The Fire Man

by Iain Adams

  ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, Mr McRae – see you Monday,’ and she was through the barrier.

  As he walked away, McRae felt a curious blend of exhilaration and dread.

  10

  Birmingham, May 2007

  ‘Graeme!’

  Cairns turned to face the only person in the world – apart, of course, from his mother – who still insisted upon employing his Christian name. ‘Don’t forget to ask Drew to come round for dinner next Friday.’

  Moira was standing sternly at the gate watching as Cairns carefully removed his suit jacket, as was his habit, prior to climbing into the car. She seemed perpetually worried about McRae’s welfare. It tended to irritate him.

  ‘I will,’ he responded, nodding but thinking that he may, in fact, decide not to. Grim liked Drew well enough, he was a mate, but the amount of time they had spent together lately was beginning to make him more than a little grateful for any relief that came along. Even tonight, for instance, he was spending the evening with him at the football. A salvage buyer of their joint acquaintance had offered Grim a couple of good tickets for the evening Villa game against Manchester City. As a life-long Everton supporter, Cairns wasn’t remotely interested, but somehow he had ended up accepting.

  And now, instead of a cosy night in front of the box with Moira, he would no doubt once again be chewing over the blasted Hellenic case, freezing his arse off on a hard seat between bouts of rather inferior football. He sighed inwardly and concentrated on negotiating his car through the match-day traffic. He was due to pick-up McRae at 6.15pm, but at this sorry rate of progress he would almost certainly be late.

  By the time he finally collected McRae from his apartment just off the Hagley Road, he was indeed late, so they needed to get a move on or they would miss the kick-off.

  His worst fears were realised. From the moment he closed the car door, McRae began to obsess over the minute details of the case. Grim sought desperately to deflect him by commenting disparagingly on the potential quality of the match ahead, but to no avail. McRae clearly couldn’t get the case out his mind, it seemed to Grim. At last, exasperated, he exploded, ‘Can’t we just forget about the bleeding Greeks for one night? I’m sick to death of that claim; it’s not as if we don’t have another thousand to worry about!’

  McRae was silent for an uncomfortable moment, a little stunned by his friend’s untypical outburst, before replying, ‘Okay, we’ll skip it, but I’ve have got some ideas that we do need to talk about… tomorrow?’

  They completed the rest of the journey in a strained silence before parking, illegally, a few streets away from the Villa Park ground.

  Struggling through the turnstiles and negotiating the scrum surrounding the so-called refreshments stand, they made their way into the glaring roar of the auditorium. Adjusting their eyes to the blinding magnesium whiteness of the floodlights and the fluorescent emerald of the pitch, the pair climbed the steps to what turned out to be truly exceptional seats. They were located high in the Tom Ellis Stand, close to the halfway line and merely a few tiers below the holy of holies: the exclusive, glass-fronted, executive boxes.

  ‘Well, the game may turn out to be rubbish, but these really are fantastic seats,’ remarked Grim, who, receiving no response, turned to find he was addressing a fat bald man in an anorak, nursing what smelled like a cup of Bovril.

  The anorak wearer merely scowled at Grim before pushing past him.

  Where the hell is he? thought Grim, scanning the crowd below. It was thirty seconds or so before, to his surprise, he finally spotted McRae descending the steps from the executive boxes, above their seats.

  ‘How did you end up there? Lose your Sat Nav?’

  ‘No, but I did see something very, very, interesting.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well...’ He got no further as 35,000 fans erupted to welcome the teams onto the pitch. ‘Tell you at half-time,’ he shouted above the cacophony.

  As it turned out, the game was more absorbing than either man had anticipated. Both sides appeared a touch deficient in terms of skill and technique, but that was more than compensated for in furious effort and last-ditch defence. At half-time, affairs were very much in the balance at 1-1.

  Deciding that a drink was merited, the two made their way down to the heaving subterranean bar where Grim endured the hectic queue in a heroic quest to purchase two soapy Budweiser beers. Both men shared a genuine dislike for the American beer, which they considered to be no more than a bastardised version of the Czech original. Grim’s face as he sipped disdainfully from the plastic beaker was a picture.

