Playing With Fire

she sensed that the open door was right behind her. All she had to do was keep on pulling him, moving backward. She thought she was going to keel over from the heat and smoke, but she kept dragging him, and soon she felt the chill of the outside piercing the blanket over her back. Almost there. A part of the ceiling fell down close to her, and flames singed her eyebrows. Annie couldn’t go on. She felt her strength waning, her legs beginning to buckle under her. So close. Her vision shimmered. Her knees bent and she started toppling forward.

Then she felt herself bodily lifted and practically thrown across the lane. As she landed unceremoniously in the mud, she was able to rub her eyes and see Winsome finish the job, drag Banks’s body out of the doorway to safety. Annie breathed the fresh air deeply and let herself fall back, hair and arms spread out in the mud, still wrapped in her damp blanket.

Winsome was outside the cottage now, and a few more feet would free Banks from the flames. His head bounced down the steps. Annie didn’t know if he was dead or alive. She didn’t even want to look at him for fear he would be grotesquely disfigured by the fire, or just lying with his eyes wide open.

Finally, Winsome set Banks down a few feet from the cottage and hurried over to Annie.

“You all right, Guv?”

“I’m fine,” said Annie.

“That was a bloody stupid thing to do, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Alan…?”

“I don’t know, Guv. It took all I had to get the two of you out of there.”

Annie flung off her blanket and took a deep breath. And another. The cold fresh air made her feel dizzy. The two of them went over and squatted beside Banks. His clothes were smoldering, so Annie put the damp blanket on him. His face was blackened by the smoke, and she really couldn’t tell if he was badly burned or not. She didn’t think so, hoped to God not.

Holding her own breath, Annie leaned forward and listened for his. She thought he was still breathing. She wished she had some oxygen, wished that the firefighters and the ambulances would hurry up. She didn’t even know whether it would help to give him the kiss of life, or if it would only make things worse. Live, you bastard, live, she whispered, Winsome beside her, hand on her shoulder, and in the distance she heard the welcome sound of a fire engine.

It was the middle of the night when Annie finally got home from the hospital, exhausted beyond belief, leaving Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe to keep a bedside vigil. There was more paperwork to do, of course, always more paperwork, but that could wait until morning.

Banks wasn’t out of danger yet. He still wasn’t conscious, for a start. Annie told the doctor that he had most likely been drugged with Rohypnol, or something similar, probably mixed with alcohol. The flames had done some damage, mostly to his right leg and side, which had been closest in proximity to one of the seats of the fire, and to one side of his face. They were second-degree burns, with blistering, which would be extremely painful and cause some scarring. Banks’s shallow breathing had prevented the high level of smoke inhalation that might have done more serious damage more quickly, and the bumps on his head from the table and steps were superficial.

Annie moved around like a zombie. She knew she should go to bed but she was certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She needed a drink; she knew that much at least. She didn’t often drink spirits, but tonight called for something stronger than wine, so she poured herself a stiff cognac and coughed when she first tasted the fiery liquor.

When she caught a glance of herself in the mirror, she was surprised at the muddy hair, sooty face and the frightened eyes that looked back at her. The doctor who had examined Annie and Winsome had been reluctant to let her go, but there was no real damage and no real reason to keep her. She had insisted she was fine. And she was, physically. Her muscles ached, and her foot was bruised and swollen from kicking the door in, but other than that she had been spared the ravages of fire and smoke. She had probably been in the burning cottage for no more than thirty seconds, she reckoned. Of course, the station officer had given her a bollocking for going in at all, but she sensed that he did so because it was expected of him, because it was his job, and that he secretly approved. He must have known, as Annie did, that there was nothing else she could have done to save Banks’s life.

Phil. Phil Keane had done all this. He had enlisted his old polytechnic pals McMahon and Gardiner to help him with the art scam, and they had got together and turned on him. For that, he had killed them. It had to have happened that way. It was the only thing that made sense now. Philip Keane, not Leslie Whitaker, was Giles Moore. Philip Keane, not Leslie Whitaker, had assumed William Masefield’s identity, and perhaps even killed him, too.

Annie would never understand in a million years how she could have felt so close to someone capable of doing what he did, of thinking she was in love with him, of sharing his bed. The thought made her skin crawl.

She realized that Phil, or whatever his name really was, was one of those rare creatures indeed: part charming con man, part cold-blooded killer. Con men didn’t usually kill, not unless they were cornered and could see no other way out. And that was what must have happened. The threat of exposure. Of ruin. Of prison.

Phil Keane made people feel special so that he could manipulate them. Chameleonlike, he metamorphosed from one identity to another, leaving chaos in his wake. And he did it for profit and self-protection. Annie shook her head in disbelief at her own blindness. How little we know even those closest to us, she thought. Phil Keane kept his true self locked in a dark, secret place nobody could ever penetrate. You saw what he wanted you to see, believed what he wanted you to believe.

And he made you feel special.

Annie tossed back the cognac and poured herself another large one. What the hell. She felt as if she had been raped all over again, and right now she didn’t know if she hated Phil more for killing McMahon and Gardiner, and for almost killing Banks, or for deceiving her so completely. He had used her all along, of that she was certain. While he hadn’t known he was going to kill McMahon and Gardiner, he had been in a criminal partnership with them by August, when he had pursued Annie, and he had no doubt thought it would be useful to get close to someone with inside knowledge of what the local police were thinking and doing.

And to cap it all, the bastard had got away.

There was a huge manhunt going on, even now, but Annie doubted they’d find him. After all, he was a chameleon. If it had been a television drama, of course, they would have hushed up Banks’s survival, let the world believe he was dead, and Annie would have waited for Phil to get in touch, to come and offer his sympathy and condolences on the loss of her friend.

But the reporters were on the scene almost as quickly as the fire brigade. This was big news. Banks was a well-known local detective with a number of successful cases under his belt. In no time flat, the local news on TV and radio was informing the good citizens of Eastvale and, no doubt, the rest of England, that DCI Alan Banks had been pulled from his blazing cottage by his heroic DI Annie Cabbot and DC Winsome Jackman, and that he was now in Eastvale General Infirmary. There was no way Phil wouldn’t hear that, and when he did, he would know the game was up. He would disappear and reemerge as yet someone else.

Annie smelled of smoke, and she wanted to go up and have a shower and get clean. She took her cognac to the bathroom with her. They would go over Keane’s cottage with a fine-tooth comb, she thought. Meticulous and fastidious as Phil was – and she had no doubt that he would have cleaned up behind him – the odds were that they would find something. A hair. A fingerprint. Something.

She stripped her clothes off and dropped them in the laundry basket. Already, she noticed, her foot was turning yellow, black and blue. At least it wasn’t broken. The doctor had told her that much.

Annie paused at the sink, gripping its edge, again looking at her black face. Like a soldier going into battle. She couldn’t understand the expression in her eyes now, didn’t know what she was feeling. Just before she turned to get in the hot shower, she noticed the toothbrush lying on the sink. It wasn’t hers. She remembered when Phil had stayed a few nights ago she had given him it to use, and it looked as if he had. She knew she hadn’t cleaned up the bathroom since.

Taking a plastic bag from the cupboard under the sink, she dropped the toothbrush in it. You never knew. It could contain Phil Keane’s DNA. Because one day they’d catch the bastard, and then they would need all the evidence they could get.

It was two days before Banks was allowed visitors at Eastvale General Infirmary, and Annie was the first to go