, became the new currency. It added some variety to the job and the woodentops had to learn how to spell some new words.

‘Ta-da!’ Dave fanfared as he came into my office on Wednesday morning, his smile broader than a seaside comedian’s lapels.

‘What?’ I said, lifting the pile of papers in my
in-tray
and sliding the request for next year’s budget underneath.

He sat down and grinned at me.

‘Go on,’ I invited, ‘or is that it?’

‘That Piers Forrester is a really nice bloke,’ he told me.

‘He’s a supercilious twat,’ I replied.

‘He’s been very helpful.’

‘He wears a dickie bow.’

‘Oh, so he’s a supercilious twat because he wears a dickie bow, is he?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Graham’s OK, too.’

‘He’s all right, I suppose.’

‘Because he doesn’t wear a dickie bow?’

‘He wears Yves St Laurent short-sleeved shirts. That must say something about him.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the detective, I’m just the office boy. What have you found out?’

‘Right,’ he replied, eagerly. ‘We’ve cracked it.’

‘Go on.’

‘Melissa went to grammar school in Beverley, didn’t she?’

‘Yep.’

‘And then on to Essex University.’

‘Mmm.’

‘So Graham has paid them a visit to have a look at her classmates there, like I did for Duncan in Leeds. And guess what?’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘There was another girl enrolled there at the same time, from the same school in Beverley. She was called Janet Wilson. She’s bound to have been in the same class as Melissa, don’t you think? She must know her.’

I let my glum look slip, but only briefly. ‘What do
you mean by
was
called Janet Wilson?’ I asked.

‘She’s married, that’s all. She’s now called Janet Holmes, and lives at the Coppice, Bishop’s Court, York. We could be there in an hour.’

You can learn a lot about a person from the pictures they have on their wall. This one was a tinted drawing, larger than average, of a circular construction. It looked Moorish at first glance, and I expected it to be called something like
In the Courtyard of the Alhambra,
but when I looked closer I realised it was biological. What I’d taken as tiles or pieces of mosaic were individual cells.

‘Do you like it?’ Mrs Holmes asked as she came into the room, carrying a tray.

‘It’s not what it seems,’ I replied, ‘and that intrigues me. It’s also very attractive.’

‘Your sergeant’s call certainly intrigued me,’ she replied. ‘Please, sit down.’

‘Constable,’ Dave corrected.

There was a caption and a signature under the picture. They read:
Ascaris lumbricoides
and
J. Holmes
. I said: ‘Did you do this, Mrs Holmes?’ sounding impressed.

‘It’s what I do for a living,’ she answered. ‘I’m a technical illustrator. I took a few liberties with the colour on that one, but it’s not great art.’

‘The inspector’s into painting,’ Dave told her.
‘Went to art college. He does all our wanted posters.’

‘Really?’ she replied.

‘He jests,’ I told her. ‘So what exactly is an ascaris whatsit?’

‘It’s a nasty little parasite that lives in pigs and occasionally in humans.’

‘You mean, like a tapeworm?’

‘Very similar, but they only grow to about a foot in length.’

‘Only a foot!’ Dave exclaimed. ‘Blimey! So how long does a tapeworm grow?’

‘Oh, the common tapeworm can reach twenty feet,’ she told him.

‘Urgh!’ he responded. ‘I’ll never have another bacon sandwich.’

Mrs Holmes poured the tea and suggested we help ourselves to milk and sugar. ‘Now, what is it you want to know about Essex University in the early seventies?’ she asked. ‘I’m totally fascinated.’

She was a good-looking woman, easier to imagine addressing a class or opening a fête than looking through a microscope. I sat down and took a sip of tea from the china cup. She’d also supplied scones which looked homemade and more in character with her appearance.

