Some by Fire (9 page)

And then I’d be on my own, I thought.

I hadn’t known what to expect of Welwyn Garden City, so it came as a pleasant surprise. I’d telephoned the Robertses after arranging to meet Fearnside, and Mrs Roberts had told me that her husband, Andrew, would be in any night after five thirty. Two junctions on the M25 and four short ones up the A1 and I was there an hour early. The approaches to the town – it’s not a city, that’s just its name – were along an avenue with wide close-cropped verges and
wall-to-wall
trees. I followed the intermittent town centre signs and found myself on a one-way system that routed me into the shopping area, where my initial enthusiasm gave way to dismay. The planners had done a good job, with some decent open spaces, and it’s probably a pleasant enough place to live and work,
but the architect only knew one type of brick and one shape of window. He was working to a tight schedule, so he designed one building and rubber-stamped the rest. Couldn’t see any of the famous concrete cows anywhere. Or was that Milton Keynes? Come to think of it, was it Milton Keynes where I was supposed to be? I decided it didn’t make much difference either way. I thought about exploring the town centre, but a drive through sufficed. I found the street where the Robertses lived and parked up for an hour, listening to the radio.

It was an ornate semi with jutting eaves in what was more like an overgrown jungle than a leafy suburb. Someone had overlooked the simple fact that trees grow. Their front garden boasted a giant flowering cherry, long past its best, and a wishing well. A Bedford Rascal with
Andrew’s Carpet Fitter’s
painted on the side stood on the drive, behind a fairly recent Saab and an elderly Fiesta. I was at the home of the phantom apostrophe bandit. The garage door was open and a teenage boy with lank blond hair and acne was working on a Honda trail bike. There was a nasty blank space behind the engine, with two suspicious-looking bolts projecting into it.

‘Problems?’ I said, to introduce myself.

He spared me a worried glance and said: ‘Yeah, it’s eight-stroking on the overrun.’

‘That sounds painful.’

‘It’s the carburettor.’

‘Will you be able to fix it?’

‘I hope so. Are you looking for Dad?’

‘Yep.’

‘He’s round the back. DAD! Your visitor’s here.’

Dad wore his hair in a ponytail and had a tattoo, nothing extravagant, on each arm. He was wearing cut-down jeans and a Guns ‘n’ Roses T-shirt. Definitely not what I’d expected.

‘DI Charlie Priest,’ I said, extending my hand, ‘from Heckley CID.’

He gave me a limp shake. ‘Andrew Roberts. Pleased to meet you. I’m just lighting the barbecue, round the back.’ He turned and led the way, me following behind.

It had just reached the God-will-it-ever-burn stage, with smoke billowing over the lapboard fence into the neighbour’s yard. The back garden was mainly lawn, with those little apple trees that only reach five feet tall growing along one side and a greenhouse down at the bottom. They had a pond with a naked cherub piddling into it, and an ultraviolet bug-killer was already glowing on the wall, like a neon sign outside a house of pleasure. This was a no-fly zone. He poked his head into the kitchen to tell his wife I was here and invited me to sit on a plastic chair.

‘First of all,’ I began, ‘can I say how sorry I am about your brother.’

‘Fancy a beer?’ he asked. I opened my mouth to say how jolly welcome that would be but he cut me off with: ‘Oh, you’re on duty, aren’t you? Never mind, I’ll get Shaz to make a pot of tea. Duncan? Yeah, it were sad. To tell the troof I hadn’t seen him for years. He was free years older than me, went his own way, like. You said on the phone that it was somefing that happened back in 1975.’

‘That’s right. There was a fire, in Leeds. A short while ago Duncan, or someone we now believe to be Duncan, rang the Friends in Need people to say he knew who started the fire.’

‘I wrote to them,’ he said, adding: ‘Well, I got DJ to.’

‘DJ?’

He pointed towards the garage and said: ‘Duncan John.’

‘Your son?’

‘Yeah. He’s a bright lad. We’ve always called him DJ.’

‘It was your letter that put us on to Duncan. Your brother Duncan, that is. The person who rang was obviously distressed, suicidal.’

‘Jesus,’ he hissed.

‘Did Duncan know Leeds, back then?’

‘Yeah. He was at the university there.’

A minute piece of the jigsaw fell into place. ‘Tell me about him,’ I invited. ‘What was he like, before he went to Leeds?’

