A Taste For Burning Part 18

That was when the second alarm went off, in a china shop across the Village Green. The hum turned to an anxious hubbub with voices raised shrilly above it. There was a general determined movement towards the doors.

Sirens wailed in stereo in adjacent shops near the exit. The crowd stopped in its tracks and milled uncertainly, fire behind them and fire ahead, unable to quantify the danger, afraid of moving into burgeoning flame and exploding plate-gla.s.s.

The speed with which he reached it enabled Donovan to smother the little fire in the boutique before the evidence of how it started was destroyed. He did what the girl should have done: hauled the stock off the rails and trampled the burning dresses under other goods till the flames asphyxiated. Of course, he didn't have to answer to the girl's Aunty Marion, who'd selected every item with the loving care of someone fulfilling a life's ambition.

When he dug out the worst-affected garment and searched for the remnants of a pocket, he saw how it was done. Robin Taylor had needed neither time nor facilities to prepare an incendiary device. He'd walked into a corner shop and bought a few matchboxes with the small change in his pockets, and started a separate fire with each.

Donovan had played the same trick in Glencurran at a time -he must have been very young -when it still seemed funny to make people think they were being fire bombed. You wedged matches in the lid of the box so 226.

that when you lit the first one it burned down and lit others which lit others which finally lit the rest in a powerful little flare hot enough to start a fire.

By arranging the matches in different ways you could delay combustion for anything up to a minute. Long enough, in the Glencurran of twenty years ago, for the village's nastier little boys to take cover and watch the results from a safe distance. And long enough today, in the noise and bustle of a new shopping centre, for a madman to be strolling round leaving his little packages where they could smoulder unnoticed for a while before bursting into terrifying life.

At the china shop he'd left one in a box of shredded paper packaging, at the stationery shop near the entrance he'd put one behind a pile of jigsaws and in the haberdasher's next door he'd secreted it among the fancy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Although he hadn't been able to pursue his hobby recently he hadn't forgotten the governing principles. He still got an itch at the back of his nose when he looked at something seriously flammable.

As Donovan stamped out the last embers among the latest fashions he heard the consternation outside: the crash of gla.s.s, the milling cattle sounds, the clatter of feet as they hurried back towards him. 'G.o.d d.a.m.n!' He reached the boutique door as the knot of people swarmed past.

There might have been thirty of them, men, women and children, not yet a stampede because it wasn't panic driving them but a wholly rational desire to find a safe exit. They were making haste but not yet running blindly. The women still had hold of their children's hands, the men of their wives'. One young woman with a pushchair stooped to rescue a faded teddy ejected by the conveyance's other occupant.

Donovan took a moment to look around. The situation had changed while he was inside the shop, continued to develop even as he watched. Perhaps Robin Taylor had 227.

had more to work his mischief with than just matchboxes -there were still two cans of petrol unaccounted for -or perhaps it was his skill with them that was paying dividends. Across the concourse the china shop was ablaze, pewter smoke wreathing in the window and flames belching from the open door. The tinsel and crpe paper and Chinese lanterns with which the halls had been decorated made a conduit along which the fire could spread: already the paper and plastic strands were dripping flame into adjoining doorways.

There was also smoke and a little flame from the two shops flanking the main entrance, and a new conflagration starting further back into the building: a bad one to judge from the amount of dense black smoke rolling into the hallway. The situation wasn't a disaster yet but it was getting seriously unpleasant.

Donovan raised his voice above the hubbub and the clatter of feet, bringing the running people to an uncertain halt. 'Where the h.e.l.l do you think you're going?'

The woman with the pushchair looked at him quickly, recognizing the note of authority, her eyes full of fear and expectation. 'There's a fire. At the entrance, we can't get past. There must be another way out--?'

There was, of course; there were a number, and Donovan knew where they were. It was the first thing Liz had asked when they arrived. But the closest was a lot further than the main door, and also a lot narrower: if one of Robin Taylor's little packages flared up before they got there they could find themselves trapped. If one exploded as they got there they could trample one another fighting to get through.

He looked again towards the entrance. Flames were lapping now through the broken gla.s.s of both shop windows but the hall was wide, there was room to pa.s.s. As he watched another group of people, obeying the quieter authority of his inspector in the way people tended to, even himself if he didn't keep his wits about him, took 228.

their courage in their hands and ran the gauntlet, reaching the safety of the open door to a muted chorus of cheers.

