Some by Fire Read online

  ‘Maggie’s had a fruitful day,’ I told them when they were settled. ‘Baseball bats and a white van, as expected. Any luck with the videos, Jeff?’

  ‘Yep. White Transit going on to the M62 at precisely oh-eight-thirteen yesterday. Phoney numberplate.’ He spread a grainy ten-by-eight printout in front of me and laid two more alongside it. ‘This is from the second robbery, in East Yorkshire, and this one is after the Penistone Road job. Can’t read the numbers, unfortunately.’

  Three white vans, coming towards the camera, an assortment of other vehicles around them. ‘You reckon it’s the same one?’ I said.

  Jeff pointed with a pencil, leaning across my desk with Maggie alongside him. ‘Look at the similarities,’ he told us, ‘apart from the obvious ones, like they’re all white Transits. See the radio aerial. It’s on the driver’s side, just behind him; not the normal position for a Transit. Usually they’re just above the windscreen, one side or the other. The tax disc in the windscreen is halfway up the screen in all of them. It could have been higher, it could have been lower. And there’s a mark at the top of the screen, there and there. Perhaps once upon a time there was a sun shield stuck across it with some lettering, and a piece got left behind.’

  ‘Sharon and Wayne?’ someone suggested.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ Jeff said, ‘but it’s the same van all right.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down,’ Sparky declared.

  ‘We don’t know they did it,’ I warned. ‘Let’s not jump in with both feet half cocked. Maybe this van is running up and down the motorway all day.’

  ‘It’s a start, though.’

  ‘Oh, it’s definitely a start, and we have a number to look for now. See if the whizkids can enhance those other plates for us, Jeff. Even if they can’t give us a definite number they might be able to confirm that it’s similar. Anything else, anybody?’

  Sparky shook his head. ‘Sorry, boss. Wasted day. The lack of information or even gossip must mean something, but I don’t know what.’

  ‘Right. Nigel…’ I began.

  He jumped to his feet and snapped me a salute. ‘Yessir!’ He thinks he’s being humorous.

  ‘Circulate all our friends, will you, with what we’ve got. Especially Traffic. The next time that van turns a wheel I want to know about it.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Good, in which case I suggest we all have an early night, for once. Catch up on the gardening while the weather’s good.’

  ‘Tea on the patio,’ Maggie enthused. ‘Heaven.’

  ‘Painting the mother-in-law’s window frames,’ Dave muttered. ‘Hell on earth.’

  ‘Cricket practice,’ Nigel said. ‘Absolute bliss, if it goes well.’

  ‘Cricket practice!’ I scoffed. ‘It’s wider bats you lot need.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ Maggie said. ‘Where do these villains get their baseball bats from? Surely it would be much easier for them to use cricket bats?’

  ‘Cricket bats!’ Nigel spluttered, affronted. ‘They wouldn’t use a cricket bat!’

  Sparky said: ‘Somehow, a yob wielding a Stuart Surridge three-springer doesn’t have the same menace, don’t you think?’

  In my PC Plod voice I said: ‘Did you notice anything unusual about him, sir?’ and then, in an upper-crust accent: ‘Ye-es, Officer. His hands were too close together.’

  ‘I thought it was a sensible question,’ Maggie murmured, pretending to be hurt.

  ‘It was, Maggie,’ I told her. ‘And the answer is: God knows.’

  ‘Perhaps their counterparts in America use cricket bats,’ Nigel suggested.

  ‘Magnum see-mi-automatic cricket bats,’ Dave added.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said, pushing my chair back from the desk. ‘This is getting silly.’

  ‘Did you, er, ring him?’ Dave asked me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Keith Crosby.’

  ‘Oh, no. I thought I’d wait for him to ring again. We’ve enough on our plates without resurrecting ghosts.’

  ‘Keith Crosby? The disgraced MP?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘Not sure, but I imagine it’s him.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He lives in Heckley, over near Dale Head.’

  ‘So I believe. We had dealings with him a long time ago, didn’t we, Dave?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ he replied.

  ‘What did he do?’ Nigel asked. He was from Berkshire, brought north by tales of streets paved with opportunity and warm-hearted women, and therefore unfamiliar with local folklore. He would also have been in short trousers at the time.

  ‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘He just happened to own this house in Leeds. Chapeltown. It burnt down. Arson. Seven people inside were burnt to death.’

  ‘Eight,’ Dave corrected. ‘Three women and five kids. It was a hostel for battered wives. First job Charlie and me ever worked together on, wasn’t it, squire?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘That was a sunny day, too.’

  ‘I know. Somehow it made it worse.’

  ‘Did he start the fire himself?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘Crosby? No, it was never pinned to anyone. There was a big stink about it and he was forced to resign as an MR.’

  Maggie said: ‘He has an MBE now.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I replied, remembering. ‘For his charity work. He started some sort of Samaritan organisation shortly afterwards. Rehabilitated himself, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Nigel stated. ‘He wants a donation.’

  ‘Very probably,’ I agreed, standing up and unhooking my jacket. ‘C’mon, or we’ll be here all night again.’ Sometimes I’ve just got to be firm with them.

  Audrey and Joe McLelland were a pleasant old couple. She was still confined to bed when Maggie and I called to see them on Friday morning, but one of the nurses had found a wheelchair for Joe and he was parked alongside her. The bedside cabinet was covered in get-well cards and she was busy opening the pile that had arrived that morning. The woman in the next bed was fast asleep and snoring, her toothless mouth gaping like an oven door.

  ‘A policeman and a police lady to see you. Aren’t you lucky?’ the nurse said by way of introduction, as if she were talking to two infants. ‘Now be sure not to let them tire you out.’

  ‘We won’t,’ I told her, and she dashed off to her other duties.

  Audrey and Joe said they were feeling better and expecting to be going home later that day. Maggie told them to stay where they were and be looked after, if they could. I left her with Audrey and wheeled Joe out of the ward and into the lift. We bought two teas from the snack bar in the entrance and had them outside, me sitting on a low wall alongside him. Several other people were doing the same; relatives in summer clothes, patients oddly at ease in dressing gowns and slippers.

  ‘I used to buy paints in your shop,’ I told him. ‘And 6B pencils. I think you got them specially for me.’

  ‘We sold a few,’ he replied, uninterested.

  He confirmed what we knew about the van, and the baseball bats. The one he was threatened with had red stripes around it, as if it were bound together with insulation tape. Other than that he had nothing further to add. They had a son who was living in America and a daughter in Kent. She’d be coming up some time today if her husband could have time off work to look after their children. They’d decided not to tell the son. ‘He’s in computers,’ Joe told me, as if that explained why.

  We needed to know what had been stolen but didn’t want to drag them out of hospital before they were ready. It would take weeks, even years for them to get back to anything like normal, and the bad dreams would probably be with them forever, but they were already over the initial shock. Whether they would ever feel safe again in their own home was doubtful, but I knew they’d both prefer it to Heckley General. Joe was reasonably well, but he’d be hopeless at telling us what had gone from where. We needed the woman’s touch. I spoke with th
e doctor and he agreed that they could both go home the next day.

  In the previous robberies the villains had taken any handy silverware and jewellery, plus the victims’ credit cards. In the eight or ten hours’ grace that they allowed themselves they’d stung the accounts for increasing amounts that were now up to the £3,000 mark. First of all, armed with PIN numbers, they took the daily limit of £300 from each account. Then, after practising the signatures, they did a tour of travel agents and bought themselves several £250 tranches of pesetas or dollars.

  After that, it was credit card purchases of tyres, aluminium wheels, TVs and VCRs; stuff they probably already had orders for. It was like winning first prize in a game show – all you can stuff in your Transit before the shops shut.

  We had photographs of one of them, the bright one, presumably, courtesy of the travel agents’ CCTV cameras. He was burly and wore a hat and spectacles in a variety of styles. This time it had been a beanie hat and heavy rims. I turned my pad sideways and did a sketch of the crime scene, with Burglar Bill standing before the counter. If we measured the height of the camera from the ground, the height of the spot on the wall behind him level with his head, and the distance between the two, a bit of nifty geometry would give us his height. To the millimetre. As soon as we had the McLellands’ bank account numbers and their consent we’d be able to follow the latest trail of thievery and tot up the damage. We’d compare the route the thieves had taken with the previous ones and see what we could deduce from that. The net was closing on them, but too slowly. Lives were at risk. We needed a break. Don’t we always.

