Date with Death

by Julia Chapman

The silhouette raised an arm, strangely misshapen in the illumination from behind, and the auctioneer felt something strike him hard on the side of the head. In a crumple of limbs, he fell to the floor.

  * * *

  ‘Mr O’Brien … Samson!’

  With his dark mood having ensured a brisk walking pace, Samson was almost at the rugby club when the police car pulled up alongside him, Constable Bradley leaning across from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Morning Danny. How’s the head?’

  Danny grinned sheepishly. ‘A bit sore. But it was worth it. We beat the Mason’s Arms!’

  Samson laughed, the young man’s joy infectious. With the sun shining, the wind whipping leaves along the road, and a great darts victory to dwell on, it was hard not to celebrate this wonderful morning. Despite his earlier bad humour.

  ‘Is that what you stopped to tell me?’ he asked with a smile.

  The constable’s face became serious. ‘Not quite. I wanted to let you know that I might be a bit late for our appointment after lunch. I’m on my way to the hospital to interview someone who was in a car crash last night.’

  ‘On your own?’ Samson could tell the lad wasn’t relishing the task.

  ‘Hopefully not. Sergeant Clayton is supposed to be meeting me there. But seeing as I was passing, I thought I’d mention it…’

  Samson nodded. With Airedale hospital a good forty minutes’ drive away, Danny would be pushing it to get there and back before lunch was over. ‘I’ll see you when you get back then. No rush. And drive carefully.’

  ‘Will do.’

  The police car pulled away from the kerb and Samson continued on his way, the grounds of the rugby club visible ahead. Harry’s car was parked outside the clubhouse. Hoping the auctioneer had a cup of coffee waiting for him and possibly some cake, Samson walked unwittingly towards the beginning of what would be a black day for Bruncliffe.

  * * *

  Petrol. Poured out in a wide arc around the floor.

  The body wasn’t where it was supposed to be. But there was no time to change it. The auctioneer had been expecting someone. And afterwards, who would be able to tell where he’d been when it all went up?

  With a flick of a wrist, a match was lit and thrown to the ground. The thin line of liquid flared, snaking brightly out of the kitchen and into the main room, flames leaping at the curtains and curling over the bar. By the time the back door out of the kitchen closed, the fire was already taking hold, encircling the prostrate auctioneer in the hallway and making its way towards the storeroom with its lethal contents.

  * * *

  Savouring his rejuvenated mood, Samson passed the school, the bright laughter of children spilling out of the classrooms and into the autumn air, lifting his spirits even further. But as he stepped off the kerb opposite the gates of the rugby club, the serenity of the morning was disrupted by the screech of brakes.

  A van had come out of the small lane that ran alongside the rugby ground and he’d walked out in front of it.

  Startled, he jumped back onto the pavement, his hand raised in apology to the driver, but with the sunshine bouncing off the windscreen, it was only as the vehicle pulled away in a snarl of exhaust that he noticed the red hair. Hannah Wilson, driving the mobile library. With the speed she was going at, there must have been a lot of books overdue somewhere.

  Heart still thumping, Samson crossed the road.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for the fire to spread. Aided by the petrol, it scaled the walls, catching at the furnishings, devouring the carpet. When it found its way to the storeroom, the precaution of padlocks and metal casing was made redundant by the neatly stacked piles of fireworks on the floor. The flames raced towards them.

  * * *

  He sensed there was something wrong the minute he turned onto the grounds. A weird light flickering behind the windows of the clubhouse. And carried on the wind, he thought he could detect the acrid smell of smoke. Bonfire Night come early.

  Samson started running, across the car park and down the path that led to the entrance. Kicking open the front door, he stepped right into hell.

  * * *

  Sheets of flame engulfing the walls, thick smoke, the snap and crack of glass … Samson staggered back. He slipped off his jacket, draped it over his head and pulled the neck of his jumper up to cover his face.

  ‘Harry!’ he called through the open door, the roar of the fire answering him. And then a staccato of explosions coming from somewhere towards the back.

  The fireworks. Christ!

  ‘Harry!’ he yelled again, crouched low as he tried to peer down the hallway, eyes stinging in the dense smoke.

  Another series of loud bangs from the far end of the building, a rocket screaming over his head and the fire beginning to creep across the ceiling. He didn’t have much time.

  Lungs searing with every intake of breath, he dropped to his knees and began crawling forward, hands sweeping blindly ahead of him. He felt his eyebrows burning, his eyes streaming, could feel his faculties slowing as the fumes took hold, and he knew his search was futile. Then the whole world exploded in light.

  * * *

  The Godfather. Over two hundred quid’s worth of pyrotechnics. As the flames licked across its fuse, it erupted in a shower of reds and blues, firing a hail of white flashes out into the hallway with the machine-gun staccato that had earned it the name, penetrating the thick smoke and allowing enough visibility for a stout leg to appear through the murk.