There was no doubt in Donovan's mind that his people should leave the same way. Half a minute and they could be outside. The fire wasn't going to run out of control in that time: the fire crew already had a hose run out on the far side. It had to be safer than heading into the heart of a burning building in the hope that they could reach a back exit.

So he lied. 'There isn't. The way in is the way out. Ach, it's only a little fire, we'll get past easy enough.'

He drove them like a Border collie driving sheep, antic.i.p.ating where they might scatter and turn back and making sure that the first thing they saw when they glanced behind was him. He couldn't have stopped a determined mutiny. But as long as he seemed to know what he was doing, as long as the low monotone of his voice and the deliberate movements of his long body bespoke confidence, they would do as he said. As long as he seemed to be in control he was in control.

He moved them quickly towards the exit, and the only moment of drama was when David took one close-up too many of the policeman's hawkish profile, contrasting its grim determination with the amorphous shades of anxiety around him, 'and Donovan picked him up by his shirt front and said very quietly into his face, 'Stop it.'

When they reached the haberdasher's, its window belching a healthy adolescent blaze, the flock slowed and then stopped, looking from Donovan to the fire and back as if wondering which was the most dangerous.

He pushed through to where the front rank was holding up the advance. Irritation barred his voice. Tor pity's sake, you could drive a petrol-tanker through there! Take a run at it and you'll be through before you feel the heat.'

He thought about giving a demonstration but he was afraid that if he left them, even for a moment, they'd turn away and take their chances in the smoky labyrinth of 229.

the Mall. He pushed David through the shuffling knot. 'Go on, show them.'

David Shapiro had seen many fires in the last year, all of them at close quarters, most of them bigger than this. Familiarity had bred affection rather than contempt, but it had also taught him how much he could get away with. How close he could dance to the painted girl without ending up in her embrace. He knew Donovan was right: the flames weren't suddenly going to leap across the hallway incinerating everything in their path. This fire would do a lot more chest-beating before it went ape. He didn't run past, he sauntered.

'See?' said Donovan. 'Come on now, let's do it.'

Still they hesitated. 'What if--?'

'It won't,' he said forcibly. 'Now, are you going or do I have to throw you?'

'What about this?' someone said. A small fire-extinguisher was waved in the air.

It wasn't part of the shopping centre's fire precautions; perhaps someone had bought it in the car accessories shop across the Village Green. It wasn't big enough to make any impact -except on their morale, and right now it was lack of morale that was delaying their escape. Donovan nodded. 'OK. Aim at the base of the fire, inside the window. Do it now.'

He didn't wait to see the results. He knew they would be minimal. But there would be a moment before these people realized that when he could herd them to safety; he edged himself into the best position to do it and filled his lungs like John Wayne starting a cattle-drive.

But as he did so his eye recorded, as a kind of visual echo, something that didn't fit, and urgent as the other demands on his attention were he couldn't leave it alone until he pinned it down. Even then he didn't know what it meant. Someone smiling. Not the woman handling the fire extinguisher, the man behind who'd pa.s.sed it to her. Smiling against the backdrop of the flames.

230.

From a vague unfocused sense of something not right Donovan went to a full-blown appreciation of what was wrong at a speed defying the laws of physics. In all the wide world he knew only two men capable of smiling at such a time, and one of them had just strolled nonchalantly past the blazing shops. The other was Robin Taylor, who'd been missing quite long enough to buy a small domestic extinguisher and replace its contents with petrol from the can he'd bought at an unsuspecting garage.

He lunged forward, throwing people aside in his haste to reach the woman with the extinguisher. Even as he dived for her he yelled, 'Don't use--'

But it was too late. She was doing her best for everyone and she didn't waste any time. She read the instructions once and carried them out to the letter. A powerful little jet sprang from the extinguisher as Donovan reached for her arm.

Fed by petrol under pressure, the playful blaze turned in the wink of an eye to a great golden beast that leapt ravening from its lair straight at the gathered people, its flickering hugeness filling the exit they had hesitated too long to take. There was one shrill scream from the woman closest to it before the beast got her by the throat. After that there were shouts and screams everywhere, but none of them rose above the roaring of the fire.

231.

10.Donovan was. .h.i.t by three things in rapid succession blinding light, searing heat and the body of the woman thrown back by the explosive energy of the flare. He staggered, lost his footing and went down, and the fire rolled over him.