  ‘Almost bad enough to make me give up,’ he snarled. ‘So, what was so interesting that you managed to get lost?’

  ‘Derek Smythson… that’s what,’ replied McRae. ‘He’s in one of the boxes just above us!’

  ‘No! Wouldn’t have thought he was a football man, not in a million years,’ responded Grim.

  ‘Nor me,’ said McRae, ‘but you know what was weirder? It looked like he was in with a bunch of guys, one of whom looked just like Friar Tuck!’

  ‘Who the hell is Friar Tuck?’ enquired Grim.

  McRae: belatedly realising that his friend was totally unaware of his personal characterisation of the “fourth man”, quickly explained.

  ‘You have to be wrong, Drew. Smythson would never be unprofessional enough to socialise with a claimant! CFG have rules about that sort of stuff, don’t they? Anyway, the guy you call Tuck was just an employee, wasn’t he? Doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, which is why I went to get a closer look. By the time I got near enough to the box, though, I could only see Smythson, so I can’t be totally certain...’ McRae’s voice tailed off as he too began to doubt the evidence.

  They drank their beers silently for a while and then made their way to their seats for the second half of the match. Grim seemed to have discounted McRae’s story completely as he became absorbed in the game, but whenever the crowd reacted to an incident on the pitch by rising to their feet, McRae couldn’t help but sneak a discreet look in the direction of the boxes. He saw nothing; no sign of Smythson nor the mythical Tuck.

  I must have been mistaken, he thought. Grim is right. It is pretty inconceivable that Smythson would be cavorting about at a football match with claimants! It must have been some geezer who just had a bald head, not Friar Tuck at all, but… Smythson is such a distinctive looking guy, he must have been right about him, surely? How many people look like walking corpses? Probably, on balance, it was him, but with a bunch of brokers. Big brokers do loads of entertaining.

  Having provided himself with a rational explanation, he turned his attention back to the game. The visitors were now in front and the home supporters were becoming distinctly rowdy in their discontent. He glanced at his watch: only eight minutes to go.

  ‘What do you think about getting out now to beat the traffic?’ he suggested.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Grim, getting to his feet even as he spoke.

  Picking their way carefully past the fans on their row, they negotiated their way to the steps and, through a sea of discarded burger cartons, pie wrappers and flattened chips, to the exit. By now, several thousand other pessimists had also begun to desert the sinking ship, and the road outside the ground was already heaving with disconsolate Villa supporters.

  ‘If we get a move on we can still get onto the Expressway before the rest of the bastards,’ shouted Grim over his shoulder, as they weaved across the road between the slow moving cars and towards the side street where the car had been parked. Breaking into a stately jog, they managed, narrowly, to make an expeditious escape. Within less than twenty minutes, they were pulling up again close to the Anchor.

  Quite why they chose the Anchor as their default watering hole was always a mystery to McRae. Yes, it was close to the office and the beer was acceptable to his picky colleague, but, in truth, it had little to recommend it. The choice of wine, his own parti
cular concern, was savagely limited, the bar staff were distinctly moody, not least because they seemed to be replaced almost weekly, and the décor had undoubtedly seen better days – better days in the seventies. Still, for some indefinable reason, McRae always felt relaxed there. More at ease than he ever felt in his own flat, to be honest. Probably because he was there more often, he thought ruefully.

  As Grim ordered the drinks, McRae gazed absently through the slats of the window, into the sodium yellow and grey night. In the street, a continuous hum of passing cars was still detectable, despite the relative lateness of the hour. They had decided to take refuge in the pub for a “quickie” because it would allow the worst of the match traffic to dissipate before they tackled the dreaded Hagley Road.

