A Taste For Burning Part 7

Four of the five smelled of mud, of weed, of things that had died and things that had fed on them. But one still smelled faintly of petrol. It was the can most likely in other ways too. It was a good size and shape to carry: if a man had walked into a garage and said he'd run out of petrol, the attendant would have pumped a gallon into just such an oil can for him to take back to his car. Like 90.the others it had been scratched and dented but its scars were fresher. One of the five couldn't have been used for years, corrosion having eaten away at it like leprosy. The screw-cap of another was rusted solid.

'Where did you find this one?'

The diver pointed. 'About a metre out.' A man leaving the timberyard by the side door and heading up the tow path towards the town centre would have pa.s.sed the spot.

'Wrap it up for now,' decided Liz. 'I'll get this over to forensics, see how recently it's been used.'

Forensics couldn't say if it was the can used to start the fire. They could say it had been in the water for a few days; prior to that it had held petrol; and under the mud it was suspiciously clean, as if someone had wiped it down before throwing it away. The fear of leaving fingerprints seemed the only explanation for such obsessive tidiness.

Encouraged, Liz sent DCs Scobie and Morgan, armed with photographs of the can, to trawl the local filling stations. They didn't come back with a description of the arsonist, his name and the number of his credit card, but they discovered something significant. None of the mechanics had seen that precise design of can before. When Morgan contacted the distributors he was told it was a new promotion, had only been on sale for three weeks and must have been bought in the Manchester area since it wouldn't be on sale nationwide for another week.

Liz pondered that. 'So we're looking for someone with business or personal connections in or north of Manchester, who's been there in the last three weeks, who presumably has a car because I can't see him bringing a can of oil home on the train. He may be the arsonist, or he may just be a chap who bought and used some oil, then dumped the can where the arsonist could find it. Do we know anything else about him?'

'If he's a commercial traveller,' said Donovan, 'we know three nights in the last week when he was at home. I'll call the Chamber of Commerce, get a list of local firms 91.with reps travelling to the north, then see if any of them has been in Manchester in the last month but not this week.'

'Yes, good,' agreed Liz. 'If he is a rep we should find him that way.'

'What if he's a grocer with an aunty in Oldham?' She glowered at him. 'In that case, Sergeant, you'll need another bright idea, preferably before Monday.'

Shapiro walked to the shop for his paper. Usually he drove but this morning he needed time to think.

Last night he'd been furious. He'd felt betrayed, by his own son, and somehow that hurt more than if it had been one of his colleagues. If it had been Donovan he'd have bawled him out and then accepted that, however crazy the action, he meant well. If it had been Liz he'd have asked her reasons and considered the possibility that her judgement was better than his.

When he realized that the story in the Courier must have come from David, that he'd put it on the table alongside his prints as part of the deal -which was why Gail Fisher had been surprised Shapiro didn't know about it -all his tolerance deserted him. The man whose ability to remain reasonable under provocation was legendary blew his top at his son for doing something he'd already decided was less than a disaster.

Even as he was doing it he knew it was a bad move. In the last couple of days they'd made a tentative start towards repairing the damage they'd inflicted on each other. What David had done had been thoughtless at best, but Shapiro had escalated the conflict from a minor skirmish to the brink of war.

As so often in the past, David fought him not with words but with silence. His face grew white and his nostrils pinched in the face of his father's anger but he made no attempt to defend himself. Even lying would have been something: they could have argued then. But he just 92.clenched his jaw against the onslaught and took it, and though his eyes grew hot and his breathing ragged he declined to trade in the same currency of insults and accusations, or even to answer them.

When finally in desperation Shapiro demanded, 'Have you nothing to say?' he only said through his teeth, 'No.' Shapiro left him alone then, defeated once again by his son's wilful refusal to communicate.

He lay awake fretting half the night, and was a little surprised to see David's van still in the drive when he woke on Friday morning. Whether it would still be there when he got back from the shop remained to be seen.

He thought he owed David an apology, not for what he'd said so much as how he'd said it. He was sure David owed him an apology, but thought he was as likely to get one from Crusher Beasley, postmarked the Isle of Wight, for bending the bars of his holding cell with the custody officer's head.

In a way, what they said was less important than the fact that they needed to talk, calmly and without recrimination. Shapiro wanted to know why David had done it, and wanted David to know why he felt hurt. But he knew now, walking back with his paper and a loaf of bread under his arm, that even that simple task was beyond them. Either they'd row -or he'd row while David went silently white -or they'd make no further reference to it, in which case David might stay another day or two but conversation would be limited to guarded exchanges over the marmalade. When he left he would disappear back into the vacuum from which mere chance had drawn him, the unexpected opportunity they had almost taken advantage of squandered.

