Firewatching

by Russ Thomas

  “You can’t be here.”

  “Adam, it’s just a coincidence.”

  It’s the first time Oscar has used his name. He’s sure he didn’t give it last night or this morning, so how does he know? And then he remembers that Doggett introduced them. It’s as though his mind is working in slow motion, and he can’t catch up.

  He’s talked his way onto a case and he’s already compromised. He has no choice. He’ll have to make some excuse to Jordan, tell her to reassign him. “You’ll need to give a statement,” he says, “but not to me.”

  “Am I a suspect or something?”

  He can’t find the words to answer. It’s called a conflict of interest. He looks up to see if Oscar’s still there, in case he’s conjured this up somehow—this one-night stand that refuses to go away. More penance for his sins. But he’s still there, the sleeve tattoo like painted chain mail wrapping his left arm. “This is your house,” he says, the sentence falling somewhere between a statement and an accusation.

  Oscar stands and reaches out a hand, but Tyler steps away from him.

  “Is it him?” Oscar asks quietly. “Is it my dad?” His voice breaks a little, and Tyler remembers he’s a victim, too. Not just a suspect. Not just last night’s shag.

  He tries to recall what they talked about last night but doesn’t remember them doing much in the way of talking. Did he mention he was with the police? As a rule it’s not something he tells people straightaway, not until he knows them better. Not unless they ask. Did Oscar ask?

  “Look, about last night . . .” Oscar leans in, wrapping a hand around Tyler’s forearm. His voice is deep and low, almost a whisper. “We can forget it if you want. I mean, I won’t say anything.” He seems younger than he did this morning. But he is younger, or at least younger than Tyler had assumed. Twenty-one! He seems more vulnerable, too, and Tyler has to suppress an irrational guilt. He’s done nothing wrong. Yet. Oscar squeezes his arm, rubs his thumb across the bare skin of Tyler’s wrist. “I’m not saying it’s what I want, though.” And all at once he is older again, the cocky, sure-of-himself lad Tyler met at the bar.

  Which is the real Oscar, which is the act? Tyler pulls his arm away just as Guy Daley walks through the doorway into the kitchen.

  “Tyler, me ol’ china. What’s all this, then? They finally letting you play with the big boys again, eh?”

  For a moment he thinks Daley has seen something, but he’s just doing his usual faux-Cockney bullshit.

  “Jordan let you out the doghouse, then?” Daley asks.

  “Detective Sergeant Daley, I need you to take a statement from Mr. Cartwright. You can take him back to the station.”

  Daley frowns at being treated like a lackey, but then he glances once at Oscar and nods, apparently satisfied the brusque manner is no more than professionalism in front of a suspect. For once Tyler’s cold reputation works in his favor.

  He leaves Oscar to the tender mercies of Daley’s schoolyard charm and makes his way back through the house, turning up the stairs without really thinking about where he’s going. He supposes he’s looking for Doggett. He has to confess. Even though he’s done nothing wrong, that’s what it feels like. A confession.

  He steps out onto a long landing lined with doors. Directly ahead are the main stairs leading back down into the hallway. To his left another staircase spirals up and behind, presumably leading to a third floor. He finds himself heading up, as though the higher he travels, the less constricting the air will feel.

  He considers what happens next. Once he’s told Doggett. After fighting his way onto this case he’ll be forced to give it up again. He’ll become the latest joke Guy Daley shares with his mates down the pub. It won’t be the first time, and he doubts it’ll be the last. Jordan’s words come back to him. Always so much to prove. He thinks about Doggett’s comment earlier about the gardener. Good-looking lad, was he? And then the later jibe: Ladies first. He knows how it will be after this. He’ll always be the bloke who was shagging the suspect. If the suspect happened to be a woman, they’d be patting him on the back and it would be pints all round. But it isn’t a woman.

  So, yes, of course he has something to prove. He always will.