  McRae was feeling more than a little guilt, conscious that his place was hardly convenient for his colleague’s route home. It would add at least another hour to Grim’s journey. ‘Look, tell you what, I’ll grab a cab from here. You can get off back to Aldridge when we’re finished. It’s crazy to go so far out of your way.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure. It would be a help, I must admit,’ conceded Grim with alacrity, secretly grateful for his boss’s unexpected and somewhat untypical consideration. Drew was a decent enough bloke, but was often a bit too distracted (or being charitable, a tad too “focused”) to remember that other people actually had lives.

  ‘Yeah, no bother,’ smiled McRae, ‘but don’t forget, I do want a chat about you-know-who first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘It can’t be first thing,’ replied Grim. ‘I’m out at nine on that ball-aching theft case in Dudley that you so kindly allocated me. The earliest I could do would be around lunchtime.’

  ‘Fair enough, unless you want to chat now?’

  ‘No, I bloody don’t,’ said Grim. ‘I’m going to take you up on your generous offer and skedaddle right now – but to show how grateful I am, I’ll get you another drink before I go, if you fancy it?’

  McRae definitely did feel like another drink, but decided that he didn’t want it in the Anchor. ‘No thanks, let’s get going, eh?’

  * * *

  Feeling the cold evening air on his face, McRae made the rare decision that a walk might do him some good, and, turning a blind eye to the taxi rank at the end of the street, decided to stroll the two miles home.

  The initial feeling of energetic virtuousness had evaporated after half a mile and was replaced by a dogged determination to see his decision through, but first he needed that drink. He knew where he would choose. The Plough and Harrow would still be open. Whatever the bar’s other qualities, it did, to his knowledge, possess at least a halfway decent selection of wines by the glass.

  Eventually, slumped in the muted Edwardian splendour of the quiet bar and enjoying a nicely cooled glass of passable Chenin Blanc, McRae pulled his biro from his inside pocket. He started to list in his dog-eared diary the issues he needed to follow up the next day. Most people used their fancy phones these days, but McRae had never broken the paper habit.

  Most of the outstanding tasks were routine, but lately it was precisely this routine, the hum-drum, that had gone by the board. Hellenic had begun to take over his mind.

  After listing the various management issues and outstanding financial reports that he knew required his urgent attention, he inevitably returned to mulling over other things. Things like keeping out of Karen’s clutches – she had had a real gleam in her eye lately and it was bothering him – and things like Hellenic, as well as his mother’s birthday, which was next week.

  McRae’s mother, Anna, was not normally a concern to him. She had remarried six years earlier, following the premature death of his father. Fortunately for both Drew and his elder brother Tom, Anna, an exceptionally well-preserved woman of only fifty-four at the time, had not taken too long to strike up a relationship with a new man. The brothers had been mortified at the disrespectful alacrity with which their mother had cast off her widow’s weeds, but over time they had both realised what a boon it was that they no longer had to worry about her. It also helped that the new husband had turned out to be a really genuine guy, or at least as genuine as a successful career in newspapers would permit, and she was very happy. Not just happy, but wealthy.

  Jeremy Carrington, the second husband, having retired from print journalism, had become a highly sought-after media consultant and seemed able to charge ridiculous sums for the briefest of contracts. Exactly what a media consultant did was a mystery to McRae, but whatever it was, it clearly paid well. So much so, in fact, that the couple had relocated two years earlier to a converted farmhouse near Heraklion in Crete, from which they made only occasional forays into the outside world.

  Nice work if you can get it, thought McRae.

  Happy and rather self-centred though she always had been, Anna did have a tendency to fret over McRae, who was only too well aware of her concerns.

  Tom, his brother, was happily married with two kids and a plain, plump, but charming wife and securely ensconced in a steady career as a building society surveyor. He lived in Leamington Spa. He was not a concern. Drew was another matter. Indeed, every time Anna had seen her younger son over the past five years, he had appeared, well… rougher.