It wasn't what he wanted. He didn't think it was what David wanted either or he wouldn't be here, he'd have stayed on Donovan's boat despite the discomfort. But the master of the subtle perceptive interview didn't know how to get from where they were to where they wanted to be.

93.The first thing he saw as he turned the corner of his street was that the van was still outside his house; and the second thing he saw was that the back doors were open and David was packing his gear inside. Shapiro's heart quickened and then fell in the s.p.a.ce of about three seconds. 'You're leaving, then?'

'My job's on again. He called while you were out: he's back from the c.u.mbrian badgers and wants me there as soon as possible.'

'Will you be back tonight?'

David didn't glance up. He continued loading his belongings steadily into the van. 'No, he's putting me up. That was the original plan, so that I could follow him round for a few days while he did all the fascinating things that make up the life of a famous naturalist. Bird-spotting from his kitchen window, all that stuff. c.r.a.p, really, but it'll make cosy little pictures to show that even celebrities are human, they have to fit their work round the washing-up.'

'And when you're finished there?'

'Then I can go home and do something important.'

'Home to London?'

Finally David looked round at him. 'Dad, what is it you want from me? Last night you accused me of wrecking your career, this morning you want us to be friends and write and visit and all that family stuff; and I don't know why. Why can't you just accept that we don't get on? That we have nothing in common: not what's important to us, not what we do about it. That for whatever reason and whoever's to blame, we never meet without rubbing one another the wrong way.

'Can't you see it doesn't matter any more? It was hard when we had to live together, but now it doesn't matter: you can hate my guts with a clear conscience. But it would be easier on both of us if you'd accept that there's nothing left between us: there never was much and now there's nothing, and a card with a few lines inside it every 94.Chanukkah and a postcard from somewhere warm each summer is about the best we're going to do. Stop pretending we're a family. There isn't a Shapiro family any more; and even when there was I wasn't part of it.'

For a moment Shapiro stood literally open mouthed. He'd never heard David speak so plainly, or so wound- ingly. He could have said -should have said -'I don't hate you, David, I never did.' He should have said, 'I never meant to hurt you.' He could even have said, 'It matters as much now as ever it did: I don't want us to be strangers for the rest of my life.' But he was taken aback and let the moment pa.s.s.

And then the previous night's anger stirred again in him. He said thickly, 'I don't know why I let you get to me. You're nothing but trouble, David, I think you always were. I was glad to see you. I was glad of the chance to put it all behind us: the misunderstandings, the bitterness. And you spat in my face. Well, that's all right. I handle rubbish every day, the smell washes off. But let's have one thing straight. n.o.body cut you out of our family except you. You had everything the girls had: the same affection, the same opportunities. The only difference was that they gave something back.' But David had said all he intended to. He twitched his father a thin-lipped smile, got into his van and drove away.

When Liz told Donovan about the visit of the irate Mr Younis and his parting threat, it was mostly for the entertainment value and just a little as a warning. She saw the way his eyes went smoky and calculating, and puzzled over it and failed to comprehend what it meant. She decided, unwisely in the event, that it probably didn't matter.

95.His trawl of the Chamber of Commerce netted four travelling salesmen who were in the Manchester area at the right time. Donovan went to see them all that Friday afternoon, starting with the representative of Castle Card & Board. Not because Mrs Lynn Markham fitted the profile of a pyromaniac -an occupation pursued by more young men than stoutish fifty-year-old grandmothers, as indeed is commercial travelling -but because Castle Card & Board was a subsidiary of Cornmarket Trading and Cornmarket Trading was owned by Asil Younis. When he told Liz he was .going to see some reps Donovan omitted to mention this.

It was hard to imagine Mrs Markham setting fire to buildings for the pleasure of watching the flames mount and the Fire Brigade wade in. She might have been the headmistress of a primary school or a breeder of one of the sportier types of dog. She wore her iron-grey hair in a pudding-basin bob and dressed in comfortable, rather mannish tweeds and walking brogues.

Which might have led the casual observer, accustomed to women executives in sharp-cut suits, to think Mrs Markham was filling in for a recent departure, was related to the owner or had got her position by outstaying everyone else in the firm. Until he saw the framed certificates on her wall which catalogued an outstanding sales career of more than twenty years. She'd been the Cornmarket group's Salesperson of the Year on more occasions than 96.Donovan had time to count; she'd regularly won awards from the Chamber of Commerce and was twice in the last three for national honours. She might look like the organizer of Castlemere Women's Inst.i.tute annual Painted Knee compet.i.tion but she was a highly effective professional seller who was single-handedly responsible for a significant portion of the Cornmarket Trading Company's profits each year.

Which was a problem as well as an opportunity. If Lynn Markham had been working for almost any other firm in town she'd have been bottom of Donovan's list of suspects even if she'd been a known collector of interesting oil cans. The fact that she worked for Asil Younis altered the complexion of the thing in a way he couldn't ignore.

