Playing With Fire

It was market day and the canvas-covered stalls were all set up in the cobbled square, chock-a-block with cheap clothes, car accessories, washing-up liquid, batteries, the cheese van, the butcher, the greengrocer, crockery, cutlery, toys, used books and videos. The older cloth-capped, waxed-jacketed punters milled around with the younger leather-and denim crowd, fingering the goods while barkers shouted out the virtues of their unbreakable tableware or infallible electric bottle openers.

There was nothing Mark wanted at the market, so he set off down the street, hands thrust deep in his pockets, head down, thinking about what Banks had just told him. He’d never realized that he might be in danger. Now, though, he looked at everyone with a keener eye, though he didn’t really know whom he was looking for. Still, if what Banks had said was right, and if the killer did believe that Mark might have seen him, then he’d better watch himself.

Mark felt something in one of the pockets of Banks’s suede overcoat. He pulled it out. A packet of Silk Cut, with two left, and a disposable lighter. What a piece of luck. Mark lit up. At least he had a fag, old and dry as it tasted.

He went through the other pockets to see if Banks had left any money, but all he found was a couple of old parking stubs and a note with “Schoenberg – Gurrelieder – del Mar/Sinopoli” written on it, which meant bugger all to him. Mark had always admitted he wasn’t much when it came to the brains department. He was a hard worker, good with his hands, and he’d tackle anything within reason, but when it came to brains and spelling, leave him out of it. The copper must be a brainy fellow if he’d written that, Mark thought. It didn’t even look like English. Maybe it was somewhere he went on his holidays. Mark had never been abroad, but he’d probably do that one day, too, he thought. Somewhere really weird like Mongolia. Ulan Bator. He’d seen it on a map in the squat and liked the sound of it. Ulan Bator. See, he wasn’t so stupid after all.

He put the headphones over his ears and turned on the CD player as he made his way among the Saturday- morning shoppers on South Market Street. Bowie came on singing “Five Years,” one of Mark’s favorites. It was nice to have real music again, better than that fucking drunk singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Even so, he felt numb and aimless, as if the music were coming down a long tube from far away. Everything had seemed like that since he knew Tina was dead. He was going through the motions, but really he wasn’t going anywhere.

After walking for about half an hour, Mark arrived at the construction site. The outside of the new gym complex was mostly completed, but there was a lot to be done inside – laying the floors, drywalling, fixtures and fittings, plumbing, electrics, painting – and it could all be done in winter, even if the weather was bad. The door was open and Mark went in. Things weren’t going full-tilt because it was a Saturday, but a lot of blokes worked weekends – Saturdays, at any rate, to get their jobs done by the deadline.

Inside, the place had the smell of newness about it. Not paint, because that hadn’t been applied yet, but just a melange of various things, from new-cut wood to the slightly damp cardboard boxes that things came in, to the sawdust that scattered the floors. Mark used to like the smell, the way he liked the smell of cut stone, but he couldn’t say why, only that it sparked something instinctive in him, something beyond words, beyond brains. There was a music to all the activity, too, a unity. Not David Bowie’s music, but hammers, drills and electric saws. To some it was noise, but to Mark it used to have pattern and meaning, the pattern and meaning of something being made. A symphony. It made him feel the same way as the music of the sea, which formed the background of some of his only happy childhood memories. He thought he must have been there when he was very young with his mother, before the drinking, before Crazy Nick. He thought it was Scarborough, had a vague memory of the castle on the hill, the waves crashing over the promenade. But he couldn’t remember for certain. None of it mattered now, anyway.

Lenny Knox was a subcontractor, a big, burly Liverpudlian with a face like red sandpaper, who usually worked every day God sent until the job was done. Sure enough, he was having a smoke by what were to be the showers and locker rooms when Mark came over. Vinnie Daly, one of his other workmates, put down his spanner when he saw Mark.

“Where you been, mate?” Lenny asked. “We was worried sick when we heard about the fire, weren’t we, Vinnie? They wouldn’t say on the news who got hurt, like. You all right?”

“I’m all right,” said Mark. “Police took me in, didn’t they? Kept me overnight.”

“The bastards.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“What about your young lass?”

Mark looked down at the unfinished floor. “She’s dead, Lenny.”

“Oh, no,” said Lenny, touching Mark on the shoulder. “Poor wee devil. I’m sorry, son, really I am. She were a nice lass.”

Mark looked at him, holding back the tears. “I wasn’t there, Lenny. I wasn’t there for her.”

“It’s not your fault, what happened. Look, if you need somewhere to kip, you know, for a couple of days, like, I’m sure my Sal won’t mind.”

“You sure, Lenny? ’Cos I’ve got nowhere else to go right now.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Look, you don’t want to be here today. Take yourself off, if you like, and come round to ours later.”

“No. I want to work. What else would I do? Where would I go? Besides, it’ll take my mind off things for a while at least. And I need the money.” The last was certainly true, but whether work would take his mind off his problems, Mark didn’t know. How could anything stop him from thinking about Tina?

Lenny looked down at him. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. Right. Look, why don’t you pick up those showerheads over there and come with me.”

Late Saturday morning, after warning Mark Siddons and setting a slowly recovering DS Hatchley the task of digging into the boy’s background, Banks headed for Adel again. Maria Phillips, true to her word, had left him the catalog and the names of three local artists whose openings Thomas McMahon had attended in Eastvale over the past five years. Unfortunately, there was no photograph of McMahon in the catalog. Apparently, people were not particularly interested in what artists looked like unless they painted self-portraits.

Banks wanted another crack at Dr. Patrick Aspern, without his wife present this time, if possible, and with the gloves off. Aspern wasn’t off his suspect list yet, not by a long chalk.

As Banks drove, he listened to Bob Dylan singing about being in Mississippi for a day too long and thought he knew the feeling. Not so much being in Yorkshire too long – he was still happy there – but staying with something or someone until long after you should have left, let go, when it all falls to pieces and the real damage gets done.

He pulled up outside the Tudor-style house, and this time Patrick Aspern himself answered the door, casually dressed in gray trousers, white shirt and a mauve V-neck sweater. He looked as if he was dressed for a round of golf, and he probably was. Banks suspected there would be no surgery on weekends.

“My wife’s lying down,” said Dr. Aspern, clearly surprised to see Banks back so soon. “This has all been a great shock to her, you know, especially seeing Christine, the state the body was in. If only she’d listened to me, at least she might have been spared that.”

“A shock to you, too, I should imagine?” said Banks. “I mean, Christine’s death.”

“Yes, of course. But we men realize we have to get on with our jobs, don’t we? Can’t afford to dwell on our emotions the way women do. Anyway, I can’t imagine how I can help you, but do come in.”

Banks followed him into the same room he had been in the previous day. The clock ticking on the mantelpiece was the only sound.

“Have you found anything out yet?” Aspern asked.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Banks. “We do know that the man on the other boat was an artist called Thomas McMahon, and that he was most likely the intended victim. Have you ever met him or heard of him?”

“McMahon? Can’t say as I have.”

“I’d like to talk to you about Mark Siddons a bit more,” Banks said.

Aspern’s expression darkened. “If anyone’s responsible for what happened to Christine, it’s him,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it. If he’d been with her, as he should have been, she’d be alive today. He knew she was ill, for crying out loud, knew she needed taking care of.”

“I thought you didn’t like the idea of their being together?”

“That’s not the point. If he was supposed to be with her, he should have been there. He knew she wasn’t