Some by Fire Read online

  The house was a smoking, sodden shell when the duty undertaker’s van left for the last time. ‘That’s it,’ the assistant divisional fire chief told me. ‘There’s no one left inside.’

  ‘Three adults and five children?’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I made it.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Multiple occupancy,’ he explained. ‘Only one means of egress. These places are death-traps.’

  ‘The neighbours say it was some sort of hostel.’

  ‘That fits.’

  ‘Any thoughts on the cause?’

  He pulled the strap from under his chin and rotated his helmet forward and off. There was a white line of clean skin between his face and his hairline. He rubbed a hand across his head, unsticking his hair from his scalp. ‘It almost certainly started at the foot of the stairs, just behind the door. An accelerant was used, probably petrol. You were first on the scene, weren’t you? Did you smell anything?’

  I shook my head. ‘Only smoke.’

  The yellow stuff’s from the furniture filling,’ he told me. ‘You were lucky, Sergeant. It’s deadly.’

  PC Sparkington had gone back to the station, so I’d have to ask him later if he’d smelt petrol. ‘Was…’ I began. ‘Did you…did you find any of the bodies down where the fire started?’

  He’d put his hat back on. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘You’re wondering if one of the kids was up early, playing with matches.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  He smiled at me like a benevolent uncle. ‘They were all upstairs. I’ve got the details.’

  ‘So it looks…deliberate. Arson?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘But…who’d want to do something like that?’

  ‘That, I’m pleased to say, is your province, not mine.’

  ‘Right,’ I mumbled, adding: ‘We’d appreciate your thoughts in writing, as soon as poss.’

  ‘You’ll have them, Sergeant.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The DCI arrived, closely followed by the SOCO and the forensic boffins from Weatherfield. I was centre of attention until I’d told them what I knew, and then they closed ranks and left me out of it. I’d always wanted a big crime, and they took it away from me. Ah well, I thought, if that’s how it goes I’ll just have to join them.

  Melissa Youngman had been the star pupil at the East Yorkshire grammar school she’d attended. Her parents were a trifle disappointed that she hadn’t made it to Oxbridge, but assured their friends and neighbours that it was because Essex University had more modern facilities for the study of Melissa’s chosen subject – palaeontology. It was also much nearer – the only Oxbridge Daddy could find on the map was in Dorset, on the south coast.

  Mr and Mrs Youngman decided to invest their life savings in property. After several excursions south they took out a mortgage on a modest semi not too far from the university and proudly presented the keys to their daughter. There were three bedrooms, so two other girls could share with her, which would take care of the bulk of the mortgage. Their only stipulation was that the cohabitants be female. Mrs Youngman knew all about students, she said, and the antics they got up to. Another girl from Melissa’s school, Janet Wilson, had also been accepted for Essex, so she was offered one of the rooms.

  Melissa took to university life like a dog takes to lamp posts. Towards the end of the first week one of the lecturers from the psychology department, Mr Kingston – ‘Please, call me Nick’ – saw her reading the noticeboard and drew her attention to an extracurricular talk he was giving about Aleister Crowley, the self-styled wickedest man in the world. It was in a smoky back room of a pub, and Nick introduced Melissa to the acquired pleasures of Courage bitter. Later that evening, on the sheepskin rug in front of his guttering gas fire, he eased her legs apart and introduced her to the more readily appreciated delights of casual sex. Melissa stared at the lava lamp on his bookcase, watching the globules of oil in their ceaseless monotonous dance, and said a little prayer of thanks that she hadn’t made it to Oxbridge.

  Next day, Saturday, her waist-length hair went the same way as her virginity, and a week later she had it cropped into stubble and dyed scarlet. The metamorphosis of Miss Youngman had begun. After the hairdresser’s she visited a tattoo parlour and asked to see some samples of his work. The first tentative butterfly on her breast was soon followed by a devilish motorcyclist on her shoulder blade and a sun symbol, better known as a swastika, where only a privileged, but extensive, few would ever see it. Her modest nose stud was considered outrageous in those days; far more so than the nose, eyebrow, navel and nipple rings she acquired in later years.

