Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

It's too big for me to handle without some authority from on high, but its source is an ex-MP, so I've got to take it seriously."

"Right, Charlie. The wife's got tickets for the ballet tonight, but I could always tell her that something's…"

"Er, not that soon," I interrupted. "How about tomorrow?"

He sounded disappointed, but agreed to meet me at the Happy Burger on the M25, near Waltham Cross. He has a thing about their pancakes and likes to escape from the office whenever possible. Clandestine meetings at motorway services made him feel important, but we'd worked on a couple of big jobs together and I trusted him to know if Crosby was being paranoid or if there really was a case. I placed the phone back and wandered into the open-plan, feeling suddenly restless. The wheels were in motion. There was nobody to talk to, so I filled the kettle and switched it on. Somebody's tabloid was lying there. I looked at the ladies' bosoms, the front page and the sport, in that order. Rebecca, on page three, was studying law. A barrister's wig was perched on her head, improving her posture wonderfully, and the caption read: All stand for the judge. She was beautiful, as they always are. Humiliating the plain ones isn't any fun. Silly girl, I thought. Thumbing through the rest I came across the horoscopes and scanned the dates. July 23 to August 23, that was me. Leo, would you believe it. It said that I was drifting aimlessly, and ought to try harder to create an impression. I knew I should have come in my shorts.

"How much is on it?" Nigel asked much later after he'd listened to the story, turning the diskette in his fingers as if he'd never seen one before.

"Not sure," I replied. "Just do one copy to start with, please, for me to give to Fearnside. Then, if there's not too much of it, do another couple. Put something on your FIN33 to cover it."

Sparky was sitting on the edge of my desk, perusing the list Crosby had given me. "Bloody hell," he concluded, offering it back to me.

"Is that your considered opinion?" I asked.

"I knew there was more to that fire than everybody thought," he replied.

"Are you sure he's not a nutter?" Nigel asked. "When we lived in Virginia Water we had a neighbour who claimed to be the last descendant of Walter Raleigh. Spent the family fortune trying to prove it and finished up in a mental hospital."

"No, I'm not sure at all," I replied.

"You mean…" Sparky began, '… there really is a place called Virginia Water?"

"Of course there is," I told him. "And very nice, too. It's close to Blackbush airport."

"Blackbush airport," Nigel echoed. "How do you know about Blackbush airport?"

"I saw Dylan there in '79. Me and quarter of a million others."

"You were there!" he exclaimed. "With all the hippies! We couldn't get out of the avenue for two days."

"Cultural event of the century," I declared. "Now here's what we do.

We keep this under our hats. We three and Mr. Wood are the only ones to know about it. Nigel, you and Jeff will have to run the everyday show, while I work on this when I can. I'll borrow Dave when I need another pair of eyes and ears. OK?"

"No problem, boss."

"If anything goes off I want to be there," Dave insisted, his tone as hard as millstone grit.

"I know you do, old son," I assured him. "And you will be."

Tuesday morning someone hijacked the postman's van and ram-raided the Sylvan Fields news agent with it. They escaped with four boxes of cheese and onion crisps and ten copies of the Guardian. We're looking for a liberal with a savoury tooth. I escaped by a nifty piece of delegation and headed south on the M1.

A lorry with a puncture in the middle of the roadworks near Northampton ate up the extra hour I'd allowed, so I arrived at the Happy Burger just about dead on time. Fearnside was sitting in his big Rover. He got out as I parked and we walked into the cafe together, without ceremony.

"It's good to see you, Charlie," he said when we were seated in the smoking section, where it was quieter.

"And you, Mr. Fearnside," I replied. "I just hope I'm not wasting your time."

"Well, first of all, let's cut out this Mr. Fearnside nonsense, eh?

It's Roland. And secondly, you got me out of an accountability meeting, so you're definitely not wasting my time. So what's it all about, eh?"

They did pancakes with cherries, maple syrup or caramel sauce, and Fearnside ordered one of each. The little girl who took the order looked flustered. She might be an ace at French irregular verbs, but this hadn't been in her crash course on waitressing. "You mean, all on one plate?" she improvised.

"Yes please," Fearnside told her, beaming. I ordered a cheeseburger.

When she'd gone I said: "In July 1975 we had an MP called Keith Crosby in Heckley. You may remember him." Fearnside gave a hesitant nod. "He fell from grace when an old terraced house he'd been bequeathed by an aunt burned down and eight people women and children were burned to death. He'd allowed the house to be used as a shelter for battered women and it was breaking the fire regulations. He resigned as an MP shortly afterwards."

Our waitress was hovering. I stopped speaking and looked up at her.

"We don't do three pancakes together," she told Fearnside, 'but you could have them on separate plates, if that's all right?"

"That will be fine, my dear," he replied with a warm smile. He was growing benevolent in his old age. I decided he must be nearer to retiring than I'd thought. "Go on, Charlie," he prompted as she turned to leave.

"Keith Crosby is convinced that J. J. Fox was behind the fire, to deliberately discredit him. Apparently he'd been investigating Fox's background and business methods. Asking questions in the House."

"J. J. Fox!" Fearnside mouthed, almost silently. "The J. J. Fox?"

"Of the Reynard Organisation," I confirmed.

"Pardon me asking this, Charlie, but does he have any… you know… evidence!"

I pushed a manila envelope across the table. "I'd hardly call it evidence, but it's all in there."

"Bloody hell, Charlie," he said. "When I was with the SFO we had a file on Fox thicker than prep school porridge, but we never pinned anything on him. Not that that meant a lot; we had files on nearly everyone who earned more than the commissioner did." He patted the envelope. "I'll have to talk to a few people. You realise that, don't you?"

What he meant was that Fox would have friends in the force, and they might have fraternal contacts in Yorkshire. "No problem," I said.

The girl brought the food and Fearnside slid his pancakes, each complete with a blob of vanilla ice cream, on to one plate. "There you go, my dear," he said, handing her the two redundant plates. I cut my cheeseburger in half and wished I'd ordered it with fries.

We ate in silence and I continued the story over coffee. Fearnside dabbed his chin with his napkin and nodded at my words. At the far end of the restaurant a couple and their two children were eating. The older child, a teenage boy, was brain damaged He kept jerking his head around and waving his arms. His father fed him spoonfuls of food and wiped his mouth. Both of them were smiling, as if it were a game they played. I half-remembered a line from a poem; G. K. Chesterton, I believe: To love is to love the unlovable, or it is no virtue at all, and for a moment or two everything I was trying to do seemed second rate.

"Hell's teeth, Charlie," Fearnside said. "If you can land something on Fox the SFO'll put your statue up in Elm Street."

"So you think it's worth pursuing?"

"From what you've told me, most certainly, old boy."

"Good. I'm just glad I haven't wasted your time."

"Not at all. Not at all."

I decided to have a little celebration and have cream in my coffee. As I fumbled with a plastic thimble of what passed for it I said: "So how long have you got to go, then, Roland?" His reply took the wind out of my spinnaker.