Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

"I've got a statement," Melissa said, bringing a page of Station Hotel notepaper from the inside pocket of her jacket. She unfolded it and we sat back, listening.

"In June or July 1975," she began, "I was having a sexual relationship with a university lecturer called Nick Kingston. I was infatuated with him and completely under his spell. He was a very charismatic man. He told me that he was renting a house in Chapeltown, Leeds, to use as a postal address for a mail order business he was just starting. The number on the house had worn off, so he asked me to write it on again, in chalk, so the postman would find it when the orders started coming in. He said he couldn't do neat numbers. He took me there one evening and I wrote the number thirty-two on the wall. A few days later he asked me to show a boy where it was. He was going to work for Nick, pick up the orders, or something. About a week after that the house was burnt down and some people lost their lives." She refolded the paper and slid it across the table towards me.

I placed my pen on it and pushed it back, saying: "Could you sign it, please."

She unfolded the statement, took the pen in her left hand and scrawled her signature across the bottom. I didn't look but I just knew that Dave's eyes had flickered my way.

We sat in silence for a while, then I said: "What colour was your hair then?"

She looked flustered, and turned to her solicitor. He decided it must be a leading question and came out with the usual is-it-relevant response.

"I'd like to know," I replied.

"I can't remember," she said.

"Was it purple?"

"I don't know."

"Was the boy you took to the house Duncan Roberts?"

"I'm not sure. Duncan rings a bell, but I never heard his surname."

"Are you sure he wasn't your boyfriend?"

"Positive."

"You didn't have an affair with him?"

"Not that one, but I had lots of boyfriends. It was never a problem for me."

I wanted to grill her about her relationship with Duncan, but managed to hold off. She'd already been threatened with the little we knew, when Piers and Graham saw her in America. That's why she was here, and I didn't want to reveal how fragile our case against her was. I asked Dave to start the video and explained to the tape recorder what we were doing.

The first image appeared, a still taken by a CCTV camera, with the number 1 in the corner. "If you recognise Kingston please say the number," I told her.

"That's him," she said, after a while.

"Number?"

"Eight."

There were sixty-five pictures, and seven of them were Kingston. She got all seven.

"Thanks," I said. "I think that's everything. We'll try to get you on a flight on Wednesday, if that suits you."

"The sooner the fuckin' better," Slade said, and flung his cup of spit into the waste bin.

Annette was waiting upstairs. Dave went to put the kettle on and I told her that Bonnie and Clyde were finding their own way back to the hotel. She was relieved of baby-sitting duties. "Thank God for that," she sighed. "They're the most thoroughly disagreeable couple I've ever met. Give me the Sylvan Fields lot any day."

"What did you find out about the telephone?" I asked. We were paying their bill, so the hotel had no qualms about feeding us the information.

"Ah! You're not going to like this. They've spent every waking hour on the phone. Several calls to Directory Enquiries, but we can't tell who they asked for; more to various parts of England, as if she's been renewing acquaintances; and several long calls to the USA. I've asked for a printout. It's as if they've deliberately run up the bill, because we're paying."

"They're anarchists, Annette," I said. "That's what anarchists do.

They'll probably put the plugs in and leave the taps running when they check out. I'd better have a word with BT."

Dave shouted: "How many sugars, Annette?"

"None, thank you," she called back.

"Listen, Annette," I said, quietly. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you to sit in on the interview, but Dave's been in on this since 1975. It's personal."

"That's OK, Mr. Priest," she replied.

I'm growing to like Annette. She's a good sport and has a pleasant nature. That Mr. Priest never fails to put me in my place, though.

Dave came in, carrying three teas, which says a lot for my department.

I found some custard creams and we told Annette all about Kermit Shermit and his filthy habits.

The others came filtering back, high on adrenalin and braggadocio.

Maggie had socked one of the Nelson brothers and the other had fallen into a stream. Good living in Tenerife had not equipped them for cross-country running. Masks and baseball bats were recovered from the Transit and a hand-drawn map was found showing directions to the house they'd intended to rob. Somebody was doing the leg work for them. Jeff sent the map to fingerprints.

We all shared in the success, and a bonus was that I didn't have to do the paperwork. In the middle of all the laughing I heard my phone ringing.

"CID, Call It Done," I said into it.

"Is that Inspector Priest?"

"Yes."

"Morning, Mr. Priest. It's Sergeant Watson from Division. As you know, the ACC leaves at the end of the week, and there's a presentation to him on Thursday night. I understand that you sometimes do cartoons for these events, and was wondering if you could knock one up for him?"

"Gosh, that's three whole days away," I replied. "I would think I could knock one up in that time. I could probably knock up a Sistine Chapel ceiling in three days."

"Oh, right, Mr. Priest. You'll send it over, will you."

"Will do."

I looked in my drawer to make sure the one I'd done three weeks earlier was still there. I didn't particularly like the ACC, so this had been a good opportunity to embarrass him. Not many people knew this, but a long time ago, when he was a humble superintendent in another division several hundred miles away, he had too much to drink at a chief constable's leaving bash and messed his trousers. He rang his wife to ask her to bring him a spare pair and skulked in the car park until she arrived with them. He took them from her, thanked her profusely, and sneaked back into the toilets to change. He took off the offending garment, stuffed it out of the window and removed the new one from the bag his good lady had handed him. It was a skirt she'd collected from the cleaner earlier in the day. My drawing recaptured the incident in all its bladder-wrenching humiliation.

It also reminded me that I needed two frames for the abstracts I'd done. One of our uniformed PCs is a dab hand at woodwork and has a nice little sideline turning out door stops and wooden apples that he sells for charity. No wooden Indians, though. I rang him and he promised to make the frames for me. He pointed out that the exhibition was next Sunday and I'd left it a bit late. I'd thought it was weeks away.

We had a debriefing in the afternoon, eating ice creams that we'd sent out for. Barry and Len Nelson had been interviewed and fed into the sausage machine for processing. They were looking at twenty years each. I deflated the euphoria by saying that we'd missed a vital opening. The bar they part-owned was called the Pigeon Pie. "And the yob we arrested for using Joe McLelland's credit card was wearing a Pigeon Pie T-shirt." I said. "We should have asked him about it."

"T-shirts from pubs in Tenerife are ten-a-penny," someone stated.

"Fair enough," I agreed, licking the runny bits from round the edges, 'but it was still a link, and we missed it."

Jeff sid: "Ah, but with luck like yours, boss, we can afford the odd mistake." He pulled the chocolate flake out and used it as a spoon.

"What do you mean, luck?" I demanded, with mock affront.

"Going to the rhubarb sheds like you did. That was dead jam my "Luck had nothing to do with it. Good detective work, that's what it was. Right, Dave?"