  Mr and Mrs Youngman grew worried about their daughter. They’d had the telephone installed so she could keep in touch, but after the first week the calls ceased to come. There was no phone in her house, so they couldn’t call her. They received a Christmas card, with a note added saying she was staying in Essex for the holiday, but there was no other contact between Melissa and her parents until, desperate with worry, they made a surprise visit on her in the middle of April.

  Janet Wilson answered the door. As Mr Youngman was the mortgagee there was little she could do to prevent him entering.

  ‘Is Melissa in?’ he demanded.

  ‘Er, yes,’ Janet admitted as her landlord pushed past her, closely followed by Mrs Youngman.

  ‘Which is her room?’

  ‘First on the left,’ she called after them as they mounted the stairs, and stifled a gulp and a giggle with her fingers as she dashed into the kitchen, all the better to hear the imminent commotion.

  Melissa was in bed with her latest conquest. They’d met at a party the night before and arrived home just after daybreak, which comes late at that time of year in Essex. Melissa had worn her full war paint and had not had time to remove it before jumping into bed, so it had become somewhat disarranged by the subsequent activities.

  Mater and pater would still have been unimpressed with the poor man in whose arms they found their only child if they’d known that he was a pupil barrister with a highly promising future. They would have been even less moved to learn that he was a full-blooded prince, and back in his homeland was entitled to wear a red feather in his hair to demonstrate his royal connections.

  He pulled his Y-fronts on and jumped out of bed. He pleaded with them, for he was princely by nature as well as breeding, and a natural diplomat. He said he loved their daughter, had known her for a long time, wanted to marry her. His only mistake was to call her Miranda.

  The middle-aged couple stood transfixed, unable to speak; Mr Youngman horrified by his beloved daughter’s appearance, his wife hypnotised by the bulging underpants, which confirmed everything she’d always known about ‘his sort’.

  Voices returned. Insults were hurled. Below them, Janet Wilson held cupped hands over her ears and listened in horrified delight at first, and then in sorrow as things were said from which there was no going back.

  It was a short visit. They didn’t even have a cup of tea. No further words were exchanged between Mr and Mrs Youngman until their car juddered to a standstill, drained of petrol, just south of Doncaster.

  A week later Mr Youngman transferred the mortgage on the house in Essex to his daughter and posted her the documents. That was the last correspondence he had with her. Mrs Youngman finished off the bottle of sherry left over from Christmas, and took to walking to the corner shop to purchase another bottle, even when it was raining. The following August she died after an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol.

  Melissa never slept with her Swazi prince again, although his performance was the one by which she measured all others. She left Essex at the end of the year, to read modern languages at the Sorbonne. From Paris she went to Edinburgh, Manchester, UCLA, Durham and Leeds. She never stayed longer than a year, never sat an examination. She played the impoverished student, but her fees were always paid in full, in advance.

  When Melissa came into his life Duncan Robe
rts had been slouching in the students’ union, hoping to con a pint out of a friend, or maybe earn one for collecting empty glasses.

  Things can’t be that bad,’ she’d said.

  ‘How would you know?’ he’d growled.

  ‘Because I have magical powers. I can read your aura.’

  He’d seen her around, wondered if he’d ever be able to afford a woman like her. Over the years the rest of the world had done some catching up, but the zips and pins holding her clothes together were gold-plated and the leather was finest calfskin. Her bone structure was as good as ever and the just-out-of-bed hairstyle cost more than a student could earn in a week waiting table.

  ‘As long as you don’t expect me to cross your palm with silver,’ he’d replied.

  ‘Why?’ she’d asked, sitting beside him on the carpeted steps that were a feature of the bar. ‘Do I detect a cash-flow crisis?’

  Her face was close to his and he could smell her perfume. ‘Not so much a crisis,’ he’d told her. ‘More like a fucking disaster.’

