The ferocity of the blast shocked him. He'd barely started to stuff the burning newspaper under the door when, with a roar like a jet engine, a blade of flame scythed his feet and hands, sending him staggering backwards down the stone steps and out on to the pavement.
His gloves and plimsolls were on fire, his bare ankles stinging with pain. He jumped up and down in a wild dance, slapping the flames until they were extinguished, and swung a still-smoking leg over the Claud Butler racing bike that had cost him most of his first year's grant.
Panic is a defence mechanism given to us by nature, in spite of protestations that we should never succumb to it, and it had served him well. The paint on the door was already bubbling with heat and the glass panel cracking as he turned out of the cobbled street and on to the main road, expertly spinning the pedals to locate his toes in the clips.
Duncan Roberts was twenty years old, a student of chemistry at Leeds University, and in trouble. Correction. He had been in trouble. Now, hopefully, his tribulations were behind him. He snicked the Derailleur gears up five sprockets and stood on the pedals, swooping down towards the city centre on the traffic-free road, the cool morning air chilling the sweat of fear that had drenched him in that terrifying moment when it looked as if his well-laid plan had gone wrong.
He was behind with his rent, his studies and his overdraft, but so were most of his friends. They survived by bumming meals and beer, dos sing on floors and copying each other's lecture notes. Then Melissa, his girlfriend, had announced that she was pregnant.
"A hundred quid," she'd said.
"A hundred quid!" he'd echoed. "Where do you think I'll get a hundred quid? Can't you get rid of it, you know, locally, sort of thing?"
"Get real, Duncan. I'm not having some old biddy poking a coathanger up me, and I'm not drinking a bottle of gin while sitting in a bath holding a nutmeg between my knees. There's this place, like a clinic, where someone I know went. It's in London. What with the fare and a room for the night it'll cost a hundred pounds, and that's all I'll settle for, so you'd better get used to it."
Duncan glanced over his shoulder to check for traffic and made a sweeping right turn across the empty junction that took him into Buslingthorpe Lane. He stopped once, to dump the empty petrol bottle in a litter bin, then chased his shadow, flickering and dancing over cobbles and kerbs, back to student bed sit land via a maze of streets of blind terraced houses. The only other people he saw were early-morning dog-walkers and muscle-bound paper-boys, cursing the advent of the Sunday supplements. Behind him, a hundred years of desiccation had left the woodwork in the house drier than a hag. The flames ripped and tore through the building like an enraged tiger loosed from its tormentors. Floors, staircases, linoleum and furniture were devoured in its rampage, exploding into incandescence as the flames reached them until the very walls themselves were ablaze.
Melissa had come up with the idea that Duncan should advertise in the Other Paper for work. He thought it was crazy, but went along because it was the line of least resistance and he had nothing better to suggest. "Student requires work. Anything considered'. Slip in a legal or within limits, of course, to imply that you weren't bothered if it wasn't, and wait for the offers to plop on to the doormat.
Students did it all the time, but he suspected that the only replies they received were from sexual deviants or fellow students with underdeveloped senses of humour. Which meant any of them.
The reply came the very day after the advert appeared. It was neatly typed, reasonably written and on good paper. The best bit, though, was that enclosed with it were four crisp five-pound notes. Duncan's teeth rattled as the hard racing tyres bounced un forgivingly on the much-repaired tarmac of his own back street, and he cocked a leg over the saddle as he freewheeled to rest, front wheel against the broken gate. He lifted the bike easily on to his shoulder and let himself in.
Nobody was about.
He'd memorised the note, then burned it. It said:
Dear Desperate Student,
I am sorry to hear about your troubles, but am sure that they are nothing compared to mine. No doubt a few pounds are all you need. I need a few thousand. Perhaps we can help each other.
I own the house whose address is at the top of this letter. Tomorrow I am going abroad for one week and the house will be empty. It would be very convenient if it burned down while I was away. I would suggest that Sunday morning, say between six and seven, might be the best time to strike. Petrol through the letter box, a match under the door. I'm sure you can work out how to do it. Wear gloves and take the normal precautions.
