Cold Is The Grave

“Yes. And smoking.”

“And smoking. Of course.”

“Yes.”

“Then you tried to sleep but her snoring kept you awake?”

“Yes. And the wind and rain.”

“And the wind and rain.” He looked so earnest that Annie couldn’t help herself; she burst into laughter. The thing was, she could just picture him there doing exactly what he said. He looked hurt. “I’m sorry, Alan. Really, I am. Nobody could make up a story as silly as that if it didn’t really happen.”

Banks frowned. “So you believe me now?”

“I believe you. I just wish you’d told me earlier. All this deception…”

“On both sides.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t deceive you. You read the situation wrongly.”

“But you kept something from me.”

“That was private business. It wasn’t to do with the case, not like your relationship with Emily Riddle. You really liked her?”

“I don’t think I could have stood being around her for very long. She could be quite exhausting. Never stopped talking. And a hell of an attitude. But, yes, I did.”

Annie tilted her head and gave him a crooked grin. “You’re a funny one. You’re so straight in some ways, but there’s a definite bohemian edge to you.”

“Is that good?”

“It’ll do. But I want you to know that I’m still seriously pissed off at you for not treating me as a professional. You’ve got a lot of making up to do.”

“Annie, I’m sorry. Really, I am. It’s been difficult, given what we had, then me thinking you and Dalton… you know. I mean, it’s not as if I don’t still…”

Annie felt her heart give a little somersault. “Don’t still what?”

“Fancy you.” The fire was waning and the air becoming chilly. Banks looked at Annie and she felt the stirrings of her feelings for him that she’d been trying to ignore since they split up. He picked up a lump of peat. “Are you staying?” he asked. “Shall I put some more on? It’s getting cold.”

Annie gave him a serious look, then bit her lip, stretched out her hand, the same hand she had slapped him with, and said, “Okay, but we’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

17

Annie pulled up in the staff car park of the red brick fire station in Salford just past eleven-thirty the next morning, after over an hour spent crawling along the M62 and getting lost in the center of Manchester. A lorry had over-turned at one of the junctions near Huddersfield, and traffic was backed up as far as the intersection with the M1. The weather hadn’t helped, either. After last night’s deep freeze, the roads were icy despite the brilliant winter sunshine that glinted on windscreens and bonnet ornaments.

The fire station stood on an arterial road near the estate of shabby Georgian semis where Ruth Walker had grown up. Banks had told Annie about Ruth’s being Rosalind Riddle’s daughter. Ruth had told a lot of lies, he said, and he thought they should find out more about her background, including the fire in which both her parents were killed eighteen months ago. It had been easy to track down the address via the Salford Fire Department, which was Annie’s first port of call. The fire-station captain, George Whitmore, said he would be pleased to talk to her.

The firemen were sitting around playing cards in a large upper room above the gleaming red engines. The place smelled of sweat, aftershave and oil. They were an odd lot, firemen, Annie had always thought. When everything was going well, they had no job to do at all, just the way the police would have nothing to do if people weren’t committing crimes. Annie had known one of the local lads back in St. Ives who spent his time at work writing Westerns under a pseudonym, selling about one a month to an American publisher. She had also been out with a fireman who ran a carpet-cleaning business on the side, and one of his friends ran an airport taxi service. They all seemed to have three or four jobs on the go. Of course, fires are as inevitable as crime, and when it came to the crunch, nobody would deny the heroism of firemen if the occasion demanded it. And no matter how politically correct you tried to be about it, no matter how much people talked about recruiting more women to the job, whether you called them Combustion Control Engineers or Flame Suppressant Units, the truth about firemen was summed up in what they always had been and always would be called as far as Annie was concerned: firemen.

“Mr. Whitmore around?” she asked one of the card players.

He gave her the once-over, smiled as if he thought he was sexy and pointed with his thumb. “Office back there.”

Annie felt his eyes on her behind as she walked away, heard a whisper, then men’s laughter. She thought of turning and making some comment about how childish they were but decided they weren’t worth the effort.

George Whitmore turned out to be a pleasant, good-natured man with cropped gray hair, not far from retirement age by the look of him. He had framed photos of his family, including grandchildren, on his desk.

“You’re the lass who phoned earlier, are you?” he said, bidding Annie to sit down.

“Yes.”

“Well, I should’ve told you you’ve probably made a long journey for nothing.”

Annie smiled at him. “I don’t mind. It’s nice to get out of the office for a while.” She took out her notebook. “You remember the Walker fire?”

“Yes. I was on the crew back then, before my bad back put me on office duties a year ago.”

“You were at the scene?”

“Yes. It happened, oh, about three or four in the morning, or a bit after. I could look it up if you want the exact time.”

“It doesn’t matter for the moment. Just your impressions will do.”

He paused and frowned. “If you don’t mind me asking, love, why do the police want to know about the Walker fire now, after all this time?”

“It’s just a background check,” Annie said. “Routine.”

“Because there was nothing funny about it.”

“I understand there was no police investigation?”

“Not beyond what’s required by law and the insurance company. No reason for one.”

“What was the cause of the fire?”

“A smoldering cigarette end down the side of the sofa.”

Another reason smoking’s bad for your health, thought Annie. “And you ruled out arson?”

Whitmore nodded. “Early on. There were no signs of forced entry, of anything being disturbed, for a start. There was also no evidence of accelerants being used, and, quite honestly, nobody had any reason to harm the Walkers.”

“You knew them?”

“Only in passing. To say hello to. They were active in chapel. Everyone knew that. I’m not a particularly religious sort myself. Nice, God-fearing couple, though, by all accounts. Nice daughter they had, too. Poor lass barely escaped with her life.”

“That’d be Ruth?”

“Aye. They only had the one.”

“So what happened from the moment the alarm went off?”

“They didn’t have a smoke detector. If they’d had one, it’s likely they wouldn’t have died. A neighbor saw the smoke and flames and phoned us. By the time we got there, most of the neighbors were already out in the street. See, a cigarette can smolder for hours and generate a lot of heat. When it takes hold, it really goes. The fire had taken hold by then, and it took us a good hour or so to put it out completely. At least we managed to stop it spreading.”

“Where was Ruth at this time?”