Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

"Um, allowing for leave, I'll be away a week on Friday."

And then I'd be on my own, I thought.

I hadn't known what to expect of Welwyn Garden City, so it came as a pleasant surprise. I'd telephoned the Robertses after arranging to meet Fearnside, and Mrs. Roberts had told me that her husband, Andrew, would be in any night after five thirty. Two junctions on the M25 and four short ones up the Al and I was there, an hour early. The approaches to the town it's not a city, that's just its name were along an avenue with wide close-cropped verges and wall-to-wall trees. I followed the intermittent town centre signs and found myself on a one-way system that routed me into the shopping area, where my initial enthusiasm gave way to dismay. The planners had done a good job, with some decent open spaces, and it's probably a pleasant enough place to live and work, but the architect only knew one type of brick and one shape of window. He was working to a tight schedule, so he designed one building and rubber-stamped the rest. Couldn't see any of the famous concrete cows anywhere. Or was that Milton Keynes? Come to think of it, was it Milton Keynes where I was supposed to be? I decided it didn't make much difference either way. I thought about exploring the town centre, but a drive through sufficed. I found the street where the Robertses lived and parked up for an hour, listening to the radio.

It was an ornate semi with jutting eaves in what was more like an overgrown jungle than a leafy suburb. Someone had overlooked the simple fact that trees grow. Their front garden boasted a giant flowering cherry, long past its best, and a wishing well. A Bedford Rascal with Andrew's Carpet Fitter's painted on the side stood on the drive, behind a fairly recent Saab and an elderly Fiesta. I was at the home of the phantom apostrophe bandit. The garage door was open and a teenage boy with lank blond hair and acne was working on a Honda trail bike. There was a nasty blank space behind the engine, with two suspicious-looking bolts projecting into it.

"Problems?" I said, to introduce myself.

He spared me a worried glance and said: "Yeah, it's eight-stroking on the overrun."

"That sounds painful."

"It's the carburettor."

"Will you be able to fix it?"

"I hope so. Are you looking for Dad?"

"Yep."

"He's round the back. DAD! Your visitor's here."

Dad wore his hair in a ponytail and had a tattoo, nothing extravagant, on each arm. He was wearing cut-down jeans and a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt. Definitely not what I'd expected.

"DI Charlie Priest," I said, extending my hand, 'from Heckley CID."

He gave me a limp shake. "Andrew Roberts. Pleased to meet you. I'm just lighting the barbecue, round the back." He turned and led the way, me following behind.

It had just reached the God-will-it-ever-burn stage, with smoke billowing over the lapboard fence into the neighbour's yard. The back garden was mainly lawn, with those little apple trees that only reach five feet tall growing along one side and a greenhouse down at the bottom. They had a pond with a naked cherub piddling into it, and an ultraviolet bug-killer was already glowing on the wall, like a neon sign outside a house of pleasure. This was a no-fly zone. He poked his head into the kitchen to tell his wife I was here and invited me to sit on a plastic chair.

"First of all," I began, 'can I say how sorry I am about your brother."

"Fancy a beer?" he asked. I opened my mouth to say how jolly welcome that would be but he cut me off with: "Oh, you're on duty, aren't you?

Never mind, I'll get Shaz to make a pot of tea. Duncan? Yeah, it were sad. To tell the troof I hadn't seen him for years. He was free years older than me, went his own way, like. You said on the phone that it was somefing that happened back in 1975."

"That's right. There was a fire, in Leeds. A short while ago Duncan, or someone we now believe to be Duncan, rang the Friends in Need people to say he knew who started the fire."

"I wrote to them," he said, adding: "Well, I got DJ to."

"DJ?"

He pointed towards the garage and said: "Duncan John."

"Your son?"

"Yeah. He's a bright lad. We've always called him DJ."

"It was your letter that put us on to Duncan. Your brother Duncan, that is. The person who rang was obviously distressed, suicidal."

"Jesus," he hissed.

"Did Duncan know Leeds, back then?"

"Yeah. He was at the university there."

A minute piece of the jigsaw fell into place. "Tell me about him," I invited. "What was he like, before he went to Leeds?"

He fingered his left ear and I noticed the ring through it. "He was my big bruvver," he said. "I looked up to him. Troof is, I worshipped him. At least I did until he went to Leeds. After that there was a lot of pressure on me from Mam and Dad to follow him, but I just wasn't bright enough. Before that, though, we got on well. All he was interested in was bikes. Push bikes, that is. He raced them, on the road, on the track, and he'd take me wiv him. He was good, and we had some fun. Then things went pear-shaped, and suddenly they didn't want me to follow him. They were quite happy for number two son to settle for an apprenticeship."

"Pear-shaped? In what way?"

"He fell in wiv the wrong crowd. He did well his first year, kept up wiv his training and his studies, but then he started drinking a lot and got into debt. He bought a Claud Butler, he said, but I didn't believe him. We dreamt about Claud Butlers in them days. He used to write to me, all about the parties and how they'd drunk the pub dry. It sounded great at the time, but afterwards I realised that he was sliding. He kept sending home for money, first from Dad, then Mam, and then from me. He dropped out halfway through his second year, and we hardly saw or heard from him again after that."

"You say he went to Leeds University?"

"Yeah."

"To read what?"

"Chemistry."

"Did you save his letters?"

He shook his head. "No, sorry."

"Did he mention any names in them?"

Another head-shake.

"Did he mention Keith Crosby?"

"The Friends in Need man? No."

"Any girlfriends?"

"No." He hesitated, then added: "Come to fink of it, he did mention one, once."

"Can you remember her name?"

"He didn't say. He just said he was going out wiv this bird but he didn't fink he'd ever dare bring her home. He raved on about her. Said she had purple hair and a ring frew her nose. In them days that was way out. From anuvver planet. I'd never even seen anyone like that back then. Not for real. I didn't believe him and he said he'd send me a picture, but he never did."

"That's a shame," I said.

It was a sad story, and it's a hundred times more common since drugs other than alcohol became freely available. After Leeds Duncan had moved to Manchester, vanished for ten years and resurfaced in Brixton, living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They'd last met at their mother's funeral. Andrew had tried to help him and lots of promises were made, but it hadn't worked out. The barbecue was glowing brightly and I could sense Andrew's impatience to be up there flourishing the giant pepper grinder. He didn't invite me to share a steak so I thanked him for his help and left. I never got that cup of tea and didn't find out who Shaz was. As I walked past the Rascal I resisted the urge to whip out my pen and draw a line through the offending apostrophe. "How many effs in apostrophe?" "There is no effin' apostrophe." "Boom-boom, thank you and good night."

"Where is everybody?" I asked, surveying the empty desks and noting the absence of jackets, daily papers and items of food required to see a team of the force's finest through their strife-torn day. Job on, I was told. The chief suspect for the ram-raid had just had an early-morning call and at that very moment was standing in his summer-weight jim jams explaining that he'd always been a Guardian reader; he bought it for the dog-racing tips.