He fingered his left ear and I noticed the ring through it. ‘He was my big bruvver,’ he said. ‘I looked up to him. Troof is, I worshipped him. At least I did until he went to Leeds. After that there was a lot of pressure on me from Mam and Dad to follow him, but I just wasn’t bright enough. Before that, though, we got on well. All he was interested in was bikes. Push bikes, that is. He raced them, on the road, on the track, and he’d take me wiv him. He was good, and we had some fun. Then things went pear-shaped, and suddenly they didn’t want me to follow him. They were quite happy for number two son to settle for an apprenticeship.’

‘Pear-shaped? In what way?’

‘He fell in wiv the wrong crowd. He did well his first year, kept up wiv his training and his studies, but then he started drinking a lot and got into debt. He bought a Claud Butler, he said, but I didn’t believe him. We dreamt about Claud Butlers in them days. He used to write to me, all about the parties and how they’d drunk the pub dry. It sounded great at the time, but afterwards I realised that he was sliding. He kept sending home for money, first from Dad, then Mam, and then from me. He dropped out halfway through his second year, and we hardly saw or heard from him again after that.’

‘You say he went to Leeds University?’

‘Yeah.’

‘To read what?’

‘Chemistry.’

‘Did you save his letters?’

He shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’

‘Did he mention any names in them?’

Another head-shake.

‘Did he mention Keith Crosby?’

‘The Friends in Need man? No.’

‘Any girlfriends?’

‘No.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘Come to fink of it, he did mention one, once.’

‘Can you remember her name?’

‘He didn’t say. He just said he was going out wiv this bird but he didn’t fink he’d ever dare bring her home. He raved on about her. Said she had purple hair and a ring frew her nose. In them days that was way out. From anuvver planet. I’d never even seen anyone like that back then. Not for real. I didn’t believe him and he said he’d send me a picture, but he never did.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said.

It was a sad story, and it’s a hundred times more common since drugs other than alcohol became freely available. After Leeds Duncan had moved to Manchester, vanished for ten years and resurfaced in Brixton, living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They’d last met at their mother’s funeral. Andrew had tried to help him and lots of promises were made,
but it hadn’t worked out. The barbecue was glowing brightly and I could sense Andrew’s impatience to be up there flourishing the giant pepper grinder. He didn’t invite me to share a steak so I thanked him for his help and left. I never got that cup of tea and didn’t find out who Shaz was. As I walked past the Rascal I resisted the urge to whip out my pen and draw a line through the offending apostrophe. ‘How many effs in apostrophe?’ ‘There is no effin’ apostrophe.’ ‘Boom-boom, thank you and good night.’

‘Where is everybody?’ I asked, surveying the empty desks and noting the absence of jackets, daily papers and items of food required to see a team of the force’s finest through their strife-torn day. Job on, I was told. The chief suspect for the ram-raid had just had an early-morning call and at that very moment was standing in his summer-weight jimjams, explaining that he’d always been a
Guardian
reader; he bought it for the dog-racing tips.

I had my usual meeting with Mr Wood and started committing yesterday’s story to print. I’d just reached the bit where the waitress at the Happy Burger kissed me goodbye and hoped I’d come again when the outer door burst open and the troops came laughing and jostling into the office. There was a knock on my door and Nigel entered, followed by
Dave. I clicked
Save
and rocked my chair back on two legs. ‘Success?’ I asked.

‘Yep,’ Nigel said, with a self-satisfied grin.

‘Go on.’

‘Definitely a criminal type. Found a
Guardian
under a cushion on the settee.’

‘Bang to rights,’ I said.

‘Oh, and about an ounce of what looks like herbal cannabis.’

‘It gets better.’ Herbal cannabis was suddenly turning up all over the place. I turned to Dave. ‘Did he, er, behave himself?’ I asked, nodding at Nigel. He has a reputation for impetuosity.

‘He was OK,’ Sparky replied.

‘Only OK?’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to mention it…’

‘Mention what?’

‘Don’t encourage him,’ Nigel interrupted. ‘He’ll mention it, whatever it is. Believe me, he’ll mention it. Nothing will stop him.’

‘I don’t know if I ought to…’ Dave continued, feigning awkwardness.

‘Now you’ve
got
to tell me,’ I replied, my hands in an appealing gesture that I’d seen so many times in court.

‘Well…’ he went on, ‘we brayed on the front door, like we do, and this little old lady opened it…’

‘Mmm.’

