Playing With Fire

“Can you tell me the name of the company he worked for?”

Alice told her. Annie wrote it down.

“Did Roland have any enemies?”

“Enemies? Roland? He was too much of a mouse to make enemies. Never offended a soul. He’d never stand in anyone’s way enough to make an enemy. No, Roland was likable enough, I’ll give him that. He had a natural charm. People liked him. Perhaps because he was so passive, so easygoing. He’d do anything for anyone.”

“This forgery business, did he have a partner?”

“Did it all by himself. As I said, you could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“How long were you married?”

“Ten years.”

“Quite late in life, then?”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “For Roland, yes. He was thirty-two when we married.”

Annie didn’t dare ask Alice how old she was. “Had he been married before?”

“Neither of us had. I must admit, he turned my head. He could be a real charmer, could Roland. Until you got to know him, of course, then you saw how empty it all was.”

“Was the divorce amicable?”

“As amicable as these things go. He didn’t have anything I wanted, despite his little business on the side, and he seemed quite willing to let me keep the house.”

“You didn’t want the caravan?”

“The caravan? I hated the bloody thing! That was typical Roland, though. Soon as we did have a bit of extra cash, off he goes and buys a bloody caravan. That was his idea of a good time: two weeks in a caravan at Primrose Valley or Flamborough Head. I ask you.”

“So there was no unsettled business between you?”

“I got on with my life, and he got on with his.”

“Mr. Mowbray, your present husband, when did he come on the scene?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you meet him before or after you split up with Roland?”

Alice paused a few moments before answering. “Before,” she said. “But things were already over for Roland and me.”

Annie supposed that Alice needed someone to go off with, an excuse to end her marriage, and somewhere to go. Many people did. They didn’t want to stay in a relationship, but they didn’t want to go it alone, either.

“What did you do last night?”

If Alice found the question offensive, she didn’t let on. “We were out to dinner at a friend’s house.”

“Can you give me the address? Just routine, for the paperwork.”

Alice gave it to her.

“Do you think Roland might have committed suicide?”

“I don’t think he had the guts. It might have been something he’d think of, but when it came to it, he’d bottle out. And certainly not in a fire. He wasn’t exactly the most physically brave man I’ve ever met. He used to make enough fuss about going to the dentist’s, for crying out loud.”

“Can you give me a list of his friends?”

“Friends? Roland? There was no one close. I can probably come up with a few names of people who knew him, mostly from work, but I don’t think they’ll be able to tell you any more than I can.”

“Was he secretive, then?”

“I suppose so. Just quiet, though, mostly. I don’t think he really had much to talk about.”

“Do you happen to have a photograph of him? As recent as possible?”

“I might have one or two,” Alice said. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Annie heard her go upstairs. She also heard her husband question her as she went. Annie sat and admired the view as two sparrows fluttered in the birdbath out in the garden. She thought she could see a hawk circling over distant Tetchley Fell. A couple of minutes later, Alice came back with a handful of photographs.

“These were taken at the last office Christmas party we went to,” she said. “Three years ago.”

Annie flipped through them and picked one of the few that was actually in focus: Gardiner sitting at a table, a little flushed from the wine, raising his glass to the photographer and smiling. It was good enough for identification purposes.

“Has anyone been around asking for him since he left?” she asked.

“No. But there was a phone call.”

Annie’s ears pricked up. “When?”

“In July, I think.”

“Did the caller identify himself?”

“No. That was the funny thing. When I told him Roland no longer lived here, he just asked me if I knew where he did live.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him. I mean, I knew where Roland was. I had to, with the divorce, the solicitors and everything.”

“Did he ever call back?”

“No. That was all.”

Interesting, Annie thought. July. Around the time Roland Gardiner started being a bit more optimistic, according to Jack Mellor, and the same time Thomas McMahon got a spring in his step. What happened last summer? Annie wondered. She asked Mrs. Mowbray a few more questions about Roland’s past: where he went to school, where his parents lived, and so on; then she left. She didn’t see Eric Mowbray on her way out, and she couldn’t say it bothered her.

“One of the main problems an art forger faces,” Phil Keane explained to Banks and Annie that Sunday lunchtime at the Queen’s Arms, “is getting hold of the right period paper or canvas.”

Banks looked at him as he talked. So this was the mysterious man Annie was now seeing? She had referred to Phil merely as a friend, but Banks sensed a bit more chemistry than Platonic friendship between them. Not that they were fawning over each other, playing kissy-face or holding hands, but there was just something in the air – pheromones, most likely, and something in the way she listened as he spoke. Not so much hanging on his every word, but respectful, involved.

Banks had noticed that one or two of the women in the place had cast appraising glances when Phil walked in ten minutes late and insisted on going to the bar to buy a round of drinks. He was handsome, Banks thought, but not outrageously so, well dressed but not showy, and he talked with the easy charm and knowledge of a habitual lecturer. He did, in fact, give occasional lectures, Annie said, so it was hardly surprising that he seemed so confident, even a bit pedantic, in his delivery. What was there not to like about this man? Banks wondered. This man who was probably shagging Annie. Let it go, Banks told himself; they’d moved on ages ago, hadn’t they? And he had Michelle.

The trouble was that Michelle was far away right now, and here was Banks sitting in the Queen’s Arms with Annie and her new fancy man, desperately looking for things to dislike. In his experience, anything or anyone who seemed too good to be true was too good to be true. Well, the man was too old for her, for a start, but then so had he been too old for her, and Phil Keane was a few years younger than he.

“Anyway,” Phil went on, “not everyone can do a John Myatt and forge modern masters with emulsion paint on any old scrap of paper he finds lying around, so the typical forger tends to be careful, especially in these days of scientific testing. He has to make sure his materials, and not just his techniques, pass all the requisite requirements. Not always an easy task.”

“You were saying about the paper…?”

“Was I? Oh, yes.” Phil scratched the crease between the side of his nose and his cheek. It was a gesture Banks immediately disliked. It said, Until I was so rudely interrupted. The pontificator’s irritation at being interrupted in his digressions. He was damned glad he’d found something to dislike about the man at last, even though it wasn’t much.

“Well, until the end of the eighteenth century, all paper was made by hand, usually from rags, and after that it