Peter Robinson - Playing With Fire

“Anything to do with fires come up in connection with him?”

“Not that I can find.”

“He didn’t try to set fire to the school, or to the house after he beat up Crazy Nick?”

“Just ran off. Never went back.”

“Sensible,” said Banks. Given the sort of background Mark had endured, both with his mother and her earlier men friends, and with Crazy Nick Papadopoulos, it was no surprise that he was willing to believe Tina’s tale of woe without question. It didn’t mean she wasn’t telling the truth, however, and Banks had certainly sensed something wrong in the Aspern household. There was another thing, too; from what Hatchley had told Banks, Mark certainly had a violent temper, no matter how justifiable his uprising against Crazy Nick had been. The lad needed watching.

“Okay, Jim,” Banks said. “Thanks very much.”

“Cheers,” said Hatchley. “My pleasure.”

By Monday afternoon, Mark was close to Sutton Bank, and starving. He was glad he had gone back into the pub for his lunch the previous day after the shock of seeing Tina’s image on the TV screen. The landlord had given him a dirty look, but other than that, his abrupt departure and return hardly raised an eyebrow. That evening he had eaten fish and chips and kipped down in another old barn. He had got up earlier on Monday morning, with only enough money for a chocolate bar left in his pocket. After walking a few miles, he realized he wasn’t trying to do the coast-to-coast walk, that was for anoraks, so he might as well at least try to get a lift.

Just outside Northallerton, a man towing a horse box gave him a lift to Thirsk. All the way he had been aware of the horse shifting nervously behind him, and he thought he could smell manure. The driver hadn’t said much, just dropped him off in the High Street, and now he was on the Scarborough Road hoping for another kind soul to stop for him.

It was a gray afternoon, the clouds so low and the air so moist it was almost, but not quite, raining. “Mizzling,” they called it in Yorkshire, describing that bone-chilling combination of mist and drizzle. There wasn’t much traffic, and most of the cars and vans that passed just whizzed by without even slowing down. If he got to Scarborough, Mark knew, there was a good chance he’d be able to pick up some casual laboring work. It didn’t matter what – ditch-digging, demolition, construction – he could turn his hand to almost anything as long as it didn’t involve being educated. School had hardly been more than a mild distraction throughout his childhood and adolescence.

A police patrol car cruised by and seemed to slow down a bit just ahead of him. Mark tensed. He knew the coppers weren’t going to give him a lift. Most likely beat the shit out of him and leave him lying bleeding in a field. He must have been imagining things, though, because the car carried on and disappeared into the distance.

Mark trudged on, hardly bothering to stick out his thumb. He must have walked a couple of miles, the steep edge of Sutton Bank looming before him, when he heard a car coming and remembered to stick out his thumb. The car slowed to a halt about ten yards in front of him. It was quite a posh one, he noticed, an Audi, and shiny, as if it had just been cleaned. It would make a nice change from the horse box. For a moment, Mark worried that it might be the killer, but how could anyone know where he was?

The driver leaned over and opened the passenger window. He was a middle-aged bloke, Mark saw, wearing a camel overcoat and leather driving gloves. Mark didn’t recognize him.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Scarborough,” said Mark.

“Hop in.”

He seemed a pleasant enough bloke. Mark hopped in.

Banks grabbed his leather jacket, left by the back door and slipped behind the wheel of his 1997 Renault, thinking it was about time he had a new car, maybe something a bit sportier, if he could afford it. Nothing too flashy, and definitely not red. Racing green, perhaps. A convertible wasn’t much use in Yorkshire, but maybe a sports car would do. His midlife crisis car, though he didn’t particularly feel as if he were going through a crisis. Sometimes he felt as if his life was on hold indefinitely, but that was hardly a crisis. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was getting older; there was no doubt about that.

A snippet of interesting information about Andrew Hurst had just come to his attention. Annie was showing Roland Gardiner’s Turners to Phil Keane, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe having easily agreed to the consultation, so Banks decided to head out to the canal by himself.

He slipped in an old Van Morrison CD to dispel the January blues – not entirely convinced that they were caused by the weather – and drove off listening to “Jackie Wilson Said.” It was just over a mile to the edge of town, past the new-look college, and another couple of miles of mostly open countryside to the canal. The road wound by fields of cows and sheep, drystone walls on either side, an occasional wooded area and stiles with signposts pointing the direction for ramblers. Not that it was rambling weather. You’d soon catch a chill and probably get bogged down in the mud before you got too far in open country. To his right, he could see the far-off bulk of the hills, like the swell before the wave frozen in a gray ocean.

The landscape flattened out toward the canal, which was why the channel had been dug there, of course, and Banks soon found the lane that ran down to the side of the lockkeeper’s cottage. He parked by the towpath and turned off Van just as he was getting going on “Listen to the Lion.”

It seemed an age before Hurst answered the doorbell, and when he did he looked surprised to find Banks standing there.

“You again,” he said.

“Afraid so,” said Banks. “You weren’t expecting me?”

Hurst avoided his eyes. “I told you everything I know.”

“You must think we’re stupid. Can I come in?”

“You will anyway.” Hurst opened the door and moved aside. The hallway was quite low, and he had to stoop a little as he stood there. Banks walked into the same room they had been in before, the one with Hurst’s extensive record collection. Helen Shapiro was singing “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Hurst turned off the record as soon as he followed Banks into the room, as if it were some sort of private experience or ritual he didn’t want to share.

He was fastidious in his movements. He lifted the needle off gently, then stopped the turntable, removed the disc and slipped it lovingly inside its inner sleeve. It was an LP called Tops With Me, Banks noticed, and on the cover of the outer sleeve was a picture of the smiling singer herself. Banks had forgotten all about Helen Shapiro. Not that he had been much of a fan to start with, not enough to know about her LPs, at any rate, but he did remember buying an ex-jukebox copy of “Walkin’ Back to Happiness” at a market stall in Cathedral Square, Peterborough, when he was about ten, before the covered market opened. It was one of those 45s with the middle missing, so you had to buy a plastic thingamajig and fix it in before you could play it.

Banks perched on the edge of an armchair. He didn’t take his leather jacket off because the house was cold, the elements of the electric fire dark. Hurst was wearing a thick gray, woolly polo-neck sweater. Banks wondered if he was too poor to pay the electricity bills.

“You should have told us you had a criminal record,” Banks said. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble. We find out things like that pretty quickly, and it looks a lot worse for you.”

“I didn’t go to jail. Besides, it wasn’t-”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” Banks said. “And I know you didn’t go to jail. You got a suspended sentence and probation. You were lucky. The judge took pity on you.”