Quintin Jardine - Fallen Gods

"I don't see how you could do it, then. You'd have to use combustible materials to start your fire. Their reaction wouldn't make their elements disappear; I'd expect there still to be a residue, an oxidisation, that could be traced afterwards."

"What if you used a material that would be natural at the scene, like oil in a garage, or paper in an office? Any traces that were found wouldn't seem unusual."

"No," Andrea agreed, 'but what about your trigger device? That wouldn't disappear into thin air either. Suppose you simply lit a blue touch paper and retired, that would leave a trace of what it had been before it was consumed." She laughed. "You can't do it, Stevie; you'd be talking spontaneous combustion, and that's not a very efficient way of starting a fire, at least not the sort you're talking about."

"What sort might it work on?" he asked, casually.

She smiled again; pure rainbow this time, no shower in sight. "Strictly speaking this is physics, not chemistry, so I'm just guessing, you understand. But maybe there's me, for a start. By the nature of the phenomenon, though, you'll have to stick around till it happens … if you're interested that is." She stretched her hand out towards him, and he took it.

"Oh, I'm interested, all right," he murmured, grinning back at her.

"What do I do if you show signs of bursting into flames?"

"As I told you," she replied, 'it's never happened before, but I'd guess you throw a blanket over us and do what you have to, to keep them from getting out of control. I have been told, though, that it might be more interesting if you just let me burn."

She unwound herself from her chair and stood up. "It could take some time, though; a few weeks, months even. So while we're waiting, I'll just make us a nice salad."

"That's the house," said Sarah. He drew the Jag to a halt and looked across the street to where she was pointing. A single deflated balloon still hung from a tree in the yard.

"Okay," he muttered. "Let's see if the lady's at home." He opened the car door and swung it open.

"Do you want me to come?" she asked.

Bob paused. "Better not," he replied, after a couple of seconds of thought. "I'm pushing my luck with Brady as it is. Let me talk to her. If there's anything I think you need to hear or see, I'll come back and get you."

He stepped out on to the road and started to walk the fifty yards towards the house. As he neared it, he looked to his right. The sheriff's department's crime scene tape was still stretched across Ron Neidholm's front door. It spoiled the look of the place. Skinner could see personality in houses; without the tape this one would have looked friendly and welcoming. Sometimes he thought he could see their history also. He looked at an upstairs window and pictured Sarah, framed in it, with a dreamy look in her eye as she dressed. He snapped his gaze away and turned in to the driveway of the house across the street.

He had always been struck by the size of the plots on which even the most modest of American houses are built. "This is a big-ass country, my man," his poor, dead friend Joe Doherty had said to him once. "We ain't stingy with our land like you Brits." He guessed that the acreage on which he stood was around the same as that of his own home in Gullane, and wondered how much less it had cost.

The front door opened before he reached it. A straw-haired woman appeared, leaning against the frame and frowning at him as he approached; she looked to be in her early thirties, around Sarah's age, and was dressed much as his wife did at home, in jeans, tee-shirt and trainers.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Skinner smiled at her; her expression softened a little, but suspicion remained in her eyes. "I hope so," he replied. He took out his warrant card and held it up for her to see; at home or abroad, he never went anywhere without it. "I'm a police officer. I'm not from around here, but I've been working with the Erie County sheriff in the investigation of Ron Neidholm's death. There are a couple of things I'd like to ask you."

The woman gasped, involuntarily. "Oh yeah," she exclaimed. "Poor Ron; how awful! He was such a nice man, for all that he was a big sports star; he was so ordinary, and so pleasant. I just can't imagine him being killed like they said. Right in the middle of my little boy's birthday party too; why I spoke to him that very afternoon. He came across to say hello."

She paused, and gave him an appraising look; Skinner found himself reminded of Alex, when he had taken her to Edinburgh Zoo as an eight-year-old. She had peered at the pygmy hippos in exactly the same way. "You're Scottish, aren't you?" she asked.

"I am indeed," he replied. "From Lanarkshire originally, but now from Edinburgh."

"How interesting. I'm Scottish too," she tittered, 'not that you'd know it to listen to me. Actually, I'm Canadian, but my parents emigrated from Scotland to Toronto about forty years ago. They came from Bellshill. That's in Lanarkshire, isn't it?"

"It sure is. My mother was brought up there."

"Hey, small world. Won't you come in? My name's Elaine, by the way;

Elaine Aitchison. My husband's Scottish too; well, Scottish from Hamilton, Ontario. His job moved us down here."

"Nice to meet you," he replied. "My name's Bob Skinner, if you couldn't read it on my card."

She led the way into a house that would have seemed large in Scotland, but which by American standards was modest in size. He followed her through into a reception room that was furnished as traditionally as anything he had ever seen; three-piece, fabric-upholstered suite, set facing a big fireplace with a console television beside it. The room had windows to the front and back; in the yard he could see a playpen, in which a child was kicking a ball, on unsteady legs.

"That's Ally, my younger son," said Mrs. Aitchison. "He's just two. Ryan, my older boy, turned seven on Monday; it was his birthday party we were having when poor Ron was killed."

"You said you spoke to him just before he died."

"Yeah. He saw the party balloons, and once the kids had arrived he came across to wish Ryan happy birthday. He brought him a football, and he'd signed it, too."

"Did you know him very well?" asked Skinner.

"Well enough. Francis, my husband, thought it was great having a football star for a neighbour, but Ron might as well have been a shoe salesman by the way he acted."

"Did you talk to him for long on Monday?"

"Not really; I was in the middle of the party. But he stayed long enough to organise a touch football game for the boys and we spoke then. I asked him about his girlfriend. I'd seen him with her at the weekend. She was new; actually I don't recall seeing him with a girl on any of his visits before."

"What did he say about her?"

Mrs. Aitchison sighed. "He lit up like a Christmas tree, the poor man. He said she was someone he'd met up with again after a long time, someone he'd never stopped loving. He told me that she'd just split with her husband, and that he hoped she'd settle down with him, since he'd decided to quit football for good."

"Was he expecting company on Monday?"

"I think he was expecting her. He said he had to go, because he thought he'd be having a visitor that evening, and he wanted to get ready. He said he didn't know when, but he was pretty sure she'd come.

When I think about it again, it could only have been her he was talking about."

"Did you see her arrive?"

"No. I saw the police take her away, then drive her car away, that was all."

"Did you see anyone else come to the house before that?"

"No; but then I wasn't looking, I was feeding eighteen kids and getting them all to the bathroom and such."

Skinner frowned. "Elaine," he asked, 'did anyone from the sheriff's detective bureau speak to you on Monday?"