Even so, by the time they'd talked for five minutes he was ready to accept that it was no more than random coincidence. She gave him the dates of her trips north, confirmed that she'd been through Manchester since the new can came on the market. She had also been around Castlemere for the last ten days. But when she told him she hadn't bought a can of oil, that she never bought cans of oil, that when her BMW needed oil it went into the garage and came back not merely serviced but also valeted, Donovan believed her.

Which was unfortunate, because he wanted to go on talking to her long enough to be sure that Asil Younis would hear of it. He had to pretend an interest in pressed paper products to keep her chatting until people began to notice. He didn't leave her office until she'd diverted several phone calls and was close to selling him half a ton of corrugated paper.

With four people to see, experience told him that whatever order he took them in, whether he went alphabetically or geographically or picked with a pin, the only one with anything useful to contribute would be the last. So he went from Castle Card & Board to the nearest of the other firms, Burton Warren Light Engineering, without calculating the percentages.

97.The MGB was parked outside the office. It was hard to miss: a cla.s.sic car in pristine condition, its livery of British Racing Green glowing with generations of wax lovingly applied. As he watched a man of about forty with an aluminium briefcase climbed in. It was a stupid car for a rep -although presumably an engineering company's salesman carries specifications rather than samples -but Donovan backed his hunch and loped over to intercept the car before it drove off.

'I'm looking for the Head of Sales, Edward Burton.'

'I'm Ted Burton. How can I help you?'

They talked in the car. Burton offered to take Donovan inside, but an office is only an office while an MGB is a star.

'You were in Manchester at the end of last month.'

'That's right. I had a couple of calls to make, I stayed at the Midland, came home the next day. What's this about?'

Donovan didn't answer directly. 'Car like this must take a lot of looking after.'

Burton blinked, then nodded. 'Sure. It's not just transport, it's a hobby. I'm underneath her most weekends.'

Donovan grinned faintly. 'Sounds more like a mistress.'

Burton laughed. His round, open face was dusted with freckles. 'You've been talking to my wife.'

'You do the work on her yourself, then.'

'Most of it. I am an engineer, after all. And there's still a surprisingly good supply of parts. I wouldn't tackle anything really major, but I do all the routine maintenance.'

'Including an oil change?'

'Of course including an oil change. Sergeant, what is all this about? What are you accusing me of?' Burton was growing tetchy but seemed genuinely puzzled: he really didn't seem to comprehend.

'Did you buy a can of oil when you were in Manchester?'

98.His eyes popped with surprise. 'How the h.e.l.l did you know that? You've been watching me? Why, for G.o.d's sake?'

Donovan refused to be drawn. 'That's a long way to go for oil.'

'The garage proprietor's an MGB owner too. We meet at rallies, I know him -I always drop in if I'm pa.s.sing. He's the expert, after all: if I buy for mine what he uses in his I'm not going to go far wrong, am I?'

'Have you used it yet?'

Burton gave up trying to understand, just answered. 'As a matter of fact I have. Last weekend. Sunday morning, to be precise.'

'What did you do with the empty can?'

'I threw it away!'

'Where?'

Burton rolled his eyes. 'You expect me to remember that?' Then his voice altered. 'As a matter of fact, I do remember. I put it in the skip. They've been laying pipes in the service lane behind my house, there's been a skip there for weeks. My bin was full so I dumped the can in the skip. All right?'

'Where do you live, Mr Burton?'

'Cambridge Road.'

Probably it meant nothing. Cambridge Road ran for miles into the countryside. But still Donovan felt the need to ask. 'You're not by any chance a neighbour of Mr Asil Younis?'

'That's right,' said Burton, finally growing angry. 'He lives two doors up on one side. And your superintendent lives three doors down on the other.'

Liz thought Taylor must have some news when he called her to his office. So he had, but it wasn't what she was hoping for. 'Did you send Sergeant Donovan to talk to Asil Younis again? After the man came here and complained about him?'

99.Taken aback, Liz shook her head. 'No, sir.'

'But he's been. To Mr Younis's house.'

'Really?'

'You're not aware of this?'

'I haven't seen Donovan since this morning. He went looking for the owner of the oil can we found in the ca.n.a.l, the one that had held petrol.'

'Why would he think it belonged to Mr Younis?'

'I don't know,' admitted Liz. 'But he must have had something in mind.' Under Taylor's sceptical gaze she amended that. 'Well, he may have had something in mind. I'll find out.'

There was a long silence. But Taylor didn't seem to be thinking about it; Liz thought he'd reached a decision before calling her in. 'I'd like you to rea.s.sign him.'

Her eyes flew wide in surprise. 'Take him off the case?'

'There must be other things he can do, other cases requiring attention. It seems to me he's lost his objectivity over this one and you'll make more progress without him getting people's backs up.'

