Playing With Fire

nervous easily and blab, if there was anything to blab.

They settled in the conservatory, which was warm enough and did indeed have a magnificent view looking west into Swainsdale, the distant hills shrouded in light mist. Alice Mowbray sat down on a wicker chair and tugged her skirt over her plump knees. The skirt was at least two inches too short for someone with her thighs, Annie thought, and in conjunction with the peroxide-blond hair it gave her a definite look of mutton dressed as lamb. Her husband, black hair slicked back with a little gel, jeans too tight over the slight paunch he was already beginning to show, looked as if he didn’t mind. Unbidden, an image of the two of them disco-dancing under a whirling glittering globe, Eric waving his hands in the air and doing his best John Travolta imitation, came into her mind, and she had to hold back the laughter.

“What is it, then?” Alice Mowbray asked.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some rather bad news for you,” she said.

Alice put her hand to her necklace. “Oh?”

“It’s about your ex-husband. I don’t know if you’ve seen or heard any news this morning…?”

“Only the Sunday papers,” Alice said.

Annie knew the Jennings Field blaze had been too late to make the national Sunday papers. “Well, I’m afraid there’s been a fire at the caravan where your ex-husband was living.”

“Oh, no,” said Alice. “Is Roland hurt?”

“There was one person in the caravan at the time. As yet, we can’t be certain if he was Mr. Gardiner, but I’m afraid that person is dead, whoever he is.”

“I don’t believe it. Not Roland.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Mowbray, but it’s true. If it is him. Are you all right?”

Alice had turned pale, but she nodded. “Yes, I’ll be fine.” She looked at her husband. “Darling, can you fetch me a glass of water, please?”

Eric didn’t look too happy at being asked to fetch and carry in front of another woman, but there wasn’t much he could do about it without looking a complete arsehole, except his wife’s bidding.

“I’m sorry to spring such a shock on you like this,” Annie said, “but there are some questions I need to ask.”

“Of course. I understand. We’ve been apart for over two years now, but it’s not as if I don’t… well, still have some feelings for Roland. Was he… you know…?”

Annie knew all about divorced men’s feelings for their exwives at first hand, through Banks, and they could be complicated. She felt lucky that Phil had never been married. “I’m afraid the body was badly burned,” she said, “but if it’s any consolation we think he was unconscious before the fire started.”

Alice frowned. “Unconscious? But how…?”

“Sleeping pills, perhaps. But we don’t know anything for certain yet. That’s why I need to talk to you.”

Eric came back with a glass of water and a pill and handed them to Alice. “What’s this?” she asked, looking at the pill.

“Your Valium,” he said. “I just thought you might need it.”

Alice set the pill aside. “I’m fine,” she said, and sipped some water.

“He was a useless pillock,” Eric said.

“Pardon?” Annie said.

“Her ex. Roly-poly. He was a prize pillock.”

“Eric, don’t be so disrespectful.”

“Well, he was. I’m only telling the truth, Allie, and you know it. Why else are you here with me while he was off living in a poky caravan in a godforsaken field somewhere? He was a loser.”

“Mr. Mowbray,” Annie said, “I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the situation here. A man, possibly Roland Gardiner, is dead.”

“I heard you the first time round, love. And I say it doesn’t make a scrap of difference. He was a useless pillock while he was alive, and he’s a useless pillock dead.”

Annie sighed and turned back to Alice, who was glaring at her husband. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said. “He’s not usually rude like this.”

“Never mind,” said Annie, giving Eric Mowbray a dirty look. “Maybe he’s just trying to hide his grief.” Or something else, she thought. She turned back to Alice. “One problem we do have is with identification. Dental records are often useful in such cases. Could you tell me who your family dentist is? Doctor, too.”

“I don’t know if Roland ever went after he left,” said Alice, “but we went to Grunwell’s, on Market Street. Our family doctor’s Dr. Robertson, at the clinic on the Leaside Estate.”

Annie knew the place.

“We don’t know much about your ex-husband,” Annie went on. “Is there anything you can tell us that might be of any use?”

“He was just ordinary, really,” said Alice.

“You can say that again,” said Eric Mowbray.

“Shut up, Eric,” said Alice.

Annie was fast starting to think that Eric Mowbray had outstayed any usefulness she might have erroneously attributed to him in the first place. “Mr. Mowbray,” she said, “perhaps you could leave us for a while? I have some questions to ask your wife.”

Mowbray got up. “Fine with me. I’ve got work to do, anyway.”

After he’d left the conservatory, the two women let the silence stretch a few moments, then Alice said, “He’s a good sort, really, Eric. Just got a bit of a sore spot where Roland’s concerned.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because he’s my ex. Eric’s the jealous type.”

“I see,” said Annie. “Does he have any reason to be?”

“Not of Roland.”

“What does Mr. Mowbray do for a living?”

“He’s in computers. He makes very good money. Look at this conservatory. It certainly wasn’t here when me and Roland were together. Nor the Volvo. And we’re having our holidays in Florida in February. We’re going to Disney World.”

“Very nice. Do you own any other vehicles?”

“Eric used to have a Citroen, but he sold it.”

“No Jeep or Range Rover?”

“No. Why?”

“Was Roland a successful businessman?”

“I often thought he was in the wrong business,” Alice said. “He just wasn’t that much of a salesman. Didn’t have the oomph. Didn’t have an ounce of ambition in his entire being. No get-up-and-go at all. Sometimes I thought he’d have been far better off as a schoolteacher, maybe. And happier. Still, he wouldn’t have earned much money at that, either, would he?”

Money seemed to figure large in Alice Mowbray’s view of the universe, Annie gathered, and perhaps in her second husband’s, too. Jack Mellor had already hinted as much the previous night. “Did he not try to get another job?” she asked.

“It would have been a bit difficult for him, wouldn’t it?”

“Why? Lots of people get made redundant and find new jobs.”

“Redundant? That’s a good one. Where on earth did you get that idea?”

“Your husband didn’t lose his job?”

“Oh, Roland lost his job, all right, but it wasn’t through redundancy. No. He was fired. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I never thought he had it in him.”

“Had what in him?”

“He’d been on the fiddle, hadn’t he?”

“Had he?”

“Yes. Something to do with forging orders and cooking the books. Stealing from the company. I must say he didn’t have a lot to show for it, but that’s typical Roland, that is. Small-time, even as a crook. No ambition.”