by Susan Hill
There were a couple of people reading at the tables, heads down.
Only four minutes before closing time. Nobody would come in now but Russon hovered by Fiction A–E just in case.
The two-minute buzzer went. Both readers got up, set their books back and left together.
Russon went to the door, Moon went to the shelf.
And out.
Moon took the slip of paper out of The Da Vinci Code, pocketed it, switched off the lights.
And out.
Thirty-seven
‘You could do this professionally,’ Kieron said. Sam had stuffed the chicken breasts with cheese and herbs and wrapped them in bacon, fried mushrooms and tomatoes slowly together and served it all with jacket potatoes.
‘Ha, no thanks. Though this was … quite satisfying.
Kieron poured himself a glass of wine. Cat was at choir, Felix in bed early with a cold and an old and beloved Roald Dahl, for comfort.
‘So not cordon bleu then.’
Sam shook his head but said nothing.
‘Tell me to mind my own business.’
‘No, only first it’s Mum, then Si, now you. And the answer is I just don’t know.’
‘I’m not getting at you, Sam. To start with, you make up your own mind about your future, and equally important, I would have no right to do so anyway. But I’d like to think you could use me as a sounding board if you need one, and if I can help as well, that would be good. But if you’d rather not talk about it at all, fine, we’ll talk about something else.’
‘Such as?’
Kieron ate in silence for a few minutes, then drank, then looked at Sam.
‘I would be interested in your take on something actually. Because I’m baffled – the rest of us are much the same. And anyone’s view from the outside might be useful.’
‘A police thing?’
Kieron nodded.
‘What help would I be?’
‘I’ve no idea. I just thought it would be worth throwing it in your direction. You’re not involved, you’re a civilian, you’ve not – well, so far as I know – thought about this before – fresh mind.’
‘OK. Throw.’
‘How much do you know about the fires in Lafferton?’
‘What, the arson attacks? If that’s what they are.’
‘They are. A completely accidental fire – you know, electrical fault, someone leaves a cigarette burning – is a pretty rare event. So this many in one area … they’re deliberate. There are other pointers too – the fire people are quite certain. All you need to know is that these are arson attacks. So – any suggestions?’
‘You mean how or why … ?’
‘I mean what type of person? Motivation? Background?’
‘What is this, some sort of test?’
Kieron laughed. ‘Absolutely not. If you want to be tested for the police force you go the usual route. No, we just need all the help we can get.’
‘Run me through the fires – just in brief.’
Sam leaned back. He had never been asked a question of this kind and he wasn’t sure where to begin. But he saw that it was not straightforward. And that it was interesting.
‘OK, to start with, it seems likely that most of these things are done by men. I don’t know why I think that, maybe I’ve just read newspaper reports. Am I right?’
‘Overwhelmingly, arson is a male crime, yes.’
‘So in a way that makes it clearer. Or maybe not. Mentally deranged?’
‘Ah, that begs a huge question, doesn’t it? Would any totally sane, rational person keep setting places alight? Well, obviously not. After that though – what’s sanity, what’s madness?’
‘OK, someone with a grudge. Maybe, if they’re setting fire to, say, betting shops, then they’ve lost a load of money, or they think they’ve been cheated. Or, they’re just pissed off and broke.’
‘Possible. A grudge … revenge. Yes. It’s a clear motive. But in the Lafferton fires, each one is different, in a different place, different type of building. There’s no pattern.’
‘Could still be a grudge, maybe against businesses. Capitalism?’
‘Yes. But none of these are existing businesses – thankfully – they’re derelict or unused commercial buildings, and in a couple of instances the fires have been in the open air. An empty car park, the towpath.’
Sam got himself a Coke, and poured Kieron another glass of red, thinking all the time. It was like the best sort of logic puzzle with an added psychological element. Except there seemed to be nothing logical about it that he could see.
‘He just likes fire. Starting it and watching it blaze. I mean, I can see that.’
‘So can I, up to a point. I can enjoy making a bonfire of fallen branches and dead leaves and old boxes, finding the right cold, clear day and then whoomph! But I’m not damaging anyone or anyone’s property and I wouldn’t want to do it very often.’
‘True. Still, the same holds, doesn’t it? You love doing it. You love seeing the results. And one of the results is getting the fire brigade out, watching all that.’
‘Yes. And it’s all down to you.’
‘Power then.’
‘Yes. Just that?’
‘There isn’t a pudding by the way. There are some apples and bananas.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I guess … the thrill of starting a blaze and watching it take hold is kind of a turn-on?’
‘Now there you are spot on – arson is very often considered by the psychs to be a sexual crime.’
‘Only by the psychs?’
‘Who am I to disagree with them?’
‘But?’
‘But I don’t believe that’s always the answer or at least not the whole answer.’
‘So … it’s a male. Age? Could be any, though maybe not over seventy?’
‘Why?’
‘You have to be fit and agile. Good at getting away.’
‘Seventy isn’t ninety.’
‘Maybe not married or with a partner. All that going out by yourself at weird hours …’
‘Possibly. Not conclusively.’
‘Loner?’
