A Taste For Burning Part 5

She didn't think he was serious, but just in case she spelled it out. 'Absolutely out of the question, Sergeant.'

'I could try Aziz again, ask him why he didn't tell me 62.his daughter was friendly with Younis's son.' 'It may not have been that they were friends.' 'In that case he'll tell me what it was instead. He led me to believe there was no connection between himself and Younis, but there's something. I think maybe if he knows I know that much, he'll tell me the rest.'

Liz nodded slowly. 'All right. But go gently with him. It could be a touchy subject, and it's still an outside chance that he's done anything wrong. Try not to upset him for no good reason.'

'Me, boss?' Donovan wasn't very good at injured innocence but that didn't stop him trying. 'I'm the soul of discretion, me.' 'Yes,' said Liz heavily. 'And I'm the Dalai Lama.'

Rachid Aziz was surprised to see Donovan again, annoyed at being approached at the supermarket where he worked. Neither made him seem like a man with a serious crime to hide.

'I asked your supervisor, he'd no objections,' said Donovan. 'He a.s.sumed it was something to do with your fire.'

Aziz blinked. 'Isn't it?'

'You tell me.'

They found a little privacy walking through the unloading bay. Donovan said carefully, 'When I asked if you knew Asil Younis, you said he wasn't a man you'd want your family a.s.sociating with. You didn't tell me about your daughter and his son.'

The conversation skipped a beat. Then Aziz said, a shade faintly, 'My daughter?'

'Your daughter Nazreen. His son Fakhar.' It was a bit of a gamble on Donovan's part. But Aziz's younger daughter was still at primary school and Younis's elder son would have left Castle High before Nazreen got there. Even Fakhar was five years her senior, their time at Castle High overlapping by only a couple of years.

Rachid Aziz was not a big man but he drew himself up 63.like one. "This is a family matter. You have no right.'

'Your fire was one of a series in which a man died,' Donovan reminded him. 'That gives me the right.'

Aziz accepted that. His voice dropped. 'But this is a matter affecting my daughter's honour.'

Some people might have found that laughable. But Donovan wasn't as much of a cynic as he made out and actually was rather touched. "Then let's deal with it now, between us, once and for all.'

Aziz saw sense in that, but it still took him a moment to find the words. 'My daughter Nazreen attracted the attention of a much older boy at her school. Fakhar Younis was already sixteen years old when she went to Castle High at the age of eleven. This is not perhaps so unusual among our people, but it was not something I wished to encourage. I thought when he went to university that would be the end of it.

'But he kept in touch with her, and it is fair to say that his attentions were not unwelcome to Nazreen. The next thing I knew I had Mr Younis on my doorstep wishing to contract a formal engagement between them. Nazreen was then fourteen years old.

'I told him I would not countenance such a thing, that if Nazreen and Fakhar wished to marry when she was eighteen I would not withhold my consent but that I considered it altogether too soon to be making long-term plans for so young a child. And he said to me' -Azi zflushed with anger, the colour plain through the olive of his skin -'he said, "But in four years' time she might not be a virgin." '

'You must have found that very offensive,' Donovan said quietly.

The glance Aziz cast him was almost grateful. 'I did. Oh, I know it is fashionable in this country to say that virginity does not matter, only being careful. That it is natural and inevitable for young people to experiment with s.e.x, and as long as there are no babies and no disease 64.that is all right and anyway parents can do more harm than good by condemning it.

'Well, perhaps that is so in the English community. I do not know. I live in an Asian community, and to us purity is important. Our children are not promiscuous. My wife and I were both pure at our marriage in our early twenties; and we didn't have to be signed away in a contract of engagement at the age of fourteen to ensure it. Mr Younis suggested that my daughter was a s.l.u.t, and that I was a bad father who could not take care of her until she was old enough to contemplate marriage. Indeed, I found that most offensive.'

'So you told him where to go?'

Aziz hung his head. 'I regret to say, Sergeant Donovan, that I struck him.'

Donovan preserved a straight face. 'So if he was looking for someone to share in a dodgy enterprise, someone who either respected or feared him enough to do as he was told when the going got tough, someone who could be relied on to care more for his financial situation than his honour, yours probably wouldn't be the first name to spring to mind.'

Aziz understood what he was saying. He smiled ruefully. 'I do not believe so, no.'

'Perhaps we'd better look somewhere else for our firebug.'

'It might have been Mr Younis on his own,' said Aziz hopefully, and they both chuckled. Then he said, 'I'm sure you understand, Sergeant, that what I have told you should remain in confidence if at all possible. For my daughter's sake.'

'No problem,' said Donovan. 'It has no bearing on the case we're investigating. I don't expect to have to talk to you about it again, let alone to anyone else.'

'You know what you've done now, don't you?' Liz said wearily. 'You've dug a hole under our only theory.'

65.'I've succeeded in disproving an erroneous theory, ma'am, yes,' said Donovan with dignity. 'Isn't it you's always telling me police work is not about getting convictions, it's about establishing truth?'

'It was your theory in the first place.'

'Indeed it was, ma'am. Anybody'd think I was the only one in this place doing any work.'

