Some by Fire (19 page)

‘That’s interesting,’ I told him, because it was. ‘You have a colourful background.’

‘But what’s it got to do with Kingston? I’ll tell you. King Sobhuza, my grandpa, was a very wise man. He embraced modern technology, where possible, but strove to maintain traditional values. Witch doctors – the ones who cast spells on people and dabbled in the black arts – were outlawed, but the more benign ones are still tolerated and even encouraged. For instance the iNyanga are herbalists, and the iSangona are foreseers of the future. I wanted to explore the psychology of traditional medicine and started attending Kingston’s lectures. I’d approached him and he said it was OK, which I thought was very kind of him. Unfortunately, as I got to know him better, I changed my mind. He was more interested in the witch doctors than I was. He was forever asking me about their powers and the type of things they could do. He believed in astral travel and all sorts of oddball stuff, and thought they had the key to it and the knowledge would be lost forever if someone, namely him, didn’t write it down.
He saw me as his key to that knowledge.’

‘Was this after the party?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I suppose so. I was starting to have doubts about him by then, though.’

‘In what way?’

‘I realised he was strange. He was into keep-fit and martial arts, things like that. Yoga. He didn’t feel pain. He could snuff out a candle with his fingers, very slowly. It was his party trick. And the same with cold. Christmas Day he used to join the swimmers in the sea at Southend or somewhere. I tell you, Charlie, Nick Kingston is a weird cookie.’

‘It sounds like it. You don’t know where he is now?’

‘No, ‘fraid not.’

‘Did you fall out or just drift apart?’

‘It was a fairly gradual process. I saw him one evening and Melissa was with him again. We fell into conversation, naturally, but it was obvious that she’d told him all about that night. They were laughing at me behind their hands, so to speak. I decided he’d been patronising me; I was just another backward nigger to him. They weren’t my kind of people, so I split.’

‘They sound a lovely couple.’

‘Made in heaven, Charlie. I’ll tell you who might be able to help you. A girl called Janet…Wilson, I think it was. She had been to school with Melissa.
They shared a house. She was a lovely person, just the opposite of Melissa. I have an address somewhere, but it’ll be twenty years out of date. God, she’ll probably have a grown-up family by now.’

‘I’ve met Miss Wilson,’ I told him, unable to hide my grin.

‘You’ve met Janet?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Did she…’ A broad smile spread across his face, like the sun breaking through and illuminating the savannah. ‘Was it Janet who put you on to me?’

I nodded.

‘Hey, that’s great,’ he declared. ‘How is she?’

‘She’s fine. Family grown up and her husband’s left her, but she’s doing nicely.’

‘Fantastic! She was a lovely girl; a real sweet. Not like Melissa. Will you give her my number, please?’

‘Sure. No problem.’

I thanked him for his help and left. Outside, I rang Dave on my mobile and told him that Kingston had dominated the conversation once again. He said he’d put his new friends on to it and agreed to meet me at the car.

He was waiting when I arrived, eating an
ice-cream
while sitting on someone’s garden wall with his jacket over his shoulder, hooked on a thumb.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said.

‘That’s OK. Graham had a quick look at the
Nicholas Kingstons; there’s only a handful of them. Going by approximate DOB, making him in his fifties, the most likely one is a Nicholas James William Kingston who lives in Kendal. They’re having a closer look at him right now. Anything else?’

I told him about Kingston’s fascination with the witch doctors, and his indifference to pain. It was stop-start motoring along the Marylebone Road and no better along the Edgware Road, except that we were now heading north. Every junction was controlled by traffic lights and the bits inbetween were clogged with buses trying to get past parked vehicles, for mile after mile. It was nearly as bad as Heckley High Street when the school turns out.

I was hungry, and Dave can eat anything, any time. He’s what they call a greedy so-and-so, unless he has a twenty-foot tapeworm eating away inside him. I said: ‘They’re paying, so which do you fancy; the Savoy Grill or the Little Chef?’

‘If it’s on the SFO,’ he replied, ‘we might as well splash out. Bugger the expense.’

‘Right,’ I agreed, ‘so Little Chef here we come.’

All the postman had brought me was a credit card statement and there were no messages on the answerphone. Dave’s wife, Shirley, had invited me
in for some supper when I dropped him off, but I’d declined. Sometimes they’re just being polite. The all-day breakfast had been over two hours ago and I was peckish again, so I had a banana sandwich with honey and a sprinkling of cocoa. ‘Condensed milk,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Why can’t you find condensed milk these days?’ The cut-and-thrust of the Ml, plus three hours of near-total concentration, had left me on edge. I was stiff and tired, but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Jacquie’s number was still on the telephone pad, and I thought about ringing it. For a friendly chat, that’s all. Make sure she was all right.

