Playing With Fire

“When did he take it out?” Annie asked.

“Thursday morning.”

“And when did he return it?”

“Saturday morning.”

So he had the Cherokee before the narrow-boats fire, but he took it back before the Roland Gardiner fire. Annie wondered why he would do that.

“Ever any problems when he brought it back?”

“No. It was always in excellent condition.”

“Did he return it full or empty?”

“Empty. It costs a bit more, but it saves the customer having to search for a garage himself.”

“You fill the cars here?”

“Yes. Of course.”

That was a piece of luck, Annie thought. They could take samples from the garage’s tank and from the Cherokee’s. Banks had told her that forensics could identify the tank from which the petrol used in the Gardiner fire came. Whoever had rented the Cherokee would most likely not have needed to refill the tank anywhere else. If they came up with a match, that was solid evidence to use in court.

“What’s the customer’s name?”

“Masefield. William Masefield.”

“What did he look like?”

“Ordinary, really.”

“Let’s see if we can improve on that, shall we?” said Annie with a sigh. She hated trying to get descriptions out of people. Most witnesses, in her experience, were neither observant nor good at expressing themselves in words. This time proved no exception. After about ten minutes, the best the three of them could come up with was that he was a little above medium height, generally in good shape though perhaps just a tad overweight, a little stooped, gold-rimmed glasses, graying hair and casual clothes – jeans, blue Windcheater. Nick thought he’d been wearing white trainers on at least one occasion, but didn’t know if they were Nike or not. At least Annie ought to be grateful there were no glaring contradictions about height or hair color. It could have been the person Mark Siddons had described visiting Thomas McMahon, but it could have been a thousand other people, too.

“Any closed-circuit TV here?” Annie asked.

“Only out back, where the cars are,” said Karen. “And it’s only turned on at night, when no one’s here. Otherwise we’d be changing the tapes every five minutes.”

Too bad, Annie thought. But it was worth a try. “Was there anything else you remember about him?” Annie asked.

“No,” said Karen.

“How did he pay?”

“Credit card.”

“Can you give me the details?”

Karen quickly made a photocopy of William Masefield’s file and passed it to Annie. The address, she noticed, was Studley, a Midlands village in Warwickshire, not far from Redditch.

“Did he have any sort of accent at all?” she asked.

“Just ordinary,” said Karen.

“What do you mean? What’s ordinary? Yorkshire? Birmingham?”

“Sort of no accent, really. But nice. Educated.”

Annie understood what she meant. They used to call it “Received Pronunciation,” and it was what all the radio and television presenters spoke before regional and ethnic accents came into fashion. RP was generally regarded as posh and related to public schools, Oxford and Cambridge, and southeastern England, the Home Counties. Most accents tell you where a person comes from; RP only told you social status.

Stefan poked his head around the door and Annie noticed Karen immediately start to preen.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“It looks like the same vehicle,” he said. “The measurements are the same, as are the tires, and there’s some distinctive cross-hatching on the casts we took from the lay-by that appear to match this specific Jeep Cherokee. Mike’s still working on it, and we’ll be taking soil and gravel samples, but I thought I’d give you the breaking news.”

“That’s great,” Annie said, tapping the sheet of paper in front of her. “William Masefield. We’ve got his details here. We’ve got him.” In her mind, she could see them swooping in and making an arrest even before Banks got back from London, unrealistic as that was. Still, she felt jubilant. She could even see a possibility of that weekend in New York with Phil. If she could afford it, because she would insist on paying her own way.

“There’s only one problem,” Stefan said.

“Oh?”

“It’s been thoroughly cleaned, inside and out.”

Annie looked at Karen, who shrugged. “We always get the returns cleaned up as promptly as we can,” she said.

“Shit,” said Annie. “No forensics.”

“Most likely not,” Stefan agreed. “Though we can certainly take it in and try. We might pick up a print or a hair the cleaners missed.”

“Wait a minute,” said Karen. “What do you mean, ‘take it in’? Take it where?”

“To the police garage,” Annie said.

“But you can’t take the Jeep. It’s booked.”

“Mr. Masefield again?”

“No. But they’re good customers. Regular.”

“It’s evidence,” said Annie. She turned to Stefan. “Tell Mike to take it to the police garage, but to make sure he gets that petrol sample first, along with a sample from the underground tank here.”

“But the captain will-”

“Don’t worry, Karen,” said Annie, picking up a pad from the desk. “We’ll give you a receipt. And you can always rent them the Explorer instead. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Commander Burgess? Well, bugger me!”

“Watch it with the vile language, Banks. And why such surprise?”

“The last time I saw you, you were a detective superintendent in National Criminal Intelligence. I thought they’d put you out to pasture for good.”

“Things change. I’m resilient, me.”

Not only that, Banks remembered, but “Dirty Dick” Burgess had been sent somewhere he could do little harm because he was accused of dragging his feet over a sensitive race-related investigation. The two had known each other for many years, and their relationship had changed significantly over the course of time. At first they had been like chalk and cheese: Burgess brash, right-wing, racist, sexist, cutting corners to get results; Banks trying his damnedest to remain a liberal humanist in a heartbreaking job, in demoralizing times. Now Banks cut more corners and Burgess toed the line more closely. They both came from a working-class background, and both had worked their way up the hard way, through the streets. Burgess was the son of an East End barrow boy. He had thrived in the Thatcher years, lain low during John Major’s reign, and now he was thriving again in the Blair era. It just went to show what Banks had always believed; there wasn’t much difference between Thatcher and Blair except for gender, and sometimes he wasn’t too sure about that.

They were about the same age, too, and had managed to find a certain amount of common ground over the years. It was fragile ground, though, thin ice over a quagmire. Banks had phoned Burgess from the train, with an idea in mind, and Burgess had suggested that Banks buy him lunch. Thus they stood at the bar of a crowded pub near the Old Bailey, washing down the curry of the day with flat lager and rubbing elbows with barristers, clients and clerks. At least Burgess hadn’t changed in one respect; he still drank like a fish and smoked Tom Thumb cigars.

What had changed most, though, was his appearance. Gone were the silver pony tail and the scuffed leather