Liz, watching from the door, unaware until a split second before of any reason this group shouldn't make their way to safety as hers had done, saw the great gout of flame leap from the window and envelop the two figures closest. She saw Donovan lurch back with the screaming woman in his arms, saw him begin to fall; then like a billow of yellow silk in a Chinese pageant the fire enfolded him.

She cried out -not his name: 'Sergeant--!' Then big men in boots and oilskins shouldered her aside and a jet of hard water flew to meet the jet of flame.

As the hose swept the fire aside like a broom clearing leaves from a path the people who had shrunk back from it screaming saw salvation. Firemen came in under the hose to guide them out but they didn't wait, charging the stream to reach the safety of oilskin arms. Liz had to fight her way through them to follow the firemen into the Mall.

Though they knew who she was they shouldn't have let her pa.s.s; but in the chaos those who had the authority to stop her didn't see her and those who saw her didn't think she'd take no for an answer. She reached the casualties three strides behind Station Officer Silcott.

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For a moment she not only couldn't tell if they were alive, she couldn't tell which limbs were whose. All she could make out was a shapeless huddle on the floor, burned flesh glistening through charred cloth, an island of human wreckage in a fresh-water sea one centimetre deep. She bent and reached out but dared not touch them. 'Oh, dear G.o.d ...'

Silcott spared her a moment's kindness in his glance. 'It may not be as bad as it looks.'

Paramedics untangled the clasped bodies. Donovan surfaced to a sensation like having his fingers broken. The woman had spun against him and automatically he'd thrown his arm protectively around her. Now it was locked there, the fingers clenched on her shoulder. In fact she'd protected him. That arm was the only part of him directly exposed to the flash, and the skin was seared from knuckles to biceps, shiny red and black where his sleeve had charred into it. Otherwise he was barely touched. The woman, by contrast, was burned the length of her back and legs, the only undamaged skin a diagonal band under Donovan's arm.

'She's an emergency,' the paramedic rapped out tersely. 'He's just going to be b.l.o.o.d.y sore.'

They stretchered the woman out but the policeman was hauled to his feet and steered out more or less under his own power. Liz went with him, his good arm round her shoulders and hers round his waist, talking to him steadily. For a minute shock held him in limbo, with no clear idea what had happened or even if he'd been hurt. He looked at her vaguely as if he wasn't sure who she was. Then all at once she saw the slack muscles of his face firm and then clench as the pain of his arm got through to him.

By the time they got outside the woman was on board and the ambulance ready to leave, its lamp flashing to clear an exit. There was just time for Shapiro to push through the crowd, stick his head in at the open door and demand, 'Is he going to be all right?' And for Donovan 233.

to grit through his teeth, 'Yeah -except that he's lost his voice.' Then the paramedics slammed the door and the ambulance left with its siren wailing.

Liz and Shapiro used the s.p.a.ce where it had been to talk. Some of what had gone before she had inferred, some of it she'd had thrown at her in hasty s.n.a.t.c.hes just comprehensive enough for her to take the required actions. This was her first chance to hear it all, in detail and in sequence, and though it was a shocking story she was less surprised than she might have been. Less surprised than Shapiro had been; and perhaps more understanding.

Around them as they talked, rocking like an ocean, unsure what to do or where to go next, relieved to be safely outside but reluctant to turn their backs on the spectacle, two thousand people crowded the car park and leaned first towards the main entrance where the fire engine was pumping water by the ton into the burning building, then the other way to make sure they weren't missing the fireworks.

Peter Voss had wound up his act by now: everyone was out, the danger of ma.s.s panic was over, what they'd feared had happened but the situation was under control. At intervals Voss asked everyone to go home now, they'd do the fireworks another night, but there was little hope in his voice. Soon local radio would carry a bulletin; then, far from dispersing, the crowd would grow. Because the opening of a shopping centre is only a PR event, but n.o.body wants to miss a good fire.

'Oh, G.o.d,' sighed Shapiro dispiritedly, 'what a shambles. Donovan hurt; that poor girl terribly hurt; the damage here's going to run into hundreds of thousands; all because of one mad boy with a fire fetish. Do we know where he is?'

Liz nodded at the entrance, hoses leading in and smoke wreathing out. 'He was in there. Five, six minutes ago he was right there, outside the haberdasher's. I didn't see 234.

him leave. Unless we missed him, he's still in there.'

