Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

Maybe I'd ask Fox if he wanted to make a similar donation.

After that we'd talk to Kingston. We were flapping around in the dark, spreading shit and not knowing where it might land. We didn't even know if they talked to each other. The fallback plan was to arrest Fox and ask him some searching questions. We'd get no answers and have to release him, but there'd be leaks of information and the papers would sit up and take notice. Every one of them would put a specialist team on the Fox story and they'd turn up more dirt than we could dream about.

Thursday morning Piers rang me from his home. They'd landed at Heathrow three hours earlier and he'd just staggered in, jet-lagged and weary. I imagined him with a five o'clock shadow and his bow tie askew and wondered what they'd thought of him in Hillbilly Land.

"Have you brought Melissa back with you?" I asked.

"No, but she said she'll come," Piers replied. "Those photographs were crucial. At first she denied ever knowing Kingston, but with them we were able to convince her otherwise. When she realised that the crap was about to hit the fan in a big way, and we were willing to make a deal with her, she became more co-operative."

"What's she offering?"

"First of all let me tell you about where she lives. It's a shanty town of trailers, not unlike some of those places you see from the train in north Wales, except it's not raining all the time. She lives with an older man who is supposed to be some kind of revolutionary poet or something. They have ties with a ranch up in the hills, and spend a lot of time there. I think it's probably where their redneck friends hang out. They're into the gun culture in a big way, the place was bristling with them."

"Did you feel safe?" I asked. It sounded dodgy to me.

"Not really, Charlie," he replied. "Even though we had the deputy sheriff with us each time we visited them. They have some mean-looking neighbours."

"How well off is she?"

"Hard to say. Not very, at first glance, but they have plenty of possessions: the trailer, big Dodge pickup, huge television, freezer, air-conditioning, you name it. I'd say their main problem is cash flow. Melissa is having problems finding the money to have her teeth fixed."

"Her teeth?"

"That's right. This is the good bit. Their belief in self-sufficiency and disrespect for the establishment precludes having health insurance, it would appear, and Melissa is suffering from impacted wisdom teeth.

They're giving her a lot of trouble."

"Sounds painful. How does that help us?"

"Like this. Melissa IDs Kingston for us and signs a statement saying that he told her to mark the number on the house in Leeds and show Duncan Roberts which it was. She thought he was just visiting there, or something. She swears she knew nothing of any plan to burn it down."

"She's a lying little madam," I said.

"That's as may be," Piers replied. "Her story is that she was a nervous little student and Kingston was a charismatic lecturer. She was under his spell. Our side of the bargain is that we fly her to England with her boyfriend, house them for a week somewhere cheap but cheerful up near you, and arrange for her to have her teeth fixed. What do you think?"

I thought for a few seconds before replying, then said: "I think you've done well, Piers. That's about as much as you could possibly achieve, but it means she's getting away with murder. We only know about Leeds.

What happened, who did she recruit, in Durham or Manchester, California, Paris or wherever?"

"I understand your feelings," Piers told me, 'but I think it's the best we'll do. We don't know how she fits into the scheme of things; whether she was a leading light or a tiny cog; and you can't catch 'em all, Charlie."

America had done him good, loosened him up. He was calling me Charlie.

After a long silence he said: "There is one little titbit I've been saving. It might upset all our plans, but on the other hand, it could be useful. How does this sound?"

When he'd finished I said: "Right. I'm convinced; let's do it."

Piers went home and slept for fourteen hours. On Friday he briefed Tregellis, who had no objections, and on Monday he phoned Melissa and said we were trying to make an appointment for her to have her wisdom teeth fixed. That was my job. The appointment, that is, although I was quite willing to tackle the teeth myself, with the pliers from my little toolkit.

Over the weekend I tidied the garden, did some washing and took my shirts to the lady who irons them for me. She's a widow who lives a few doors away. Before her husband died he was the only friend I had in the street. The others don't like me because my dandelion seeds blow into their gardens. And I'm the law. I stroll round the cul-de-sac and pretend to look at then-tax discs, and as soon as I've passed they dash out to check them. We had home-made lemonade in her garden, with carrot cake, and I paid for it by making her laugh.

I bought three broad sheets on Sunday and scanned the business pages for news of Fox and Reynard. All of them told the story about him opening Reynard Tower, in Leeds, which would be the new seat of his insurance empire. The jobs, the spokesperson assured us, would be real ones.

Monday I gave Annette the job of negotiating with our contacts at Heckley General to see if they would be able to do Melissa's teeth at short notice. It would cost us, but a specialist said he could fit her in, after hours. In any other profession it's called moonlighting, using the boss's tackle, and would result in the sack. In the NHS it's normal practice. Can you imagine Kwik-Fit allowing their mechanics to fit exhausts to the cars of their private customers after five o'clock?

Not on your Nelly, Jose.

I had a long session with Nigel; questions and answers, role-playing.

He's good at stuff like that, and it was useful. We lunched at the Chinese and Nigel tested me on my knowledge of the Reynard Organisation. I scored ten out of ten, but I'd done some swotting.

Tregellis rang to wish me luck and Sparky poked his head round the door to say the same thing. I felt as if I was about to fight Mike Tyson. I emptied my in-tray and went home, slightly disappointed that there was no postcard of the Acropolis in there.

Tea was a tin of sardines, full of essential oils no, that's aroma therapy but they're good for you; followed by a piece of my neighbour's carrot cake that she'd insisted I bring home. I wondered what her apple pies were like. After that I found two big pieces of hardboard and painted them with white emulsion. The art exhibition was two weeks away and I was behind schedule. I did some sketches and by the time I went to bed I'd developed a couple of ideas.

I've interviewed people who've strangled wives, stabbed lovers, shot strangers, smothered babies. Some filled me with rage, others made me weep. All of them had a story, some redeeming feature, that reminded me of the old saw: There but for the grace of God… Well, nearly all of them. But Fox was different. He was from a mould that is rarely used, thank heaven. If what Crosby had told me was true, his goals in life were self-preservation and the accumulation of wealth and power.

Vast wealth. Monstrous power. The tools he used in the pursuit of these were murder and a cold indifference to the lives of anyone else.

He'd had fifty years to hone his skills, and tomorrow I was meeting him. One thing was certain; I wouldn't come away from that meeting much wiser than when I went in. But I'd know my quarry. I'd have seen him on his own patch, surrounded by his imperial guard of lawyers. I'd know what I was up against the next time we met, and I was sure there'd be a next time.

The weather changed through the night, as the forecasters had predicted. The summer was over. Flurries of rain rattled against the bedroom window like handfuls of gravel tossed by a lover. I sat up with a start. Perhaps it wasn't rain… but the sound of water running along the gutter told me it was. I sank back into my pillow and tried to sleep.