If the house is gone when I return, I will immediately post you two hundred pounds in cash. I am putting a lot of trust in you. I hope you feel you can trust me. Who dares wins. The twenty pounds is a non-returnable bonus.
Good luck.
Duncan leaned the bike against the wall of the hallway, the brake lever settling into the groove it had made in the plaster, and chained the front wheel to the frame. He peeped round the door of the downstairs room. Two strangers were asleep on the floor, one of them no doubt having abandoned the settee in the middle of the night when the itching started. He tiptoed upstairs, stepping gingerly between the cans and bottles, and skirted the rucksack, broken record player and surplus coffee table on the landing.
His room was a dump, but it was home. The job was done. He flopped on the bed and closed his eyes. The place smelled, even to him. That's what going out in the fresh air does for you, he thought, and made a mental note to avoid it in the future. He giggled to himself, and wished Melissa was with him. He was wide awake, thanks to the adrenalin coursing through his veins, with nowhere to go.
Melissa was in London, arranging her appointment and creating an alibi for the two of them. He hadn't thought it necessary, but she'd insisted. She was six years older than he was, and he'd given way to her experience. If there was one thing he loved doing, it was giving way to her experience. They'd recced the house together and decided it was a piece of cake. It was the end one of a Victorian terrace, a bit like the flat, with a small yard in front overgrown with willow-herb and brambles, transferred from the park via the alimentary canals of the local pigeons.
"Nothing to it," she'd said, putting her arm through his and smiling up at him. They'd celebrated by spending some of the twenty on a curry and a few pints.
Duncan rolled on his side and embraced an armful of bedsheet, burying his face in it. In one week he would have two hundred pounds, and their troubles would be over. He fell asleep dreaming of what he could do with the remaining hundred, and never heard the sirens of the fire engines as they charged across the city.
It was early afternoon when he awoke. He peeled his cycling gear off and changed into his normal uniform of jeans and Hawkwind T-shirt. One of the strangers was in the kitchen, making toast, accompanied by Radio Leeds from a cheap transistor on the window-sill.
"Hi, I'm Duncan," Duncan said with exaggerated bonhomie as he entered the room. "Where are the others?"
"Oh, er, John, hi. Gone to Headingley on a demo. D'you live here?"
"Yeah. Any coffee made?"
"Coming up. Pete said it was OK if I helped myself. Hope I haven't taken your bread."
"Don't worry about it. What is it, anti-apartheid again?"
"What's what?"
"The demo."
"No idea. Not my scene."
"Thank fuck for that." Duncan nodded towards the radio. "Anything on the news?" he asked.
"Yeah," John told him. "Some heavy shit up Chapeltown. House burned down. Didn't you hear the engines?"
Duncan was looking in the fridge, lifting out and inspecting cartons of milk and half-eaten packets, but not really seeing what he was doing.
"Mmm," he mumbled, as if uninterested. "Anybody hurt?" The toaster popped behind him, and the smell of burning bread set his saliva flowing.
"Shit!" he heard John exclaim.
"It burns at anything over number one," Duncan informed him.
"Thanks." John started to scrape carbon into the sink, trying to rescue his toast.
"So?" enquired Duncan.
"So what?"
"I asked you if anybody was hurt."
"Where?"
"In the fucking fire!"
"Oh, yeah, sorry."
Duncan hesitated, a carton of milk halfway to his lips. "Who? Did they say who?"
"Not really. Just that it was some sort of hostel. There were three women and five kids in it. They were all burnt to death."
Duncan reached his free hand out to steady himself, not realising that he was squeezing the carton and its contents were running down his jeans and over his plimsolls and soaking into the threadbare rug.