‘And…well…it’s just that…to be honest…I thought
Freeze, motherfucker!
was a bit over the top.’

‘I never!’ Nigel exclaimed. ‘Oh, forget it!’

‘Little old ladies can be dangerous, David,’ I warned him. ‘Especially if they’re carrying a handbag. Sometimes they have a jar of Pond’s cold cream tucked in the bottom corner. Get sandbagged by one of those and it’s like being hit by a flat-nosed .45. Anyway, it looks like you’ve saved us from a red face, so well done the boys.’

‘What about you?’ Dave asked.

I flicked the monitor with the back of my knuckles. ‘Just putting it all down,’ I replied.

‘JJ Fox had a mention on the YTV news last night,’ Nigel said.

‘What’s he done?’ I asked.

‘Apparently that big new office block he’s built near the river in Leeds is going to house Reynard Insurance, which will mean about a thousand extra jobs for the region. They’re expecting him to come personally to cut the ribbon when it opens.’

‘Really? Did they say when?’

‘’Fraid not, but they said he’ll no doubt stay at the Fox Borealis, where the penthouse suite is permanently earmarked for him.’

‘With a pad on the roof for his helicopter,’ Dave added.

‘How frightfully non-U,’ I said. ‘It sounds as
if Leeds has adopted a new son. Maybe we’ll get a chance to have an audience with him when he comes, so let’s do our homework.’

The multiscreen was reshowing
Seven
, and I fancied watching it again, but Jacquie wanted to see the one about three girls from small-town America who vowed to stay friends whatever life threw at them, so that’s what I bought tickets for. The willowy blonde married a millionaire, the husband of the perky brunette beat her up and the redhead caught cancer. I used the time to muse on Crosby’s story, wonder where I fitted in life’s big picture and reflect on the nature of the universe immediately before the Big Bang. Some professor of radio astronomy had been on
PM
talking about waves – ripples in space – that he had detected. He said they were vibrations from the Big Bang, still travelling outwards fifteen billion years later. In which case, I thought, how come we arrived here first? Maybe I’d write to him and ask. Everybody was in tears as we left the cinema, so it must have all worked out in the end. I hadn’t expected it to still be light outside, but it was. We strolled hand-in-hand through the town centre, which was nice, and had a pizza, which wasn’t. Pizza isn’t on my menu. If the Romans had taken the recipe for Yorkshire pudding back with them we’d never have heard of pizza. Jacquie invited me in for a coffee and introduced me
to the kitten she’d acquired. I tickled its ears while we listened to Neil Diamond and Jacquie fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I used to like Neil Diamond, years ago. Now, I feel like throwing up. I sat through ‘Sweet Caroline’, for old times’ sake, and said I’d better go. We had a short but torrid necking session behind her front door and I left. Another day over.

Leeds became a university city early in the twentieth century. The colleges upon which it was built rose out of necessity, not from the beneficence of a monarch with aspirations beyond his intellect and a weather eye on his place in history. The textile industry required chemists and the mines and railways needed engineers. Then, as the north burgeoned with industrial growth, all the incidental needs of the population grew apace with it. Doctors and priests; bankers and businessmen; entrepreneurs and charlatans: they were swept in as if by a spring flood, dragged along on the coat tails of steam, iron, coal and wool. The Parkinson Tower is a Portland stone monolith that dominates the skyline to the north of the city and marks the epicentre of the rambling campus. I drove by it and looked for a parking place.

The University Registrar and Secretary was called Hugh Roper-Jones and he’d been at his desk when I rang him. Unfortunately he was about to attend a
briefing of potential undergraduates, but he told me he had to be free before twelve for a lunch appointment. I said it wouldn’t take long and I’d be waiting outside his door.

I walked down the road past the departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics and Electrical Engineering and there it was – Chemistry. Duncan Roberts had been studying chemistry. I ran up the steps and through the wood and glass doors. Inside was a lobby but no reception desk. I scanned the notice-boards that lined the walls and decided that students hadn’t changed much since my day. They still needed cheap accommodation and sold bicycles and went to concerts and piss-ups. A series of glossy posters advertised the department and listed some of its achievements. It reminded me that this was where they invented DFO. We use it to develop latent fingerprints, and I felt I was among friends. The next door led into a corridor with a lecture theatre facing me. A sign on the wall indicated that SOMS was on the fourth floor and LHASAUK on the second. Now I was way out of my depth. One thing I did know was that Roper-Jones’s office was not in this block, so I left.