Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

"Yeah, well, you know what I always say. It's a bit like sex. Even when it's bad it's good." He laughed just as much as before, giving me another view of his stumps, but this time there were wodges of half-masticated bread and ham clagging the gaps between them and strings of saliva hung down from his top palate. I turned away and gypped.

"So what can you tell me?" I asked when I dared look back at him.

He swallowed and scavenged around the recesses of his mouth with his tongue. "Mate o' mine," he began, 'heard a conversation in a pub.

Might be interesting." He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a gesture recognised in every market in the world.

I said: "Don't muck me about, O'Keefe. I saved you losing your stock on Saturday, not to mention appearing before the beak this morning. If you've got something for me, let's have it."

"Fair enough, Mr. Priest. Thought it was worth a try, that's all.

This mate. He was in t'Half a Sixpence, in Dewsbury, about a month ago. He was at t'bar, getting a pint, an' three blokes were leaning on it."

"Go on."

"Two of 'em was rough-looking, he reckoned. Not mucky or owl, but tough. "Eavies, you might say. T'other one was a bit of a wide boy.

Smart suit, sunglasses, 'anky in his top pocket."

"What did they say?"

"I'm coming to it." The waitress brought the teas and sandwich. When she'd gone he said: "One of the rough ones asked t'toff if there was anything else. He said, no, just the computer, and 'anded 'im a bit o' paper. The rough one looked at it and said no problem. Then one of 'em said: "I don't suppose you want any elephant, do you?" an' they all 'ad a good laugh."

"Elephant? What's that?" I asked.

"I dunno. My mate thought it was maybe a drug. Don't you know?"

"It could be. They have all sorts of different names for them.

A computer was bought with the stolen cards from the last robbery, so I'm fairly certain you're on to something, O'Keefe. You'd better tell me who this mate is."

"He's called Collins. "Wilkie" Collins, but he won't talk to you. He 'ates cops."

"Would I know him if I saw him?"

"Doubt it. He only does Dewsbury and Leeds."

"OK, you'll have to talk to him for me. Tell him that it's only a matter of time before somebody dies and he could help prevent it. Maybe that will change his mind. For a start, I want a better description of all three of them. What time of day was it, did he say?"

"Dinner time."

"Right. You've done well for me. Find out what you can and give me a ring. If I don't hear from you I'll come looking, eh?"

"Glad to be of assistance, Mr. Priest," he replied, grinning.

I left my tea untouched and drove back to Heckley. I skipped lunch.

O'Keefe, with his odd eye and bad teeth, had left me without an appetite. He could earn a good living hiring himself out to slimming clubs as an appetite suppressant.

The outer office was deserted except for Dave, crouched over his desk, telephone to ear. He raised his head and gave me a thumbs-up as I walked through. There was a sheet of A4 on my desk with a message on it to ring DJ Roberts, timed at eleven seventeen, with a number I didn't recognise. I was staring at it when Dave ambled in.

"Seen this?" I said, waving the page before his eyes.

"Yeah. One of the girls brought it in and I had a quick look. DJ's the son, isn't he?"

"Mmm. Wonder what he wants?"

"Give him a ring."

"First things first. How've you gone on?"

"Pretty good," he said, settling on to the spare chair and smoothing a sheet of paper on the desk. "Listen to this. Melissa Frances Youngman was born in Anlaby Maternity Home on New Year's Day 1951. She attended Cathedral Grammar School, Beverley, where she became head girl and passed ten O levels and four A levels. I spoke to the school secretary, she was very helpful. Melissa passed her driving test in 1968 but has never registered a motor vehicle."

"Probably given driving lessons for doing so well at school," I suggested.

"If that's a dig then I resent it," he snarled.

"Sorry."

"I should think so. In 1969 she enrolled at Essex University to study palaeontology and her mother died shortly afterwards, in August 1970.

She was only forty-two."

"Did you find cause of death?"

"Accidental overdose."

"That must have been unsettling for Melissa."

"It must, mustn't it? Her father, incidentally, died in 1995. Melissa only did one year at Essex, but there's a note on her record to say she applied to Edinburgh and the Sorbonne for a place there. That's in Paris." He spun the sheet of paper round and pushed it towards me, so I could read his notes for myself.

"I thought it was in Scotland," I said, but he ignored me. 1969, Essex, I thought. Then Edinburgh or the Sorbonne, and Leeds in 1975 or 1974. "It looks as if she decided to become a professional student," I declared, adding: "I wonder what her influences were? Why would a small-town girl like that, with a decent intellect, dye her hair purple back in those days, when it was considered pretty outrageous?"

Dave said: "I'm only a couple of years older than her and when I was at school loads of the kids had their heads dyed purple."

"That was by the Nit Lady," I reminded him. "You had to have a dose of malt every day, too, for rickets."

"No, we had some white powder for them."

"Rickets, not crickets. So what do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"Mmm."

"I think you want me to start all over again at Edinburgh University and the Sorbonne, but you want me to volunteer because you daren't ask me yourself."

"That's about it," I admitted. "Man with dog never has to barV "I might have to recruit Sophie's help again with the Sorbonne.

Sheparlais better French than me."

"So do Interpol," I suggested.

He nodded his agreement. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"There's one thing we could check," I said.

"I know! I know! I hadn't forgotten. Has she any form? I'll do it now." He stood up and went out into the big office, where one or two of the others had returned from wherever they'd been. I looked at my piled-up in-tray, grimaced, and reached for the top item. It was a report predicting the benefits of synchronised traffic lights on road congestion in the town centre. I ticked my name on the distribution list and slung it in the out-tray. If only they could all be so simple.

Dave was smiling when he came back five minutes later. "Two convictions," he told me. "Possession of a small quantity of a Class B drug, namely cannabis, in 1970, while living in Essex, and possession with intent to supply in 1974, when she was, believe it or not, a student at Durham University."

I said: "Durham! Jesus! She gets around."

"Small fine for the first offence. Community service order for the second."

"That's been a good day's work," I told him. "Well done."

"Cheers. Have you rung him?"

"Young Duncan? No, I'll do it now." I found the telephone number and dialled, convinced that the code was one I'd never used before. A girl answered almost immediately.

"Is Duncan there, please?" I asked.

"Duncan? You mean DJ?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Who wants him?"

"He wants me. He left a message."

"I'll get him."

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and hissed: "Woman; she's fetching him." I pointed to a phone in the outer office, and dialled the number to make it a party line. Dave went out and picked it up.

"Is that Inspector Priest?" said a voice I'd last heard talking about carburettors.

"Yes. How can I help you, DJ?"

"I, er, was just wondering about my Uncle Duncan. My dad told me you came to talk about him, free weeks ago, when I was fixing the bike."

"That's right. Did you get it going?"

"Yeah. No problem. It's just that, I, er, was a bit closer to my uncle than my dad knew, what with being named after him an' all. Went to see him now and again. I just wondered if you could tell me anyfing about how he died, and why. If you know what I mean."