God, it was a long time ago. I was just coming to the end of my first week of night shifts at Chapeltown, Leeds, where I'd been transferred after making sergeant. I was tired, hungry and out of my depth. The radio in my clapped-out blue and white Vauxhall Viva burst into life.
Something about a fire at a dwelling in the Leopolds, wherever they were.
"Alpha Charlie to XL," I said into the microphone. "The intruder at the health centre was the caretaker, come in early to prepare the place for some function. PC Watson had it sorted.
Tell me where this fire is and I'll take it. Over."
"Thanks, Sarge," came the reply. "Where are you now? Over."
"Halfway out of the health centre gate, pointing at Roundhay Road, over."
There was some background noise, it sounded like laughter, then: "Turn left up Roundhay Road, right at the traffic lights, and the Leopolds are on your left. It's Leopold Avenue. Over."
"Ten-four, out." We were big on ten-fours in those days.
The lights obligingly showed green as I approached them and I swung right across a road that was freer of traffic than I'd seen it in the two weeks I'd been there. A good scattering of people were walking the pavements, though, in a variety of shapes, colours and modes of dress.
I saw yashmaks, jellabas, and severe old gentlemen wearing yarmulkes.
In Heckley, where I come from, we have plenty of Asians who came to work in the textile industry, but nothing like the mix I was witnessing here. The sun was already high and warm, adding to the illusion that this was another country. We were heading for a scorcher, and I was going to spend it in bed, once I'd sorted this fire.
I found the Hovinghams, the Dorsets, the Sandhursts and the Chatsworths, but there was a definite lack of Leopolds. They were streets of back-to-back terraced houses, built by hard-nosed industrialists in the nineteenth century and given inspirational names by their wives between bouts of swooning and fundraising for the vicar's latest campaign to save the heathens. Indoor toilets and hot water came much later. The heathens themselves later still.
I was weighing the embarrassment of radioing in for further instructions against the indignity of asking a pedestrian when I saw the fire engine coming towards me. He went by in a bedlam of noise and flashing lights and I made a U and raced after him. As soon as I turned round I saw the smudge of brown smoke over the chimneys, an affront to the morning. We crossed the main road and there it was, on the left Leopold Avenue.
I went past the fire tender and swung in next to one of our mini-vans that had beaten me there. A big PC I'd only seen at shift-change times was standing in the road, looking up, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with both hands. As I got out he dashed through the gate in front of the house and leapt up the three steps to the front door. He held his head low, away from the door, and smashed the glass with his elbow. I looked up at the windows but I could see only smoke. The PC was groping inside the door, feeling for the latch, as more smoke swirled around him.
He got the door open as I reached him and went inside, head down, arm raised across his face. "What's happening?" I shouted at him.
He looked round at me, his face bunched with pain. "I saw someone!" he yelled back.
"Where?"
"The roof window." He dashed into the hallway towards where he knew the stairs should be, stumbled into them and started climbing. The smoke was yellow. I went back to the door, took a deep breath, closed my eyes and dashed into it. I caught him halfway up the first flight, doubled up and coughing. I grabbed him round the waist in a rugby tackle and dragged him back down the stairs. An oblong of light marked the position of the door. I smothered his flailing arms and bundled him towards it and out into the morning "What the fuck are you playing at?" a fireman shouted at me as the big PC leaned on the wall of the yard and coughed the chemicals out of his lungs.
"He saw a face," I gasped. "Up at the roof window."
"Right." He yelled the information to his colleagues, then told me: "A couple of lungfuls of that and you're a goner." He nodded towards the open door and dashed off towards the fire tender as another one came hee-hawing down the street.
Firemen were running all over the place in a well-rehearsed ballet.
"You OK?" I said to the PC.
"It was a l-little g-girl," he spluttered.
"It's out of our hands now."
"I could have got to her."
"Maybe."
