Nicci French - Secret Smile

I turned to her, my skin prickling. 'Fire?'

'There was a fire here,' she said. 'You can see. A whole Year Eleven classroom was burnt to the ground, and half the IT area.'

She pointed across the yard to a low red-brick building that was newer than the rest of the school.

'How awful,' I said. I felt hot and then cold all over. 'How did it happen?'

'Never caught no one. Probably kids fooling around. Awful what they get up to nowadays, isn't it? There's Ellie now.' She raised an arm to a lanky girl in plaits walking our way.

'So no one was caught?'

'Good luck with the move,' said one of them over her shoulder. 'Maybe see you again, if you decide to come here.'

I got back into the van and put another Polo into my mouth. I sucked on it, feeling its circle become thinner and thinner until it broke and dissolved. I turned on the ignition, but still sat with the engine idling, staring at the new classroom, imagining a blaze of leaping orange flames. Simon Rees's revenge. I shivered in the warmth. Like a sign I knew how to read, like graffiti scrawled on the wall: Brendan woz 'ere.

Don was his own worst enemy, in all sorts of ways. He smoked too much. He kept irregular hours. He existed in a general state of vagueness which I began to think was largely deceptive, but not entirely. When I was sealing the floor, he wandered in with two mugs and I had to wave him back before he caused disaster. I joined him out in the corridor and he handed me a coffee and started thinking aloud about other things that needed doing in his flat. Did I think the window frames looked a bit worn? (Yes, I did.) Could anything be done about the cracks in the living room door? (Yes, if money were no object.) I sniffed at the strong black coffee to try to rid myself of the resinous reek of the floor lacquer.

'It's dangerous to think of things as you go along,' I said. 'That's how costs spiral out of control.'

'I've heard that,' Don said, sipping his coffee. 'The problem is that it's easier to think up ideas once the work has started. Don't you find that?'

I shook my head.

'There's always more you can do,' I said. 'Always something else that can be fixed. What I like is getting a job finished.'

'You don't want more work?'

'That's a funny thing,' I said. 'I have this feeling that not only I should be working at the moment. Shouldn't you be as well?'

Don looked a bit shifty.

'I have this problem,' he said. 'I suffer from attention deficit disorder.'

'Is that a real illness?'

'It's more like an excuse with a long name. This is my day when I work from home.'

'Does this count as work?'

'It's fallow time. I think and write and make plans.'

'What do you do the rest of the time?'

'Bits of teaching, I see some patients, other stuff.'

'You look too young for that,' I said.

'You mean "immature"?'

'You should learn to take a compliment,' I said. 'I was saying I was impressed.'

'I think it's cleverer to be able to do what you do,' he said.

'You don't know the half of it. Remember Brendan, that man I told you about?'

'Yes.'

'I found his sister. She lives in a council house in Chelmsford.'

'You went to see her?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

I couldn't think of a short answer, so I told him what I'd done. I told him how Brendan wasn't his real name, about what he did to his school.

'Isn't that scary?'

'Are you scared yourself?'

'Me?' I shook my head. 'This isn't about me. This is about other people, don't you see?'

'It's hard to tell.'

'You said yourself he sounded dangerous. And look at all the signs.'

'Maybe.'

'He set fire to his school. Would you admit that that's a symptom of mental disturbance?'

'You didn't say what happened. Was he charged with arson? Did he receive any kind of treatment?'

I took a deep breath.

'He was never caught.'

'Did the sister tell you he did it?'

'Reading between the lines, it's obvious. Can't you see the pattern? Everything fits. Is it true or is it not true that setting fires as a child is one of the earlier signs of being a psychopath?'

I'd finished my coffee and Don gently took the mug from my hand.

'This conversation isn't going the way I planned,' he said.

'What do you mean?'

'I was going to work my way around to saying that it's fun having you working here and how I wondered if we could have a drink some time. I was also going to say at the same time that you probably get hassled all the time like this. Maybe I was also going to apologize as well because perhaps it's difficult for a woman like you because you can't do your job without being harassed by people like me.'

I couldn't help smiling at this.

'Instead I started going on about this psychopath I used to know.'

'That's the thing,' said Don. 'I don't want to offend you.'

'I'm not easily offended.'

Don paused and looked at me as if he were trying to decide if I were telling the truth.

'I worry that you misunderstood what I told you before.'

'Why do you worry?'

'I don't think you should have gone to see those women.'

'You think it's dangerous?'

He took a sip of his coffee and then gave an expression of disgust.

'Cold,' he said. 'You should be careful about interfering in other people's lives.'

'I've told you,' I said, with a harder tone in my voice. 'Brendan is dangerous. Do you disagree?'

'There are colleagues of mine who carry out assessments for social workers about children who are at risk. Every so often a child will be murdered and the social workers and the psychiatrists and the police will be blamed in the press for having known the child was in danger and not having acted before. What the press won't mention is the hundreds and thousands of other children who are also in that grey area of being poor, vulnerable, threatened, hopeless. But most of them will turn out more or less all right. There's no magic checklist, Miranda. You wouldn't believe how many people I see who are on the edge. You can tick all the boxes. They have been bullied and beaten and sexually abused. Yes, they may have set fires. Whatever the profilers say, that doesn't make you Jack the Ripper. Above all, he's out of your life and it's not your business any more.'

'Don, if you had sold a car and then you got a report that there was something dangerous about it, that the brakes didn't work, would you just forget about it? Would it not be your business?'

Don looked genuinely troubled by this.

'I don't know, Miranda. I want to say that I admire you for doing this. You're being a good Samaritan. Better than that, you're being a good Samaritan for someone you don't know. I just want to say two things. The first is that people aren't like cars. And the second is, what are you actually going to do?'

'It's very simple,' I said. 'I want to find out if he's going out with anybody else. If he is, then she will be at risk and I'll warn her.'

'She may not be grateful,' said Don. 'A gesture like that could be misconstrued.'

'That doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'm not easily embarrassed.'

'And you may be putting yourself in danger.'

When he said this, I felt a shiver go through me. It wasn't apprehension, though, more like a surge of exhilaration. I had a strange sense of stepping out of my life and all the things that trapped me.

'That's not important,' I said to Don.

'Will you be careful?'

'Yes,' I said, meaning no. I would not be careful; I would be unstoppable.

I wanted to find Brendan without his knowing I'd found him. It was more difficult than I expected. I phoned an old friend of Laura's called Sally, whom I'd seen at the funeral. I guessed that she'd been in touch recently. Her tone became awkward and constrained when I identified myself. Obviously she must have heard some version or other of the tangled relationships between Brendan, Laura and me. Did they feel sorry for me? Did they think I was to blame in some way? I hardly gave it a thought. I told her I wanted to get in touch with Brendan. Was he living in Laura's flat? She said that she didn't think so, but that I should check with Laura's parents.