Playing with Fire

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I’ll get the local nick to take a look,’ Jamieson said. ‘And I’ll see you and Kate later.’

  Tess Farrell answered an imperious ring on her front doorbell just as she was making Dave Donovan a cup of tea. She had realized as soon as he had explained everything that had happened to him and Kate since they had left to go to Jason Destry’s party in the country that Dave was not likely to be departing for Liverpool tonight. In fact, she guessed that he would not be very keen to go home at all until he was sure that Kate O’Donnell had recovered and left hospital. He and Kate had gone through a stormy relationship several years ago which had started at Liverpool College of Art and sunk after Dave had unsuccessfully tried to launch his band in London. But Tess knew he had never accepted that it was all over, however fervently he had claimed that Marie had taken Kate’s place. When he had explained to Tess briefly what had happened at the house in Surrey he had more or less collapsed on the sofa and was still asleep.

  When Tess opened the door she found herself faced with two men, neither of whom she recognized.

  ‘Miss Farrell?’ the older of the two asked. She nodded. The man reached into an inside pocket and flashed a card with an ID photograph in her direction. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Brian Jamieson. I understand you have a David Donovan staying with you and I need to ask him some questions about what happened last night.’

  ‘You’d better come in then,’ Tess said, and led the two men up the stairs to the first-floor flat. ‘He’s been asleep for hours. I don’t know what happened to him at Jason Destry’s party but whatever it was it wasn’t good. Do you know if Kate O’Donnell has woken up yet? He told me she was unconscious.’

  ‘She hadn’t when I left the hospital about half an hour ago,’ Jamieson said. ‘DS Barnard is with her.’

  Tess nodded, wondering if Harry was there as her boyfriend or one of DI Jamieson’s investigating team or, more cynically perhaps, both. Tess shook Donovan’s shoulder. ‘Wake up, Dave,’ she said. ‘There are two policemen here to talk to you.’ Donovan groaned but succeeded in opening his eyes and slowly sitting up, eyeing the two officers in jeans and leather jackets with deep suspicion.

  ‘DI Jamieson and DS Bentley from the drug squad,’ Jamieson said, displaying his warrant card again. ‘I understand you were at a party last night in Surrey, at Jason Destry’s house. Is that right?’

  Donovan grunted and nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘But not for long. Kate O’Donnell didn’t feel too good so we came back to London after the firework display. I asked the driver to bring us back here but they more or less chucked us out of the car somewhere else. It was pitch-black and Katie was rambling by then and eventually fell asleep, or passed out – I couldn’t get her to wake up. All I knew was that she was still breathing. I was out of my mind. I thought she was going to die.’

  ‘We know there were drugs available at the party. So what did she take?’

  ‘She didn’t take anything as far as I know,’ Donovan said angrily. ‘I know you bizzies think anyone in a band must be on drugs, but I’m not and Kate wouldn’t touch anything willingly. You must know her boyfriend’s a bizzy himself.’

  ‘So you’re saying someone spiked her drink?’

  ‘And mine,’ Donovan said. ‘By the time we told Jason we wanted to go back to London because Kate wasn’t feeling good and I was feeling pretty weird myself. I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or dreaming in the back of that car. And Kate was hysterical before she passed out completely. Said the house was on fire. She seemed terrified. I begged the driver not to dump us but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Well, as fairy stories go that’s quite a good one,’ Jamieson said. ‘My problem is the doctors say some drugs don’t leave any traces in the body so there may be no way we can check what it was. It’s a pity that.’

  ‘Or even if it was a drug at all,’ Donovan said, sounding more confident by the minute.

  ‘Given the way your friend Kate has reacted I don’t think there’s much doubt she was drugged and is probably lucky to be alive. And it’s my job to investigate what happened at that party. DS Barnard told me you were planning to go back to Liverpool?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ Donovan said. ‘But only if Kate is OK. She’s an old friend.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Jamieson said.

