Peter Robinson: Playing With Fire

Phil had suggested that McMahon and Gardiner were involved in some art forgery scam, an ill-advised and illtimed attempt to come up with a Turner watercolor that had been lost for over a century. Annie agreed. But if that was the case, her question remained: Who killed them, and why? Leslie Whitaker still seemed the most logical culprit, despite the Jeep Cherokee rented under William Masefield’s name. Perhaps that was a red herring, another issue entirely?

Annie ruled out the Siddons-Aspern angle, as she had done almost from the start, despite her mistrust of the boy. Tina’s death was an unfortunate but irrelevant distraction; she had died because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time and in the wrong state of mind. In other words, she wasn’t the intended victim. Thomas McMahon was. And in Gardiner’s case, there was no question. He lived alone, and in isolation. The two knew each other from their time at Leeds Polytechnic, and they had also once been close to a mysterious character named Giles Moore, who had misled all his friends about being a university student.

Why? What possible reason could he have had, unless lying was an essential part of his character? If it was, it could easily be put to criminal purposes. This Giles Moore had claimed to be studying art history, and according to Elaine Hough, had seemed to know plenty about the subject, whether he learned it at university or not. Was this, then, the person who had assumed William Masefield’s identity when hiring cars for meetings with McMahon? Meetings about their scam. Because she was certain it was he, not McMahon or Gardiner, who was the brains behind it. And was this person Whitaker?

But again the question remained: Why had Moore-Masefield-Whitaker, or whoever he was, killed the goose that laid the golden eggs – McMahon? Unless… unless, she thought, the Turners weren’t part of his master plan, and he believed they would ruin everything and expose him. Phil had said that any forger worth his salt goes for lower-level stuff, artists who fetch a decent price but don’t draw too much attention to themselves, like Turner or Van Gogh. And Phil should know. He was in the business. An expert. Dead artists were a better bet, too, especially if they’d been dead so long that nobody living had known them, because the provenance was easier to forge. So who was it?

Winsome walked by with a handful of papers she had been keying into HOLMES.

“Anything?” Annie asked.

“My fingertips are bleeding,” said Winsome. “I don’t know if that counts as anything.” She dropped the papers on Annie’s desk. “The list of parking tickets from the Askham Bar area. You’d think with all those vehicle numbers something would jump out, wouldn’t you?”

“Son of Sam?”

“Like that, yes.”

“Fancy a drink?”

Winsome grinned. “You’re talking my language.”

Annie glanced over the list of car numbers that had been given parking tickets in the area around Kirk’s Garage, where “William Masefield” had rented his Jeep Cherokee and she saw one that immediately jumped out at her. It couldn’t be right, she thought. It wasn’t possible. She looked again. Maybe she’d remembered the numbers wrong. But she knew she hadn’t. She never did.

Banks felt irritable when he got back to his cottage that evening. It was because of his argument with Annie, he knew. He didn’t think he’d been too heavy-handed, so maybe she had simply overreacted. Love can make you feel that way sometimes. Was Annie in love with Keane? The thought didn’t make Banks feel any better, so he poured himself a generous Laphroaig, cask strength, and put some Schubert string quartets on the CD player. Should he have told her about Helen? Probably not. What he should do, he realized, was talk to Keane again and suggest he tell Annie himself. After all, if it was such an open marriage, what had he got to hide? Annie wouldn’t like it, would no doubt promptly end the relationship, but that was Keane’s problem, not his.

He was trying to decide whether to get back to his Eric Ambler or watch a European cup match on TV when someone knocked on his door. Too late for traveling salesmen, not that there were many around these days, and a friend would most likely have rung first. Puzzled, he put his glass aside and answered it.

Banks was surprised, and more than a little put out, to see Phil Keane standing there, a smile on his face, a bottle clutched in his hand. He’d wanted to talk to Keane again, but not in his own home, and not now, when he was in need of solitude and relaxation, and the healing balm of Schubert. Still, sometimes you just had to take what you were offered when you were offered it.

“May I come in?” Keane asked.

Banks stood aside. Keane thrust the bottle toward him. “A little present,” he said. “I heard you like a good single malt.”

Banks looked at the label. Glenlivet. Not one of his favorites. “Thanks,” he said, gesturing toward his glass. “I’ll stick with this for now, if you don’t mind.” No matter how paranoid it seemed, he felt oddly disinclined to drink anything this man offered him until he knew once and for all that he was who and what he claimed to be. “Would you like some?” he asked. “It’s an Islay, cask strength.”

Keane took off his coat and laid it over the back of a chair, then he sat down in the armchair opposite Banks’s sofa. “No, thanks,” he said. “I don’t like the peaty stuff, and cask strength is way too strong for me. I’m driving, after all.” He tapped the bottle he’d brought. “I’ll have a nip of this, though, if that’s all right?”

“Fine with me.” Banks brought a glass, topping up his own with Laphroaig while he was in the kitchen, and bringing the bottle with him. If he was going to have a heart-to-heart with Keane, he might need it.

“You know,” said Keane, sipping the Glenlivet and relaxing into the armchair, “when it comes right down to it, we’re a lot alike, you and me.”

“How do you get that?” Banks asked.

Keane looked around the room, blue walls and a ceiling the color of ripe Brie, dimly lit by a shaded table lamp. “We both have a taste for the good things in life,” he said. “Fine whiskey, Schubert, the English countryside. I wonder how you manage it all on a policeman’s salary?”

“I do without the bad things in life.”

Keane smiled. “I see. Very good. Anyway, however you work it, we have a lot in common. Beautiful women, too.”

“I assume you mean Annie? Or Helen?”

“Annie told me about you and her. I didn’t know I was poaching.”

“You weren’t.”

“But you’re not happy about it. I can see that. Are you going to tell her?”

“About Helen?”

“Yes. She told me about your little visit yesterday.”

“Charming woman,” Banks said.

“Are you?”

“Don’t you think it would be better coming from you?”

“So you haven’t told Annie yet?”

“No. I haven’t told her anything. I’ve been trying to decide. Maybe you can help me.”

“How?”

“Convince me you’re not a lying, cheating bastard.”

Keane laughed. “Well, I am a bastard, quite literally. I admit to that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Look,” Keane went on, “the relationship Helen and I have is more like that of friends. We’re of use to one another. She doesn’t mind if I have other women. Surely she told you that?”

“But you are married.”

“Yes. We had to get married. I mean, she was an illegal immigrant. They’d have sent her back to Kosovo. I did it for her sake.”

“That’s big of you. You don’t love her?”

“Love? What’s that?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t explain it to you.”