Peter Robinson - Playing With Fire

“Alan?”

Banks turned to see Ken Blackstone frowning at him.

“All right?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“My sofa?”

“Why not,” said Banks, with a sigh. “It’s a bloody long way home, and I’m knackered. Got any decent whiskey?”

“I think I could rustle up a dram or two of Bell’s.”

“That’ll do nicely,” said Banks. “Let’s leave it to DI Bridges and go. We’ll sort this mess out tomorrow.”

Annie was in the office early, despite a mild hangover and a mostly sleepless night. Phil had picked up the Turners and set off for London after dropping her at the front doors of Western Area Headquarters. She made a pot of strong coffee in the squad room and settled down to some much neglected paperwork. She was just starting to enjoy the relative early-morning peace and quiet when the place started springing to life. DC Rickerd was first in, followed by Winsome. Then Kevin Templeton and the others came and went, attending to the varied tasks and minutiae of a major investigation. Annie felt embarrassed to be wearing the same clothes she’d gone to dinner in the previous evening, but nobody noticed, or at least nobody said anything. Banks wasn’t there, anyway. She could only imagine the kind of look she’d get from him. Sometimes she felt as if he could smell the sex on her, no matter how long she had showered.

It wasn’t long after nine when an excited DC Templeton came up to her waving a sheet of paper. “I’ve got it!” he said. “I’ve got it.”

“Alleluia,” said Annie. “What have you got?”

“McMahon and Gardiner. The connection.”

Annie felt the excitement of a big break spread around the squad room like the first breath of spring. Everyone put in hard and long hours on a case, and something like this was payday for them all, whether they’d worked that particular angle or not.

“Come on, then, Kev,” she said. “Give.”

“They were at university together,” said Templeton. “Well, it wasn’t actually a university back then, but it is now.”

“Kev, slow down,” said Annie. “Give me the details so they make sense.”

Templeton ran his hand over his wavy brown hair. He had some sort of gel on it, Annie noticed, which made it look wet, as if he’d just walked out of the shower. He always did fancy himself a bit, did Kevin Templeton, she thought, and he was a good-looking, trim, fit lad who probably did really well with the girls. He had a touch of the Hugh Grant boyish charm about him, too, the sort of quality that called out for a bit of mothering, but just enough to make it an attractive proposition for the right type of woman. Not Annie. She wasn’t the mothering kind.

“Okay,” he went on, reading from the sheet. “Between 1978 and 1981, both Thomas McMahon and Roland Gardiner attended the former Leeds Polytechnic, since 1992 known as Leeds Metropolitan University. Back then it was made up of the Art College, the College of Commerce, the College of Technology and the Cookery School. Thomas McMahon attended the Art College, obviously, and Roland Gardiner went to the College of Commerce.”

“Did they know one another?”

Templeton scratched his forehead. “Can’t tell you that, ma’am. Only that they were both there at the same time.”

Winsome shot Annie a glance. Annie smiled at her. One day she’d get Kevin Templeton out of the habit of calling her “ma’am,” too. Coming from a handsome young lad like him, it really did make her feel like an old maid.

“In my experience,” Annie said, “it’s pretty unlikely that art and commerce students shared the same interests. I doubt they’d ever mix.”

“Not the same subjects, maybe,” said Templeton, “but that’s only a part of what college is all about, isn’t it? There’s the pub, student politics, the music scene. Leeds Poly always had great bands. They could have met through something like that.”

“ ‘Could have’ isn’t good enough, Kev. If we’re to make any sort of link, we need to know for certain. And we need to know who else they hung out with. There’s a fair chance that whoever killed them met them back then, was someone who was maybe part of the same scene. I certainly don’t believe it’s a coincidence that two men who were murdered so close together and in much the same way just happened to go to the same poly at the same time. But we need a definite connection, if one exists. And there’s the late William Masefield to consider, too. How was he linked with the others, if he was?”

“Well,” said Templeton, “I could always get on to the authorities in Leeds. I’m sure their records go back that far.”

“And what do we do then? Check up on every student who attended Leeds Poly from 1978 to 1981? It’d be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Can you think of any other way?”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Winsome.

Annie and Templeton looked at her. “Go on,” Annie said.

“Friends Reunited dot com. I’m a member. I’ve used it before to locate people. I admit it’s a short cut, but it might help narrow things down a bit. Of course, you’ve only got the people who have taken the trouble to register on the site, but there’s a chance one of them might remember McMahon or Gardiner. We can send out an e-mail to everyone on the list who left Leeds Poly in 1981, asking if they knew a Thomas McMahon and a Roland Gardiner, and see what kind of response we get back. Plenty of people are constantly online these days, so if we’re lucky we might even get a speedy reply.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Annie, getting to her feet. “Come on, let’s do it.”

The interview room was the same as just about every interview room Banks had ever been in: small, high window covered by a grille, bare bulb similarly covered, metal table bolted to the floor. The institutional green paint looked fresh, though, and Banks fancied he could still smell traces of it in the stale air. Either that or the Scotch he had drunk with Ken Blackstone the previous night was giving him a headache. He massaged his temples.

Frances Aspern sat opposite Banks and DI Gary Bridges, who was not only wearing the same suit as he had last night, but looked as if he’d slept in it, too. Dressed in disposable navy overalls, Frances Aspern seemed listless and distant, and much older than she had when Banks first saw her. The dark circles under her eyes testified that she hadn’t slept, and she was fidgeting with a ring. Not her wedding ring, Banks noticed. That was gone.

“Are you ready to talk to us?” Bridges asked, when he had issued the caution and set the tape machine rolling.

Frances nodded, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Can you speak your answers out loud, please?” Bridges asked.

“Yes,” she said, in a small voice. “Sorry.”

“What happened last night?”

Frances paused so long before answering that Banks was beginning to think she hadn’t heard DI Bridges’s question. But eventually she began to speak. “We were asleep. Patrick heard a noise downstairs. He took his gun out of the cabinet and went down.” Her voice was a monotone, disconnected from her feelings, as if the things she was saying were of no interest to her.

“What happened then?”

“I waited. A long time. I don’t know how long. Then I went downstairs. He was going to hurt the boy. I picked up his gun and shot him, then I cut the boy free and told him to go.”

“What about the fire?” DI Bridges asked.

“Fire cleanses,” she said. “I wanted to purify the house.”

“What did you use to start it?”

“Rubbing alcohol. It was on the table.”

“What happened?”

“The boy came back and put it out. I told him not to, but he didn’t listen. Then he made me sit down and he rang the police. I just felt so tired I didn’t care what happened, but I couldn’t sleep.”