Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

I had my usual meeting with Mr. Wood and started committing yesterday's story to print. I'd just reached the bit where the waitress at the Happy Burger kissed me goodbye and hoped I'd come again when the outer door burst open and the troops came laughing and jostling into the office. There was a knock on my door and Nigel entered, followed by Dave. I clicked Save and rocked my chair back on two legs. "Success?" I asked.

"Yep," Nigel said, with a self-satisfied grin.

"Go on."

"Definitely a criminal type. Found a Guardian under a cushion on the settee."

"Bang to rights," I said.

"Oh, and about an ounce of what looks like herbal cannabis."

"It gets better." Herbal cannabis was suddenly turning up all over the place. I turned to Dave. "Did he, er, behave himself?" I asked, nodding at Nigel. He has a reputation for impetuosity.

"He was OK," Sparky replied.

"Only OK?"

"Well, I wasn't going to mention it…"

"Mention what?"

"Don't encourage him," Nigel interrupted. "He'll mention it, whatever it is. Believe me, he'll mention it. Nothing will stop him."

"I don't know if I ought to…" Dave continued, feigning awkwardness.

"Now you've got to tell me," I replied, my hands in an appealing gesture that I'd seen so many times in court.

"Well…" he went on, 'we brayed on the front door, like we do, and this little old lady opened it…"

"Mmm."

"And… well… it's just that… to be honest… I thought Freeze, motherfucker! was a bit over the top."

"I never!" Nigel exclaimed. "Oh, forget it!"

"Little old ladies can be dangerous, David," I warned him. "Especially if they're carrying a handbag. Sometimes they have a jar of Pond's cold cream tucked in the bottom corner. Get sandbagged by one of those and it's like being hit by a flat-nosed.45. Anyway, it looks like you've saved us from a red face, so well done the boys."

"What about you?" Dave asked.

I flicked the monitor with the back of my knuckles. "Just putting it all down," I replied.

"J. J. Fox had a mention on the YTV news last night," Nigel said.

"What's he done?" I asked.

"Apparently that big new office block he's built near the river in Leeds is going to house Reynard Insurance, which will mean about a thousand extra jobs for the region. They're expecting him to come personally to cut the ribbon when it opens."

"Really? Did they say when?"

"Fraid not, but they said he'll no doubt stay at the Fox Borealis, where the penthouse suite is permanently earmarked for him."

"With a pad on the roof for his helicopter," Dave added.

"How frightfully non-U," I said. "It sounds as if Leeds has adopted a new son. Maybe we' 11 get a chance to have an audience with him when he comes, so let's do our homework."

The multiscreen was re showing Seven, and I fancied watching it again, but Jacquie wanted to see the one about three girls from small-town America who vowed to stay friends whatever life threw at them, so that's what I bought tickets for. The willowy blonde married a millionaire, the husband of the perky brunette beat her up and the redhead caught cancer. I used the time to muse on Crosby's story, wonder where I fitted in life's big picture and reflect on the nature of the universe immediately before the Big Bang. Some professor of radio astronomy had been on PM talking about waves ripples in space that he had detected. He said they were vibrations from the Big Bang, still travelling outwards fifteen billion years later. In which case, I thought, how come we arrived here first? Maybe I'd write to him and ask. Everybody was in tears as we left the cinema, so it must have all worked out in the end. I hadn't expected it to still be light outside, but it was. We strolled hand-in-hand through the town centre, which was nice, and had a pizza, which wasn't. Pizza isn't on my menu. If the Romans had taken the recipe for Yorkshire pudding back with them we'd never have heard of pizza. Jacquie invited me in for a coffee and introduced me to the kitten she'd acquired. I tickled its ears while we listened to Neil Diamond and Jacquie fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I used to like Neil Diamond, years ago. Now, I feel like throwing up. I sat through "Sweet Caroline', for old times' sake, and said I'd better go. We had a short but torrid necking session behind her front door and I left. Another day over.

Leeds became a university city early in the twentieth century. The colleges upon which it was built rose out of necessity, not from the beneficence of a monarch with aspirations beyond his intellect and a weather eye on his place in history. The textile industry required chemists and the mines and railways needed engineers. Then, as the north burgeoned with industrial growth, all the incidental needs of the population grew apace with it. Doctors and priests; bankers and businessmen; entrepreneurs and charlatans: they were swept in as if by a spring flood, dragged along on the coat tails of steam, iron, coal and wool. The Parkinson Tower is a Portland stone monolith that dominates the skyline to the north of the city and marks the epic entre of the rambling campus. I drove by it and looked for a parking place.

The University Registrar and Secretary was called Hugh Roper-Jones and he'd been at his desk when I rang him. Unfortunately he was about to attend a briefing of potential undergraduates, but he told me he had to be free before twelve for a lunch appointment. I said it wouldn't take long and I'd be waiting outside his door.

I walked down the road past the departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics and Electrical Engineering and there it was Chemistry. Duncan Roberts had been studying chemistry. I ran up the steps and through the wood and glass doors. Inside was a lobby but no reception desk. I scanned the notice-boards that lined the walls and decided that students hadn't changed much since my day.

They still needed cheap accommodation and sold bicycles and went to concerts and piss-ups. A series of glossy posters advertised the department and listed some of its achievements. It reminded me that this was where they invented DFO. We use it to develop latent fingerprints, and I felt I was among friends. The next door led into a corridor with a lecture theatre facing me. A sign on the wall indicated that SOMS was on the fourth floor and LHASAUK on the second.

Now I was way out of my depth. One thing I did know was that Roper-Jones's office was not in this block, so I left.

He was in the E. C. Stoner Building, and waiting for me. I told him about the phone call from Duncan and suggested that he'd possibly witnessed someone starting a fire, back in 1975, in which there had been a fatality. Perhaps, I was wondering, he had confided in a fellow student. If Mr. Roper-Jones could furnish me with the names and last-known addresses of Duncan's classmates I could be on my way and leave him to lunch in peace.

"Ah!" he said ominously, fingering a cuff.

"Don't tell me," I said.

"I'm afraid, Inspector, that our computerised records only go back as far as 1980."

"Damn!"

"Before that, they are all on cards."

"But you have them?"

"Oh yes. We can go right back to 1905, and before, for some departments."

The door behind me opened and a female voice said: "Oh, sorry!" I turned round and saw an elegant woman in a blue dress with white stripes, holding the door wide.

"Five minutes, Emm, please," Roper-Jones told her and she left.

"If somebody could show us the cards I could supply a body to go through them," I suggested.

"I think we'll be able to do better than that for you, Inspector," he replied. "Let me show you the students' office."

He led me along the corridor to where it widened to make a waiting area, with a row of tellers' windows in the wall, like a bank. We went through a door into the large office behind the windows. It was cluttered with boxes and files and desks and terminals. They were running out of space. Would computerisation save them before they achieved meltdown and had to move to bigger premises? It was unlikely; there is no single recorded case in history of computerisation ever saving paper.