  In his late-twenties, McRae had been an attractive man: tall, slim and with a pleasing, if angular, face. However, over the past few years, his waist line had expanded and his face had become haggard and chalky in complexion. He often looked tired and was clearly working too hard, drinking too much and, of course, smoking too many. Still, not bad looking – he was saved by a pair of rather distinctive green eyes – but definitely unhealthy. If he didn’t get a grip soon, so thought his mother, he would have no chance of finding a new woman. Of course, Helen, the ex-wife, was the cause. The divorce had changed Drew, but not for the better.

  In Anna’s considered view, Helen and her son had been an accident waiting to happen. They had been together, off and on, for years before the marriage and it seemed likely that both had had an inkling that there was something not quite right. Nonetheless, the marriage had, like the outcome of an English penalty shoot-out, always had a certain dreadful inevitability about it.

  Helen had possessed something of her Trojan namesake’s alleged beauty. She was slim and hazel-eyed, with thick strawberry-blonde hair and a vivacity that could be captivating. She was also materialistic, short-tempered and there was an intellectual shallowness that, overtime, had clearly begun to grate. Drew, for his part, was inclined to be an uneasy cocktail of frivolity and intensity. He had been working long hours and had acquired a brooding quality that could lead to jealousy, particularly with a pretty airhead for a wife. Inevitably, the differences had led to fiery rows and in an indecently short time Helen had found consolation in the arms of a local estate agent – an annoyingly successful estate agent.

  Instead of coming to terms with his loss, McRae had seemed driven by a need to succeed in his own right and so the work had become all-consuming. His social life had dwindled to nothing. All work and no play were making Drew a dull boy indeed.

  He was well aware of his mother’s views. After all, every time he saw her, his latest girlfriend (or lack of) was the primary subject of discussion. Somehow, he was never able to get her to accept that he just wasn’t interested – at least not for the moment. Anyway, the fact was that her birthday was imminent and as he had no intention of flying to Crete any time soon, he had better arrange to get her something by internet. He decided to give Tom a ring; he always had some ideas.

  As for Karen, while he had tried his damnedest to forget the “Di Mario incident” as he thought of it, she clearly hadn’t. The more brusque and business-like he became in his manner towards her, the more she seemed intent upon a rematch. She stayed later and later at the office, well after the other girls had left. She was available for work on Saturdays, without overtime. In short, her dedication, already unusual, had become absolute. The message was unambiguous, she was always available. Despite his be
st efforts, McRae found that they were frequently alone in the office and the truth was that he allowed her to do the extra work with gratitude, aware that all the time he was becoming closer, for which one day a price might have to be paid.

  He was also beginning to recognise her commercial value, which was rapidly emerging to be far greater than he had ever appreciated. The first revelation had been the analysis work that she had done on the Hellenic stock.

  Once he had managed to rescue a representative selection of garment samples from the ruined warehouse, Karen had got to work with energy and enthusiasm. Her innate cynicism and untrusting nature were proving to be major assets. Visits to suppliers and buyers she had known from her boutique days, many of whom were keen to help on a strictly non-attributable basis, plus diligent internet surfing – most of it he suspected on a Sunday – had turned up some interesting, if not devastating, results.

  Much as she had originally thought, but now based upon research rather than pure instinct, it had become increasingly clear, even to McRae that the Greek merchandise was anything but haute couture. The clothes were, in the main, cheaply made, not particularly well finished and, what was most disturbing, not always a la mode. They had even concluded that some of the Xenia and Dido garments could conceivably have been the previous year’s stock.

  Cogitating for the umpteenth time over the issues, McRae decided that for the following day’s meeting he would ask Karen to sit in alongside Grim. She had done a terrific job and, secretary or not, she was proving her worth as an investigator on this case. It would be interesting to see what Grim thought of her conclusions, as so far he was completely unaware of these developments. Come to think of it, it would also be interesting to see how he responded to Karen’s presence in the discussion. Not exactly a feminist, our Mr Cairns!

  Nevertheless, it was going to be even more illuminating to hear from Steve Balfour. The forensics consultant was overdue to present his final detailed conclusions on the cause and was scheduled to show up before they started their own case review.