  He reaches the top of the stairs and walks along a narrow corridor and through an open doorway that leads into an attic room. The pallid sky is visible through the rotting rafters, and a single mattress lies beneath, filthy and sodden despite the fact it hasn’t rained in weeks. There’s a large wooden chest of drawers to the right and, next to that, an old-fashioned wardrobe big enough to climb inside. To the left, a dormer window framed by a pair of heavy winter curtains that reaches from floor to ceiling. Other than that the room is empty: bare floorboards, bare walls.

  Very bare walls . . .

  He hears the floorboards creaking behind him just before Doggett says, “Nice place. Bit of a fixer-upper.”

  “I thought you were heading back to the station?”

  “I’m just leaving now.” Doggett stands next to him and follows his eyes to the wall. “What?” he asks.

  Above the bed there’s a subtly paler patch of plaster, a square of wall that has been protected from the worst of the elements somehow, around it a border of muck and grime. A border about the size of a small picture frame. About the size of the portrait he saw on the wall downstairs. Why would somebody move it?

  “It’s nothing,” he says.

  Doggett frowns at him but lets it go. “What happened with the Cartwright lad?”

  This is the point of no return. This is his opportunity. The only one he’s going to get. He wouldn’t be the first person removed from a case because it struck too close to home. There’s no shame in it. All he has to do is tell the man the truth. And there is Doggett staring at him, waiting for him to fail.

  “Daley’s taken him back to the station. I thought it was better to get him out of here.” And it’s as easy as that. The moment has passed. He doesn’t even have to lie.

  Doggett grunts. “Fine. But don’t leave it too long to talk to him.” He turns to go and then stops. “Oh,” he says, “I need you to pick me up from court in the morning. I’m giving evidence in the Kendrick case. I should be done by eleven.”

  “That’s a bit of a late start, isn’t it?”

  “He’s been here six years, son. I reckon he’ll keep a few more hours.” Doggett turns once again and heads toward the door. “Get yourself an early night, Sergeant. Sleep tight.” His voice echoes down the stairwell. “Don’t let the buggers bite.”

  Tyler turns back to contemplate the empty wall.

  * * *

  —

  The irritating buzz of a disk jockey reverberates across the plastic dashboard, down the driver’s door, and into Tyler’s right arm where it hangs out of the window. He has his shirtsleeve rolled to the elbow, the Vectra’s metallic paint warming his forearm. Somewhere, far behind in the queue, someone vents the day’s frustration by leaning on a car horn. The lights ahead change to green. The traffic fails to move.

  On the radio the DJ discusses star signs with the guest astrologist. He finds himself listening for his own. Gemini—a good week for new relationships, with Mercury ascendant; both romance and work hold opportunities for new beginnings. Christ! His mother would have loved that. She was into all that crap for a while. Horoscopes and crystals, patchouli oil and cosmic shopping. Maybe that’s why she left when she did. Maybe she saw a premonition of what was to come.

  The traffic lights complete another cycle; red, red and amber, green, amber, red. Still nobody moves. Another horn sounds.

  What the hell is he going to do?

  He needs to think it through, but he can’t focus on anything. The green man on the crossing light has been knocked aslant, making it look like some drunken office worker off to enjoy the lazy evening. He finds the image strangely soporific as flashes of the day visit him
like some bad acid trip: Oscar’s pale skin covered in those dark swirls of ink; the desiccated flesh of the corpse with its broken fingernails; the gray, mottled face of the portrait in the living room. A portrait that once hung in the attic. Why does that seem so significant?

  Again the lights blink their pattern. Why didn’t he tell Doggett? That was his moment. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. It’s not unheard-of to come across someone you know while working a case, especially in a city like Sheffield. A place that’s more like an overgrown village, where you’re never more than three Facebook friends away from every new acquaintance. But there are procedures for this sort of thing. You’re supposed to disclose the information, not just bury your head in the sand.

