In A Dark House

out, and after a moment she turned on the cold tap and held her wrists beneath the stream. When the faintness began to pass, she shut the water off and reached for the towel, only to find it had disappeared from the hook – nicked by one of the shelter residents, she supposed, as per bloody usual. Tearing off a bit of toilet tissue from the roll, she dried her hands and gazed at herself in the fly-specked mirror over the basin.

She saw carefully streaked hair, expensively feathered over her ears and at the nape of her neck. Regular features, nose a bit turned up, skin taut and evenly tanned from weekly sessions in the tanning salon. A good face, she told herself, an attractive face, but in the cold light filtering through the toilet window, there was no denying it was the face of a forty-five-year-old woman.

How could she possibly have convinced herself it didn’t matter? She’d risked her job, her marriage, her children, her comfortable semidetached house in Peckham, all for a few quick encounters on the stained and threadbare sofa in her office.

Encounters. That was a euphemism even shabbier than passed on or developmentally challenged. She could at least be honest with herself. It had been sex - sweaty, pulseracing, heart-pounding, skin-tingling sex – and she had wanted it with a ferocity she hadn’t known she possessed.

And she had believed that it mattered as much to him as it did to her. She had been an utter fool, a stupid, pathetically middle-aged fool, and now she would have to deal with the consequences.

The phone call had come that morning as Michael Yarwood was downing a last cup of coffee in his Birmingham hotel room before beginning the first day of a three-day Labour conference. While the official agenda held topics such as “Communicating with Your Constituents” and “The Question of Tax,” the real purpose of the meeting was to meet and greet, to make or cement alliances that would further one’s political ambitions. If he had been naive enough in his early days as an MP to think that his own convictions mattered, he had long since learned the error of his ways. But if he’d learned to play the game, he’d also learned to enjoy it for its own sake, and he’d been looking forward to the weekend as a way to take his mind off more personal troubles.

Then the police had rung his London office, and the dominoes had begun to topple. His secretary had rung him, her voice squeaky with distress; he had taken the first available train, then a taxi from the station, stopping only to drop off his overnight bag at his flat. Now, he stood staring in disbelief at the remains of his building, struggling for breath as if he’d just been kicked in the chest by a draft horse. He hadn’t imagined it would be so bad, hadn’t really visualized the gaping windows, the piles of rubble on the pavement.

Reduced to rubble. Maybe it was fitting for a bricklayer’s son with aspirations above his station. He’d been eighteen when he’d bought his first small delivery van with the earnings from his second job; twenty-five when he’d stood for his first council seat. He’d balanced his anomalous roles as small-business owner and Labour activist by his personal rejection of the greed-driven principles of big business and his unswerving dedication to improving his borough. Until, driven by his worries over Chloe, he’d given in to the temptations of the property market, and now he was facing financial disaster.

Or worse. His secretary had informed him that the prime minister’s office had unofficially requested that Scotland Yard oversee the case, and that was the last thing he needed.

A movement caught his eye. Turning, he saw a reporter coming towards him, accompanied by an assistant wielding a handheld video cam like an unnatural appendage. For a moment he wondered wildly if he had conjured them up from the depths of his imagination. But no, they were real enough. The red eye of the camera held him mercilessly, and he struggled to resurrect his public face as the reporter held out a mike.

But before the reporter could speak, there was a touch on his shoulder and a quiet voice said, “Mr. Yarwood? I’m with the police. If we could have a word.”

Kincaid had recognized Yarwood immediately, but had been content to observe him for a few moments. The man was smaller in stature than he appeared on television, nor did he seem to have the assurance that had always leapt from the screen. Was it shock, Kincaid wondered, or did the camera amplify certain character traits?

Yarwood wore no overcoat – he had not, perhaps, planned to spend his day standing in the rain – and the fit of his dark suit suggested Savile Row. No amount of tailoring, however, could really make the man look as though he belonged in a suit. He was too burly, too barrel-chested, his arms and shoulders out of proportion to the rest of his body, his legs short as a wrestler’s.

It had seemed strange to see Yarwood’s bulldog face wiped clean of its usual cheerful belligerence; stranger still to see his expression of dismay at the journalists’ approach.

Seeing no advantage to letting the press have their way with Yarwood just yet, Kincaid hurried to the rescue. When he’d introduced himself, deftly turning Yarwood away from the camera, he looked round for a place where they could talk.

The rain seemed to have stopped for the moment, at least, making shelter less of a necessity, but it was still difficult to find somewhere that afforded privacy and the least likelihood of being trampled by firefighters with rakes and axes. The side street between Yarwood’s warehouse and the similar building next door had been blocked off completely with crime scene tape. Making a quick decision, Kincaid ducked under the tape and led Yarwood towards a spot by the facing building’s side door.

Cullen was busy taking details from Spender, the job foreman, but DI Bell caught his eye and came to join them. Kincaid introduced them, but Yarwood seemed not to take it in. He stared at the burned building as if mesmerized.

“The body – they say you found a body – is it still…” His eyes shifted towards the building, like an involuntary tic.

“No,” Kincaid told him. “It’s been taken to the morgue, for examination. Have you any idea how a woman ended up dead in your building, Mr. Yarwood?”

“A woman?” Was it Kincaid’s imagination, or had he seen a jolt of panic in the man’s eyes? If so, Yarwood managed to disguise it, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking on the balls of his feet. “My guess would be that the construction crew left the building open and some poor soul wandered in off the street.”

“That occurred to us as well,” Kincaid said agreeably. “But Mr. Spender, your job foreman, says he checked the locks himself when they finished up for the day, and both doors were well fastened.”

“Well, perhaps he’s mistaken,” Yarwood ventured after a moment’s pause. It was obvious he didn’t want to call his foreman a liar.

“Or maybe someone came along later and unlocked it again,” suggested Bell, her Scots accent sounding clearly. “Where were you last night, Mr. Yarwood?”

Yarwood stared at her in surprise. “You’re not suggesting-”

If Kincaid had needed a partner in good cop/bad cop, he had certainly got it. “It’s routine, you understand, Mr. Yarwood. We have to ask these things, and it’s to your benefit to get things clear from the beginning.”

“My benefit?” Yarwood sounded puzzled.

“We have a possible homicide and a possible arson here. As you are the owner of the property, the Fire Investigation Team will naturally need to rule you out – as will your insurance company. Insurance fraud is more common than you’d think.”

Yarwood ran a hand through his short, thinning hair, and seemed to gather himself. “Of course. I understand that. I was in Birmingham, at a party conference. I had dinner in the hotel restaurant with some other attendees, then went to bed.”

“Mr. Spender says you have the only other set of keys to the warehouse. Did you have them with you?” asked Bell.

“No, they’re at home in my flat. Why would I carry them with me?”

“Why indeed?” agreed Bell lightly, but there was no humor in her voice. “We’ll need the details, of course, Mr. Yarwood, but even if you were safely put up in the Midlands last night, that doesn’t rule out a bit of professional help.”

“Now look, Inspector, you can’t accuse me of setting my own warehouse alight.” Yarwood glared at her with a return of his characteristic attitude, as if he were suddenly on firmer ground.

“No, not at this stage, anyway.” Bell allowed herself a small smile. “But there are rumors going round that you were in financial trouble, that your leases weren’t selling fast enough to cover your construction costs.”