'Get out of here!' She aimed a rolled-up newspaper at him but he dodged round her door before she could throw it.

David was out and Shapiro was wallowing in a hot bath when the phone rang. His immediate reaction was to let it ring. He wasn't on duty. He wasn't on call. He was on holiday. But the habits of thirty years go deep, and after listening to it with mounting irritation for perhaps a minute he got out of the bath and padded dripping into the bedroom to answer it. 'This had better be good.'

'Mr Shapiro?' It was a woman's voice. 'It's Gail Fisher, at the Courier. I'm sorry to bother you at home, Chief Inspector, but I tried your office and they said you wouldn't be in for a day or two. We're about to go to press and I wanted to give you the chance to comment on this Foot business.

Shapiro's heart sank. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that the paper wouldn't get hold of it, that the inquiry could be held and his performance vindicated without the matter leaving Queen's Street. There were other people involved: Foot for one, this witness who claimed to have been with him for another. Somebody must have thought that the oxygen of publicity would breathe fresh life into their cause.

'I'm sorry, Miss Fisher, there's nothing I can say about it. Allegations have been made which are being investigated by my superiors. When they reach a conclusion I'll be informed. I dare say you'll hear too.' He hadn't meant that as sourly as it sounded.

66.'When you're vindicated it'll give me the greatest possible pleasure to say so, in the largest print I can find.'

Shapiro appreciated her confidence. 'I'll look forward to that.' He paused, a certain diffidence creeping in. 'Urn -would it be terribly unprofessional for me to ask what you'll be saying this week?'

'Just that the case has been reopened,' Fisher said. 'And a rsum of the original facts and findings. That's about all; unless you want to go on record as denying a coverup.'

Shapiro scowled. 'So you heard that too. You wouldn't by any chance have seen these photographs as well?'

He could hear her grin. 'Not yet.'

'Well, that makes two of us,' he said heavily. 'And you can quote me on that.' He thought for a moment, steaming gently. 'Where did you pick this up? It's still internal at this stage.'

There was the briefest of pauses, as if he'd surprised her. 'You don't know?'

'If I knew,' he said patiently, 'I wouldn't have to ask.'

There was another, longer hiatus. 'Chief Inspector, you're putting me in a difficult position. I can't tell you where I first heard the case was being reopened.'

'You have a source to protect? Who? This witness who claims to have been with Foot while someone else was bombing BMT? The one with the photographs?'

'No,' she said, firmly enough that it was probably true. 'No, I don't know who that is. Yet. I'll be trying to find out.'

'Who, then? Foot himself? He's been claiming I framed him for eight years, why would you suddenly listen to him now?'

'Chief Inspector--'

'It had to be Foot. Apart from him and his brief, and this star witness of theirs, the only people who know what's going on work in my office.'

'Mr Shapiro, I'm sorry if I seem evasive. I'm confused.

67.I thought you knew where the story came from. I thought it had your blessing.'

'My blessing*! Whyever would you think that?' 'Because it really didn't come from Trevor Foot, Chief, that's why.'

68.When he finished work on Thursday evening, labouring by torchlight because his power cable was buried under the remains of a wall, Donovan began shovelling rubble and broken gla.s.s out of the wreckage of his home into sacks that he then lugged up on to the tow-path. He'd found a glazier who was going to call the next day: now he had to clear enough debris for the man to reach the windows.

After three hours he'd had enough. The job wasn't finished but he'd broken its back; if he did much more tonight he thought he'd break his own. In the galley he set water to heat on the gas stove: half for the coffee pot, half for a wash.

When Tara eased fractionally to the weight of someone stepping aboard he stopped and listened, expecting to be hailed. But no one called so he wiped the soap out of his eyes with a rag of towel and pushed the hatch open. 'Who's there?'

'It's me.' But Shapiro, normally the most courteous of men, didn't wait for an invitation before descending the companionway with the heavy caution of someone who considered living on a boat both unnatural and perverse.

'Chief?' Even in one word Donovan couldn't mask his surprise. 'Come in, sit down -if you can find anywhere clean. Watch your step, there's a lot of rubbish about still.'

Shapiro took the torch off the galley table and shone it ahead of him. 'You should have got David to give you 69.a hand.' His voice was flat, expressionless. He wasn't here to discuss Donovan's domestic crisis. It wasn't any kind of a social call.

Donovan dried himself roughly, groped for his shirt. 'I'm better working on my own.' He dared a grin that the darkness kept Shapiro from seeing. 'You may have noticed this.'

The torch swung round, blinding him. He put up a hand to shield his eyes but Shapiro kept the light full on his face. His voice tight with anger he demanded, 'Whatever possessed you, going to the papers?'

Donovan squinted into the light, trying to see past it. 'What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about.'

Shapiro's laugh was bitter and ironic. 'Don't give me that just-off-a-potato-boat routine, Sergeant, I've seen it before. You're not some dumb Paddy, though dear G.o.d, often enough you act like one. But you're not getting a fool's pardon this time.'