I put my hand on his arm, saying: "Come on, we're in the way here." He pulled his arm out of my grasp but followed me across the road. We stood against the low wall of the house opposite and watched the professionals. They ran a ladder up to the attic window and pulled a thin red hose from the tender. A fireman in full breathing gear readied himself to go up, his mate adjusting his equipment for him while another ran down the street looking for the hydrant. Two more engines arrived. Word had got back that this was a big shout.
"You OK?" I tried again.
He nodded and tried to stifle another cough.
"Want a whiff of oxygen?"
"No."
Right, I thought. Please yourself. My left hand felt sticky. I looked down at it and saw blood. I gave myself a quick once over and decided it wasn't mine.
"Are you bleeding?" I asked.
"It's nothing."
"Let's have a look."
"I said it's nothing."
"And I said let's have a look." Because I'm the sergeant and you're a PC, right?
He held a bloody fist towards me.
"Open your fingers."
He opened them. It looked as if a sliver of glass from the door had sliced into the ball of his thumb.
"That needs stitching," I told him. "Let's get you to the Infirmary."
"It'll be OK."
"It needs stitching."
"I'm not going for it stitching."
He was a stubborn so-and-so, no doubt about it.
"Well, it needs a dressing," I insisted. "Let's see what's in the first-aid kit." I strode towards my panda without waiting for a reply and after a slow start he tagged along.
Not much, was the answer. A couple of dressings, a one-inch bandage, some rusty safety pins and the inevitable triangular bandage. The one from his van was worse. The neighbours were standing in little groups, watching the action, and an old lady let us use the sink in her kitchen. It was a deep porcelain one, streaked brown by a century's drips, its spindly taps encrusted with verdigris and dried calcium. A galvanised peggy tub stood in the middle of the room with a handle sticking out of the lid for agitating the clothes. Automation had arrived. I washed the wound with cold water out of the hot tap and smothered it with some Germolene she found. A big ginger cat jumped up to inspect my handiwork and sniffed the open tin. The cut was deep and really needed stitching. I put a dressing on it and told him to hold it there with his thumb across his palm. No blood came through so I covered the lot with a bandage.
"It's Sparky, isn't it?" I said as I tied it off.
"No, Sarge," he replied. "My name's Dave Sparkington. I don't like being called Sparky."
"Fair enough." I pulled the ends tight, saying: "That should do it.
Keep that on for as long as possible, or until a proper doctor sees it.
Have you had a tetanus booster?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
With some, you just can't help them.
The fireman in the breathing apparatus never made it into the attic bedroom. He was nearly at the top of the ladder when the window exploded outwards and a ball of flame blossomed from it, rolling up over the roof. He hesitated, took a few more rungs and called for the water. Two more in breathing gear went in the front door, carrying powerful searchlights, and others came running up the street unreeling canvas hoses, having connected them to the mains hydrant. You could tell they'd done it before.
An hour later they brought the first body out and I sent for assistance.
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, un sticking 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 smelled 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 co habitants 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 lampposts. 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 notice board and drew her attention to an extracurricular talk he was giving about Aleister Crowley, the self-styled wicked est 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 Roberts 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 firemen'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 wooden tops "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 amusemenj 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."
"It was a good one. Unstoppable."
"I thought it went between your legs."
"No it didn't!" I insisted, indignantly. "It was a cracker, straight into the bottom left-hand corner. I didn't have a chance."
"Thanks."
I pulled into the kerb and looked across at him. "Was that you?"
"One of my finer moments."
"You big sod!"
We both ordered vindaloos. In those days it wasn't curry unless it stripped the chromium plating off the cutlery. I took a big gratifying draught of lager and said: "So, how are you finding the job?" I wanted a moan, so I thought I'd invite him to have first go.
He bit off a piece of chapati, holding it in his good hand, before replying. "It's OK. I've never really wanted to do anything else.
Just be a copper, ever since I was a kid. A detective, preferably, in the suit and the white socks…" He fingered his imaginary lapels.
"But after this morning… now, I'm not so sure."
"I don't think there'll be many days like today," I said.
"One's enough. Let's just say I learned something this morning, about myself. What about you?"
