Peter Robinson - Playing With Fire

“I’ll follow you.”

“Okay. It’s late, but I want to set a few things in motion while they’re fresh in mind. For a start, I want to know about Mark Siddons’s and Andrew Hurst’s alibis for tonight. And Leslie Whitaker’s. I’m not at all certain about him yet. Then we’ll have to track down Gardiner’s ex-wife. And let’s not forget Dr. Patrick Aspern, Tina’s stepfather.”

“Surely you can’t think he had anything to do with all this?”

“I don’t know, Annie. Serious allegations were made, at least as far as his conduct toward his stepdaughter is concerned. And neither he nor his wife have solid alibis for the boat fires. He’s not off my list yet. I think I’ll send Winsome down to talk to him in the morning, ask him for an alibi. That should be interesting.”

Annie sighed. “If you think it’s necessary. It’s your neck.”

“And I want to put a rush on toxicology, too. These people didn’t just lie down and let themselves be burned.”

“Alan?”

“Yes?”

“I was talking to a friend of mine earlier, a chap called Philip Keane. He operates a private art authentication company, the one that was involved in the Turner find up here last July. I think he might be able to help, at least as far as the art angle is concerned. I’m sure he’d be happy to have a chat with you.”

Banks looked at her. He knew she was seeing someone, but not his name. Was he the one? Was this why she had dressed up specially tonight and put a little extra makeup on? The timing was right, and he knew she’d helped the local gallery out with security for the brief period the Turner was housed there. “Did he know McMahon?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just something that crossed my mind earlier, and Phil might have some ideas, that’s all.”

“All right,” said Banks. “Tell him to come to the station tomorrow.”

“Oh, come on, Alan. He’s a friend, not a suspect. How about the Queen’s Arms? Lunch?”

“If we’ve got time. Tomorrow might be a busy day.”

“If we’ve got time.”

“Okay,” said Banks.

Annie opened the door, and when she moved, Banks caught a whiff of her Body Shop grapefruit scent, even over the fire smells and the smoke from the pub that lingered in her hair and on her clothes. Annie stepped over to her own car. Banks slipped Tom Waits’s Alice in the CD player and headed back through the dark lanes to the station listening to the croaking voice sing about shipwrecks, ice and dead flowers.

DC Winsome Jackman hated Yorkshire winters. She didn’t think much of the summers, either, but she really hated the winters. As she got out of her nice warm car in front of Patrick Aspern’s house on Sunday morning, she felt a pang of longing for home, the way she often did when the cold and damp got to her even through her thick sweater and lined raincoat. She remembered the humid heat back home, way up in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, the lush green foliage, the insects chirping, the bright flame trees, banana leaves click-clacking overhead in the gentle breeze from the ocean, remembered how she used to walk up the steep hill home from the one-room schoolhouse in her neat uniform, laughing and joking with her friends. She missed her mother and father so much she ached for them sometimes. And her friends. Where were they all now? What were they doing?

Then she remembered the shanties, the crippling poverty and hopelessness, the way so many men treated their women as mere possessions, chattels of no real value. Winsome knew she had been lucky to get out. Her father was a police corporal at the Spring Mount station, and her mother worked at the banana-chip factory in Maroon Town, sitting out back in the shade with the other women, gossiping and slicing bananas all day. Winsome had worked for two summers at the Holiday Inn just outside Montego Bay, and she had often talked to the tourists there. Their stories of their homelands, of America, Canada and England, had excited her imagination and sharpened her will. She had envied them the money that allowed them to have luxurious holidays in the sun, and the opportunities they must have at home. These countries, she had thought, must indeed be lands of plenty.

And it wasn’t only the white folk. There were handsome black men from New York, London and Toronto, with thick gold chains hanging around their wrists and necks, their wives all dressed up in the latest fashions. What a world theirs was, with all the movies, fashions, cars and jewelry they wanted. Of course, the reality fell a long way short of her imagination, but on the whole she was happy in England; she thought she had made the right move. Apart from the winters.

She sensed, rather than saw, a number of curtains twitch as she walked up the path to ring Aspern’s doorbell. A six-footone black woman ringing your doorbell was probably a rare event in this neighborhood, she thought. Anyway, winter or not, it was nice to get away from the computer for a while, and out of the office. And she was on overtime.

A man answered her ring, and she was immediately put off by the arrogant expression on his face. She had seen looks like that before. Other than that, she thought he was probably handsome in a middle-aged English sort of way. Soft strands of sandy hair combed back, unusually good white teeth, a slim, athletic figure, loose-fitting, expensive casual clothes. But the expression ruined everything.

He arched his eyebrows. “Can I help you?” he asked, looking her up and down, the condescension dripping like treacle from his tongue. “I’m afraid there’s no surgery on Sundays.”

“That’s all right, Dr. Aspern,” Winsome said, producing her warrant card. “I’m fit as a fiddle, thank you very much. And I probably couldn’t afford you, anyway.”

He looked surprised by her accent, no doubt expecting some sort of incomprehensible patois. The Jamaican lilt was still there, of course, but more as an undertone. Winsome had been in Yorkshire for seven years, though she had only been in Eastvale for two since her transfer from Bradford, and she had unconsciously picked up much of the local idiom and accent.

Aspern examined her warrant card and handed it back to her. “So first they sent the organ-grinder, and now they send the monkey.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Never mind,” said Aspern. “Just a figure of speech. You’d better come in.”

Winsome got the impression that Aspern scanned the street for spies before he shut the door behind them. Was he worried what the neighbors might think? That he was having an affair with a young black woman? Drugs, more likely, Winsome guessed. He was concerned that they would think he was supplying her with drugs.

He showed her into a sitting room with cream wallpaper, a large blazing fireplace and a couple of nice landscape paintings on the wall. A recent medical journal lay open on the glass-topped coffee table beside a half-empty cup of milky tea.

“What is it this time?” he asked.

Winsome sat in one of the armchairs without being asked and crossed her long legs. Aspern perched on the sofa and finished off the tea.

“Where were you last night, sir?” Winsome asked.

“What?” Aspern’s superior expression was replaced by one of puzzlement and anger.

“I think you heard me.”

“Let’s say I just didn’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“Okay,” said Winsome, “I’ll repeat the question. Where were you last night?”

“Has he put you up to this?”

“Who?”

“You know damn well who I’m talking about. Banks. Your boss.”

“DCI Banks issues the actions, sir, and I just carry them out. I’m merely a humble DC. I’m not privy to his inner thoughts. As you so accurately put it yourself, the monkey, not the organ-grinder.” She smiled. “But I do need to know where you were last night.”