  Donovan opened his mouth to argue but Jamieson did not give him time. ‘I need you here as a witness,’ he said. ‘I need statements from you and Miss O’Donnell. I could arrest you as you’ve admitted that you and Kate O’Donnell were under the influence of drugs when you left Destry’s party. But if I did that you might end up in the dock alongside Destry and his mates. If you help me with the prosecution you should be OK.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Tess said sharply from the other side of the room. But Jamieson shrugged.

  ‘Drug convictions are going through the roof,’ he said. ‘New drugs like LSD are coming on stream and it sounds as if that’s what you took – or were given. Scotland Yard want it stopped. Sorry, but that’s where we are. What’s it to be, Mr Donovan?’

  Donovan looked helplessly at Tess. ‘Looks as if I’ll be staying if you put it like that, whack,’ Donovan said, leaning back on the sofa and closing his eyes again, defeated.

  ‘And there’s one other thing I need from you, Miss Farrell,’ Jamieson added. ‘In the circumstances I’m within my rights to search your flat. We can do that two ways. You can give me and DS Bentley permission to search now and get it over with, or I can apply to a magistrate for a search warrant, in which case one of us will try to track down a magistrate, which might not be easy on a Sunday afternoon, and the other will stay here until the documents are ready and then do the search. Which would you prefer?’

  ‘My God, you’re a bastard,’ Donovan muttered.

  ‘I’m doing my job,’ Jamieson said without a hint of an apology.

  ‘You can search now,’ Tess said. ‘And if you’re carrying anything you shouldn’t, Dave, it’s on your own head. It’s absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  Barnard sat beside Kate’s bed as the afternoon wore on. He had drunk cups of tea after he had decided that what they called coffee in the canteen tasted of dishwater and had eaten nothing all day, and felt his eyes closing intermittently. Every so often he had shaken himself awake when he persuaded himself that Kate’s eyes were flickering, but every time she had lapsed back into immobility almost at once. As the afternoon dragged on the only thing that really roused him was the regular visits of a nurse to check on Kate’s condition as he sank closer and closer to total despair.

  In the end it was Kate who took him by surprise; he guessed that he must have fallen asleep again only to find that Kate’s eyes were finally wide open and she had half a smile on her face and was watching him sleep.

  ‘You’re awake,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not great,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. What can you remember?’ As soon as Barnard saw her face crumple in distress he knew that was the wrong question to ask, too soon almost certainly and quite possibly ever.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Forget everything if that’s what you want. You don’t have to talk about it, especially not to me. Just concentrate on staying awake for now. You’re going to be fine. And you have no idea how good that makes me feel. Let me get the nurse. She’ll know what to do now you’re awake.’ He went to the door of the side ward and waved to the ward sister at the far end close to the nurses’ station. She hurried towards him. If he had even half doubted how serious the medical staff felt Kate’s condition to be, the look of relief on the nurse’s face convinced him.

  ‘Is she awake?’ she said, taking his arm and preventing him going back to Kate’s bedside. ‘Is she talking normally? That’s what the doctor said he needs to know.’

  ‘She’s talking but is very emotional – scared even. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened. Not
yet anyway.’

  ‘I’ll phone the doctor,’ the sister said. ‘He’ll want to see her now, I’m sure.’

  ‘There’ll be a lot of people wanting to see her and ask her lots of questions, as DI Jamieson explained,’ Barnard said.

  ‘That will be up to Mr Ingleby,’ the sister said sharply. ‘He won’t want anything done which might disturb her mental balance. Some of these drugs are very dangerous things.’

  ‘I know,’ Barnard said. ‘Will Mr Ingleby talk to me, do you think? We’re not married. I’m not her next of kin.’

  ‘That will be up to the consultant,’ the ward sister said. ‘He’ll make his own decisions. You’ll have to explain the circumstances to him. Shall we have a look at Miss O’Donnell before I make the phone call? You can stay with her if you wish.’

  ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Barnard said, and he followed the nurse back into the side ward feeling the tension build as Kate submitted to the routine checks on her well-being.

