A Taste For Burning Part 4

'By then I was curious,' said Donovan, 'so I kept looking. And on page three we find Councillor Morrison asking what's going to be done about all the empty prop 51.erty in the centre of Castlemere -everything from two- room flats in the Aldermaston Tower to a full-sized warehouse in Viaduct Lane.'

Liz gave a low whistle. 'You think our man's picking his targets out of the Courier!'

Donovan shrugged. 'I don't know. Two of them -the two adverts, say -I'd have taken as a coincidence. But all three? To me, that smells.'

Liz considered. 'Maybe it does, but does it help? We can't alert every business mentioned in last week's paper to the possibility of an arson attack. We'd have half the town in uproar. We have to narrow it down.'

'If he keeps this up for another week,' Donovan observed darkly, 'we can narrow it down to the places left standing.'

'What did you make of Rachid Aziz?'

'The guy's under pressure, the fire couldn't have come at a better time for him, but I doubt if he's the type. He knows Younis, though. Hasn't a good word to say for him.'

'It seems to be mutual. Younis said they had nothing in common, but I think it could be more personal than that.'

'Like, they've done a bit of business that now they're feeling vulnerable about?'

'It's possible, isn't it? I wouldn't put it past Younis to defraud his insurance. But then, why would he wait ten years?'

'And where does the timberyard fit in?'

'I can't see that it does. I was with the Evanses when I got your message, but I couldn't find a single reason any one of them would want the place to go up in smoke.'

'Maybe it's a red herring: whoever did the other two did the timberyard specifically to confuse us.'

Donovan inclined to the conspiracy theory of life. All the same, there was a kind of logic to it. He could be right. With three buildings in ashes and one man dead there was still so little to go on.

And nothing more they could usefully do that day. Except-- 52.'I'm going to move into Mr Shapiro's office till he gets back. Give me a hand, will you?'

Donovan said nothing but his expression was eloquent. He didn't like it. He knew there were practical reasons for not leaving the DCI's office empty. If Shapiro had been sunning himself in the Mediterranean, or catching up on his decorating, or doing anything with leave taken in the normal way, he'd have had no qualms. But in the present circ.u.mstances it seemed too much like condoning what had been done. Donovan would rather have left the office empty, a constant reproach.

When they'd finished Liz said, 'It won't be for long. We'll be doing this again before the dust's settled.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

It had taken blood, sweat and tears to get him to use her proper t.i.tle the first time: now she ground her teeth over it, taking it -as he meant it -as censure bordering on insult. 'Go home, Donovan,' she said wearily. 'Get your windows fixed.'

Shapiro was drinking. It wasn't something he did much, he didn't like it enough. But his head hurt with trying to remember where he'd gone wrong with the Foot case, how he'd left himself open to an accusation that eight years later his superintendent had no choice but to act on. And for the life of him he couldn't. So he drank.

When the doorbell rang, his first thought was that he'd had one Scotch too many and the noise was in his head. Then it rang again, so probably he hadn't imagined it. After a little while he got up and opened it.

David stood at an angle on the doorstep, as if half ready to leave. His hair was tousled and his clothes smelled of smoke. 'Dad.'

'Ha!' said Shapiro, obscurely, sending a blast of Scotch fumes into the night.

Slowly, incredulously, David began to smile. 'You're drunk.'

'I have drink taken,' Shapiro amended pontifically. 'It 53.is possible I would not pa.s.s a breathalyser.'

'You're drunk.'

'I am tired and emotional.'

'As a newt,' chuckled David. 'Can I come in?'

He hadn't seen the house before. After his marriage broke up Shapiro sold the family home and moved into this stone cottage at the foot of Castle Mount. It was more than enough for a man on his own.

'It's nice,' said David. 'Does it have a spare room?'

Shapiro squinted at him. 'I thought you were staying with Donovan.'

'I'm in the way there now. There's really only the saloon that's habitable.' His sharp jaw came up. 'Of course, if it's any trouble--'

'No trouble,' Shapiro said hastily, 'no trouble. Spare room's' -he indicated the stairs -'up there somewhere.'

David smiled. 'I'll find it.'