Donovan too was growing angry. He didn't think he deserved this, and even if he did Shapiro owed it to him to explain how. He growled, 'Get that d.a.m.ned light out of my eyes and tell me what it is I'm supposed to have done, 'cause I haven't the foggiest notion what you're doing here. Sir.' He always thought he could get away with murder if he said 'sir' at the end.

'Gail Fisher called me. From the Courier.'

'Did she?'

'She wanted to know if I'd care to comment on the reopening of the Foot case.'

'So?'

Shapiro was breathing heavily in the darkness behind the torch. 'So how did she know the Foot case was being reopened, Sergeant?'

It was a powerful torch, the strongest he had, and Donovan still couldn't look at it without flinching. It made him look as if he had something to hide. Provoked beyond 70.his admittedly meagre fund of patience he struck out, batting the beam aside. 'What are you saying? That she got it from me?'

'The last time I saw you,' gritted Shapiro, 'you were waving a copy of the Courier under my nose. And she as good as told me it was someone in my office gave her the story.'

'I don't care what she told you,' Donovan said forcefully, 'and I don't care how it looks. I didn't tell Gail Fisher or anyone else at the Courier about the Foot case. I didn't tell anyone who could have told anyone at the Courier. I don't gossip about our business. Or anything else, as it happens.'

The trouble was, Shapiro believed him. If he hadn't been so angry he'd have known it was a nonstarter: Donovan was so disinclined to gossip that getting routine information out of him was like drawing teeth. Another man, well meaning but not necessarily a great thinker, might have decided the publicity would help. But that wasn't Donovan's style either. If he'd felt strongly enough about it -and taking virtues, such as loyalty, to the kind of extremes where they become vices such as obstinacy was his speciality -he'd have raised it with Superintendent Taylor not a reporter.

Anger had kept him going: robbed of it Shapiro suddenly felt old and tired. He sighed, put down the torch. 'No. I'm sorry, Donovan, I know you better than that. I think maybe it's as well I'm -on holiday. I'm really not thinking very straight about all this, am I?'

The Irish are a sentimental people and Donovan was a sucker for pathos. He brushed debris off a galley stool, heedless of the shards of gla.s.s p.r.i.c.king his hands. 'Sit down, Chief. Tell me what's happened. Tell me how I can help.'

The first task was easier than the second. 'Top and bottom of it is, lad, you can't help. It's up to G.o.d now.' The backwash from the torch showed doubt in Donovan's 71.narrow face and Shapiro smiled faintly. 'Superintendent Taylor to you.'

Donovan was too troubled to be amused. 'Why would anyone from Queen's Street go to the papers? There's n.o.body there believes for a minute that you fitted Foot up.'

Shapiro shrugged. 'I thought maybe someone wanted the Courier to take up cudgels on my behalf. Someone with my interests at heart but a gale whistling between his ears.'

'So you naturally thought of me.1 'I have apologized for that,' Shapiro said with dignity. 'Er -what was it in the paper that you wanted to show me?'

Donovan told him. He saw Shapiro's interest quicken, then subside again. 'Well, that's none of my business now. I expect Inspector Graham will get to the bottom of it.'

'Yeah,' said Donovan.

'Yes,' said Shapiro thoughtfully.

Liz and Brian had been in bed for half an hour when Brian's sinuses started itching and he thought he'd open the window another notch. But he went on standing at the drawn curtain until Liz looked up and said, 'What is it?'

'I'm not sure,' he said, bewildered. 'But I think it's Frank Shapiro's car parked across our drive.'

She wrapped a dressing-gown round her T-shirt, slid her feet into slippers and went to see why.

Shapiro had been sitting there for twenty minutes, unable to decide whether to ring the bell or go home. When the hall light came on he fumbled for the ignition; then she was padding towards him and he couldn't for shame cut and run, spitting gravel at her from under his wheels. He wound his window down.

'Frank, for Heaven's sake come inside.'

'No,' he said. 'I only--'

'Come inside.

72.Her hair fell in a long loose plait down her back. He'd never seen it down, hadn't realized there was so much of it. Pulled out straight it would be as long as Sally's. My G.o.d, he thought in sudden despair, what are you doing! You're waxing lyrical about a detective inspector's hairl She was making coffee and so didn't witness his confusion. When it was done she turned back with a smile. 'Now then, what's going on?'

It was too late in the day to do anything else so he told her the truth. 'I wondered if you knew anything about it.'

'You wondered if I told the Courier that you'd been sent on holiday while your conduct of an eight-year-old case was being investigated?'

'No,' he said. 'No. Well, maybe a little bit.'

'Why me?'

'I've already seen Donovan.'

She laughed but there was an edge to it. 'I bet he was thrilled.'

'I thought he was going to hit me,' admitted Shapiro.

She watched him over the top of her mug. 'I haven't spoken to Gail Fisher or anyone else about this.'

'I know that.' His eyes were downcast, his whole demeanour apologetic. 'Oh, G.o.d, Liz, I'm doing this so badly. Not just' -he waved a shaky hand round her kitchen -'this whole business. Being suspended. Because that's what it is, whatever Taylor chooses to call it. I hate it and I can't handle it. I don't think I could feel any worse about it if I'd done what I'm supposed to have and the skeletons were queuing up to fall out of the cupboard.'