Ruth Rendell - Portobello

Searching for means of doing this, she remembered her sister's story about being asked for matches by the girl with the cigarette in the hotel foyer. She and Eugene had been so happy then. A sob caught at her throat but anger came back. A book of matches was in that secret drawer in the kitchen and alongside it another packet of those things, those bloody things. She found some paraffin too, an ancient bottle of the stuff, untouched for years. It worked, though, and the matches worked. Regardless of the ban on bonfires, in place for decades, she started the fire and it blazed up, consuming his stupid sweets, the garden stinking of – well, it couldn't be burnt sugar. Burnt chemicals, saccharine, aspartame. She stood, looking at the little blackened patch left behind on the grass until the phone ringing fetched her indoors.

It must be him, it must be. To say he was sorry, he had lost his mind, he didn't know what had come over him. She stumbled and almost fell in her haste to get to the phone.

It was her sister.

'Oh, Hilary,' she cried, 'I don't know what to do. I think Eugene's gone mad. Would you come or can I come to you? I'm going mad too.'

Fize didn't believe in letting women in on men's business. Besides, confiding in Gemma would mean confessing that he and Ian were responsible for setting fire to that house. Or Ian was. But he had been there, he had helped, and Fize knew enough about the law to be pretty sure that in a case of murder and arson, when two people were there, even if only one of them struck the match, both were considered to blame. He wouldn't have cared about any of this if they hadn't arrested Lance, if they hadn't charged him and banged him up. He might not have cared too much if the man on remand had been someone he didn't know. At the time, or just before the time, when he and Ian had been on their way over to Blagrove Road, armed with a bottle of petrol and a bag of fireworks, burning up Lance in his bed had seemed an entirely just and reasonable thing to do. Any man would feel the same towards the bloke who's been messing about with his girlfriend.

But there were objections to that. For one thing, he didn't really know that Lance and Gemma had been doing any more than she said they had when he asked her, that is, having a cup of tea with Uncle Gib and talking about old times. To back up her story was the fact that he had seen the old man go into the house while they were in there. Surely that meant they couldn't have been doing anything they shouldn't. Of course he hadn't felt like that when he was shoving the bottle of petrol through the letter box. As for Ian Pollitt, he didn't feel anything at all about Lance or Gemma or himself, for that matter, Fize was sure of that. Ian just enjoyed a bit of trouble and was always on the lookout for it.

But he'd started to feel bad about things when first he heard that they'd killed a man who was living in the house that he'd never even heard of. Killing someone you didn't hate or want to have revenge on, someone you didn't know existed, seemed worse than anything. Fize didn't want to lose his job and Gemma or upset his mother, he didn't want to go to prison, but he had some sort of vague idea, picked up from Hollywood films, that you could make something with the police called a plea bargain. You could in America, so presumably you could here too. If you confessed and told them the name of the bloke who had done it with you, he might go down but you'd get off – or get a suspended sentence or something. Fize thought it was worth trying.

He tried it on Ian.

They were in the amusement arcade in the Portobello Road at the time, playing the fruit machines. Ian had just had a big win but whereas anyone else would have ploughed the lot back, he pocketed his winnings. He always did. He didn't seem to hear what Fize was trying to tell him about Lance – not surprising considering the racket in there – but said he needed a drink. They went into the Portobello Arms.

Fize could never express himself very well. Gemma could. She was what they called articulate. He tried to explain to Ian what he meant but the way it came out, Fize stumbling over words and saying 'you know' every five seconds, it sounded as if all he was doing was trying to drop Ian in the shit. And perhaps he was.

'Can you tell me why it is', said Ian in a very aggressive way, 'every time we go into a fucking pub you go ballsing on about bleeding Lance Platt. Can you tell me that?'

'It's on account of I don't reckon it's right him being banged up when he didn't do nothing.'

'Oh, no,'said Ian with heavy sarcasm, 'he didn't do nothing. He's not a thief, he don't break into places and nick old ladies' jewellery. He never smacked your girlfriend so her tooth come out. He don't mug folks for their mobiles.'

'Yeah, maybe, but he's not going down for that, is he? He's going down for something he never done.'

'Oh, give me a break.' Ian finished his drink and asked for another – for himself. No second one for Fize. 'I'm going to say just two words to you,' he said, laughing at his own wit, 'and the second one is "off".'

Fize saw Ian's big calloused hand go to his jeans pocket, go into it and close over something. He said no more.

At home he and Gemma never said much to each other. His parents had never said much to each other. This was partly due to his mother speaking only a very few words of English and his father no Farsi at all. Gemma liked talking, she was hours on the phone to girlfriends and round at her mother's the two of them chattered away non-stop, but the things they talked about, kids and clothes and make-up and celebrities and music, interested Fize not at all and he knew nothing about them. He liked Abelard but he had nothing to say to him. They watched telly together, and he and Gemma watched telly. Gemma talked about the actors in soaps and the things they did and said, but all he said was 'yes' and 'right' and 'don't know'. He didn't know what to say, so he left all the talking to her.

She talked to everyone about everyone they knew, the people in the other flats, the other mums with little kids, his mum even though she could hardly understand a word, and, if he was there, he listened without saying anything much. But she didn't expect replies from him. And the one subject she never talked about was Lance Platt. It seemed like she'd forgotten him. Fize would have liked more than anything to find out what she thought about his dilemma but he was scared to mention it, even to touch on it. She might get up out of her chair, grab Abelard and go straight down the cop shop. She was capable of that.

It was getting so that he lay awake in the night, thinking about what he and Ian had done, lay awake beside the soundly sleeping Gemma, often with Abelard snuggled up between them because the little boy had got into bad habits Fize's own mother would never have allowed. Gemma wouldn't leave any windows open in case Abelard fell out of them. It was stuffy and hot in that bedroom and Fize sweated as he thought about Lance Platt in a much smaller room somewhere, a cell with bunks in it and another bloke maybe. Not a lovely girl like Gemma. And the chances were Lance would stay in that room or somewhere like it for years. Fize knew he had to have another go at Ian but not in a pub this time.

Here, maybe. Ask him round when Gemma was out of the way. Perhaps when he was babysitting Abelard, and she'd gone over to Michelle's or her mum's. If this fine weather went on he could leave the door to the balcony open and there'd be people on all the other balconies. And Abelard would be around, running in and out. He'd have to persuade Ian to see things his way. If he couldn't, if there was no moving him – and Fize was afraid there wouldn't be – would he have the bottle to go to the police on his own?