  Joe gave us the permission we needed and Maggie spent the afternoon on the phone, talking to the banks and travel agents. We knew from experience that it would take days for all the transactions to be processed, but we were under way. I studied the other files, looking for inspiration, and spoke with the SIOs for the jobs outside our patch. No eager young detective came leaping into the office asking for a job so I went to the travel agent where the photograph was taken and took the measurements myself. I filled them in on my sketch and found some sine tables in the back of an old diary. It took me nearly an hour, but eventually I had a figure. He was six feet two tall, and built like a haystack.

  The phone was ringing as I arrived home. I charged into the hallway and gasped: ‘Priest,’ into it, my jacket half off and every door behind me wide open.

  A female voice intoned something like. ‘Oh hello my name is Mindless Sally from Leaky Windows and we are doing a promotion in your area and require a show house for one of our conservatories all you have to do to receive a three million per cent discount is to agree for our photographer to take some pictures which we will use in our publicity material when would you like a representative to call to give you a no-obligation quotation?’

  I said: ‘Pardon?’

  ‘My name is…’

  ‘No, love,’ I interrupted. ‘I, er, already have a conservatory, thank you.’ I didn’t but it was unlikely she’d sue.

  ‘Would you be interested in double-glazing?’

  ‘Got it,’ I told her, this time with conviction.

  ‘A patio door? We have a special offer at the moment where…’

  ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I don’t need anything like that, thank you. In fact, I’m moving next week.’

  ‘What about your new house?’

  ‘I’m going abroad. Puerto Rico.’

  ‘OK. Sorry to have troubled you.’

  I replaced the phone and pulled my other arm out of its sleeve, muttering: ‘Then why did you?’ to nobody in particular. She’d been the third this week. Six flies had come in through the open doors and were doing aerobatics around my kitchen. I found an aerosol of Doom under the sink and gave each of them enough to stun a Tetley’s dray horse. With maximum prejudice, as the CIA say.

  One minute earlier the next call would have dragged me out of the shower, and that would have meant big trouble for someone. I mean, like, BIG. As it was, I was dry but improperly dressed when I answered it.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Charlie,’ the desk sergeant said, ‘but a bloke called Mr Crosby has been on again. Asked me to ask you to call him. Wouldn’t say what it was about, just that he knew you from long ago.’

  ‘No trouble, Arthur,’ I replied. ‘You know as well as I do that the CID never sleeps. Give me the number.’ I wrote it down and said: ‘If we’ve met before it must be Keith Crosby. You remember him, don’t you?’

  ‘Our old MP? That was a long time ago. He got sacked, didn’t he?’

  ‘He resigned.’

  ‘I remember now. Wasn’t he caught dipping his bread in someone else’s gravy? Nowadays they’re all at it. What does he want?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t, and I don’t know what he wants. Have a quiet night.’

  ‘And you.’

  Keith Crosby wanted to meet me, to tell me a story. That’s what he said after I’d rung his number and introduced myself. ‘I’ve seen your name in the paper several times, Mr Priest,’ he continued, ‘and I remembered you from all those years back. You impressed me. I thought then that you’d make a good policeman, and I was delighted to read of your successes.’

  ‘Sadly, not in the promotion race,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, I suspect that has more to do with a lack of ambition, not any flaw in your ability,’ he replied. I was growing to like him. ‘You came to see me,’ he went on, ‘twenty-three years ago, after the fire. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. I had a piece chewed off me by the DCI for interfering.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. He was convinced that the real target for the arsonist was a brothel in the next street, Leopold Crescent. A group of girls had set up a cooperative, working for themselves instead of the local pimps. He assumed the pimps were fighting back.’

  It’s the sort of thing they’d do,’ I said. ‘It was the identical house, one street along.’

  ‘But you didn’t really believe it, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t believe anything, Mr Crosby. We gather evidence, see where it leads.’