But it would have been self-indulgent and inconsiderate of her feelings, so the phone stayed where it was. Part of me wished I’d gone in for that coffee at Elspeth’s. It would have ended in tears, probably, but would that matter? Is ending in tears worse than never happening? I doubt it. In fact, I’m sure of it. I wondered if she’d finished her painting.

Dave was right. I’d make an excuse to see Mrs Holmes again. Time it so we could repair to the riverside pub for a ham sandwich, with salad and a glass of orange juice; unless she had eventually developed a taste for beer. Then, perhaps, she’d show me some more of her drawings.

Things were moving on all fronts, which is how I like it. I found my box of oil paints in the back bedroom and a stretched canvas, about two by two,
which hadn’t been used. All this talk of pictures had inspired me. I underpainted the canvas with a big red circle and then divided it into segments. It was going to be an abstract inspired by a cross-section of a tapeworm. I edged the segments in blue, didn’t like it and tried orange. That was better. By one o’clock it was mapped out and I knew exactly how it would look. The circle had become broken and scattered, a jumble of interlocking triangles and rectangles. All it needed now was the colour piling on, thicker than jam. It was a happy and optimistic me that fell into bed, still smelling of natural turpentine, to dream of girls and art galleries and long student days.

Sparky was rapidly becoming the bringer of good news. I was having my morning coffee with Mr Wood when he knocked and came in, looking pleased with himself. ‘Pour yourself a cup, David,’ Gilbert invited. ‘Not often we see you up here.’

‘No thanks, boss,’ Dave replied. ‘I prefer it from the machine. It has this pleasant…undertaste of oxtail soup.’

‘Don’t know how you drink the damn stuff,’ Gilbert declared.

‘He doesn’t drink it,’ I said. ‘He drinks mine. What is it, Dave? You came in grinning like a dog with two bollocks, so you’ve obviously something to tell us.’

He tilted his head to one side, thought about it for
a few seconds and stated: ‘Generally speaking, dogs do have two bollocks.’

‘Not on the Sylvan Fields estate,’ I snarled.

‘Oh, right. Nobody has two of anything there. Nicholas Kingston. The one with a Kendal address, that is. Our little friends at the Serious Fraud Office have done the homework that I set them yesterday and scored ten out of ten. They’ve got better contacts than we have, that’s for certain.’

‘Go on,’ I invited.

‘Well, first of all, this Nick Kingston earns a respectable income as a university lecturer, which is what we had hoped for. Bit more than you take home, Charlie, but not quite as much as Mr Wood. The interesting bit is the university. He’s at Lancaster.’

‘Lancaster!’ I exclaimed.

‘Yep.’

‘Struth!’

‘What’s special about Lancaster?’ Gilbert asked.

‘On Monday,’ I replied, ‘or perhaps Tuesday, we had a phone call from Duncan Roberts junior, known as DJ. He’s the teenage son of Andrew Roberts, brother of Duncan senior who topped himself after putting his hand up for the fire in Leeds.’

Gilbert nodded, pretending he understood.

‘He wanted to talk about his Uncle Duncan, see if we could tell him anything. His parents live in Welwyn Garden City,’ I continued, ‘but when
we checked, young DJ was ringing from Lancaster.’ I turned to Dave. ‘Can you see if he’s at university there, please?’ I asked.

‘Dunnit. He is, reading mechanical engineering.’

‘Blimey!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s interesting. I don’t know what it means, but it’s interesting.’

‘Could be a coincidence,’ Gilbert warned. It’s his job to remind us of the mundane possibilities. It’s mine to go off on wild flights of fancy; to soar with the eagles and wage war on the forces of evil. That’s how I see it. I turned to Dave. ‘Well done, Pissquick,’ I said. ‘You’d better take a day off this weekend.’

He pulled a glum face and said: ‘But…don’t you want to know what I came to tell you?’

‘You mean there’s more?’ I queried.

‘Just a bit. University lecturer is only one of his jobs.’

‘Where did you say this info came from?’ Gilbert interrupted.

‘The SFO,’ Dave answered.

‘No, where did they get it from?’

‘No askee,’ he replied with a shrug, implying ask no questions, be told no lies.

‘The Inland bloody Revenue, I bet,’ Gilbert stated.