  She held her hand out in front of him, palm up. On it was a collection of coins. ‘Well, I’ve got two pounds and a few coppers,’ she’d said. ‘So we can either have a couple of pints each here, or buy a bottle of wine and take it somewhere more comfortable. What do you say?’

  He looked at the coins, then into the face with its painted eyes, only inches away. That perfume was like nothing he’d ever experienced before and her arm was burning against his. ‘Right,’ he’d croaked. ‘Er, right. So, er, let’s go find a bottle of wine, eh?’

  By the time I’d finished all the paperwork, that final night shift had lasted until three o’clock in the afternoon. I was supposed to be looking at a flat, but I hadn’t the energy. I drove back to my digs and went to bed. The thin curtains couldn’t compete against the afternoon sun, the landlady’s beloved grandson was kicking his ball against the back wall and the man next door had chosen that particular Sunday afternoon to install built-in wardrobes twelve inches behind my headboard. And then there were all the other things chugging and churning away inside my mind. I didn’t sleep.

  I was up at seven and the landlady kindly allowed me to have a bath, even though I hadn’t given prior notice and it wasn’t really my day for one. She didn’t do meals on the Sabbath, but guests were allowed to cook their own food in the kitchen, as long as they left it as they found it and didn’t use metal implements inside the non-stick pans. And didn’t leave any dirty crockery around. And didn’t leave a tidemark inside the bowl. And didn’t stink the place out with foreign food. And didn’t… Oh, stuff it. I got in the car and went looking for a Chinese.

  I knew there wasn’t one in Leopold Avenue but I went there just the same, returning to the scene of the crime like a magpie to a roadkill rabbit. Tugging at the entrails. A police Avenger was parked outside the burnt-out house, the bobby deeply engrossed in the back pages of the Sunday Mirror. Dave Sparkington was sitting on the wall opposite, gazing up at the blackened brickwork and the charred ribs of the roof. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and his left hand was encased in bandage.

  ‘How is it?’ I asked as I climbed out of my elderly Anglia. It’s hard to imagine that most of us couldn’t afford cars in those days.

  He held his fist up for inspection. ‘OK, Sarge, thanks.’

  ‘That looks a better job than I made of it.’

  ‘The inspector made me get it fixed, but it’s just the same as you did it. My thumb’s still inside, somewhere.’

  I said: ‘Did you know there’s a judge in Leeds who’s lost both his thumbs?’

  ‘Justice Fingers?’

  ‘That’s him.’ I sat on the wall alongside him and stared at the house. The smell of wet soot hung heavy in the warm evening. It should have been pollen and new-mown grass, but we got chemical fumes, carbonised wood and sopping carpets. And a memory of something else.

  ‘She was called Jasmine,’ he said. ‘Jasmine Turnbull.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Mmm. They had a bedroom upstairs. And the attic. I bet it was the first time she’d ever had her own room.’

  ‘Don’t personalise it, Dave,’ I heard myself saying, as if quoting from the textbook. ‘Something like this happens every week somewhere. It’s just that we were here this time. That’s not a reason to feel any worse about it.’

  ‘You could smell them,’ he said. ‘When we went inside…’

  After a silence I said: ‘They sent me the wrong way.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Control. They told me to turn right at the lights. Not left.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’

  ‘It might have done.’

  ‘It’s an easy mistake to make.’

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake.’

  ‘So what will you do?’

  I thought about it for a few seconds, then said: ‘Nothing, I suppose. But I’ll remember. I bear grudges.’

  ‘That’ll learn ’em,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you like being called Sparky?’ I asked, changing the subject.

  He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘To be awkward, I suppose. I’ve a reputation to maintain.’

  ‘For being awkward? I’d noticed it.’

  He grinned and nodded.

  ‘Well,’ I went on, ‘I don’t like being called Sarge. It’s Charlie, OK? Charlie Priest.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he replied.

  ‘How long have you been in the job?’

