Losing Ground

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Or it could be a bit of cloak and dagger stuff from Calleshire Construction,’ persisted Selby.

  Lionel Perry handed the letter over. ‘Look into it anyway, will you, Robert, and find out what he’s up to?’ One eye on the clock, he gathered up his papers and closed the meeting. He forbore to remind them that on the other hand they were talking very big money indeed if Berebury Homes’ development plans were to get the go-ahead without let or hindrance – with or without their rivals Calleford Construction muscling in.

  Nobody could guess quite how big.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Inspector,’ the fire officer picked his way hurriedly over an intricate cobweb of hoses lying on the ground to greet the two policemen. ‘Burton’s the name, Charlie Burton.’ He waved an arm in the direction of clouds of black smoke billowing up from behind the house, adding unnecessarily, ‘And that’s where our fire was.’

  ‘At the back,’ agreed Sloan, scanning the big old house, neglected but standing nevertheless. ‘Still at the back, too,’ he said.

  Burton pushed his helmet back and grimaced. ‘Contained so far. Not that you can ever be sure. Not with fire.’

  ‘You never can tell with bees, either,’ murmured Detective Constable Crosby at Sloan’s elbow.

  ‘Can’t make any promises at all at this stage about when you’ll be able to go in either,’ said the fire officer. ‘All I can say is that it hasn’t spread into the really old part of the house.’ He turned and pointed in the direction of a stand of trees beyond the side of the house. ‘Luckily there’s still plenty of water in the old lake over there otherwise I don’t know what we’d have done out here in the back of nowhere.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan followed his gaze over what had once been lawn and was now field in the direction of what had probably been designed as ornamental water.

  ‘We haven’t half upset the water lilies,’ said Burton. ‘But this is the way to go. Follow me.’

  Sloan said, a little puzzled, ‘I thought the place was supposed to be empty.’

  ‘It was,’ said the man drily. ‘There was some printing business in here at one time but that took itself off when we got round to doing a fire check for their Safety at Work Certificate.’

  ‘Not safe?’ said Crosby.

  ‘Electrical wiring out of the Ark,’ said Charlie Burton. ‘And the insulation was as rotten as it could get.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what went wrong today,’ suggested Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘No, no, it’s not an electrical fire,’ said Burton, his professional expertise aroused. ‘There’s a bit more to it than that. If you ask me, ten to one it’s arson. You’ll see why in a tick. Our expert’s on her way over as we speak but whatever you say, Inspector, nobody’ll be able to do anything until the site’s cooled down a bit.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded his understanding that there were would be forensic experts in the fire service, too.

  ‘Nobody,’ repeated Burton, tilting his helmet back.

  ‘This fire…’ began Detective Inspector Sloan, on duty and busy.

  ‘We reckon we doused it before it got a hold on the main building,’ said the fire officer. ‘Easily. The billiard room was only added on, not integral.’

  ‘Lucky you got here in time, though,’ said Sloan.

  Burton looked unhappy. ‘I’m not so sure that we did.’

  Sloan looked round the deserted garden and then at the remains of the parkland. ‘You can’t see anything of the place from the road so it was lucky that you got here at all.’

  ‘Lucky, nothing,’ said the fireman pithily. ‘We had a call – an anonymous call from a public telephone kiosk.’

  ‘You’ll have it recorded, though,’ murmured Sloan. All the services recorded everything these days: too much for the liking of some.

  ‘Switchboard said it sounded as if it was spoken through a handkerchief or something,’ said the fire officer.

  ‘Disguised,’ deduced Detective Constable Crosby from the sidelines.

  ‘A man’s voice, that’s all they can say,’ said the fireman.

  Detective Inspector Sloan was not surprised. Most of the fire-setters he had encountered had been male – and young.

  ‘We’ve traced it to a call box out on the road towards Almstone,’ said Burton.

