Playing With Fire

in. Beyond the window, occasional shafts of sunlight shot through the cloud cover. Cut flowers brightened up the drab-olive room.

Banks lay propped up on his pillows, one side of his face bandaged and smeared with antibiotic salve, looking at the rain through his window. He looked spent, Annie thought, but there was still life in his eyes, life and something that had not been there before. She didn’t know what it was.

He had lost everything. Banks’s cottage didn’t exist anymore. She had seen it with her own eyes reduced by fire to nothing more than a roofless shell. Everything he owned had gone up in flames: his CDs, clothes, furniture, stereo, all his memorabilia, family photographs, papers, letters, the lot. He had nothing left except his car and whatever personal effects he kept in his office. Did he know this? Surely someone must have told him.

“How are you doing?” she asked, laying her hand on his bare forearm, near the spot where the needle rested.

“Can’t complain,” Banks said. “If I did, no one would listen.”

“Are they treating you well?”

“Fair to middling. Mostly I’m bored. Did you-”

Annie passed him the hip flask. “It’s not Laphroaig,” she said.

“Good,” said Banks, slipping it in the drawer. “I’m not sure I could stomach that stuff again.”

“What has the doctor said?”

“I should heal up okay,” Banks said. “But there might be some scarring. We’ll have to wait and see. At least the headache’s gone. Worst I ever had.”

“Pain?”

“Pretty bad, but they keep me dosed up. Ever burned your finger?”

Annie nodded.

“Well, multiply the pain by a few thousand and you’ll have some idea. Thing is, with second-degree burns the nerve endings stay intact. That’s why it hurts. I didn’t know that. The hair follicles and sweat glands, too. It’s only the upper layers of skin that are burned. You know what the worst thing is, though?”

“What?”

“The memory loss. I can’t remember a bloody thing, from the moment I answered the door to the moment I woke up here. Except for the taste of the whiskey. The doctor says it might come back or it might not. Which is a pretty bloody useless thing to say, if you ask me.”

“Tracy’s been by a couple of times,” Annie said, “and she’ll be back. Brian rang. He’s in Amsterdam with the band. Wants to know if you need him.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Banks. “I’ll be home in a day or so.”

Christ, thought Annie, the poor sod. He didn’t know. “Alan,” she said. “Look, I wouldn’t… you know… the cottage, I mean. The fire caused quite a lot of damage.”

Banks looked at her as if she was confirming what he already suspected, and nodded. “Well, I’ll be out of here, at any rate,” he said.

Annie handed him a gift-wrapped package. “Everyone in the squad room put together for this.”

Banks opened it and inside found a new personal CD player and a copy of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

“We didn’t know what you’d want,” Annie said. “It was Kev’s idea. I think it’s the only opera he’s ever heard of. There’s batteries already in it.”

“It’s fine,” said Banks. “Thank everyone for me.”

“You can do it yourself soon.”

Banks turned the CD player over in his hands for a few moments and looked away, as if the emotion were too much. “Have you caught him yet?” he asked.

“No,” said Annie. “Not yet. But we will. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Tell me what you’ve found out.”

Annie sat back in her chair. “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “Greater Manchester Police found his BMW parked at the airport, which means he could have gone anywhere. We’re pursuing inquiries with the major airlines and at the railway stations, but nothing yet. And the cottage hadn’t been in his family for generations. It was leased from a couple who live in south London. We’ve got fingerprints and DNA, but there are no matches with anything on record yet.”

“So he’s clean?”

“Not quite,” said Annie. “Spectral analysis matched the petrol in the BMW’s fuel tank with that used at the Gardiner scene and…”

“And?”

“And at your cottage.”

“So he used his own car to visit Gardiner, too?”

“Had to,” Annie said, looking away. “He was having dinner with me at The Angel when the fire started.”

Banks said nothing for a moment. “Anything else?” he asked finally.

“His prints match a partial the SOCOs found on the rented Jeep Cherokee, which confirms what we already suspected.”

“That the killer was using Masefield’s identity?”

“Yes. The accountants digging into Masefield’s investments have discovered that he was dealing with someone called Ian Lang of Olympus Holdings, registered in the British Virgin Islands, but they’re not having a lot of luck tracing Mr. Lang or his company.”

“They wouldn’t have, would they?” said Banks. “Any more on Masefield?”

“All we know is that he was at university in Leeds at the right time, so I assume ‘Giles Moore,’ if that’s who we’re looking for, must have known him somehow and kept in touch. There’s every chance that Keane had something to do with whatever lost Masefield all his money, and that he killed him. But we can’t know for sure. Maybe it was just opportune. Maybe Masefield did commit suicide – everyone said he was depressed and drinking too much – and Keane found him dead, stole his identity and started the fire. But one way or another, he was involved in the death.”

“Yes,” said Banks. “And it would have been easy for him to pass himself off as Masefield if the two of them had a passing resemblance. It’s amazing what you can do with a pair of glasses, a different hairstyle or coloring, maybe a slight stoop and a little paunch.”

“Anyway,” Annie went on, “I talked to Elaine Hough again, and she reluctantly dug out a couple of old letters Giles Moore had written to her. She said she hadn’t wanted anyone else to read them. No detectable prints, unfortunately, but we do have samples of Keane’s handwriting, and our expert cautiously admits they might match. But they’re years apart, so it’s hard to be certain. Nothing that would stand up in court, at any rate.”

“It’s a start,” said Banks. “Can you show her Keane’s picture?”

“We don’t have a picture,” Annie said. “Another problem is that we can’t seem to dig up any background on Giles Moore. He definitely existed for Elaine Hough, and for McMahon, Gardiner and Masefield, and whoever else he hung around with in Leeds, but outside that, we have no record of him. You do realize we might never find out?”

“Someone like him,” Banks said, “is bound to be clever. Keane and Moore are probably only two of his identities. Maybe he’s Ian Lang, too. God knows who he is now, or where, but if I read him right, he’d have an escape route – and a new identity – all set up for an eventuality like this. I’ll bet he’s overseas already. He’s been at this all his life, Annie. Conning people, stealing identities. Maybe this is the first time he’s killed, maybe not. But he’s been at the game for a long time. Look how he conned us.”

Annie produced a cheap pocket-sized notebook bound in stiff cardboard covers and tapped it with her forefinger. “We found this at the cottage,” she said. “One of the SOCOs discovered a false ceiling in the wardrobe. The measurements didn’t agree. In it we found the notebook, a passport in the name of Ewan Collins, and about twenty thousand quid in fives and tens.”

“So he didn’t have time to get back there and pick them up,” said Banks. “Which means maybe he doesn’t have a passport – not one he can use, at any rate.”

“Which means he may well be still in the country.”

Banks looked at the notebook. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Roland Gardiner’s journal. It looks as if he started keeping it when Keane first came to visit, and it stops on