  ‘Nearly five years. You?’

  ‘About the same.’

  ‘Is that all? So when did you get your stripes?’

  ‘A fortnight ago,’ I admitted.

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘You mean it doesn’t show?’

  ‘I thought you were an old hand.’

  ‘Bullshitting doesn’t become you. I prefer it when you’re being awkward. My dad’s a sergeant at Heckley; it runs in the family.’

  ‘Is that why you joined Leeds City? To get out from under him?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘I’d just left art college. I’ve a shiny new degree in art, if you know anyone who needs one. So far it’s earned me commissions for two police dance posters. What did you do?’

  ‘Three years in the army. Waste of time. Me and discipline don’t go.’

  ‘I can believe that.’ Something over the road caught my eye. ‘Come and look at this,’ I said. We walked across the street to the burnt-out house. The number, thirty-two, was written in chalk on one of the bricks beside the door. A patch of peeling paint showed where it had originally been.

  ‘That’s been done recently,’ I said, examining the numbers.

  ‘To help the postman,’ Dave suggested. ‘Maybe they received a lot of mail. It was a hostel…court papers, that sort of thing. Important stuff.’

  I walked to next door. The number thirty was neatly painted on the wall. ‘Postmen can usually count in twos,’ I said. ‘Maybe someone chalked the number nice and clearly so someone else knew they’d found the right house.’

  ‘You mean…the arsonist.’

  I sighed and felt myself deflate. ‘Nah,’ I admitted. ‘It’s just crazy guesswork.’

  ‘It might not be,’ Dave said, interested. ‘Just suppose someone did come and write the number on the wall. What would they do with the chalk?’

  ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘Right. Would you say chalk carried fingerprints?’

  ‘I doubt it. No, definitely not.’

  ‘So you might as well just chuck it away?’

  ‘As soon as you’d done with it.’

  ‘Right, but if you lived here you’d take it inside and put it back wherever you found it.’ Dave stood facing the door, pretended to write the number, turned around and mimed tossing a piece of chalk into the little garden.

  The soil in every other yard was as hard as concrete, but this had recently absorbed a few thousand gallons of water and fi
remen’s boots had trampled all the weeds into it. We didn’t see any chalk.

  ‘Let’s look at the other side,’ Dave suggested.

  And there it was – a half-inch piece of calcium carbonate, just the size teachers hate, nestling under the wall where the stomping boots couldn’t reach it. I braved the mud and picked up the evidence between my finger and thumb. ‘Exhibit A,’ I said, triumphantly.

  Dave repeated his mime. ‘Maybe it’s at that side because he was left-handed,’ he concluded.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And not very tall. I had to stoop to do the number.’

  ‘You’re as tall as me.’

  ‘I know, but it’s written two bricks below the painted number. I reckon he suffers from duck’s disease.’

  ‘Or he’s a she,’ I suggested.

  Dave nodded enthusiastically. ‘Or he’s a she.’

  We gave the piece of chalk to the PC in the car and told him to invite CID round. We left it at that, not going into our leaps of conjecture about the culprit. They’re supposed to be the ones with the imagination, not we poor woodentops.

  ‘Fancy a pint and a Chinese?’ I asked Dave, smiling with satisfaction as I dusted the mud and chalk from my fingers.

  ‘I’d prefer a curry,’ he replied.

  ‘Awkward to the last,’ I said. ‘Curry it is. Let’s go.’

  In the car I asked him if he came from Leeds. He just said he didn’t.

  ‘So, is it a secret?’ I asked.

  ‘Heckley,’ he responded, and I could sense the amusement in his voice.

  I glanced across at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I don’t remember you.’

  ‘I remember you. I wasn’t sure at first. You played in goal for the grammar school.’

  ‘That’s right.’ I grinned at the memory. Recognition at last.

  Dave said: ‘I played for the secondary modern. We beat you in the schools’ cup final.’

  I was nearly laughing now. ‘Only by a penalty,’ I replied.

  ‘You let it in.’