Liz couldn't believe they were having this conversation. She wasn't that surprised Donovan had found or manufactured a reason to see Younis again. She wasn't surprised Younis had complained about it: he'd said he would, she took him for a man of his threats. And of course he and Taylor would be known to one another, being near neighbours on one of the very best stretches of Cambridge Road. She might have expected a gentle tweaking of strings.

But she didn't expect to be told to drop her sergeant. Superintendent Taylor knew she was anxious about how this case might develop, and the only comfort he'd been able to offer was the hope that she'd have it cleared up before Castle Mall opened. Now he expected her to pare her team down further because a local businessman, whose own integrity was by no means certain, was offended. It was absurd. She was d.a.m.ned if she was going to accept it.

100.'Sir, I don't think you can have thought this through. I'm already struggling without DCI Shapiro. If I sideline Donovan as well it'll be me and a bunch of constables to deal with a maniac who's effectively holding this town to ransom.'

Taylor's manner was cool. 'You're exaggerating, Inspector.'

'Forgive me, sir, but I'm not. If he's still at large by Monday night he's going to be at the shopping precinct. So are thousands of other people. You say we can't get the opening deferred, and we both know that the chances of normal policing picking him out of the crowd are tiny. Now you're telling me that because he's upset a suspect -all right, a long shot of a suspect but somebody who's certainly involved -I should send Donovan to check shotgun licences and the serial numbers on videos. I can't afford to, sir. I need his help.'

Taylor let a well-shaped eyebrow arch in mannerly disbelief. 'You're telling me you can't run your department without Detective Sergeant Donovan holding your hand?'

Liz bristled. 'Of course I'm not. I'm saying that, whatever his social failings, he's an experienced detective with a good track record and I need more like him not less. I'll find out why he went to see Younis again. If necessary I'll drag him over the coals. With your permission, sir, I'll tell him of this conversation so he's in no doubt about how seriously we're taking Younis's complaints. But I can't afford to weaken my grip on this.' She took a deep breath and went on the record. 'I'm sorry, sir, but if you want him off the case it'll have to be an order. If the discretion is mine I won't part with him.'

Superintendent Taylor sighed. 'Liz, I don't want to pull rank on you. You're doing a good job in difficult circ.u.mstances and I want to help. I don't want to undermine your authority.'

She'd come this far, she might as well say what was on her mind. 'Forgive me, sir. But I don't think you'd be having this conversation with Mr Shapiro. I think you'd 101.

accept his judgement as to how and when to discipline his officers, and when an investigation is important enough to risk a little flak. If you're satisfied with the job I'm doing, won't you trust me to get on with it?'

Again the long pause while he formulated his reply. But it wasn't the content he was considering so much as the packaging. 'I've run Queen's Street for a good few years now. It's a more complex job than it perhaps appears. There are different interests to reconcile, of which thief-taking is only one. We need the support of the community to succeed, and that means not alienating important sections of it by being unnecessarily thoughtless, or clumsy, or rude. Mr Younis may be a member of a racial minority but--'

Liz was not an impetuous woman. Self-control had proved its worth on her climb through the ranks of her profession. So she didn't make a habit of interrupting senior officers; but this time she made an exception. 'Sir, if you think Sergeant Donovan would have behaved differently if Mr Younis had been white, without knowing any of the details I feel quite safe in saying that you're wrong. Donovan is many things, not all of them admirable. But he's not a bigot.'

'I'm very glad to hear it,' said Taylor. 'It shouldn't, of course, need saying but we're both aware that it has become an issue in the job today. Well, you work with him closer than I do, I'll accept your a.s.sessment. The fact remains, Mr Younis believes he was the victim of discrimination.'

'By taking Donovan off the inquiry you're as good as confirming it.'

'No, I'm avoiding an unnecessary confrontation. That's what I mean about reconciling different interests. Perceived failings can do as much damage as real ones. If nothing else, Donovan needs to learn discretion. And we have to be seen to be alive to the sensibilities of those we serve. I'm sorry if you feel it'll be a problem, but in 102.

all the circ.u.mstances I don't consider it appropriate for Sergeant Donovan to continue on this inquiry7. If you don't wish to convey that message to him I'll tell him myself.'

Little as she liked it, Liz had no choice but to accept his decision. 'No, I'll tell him, sir. But I would like to put on record my view that the action is unjustified.'

Taylor nodded, the least trace of a smile in the curve of his beard. 'So noted, Inspector. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of work ...'

So had Liz; more than before she came in here. Still she lingered. 'The Foot business?'

'That too,' said Taylor flatly; and he held her eyes and said nothing more until finally, defeated, she excused herself and left.

103.

Donovan heard her out in silence, itself a suspicious sign. By the time she'd finished there was the ghost of a smile on his thin lips. She shut her eyes a moment to collect her thoughts. 'Would you care to tell me what's going on?'