  ‘You found a piece of chalk, remember? Someone had marked the house earlier, so that there would be no mistake. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was a possibility.’

  ‘Will you see me, Mr Priest? It’s a long story, I’m afraid, but I desperately need to tell it to someone. Someone who might understand.’

  ‘I’ll listen to what you have to say,’ I told him, ‘but I can’t promise any action. We just haven’t the time or resources to resurrect ancient crimes, especially if there is little or no public benefit. Perhaps an injustice was done, which is unfortunate for you, but that’s how it works. Sometimes, as you know, the bad guys win.’

  ‘But you’ll listen, Mr Priest? That’s all I ask.’

  ‘I’ll listen. I have a reputation for being a good listener. It usually hides my boredom.’

  ‘So when can I see you? Do you work Saturdays?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m busy in the morning.’ Another sunny day off was slipping out of my grasp. ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll lunch at the Bargee. That’s fairly near you, isn’t it? I could eat about twelve, see you about half past. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds fine, Mr Priest, but do you object to me having lunch with you? They have a nice garden where we could eat and talk without fear of being overheard, if the weather stays fine.’

  ‘OK, Mr Crosby. Tomorrow at twelve it is.’ I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, and it had been a long time ago, but the photograph in the paper of little Jasmine Turnbull had lived with me ever since, and I’d have gambled money that Sparky could have named the other seven victims. The inquiry had turned nothing up, and a couple of months later all CID’s resources were concentrated on finding the person who was going round knocking street girls on the head with a ball-peen hammer.

  All that talk about lunches had reminded me that I was hungry. I looked at the bottom number on my telepho
ne pad and dialled it. A husky voice repeated the numbers and I said: ‘Hi, Jacquie, it’s me. I’ve managed to escape early. Don’t suppose you’d like to watch me eat, would you?’

  There was a condition. There’s always a condition. Jacquie would watch me eat providing she had a similar piled-up plate in front of her. ‘I’ll never be a rich man,’ I sighed and arranged to pick her up in fifteen minutes.

  We went to the Eagle, up on the moors. It had been taken over by one of the big chains since my last visit and the menu read like a government specification. We had overdone eight-ounce (uncooked) steaks with French fries as dangerous as broken knitting needles, succulent garden peas that were so green they looked radioactive, all garnished with half a tomato – cold – and a sprig of parsley. What are you supposed to do with parsley? We entered into the spirit of the place by finishing off with Black Forest gateau and ten minutes in the bouncy castle.

  ‘That was lovely,’ Jacquie said, looking up into my face and laughing as we walked across the car park.

  ‘Telling fibs doesn’t become you,’ I replied. ‘It was dreadful. Six months ago it was all home-cooked and they did the best apple pie in Christendom. Sorry, love, I’ll let you choose next time.’

  ‘It was fine,’ she told me. ‘Don’t worry about it. The alternative for me was washing my hair and phoning Mum.’

  ‘And this was preferable?’

  ‘Of course it was. No dishes to do.’

  ‘Thanks. Get in.’

  Jacquie came into my life when I was as low as I’ve ever been. I’ll never be able to tell her how good she was for me, for I’d only be able to do that by comparing her with someone else, which would be unkind. She was eighteen years younger than me and had the kind of figure that ought to be included in the Highway Code. Watch out, deadly distraction ahead. Masses of wild fair hair framed a face that was full-lipped yet ingenuous, blue-eyed but smouldering. English Rose meets Sophia Loren. It was a potent combination. But…

  ‘Let’s go for a drive,’ I suggested, starting the engine. ‘I need my spirits lifting after that.’ I took us on to the Tops, near Blackstone Edge, and parked with the nose of the car almost overhanging the drop into Lancashire. It’s one of my favourite places, and Jacquie wasn’t the first woman I’d shared it with. I sat with my arm extended across the back of her seat, my fingers running through her hair, and we talked about our days as the sun fell imperceptibly into Morcambe Bay. Jacquie owns a boutique, Annie’s Frock Shop, in the new mall, and she told me about a difficult customer and the problems of ordering from the winter collections when the thermometer is in the eighties. I told her about the robbers and the ram-raiders.