Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

The ferocity of the blast shocked him. He'd barely started to stuff the burning newspaper under the door when, with a roar like a jet engine, a blade of flame scythed his feet and hands, sending him staggering backwards down the stone steps and out on to the pavement.

His gloves and plimsolls were on fire, his bare ankles stinging with pain. He jumped up and down in a wild dance, slapping the flames until they were extinguished, and swung a still-smoking leg over the Claud Butler racing bike that had cost him most of his first year's grant.

Panic is a defence mechanism given to us by nature, in spite of protestations that we should never succumb to it, and it had served him well. The paint on the door was already bubbling with heat and the glass panel cracking as he turned out of the cobbled street and on to the main road, expertly spinning the pedals to locate his toes in the clips.

Duncan Roberts was twenty years old, a student of chemistry at Leeds University, and in trouble. Correction. He had been in trouble. Now, hopefully, his tribulations were behind him. He snicked the Derailleur gears up five sprockets and stood on the pedals, swooping down towards the city centre on the traffic-free road, the cool morning air chilling the sweat of fear that had drenched him in that terrifying moment when it looked as if his well-laid plan had gone wrong.

He was behind with his rent, his studies and his overdraft, but so were most of his friends. They survived by bumming meals and beer, dos sing on floors and copying each other's lecture notes. Then Melissa, his girlfriend, had announced that she was pregnant.

"A hundred quid," she'd said.

"A hundred quid!" he'd echoed. "Where do you think I'll get a hundred quid? Can't you get rid of it, you know, locally, sort of thing?"

"Get real, Duncan. I'm not having some old biddy poking a coathanger up me, and I'm not drinking a bottle of gin while sitting in a bath holding a nutmeg between my knees. There's this place, like a clinic, where someone I know went. It's in London. What with the fare and a room for the night it'll cost a hundred pounds, and that's all I'll settle for, so you'd better get used to it."

Duncan glanced over his shoulder to check for traffic and made a sweeping right turn across the empty junction that took him into Buslingthorpe Lane. He stopped once, to dump the empty petrol bottle in a litter bin, then chased his shadow, flickering and dancing over cobbles and kerbs, back to student bed sit land via a maze of streets of blind terraced houses. The only other people he saw were early-morning dog-walkers and muscle-bound paper-boys, cursing the advent of the Sunday supplements. Behind him, a hundred years of desiccation had left the woodwork in the house drier than a hag. The flames ripped and tore through the building like an enraged tiger loosed from its tormentors. Floors, staircases, linoleum and furniture were devoured in its rampage, exploding into incandescence as the flames reached them until the very walls themselves were ablaze.

Melissa had come up with the idea that Duncan should advertise in the Other Paper for work. He thought it was crazy, but went along because it was the line of least resistance and he had nothing better to suggest. "Student requires work. Anything considered'. Slip in a legal or within limits, of course, to imply that you weren't bothered if it wasn't, and wait for the offers to plop on to the doormat.

Students did it all the time, but he suspected that the only replies they received were from sexual deviants or fellow students with underdeveloped senses of humour. Which meant any of them.

The reply came the very day after the advert appeared. It was neatly typed, reasonably written and on good paper. The best bit, though, was that enclosed with it were four crisp five-pound notes. Duncan's teeth rattled as the hard racing tyres bounced un forgivingly on the much-repaired tarmac of his own back street, and he cocked a leg over the saddle as he freewheeled to rest, front wheel against the broken gate. He lifted the bike easily on to his shoulder and let himself in.

Nobody was about.

He'd memorised the note, then burned it. It said:

Dear Desperate Student,

I am sorry to hear about your troubles, but am sure that they are nothing compared to mine. No doubt a few pounds are all you need. I need a few thousand. Perhaps we can help each other.

I own the house whose address is at the top of this letter. Tomorrow I am going abroad for one week and the house will be empty. It would be very convenient if it burned down while I was away. I would suggest that Sunday morning, say between six and seven, might be the best time to strike. Petrol through the letter box, a match under the door. I'm sure you can work out how to do it. Wear gloves and take the normal precautions.

If the house is gone when I return, I will immediately post you two hundred pounds in cash. I am putting a lot of trust in you. I hope you feel you can trust me. Who dares wins. The twenty pounds is a non-returnable bonus.

Good luck.

Duncan leaned the bike against the wall of the hallway, the brake lever settling into the groove it had made in the plaster, and chained the front wheel to the frame. He peeped round the door of the downstairs room. Two strangers were asleep on the floor, one of them no doubt having abandoned the settee in the middle of the night when the itching started. He tiptoed upstairs, stepping gingerly between the cans and bottles, and skirted the rucksack, broken record player and surplus coffee table on the landing.

His room was a dump, but it was home. The job was done. He flopped on the bed and closed his eyes. The place smelled, even to him. That's what going out in the fresh air does for you, he thought, and made a mental note to avoid it in the future. He giggled to himself, and wished Melissa was with him. He was wide awake, thanks to the adrenalin coursing through his veins, with nowhere to go.

Melissa was in London, arranging her appointment and creating an alibi for the two of them. He hadn't thought it necessary, but she'd insisted. She was six years older than he was, and he'd given way to her experience. If there was one thing he loved doing, it was giving way to her experience. They'd recced the house together and decided it was a piece of cake. It was the end one of a Victorian terrace, a bit like the flat, with a small yard in front overgrown with willow-herb and brambles, transferred from the park via the alimentary canals of the local pigeons.

"Nothing to it," she'd said, putting her arm through his and smiling up at him. They'd celebrated by spending some of the twenty on a curry and a few pints.

Duncan rolled on his side and embraced an armful of bedsheet, burying his face in it. In one week he would have two hundred pounds, and their troubles would be over. He fell asleep dreaming of what he could do with the remaining hundred, and never heard the sirens of the fire engines as they charged across the city.

It was early afternoon when he awoke. He peeled his cycling gear off and changed into his normal uniform of jeans and Hawkwind T-shirt. One of the strangers was in the kitchen, making toast, accompanied by Radio Leeds from a cheap transistor on the window-sill.

"Hi, I'm Duncan," Duncan said with exaggerated bonhomie as he entered the room. "Where are the others?"

"Oh, er, John, hi. Gone to Headingley on a demo. D'you live here?"

"Yeah. Any coffee made?"

"Coming up. Pete said it was OK if I helped myself. Hope I haven't taken your bread."

"Don't worry about it. What is it, anti-apartheid again?"

"What's what?"

"The demo."

"No idea. Not my scene."

"Thank fuck for that." Duncan nodded towards the radio. "Anything on the news?" he asked.