Shapiro was certainly drunk but not insensible. As David started up the stairs he said, 'Donovan told you, didn't he? About my problems.'

And David was a poor liar. He said, 'No, he didn't,' when he should have said, 'What problems?'

Shapiro smiled into the chest of his cardigan. 'Go find your room.'

When David returned there was coffee steaming on the kitchen table. Shapiro had already made a start on it and sobriety loomed. David sat down. 'Is it serious?'

Shapiro laughed but no sound came out. 'Oh no, it's the sort of thing that happens every day. Somebody says you lied in order to jail an innocent man and your superior officer won't take your word that you didn't. And he won't trust you not to interfere in his investigation so he tells you to go home until he's decided whether his chief of detectives or a convicted criminal is more likely to be telling the truth. An everyday tale of provincial policing, that.'

'I suppose,' ventured David, 'this is the price we pay 54.for accountability. In order to be sure n.o.body's playing the system they have to be willing to look at anyone who might be.'

'Well, thank you for that in-depth a.n.a.lysis,' Shapiro said nastily. It was partly the drink, but he wouldn't have spoken to his newest police cadet that way. He sighed. 'I know about accountability; I approve of accountability. Without Complaints Investigation a senior police officer has the sort of power over people's lives that ships' captains used to have: master under G.o.d. The good ones can make a mistake. The bad ones have scope for real corruption. I accept that allegations have to be investigated.

'But David, it hurts. Never mind the principles, never mind the need for safeguards: when somebody says that an innocent man's been in prison for eight years because I fitted him up, that hurts. Do you understand? It's a real physical pain, like a knife under my ribs. It's as if nothing I've done in the eight years since has any validity, because the people who know me best think I could have done that.'

'But you didn't, did you?' It was more a statement than a question.

'No, of course not. I don't understand. Taylor said there were some photographs, but we never saw any photographs. It was an open-and-shut case. A laboratory was fire-bombed, some animal fanatics claimed responsibility, Trevor Foot was heard boasting about it in a pub and we picked him up. He didn't even deny it, he just played games with us. He had a history of joining extremist groups and he had connections with this one. Also, he'd been missing from his work for two days before the raid. Sure, when it went to court he said he'd been framed. But he wasn't. For one thing there was no need. He admitted what he'd done in front of witnesses because he was daft enough to be proud of it. The jury were hardly out long enough to elect a foreman and take a vote. They knew he was guilty.'

55.'Then you've nothing to worry about.'

'I'm not worried,' Shapiro snapped. 'I'm -angry.'

'Every day,' said David quietly, 'the police question people about crimes they didn't commit. When that becomes obvious they're released, with an apology if they're lucky. That's the position you're in. Next time you find you've picked up the wrong guy, remember how it feels.'

As Shapiro regarded his son through the clearing mists of alcohol his brow furrowed. They'd always had arguments. For years at a time they'd hardly spoken except in anger. He wasn't sure how it began, though in his fairer moments he knew better than to blame a child for a breakdown in communications with an adult.

David was the last of his children and the least like him. Rachael was as tall as her father, had the same broad face and fought -as he had given up fighting -the same tendency to stoutness. Sally looked like her mother but thought like him. But there was no explaining David: nothing of either himself or Angela about the boy, in appearance or any other way.

Angela was a tall slender woman with, in her youth, hair the colour of a wheatfield streaked with poppies. Shapiro was of average height with curves where most young men have angles. He was never quick enough for a policeman: he tried hard but he wasn't designed for speed. Fortunately his promotions came rapidly and he soon found himself in jobs where intellect mattered more than fitness. Once he made Detective Sergeant his colleagues stopped running sweepstakes on how many criminals would outstrip him each month, how old they might be and whether any of them would have wooden legs, and started noticing how many convictions he got in other ways.

So Frank Shapiro was the last man to expect perfection of his children. He loved Rachael with her broad sunny face, who from the age of three looked like the teacher 56.she would become; and he loved Sally with her swift mind and sharp tongue, and the river of golden hair she tossed over her shoulder to end any argument she was in danger of losing. He expected Sally to become an actress, was startled to find himself the proud father of a civil engineer.