  The lights complete another cycle, and Tyler slams his hand down on the dashboard. “Fuck!” He glances to his right to see the woman in the passenger seat of the car next to him watching. Fuck this! He starts the engine, flicks the left indicator, and inches his way out into the bus lane. He speeds past the line of waiting traffic, ignoring the disapproving glares of the trapped motorists. At the next junction he finds the first empty parking space and abandons the car on a meter. He can collect it first thing, before the wardens come by. It’s insured, and it’s not as though it’s his car anyway. Maybe they’ll sack him for misuse of public property, and the rest of his problems will go away. He presses the lock button on the key fob, the lights flash twice in quick succession, and the car chirrups an irritatingly jovial goodbye.

  His route home takes him past the Red Deer and he hovers outside for a moment, wondering if this is where he was heading all along. Once inside, he orders a pint of Moonshine and heads out to the beer garden. He finds a spot on a bench near the back wall and uses the conversations of the postgrad students and after-work crowd as white noise to help focus his thoughts.

  He’s halfway through the second pint when Sally-Ann calls.

  “How was your day?”

  He begins to put her off, annoyed with himself for answering the bloody thing in the first place, but she starts speaking again right over the top of him. “Was it him, then? Was it Cartwright? Oh my God, Adam, this is going to be fucking huge! You’ll be mega-famous. Assuming you’re on the case. You are . . . aren’t you?”

  He starts to tell her they’re not sure of anything yet but she’s already talking again, filling him in on the gossip back at the station. How everyone’s saying the son did it, how Carl heard from that skinny bloke in Reception how he overheard Doggett telling Jordan they’d have the whole thing wrapped up in a couple of days . . . and on and on.

  He tunes out her voice and goes back to his thoughts. He could still go to Jordan, make out it was the shock that stopped him saying anything earlier. She’ll be pissed with him, but it would probably be all right. She’d reassign him without any fuss, and maybe no one would even need to know why.

  “Adam?” Sally-Ann’s voice brings him back to the present.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, how did it go last night? With that bloke? I saw you slipping out the door with him. You’re a dark horse, aren’t you? Only, I said to Carl—”

  Last night. It can’t have been only last night. It feels like weeks ago. He breaks into her chatter. “I don’t think that’s going to work out.”

  “Oh,” she says. “That’s a shame, he was cute.” There’s an uncharacteristic pause and then she goes on. “Anyway, the reason I was ringing was to tell you about Saturday . . .”

  He lets her witter on for a bit with the details, a friend of a friend’s birthday, a nightclub, all the gang will be there. He assumes that means he’s part of the gang now. He’s not sure how he feels about that. In the end he finds himself promising her a dance just to get her off the phone.

  After that, the evening disappears through the bottom of a glass, and before long the guy behind the bar is calling last orders. Tyler drains his pint and takes his leave, helping an old fellow negotiate the steps on the way out. The man smiles at him with a mouth missing most of its teeth, and then staggers away into the night. The evening is warm and quiet. A group of lads burst from a nearby pub and cheer at nothing in particular. Tyler crosses the street and leaves the high street, moving into the industrial suburbs. The noise of the city begins to fade, and the orange-tinted darkness settles down into standby mode. At one point, an ambulance siren sounds close by and rips the night into action again, but it, too, fades away into the distance and the city returns to its watchful slumber.

  Because his flat is part of a reclaimed industrial estate, there are few people around at this hour. He begins to imagine an echo to his footsteps. He turns and looks behind. He listens for the sound of footfalls, but there’s nothing. When he reaches his apartment building, however, he pushes the door firmly shut rather than allowing it to close on its own. He waits until he hears the sound of the lock re-engaging before letting go of the door.

  Only as he turns does he notice the figure sitting hunched over next to the lift. Oscar looks up, his head bobbing on his shoulders like a nodding dog. He has the same vague look in his eyes as the old man at the pub.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Tyler has a sudden flash of déjà vu even as he notes the slight slur in his own voice.

  “I had a few drinks . . .” Oscar tries to stand but loses his balance and falls against the partition wall, the flimsy plasterboard buckling a little under the pressure. “One of . . . your neighbors . . .”

  Tyler slams his finger onto the button that calls the lift. “You can’t be here, for fuck’s sake!” How the fuck does he even know where he lives?

  “I wanted to see you.”