  ‘Not the one in the village, then.’ At the back of his mind Sloan had the thought that the other public telephone booth in Tolmie was next to the post office bang in the middle of the village High Street. Someone else must have known that too, then. He looked quizzically at the fire officer. ‘If you know all that, why did you want us out here?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ Charlie Burton’s expression changed and he suddenly became very businesslike. ‘Come this way, Inspector.’ He led the way round the side of the house, picking his way round the snaking hoses once more. ‘Just follow me, both of you, but mind how you go. We don’t want any more accidents.’

  ‘More accidents?’ said Detective Constable Crosby, perking up.

  ‘That’s what I said.’ He pursed his lips and said ‘At least, I hope it was an accident.’

  The two policemen followed the fire officer in single file, one behind the other, each following in the footsteps of the one ahead, none willing to step on any of the full hosepipes. As they got nearer to the back of the house they could hear the hissing of cold water on hot wood above the steady throb of the water pump.

  There were firemen and a-plenty in action, tackling the site of the fire with practiced efficiency. The fire officer advanced to the side of the single-storey building least damaged by the flames.

  ‘Come this way but mind how you go,’ he said, indicating a window that had once held glass. ‘You can see inside from here.’

  Sloan clambered over a melange of wet wood, brick and glass to the fireman’s side.

  ‘Now take a look through there, Inspector,’ Charlie Burton said, jerking his thumb. ‘You may have to wait a moment for the smoke to clear enough for you to see what we saw.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan approached the window space and peered into the building. There were no flames to be seen now but amid the swirling smoke he could make out exactly why it was the Criminal Investigation Department of the Force had been sent for by the fire brigade.

  In the middle of the floor was a small pile of what were undoubtedly bones.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Bones?’ spluttered Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Bones,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘Definitely bones.’

  ‘What sort of bones?’ demanded Superintendent Leeyes peremptorily.

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, sir. I didn’t get a very good look at them before the roof caved in.’

  ‘Are you talking about a skeleton?’ asked Leeyes from the comfort of his office back in Berebury.

  ‘They might have come from one once,’ replied Sloan, choosing his words with care, ‘but what I saw looked like just a heap of bones.’

  ‘Disjecta membra, then,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’ Sloan was perched uncomfortably among hoses snaking everywhere.

  ‘Scattered limbs.’ The superintendent was a regular member of Adult Education Classes. The one on ‘Latin For All’ had left its mark on the man. And on those at the police station, too.

  ‘Dismembered ones, anyway,’ ventured Sloan. ‘We’ve determined it a crime scene for starters and Dr Dabbe’s on his way over here now.’ He’d left Crosby sealing off the site with what the constable persisted in calling tinsel tape.

  The superintendent’s grunt underlined his ingrained mistrust of professionals. Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe was the consultant pathologist for their part of the county of Calleshire and therefore not sufficiently in awe of senior policemen for the superintendent’s liking.

  ‘Not that he’ll be able to see any more than we did at this stage.’ Sloan paused to consider how to give his superior officer the unwelcome news that the
fire brigade had already staked their claim to make their own investigation, Superintendent Leeyes being strong on the territorial imperative. ‘The whole site’s still very hot.’

  ‘That won’t stop him,’ forecast Leeyes. ‘Even if you won’t give him the go-ahead.’

  ‘No, sir. Probably not.’ He could only agree with this. The good doctor had a reputation for getting the bit between the teeth.

  ‘Go on, man.’ The sound of the superintendent’s fingers being drummed on a desk in Berebury was clearly audible down the telephone line. ‘What next?’

  ‘I am informed, sir, that the fire people have already initiated their own enquiries…’ Sloan hurried on in response to a low growl down the telephone line, ‘as they naturally have reason to believe that arson is involved, too.’

  This was rewarded with another grunt. ‘Do we have any incendiarists on record?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Or pyromaniacs?’

  ‘I’m looking that up now,’ said Sloan. ‘I shall need to check on missing persons, too.’

  ‘Missing for quite a while,’ observed the superintendent acidly, ‘if they were down to the bones.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan. ‘But I think all we can do at this stage is to wait for everything to cool down.’