  When the ward sister finally left to make her phone call Barnard threw hospital rules aside, sat on Kate’s bed and put his arms round her. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said. ‘If you feel up to it. A lot of people are going to want to know what happened so you can try it out on me first.’ She cried then, long, wracking sobs which told him nothing except she was adrift in a place he could not even imagine, confused and consumed apparently by images of fire.

  ‘There were fireworks, Dave said. Just fireworks. Nothing dangerous,’ Barnard tried to reassure her.

  ‘No, no, there was a fire in the tower,’ Kate insisted. ‘It was on fire and I couldn’t get out. Every time I opened the door someone – or something – pushed me back in. There were flames everywhere. Even now I can see it and smell it and think I’ll choke on it. I was in the middle of it and I thought it would never stop. I was looking for you. I wanted you and I couldn’t find you anywhere …’

  ‘I wasn’t there, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Where was Dave while all this was going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not hurt,’ Barnard said, feeling completely helpless. ‘You’re not burnt. They said they gave you a thorough going over when you were brought in and found nothing to worry about, nothing physical anyway.’

  ‘It was in the car, the fire. The car was burning.’ She examined her hands and arms carefully.

  ‘No,’ Barnard said gently. ‘The car wasn’t burning. Can you remember being in the car?’

  She looked puzzled for a moment. ‘I thought I’d got drunk again, like after I went with Dave to the club. I felt woozy. The driver said they would take us back to London but I can’t remember much after that.’

  Barnard felt rather than heard someone behind him, and he turned his head to see the ward sister and the specialist enter the room.

  ‘We were lucky,’ the ward sister said. ‘Mr Ingleby had already been called in to deal with another patient so it didn’t take long to find him.’

  The consultant did not look pleased to see Barnard, still sitting on the bed. ‘And you are?’ he said, frost in his voice and eyes.

  Barnard shrugged slightly and stood up. ‘I’m Kate’s boyfriend,’ he said. ‘She’s a long, long way from her family.’

  ‘Right, then you can tell the sister here how to get in touch with them. Do you have any idea what this young lady took, or how much?’

  ‘I wasn’t with her when it happened,’ Barnard said.

  ‘Right,’ Ingleby said, and there was a wealth of accusation in the single word. ‘Then you can leave us to examine the patient.’

  ‘Visiting hours are long over, Mr Ingleby, as you know, sir. I have told him that several times.’ A note of outraged authority was very evident now in the nurse’s tone.

  ‘Can I take her home tonight?’ Barnard asked without much hope.

  The doctor shook his head angrily. ‘I will want to keep her under observation at least until tomorrow, possibly longer. You can ring the ward sister after midday and she will tell you whether I think it’s safe for her to leave and you – or her family – can come and fetch her. Some of these episodes are slow to clear up. The hallucinations come back unexpectedly …’

  ‘I’d like to go home soon,’ Kate said with just an echo of her usual determination, which Barnard rejoiced to hear.

  ‘And I had a bag with me at the party,’ she said. ‘A bag and my camera. I wanted to take some pictures, and I think I did. But I’m not sure whether I brought it back with me.’

  ‘I’ll find it, sweetheart,’ Barnard said, feeling a faint stirring of optimism at last. He leaned around the ward sister to give her a hug. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘And there’s something else,’ Kate said, avoiding the sister’s annoyance and grabbing Barnard’s hand tight. ‘It’s important. Kevin Dunne gave me his phone number so we could get picked up. I couldn’t understand why it sounded familiar until much later when I realized that I’d heard it before. It was the same number that Marie Collins left with her agent.’

  ‘You think that’s where she was staying,’ Barnard said. ‘With Kevin Dunne?’

  ‘We thought she’d go looking for the Scousers, didn’t we?’ Kate said, her voice breaking.

  ‘So where is she now? You didn’t see her at the party, did you?’ Barnard asked.

  ‘No, Kevin came in the cars with the rest of us but there was no sign of Marie. So where was she then?’ For a moment they were left speechless until Barnard decided that the conversation was not going to offer an answer and that Kate was becoming very anxious.