Loving his son was harder. The small dark intense child seemed to need things the girls had not, which Shapiro could not identify, much less provide. There was no joy in him. He did well at school but flayed himself in the process. He was a talented musician but took no pleasure in music, made of it only another rod for his back.

Angela understood better than Shapiro. 'He needs your approval, Frank. Tell him you're proud of him.'

Shapiro was astonished. 'I do. All the time.'

'No, you don't. You praise what he's done. Top of the cla.s.s -well done, David. The music prize -congratulations, David, knew you had it in you. He thinks he has to do things to please you. The trouble with that is, if he wins the music prize this year, what's he going to have to do next year?'

Shapiro had huffed and snorted about that, pretended not to know what she was saying. Later, alone, he thought about it and found that he did understand. But he didn't know what to do about it. Frank Shapiro and his son lacked the vocabulary to discuss anything that mattered. There was something brittle and impervious about the boy that shrugged off efforts to reach him. Shapiro hadn't felt a failure since he was last outrun by a geriatric shoplifter, but his son made him feel a failure.

If the Shapiros had had friends with children, so that he could have leaned on bars and exchanged horror stories with other fathers of growing sons, Frank would have found there was nothing unusual about his problems. Teenage boys are full of paradox, the despair of fathers throughout the land. If Shapiro had known that it would have been easier for both of them.

But by the time David was growing up Shapiro's career 57.had taken him past the point of sharing personal confidences with colleagues and he had no close friends outside work. He believed his failure with his son was something unique to them, and he regretted it but never found a way past it. When Angela decided that twenty-four years was long enough to live with a policeman, David left with her. A year later he was studying photography in Brighton. Shapiro could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd seen him since.

Now they were arguing again, but there was a difference. David had become a man, had learned somewhere the confidence in his own opinions that he should have got from his father, and Shapiro felt a sudden respect for him. After all this time. He still looked like a dropout. He was still wasting his energies on what seemed to Shapiro more like a hobby than a job. But in the years of separation two things had happened. David had grown up, and Shapiro had let go.

He was still bemused but no longer affronted by the choices David had made. He no longer felt responsible for his son's shortcomings. For the first time it was possible for them to meet a little like strangers, and to base their judgements of each other on what they saw instead of what they remembered. Time had built up a burden of anger, and more time had laid it to rest.

Shapiro said quietly, 'I'm glad you're here.' David only flicked him a tiny fleeting smile and poured more coffee. 'How long can you stay?'

David explained about Payne and the badgers. 'I'll give him till the weekend, then I'm going back to London. I can't afford to waste any more time on this.'

'You got your fire pictures, though,' said Shapiro. 'Are you pleased with them?'

David looked at him in surprise. Another first: his father showing an interest in his work. 'Yes, I am. They'd have been better if I could have got inside, though.'

'Where did you develop them?'

58.'The Courier lent me their darkroom in return for first refusal on the prints. They're taking a couple of them: at least I shan't be out of pocket on the week.'

'Stick around a bit longer,' suggested Shapiro grimly, 'we might manage another one. This chap's still on the loose, and I'm d.a.m.ned if I know how to find him. If it was still my job, which it isn't.' He brightened. 'You could come to Alison Taylor's wedding with me next Tuesday. Weren't you at school with the Taylor kids?'

'Batman and the Vestal Virgin? Sure.'

Shapiro laughed out loud. 'Why did you call them that?'

David shrugged. 'Batman, Robin -you know. Anyway it suited him. Alison's all right. The only problem with her was her dad. When she was seventeen he still wanted her home by nine o'clock.'

Shapiro sighed. 'You worry about girls. I used to worry about Sally. Rachael was always terribly competent, from about fourteen she worried about me, but there was something vulnerable about Sally.'

'Sally,' David said firmly, 'is and always was about as vulnerable as an armadillo.'

After a long pause, afraid of breaking something, Shapiro said, 'I worried about you too.'

David's expression tightened. 'I made out all right.'

'I know. But I should have done better by you. I don't know why, I always felt -out of my depth.'

If only David could have met him halfway then. If he'd smiled and said, 'We both made mistakes.' If he'd made a joke about it: 'The first twenty years are the worst.' But he didn't. His eyes low, he just said again, 'I made out.'