  Tyler presses the button again.

  “Adam, wait . . . please . . . Jus’ two minutes . . . then I’ll go.”

  Tyler swallows. His mouth is dry and stale with beer. He turns to look at Oscar. “What do you want?”

  Oscar looks out through the glass doors into the dimly lit parking lot. “Is it him?” he asks again. “Is it my dad?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  The foyer is hot and stuffy, and Tyler feels the sudden urge to be outside again. His head is swimming and it’s hard to breathe.

  “I don’t know what to do,” says Oscar. “I can’t go home.”

  “There must be somewhere. Someone.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” He starts toward the door and then stops again, swaying slightly. “I fucked this up,” he says, standing with his back to Tyler. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. I mean . . . I didn’t . . .” The lift arrives with a gentle chime just as Oscar falls to his knees and vomits noisily onto the carpet.

  “Shit.” Tyler rubs a hand over his face.

  Maybe it’s because he knows what it is to lose a father. Or maybe in the light of Jordan’s identification of his character flaws, he feels the need to reach out to someone, to prove he’s human after all. Maybe it’s something else. Some primal urge he doesn’t let himself dwell on too long. Whatever the reason, he finds himself saying, “All right, you’d better come up.”

  day two

  24 pageviews—2 posts, last published

  Thursday, 15 September—3 followers

  The Great Fire of London, 1666

  So. They have found him.

  You find it strange to know he’s no longer there, tucked up safely behind his wall. You remember how it used to be, how he might be lurking round any corner, lying in wait to pop up when your guard was down.

  You remember this bus shelter. You stare at the ramshackle structure, barely holding itself together after all these years, and in your head he’s still screaming. That red-hot anger rippling through your veins. All you can do is find a way to distract him. Remember the fires. Stay focused on the flame.

  The most famous fire in history burned for four long days, eating the city of London. Thirteen thousand hou
ses. Eighty-seven parish churches. Fifty-two guildhalls. Four-fifths of the greatest wooden city in the world reduced to nothing but a smoldering ruin. Despite all this damage, hardly anybody died. Some say as few as six. Of course, that doesn’t include the dozens who died of hunger and exposure in the refugee camps afterward. Nor does it account for the ones who took the blame. The foreigners and the papists, who were lynched or beaten to death by mobs. And poor Robert Hubert, sentenced to death and hanged after his confession. Only afterward was it discovered the simpleminded Frenchman didn’t even arrive in the city until two days after the conflagration began.

  That is what they do though, isn’t it? You know that full well. How they search for explanations for their suffering and loss. Who wants to believe the world is a capricious, dangerous place? Far better to find a scapegoat, some poor sod who was in the wrong place at the wrong time who can take the blame. Then they can rest, safe in the knowledge the world is a warm, well-ordered place with clearly defined rules.

  You know it isn’t. You know the world is a bastard place, full of evil men.

  If a scapegoat can’t be found, they blame God.

  But the truth is it was just an accident. A terrible coincidence. Nothing to blame for the loss of half a city but bad luck, poor construction, and an unusually strong wind. London was simply a powder keg, waiting for a spark. You might as well blame the Middle Ages. You might as well blame Time.

  But sometimes someone is to blame. Arson—the criminal act of intentionally setting fire to one’s own or another’s property for improper reason. You soak the bus shelter in petrol and feel the fumes burning your nose, making you light-headed. You pause for a moment and listen to the thick liquid dripping from the wooden roof and pooling on the concrete floor. You remove the gloves carefully, making sure not to get any of the petrol on your hands.

  You shake a little as you light the match, watch it spark, flare, and then sputter and settle. See the way it is already reaching out, eager to consume the sacrifice you’ve prepared for it. You flick your wrist and the burning match soars through the night air, up, up, in a graceful arc, pausing for a moment, hanging in the night sky like a perfect glittering jewel. And then it’s falling again, gaining speed until . . . whoomph! It hits the surface of the puddle and bursts into furious life, fire skittering out across the oily pavement to the walls of the wooden shelter.