‘Like I said,’ Dave told him, ‘they have better contacts than us.’ The Inland Revenue’s principal task is collecting taxes. They’re not a reservoir of essential information for the law enforcement agencies. If it
were common knowledge that they supplied us with details of their clients’ finances it would hamper their tax-collecting abilities, so they don’t do it. Anything an individual employee of theirs might pass on is strictly off the record.

‘So what else did they say?’ I demanded, impatiently.

‘Apparently,’ Dave continued, ‘Mr Kingston also earns a healthy salary working as a freelance consultant. His main customer for this work – in fact, his only customer for the last few years – is…wait for it…something known as the Reynard Organisation.’

‘The Reynard Organisation?’ I whispered.

Dave nodded. ‘Yep!’

‘Reynard the Fox. Holy mother of Jesus!’ That was it. We had the link. Duncan senior started the fire, Melissa put him up to it, Kingston was pulling
her
strings. Crosby owned the house and he was Fox’s sworn enemy. And Kingston worked for Fox. QED,
quod erat demonstrandum
. ‘Which was to be proved.’ All we had to do now was the
demonstrandum
bit.

I put the phone to my ear and nodded to Annette Brown, our swish new DC. She was seated in my office where I could see her through the window. We’d set up a telephone conference on the internals, with Dave, Nigel, Jeff and myself all listening in the big office.

Annette picked up my phone and dialled the Kendal number. After three rings a man said: ‘Hello.’ It’s difficult to form an impression from just hello.

‘Is that Mr Kingston?’ Annette asked in her best little-girl voice.

‘It might be,’ he replied.

‘Oh, hello, Mr Kingston,’ she went on. ‘This is Janine from ABC Windows. We’re doing a promotion in Kendal at the moment, with fifty per cent off, and are looking for a show home in your area. Would you be…’

‘What did you say your name was?’ he interrupted.

‘Er, Janine, Mr Kingston.’

‘And do you have a boyfriend, Janine?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘So in that case why don’t you piss off home and get him to give you a good stiff seeing-to.’ CLICK!

The four of us in the outer office buried our heads in our arms and shook with laughter. When I looked up Annette was standing there, blushing. ‘That was short and sweet,’ she said bravely.

It wasn’t politically correct, but I couldn’t resist it. I flapped a hand towards the door and said: ‘Well, off you go then.’

It was Friday and he was at home. I didn’t want to wait until Monday, but we were supposed to be having a team meeting in the afternoon. Dave knew as much as I did about this case but we were both a week behind with the burglaries, although it was obvious that there had been nothing new to report. I decided to dash up to Kendal to try to catch Kingston at home while they held the meeting without me. Dave and I discussed tactics and at just after eleven I filled the car with petrol and pointed it towards Cumbria, formerly Westmorland, aka the Lake District.

First stop was Kendal nick. I had a long talk with my opposite number, who I’d never met before,
and told him the minimum I could. He realised I wasn’t being too forthcoming but had the good sense to know that I probably had my reasons and didn’t ask too many questions. The main thing was that he offered his cooperation and gave me directions to Kingston’s house.

Somebody once said that schizophrenics build castles in the air, psychopaths live in them and psychiatrists collect the rent. OK, so he was a psychologist, but he was doing very nicely. The house was the end one of three that a farmer had built in one of his fields in the middle of nowhere. How he’d obtained planning permission was probably a story in itself, but the proof was here in the security gates, the five- or six-bedroomed mansion and the sweeping views towards the mountains. I pressed the button and wondered what happened next.

There was a click and a hum and the big gates swung open. They were black with gold arrowheads and Prince of Wales feathers. I looked one way, then the other, and strode off up to the block-paved drive. I’d once had a quote to have mine done like this, but had thought £4,000 excessive and opted for tarmac again. Kingston’s drive was about twenty times as long as mine. Loopy Lucille from Draughty Windows could have earned herself a holiday in Benidorm with the commission on this. When I reached the door I paused for breath and rang the bell.

It definitely wasn’t the cleaning lady who opened the door almost immediately, her mouth already forming words which she cut off when she saw me. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, with what might have been a touch of disappointment. ‘I, er, I’m sorry, I, er, thought you were the man from Wineways.’

She was about average height but that was the only thing about her that was average. Ash-blonde hair down to her shoulders and curves like Monza, fast and sweeping, demanding your full attention. She was under thirty, at a guess, and wearing a navy-blue pullover with a white blouse and jodhpurs. This was trophy wife incarnate. I took it all in with a trained policeman’s sweeping glance, from the Hermes scarf at her throat right down to the gleaming riding boots with two spots of mud on the left and three on the right. She’d been out for a canter.