From outside it was hard to judge whether the fire was still spreading or if the firemen had mastered it. The rosy light flickering within said there were flames yet to be extinguished but not how big a task that would be. Td better tell Silcott.' Shapiro headed into the entrance where the Station Officer was directing operations.

While Shapiro was talking to Silcott Liz let her gaze travel over the crowd; not expecting to see the missing man, mostly out of habit. Uniform were moving people away from the building a few yards at a time and widening the corridor for the emergency services. As she watched a second fire engine did a handbrake turn off the ring road and surged through the crowd, everything on it that could flash or wail doing so.

David Shapiro arrived out of the bedlam without warning or greeting; one moment there was no sign of him, the next he was standing beside her, wiping his lens with a tissue as if he'd been there all along. 'There's a rear exit still open,' he said casually. 'Are you coming?'

She stared as if he'd offered her a caterpillar sandwich. 'Until those nice men in the Dayglo oilskins tell me it's safe, I'm not even peeping through a window.'

He shrugged. 'Suit yourself. I just thought Robin might leave that way. Still, you know your job.' He padded off along the side of the building, the camera on his chest like a badge of office.

Liz hesitated, drew a breath to call her chief. Then she let it go in a muttered profanity and trotted after his son. There were two reasons. One was that he was right, the exit should be watched, but taking officers out of the cordon could weaken it fatally. The other was that she suspected David meant to enter the building, his sights set on a climax for his portfolio, and if she asked him not to he just might not but if his father asked he would. David Shapiro was a young man who could literally die of obstinacy.

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The rear of the great pentagonal building ran parallel to the site boundary, only the unloading bays and room to swing a juggernaut between it and the fence. With the bulk of the building between them and all the activity the area was dark. Liz found it hard to maintain her focus on the shadow that was David Shapiro moving among the other shadows; when he stopped she almost walked into him. 'There.'

It wasn't the only fire exit at the rear of the building. The reason David had come here, Liz realized, was not because Robin Taylor was more likely to use this one than the others but because it suited his own purpose better. Emergency exits are designed to be opened from the inside, but there had been much coming and going earlier in the evening, putting the finishing touches to the opening displays, and the door had been wedged open. It gave on to a corridor, and the corridor was also dark but at the end danced a faint roseate glow.

David checked his camera, confident as a blind man of the feel of the settings, and moved towards the opening. Liz put her hand on his arm. 'That wasn't part of the deal.'

She felt him looking at her. 'There was no deal.' His tone was ambivalent: she heard wariness and elation, challenge and humour weaving through it. The feelings of a sportsman before a big game.

'You'll get me sacked,' she said, keeping her voice light. 'And if Station Officer Silcott finds you prancing about in there while his men are trying to work he'll attach you to his hose with a jubilee clip.'

David snorted with laughter. 'Tell you what. In the interests of protecting your employment, and saving me from a close encounter with a jubilee clip, I'll just go to the end of the corridor and shoot what I can see from there. OK?'

It wouldn't have been all right if she'd believed him, and she didn't believe him. But as she opened her mouth to say so, glancing over his shoulder she suddenly saw the 236.

quality of light inside the corridor diminish. It might have been the fires dying back but seemed too abrupt, more as if something had pa.s.sed in front of the light. Her body went as still as a pointer's. After a moment David realized why their argument had ended in a sudden silence and turned to watch too.

Someone was moving in the corridor. Not a fireman, the outline of the helmet was missing and the figure moved too freely for someone in boots and oilskins. At the same time there was indecision in the way it took a few paces towards the door, turned and hovered a moment watching the fires, turned again and made once more for the open air.

'It's him, isn't it?' whispered David.

'I think so.'

They whispered because unless he heard them Robin Taylor couldn't know they were there. They could see him because he was silhouetted against the glow, but behind them was only more darkness.

In spite of which Liz knew what David was doing as if the small movements of his hands were taking place in the beam of an arc-lamp. 'Use that camera,' she breathed, 'and I'll put it where the next picture it takes will make medical history.' His hands returned to his sides.

They inched apart, afraid that even in the dark Robin would see them as he reached the door. Now he was ready to leave, it seemed, because he didn't look back again but came directly at them, not hurrying but not hesitating either. It was clear from the rhythm of his stride that he had no idea he was observed.

Liz wished now she'd risked taking men from crowd control. But it was already too late: if she called for help she'd drive him back into the building, if she ran for help they'd lose him in the dark, if she sent David the reinforcements would be too long coming and she'd have to face him alone. She hadn't forgotten the damage he'd inflicted on his uncle and Donovan, each of them stronger 237.

than she was. Her only real weapon was surprise; all her ingenuity now was bent to using it.