‘Do you work from home?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘My husband left me two years ago, as soon as the children were off our hands. Traded
me in for a younger model; and more streamlined.’ She patted her hips, which looked perfectly reasonable to me. ‘I’d always been an illustrator, which was considered something of a cop-out for someone with a degree, but now there’s a bigger than ever demand for my services. I do lots of computer animation, too, of course, but a good animator can name her own price, almost.’

It explained a lot. The house was a four-bedroomed detached on a swish estate just down-river from the bishop’s palace. We knew she’d lived there for nine years, so it must have been the marital home, but she’d managed to keep it. Working alone, in her studio, explained the hospitality, which was above that we normally received. Two handsome detectives were visiting and she probably hadn’t spoken to anyone livelier than a checkout girl all week. Get out the decent cups and some buns.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s this all about?’

I reached for a plate and a scone and settled back in my easy chair, gesturing towards Dave. ‘DC Sparkington will tell you,’ I said, adding: ‘The scones look good.’

‘They’re from Betty’s,’ she told me.

‘And I thought they looked homemade,’ I replied.

‘No. I’m afraid I’m the world’s worst cook.’ Ah, well, I can’t be right all the time.

Dave took a drink of tea and placed the cup and
saucer back on the low table that was between us. ‘You went to the Cathedral Grammar School at Beverley, I believe, Mrs Holmes?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ She leant forward, interested, and interlinked her fingers around her knee.

‘And from there?’

‘From there I went to Essex University for four years, as you know.’

‘Reading…’

‘Biology.’

‘Was anyone else from Beverley accepted for Essex?’ Dave asked. I had to smile. A week ago he’d have said: ‘What were you taking?’ and: ‘Did anyone else go to Essex?’

‘Yes, there was one other girl,’ she replied.

‘Called…’ Dave prompted.

‘Melissa. Melissa Youngman.’

‘How well did you know her?’

‘Quite well. We weren’t friends, but we were in the same classes at Beverley for seven years, plus a year at Essex.’

‘Were you on the same course?’ Dave asked, puzzled.

‘No. Melissa read palaeontology, but some of our courses were combined for the first year. And we shared a house.’

‘You shared a house? How did that come about?’

‘Melissa’s parents bought a little semi for her, and
I had a room in it. It was normal for freshers to stay in a hall of residence, so we had to have a special dispensation, but it only lasted a year. I moved out and Melissa moved on.’

‘Where to?’

‘Melissa? I don’t know.’

‘Tell me about her,’ Dave invited.

I put my empty plate back on the table and settled back to listen.

‘Tell you about Melissa?’ she queried.

‘Yes please.’

Mrs Holmes’s face looked mystified for a few seconds, then broke into a smile of realisation. ‘It’s Melissa you want to know about, isn’t it?’ she demanded, unable to contain her delight. ‘What has she done now?’

‘Her name has cropped up in an investigation,’ Dave told her. ‘We don’t know if she is involved but we’d be grateful for anything you can tell us about her.’

‘About poor Melissa? Good grief.’

‘Yes please.’

‘Well, let me see…’ Mrs Holmes hadn’t spoken to a soul for a fortnight, and now she was being given the invitation to gossip about her best schoolfriend, who she hated, by two people who were trained listeners with no intention of interrupting. It was a moment to savour. She gathered her thoughts,
smoothed her flowered skirt and began.

Melissa was head girl, which we knew, and a brilliant scholar. Annoyingly, she was also good at games, and not considered a swot by anyone. She had long hair, down to her waist, and her parents doted on her. They were always in the front row at speech days and school plays, applauding their daughter long after everyone else had stopped. But something happened to her in that first week at university, and Mrs Holmes didn’t know what it was.

‘All sorts of societies organised meetings and parties for the new students, partly to entertain us and break the ice, partly to recruit new members. We went to one, I remember, about the rain forests, which weren’t quite the cause
célèbre
in 1969 that they are now. Oh! The high life! Those were the days,’ she laughed, and I noticed that she still had a girlishly happy face. Betrayal and disappointment hadn’t left their mark. ‘On the Friday,’ she continued,’ – and this is still the first week – Melissa announced that we were going to a lecture about a man called Aleister Crowley. Have you ever heard of him?’