‘No,’ I said, offering my ID. ‘I’m the man from the CID. Detective Inspector Priest. I was wondering if I could have a word with Mr Kingston.’

She quickly regained her composure and realised I really was just another tradesman. ‘Mr Kingston?’ she echoed, as if I’d asked for an audience with Barbra Streisand. I was two steps down from her so she had the advantage, whichever way you looked at it.

‘Is he in?’ I wondered.

‘What’s it about?’ she demanded. ‘He’s very busy.’

‘Are you…Mrs Kingston?’ I risked. I suppose she could have been his daughter.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Could you please tell him it’s about a little matter that I’m sure he can clear up. I won’t keep him more than a few minutes.’

‘Well, actually, he’s not in the house. I think you’ll find him in the belvedere.’

‘The Belvedere?’ I queried. Where the hell was the Belvedere?

‘Yes. He does his reading there.’

‘Can you give me directions, please?’

She stepped down to my level and pointed to the corner of the house. ‘At the bottom of the garden,’ she told me. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming.’

I wandered down the side of the house feeling bemused. He had a pub at the bottom of the garden? Wow! Wait till I told Sparky! There was a BMW M3 convertible in one of the garages and a short hike away I saw a large summerhouse flanked by ornamental trees. As I approached it Kingston came to the door and held it open for me, for which I was mightily grateful. This, presumably, was the belvedere, and they had a telephone line to it.

They also had electricity and the security system coupled up. It was a double-glazed mahogany construction shaped like an old thrupenny bit, with a raised deck running all the way around it.

‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ Kingston greeted me. ‘My wife forewarned me of your approach.’

I entered, then waited for him to pass me because there was more than one room. He pushed a door open and said: ‘In here, please.’

It was every grown-up small boy’s dream. Windows on three sides gave a view of the hills, as if from a ship’s bridge. Behind me, the wall was lined with bookcases and framed old Ordnance Survey maps. ‘What a gorgeous view,’ I stated.

‘Mmm, it is,’ he agreed. ‘Goat Fell. We try to walk over it three times a week.’

‘Both of you?’

‘Of course. Just the thing to raise your, er, spirits.’

‘It’s beautiful. I envy you.’

‘Do you know the Lake District at all?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’ve done most of it,’ I boasted.

‘Really? Good for you.’

Leaning in a corner I noticed a high-powered airgun with a telescopic sight, and one of the windows was wide open.

‘Shooting?’ I asked, nodding towards the gun.

‘Squirrels,’ he replied. ‘Grey ones, of course. Bloody menace they are.’ Thirty yards away, hanging from a branch, were several bird-feeders filled with peanuts.

‘Sit down, Inspector,’ he invited, ‘and tell me how I can help you. Francesca didn’t catch your name…’

‘Priest,’ I told him, settling into a studded leather
chair that matched the captain’s he pulled out for himself. ‘From Heckley CID. I believe you were a lecturer at Essex University back in 1969.’

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, throwing his head back and guffawing. ‘I knew I should have paid that parking ticket! You’ve taken your time, Inspector, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

I didn’t mind at all. My day would come. In some ways he was a bit like me. Tallish, skinny, with all his own hair worn a little too long. The years had treated us differently, though. My features have been etched by alternating stress and laughter into an attractive pattern of wrinkles and laugh-lines. Well, I think so. He’d grown flabby-cheeked and dewlapped from a dangerous combination of dissolute living and half-hearted exercise. He wasn’t wearing well, in spite of his efforts.

I said: ‘You lectured in psychology, sir, I believe.’

‘That’s right, Inspector. You are to be commended for your diligence; I can see you’ve done your homework.’

‘Can I ask…why psychology?’ There was no table between us and I carefully watched his reactions. He might have the book learning, but my knowledge of human behaviour was honed on the streets and in the interview rooms, with some of the toughest nutters and craftiest crooks in society.

He smiled and shrugged, saying: ‘I’ve never
been asked that before, Inspector. Is it part of your enquiry?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I just wondered how a person goes from school into a subject like that. It’s not as if it was on the curriculum in those days is it?’

‘No, I suppose you’re right.’ He thought for a few seconds, then said: ‘Girls.’

‘Girls?’ I repeated.

‘Mmm. Girls. I’m a Freudian, Inspector. I think I went into psychology because: a) I would meet lots of girls, and b) I’d learn how to deal with them after I’d met them. Does that answer your question?’

