Val McDermid - The Wire in the Blood

‘I’m not going to attempt to pretend this is a social chat so we can get to know each other better,’ she announced, sharing the biscuits out among the three of them. Di Earnshaw watched her, eyes like currants in a suet pudding, hating the way her new boss managed to look elegant in a linen suit with more creases than a dosser’s when she just looked lumpy in her perfectly pressed chain-store skirt and jacket.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Tommy said, a grin slowly spreading. ‘I was beginning to worry in case we’d got a guv’nor who didn’t understand the importance of Tetley’s Bitter to a well-run CID.’

Carol’s answering smile was wry. ‘It’s Bradfield I came from, remember?’

‘That’s why we were worried, ma’am,’ Tommy replied.

Lee snorted with suppressed laughter, turned it into a cough and spluttered, ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

‘You will be,’ Carol said pleasantly. ‘I’ve got a task for you three. I’ve been taking a good look at the overnights since I got here, and I’m a bit concerned about the high incidence of unexplained fires and query arsons that we’ve got on our ground. I spotted five query arsons in the last month and when I made some checks with uniform, I found out there have been another half-dozen unexplained outbreaks of fire.’

‘You always get that kind of thing round the docks,’ Tommy said, casually shrugging big shoulders inside a baggy silk blouson that had gone out of fashion a couple of years previously.

‘I appreciate that, but I’m wondering if there’s a bit more to it than that. Agreed, a couple of the smaller blazes are obvious routine cock-ups, but I’m wondering if there’s something else going on here.’ Carol left it dangling to see who would pick it up.

‘A firebug, you mean, ma’am?’ It was Di Earnshaw, the voice pleasant but the expression bordering on the insolent.

‘A serial arsonist, yes.’

There was a momentary silence. Carol reckoned she knew what they were thinking. The East Yorkshire force might be a new entity, but these officers had worked this patch under the old regime. They were in with the bricks, whereas she was the new kid in town, desperate to shine at their expense. And they weren’t sure whether to roll with it or try to derail her. Somehow she had to persuade them that she was the star they should be hitching their wagons to. ‘There’s a pattern,’ she said. ‘Empty premises, early hours of the morning. Schools, light industrial units, warehouses. Nothing too big, nowhere there might be a night watchman to put the mockers on it. But serious nevertheless. Big fires, all of them. They’ve caused a lot of damage and the insurance companies must be hurting more than they like.’

‘Nobody’s said owt about an arsonist on the rampage,’ Tommy remarked calmly. ‘Usually, the firemen tip us the wink if they think there’s something a bit not right on the go.’

‘Either that or the local rag gives us a load of earache,’ Lee chipped in through a mouthful of his second KitKat. Lean as a whippet in spite of the biscuits and the three sugars in his coffee, Carol noted. One to watch for high-strung hyperactivity.

‘Call me picky, but I prefer it when we’re setting the agenda, not the local hacks or the fire service,’ Carol said coolly. ‘Arson isn’t a Mickey Mouse crime. Like murder, it has terrible consequences. And like murder, you’ve got a stack of potential motives. Fraud, the destruction of evidence, the elimination of competition, revenge and cover-up, at the “logical” end of the spectrum. And at the screwed-up end, we have the ones who do it for kicks and sexual gratification. Like serial killers, they nearly always have their own internal logic that they mistake for something that makes sense to the rest of us.

‘Fortunately for us, serial murder is a lot less common than serial arson. Insurers reckon a quarter of all the fires in the UK have been set deliberately. Imagine if a quarter of all deaths were murder.’

Taylor looked bored. Lee Whitbread stared blankly at her, his hand halfway to the cigarette packet in front of him. Di Earnshaw was the only one who appeared interested in making a contribution. ‘I’ve heard it said that the incidence of arson is an index of the economic prosperity of a country. The more arson there is, the worse the economy is doing. Well, there’s plenty unemployed round here,’ she said with the air of someone who expects to be ignored.

‘And that’s something we should bear in mind,’ Carol said, nodding with approval. ‘Now, this is what I want. A careful trawl through the overnights for CID and uniform for the last six months to see what we come up with. I want the victims re-interviewed to check if there are any obvious common factors, like the same insurance company. Sort it out among yourselves. I’ll be having a chat with the fire chief before the four of us reconvene in … shall we say three days? Fine. Any questions?’

‘I could do the fire chief, ma’am,’ Di Earnshaw said eagerly. ‘I’ve had dealings with him before.’

‘Thanks for the offer, Di, but the sooner I make his acquaintance, the happier I’ll feel.’

Di Earnshaw’s lips seemed to shrink inwards in disapproval, but she merely nodded.

‘You want us to drop our other cases?’ Tommy asked.

Carol’s smile was sharp as an ice pick. She’d never had a soft spot for chancers. ‘Oh, please, Sergeant,’ she sighed. ‘I know what your case-load is. Like I said at the start of this conversation, it’s Bradfield I came from. Seaford might not be the big city, but that’s no reason for us to operate at village bobby pace.’

She stood up, taking in the shock in their faces. ‘I didn’t come here to fall out with people. But I will if I have to. If you think I’m a hard bastard to work for, watch me. However hard you work, you’ll see me matching it. I’d like us to be a team. But we have to play by my rules.’

Then she was gone. Tommy Taylor scratched his jaw. ‘That’s us told, then. Still think she’s shaggable, Lee?’

Di Earnshaw’s thin mouth pursed. ‘Not unless you like singing falsetto.’

‘I don’t think you’d feel a lot like singing,’ Lee said. ‘Anybody want that last KitKat?’

Shaz rubbed her eyes and turned away from the computer screen. She’d come in early so she could squeeze in a quick revision of the previous day’s software familiarization. Finding Tony at work on one of the other terminals had been a bonus. He’d looked astonished to see her walk through the door just after seven. ‘I thought I was the only workaholic insomniac around here,’ he’d greeted her.

‘I’m crap on computers,’ she’d said gruffly, trying to cover her satisfaction at having him to herself. ‘I’ve always needed to work twice as hard to keep up.’

Tony’s eyebrows had jumped. Cops didn’t generally admit weaknesses to an outsider. Either Shaz Bowman was even more unusual than he’d initially appreciated or else he was finally losing his alien status. ‘I thought everybody under thirty was a wizard on these,’ he said mildly.

‘Sorry to disappoint you. I was behind the door when the anoraks were being handed out,’ Shaz replied. She settled in front of her screen and pushed up the sleeves of her cotton sweater. ‘First remember your password,’ she muttered, wondering what he thought of her.

Two forces seethed under Shaz Bowman’s calm surface, taking it in turns to drive her. On the one hand, fear of failure gnawed at her, undermining everything she was and all she achieved. When she looked in the mirror, she never saw her good points, only the thinness of her lips and the lack of definition in her nose. When she reviewed her accomplishments, she saw only the places where she had fallen short, the heights she had failed to scale. The countervailing force was her ambition. Somehow, ever since she’d first begun to formulate the ambitions that drove her, those goals had restored her damaged self-confidence and shored up her vulnerabilities before they could cripple her. When her ambition threatened to tip her over into arrogance, somehow the fear would kick in at the crucial point, keeping her human.