Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

Fanny’s tears had stopped. The face she turned to Gemma was bleak and empty as a paper husk, and she drew herself up with obvious effort. “She’s not coming back, ever,” she’d said then, coldly, clearly. “She might as well be dead.”

Gemma felt the skin tighten between her shoulder blades as she remembered Fanny’s expression. There was nothing more cruel than betrayal, and here they had a web of betrayals. There was Laura, who had perhaps meant to betray Tony; Tony, who meant to betray Laura; and Elaine, who had betrayed both Tony and Fanny. But while Tony’s and Laura’s motivations seemed at least understandable, Elaine’s did not.

And if it was Laura Novak who had died in the warehouse, who had killed her? Where were Elaine and Harriet, and how did Chloe Yarwood fit into it all? For if they had proof of anything, it was that Chloe Yarwood had been in the warehouse that night.

Kincaid was right; they had to talk.

Setting a fire in daylight took nerve and cunning, but he had both, and he was more than ready for the challenge. Since the burning of the warehouse on Thursday night, he had slept only feverishly, his brain teeming with images of flames and shouting firefighters.

The pleasure had been more intense than any he’d experienced, and yet it had left him with a niggling shard of discontent. He’d held the open flame of the pocket lighter to the furniture – oh, yes – but he’d missed the careful planning and plotting that had preceded his other fires; it had been like orgasm without foreplay. Now he knew he had to own the fire from beginning to end, and the desire to get it right drove him like an itch under his skin.

But this one, this one he’d worked out well in advance. He knew the building from a job he’d had some years ago, and he’d marked it then on the map he carried always in the back of his mind. The place was perfect, a neglected Victorian warehouse, set back from any main thoroughfare. This meant not only that he’d be less likely to be seen, but that the blaze would have more time to take hold before it was reported. And best yet, he knew the building had an illegal propane tank. Once he’d set alight the cardboard boxes accumulated on the ground floor, the warehouse would burn like fury.

They would come, the firemen – firefighters, he corrected himself, his lip curling at the politically correct term – like little gods in their coats and helmets and boots, and he would show them.

He thought of the photograph he kept by his bed, a faded sepia image of a Victorian fire company, all Southwark men, in full regalia. They might look like Gilbert and Sullivan caricatures to the modern eye, with their luxuriant whiskers and pointed helmets, their mongrel dogs in their laps, but these men had been real firefighters who had fought real fires. Heroes. They had been heroes the likes of which the fire service would not see again.

They had breathed smoke like dragons, and they had conquered fire with the poor means at their disposal. And if sometimes the fire had conquered them, there had been no shame in it.

Stepping out of the shadows, he crossed the empty road and eased open the ground-floor door of the warehouse. He’d cut the padlocks the previous night, on his way home from work, gambling that the damage wouldn’t be noticed on a Sunday. He looked round the cavernous space, adjusted a cardboard box filled with the crisp packets he’d collected for the purpose, and pulled his lighter from his pocket.

Oh, they would come, these great new firefighters, little gods in their arrogance – and then they would run like rats.

Kincaid was waiting for her on the terrace of the Anchor, leaning on the railing overlooking the Thames. The day had stayed damp and dull, and now water, sky, and the City across the river seemed to meld one into the other, like a Turner painting with all the color leached out.

“Samuel Pepys watched the City burn from here, did you know that?” He gestured at the prospect as Gemma joined him.

“From the Anchor?”

“I don’t think the Anchor was built until a century or so after the Great Fire. But somewhere near here, on the Southwark bank. It must have been terrifying, but thrilling in a way, as well,” he added, his gaze fixed on the distance.

Gemma had no patience at the moment for daydreaming about fires. They had more concrete matters to deal with. “I’ve rung the boys,” she said, accepting the half pint of cider he’d bought for her. “They’ve been home to let the dogs out and have gone back to Wesley’s. They’re having a jam session, apparently, with Wes’s cousins, and eating until they’re sick.”

“That’s good for Kit.” Kincaid looked relieved. “He’s hardly touched anything for days.”

“I’ve got to get home soon,” said Gemma, her guilt over her absence only slightly tempered by the knowledge that the boys were in good hands. “I want to be there when they get back.”

“I know. But I’ll be a while yet.” Running a hand through his hair, as was his habit when he was tired, or exasperated, he sighed, then drank off some of his pint. “God, what a day. I’ve rushed Laura Novak’s hair sample to Konnie. He’s not happy, I can tell you, but he said he’d start on it straightaway.” He turned from the river to study Gemma’s face. “You’ve not much doubt, have you, that it was Laura’s body in the warehouse?”

“No. I don’t think Laura took Harriet. And if she’s not with her daughter, there’s only one thing that would keep her from moving heaven and earth to try to find her. But if Laura’s dead, who killed her, and why?”

“Novak’s the obvious suspect,” Kincaid said. “Maybe he decided he couldn’t keep Laura from taking Harriet back, even in Czechoslovakia, so he arranged to meet her Thursday night. He killed her, intending to take Harriet out of the country the next day, before Laura’s death was discovered. And he’d have wanted to delay identification of the body, hence the stripping and the fire.”

Gemma was shaking her head even before he’d finished. “Why would Laura have arranged to leave Harriet with Mrs. Bletchley if she were just meeting Tony for a talk? Why would she have lied about having to work that night? Why would she have agreed to meet Tony in an empty warehouse? That wouldn’t make sense even if they’d been on good terms. And” – she waved a hand to stop him from interrupting- “you didn’t see Tony’s face when you rang the bell at his flat and he thought it was Laura. He was genuinely terrified.”

“He’d also been on a bender and was barely coherent. Maybe he was having guilt-induced hallucinations. Like Lady Macbeth.”

“Now you’re really stretching it.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

Kincaid grinned. “Admitted. But tell me if you’ve a better idea.”

Resting her elbows on the railing, Gemma gazed out at the river, as he had done. A train rumbled by over the railway bridge, but the pedestrian walkway along Bankside was fairly quiet. The weekend was winding down, the time she could give to this case was running out, and it seemed they’d made little progress. “Why would Laura have gone to Michael Yarwood’s warehouse? Is there some connection between them we haven’t seen?”

“I’ve got Doug out looking for Yarwood as well as Chloe. Yarwood’s ex-wife says he’s not been home since earlier today, and that he’s desperately trying to raise money, even trying to find a quick buyer for his house, which he’s always refused to sell.”

Gemma frowned. “That might make it more likely that he torched the warehouse for the insurance money, if it weren’t for the small matter of the body-”

“Not if he needed immediate cash. Insurance payouts are never quick.”