Some by Fire (2 page)

‘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, 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 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.’