"Me?" I thought he'd never ask.
"Mmm."
I tipped some more pilau rice on to my plate. "I don't know," I replied. "Do you want this last bit?"
"Please."
I passed it across to him. "To be honest, I'm having second thoughts.
I only came into the job to make my dad happy. Family firm and all that. I wasn't under pressure or anything, but I knew that was what he wanted, not an art student for a son. And I didn't want to be a teacher, nuh-uh. In a way, it was the easy option. My ambition was to make inspector, prove I could do it, but I don't know if I'll stick it that long."
"You make it sound easy."
I shrugged and wiped my mouth. "That's just the plan. Maybe I'll fail. So why didn't you join East Pennine?"
"I tried. They wouldn't have me."
"Oh, I'm sorry." As an afterthought I added: "Perhaps they were full."
"Perhaps." He caught the waiter's attention and ordered two more drinks.
"Just an orange for me," I said, almost apologetically. I felt a prat, and deservedly so. I'd taken for granted what Dave had struggled for, but I never gave another thought to the lesson he said he'd learned that morning, not for another twenty-odd years.
The waiter placed the drinks in front of us and asked if we'd enjoyed the meal. We nodded profusely and mumbled our thanks. When he'd gone I said: "Have they given you a sick note?"
"Yeah. Just for a week," he replied.
"It's my long break." Four blessed days off and the weather was set fair. "Have you ever done any walking?"
"Walking? You mean up mountains?"
"We call them fells."
"Not since a couple of school trips. Ilkley Moor, Simon's Seat, would it be?"
"I was thinking more like Helvellyn, in the Lake District." "I've never been to the Lakes. Would I be able to do it?" "Course you would. And I'll tell you something else: you don't half enjoy a curry and a pint on the way home." I didn't mention the aphrodisiac properties of a day's pleasant exertion in the fresh air. He could discover that for himself, in different company.
And that's how the West Yorkshire Police Walking Club was born, all those years ago.
Melissa wasn't in London when the litre of petrol ignited, sending a fireball up the staircase of the hostel and instantly consuming all the oxygen in the sealed-against-draughts building. The fire had faded briefly, starved of fuel, until the windows imploded and dense morning air rushed in to meet vaporised hydrocarbon in a conflagration of unimaginable ferocity. The news reports said that the eight occupants were overcome by fumes. They were being kind; fire is not a gentle executioner.
Melissa was in bed at the time, in the finest hotel Biggleswade had to offer, in the arms of Nick Kingston. They learned of the fire on Radio Four's The World This Weekend, sandwiched between a story about Lord Lucan being wanted for the murder of his child's nanny and one that they didn't hear because they were dancing on the mattress. They lunched in the dining room and took a bottle of champagne back to their room. Melissa wanted to make love, but Nick was discovering, to his dismay, that sometimes it took a day or two for the well to fill up again. And he preferred them younger.
Three weeks later they met again, at the same hotel. Duncan had received his two hundred pounds, as promised, and Melissa had told him that she was booked into the clinic for the abortion. After dinner, in the safety of their room, Nick handed her a thick envelope.
"I'm to tell you well done," he said.
"How much?" she asked, glancing at the contents.
"Normal rates. Two for the job, plus a bonus of a hundred each for the bodies. How's your boyfriend?"
"A cool thousand pounds. Thank you very much. How's Duncan? I'm worried about him."
"Did he take the money?"
"Oh, he took the money, no hesitation."
"He'll be all right then. Don't forget you'll need a hundred from him for the abortion," he told her, grinning.
"Well, let's make sure they've got something to look for, Dr.
Kingston," she whispered. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him, then lowered her hands and started to undo his belt. Nick Kingston grasped her hair, pulling her head back, and explored her mouth with his tongue. If he imagined she were the nineteen-year-old maths student he'd shagged last night, he might just about manage it.
He was beginning to find Melissa repellent and sensed it would lead to trouble between them.