Some By Fire dcp-6

by Stuart Pawson

  He opened the door, still wearing his Guns 'n' Roses and cut-downs.

  "Hello, Mr. Roberts," I began. "DI Priest. I was just passing. Been to a meeting, you know how it is, and thought I'd call to give you the latest."

  "Oh, er, right," he replied. "You'd, er, better come in."

  The carpets were deep and well-laid, as you might expect, but the colour was out of your nightmares. Day-glo orange and brow ny-orange in geometric patterns that shimmered and swayed like a Bridget Riley painting. The fireplace with its copper canopy dominated the room and the pictures on the walls were numbers one to five in the World's Most Sentimental Prints. The kid with a snotty nose, the Malaysian woman who's just eaten a badly cleaned puffer fish, and so on. Shaz was curled on the settee in a fluffy pink cardigan, watching TV and looking like an inflatable Barbie doll with a slow leak. I rested my eyes on the fish tank bubbling in the corner and sat down.

  "Hope I'm not disturbing you," I began, 'but I thought you'd like to know what's happening."

  "No, that's all right," he replied. She threw me a smile, on and straight off, and made a token effort to pull the hem of her miniskirt towards her knees.

  "There've been a few developments," I began, 'but we're still working on it." I was competing against a peroxide-blonde creep who had a good line in third-form humour and a tits fixation. "Whether your brother Duncan started the fire is uncertain, but if he did he was most certainly put up to it by a girl. We're convinced he was just being used. She's in America at the moment, but we'll be having words with her. The house belonged to Keith Crosby at the time of the fire, and he was sacked. He was an MP, as you know. Apparently there was some bad blood between him and a prominent businessman, someone really famous, but I can't tell you his name just yet. We're talking to him a week on Tuesday and hoping he'll throw some light on things. He's promised to give us his full co-operation. One theory is that the girl did it to please him. So…" I stood up to leave,"… watch the news on telly and hope that he keeps his promise."

  "Right," he said, rising. Tanks for coming."

  At the door I turned and said: "Isn't young DJ at home?"

  "No," he replied. "E's at college."

  "I thought it was the holidays."

  "Yeah, well, you know how it is. "Spect he has a bird up there or somefmg. He's at Lancaster University. Takes after his uncle in that re spec not me."

  "What's he studying?"

  "Mechanical engineering. He's a whiz wiv anyfing mechanical."

  "He rang me," I told him, 'to ask about Uncle Duncan."

  "Who? DJ?" He sounded surprised.

  "Mmm. I think he cared about him more than you realised. I was hoping he'd be here, so I'd be grateful if you could pass on what I've told you."

  "Yeah, right, I'll give 'im a bell an' tell 'im."

  "Week on Tuesday," I said. "Watch the papers."

  "Will do. Fanks."

  I started the engine and did a three-point turn at the end of their cul-de-sac. He'd gone in before I drove by so I didn't wave. That's put the Fox amongst the chickens, I thought. This hadn't been in the game plan, and Tregellis would probably eat his desk if he found out, but sometimes it helps to stir things up a little. I tried to blink away the green spots that were swirling before my eyes and headed back towards the M1.

  "That's where Percy Shaw lived," Sparky said, presumably pointing down a lane end we'd just passed.

  Here we go, I thought. He's in one of those moods.

  "Who's Percy Shaw?" Nigel asked, dead on cue. He'll never learn.

  "Percy Shaw? You've never heard of Percy Shaw?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Blimey, and I thought you were educated. Percy's a local hero, and his product is used on nearly every road in the country; in the world, probably."

  "Oh, I know who you mean," Nigel realised. "The Catseye man. He was clever, no doubt about it."

  Sparky was driving my car and I was dozing in the back. We were making our way towards the M62 and then on to Bridlington. It was six thirty a.m." the sun was shining and in the North Sea the fish were swimming on borrowed time.

  "He was more than clever, Nigel," Dave asserted. "He was a genius."

  "Well, I wouldn't say a genius," Nigel argued.

  "Of course he was. It was on this very road that he had his inspiration. He was driving along, one foggy night, and this cat was coming towards him. Percy saw how its eyes glowed in his headlights and when he got home he invented the Catseye.

