Colin Dexter - The Fire Engine That Disappeared

‘Yes, of course, that’s okay, but—’

‘It’s not at all okay,’ said Gunvald Larsson angrily. ‘I happen to have to take the responsibility for this assignment and I prefer not to be messed about by some bungler in the ordinary force.’

Zachrisson was only twenty-three years old and an ordinary policeman. At the moment he belonged to the Protection Section in the Second District. Gunvald Larsson was twenty years older and an inspector in the Stockholm Murder Squad. When Zachrisson opened his mouth to reply, Gunvald Larsson raised his large right hand and said harshly:

‘No more backchat, thanks. Get off to the station in Rosenlundsgatan and have a cup of coffee or something. In precisely half an hour, you’re to be back here, fresh and alert, so you’d better get a move on.’

Zachrisson went. Gunvald Larsson looked at his wristwatch, sighed and said to himself, ‘Rookie.’

Then he turned right around, walked through the bushes and began climbing up the slope, muttering and swearing under his breath because the thick rubber soles of his Italian winter shoes could not get a grip on the icy stones.

Zachrisson had been right in that the knoll did not offer any shelter whatsoever against the mercilessly biting north wind, and he himself had been right when he had said that this was the best observation point. The house lay directly in front and slightly below him. He could not help observing what happened in the building and its immediate surroundings. The windows were all wholly or partly covered with frosted ice and no lights were showing behind them. The only sign of life was the smoke from the chimney, which hardly had time to be coloured by the cold before it was torn to shreds by the wind and rushed away in great cotton-wool blobs up into the starless sky.

The man on the knoll automatically moved his feet from side to side and flexed his fingers inside his sheepskin-lined gloves. Before becoming a policeman, Gunvald had been a sailor, first as an ordinary seaman in the navy, later on cargo ships in the North Atlantic, and many wintry watches on open bridges had taught him the art of keeping warm. He was also an expert on this sort of assignment, though nowadays he preferred to restrict himself to planning and supervising them. After he had stood on the knoll for a while, he was able to make out a flickering light behind the window furthest to the right on the second floor, as if someone had struck a match to light a cigarette or look at the time, for instance. He glanced automatically at his own watch. It was four minutes past eleven. Sixteen minutes since Zachrisson had left his post. By this time, he was presumably sitting in the canteen at Maria police station, filling himself with coffee and grumbling to the off-duty uniformed policemen, a short-lived pleasure, for in seven minutes the man would have to be on the march back again. If he did not want to be in for the rollicking of the century, thought Gunvald Larsson grimly.

Then he thought for a few minutes about the number of people who might be in the house at that particular moment. There were four flats in the old building, two on the first floor and two on the second floor. Up on the left lived an unmarried woman in her thirties, with three children, all with different fathers. That was more or less all he knew about the lady and that was enough. Below her, to the left on the first floor, lived a married couple, old people. They were about seventy and had lived there for almost half a century, in contrast to the upper flats, which changed tenants rapidly. The husband drank and, in spite of his venerable age, he was a regular customer in the cells at Maria police station. To the right on the second floor lived a man who was also well known, but for more criminal reasons than just Saturday-night boozing. He was twenty-seven and already had six different sentences of varying lengths behind him. His crimes varied from drunken driving, breaking and entering, to assault. His name was Roth and it was he who had thrown a party for his one male and two female chums. Now they had turned off the record-player and the light, either to sleep or else to continue the festivities in some other way. And it was in his flat that someone had struck a match.

Below this flat, at the bottom right, lived the person whom Gunvald Larsson was watching. He knew what this person’s name was and what he looked like. On the other hand, oddly enough, he had no idea why the man had to be watched.

It had come about in this way: Gunvald Larsson was what the newspapers in exalted moments refer to as a murder-scout, and as at this particular moment there was no special murderer to scout for, he had been loaned to another department to be responsible for this assignment, on top of his own duties. He had been allocated a scratch collection of four men and given simple directions: Ensure that the man in question does not disappear and that nothing happens to him and note whom he meets.

He had not even bothered to ask what it was all about. Drugs, presumably. Everything seemed to be about drugs these days.

Now the watch had gone on for ten days and the only thing that had happened to the man in question was a tart and two halfbottles of booze.

Gunvald Larsson looked at his watch. Nine minutes past eleven. Eight minutes left.

He yawned and raised his arms to start beating them round him.

At that precise moment the house exploded.

The fire began with an ear-splitting bang. The windows in the right-hand first-floor flat were blown out and most of the gable seemed to be torn off the house, as simultaneously long ice-blue flames shot through the broken panes. Gunvald Larsson was standing on the top of the hillock with his arms stretched out, like a statue of the Saviour, paralytically staring at what was happening on the other side of the road. But only for a moment. Then he rushed, slipping and swearing, down the stony slope, across the street and up towards the house. As he ran, the flames changed colour and character, became orange and licked greedily upward along the boards. He also got the impression that the roof had already begun to sag above the right-hand part of the house, as if part of the actual foundations had been jerked away. The flat on the first floor had been in flames for several seconds and before he reached the stone steps outside the front door, it was burning in the room above as well.

He flung open the door and at once saw that it was too late. The door to the right in the hall had been torn off its hinges and was blocking the stairs. It was blazing like a giant log and the fire had begun to spread up the wooden staircase. A wave of intense heat blew back against him and he staggered, scorched and blinded, backwards down the outer steps. From inside the house came desperate screams of human beings in pain and terror. So far as he knew, there were at least eleven people in the building, helplessly barricaded inside this veritable death-trap. Presumably some of them were already dead. Tongues of flame were shooting out of the first-floor windows as if from a blowtorch.

Gunvald Larsson glanced swiftly around to see if there were any ladders or other aids. There was nothing in sight.

A window was thrown open on the second floor and through the smoke and flames he thought he could make out a woman, or rather a girl, who was screaming shrilly and hysterically. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled:

‘Jump! Jump to the right!’

She was up on the windowsill now, but hesitating.

‘Jump! Now! As far out as you can! I’ll catch you.’

The girl jumped. She came hurtling through the air straight at him and he managed to catch the falling body with his right arm between her legs and his left arm round her shoulders. She was not all that heavy, perhaps seven or eight stone, and he caught her expertly, without her even touching the ground. The moment he caught her, he swung right around so that he was protecting her from the roaring fire, took three steps and put her down on the ground. The girl was hardly more than seventeen. She was naked and her whole body was shaking as she screamed and tossed her head from side to side. Otherwise, he could see nothing wrong with her.