Playing With Fire

“Out with it, man,” Aspern prodded. “Has there been an accident?”

“Not quite,” Banks said. “Christine’s dead. I’m sorry, there’s no easier way to say it. And we’ll need one or both of you to come and identify the body.”

They sat in silence, not looking at each other, not even touching. Finally, Aspern found his voice. “Dead? How? What happened?”

“There was a fire. You knew she was living on a canal boat just outside Eastvale?”

“Yes. Another foolish idea of hers.” At last, Aspern looked at his wife. Tears were running from her eyes as if she’d been peeling an onion, but she made no sound. Her husband got up and fetched her a box of tissues. “Here you are, dear,” he said, putting them down on her knees. She didn’t even look at them, just kept staring ahead into whatever abyss she was seeing, the tears dripping off the edges of her jaw onto her skirt, making little stains where they landed on the pale green material.

“I appreciate your coming yourself to tell us,” said Aspern. “You can see my wife’s upset. It’s been quite a shock. Is that all?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” Banks said. “The fire was of doubtful origin. I have some questions I need to ask you as soon as possible. Now, in fact.”

“It’s all right, Patrick,” Mrs. Aspern said, coming back from a great distance. “Let the man do his job.”

A little flustered by her command of the situation, or so it seemed to Banks, Aspern settled back onto the sofa. “If you’re sure…” he said.

“I’m sure.” She looked at Banks. “Please tell us what happened.”

“Christine was living with a boy, a young man, rather, called Mark Siddons, on an abandoned narrow boat.”

“Siddons,” said Aspern, lip twisting. “We know all about him. Did he do this? Was he responsible?”

“We have no evidence that Mark Siddons had anything to do with the fire,” said Banks.

“Where was he? Did he survive?”

“He was out at the time of the fire,” Banks said. “And he’s unharmed. I gather there was no love lost between you?”

“He turned our daughter against us,” said Aspern. “Took her away from home and stopped her from seeing us. It’s as if he took control of her mind like one of those religious cults you read about.”

“That’s not what he told me,” Banks said, careful now he knew he was walking on heavily mined land. “And it’s not the impression I got of him.”

“Well, you wouldn’t expect him to admit it, would you? I can only imagine the lies he told you.”

“What lies?”

“Never you mind. I’m just warning you, that’s all. The boy’s no good. Don’t believe a word he says.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Banks. “How old was Christine?”

“Seventeen,” said Aspern.

“And how old was she when she left home?”

“She was sixteen,” Mrs. Aspern answered. “She went the day after her sixteenth birthday. As if she just couldn’t wait to get away.”

“Did either of you know that Christine was a drug user?”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Aspern. “The crowd she was hanging around with. What was it? Pot? Ecstasy?”

“Apparently she preferred drugs that brought her oblivion rather than awareness,” Banks said softly, watching Patrick Aspern’s face closely for any signs of a reaction. All it showed was puzzlement. “It was heroin,” Banks continued. “Other narcotics, if she couldn’t get that, but mostly heroin.”

“Oh, dear God,” said Mrs. Aspern. “What have we done?”

Banks turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“Fran,” her husband said. “We can’t blame ourselves for this. We gave her every opportunity. Every advantage.”

Banks had heard this before on so many occasions that it slipped in one ear and out the other. Nobody had a clue what their kids really needed – and how could they, for teenagers are hardly the most communicative species on earth – but so many parents assumed that the advantages of wealth or status were enough in themselves. Even Banks’s own parents, working-class as they were, thought he had let them down by joining the police force instead of pursuing a career in business. But wealth and status rarely were enough, in Banks’s experience, though he knew that most kids from wealthy families went on to do quite well for themselves. Others, like Tina, and like Emily Riddle and Luke Armitage, cases he had dealt with in the recent past, fell by the wayside.

“Apparently,” Banks went on, cutting through the husband-wife tension he was sensing, “Christine used to steal morphine from your surgery.”

Aspern reddened. “That’s a lie! Did Siddons tell you that? Any narcotics in my surgery are safely under lock and key, in absolute compliance with the law. If you don’t believe it, come and have a look for yourself right now. I’ll show you. Come on.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Banks. “This isn’t about Christine’s drug supplies. We know she got her last score from a dealer in Eastvale.”

“It’s just a damn shame you can’t put these people away before they do the damage,” said Aspern.

“That would assume we know who the criminals are going to be before they commit their crimes,” said Banks, thinking of the film Minority Report, which he had seen with Michelle a few weeks ago.

“If you ask me, it’s pretty bloody obvious in most cases,” said Aspern. “Even if this Siddons didn’t start the fire, you can be damn sure he did something. He’s got criminal written all over him, that one.”

More than once Banks, like his colleagues, had acted on the premise that if the person they had in custody hadn’t committed the particular crime he was charged with, it didn’t matter, because the police knew he had committed other crimes, and had no evidence to charge him with them. In police logic, the crime they were convicted for, the one they didn’t commit, made up for all the crimes they had committed and got away with. It was easier in the old days, of course, before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act gave the criminals more rights than the police, and the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn’t touch anything with less than a hundred-percent possibility of conviction, but it still happened, if you could get away with it. “We’d have to overhaul the legal system,” he said, “if we wanted to put people who haven’t done anything away without a trial. But let’s get back to the matter in hand. Did you know of anyone who’d want to hurt Christine, Mrs. Aspern?”

“We didn’t know her… the friends she made after she left,” she answered. “But I can’t imagine anyone would want to harm her, no.”

“Dr. Aspern?”

“Me, neither.”

“There was an artist on the adjacent boat. All we know is that his name was Tom. Do you know anything about him?”

“Never heard of him,” said Patrick Aspern.

“What about Andrew Hurst? He lives nearby.”

“I never saw anyone.”

“When did you last visit the boat?” Banks asked him.

“Last week. Thursday, I believe.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Aspern said. “She’s my stepdaughter. I was concerned. I wanted to persuade her to come home.”

“Did you ever see the neighbor on one of your visits?”

“Look, you’re making it sound as if I was a regular visitor. I only went up there a couple of times to try to persuade Christine to come home, and that… thug she was with threatened me.”

“With what?”

“Violence, of course. I mean, I’m not a coward or a weakling or anything, but I wouldn’t put it past someone like him to have a knife, or even a gun.”