  ‘Don’t worry, Katie,’ he said. ‘Kevin’s safely tucked up with Destry on remand so he’s not going anywhere. I’ll feed what you’ve said into the system. Now get some rest. I’ll see you soon.’

  DI Brian Jamieson was sprawled in a chair close to the main doors when Barnard left Kate’s ward and he stood up as the sergeant came down the stairs.

  ‘You and me, we need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Right, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘Have you interviewed Dave Donovan yet?’

  ‘I caught up with him at the flat in Shepherd’s Bush. That girl’s a bloody teacher. You’d think she’d know better than to get within a mile of illegal substances.’

  ‘I’m sure she does,’ Barnard said. ‘It was Kate who arranged for Donovan to stay there, just for a couple of nights it was supposed to be, while he looked for this girlfriend who’s allegedly gone missing. None of us knew all this would happen. Kate’s just given me a new take on the missing girlfriend as it happens.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I tend to believe the story of your girl and Donovan having their drinks spiked. It’s just the sort of thing Jason Destry would think was funny. The drug problem is London-based, so unless someone’s hoping Donovan will flog LSD for them on Merseyside I think he’s just collateral damage, like your girl.’

  ‘“My girl”, as you call her, is a photographer and she just told me she took her camera with her to Destry’s party, but she doesn’t know what happened to it.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Jamieson said. ‘No one’s found a camera at Destry’s house to my knowledge. So she could have left it in the car or dropped it where they were dumped under the arches. Do you fancy a quick trip to King’s Cross? I asked the local lads to see what they could find down there but they might need geeing up. What do you think?’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Barnard said.

  NINETEEN

  Jamieson drove the MG fast through the quiet Sunday afternoon streets and made a sharp turn into a side street between King’s Cross and St Pancras, the two mainline stations. The road was lined on one side by neglected-looking brick archways which, close to the Euston Road, had been taken over by depressed commercial enterprises until even those petered out and there was no sign of life left, just wind-blown litter and cavernous openings which gave on to nothing but darkness. Round a bend they came across a squad car parked to effectively block the road completely and Jamieson parked alongside.r />
  ‘They’ve only sent one car,’ he said angrily. ‘It could take them a week to find anything in there. Come on. We’ll have to have a look ourselves. I’ve got a flashlight.’

  Full of foreboding, Barnard followed the DI into the gloomy interior of the arches, trying to avoid thinking about what Kate had gone through here and what they might still find. The DI kept the torch focused on the littered floor where the detritus made it all too obvious what normally went on here, at least where the arches were close enough to the outside world to enable the prostitutes and their clients to see each other in the twilight and the drinkers to recognize what they were drinking before they slid into oblivion. But there was no sign of anyone using the space now and Barnard guessed that if there were a couple of uniformed officers prowling these rambling corridors no one would come back until they were sure the police had returned to their cars and driven away.

  ‘Dave Donovan didn’t seem sure how far he walked to get out of here and to the phone box,’ Barnard said. ‘He said he carried Kate some of the way.’

  ‘Sounds as if you owe him,’ Jamieson said, flicking the beam of his light over the accumulated rubbish at the sides of the tunnel, causing an occasional rustle from a startled rodent.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ Barnard said, which was an admission he never thought he would hear himself make about Dave Donovan. They plodded on in silence until Barnard stopped suddenly, almost tripping Jamieson up.

  ‘There!’ he said, pointing and then dodging along the DI’s flashlight beam to something much cleaner than anything else in sight.

  ‘Wait, don’t touch,’ Jamieson said, pulling gloves out of his pocket and putting them on. ‘There’ll be prints. Is it Kate’s bag?’

  ‘I think so, yes,’ Barnard said, sounding strangled by conflicting emotions.

  Jamieson picked the bag up carefully and opened it. ‘Yes!’ he said, lighting up the interior and showing Barnard the camera, which fitted neatly into one of the compartments. ‘Hers?’