  ‘Tolmie Park,’ Superintendent Leeyes mused aloud. ‘That rings a bell…’

  ‘It’s the painting of the house out here that I understand has gone missing after the break-in at the Greatorex Museum,’ Sloan reminded him. ‘Or, rather, a painting of one of the family with the house in the background.’

  ‘Can’t be a coincidence, that, Sloan,’ growled the superintendent.

  ‘No, sir.’ No matter how much defence counsel could – and usually did – make of the benign statistics of coincidence the police were inclined to a more realistic view, circumstantial evidence being better than none.

  ‘But there’s something else about the place that I should remember, surely?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. It was Tolmie Park that the Calleshire and County Bank had all that trouble with two or three years ago. At least they called it trouble – we called it fraud.’

  ‘If I remember rightly, Sloan, at the time I wanted to call it grand larceny.’ He sniffed. ‘But the bank wouldn’t bring an action, would they?’

  ‘Bad for business was what they said that would have been,’ pointed out Sloan.

  ‘Keeping mistakes in the family is what I call it,’ said the superintendent vigorously. ‘Not good.’

  ‘Banks like doing that,’ said Sloan.

  ‘They caught a nasty cold, though, if their figures were correct. And one, I may say, that they kept very quiet about.’

  ‘Banks do. I expect they just called it a loan that went wrong,’ said Sloan, ‘and adjusted their books accordingly.’ The finances of the Sloan ménage were straitened by a mortgage that was just – but only just – manageable.

  ‘Call it whatever you like,’ responded the superintendent briskly. ‘Me, I still say it was larceny.’

  ‘A money matter, anyway,’ conceded Sloan.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me a hill of beans if this fire was, too,’ prophesied the superintendent. ‘Most trouble is.’

  Somewhere where the news of the fire was received with shock mingled with disbelief was at the council offices in Berebury.

  ‘Fire?’ squeaked Melanie Smithers, the conservation officer there. She was young, plump and earnest. She was also dedicated to her job. ‘Are you saying Tolmie Park is on fire?’

  ‘Too true, I am,’ said Jeremy Stratton coolly. He worked in the council’s planning department. ‘Someone’s just rung in to tell us and accuse the developers of designer vandalism.’

  ‘But,’ she stammered, ‘they didn’t need to do that.’

  ‘I’m not saying they did,’ said the man from planning patiently. ‘I’m just saying that someone else is saying so.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Anonymous call.’

  ‘Vandals, I expect,’ she said.

  Jeremy Stratton leant negligently against the door post and drawled, ‘Now who exactly are we talking about when we use the word vandals? Developers or the local yobbos? Personally, as far as the damage they do to the environment, I find it hard to tell the difference.’

  ‘But,’ wailed Melanie Smithers, ‘they’ve only just put in for enabling planning permission. You must know that.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said sardonically, ‘we know that all right.’

  Melanie Smithers reached for her hard hat. ‘How big a fire?’

  ‘They didn’t say that either,’ said the planning officer. The planning and conservation sections of the council were often at odds. This time he felt he had the edge. ‘They might have put in for enabling development all right but they haven’t got it yet, have they?’

  ‘There were no delays in my section,’ she retorted hotly. ‘Tolmie Park is part of Calleshire’s built heritage and we want it restored and kept safe.’

  ‘It would seem that somebody doesn’t,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘And granting permission for enabling development is the only way you can be sure these days,’ said the girl. ‘Unless you find a genuine benefactor prepared to do the restoration for love.’

  ‘But you don’t need enabling development if there’s nothing to preserve, do you?’ he grinned, starting to withdraw to his own office.

  ‘There’s that beautiful old house,’ said Melanie Smithers as she struggled with difficulty into her high-visibility yellow jacket, ‘just waiting for the right people to come along.’

  ‘There’s all that land, too,’ said Jeremy Stratton.

  ‘We at Conservation don’t mind so much about that,’ she said, grabbing her files and making for the door.