‘Did it live up to expectations?’

He bit his lower lip and nodded his head, very slowly. ‘I think I can safely say that it did. It bloody well did. After all,’ he continued, ‘we’re talking about Essex in the sixties. What more could a man want? What was it that poet said? Sexual intercourse was invented in 1962, or whenever?’

‘Philip Larkin,’ I told him. ‘It was 1963, after the something-something and the Beatles’ first LP.’

‘That was it. Bloody wonderful time, it was. Did you go to university, Inspector?’

‘Art college, about the same time.’

‘Well then, you’ll know all about it, eh?’

‘Can you remember any names from that period?’ I asked.

He pulled his feet in, just for a moment, then
relaxed again. ‘Students, you mean?’ he queried.

‘Mmm.’

His right hand brushed his nose. ‘No, ’fraid not,’ he replied.

‘None at all?’

He did an impression of a thinking man before shaking his head.

‘I have a list of names,’ I told him, taking my notebook from my jacket pocket and opening it. ‘I’m supposed to ask if you can volunteer any, and if you can’t I’ve to prompt you with a few. Is that OK?’

‘Fire away, Inspector.’

‘Right.’ I glanced down at the notebook. ‘Have you ever known a girl called…let me see… Melissa Youngman?’

His hand went to his mouth in a pensive gesture and he said: ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

I put a cross next to carrots on last week’s shopping list. ‘How about Janet Wilson?’

This time there was no reaction. ‘No.’

‘Mo…Dlamini, would it be?’

He pulled his feet under the chair and said: ‘No.’

‘You never heard of any of them?’

‘No.’ He relaxed, stretching his legs again, and said: ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but it was a long time ago, and to be honest, sometimes I couldn’t remember
their names the next morning. Are you allowed to tell me what it’s all about? It must be serious after all these years.’

‘Something about a fire, I believe, in an area of Leeds called Chapeltown. It’s the red-light district. A witness has recently made a death-bed statement that has led us to this woman called Youngman, but we can’t find her. One of my chiefs has decided I haven’t enough to do already and has given me the job of looking into her background and associates. We’ve got to look as if we’re doing something, I suppose. I’m told that she went to Essex University and one of her classmates thought she’d had an affair with a psychology lecturer. That led me to you. Believe me, Mr Kingston, I’ve enough on my plate that happened last week, never mind twenty-three years ago. I suspect that it’s to do with drugs, it usually is, but nobody tells me anything.’ I closed my notebook and asked if there’d been much drug-taking at Essex.

It was there, he told me, for those who took the trouble to look for it. And if you were at a party the odd reefer might be passed round. He’d dabbled, of course – who hadn’t? – but only with pot. Nowadays he didn’t know what made young people tick. He sympathised with the dilemma the police and the government were in. Legalisation wasn’t the answer; that would just make a fortune for the tobacco companies. Perhaps the new Drugs Tsar would make
a difference? I stifled a smile. We call him Twinkle, as in
Twinkle, twinkle, little Tsar
.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’ve never heard of her or the others I don’t think I need trouble you any longer. Thanks for your time, sir.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘I’m only sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.’

I stood up as if to take my leave and glanced around. ‘Is this where you do your studying?’ I asked.

‘Yes. This is my little den.’

I turned towards the bookcase. ‘May I look?’

‘Of course.’

They were the sort of books that are referred to by the names of the authors rather than title. Get out your Weber, Umlaut and Schnorkel rather than your
The Perceived Differences Between Alternative Analytical Approaches to Clinical Investigations of Stress-Induced Syndromes in Western and Oriental Societies
. They made
Stone’s Justices Manual
sound kid’s play. I let my eyes flick over them, not paying much attention, until a familiar title caught my eye.

‘Read one!’ I announced triumphantly, pointing to
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
which had been a cult read book in the seventies.

‘Ah, the Pirsig,’ he said. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Mmm. Dabbled with Zen for a while afterwards. And caught up on my Plato.’

‘Really?’

Further along I saw some more I had read. I was definitely down among the beer-drinkers now. ‘And these,’ I told him. ‘The Carlos Castanedas.’

‘I’m impressed, Inspector,’ he replied. ‘What did you think of them?’

We had something in common. I decided to milk it for every drop. ‘I thought they were interesting,’ I told him. ‘Only last week I was walking in the Dales when the weather changed. I could feel it coming, long before it reached me. It was probably only a temperature drop, or the wind rustling the heather, but I thought of Castaneda and wondered about it. And I always look for a power spot before I sit down to eat my sandwiches.’