Dave said: ‘No,’ and I left it at that, although I had.

‘He was the self-styled wickedest man in the world, apparently, although it all sounded harmlessly bonkers to me. He was a witch, a warlock, I suppose, who climbed Everest without oxygen or warm clothing and
performed other fiendish deeds like that. He probably did spells and things, but the Everest bit is all that I can remember. Melissa was fascinated. Or maybe it was the lecturer who captivated her. He was a bit of a dish, if you like that sort of thing, but far too smooth for me. Afterwards she trapped him in a corner and wouldn’t let him go. I waited for ages, sipping a half of beer and wondering why people drank the stuff,’ she laughed again, ‘until Melissa came over and told me that it was all right, Nick would see her home later.’

‘Nick?’ I asked.

‘Nick Kingston, the lecturer. Apparently he also taught psychology at the university, although we didn’t know that at the time. So I walked home all by myself and Melissa stayed out all night. I was shocked, but that was only the beginning.’

‘Why? What happened next?’

‘I didn’t see her until she came in, late Saturday afternoon. She’d had all her hair chopped off and it looked a dreadful mess. I asked her why and she just said she was sick of it. The following week she had it dyed and she had her nose pierced. She was a different person.’

‘What colour did she dye it?’ we both asked.

‘Bright red.’ Ah, well, she still had six years to go purple.

‘Was there anything else?’ I wondered.

‘Not really,’ Mrs Holmes replied. ‘We drifted apart after that. I knew I had to work hard, and I didn’t want to let my parents down. I know it’s corny, but they made sacrifices to send me to university, and I wasn’t as gifted as Melissa. I thought she wasted her talents, and to be honest, I grew to dislike her.’

‘Did she and this Kingston become a couple?’ Dave asked.

‘For a while,’ Mrs Holmes answered, ‘and then…’ She covered her face with her hands and began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘Oh my goodness!’ she exclaimed as she recovered. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you…’

Her laughter was infectious. ‘If you don’t,’ I said, smiling, ‘we’ll just have to arrest you and take you to the station to make a statement.’

She blew her nose on a tissue and concealed it somewhere in the folds of her skirt. ‘It was awful,’ she declared, but her expression said otherwise. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘We went to a party at Nick Kingston’s flat. It must have been after Christmas, because I’d taken my father’s car back down there after the holiday. It was a Morris Minor, and he said I’d have more use for it than him. After that, I was invited to a lot more parties, because I was good for a lift. I remember! It was to watch a moon landing, that was it!
Apollo 13
, the one that had problems. We were all interested, history was being made, but Kingston knew everything about it.
He was a complete show-off. Would you like some more tea?’

We would. She refilled our cups and I invited her to continue.

‘Kingston was awful to Melissa. They’d seen a lot of each other up to then, but I could see he was deliberately ignoring her and chasing another girl. Melissa took her revenge by latching on to poor Mo.’

‘Mo?’

That smile came back, but wistful this time. ‘That’s right, short for Mobo Dlamini. He was from Swaziland, that’s in South Africa, and a lovely person. His father or grandfather was the king, and he came over here to study law.’

‘Could you spell it, please?’ Dave asked, and noted it down.

‘I went home just as it was breaking dawn,’ Mrs Holmes continued, ‘but Melissa didn’t come with me. I heard her and Mo arrive much later. Their giggles and antics woke me up. About lunchtime I had my revenge. There was a knock at the door and who should I find there but Melissa’s parents, Mr and Mrs Youngman. They pushed past me and marched up to her room. Can you imagine their reactions? Not only was their darling daughter in bed with a man, but he was a black man. It was awful. I heard most of it and Mo told me the rest. They stormed out and drove away, and I don’t think she saw them again. I
gave Mo some aspirin and some breakfast and took him home.’