In A Dark House

for the challenge. Since the burning of the warehouse on Thursday night, he had slept only feverishly, his brain teeming with images of flames and shouting firefighters.

The pleasure had been more intense than any he’d experienced, and yet it had left him with a niggling shard of discontent. He’d held the open flame of the pocket lighter to the furniture – oh, yes – but he’d missed the careful planning and plotting that had preceded his other fires; it had been like orgasm without foreplay. Now he knew he had to own the fire from beginning to end, and the desire to get it right drove him like an itch under his skin.

But this one, this one he’d worked out well in advance. He knew the building from a job he’d had some years ago, and he’d marked it then on the map he carried always in the back of his mind. The place was perfect, a neglected Victorian warehouse, set back from any main thoroughfare. This meant not only that he’d be less likely to be seen, but that the blaze would have more time to take hold before it was reported. And best yet, he knew the building had an illegal propane tank. Once he’d set alight the cardboard boxes accumulated on the ground floor, the warehouse would burn like fury.

They would come, the firemen – firefighters, he corrected himself, his lip curling at the politically correct term – like little gods in their coats and helmets and boots, and he would show them.

He thought of the photograph he kept by his bed, a faded sepia image of a Victorian fire company, all Southwark men, in full regalia. They might look like Gilbert and Sullivan caricatures to the modern eye, with their luxuriant whiskers and pointed helmets, their mongrel dogs in their laps, but these men had been real firefighters who had fought real fires. Heroes. They had been heroes the likes of which the fire service would not see again.

They had breathed smoke like dragons, and they had conquered fire with the poor means at their disposal. And if sometimes the fire had conquered them, there had been no shame in it.

Stepping out of the shadows, he crossed the empty road and eased open the ground-floor door of the warehouse. He’d cut the padlocks the previous night, on his way home from work, gambling that the damage wouldn’t be noticed on a Sunday. He looked round the cavernous space, adjusted a cardboard box filled with the crisp packets he’d collected for the purpose, and pulled his lighter from his pocket.

Oh, they would come, these great new firefighters, little gods in their arrogance – and then they would run like rats.

Kincaid was waiting for her on the terrace of the Anchor, leaning on the railing overlooking the Thames. The day had stayed damp and dull, and now water, sky, and the City across the river seemed to meld one into the other, like a Turner painting with all the color leached out.

“Samuel Pepys watched the City burn from here, did you know that?” He gestured at the prospect as Gemma joined him.

“From the Anchor?”

“I don’t think the Anchor was built until a century or so after the Great Fire. But somewhere near here, on the Southwark bank. It must have been terrifying, but thrilling in a way, as well,” he added, his gaze fixed on the distance.

Gemma had no patience at the moment for daydreaming about fires. They had more concrete matters to deal with. “I’ve rung the boys,” she said, accepting the half pint of cider he’d bought for her. “They’ve been home to let the dogs out and have gone back to Wesley’s. They’re having a jam session, apparently, with Wes’s cousins, and eating until they’re sick.”

“That’s good for Kit.” Kincaid looked relieved. “He’s hardly touched anything for days.”

“I’ve got to get home soon,” said Gemma, her guilt over her absence only slightly tempered by the knowledge that the boys were in good hands. “I want to be there when they get back.”

“I know. But I’ll be a while yet.” Running a hand through his hair, as was his habit when he was tired, or exasperated, he sighed, then drank off some of his pint. “God, what a day. I’ve rushed Laura Novak’s hair sample to Konnie. He’s not happy, I can tell you, but he said he’d start on it straightaway.” He turned from the river to study Gemma’s face. “You’ve not much doubt, have you, that it was Laura’s body in the warehouse?”

“No. I don’t think Laura took Harriet. And if she’s not with her daughter, there’s only one thing that would keep her from moving heaven and earth to try to find her. But if Laura’s dead, who killed her, and why?”

“Novak’s the obvious suspect,” Kincaid said. “Maybe he decided he couldn’t keep Laura from taking Harriet back, even in Czechoslovakia, so he arranged to meet her Thursday night. He killed her, intending to take Harriet out of the country the next day, before Laura’s death was discovered. And he’d have wanted to delay identification of the body, hence the stripping and the fire.”

Gemma was shaking her head even before he’d finished. “Why would Laura have arranged to leave Harriet with Mrs. Bletchley if she were just meeting Tony for a talk? Why would she have lied about having to work that night? Why would she have agreed to meet Tony in an empty warehouse? That wouldn’t make sense even if they’d been on good terms. And” – she waved a hand to stop him from interrupting- “you didn’t see Tony’s face when you rang the bell at his flat and he thought it was Laura. He was genuinely terrified.”

“He’d also been on a bender and was barely coherent. Maybe he was having guilt-induced hallucinations. Like Lady Macbeth.”

“Now you’re really stretching it.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

Kincaid grinned. “Admitted. But tell me if you’ve a better idea.”

Resting her elbows on the railing, Gemma gazed out at the river, as he had done. A train rumbled by over the railway bridge, but the pedestrian walkway along Bankside was fairly quiet. The weekend was winding down, the time she could give to this case was running out, and it seemed they’d made little progress. “Why would Laura have gone to Michael Yarwood’s warehouse? Is there some connection between them we haven’t seen?”

“I’ve got Doug out looking for Yarwood as well as Chloe. Yarwood’s ex-wife says he’s not been home since earlier today, and that he’s desperately trying to raise money, even trying to find a quick buyer for his house, which he’s always refused to sell.”

Gemma frowned. “That might make it more likely that he torched the warehouse for the insurance money, if it weren’t for the small matter of the body-”

“Not if he needed immediate cash. Insurance payouts are never quick.”

“Forget the fire for a bit,” Gemma said slowly. “What would you think if you had a missing child and a prominent father trying to raise immediate cash on the quiet?”

Kincaid stared at her. “Ransom. Bloody hell.”

“It could be an attempt to collect Yarwood’s gambling debts. They – whoever he’s in hock to – lured Chloe to the warehouse, snatched her, then set the place alight to prove they meant business.”

After a moment’s thought, Kincaid said, “It might be plausible but for two things. Yarwood’s ex-wife, who has nothing kind to say about him, swears he’d never gamble. And-”

“The body.” Gemma grimaced and rubbed at her face. Her head was starting to ache. “It doesn’t explain the body, whether it’s Laura’s or not. And none of this is getting us any closer to finding Elaine and Harriet Novak.”

“Did you have any luck talking to Fanny?”

“No. She was too shocked. I’m not sure she took it in, about Harriet. Winnie’s promised to stay on with her.”

“I’ll talk to Fanny again tomorrow,” he said. “And to Tony Novak, and to Yarwood, if we can find him.”

“You won’t have much time.” The thought of the court hearing hovered in the back of her mind like a shadow, and she felt her stomach knot.

“I know.” He touched her shoulder, turning her to face him. The reflection of the river had turned his eyes gray as slate. “It’ll be all right,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he meant to reassure her or himself. In the distance, a siren began to wail, then another. After a few moments, the sound faded away.

Fanny sat, chill and silent, as the light in the green room faded to gray. She seemed not to hear Winnie’s soft queries, or to feel Winnie’s chafing of her hands, or to notice the butting, purring overtures of Quinn, the cat.

Winnie lit the lamps and the candles, hoping to restore some sense of normality. Then she made a cup of tea, to warm her hands if she could not warm Fanny’s. She sat close beside Fanny’s chair and saw her own face reflected in the darkening window, lit by the flickering candle flame.