Playing With Fire

out, just like British Waterways was trying to get rid of the barge squatters, but for better or for worse… this was Gardiner’s home.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Annie said. “Is someone trying to set fire to all the eyesores and down-and-outs in the area?”

“It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Banks. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. We’ve no evidence yet that there’s any connection between the fires. And they weren’t down-and-outs, despite their living conditions. Don’t forget that Thomas McMahon was an artist who managed to make a living painting local landscapes for the tourist trade. I think he chose to live the way he did. Even Mark Siddons works at the Eastvale College building site. None of the victims were really spongers or bums.”

“The girl was a junkie, though.”

“Well,” said Banks, watching Geoff Hamilton guide the SOCO in packaging debris from the caravan, “there might be any number of reasons for that.” He was thinking, as Mark had been thinking earlier that evening, about Dr. Patrick Aspern, with whom he was far from finished. “Besides, in my book, that makes her ill, not criminal.”

“You know what I mean,” Annie said. “And you also know that I agree with you. All I’m suggesting is that a junkie loses a certain… strength of will, that someone who needs something so much will do whatever it takes to get it, sponging being the least of it.”

“Point taken,” said Banks.

The local constable, PC Locke, came over to them. “Mr. Mellor wants to know if he can go to the Fox and Hounds,” he said. “Says the dog’s freezing its balls off – if you’ll pardon my language, ma’am – and he needs a pick-me-up.”

“I can understand that,” said Banks. “Look, this isn’t exactly kosher,” he went on, taking Locke aside and lowering his voice. “Strictly speaking, we have to consider Mellor a suspect, but why don’t you accompany him to the Fox and Hounds and wait for us? We’ve got to talk to him somewhere, and it might as well be there. At least I suppose it’ll be warm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep a sharp eye on his alcohol intake. He’s allowed one, a small one, for the shock, but no more. I don’t want him pissed when we get there to question him, okay?”

“Understood, sir.”

“And one more thing.”

“Sir?”

Banks gestured over to the road, where the phalanx of media people jostled for space and pointed cameras. “Avoid them. Mum’s the word.”

“I think I can manage that, sir. We’ll go the back way.”

PC Locke walked over to Mellor and they headed toward the back lane, the dog on its leash trotting along beside them, and before they had got very far, they vanished over a stile into the darkness. Banks hoped that no bright spark of a reporter decided to go and check out the local pub. They’d get there eventually, he knew, but they wouldn’t leave the scene yet, not while there was still some action.

“Are you sure that was wise?” Annie asked.

“Probably not, but I don’t think Mellor started the fire. Let’s have a look at the damage.”

They walked closer to the burned-out caravan. In the bright artificial light, it was easy to spot the pooling at the center of the floor, one sign of accelerant use, and Banks fancied he could even smell a whiff of petrol on the air. Geoff Hamilton’s electronic “sniffer” had already detected something and confirmed that some sort of accelerant had been used. The damage to the caravan was far worse than that to the boats. It was also such a small scene, and the remains of the floor were so unstable, that Hamilton and DS Stefan Nowak were trying to do the best they could by working their ways in from the outside edges, not trampling on the flimsy caravan floor at all. Peter Darby was videotaping their progress, occasionally swapping his camcorder for his trusty Pentax and taking a flurry of stills.

At the center of it all, by the pooling that marked the seat of the blaze, lay a blackened body, this one on its side, curled in the familiar pugilistic pose. It had been hard to spot at first among the charred furniture and fixtures, but once you managed to separate it from its context, you couldn’t miss it. Hamilton said that the warped and cracked object beside the body was a glass. There had been a glass lying beside Tom McMahon’s body too, Banks remembered, wondering if it was relevant. He noticed Annie give a little shiver, and he didn’t think it was caused by the cold.

Hamilton and Stefan Nowak came walking toward them.

“Anything?” Banks asked.

“Pooling, traces of accelerant,” said Hamilton.

“Same as before?”

“Looks like it.”

“Anything to connect the two?”

Hamilton shifted from foot to foot. “Well,” he said, “apart from the fact that we’ve had two suspicious fires in out-of-the-way places in two days, when we’re usually only unlucky enough to get two a year, I’d say no.”

It was an important point. Banks needed to know whether they were now running two separate arson investigations or just one. “How long would it take for a caravan that size to be reduced to that state?” he asked.

“Half an hour or so. Whatever caused it, it was hot and fast.”

“What about the accelerant used?”

“This one smells like petrol to me – you can smell it yourself – though I’d rather wait for the chromatograph results and the spectral analysis, just to be certain.”

“The previous victim, or one of them, was an artist,” Banks mused aloud. “So it was reasonable to assume that he’d have turpentine somewhere around. We don’t know what Mr. Gardiner was yet, but the killer clearly brought his own accelerant this time. Maybe he knew both victims, knew that McMahon would have turpentine handy to start the fire, but also knew that he had to bring his own to Gardiner’s caravan. But why bring petrol instead of turps?”

“Probably had some on hand,” said Hamilton. “Most people do, if they’ve got a car. It’d be easy enough to siphon a little off. And safer than going to a shop to buy turpentine. Someone might have remembered him.”

“Good point,” said Banks. “What about the victim?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he didn’t just lie there and let himself burn to death, did he?”

“How the hell would I know what he did?”

“Speculate. Use your imagination.”

Hamilton snorted. “That’s not my job. I’ll wait for the test results and the postmortem, thank you very much.”

Banks sighed. “Okay,” he said. “If the victim had been conscious, and capable, might he have been able to escape this fire?”

“He might have been,” Hamilton conceded. “Unless he was overcome by smoke or fumes. They can disorient a person very quickly.”

“Whoever set the fire had to have been inside the caravan at the time, hadn’t he?”

“It looks that way from the pattern of pooling. If he’d poured it through the window or tossed it through the door, for example, you’d see evidence of that in the trail, and in the charring.”

“And there isn’t any?”

“Not that I can see.”

“And whoever set the fire got out?”

“Well, there’s only one body.”

“What about access, escape route?”

“There’s a lane runs by the back, behind the trees and the wall.”

“Okay,” said Banks. He turned from Hamilton and looked at the charred, smoking caravan again. There wasn’t much more they could do at the scene. Best leave it to Stefan and his team, see what they could turn up, if anything.