They hardly said anything more until they went to bed.

59.8.If Aziz and Younis had been a couple of Irishmen, Donovan would have spent an evening in the Fen Tiger, where Castlemere's small Irish community congregated. He'd have bought a few drinks, started a few conversations, and by chucking-out time would have had some idea of the relationship between the two men, whether they were likely to have concocted something like an insurance fraud and then fallen out over it.

But the Pakistanis were Moslems and if they drank it wasn't in public, and Donovan couldn't think where else casual acquaintances might be persuaded to talk about them. The only place he knew they had mutual friends was the mosque and he doubted his ability to engage anyone there in gossip.

Then he thought of the school. Both men had raised children in the town, they had to be educated somewhere: Younis could have afforded private schools but he might have considered it more important for his sons to grow up in the town where they were going to do business. As local businessmen both would have been parent-governor material, and if they'd served on a school committee together he could talk to the people who'd served with them.

Castlemere had more than one secondary school but Castle High was the likeliest choice. Of the alternatives, one essentially served the big housing estate on the edge of town where neither family lived; one was called St 60.Elwyn's, which while open to all wouldn't appeal to non- Christian families; and one prided itself on its aggressively modern approach. Both Younis and Aziz seemed like men who would prefer examination results to creative self-expression.

Also, Donovan knew someone who taught at Castle High.

Brian Graham, called out of his Thursday morning history of art cla.s.s, greeted Donovan cautiously. 'Did Liz send you?' He had nothing against the detective, beyond a few sleepless nights while his wife sat up fuming about him, but he liked order and being around Donovan was like handling a live grenade.

'Not really.' Donovan gave his vulpine grin. 'I'm showing my initiative.'

When he explained what he wanted Graham took him to the school secretary who produced the enrolment list. 'Yes, we have an Aziz -Nazreen Aziz, aged fourteen, parents Mr and Mrs Rachid Aziz, Rosedale Road. Is that the right one?'

Donovan nodded. 'How about Younis?'

She hadn't a current Younis but tracked down two ex-pupils. 'Salman and Fakhar Younis -parents Mr and Mrs Asil Younis, Cambridge Road?'

'Bingo,' said Donovan. 'Were Mr Younis and Mr Aziz ever on the school board together?'

The woman took the disc out of her computer with a sniff, put in a different one. 'If you'd asked me that to start with, Sergeant, we could have saved ourselves some time.' She keyed up a display. 'No. Mr Younis was a parent-governor for six years, until two years ago when his younger son went up to Reading. Mr Aziz has never served on the school board.'

'Oh,' said Donovan, disappointed. 'Well -their kids weren't in the same cla.s.s and they wouldn't have played the same sports. Anything else they might have done together?' He was thinking of music or dramatic societies, 61.something that might have meant the two fathers meeting after rehearsals or at concerts.

The secretary looked at him suspiciously. 'Are you sure you've got the authority for this?'

'What authority do I need?' he asked, surprised. 'Isn't it a matter of public record who serves on a school board?'

'Well, yes, probably,' she admitted. 'But I'm not going to call up the children's files without a direct instruction from the princ.i.p.al.'

Until then Donovan hadn't considered that the connection might be the children themselves. But Younis had sons and Aziz had daughters, so he considered it now. 'Then I'd better talk to the princ.i.p.al.'

'You did whatT demanded Inspector Graham, her eyes great with despair. 'And you involved my husband in this?'

'He wasn't involved. He showed me the way to the secretary's office, and she showed me to the princ.i.p.al's office,' said Donovan. 'And the princ.i.p.al said that pupil files were strictly confidential and I'd need a warrant to see them. And then she said that, so far as she knew, all that was in the past anyway.'

Liz frowned. 'All what?'

'Well, exactly,' said Donovan. 'All whatever it was that was in those files I couldn't see. So I wondered what you wanted me to do next. Do we have grounds for a warrant?'

Liz didn't even have to think. 'Not at this stage. We've no convincing reason to suspect Aziz and Younis, we can't investigate their families until we have.'

'So I guess waylaying Nazreen Aziz at the school gates and asking her what she was up to with the Younis boys is out of the question too, huh?'