  ‘Somebody does,’ he said softly to her departing back. ‘They mind very much.’

  * * *

  ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ cried Wendy Pullman in anguish. She put down the telephone and turned to her husband. ‘Oh, Paul, that was Jonathon Ayling.’

  ‘What’s that maniac gone and done now?’ sighed Paul Pullman.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. Jonathon hasn’t done anything. It’s awful. He says he’s just heard that the developers have done exactly what we said they would do and set Tolmie Park on fire.’

  Wendy Pullman was the chairman of the Berebury Preservation Society. It had been founded on a rising tide of enthusiasm after the successful rescue of an endangered windmill in Larking village. Although even their best efforts had not been enough to save the last working forge in Calleshire over at Cullingoak – the giant leather bellows were now in the hands of a private collector – undeterred, they had proceeded to take up the cudgels in the cause of saving Tolmie Park from the developers with undiminished vigour. Their society’s motto was ‘Rebels With a Cause’.

  ‘Is Jonathon sure it’s them?’ asked Paul Pullman reasonably.

  His wife brushed this aside. ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Nobody else has anything to gain.’ She paused and then said ‘He sounded quite – well, het-up. You know how excited Jonathon gets at the least little thing as far as preservation is concerned. But a fire…’

  Paul Pullman, a preternaturally serious young man, nodded sagely. ‘It was always on the cards that something like this would happen. We all knew that. The developers must have been looking for a quick way out of their planning troubles and taken it.’

  ‘But they go and do it after all we’ve done to try to save that beautiful building,’ said his wife tearfully. ‘It’s not fair.’

  Wendy moved over to her desk in the corner of the room and searched for a file. The fact that their headquarters were situated in the Pullman’s sitting room did not detract from the importance of the society in the eyes of its members. On the contrary, in fact, as it meant that one or other of the Pullmans was usually on the spot to deal with any sudden threats to existing old buildings.

  ‘They’re nothing but va
ndals,’ she wailed.

  ‘They’re businessmen,’ her husband reminded her. ‘In it for the money.’

  ‘Don’t they have souls?’ she asked rhetorically.

  ‘They have shareholders,’ said Paul Pullman.

  ‘But what can we do now?’ she asked. ‘That’s what Jonathon wants to know. That’s why he rang.’

  Paul Pullman stroked a non-existent beard and looked very wise. ‘I’m not quite sure of the best course of action at this particular stage but I would say…’

  He was interrupted in the delivery of his carefully considered opinion by the ringing of the telephone.

  Wendy picked it up. ‘Who? Ah, yes, of course.’ She leant over and hissed in her husband’s ear, ‘It’s a reporter from the Berebury Gazette.’ She straightened up and said into the telephone ‘Yes, I’m the chairman of the Berebury Preservation Society. Of course, I’m happy to make a statement for your publication.’

  She motioned to Paul to hand her the file from the table and switched her voice into careful public relations mode. ‘Tolmie Park is a very beautiful building, dating originally from about 1620. It was restyled in the early eighteenth century in the time of the fourth baronet,’ although she had the file in her hands, she had the details off by heart, ‘by the architect Colen Campbell – that’s Colen with an “e”. Got that? Good.’

  She paused and rolled her eyes at Paul and then resumed her lecturing mode. ‘Colen Campbell remodelled it in the harmonic mode much used by classical architects at the time, which is what makes it so important. What’s that?’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Wendy. ‘Not a lot of it about any longer. Quite so.’ Then she said in a very different tone of voice. ‘Yes, of course, we know all about the house. That is why we are so keen to preserve it for future generations.’

  Paul nodded approvingly at what she was saying. She grimaced at him in return but went on addressing the telephone as if she were on a platform.

  ‘Further landscape work was done at the turn of the nineteenth century by the famous gardener Humphry Repton. That’s Humphry without an e. Repton’s got one, of course. Got what? An e, of course. In Repton.’ She covered the mouthpiece and hissed at her husband. ‘Don’t these people know anything at all?’