  Nigel didn't comment, but Dave was undeterred. "Next morning," he continued, 'he was driving back from the patent office when he saw the very same cat, but this time it was walking away from him. Percy dashed straight home and invented the pencil sharpener."

  I'd heard it eight times before but I had to smile, or maybe Nigel's guffaws were infectious, or perhaps it was just that I was pleased they got on so well together. At first, when Nigel joined us, it was open warfare between them. Then they learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and now they ganged up against me. I regarded it as one of my successes. Dave went through my selection of cassettes, ejecting each after a short burst. "God, you don't half listen to some crap," he pronounced.

  The rustling of paper told me that Nigel was struggling with the Telegraph we'd had to stop for. After a while he said: "Hey, this sounds a bargain! P amp; O are doing two on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander for seventy-nine pounds, and that includes a car!"

  "Sounds good," Dave agreed. "I wonder what sort of car it is?"

  I wasn't going to get any sleep so I opened my eyes and sat up. Nigel folded his paper and offered it to me, but I declined, so he stuffed it in the door pocket. We were on the motorway, south of Leeds, overtaking a string of lorries through the semipermanent roadworks near the M1 junction.

  "Speed cameras, Dave," I warned. "Slow down, or the bastards'll get you."

  "No," he stated, 'they'll get you:

  "Well slow down the nV He slowed down. We left the roadworks behind and Nigel was admiring the view. "What are those?" he asked, looking out of his window. "I seem them every time I come this way and wonder what they are."

  Dave glanced across and I peered out of the back window. "What are what?" Dave said.

  "Those buildings, in that field."

  Long and low, red brick with slate roofs, they were a familiar sight to me, but to Nigel, from Berkshire, they were a novelty.

  Tusky sheds," Dave stated.

  Tusky sheds?"

  "Rhubarb sheds," I explained. "They grow rhubarb in them. Norfolk has its windmills, Kent has its oast houses, and we have rhubarb sheds."

  "Right!" Nigel exclaimed. "Right! And I suppose that's a toothpaste quarry over there, and that old mill is where they used to make blue steam!" He pulled the Telegraph out again and started reading the obituaries.

  "They're rhubarb sheds!" Dave snapped at him. "Like he told you."

  "Just once," Nigel pronounced, 'just once it'd be nice to get a sensible answer to a sensible question." He read a few more deaths then pretended to be asleep.

  "Nigel," I said, assuming my mantle of authority. "They are rhubarb sheds. It grows best in the dark. This area south of Leeds is the country's major producer of rhubarb."

  "Have you ever had rhubarb crumble?" Dave asked him.

  "No," he snarled.

  Dave glanced back over his shoulder. "Ring our Shirl," he told me, 'and tell her to get a rhubarb crumble out of the freezer. Nigel's in for a treat."

  The arrangement was that the three of us were going back to Dave's house for fresh-caught fish, and chips made with his home-grown potatoes. I asked Nigel to pass me my phone and dialled Shirley.

  We'd forgotten it was not quite seven in the morning, and Shirley wasn't too pleased at being disturbed again. She's a pal, though, and soon forgave me, but couldn't help with the crumble. They were out of them. "Bring some rhubarb back with you," she suggested, 'and I'll make him one."

  The east coast suffers from what are known as sea
frets. One hundred yards inland it can be a scorcher, but a thick mist rises off the water, blotting out the sun and turning July into November. Today we had a mother and father of one.

  We groped our way along the pier, between plastic-clad holiday makers forced to desert their rooms while the maid changed the sheets, and were accosted by the touts who work for the boats. Seven blokes in scruffy clothes hadn't come to sample the fun fare and we were putty in their hands. Dave put up a struggle, giving nearly as good as he got, and insisted that we go in a boat that was only half-filled. Just before we cast off, however, we were ordered to switch into the boat tied alongside, which was also half-full, so now we were in one that was crowded.

  On the trip out I explained to Nigel how to put a bunch of mussels on his hook and how to feel for the bottom with the big lead weight.