She stooped carefully, eyes glued to the movement in the corridor, and lifted the half-brick wedging the door, keeping it open with her hand. Kicking the brick aside would have made a noise; the other advantage was that if need be she could thump him with it. Carrying unauthorized weapons was the quickest way Liz knew for a detective inspector to get back on points duty, but making use of what came to hand in an emergency was intelligent policing.

It wasn't much of a plan, but what she intended to do was wait until he stepped outside then let the door close behind him, identify herself and arrest him. She thought he would either try to return to the building, wasting time and energy trying to open a door with no outside handle, or make a break for the perimeter fence. Either way she'd tackle him from behind, the safest way with a dangerous man. Then she'd yell her head off and hope help would come before he could struggle free and beat her face in.

Of course, there was David. She didn't know how much she could rely on him. He was smaller than her and he hadn't done training courses in subduing violent criminals but he was better than nothing. As a last resort he could dazzle Robin with his flashgun.

She never knew what alerted him. She made neither sound nor movement to betray her presence, and she didn't believe that David did. But four or five paces from the door Robin suddenly became uneasy. He slowed, glanced behind him, tipped his head on one side and seemed to peer into the darkness outside. She froze where she stood, three-quarters behind the door; only her hand and half her face would have been visible had there been light to see, and she didn't dare shift those for fear that the movement would confirm his suspicion. She held her breath in case he was doing the same in order to listen.

For what seemed a long time, and probably was a 238.

couple of minutes, none of the three of them moved. They breathed, when they had to, through their mouths. David remained invisible against the wall; Liz concentrated on keeping the door still. The faceless shade that was Robin Taylor remained balanced on the b.a.l.l.s of its feet, its hands lightly spread, ready to dance back at any moment. Only the fact that he wasn't sure, that he felt the presence of another person but saw and heard nothing, kept him there.

At last he seemed rea.s.sured by the continued silence, the dearth of movement. The shape of him relaxed a fraction, the hands coming down, the weight dropping into the feet. He took a step towards the door.

And it was at that moment, with the man she sought almost within her grasp and still unaware of her, that the fires which continued to burn inside the Mall got a sudden new impetus from somewhere and flared up behind him, casting a gout of rosy light the length of the dark corridor. It was only for a second but it was enough. It showed him the half-open door, the hand holding it, the face peering round it. He knew he'd been right when he sensed a waiting presence.

What he didn't know was whether it was one person or a posse waiting for him. If he'd known it was only one woman detective with the dubious support of a magazine photographer he might have come on. Probably he could have flattened them both and been over the perimeter fence before anyone could stop him. But he had no reason to suppose it was a cut-price reception committee. He thought if he came out he'd be caught.

He thought if he went back, back into the element he loved and understood as no one else in his experience did, he would be safe. It wasn't an act of despair, choosing suicide as the least undignified way out. The fire was his creation, his child and his beauty, and he believed he could pa.s.s through it unharmed. He turned from the darkness and ran to its flaming heart because he believed 239.

he would be safe there and any who tried to pursue him would not.

There was no further point in concealment. Liz sprang into the doorway crying, 'Robin, come back,' at the top of her voice. But there was no reply, only the swift tattoo of his running feet. 'G.o.d d.a.m.n!' she exclaimed in fury and despair.

Robin Taylor had done many odd things, many obscene things, many downright insane things. But this was his first miscalculation: to think he was the only one who knew his way around fires as other men know their lovers' bodies. David Shapiro was another. He pa.s.sed Liz calmly, without hesitation or fuss. 'I'll get him.'

Liz stared at him aghast. 'You're not going in there!'

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. 'Yes, I am.' And he did.

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11.When he reached the end of the corridor David understood why Robin Taylor decided to leave when he did. Even for a pyromaniac the Mall had become too hot to handle.

David was surprised how much progress the blaze had made against the combined efforts of the sprinkler system and the firemen's hoses. It should have been dying back by now. He'd seen too many fires to expect instant results on anything bigger than an overheated chip-pan, but all the water pouring on to it should have had some effect. The only explanation he could think of was that as the firemen battled their way in from the front Robin was retreating behind the flames, helping them to spread, thinking they'd cover his retreat. He'd tried to leave now because there was almost nowhere left to retreat to.