Playing With Fire

then the Job, the unpredictable hours. Sometimes he wondered if it was possible for a copper to have anything but the most superficial and undemanding of relationships.

He had also wondered more than once over the past few months where things were going with Michelle. They met up when they could, usually managed to have a good time, and the sex was great. But she always seemed to hold a part of herself back. Most people did, Banks realized, including himself, but with Michelle it was different, as if she were carrying around some great weight she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, share, and in a way it made their relationship feel superficial.

With Annie, Banks had developed a deeper relationship. That was the problem, what had made Annie run: the intimacy, and Banks’s residual feelings for Sandra. And the kids, of course. The idea of Banks’s two children seemed to scare Annie to death. Michelle never talked about children. Banks wondered if she had been deeply wounded by her past in some way. Annie had been raped, and they had talked about that, got it out in the open, but with Michelle… she just wouldn’t open up.

Banks sorted through his post, pleased to see that his copies of Gramophone and Mojo had both arrived, and poured a wee dram of ten-year-old cask-strength Laphroaig, which DS Hatchley had bought him at a duty-free shop. Talk about a drink with teeth; it bit deep into your tongue, throat and gut and didn’t let go. The aroma alone was enough to make you feel pissed.

Banks thought about Michelle again. Was he attracted only to wounded women? he wondered. Did he see himself as some sort of healer, a Travis McGee figure, remembering the books he’d read with prurient interest as an adolescent, along with James Bond, the Saint, Sexton Blake and Modesty Blaise. Just a few days on the Busted Flush with old Travis and you’ll be right as rain. Well, if he did see himself that way, he wasn’t making a very good job of it, was he? And you didn’t get to his age, or Michelle’s, without taking a hefty emotional, even physical, knock or two along the way. Especially if you happened to be a copper. Banks laughed at himself, tilted his head back and tipped his glass.

He phoned back, but Michelle was out, so he left a message of regret on her answering machine. Maybe next weekend, he said, though he doubted either of their cases would have wound down by then.

At least he had had one bit of good news when he called back at the station after his little chat with Maria Phillips: their body was definitely Thomas McMahon. There was only one dentist in the village of Molesby, the nearest settlement to the narrow boats, and DC Templeton had had the good sense to check there first with the dental impression. Thomas McMahon had been there for a filling less than a week before.

Sometimes it was that easy.

It was cold in the cottage, and Banks considered lighting a peat fire. Then he decided it wasn’t worth it; he was sure he wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to enjoy it. Besides, after today, there was something about the idea of even the most innocent domestic fire that frightened him. He checked the smoke detectors to see if they were both still working. They were. Then he turned on two bars of the electric fire and poured himself another drink.

He thought of watching a movie on DVD. He had recently bought a player and it had revitalized his interest in movies. He was starting to collect them the way he did CDs. In the end he decided that it was too late; he knew he would fall asleep on the sofa halfway through. Instead he put on Cassandra Wilson’s Belly of the Sun CD and browsed through the Gramophone reviews. God, what a deep, rich sensuous voice Cassandra had, he thought, like melting chocolate as she worked each syllable for all she could get, stretched them out until you thought they’d break, dropped on them from high or crept up underneath them and licked and chewed them out of shape.

The whiskey tasted good, sharp, peaty and a little bit medicinal, and he wished he could go outside and stand by Gratly Falls and look down the daleside to the lights of Helmthorpe the way he did when the weather was good, but it was too cold. Oh, certainly it was mild enough for January, but after dark a chill came to the air that defied even the properties of a fine single malt whiskey to warm the cockles of one’s heart. A wind had sprung up, too, and he felt as if he were marooned in his little cottage, straining against its ropes to stay on the ground.

As he put the magazine aside and settled back with his feet up, only a dim table light on, Cassandra singing Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm,” his mind drifted over the day’s events, as it often did at times like this. He wasn’t so much thinking as just riffing, improvising on a theme, the way a jazz player did, or the way Elgar had written his Enigma variations.

Enigma was a good place to start. Everything about today’s events seemed infused by that very quality. Elusive, inchoate, equivocal. On the one hand, it appeared as if Thomas McMahon had been the intended victim, but there were no signs of external injury other than the fire damage, and they knew nothing about any possible motive. On the other hand, Mark Siddons had had a row with his drug-addict girlfriend Tina and stormed off, but his alibi held tight, and the physical evidence exonerated him.

Tina, or Mark, had also bought drugs from Danny Boy Corcoran, and wherever drugs are concerned you have to look closely at everyone involved. Then there was Tina’s stepfather, Dr. Patrick Aspern. Banks hadn’t particularly liked him, but that didn’t mean much in itself. He had disliked innocent people before. But if what Mark said about Aspern and his stepdaughter was true, that was enough to give the doctor a strong motive. And both Aspern and his wife had been evasive, to say the least, when it came to alibis. On the other hand, perhaps something in Mark’s own background had made him only too eager to believe Tina’s story without question. That background might well be worth looking into, Banks thought, making a mental note to put DS Hatchley on it in the morning.

Andrew Hurst was another problem. Hurst haunted the canal side, he had lied about his activities, he had washed his clothes, and he had no alibi. But what motive did he have? Perhaps he didn’t need one. He had first approached the scene, then he had rung the fire brigade. Maybe he was an arsonist who just liked to start fires, a pyromaniac. From what Banks knew of the basic psychology of pyromaniacs, many of them liked not only to report, hang around and watch their own handiwork, but they liked to take part in the firefighting operation, too, and help the police. Banks would see just how helpful Andrew Hurst wanted to be.

Banks thought about another Laphroaig as the CD came to an end, but decided against it. Instead, he took himself off to bed.

Chapter 5

Danny Boy Corcoran lived in a small flat off South Market Street, on the fringes of the student area. He had once been a business student at Eastvale College, but he had discovered a more lucrative career in selling drugs and dropped out before finishing his diploma. His flat had been under surveillance all night, and Danny and his girlfriend hadn’t arrived home until eight in the morning, so Banks and Annie had the advantage. Banks felt surprisingly well rested after his early night, and even Annie looked and sounded more cheerful than she had in days. The cold still lingered, Banks could tell, by her red nose and the occasional sneeze, but it was on the wane.

Danny Boy, on the other hand, looked like crap. He had clearly just gone to bed and was wearing only a red sweatshirt with a Montego Bay logo and Y-fronts, his scrawny hairy legs sticking out below. Danny was a wannabe bad-boy Jamaican drug dealer, but unfortunately for him, in reality he had been born to white middle-class parents in Blandford Forum. His dreadlocked hair stuck out in all directions, and his bloodless face seemed paler than a vampire’s in a time of famine. “Can we come in, Danny?” Banks asked, as they showed their warrant cards.

“Why? Whaddya want?”

“I’ll tell you if you let us come in.”

Danny’s lanky frame still blocked the doorway. “Gorrawarrant?”

“We don’t need one. We just want to talk.”

A figure appeared behind Danny, framed by his outstretched arm and the doorpost, similarly thin, and pale enough to make her flesh-toned bra and panties look like a suntan. Banks could see she had goose bumps on her arms. And needle marks. “Danny, who is it? Tell them to go away and come back to bed.”

“Fuck off, Nadia,” Danny said without turning around. “It’s business.”

Nadia made a face at his back, turned and shambled away.

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve come here disturbing my rest for,” he said. “I’ve not done anything wrong.”