  Because of the weather, and because it was just a three-hour trip, we would only go into the bay. We shivered, shoulder to shoulder, and waited for the boat to stop.

  The skipper switched the engine off and gave the order to start fishing. The boat, bristling with rods, looked like a floating hedgehog. I felt my weight hit the bottom, reeled in a couple of turns and showed Nigel how to do the same.

  "Now wait for a bite," I said.

  "And then what?"

  "Strike and haul it up."

  "That simple."

  "Yep."

  The first tangle came after about ten minutes of waiting. Someone at the other side of the boat started winding in, a chap along from me struck and started winding, then Dave, me, Nigel and everyone else in the boat.

  "Stop reeling in!" yelled the skipper.

  It took him nearly fifteen minutes to unravel the ball of spaghetti that we eventually lifted out of the water. We repeated the exercise six more times and that was the three hours up. "Is it always this much fun?" Nigel asked.

  The other four made straight for the pub while we went looking for a fishmonger. "I don't suppose you have any cod with the heads and tails still on?" Dave asked in the most promising one.

  "Sorry, sir," the man replied. "It's all been filleted."

  "Oh. In that case, can I have six large portions, please?" Shirley and their children, Daniel and Sophie, would be eating with us.

  I noticed that the salmon was only ten pence dearer than the cod. "I think I'd prefer a piece of salmon," I said.

  Dave turned on me. "You can't have salmon. We've supposed to have caught it."

  "Well, I caught a salmon."

  "They don't catch salmon."

  "Of course they catch it. Where do you think it comes from?"

  "It comes from a farm. They farm it."

  I turned to the fishmonger. "Was the salmon wild?" I asked him.

  "It wasn't too pleased," he replied. Everybody's a stand-up comedian these days.

  We couldn't find a rhubarb shop so we joined the others in the pub and let them have a smell of our fish. Dave and Nigel had a couple of pints and I settled for halves because it was my turn to drive. They talked about the job most of the way home while I concentrated on staying awake. "So were you two on the Ripper case?" Nigel asked.

  "On it's putting it a bit steep," Dave replied. "We were there, that's all."

  "So what were you doing?"

  "Stopping cars, mainly. Anybody out late at night got used to being stopped. Other crime fell dramatically."

  "And how long did it go on for?"

  "Oh, about two years. I'm not proud of it, but the Ripper paid the deposit on my first house."

  "We worked hard, Dave," I said. "Some paid for their entire houses and did a lot less than us."

  "Mmm, I know."

  "You were lucky, weren't you, when you caught him?" Nigel asked.

  "Dead jam my Dave agreed.

  "It was good policing," I argued.

  "We could do with a bit more luck like that," Dave said.

  After a silence Nigel asked: "So why haven't you ever gone for your stripes, Dave?"

  Dave didn't reply. "You're on a touchy subject, Nigel," I warned.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know, but he has his reasons, daft as they probably are."

  "So why haven't you?" Nigel persisted.

  "Leave it," I told him. Dave has fluffed his sergeant's exam several times, but I don't know why. He claims he just freezes in the exam room, but I don't believe him. I've seen him take on more than one whiz kid barrister and do all right.

  We were passing a sign saying the next services were ten miles ahead.

  "Wouldn't mind stopping for a pee," Dave said.

  "Me too," Nigel added.

  Nigel was explaining to Dave how J.J. Fox gained control of various companies even though he had less than fifty per cent of the shares.

  "He has a reputation second to none for making companies profitable," he said. "OK, so he sacks people and asset-strips, but the shareholders don't mind if they are reaping the benefits. If he has, say, thirty-five per cent of the shares, he can attract the proxy votes of the smaller shareholders who can't be bothered to vote themselves.

  This might give him, say, a sixty per cent holding, so he's effectively in control."

  "Shareholders want to see their investments doing well," I said as I cruised past the slip road to the services. "You can't really blame them for ignoring the man's ethics."

  "Not only that," Nigel added. "Most of the investors are probably pension schemes. They're obliged to strive for the best available for their members, so they can't afford to be choosy."

  "Aargh! You've passed them!" Dave complained.

  Five minutes later we were back in the rhubarb triangle. "How desperate are you?" I asked.

