Peter Robinson - Playing With Fire

Mark tried, but sleep just wouldn’t come. Most of his thoughts centered on Tina and the news the policeman had given him of her death. Of course, he had known it, known as soon as he got to the woods and saw the firemen and the smoldering barges that she had to be dead. But he had tried to deny it to himself; now he had to face it and accept it: he would never see Tina again.

And it was his fault.

Tina . So gentle, so frail and so birdlike, it broke his heart that he had been unfaithful to her and hurt her and would never get the chance to put things right, to tell her he was sorry and that he loved her, only her, not Mandy or anyone else. Tina trusted him, needed him and depended on him. He got her through the bad times, and when there were good times – which there were – they laughed together, and some-times went on walks in the country and drank screw-top wine and ate cheese-slice sandwiches beside a crystal stream.

Sometimes they seemed to live an almost normal life, the kind of life Mark wanted for them. In his dreams, he got a steady job in Eastvale, maybe working on church restoration, got Tina straight, then they rented a little flat. When the first baby came, they had saved enough for a small semi, maybe by the sea. At least that was how he saw their life developing. He knew he’d be taking care of Tina forever, because she would always need that, even if she got straight, she was so badly scarred inside; but he could do it, he wanted to do it, and once she kicked the habit she couldn’t help but get stronger. She was intelligent, too, much brighter than he; maybe she could get into the college like Mandy and get a job as a secretary or something. He bet she could work with computers if she put her mind to it.

Sometimes they even made love, but that was hard for Tina; she was never far from the hunger and the darkness at the center of her being. The wrong word or gesture, and she was burrowing deep inside herself again, scrunching up in the fetal position with her thumb in her mouth, on the nod. And when she was like that, it didn’t matter if he was there or not. Which was why he hadn’t been there last night.

Tina wasn’t much interested in sex, partly because drugs do weird things to your sex drive, but mostly because of her stepfather. When Mark thought of Patrick Aspern, his stomach knotted and rage surged through him. One day he’d…

Despite what the policeman had said, Mark wondered if Tina could have started the fire accidentally. She heated her spoon over a candle to prepare her fix, and she’d been careless once or twice in the past. But he’d been there then, not like this time.

But no, he realized; it couldn’t have happened that way. He remembered that he had been careful to snuff out the candle himself before leaving her on the nod, in a sleeping bag, her eyes glazed, pupils dilated, to all intents and purposes lost to the world, wrapped in a warm cocoon of safety and oblivion, without a care, until it started to wear off and she started to itch and her stomach knotted up and her every pore oozed with craving for more. He’d been through it all with her so many times, and he knew he’d have gone through it again when he got home, if it hadn’t been for the fire.

He’d told Tina he was sick of her and her junkie ways, and if she didn’t get into some sort of rehabilitation center or methadone program he was leaving her. She didn’t care when he said it because the heroin was kicking in and flooding her veins and that rush, that golden warmth, was the only thing she cared about in the whole world when it spread through her like an orgasm. So he stormed out. Out to Mandy and her tantalizing, lithe young body. Tina didn’t know where he was going, of course, and she never would now. But he knew, and that was more than enough.

At least he knew the fire couldn’t have started on their boat. Did she know it was happening, that the flames were creeping closer, the smoke enveloping her? Even if she had come round when she smelled the smoke or saw the flames, would she have had time to get her head together and jump for land? Or water? Perhaps then she would have drowned. Tina couldn’t swim.

Mark curled up on the hard bunk, and the thoughts and fears tumbled around in his tired brain. When the drunk started up again with “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” he put his hands over his ears and cried.

“Is the music all right?” Banks asked Frances Aspern.

“Pardon?”

“The music. Is it okay?”

They were entering the Dales landscape beyond Ripon, and the distant shapes of the hills rose out of the mist in shades of gray, like whales breaking the water’s surface. Banks was playing Mariza’s Fado em Mim, traditional Portuguese songs, accompanied by classical guitar and bass, and he realized they might not be to everyone’s taste. Frances Aspern had been staring out of the window in silence the whole way so far, and he had almost given up trying to start a conversation. He couldn’t help but be aware of the weight of her grief beside him. Grief or guilt; he wasn’t certain which.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Aspern. “It’s fine. She sounds very sad.”

Indeed she did. Banks didn’t understand a word of the songs without the translations on the CD booklet, the print of which was daily getting too small for him to read without glasses, but there was no mistaking the sense of loss, sadness and the cruelty of fate in Mariza’s voice. You didn’t need to know what the words meant to feel that.

“I didn’t want to ask you while your husband was present,” Banks said, “but is Christine’s birth father still around?”

She shook her head. “I was very young. We didn’t marry. My parents… they were good to me. I lived with them in Roundhay until Patrick and I married.”

“We’ll still need to talk to him,” said Banks.

“He’s back home. In America. We met when he was traveling in Europe.”

“Can you give me the details?”

She looked out of the window, away from Banks, as she spoke, so that he could barely hear her. “His name is Paul Ryder. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. I don’t have his address or telephone number. We haven’t been in contact since… well…”

Banks made a mental note of the name and city. It might be hard to track down this Paul Ryder after so long, but they’d have to try. “How did you and Dr. Aspern meet?” he asked.

“Patrick was a colleague of my father’s, a frequent visitor to our house when I was at home, when Christine was only a baby. My father is also a doctor. I suppose, in a way, he was Patrick’s mentor. He’s retired now, of course.”

Banks wondered how well that marriage had gone down with Mrs. Aspern’s family. “Were you both at home last night?” he asked.

She turned to look at him. “What do you expect me to say to that?”

“I expect you to tell me the truth,” Banks said.

“Ah, the truth. Yes, of course we were both at home.” She turned to look out of the window again.

“Did your husband go out at all yesterday?”

Mrs. Aspern didn’t reply.

“Is there anything else you want to say?” Banks asked. “Anything at all you want to tell me?”

Mrs. Aspern glanced at him again. He couldn’t make out the expression on her face. Then she turned back to look out of the window. “No,” she said, after a long pause. “No, I don’t think so.”

Banks gave up and drove on, Mariza singing against a backdrop of the misty Dales landscape, a song about sorrow, longing, pity, punishment and despair.

The scene looked different in the late afternoon, Annie thought as she walked through the woods to the canal branch. The area was still taped off, and she had to show her warrant card and sign in before entering, but the firefighters and their equipment were gone, and in their stead was an eerie silence shrouding the two burned-out narrow boats and the scattering of men in hooded white overalls patiently searching the banks. The smell of ashes still hung in the damp air.