‘So many criminals are – excluding gangs and drugs. But this sort of thing, yes, very likely.’
‘Local. He isn’t going to come a hundred miles. He could do it nearer home.’
‘Local because of …’
‘Local knowledge.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So, a Lafferton bloke. How does he start the fires? Not just matches.’
‘No. Petrol, either petrol-soaked rags or the usual way we all start a fire in the grate – newspaper, kindling, firelighters, only a whole lot more than we need and then he douses it with petrol. Adds old paint cans. Varnish. Anything. None of which are hard to get hold of.’
‘He’d smell of them.’
‘Good point.’
‘So all the more reason why he’s single or else he has somewhere to dump the clothing he wears for doing it.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere … empty house, old shed, even down by the river or the canal.’
‘How does he get from the fire to there and from there to home?’
‘Bike. Or he runs. Easier to slip in and out of back alleys and back gardens. Which means he doesn’t come too far.’
Kieron reached for a pad and pen. ‘So what have we got?’
‘Male. Single. Bit odd but maybe not totally bonkers. I mean, he’s cunning, he can plan. Local. Age, what, twenty to fifty? That’s a big field. Something else … have people at work or wherever noticed he’s interested in fires, maybe in these fires – you know, looking them up on the Internet news, in the paper, watching for them on TV? I mean, he wants a result, doesn’t he? He wants to be sort of famous, even if it’s only in his own head.’
Kieron finished his wine and got up to clear the table. ‘This has been great, Sam, it’s very helpful. It’s got a lot of dead wood out of the way and cleared my mind.’
<
br /> ‘Yeah, but it’s not you, is it? You’re the Chief. You’re not CID. You’re not leading the case.’
‘No. But I have to be on top of it, like everything else. This isn’t just one incident which would probably whizz past me, you’re right. This is ongoing and it could easily get worse – and we need to be ahead of him. Which isn’t easy.’
‘Do they suspect anyone yet?’
‘No. Which is the big problem. There’s no one even on the radar. So it may be just a case of vigilance on the part of the patrols rather than clever detective work.’
‘Is it often like that?’
‘Varies. Do you want a coffee?’
‘No thanks. You mean, often patrols catch criminals by chance?’
‘By chance, occasionally, but not usually. It’s generally based on something – a tip-off, CID work, everything’s different. That’s why police work is so interesting.’
‘Not sure I’d like just swanning round in a patrol car for hours.’
‘“Swan”, isn’t the term I’d apply, Sam. It has its moments as well.’
‘I think I’ll go out and see if anyone’s about.’
‘About?’
Sam gave him a look from the doorway. ‘That’s right.’
He was not late back. None of his friends were in town. He met someone he vaguely knew from school and a posse of his friends, but after an hour, he realised with a shock that he had nothing at all in common with them. They wanted to get pissed and behave in as juvenile way as they could manage. He had driven in, so half a lager was his limit, and the jeering because he switched to Coke was enough to send him home.
Kieron had gone to bed. Cat was emptying the dishwasher and finishing up the red wine Kieron had left. She did not ask where he had been.
‘Kieron said he’d sent you a link to a couple of things he thought might interest you. I went from choir straight to the hospital.’
‘How is he?’
‘Not very well. They’ve done everything – CAT scans, X-rays, bronchoscopy – thoracic medicine wasn’t his own speciality for nothing. The consultant was one of his old students.’
‘It’s who you know, as usual.’
‘Sometimes. Anyway, he has pneumonia and he should have been treated earlier – the congestion on his lungs is bad. They’ll get on top of it though – he’s pretty fit generally for his age.’
‘Bet he’s giving them a hard time.’
‘Oh he is. Gave me one as well, come to that.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
She laughed. ‘Switch the lights off and all that when you come up, Sambo.’
She gave him a quick hug and ruffled his hair to provoke him, as she went by.
To [email protected]
From [email protected]
Thought these two might interest you. K
One link was to a forensic psychology journal and an article about arson. The second was to a couple of university degree courses in criminology. He filed the first to read later and did not plan to do more than skim the second but ended by going upstairs and investigating several prospectuses on his iPad. He was still reading when he fell asleep with the light on after two o’clock.
Thirty-eight
Marion had not been sure if she could drive safely when she first got into the car. She was shaky, her palms were damp, and she seemed unable to focus properly, the edges of buildings seemed blurred.
But it was better once she started and the first few miles, out of town onto the bypass and then towards Bevham, were fine, because they were so familiar and she could drive without thinking about where she was actually heading. But then it was all new to her. Satnav took her left and right, round roundabouts to this or that exit, over crossroads, then ‘continue on for four miles’, and she gripped the steering wheel, as if she thought it might come away from its fixing. She was usually a perfectly relaxed driver, and competent, but she did not feel so now, she felt as if she was a danger to everyone, and also, as if somehow people could look at her through the car windows and know who she was and why she was on this road.
The signs began, several miles from the prison. They could have read Recycling Centre or Hospital or Crematorium but they didn’t. And when she took the last turning down a short road, they were white on black. HM PRISON LEVERWORTH.