  "Quite," Nigel said.

  "Bloody," Dave added.

  Away to my left I could see a pair of sheds, side by side in the middle of some allotments, with a Land Rover standing outside them. "Right,"

  I said. "In that case we'll kill two birds with one stone." I pulled across into the slow lane and indicated that I was leaving at the next exit.

  "Where are we going?" Nigel asked.

  "To some rhubarb sheds," I replied. "There was a Land Rover outside.

  You can have a pee and I'll see if he'll sell me some rhubarb."

  I took left turns until I was driving back alongside the motorway, and turned left again down a cobbled street that looked promising. We were between two rows of terraced houses, left isolated for some reason when the area had been cleared. They were occupied and looked tidy, with clotheslines across the road and some children kicking a ball about.

  We'd stepped back in time.

  The cobbles gave way to a dirt track that led through the allotments, fenced round with a mishmash of old doors, wire netting and floorboards. Blue smoke drifted up from a pile of burning sods and a piebald pony tied to a stake reached for fresh grass outside the bald circle it occupied.

  "There they are," I said, nodding towards the rhubarb sheds. There were two of them at the far side of an area of uncultivated ground, backing against the motorway embankment. More gypsy ponies were tethered nearby, but the Land Rover had vanished.

  "He's gone," I said. "Never mind." I drove up to the sheds and stopped. We all got out and Dave and Nigel wandered round the back to relieve themselves.

  Several abandoned cars were strewn down one side of the buildings, like wrecks on the seabed, slowly returning to nature. A Morris Minor had almost rotted away, its oil-soaked engine putting up the only resistance. Tall grass and willow-herb grew through tyres that were scattered around, left where they fell. I kicked one and two goldfinches flew up from a patch of thistles.

  The door at the front of the first shed was wide enough for a trailer to be backed through, and written on it in cream paint that had dribbled was the name J. Nelson and Sons, with a telephone number. The padlock on the door was a big Chubb made from some exotic steel that must have cost about a hundred pounds, and a picture of a Rottweiler's head bore the legend: Make my day. Rhubarb's a valuable crop, I tho
ught.

  I heard Dave call my name so I walked round the side. He emerged from behind the building, at the far end, and shouted: "Come and look at this."

  I picked my way through the nettles and debris and joined them at the back of the sheds, up against the embankment. "What have you found?" I asked.

  There was a post-and-rail fence marking the boundary of the motorway, and Dave pointed at a rail. "See that," he said.

  The rail was sawn through, almost all the way, close to the post.

  "So?"

  "And here, and here." All three rails were similar. "It's the same at the other end," he told me.

  I walked the four yards to the next post to see for myself. "What do you make of it?" I asked.

  "Someone might want to get away in a hurry," Nigel said. "They could charge straight through the fence and up the bank on to the motorway."

  "Now why would they want to do that?" I wondered. There was a junction five hundred yards away, with a choice of five different directions for them to flee down.

  "Come and listen," Dave said, adding: "But mind the wet grass."

  I followed him to the boarded-up window in the back wall.

  "What can you hear?" he asked.

  "Traffic'

  "No, from inside. Listen."

  I cupped my hand around an ear and put it close to the window, sealing the other with a finger. There was a low hum coming from inside. "Sounds a bit like a generator," I said.

  "Why would he want a generator?"

  "Lighting?"

  "Rhubarb grows in the dark. So do mushrooms."

  "Heating?"

  "It's the hottest summer on record, and generators are not that powerful."

  "Right," I said. "So maybe we should take a closer look. The lock on the front door looks as if it came from Fort Knox."

  "Leave it to me," Dave said, and wandered off to rummage amongst the wrecks. He came back in less than a minute carrying a half-shaft.

  We were in a secluded spot behind the buildings, out of sight of the traffic or the nearby houses. What we were doing was illegal, there was no excuse for it, but we did it just the same. Every pane of glass in the window was broken but it was boarded up on the inside. Strands of barbed wire were stapled around it as a further deterrent. Dave took a swing at the end board and a dog inside started barking. It sounded big, and fierce, and very angry.