She stopped at the side of the road and got out. She was going to be sick. She took gulps of the cold air. Her chest tightened and she felt dizzy again. Several other cars passed. She leaned on the car door.
After all this, she would have to give up and turn back. She couldn’t face it. Face him. It wasn’t the prison itself that worried her. The prison was nothing. She wasn’t going to be attacked or challenged. Ordinary people were on their way, other women. Children.
Him.
Lee Russon. The last person on God’s earth to see Kimberley alive, she knew, and the only one to see her dead. She knew that too.
She heaved and spat out phlegm onto the grass.
Why had she insisted on doing this? What had possessed her?
The letter had told her she would be searched and she had thought that it wouldn’t bother her – it was necessary and she had nothing to hide. But it did bother her, it made her feel she had a number not a name, that she was unclean and exposed. Zap, up her and down her, went the sensor in the prison warder’s hand, front and back, and then hands, and turn round this way, now to the right, thank you. You can go through.
She had brought nothing. There had been a list of what could and could not be taken into the prison but it had never crossed her mind. Now, she saw women with magazines and sweets and bars of chocolate and felt guilty. Mean. Which was ridiculous.
There was a lot of noise, metal chairs being scraped back on the bare floor, screeching, children’s voices, and then their footsteps as they filed in through a door at the back. She stared down at her hands in her lap, at the Formica tabletop, and the floor, at her feet. She could not look at any one of them, not try and see him, watch him walking towards her.
There was a smell, floor cleaner and something else she could not identify. Sweat? Fear?
The chair opposite her was pulled out and she saw a body blocking the light from the window behind. Hands on the table. Hands.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Marion.’
She noticed the hands. Squared-off nails. Clean. Fat stubby fingers. Hairs down the backs like furred creatures. The hands. How had he killed her? With his hands?
‘It’s all right.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I’m not going to bite. I’m very glad to see you, actually. Marion.’
She drew a sharp breath and glanced up quickly and he was looking straight into her face, her eyes; she could not have avoided his stare.
The face was flabby. There was a shadow on the jaw and chin. The hair was greying and short. There was nothing interesting or surprising or unusual or remarkable about the face. You could have seen the face anywhere. The eyes were pale. Grey-green, with streaks, like the streaks in marbles. Pale. Small piggy eyes but staring, staring. Not blinking, not leaving her face. He smiled. He had poor teeth. She looked away.
‘Thank you for visiting, Marion. I appreciate it. Can’t have been easy.’
Smile.
‘Listen, I know why you have. You don’t bother me, I’m glad you’re here because I can tell you to your face. Look at me, Marion.’
She looked.
‘Thank you. I’m not a monster, Marion but I know I did what I did and I’m being punished for it and that’s only right. Not good but right.’
He did a tattoo with his fingers on the tabletop, drumming them and drumming them, faster and faster, but he did not take his eyes off her face. Then he stopped abruptly.
‘I want you to listen to me, Marion, because we won’t get this chance again, you won’t come here again, I know that, and why would you? I have to take my chance. Listen.’
Russon leaned forward so suddenly that in pulling back she almost tipped her
chair over. She could see the guard out of the corner of her eye, looking in their direction.
‘I did not kill your daughter. I did not kill Kimberley.’ He was almost whispering, his words hissing out between almost-closed teeth on a stream of bad breath. ‘As you are my witness, Marion. I have done bad things, though I am not a bad person. Never mind how I came to do them, but I did. Only you hear this because it’s the plain truth. I know what you think and I know what you believe, and do you know what, I don’t blame you for that, because in your shoes I’d probably believe the same. Only I am telling you now and I am telling you straight. I did not kill your daughter. And you have to believe me, Marion. You’ll get no rest until you do.’
And then Lee Russon smiled.
A few miles from the prison she saw a roadside diner. It smelled of cold fried food and there were a couple of van drivers sitting on the red plastic benches. They did not glance in her direction. She got a mug of tea and a slice of coffee cake. The tea was strong and hot and fresh, the cake dusty with fondant on the top.
Traffic swished past through the steady rain that must have begun when she was in the prison.
She could not get Russon’s eyes or his face or his voice or his hands or his clothing, anything about him, out of her mind. It was like a poster pinned up, and no matter what she looked at, it came in front of her eyes.
She had gone to confront him. She had gone to demand he tell her the truth, confess to Kimberly’s murder. Say where he had dumped her body.
Instead, he had taken the lead. He had not seemed troubled. He had said he had not killed Kimberly, almost as if he was saying he had not watched the TV news the previous night, and by looking at her out of those pale eyes, had insisted that she believe him.
Did she? She sipped the tea, which was so very hot it scalded her tongue but revived her. Did she?
Yes. Somehow or other, he had convinced her. He had more or less admitted to other terrible crimes, but wanted her to know, from his own mouth, that he was innocent of the murder of Kimberly, and had no idea what had happened to her, and certainly not whether she was dead.
She pulled herself up. No. He had not said he had no idea what had happened to her or that he knew or did not know if she was really dead. He had said he had not killed her. But in that case, surely he would have told her he knew nothing about her disappearance at all?