  ‘Harry!’ Coughing hard, senses reeling, Samson forced himself forward, reaching out to grasp the ankle of the body in front of him. Still prone on the ground, fireworks whizzing overhead, he pulled as hard as he could, dragging the unconscious auctioneer towards the doorway. Arms straining at the weight, he inched backwards. Nearly there. One more heave, then he was through the open door, dragging Harry after him.

  Air. Sweet. Fresh. But still danger.

  He staggered to his feet, vision fogged, hooked his hands under Harry’s armpits and hoisted him up, the auctioneer slumping over him like a drunk leaning on a mate. He’d only managed a couple of steps away from the building when there was a blinding flash of light, and on a roar of sound, a staggering force knocked the two men to the ground.

  17

  The noise ripped through the town, windows rattled in the nearby school and a dark plume of smoke rose into the blue sky. It was enough to startle the people of Bruncliffe.

  Standing idly in the kitchen while the kettle boiled, marvelling at how rapidly her good humour – which had originated from the unexpected treat of having Elaine Bullock staying over the night before – had evaporated under the curmudgeonly temperament of her tenant, Delilah was torn from her thoughts by the blast. She hared down the stairs and out onto the street, Troy Murgatroyd coming crashing out of the pub at the same time. Next door, Jo Whitfield was already on the steps of her salon, hands in gloves covered in hair dye.

  ‘What was that?’ asked the hairdresser.

  ‘Sounded like an explosion,’ Troy replied as the small road began to fill with people.

  ‘Fireworks!’ said someone further down by the antique shop. ‘Someone’s letting off fireworks.’

  ‘That was more than a couple of rockets,’ muttered Seth Thistlethwaite, who’d followed Troy out of the pub. ‘That was serious.’

  ‘Fireworks…’ murmured Delilah, looking to the sky where black clouds were blotting out the sun. ‘Fireworks! The rugby club!’

  She began running.

  * * *

  It seemed like the whole of Bruncliffe had descended on the rugby club. Delilah arrived, breathing hard, panic squeezing her chest, and had to squirm through a scrum of people gathered on the pavement.

  ‘Samson,’ she shouted, pushing past.

  ‘Be careful, love! Don’t go too close.’ A well-meaning hand grabbed hold of her, but she shrugged it off and broke through to where a fire engine was already in place, hoses snaking away towards the clubho
use.

  Or what had been the clubhouse. Flames were shooting out of the broken windows, part of the roof had already collapsed and fireworks were spiralling into the sky. On the grass, some distance from the inferno, two paramedics were preparing to lift a prone figure onto a stretcher.

  ‘Samson!’ She ran across the car park, past an ambulance with its back doors wide open, and staggered towards the man on the ground.

  Harry Furness. An oxygen mask over his mouth. Blood gushing down his blackened face. Eyes closed. But his chest was rising and falling.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ she murmured. Then she looked over at the burning building. Samson. Where was Samson? She felt her knees weaken as she watched the firefighters battling the blaze, the wind whipping the flames. No one could still be in there and survive.

  ‘Don’t go collapsing on us, love.’ One of the paramedics was standing next to her, a firm hand under her arm. ‘We’ve got our work cut out with these two buggers!’

  ‘Two?’ Delilah turned in confusion and the paramedic pointed back towards the ambulance.

  She wheeled round and there, huddled in a blanket, was Samson O’Brien, perched between the open doors of the emergency vehicle.

  ‘He’s refusing to come back to hospital with us. But I tell you what – if it hadn’t been for him, this one would be a goner.’

  Delilah was already crossing the grass before the paramedic had stopped speaking. ‘What happened?’ she asked, taking in Samson’s singed eyebrows, the cuts and grazes on his soot-covered face and arms.

  He started coughing and winced, a hand going to his throat. She thought he wasn’t going to be able to speak, but then a hoarse sound emerged and his words turned the chilly autumn day even colder.

  ‘Attempted murder,’ he rasped. ‘That’s what happened.’

  * * *

  ‘You should have gone to hospital,’ said Delilah, watching Samson come down the stairs from the second floor, his hair damp, fresh clothes replacing the reeking, singed items he’d been wearing.

  She’d tried to persuade him to join the unconscious Harry Furness in the ambulance, telling him he at least needed to get a check-up, but he’d stubbornly refused, walking back with her into town instead. In the five minutes it took to reach their building, it seemed like all of Bruncliffe came up to them, most already aware there had been an explosion at the rugby club; most already hailing Samson as a hero for saving Harry’s life.

  He’d shaken off the praise and quickened his step, his expression darkened by more than just the residue of the smoke-filled clubhouse. When Delilah opened the front door of their building and an anxious Tolpuddle came bursting down the hallway at them, barking at the top of his lungs in complaint at having been left alone, Samson had slipped past her and dropped to his knees, burying his face in the dog’s ecstatic welcome.

  Realising this was therapy for both man and dog, she left them there for a few moments, then gently pulled Tolpuddle aside.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Samson, holding out a hand. ‘You need a shower. You can use the one upstairs.’

  He’d nodded, got to his feet mumbling something about having a towel and change of clothes with him because he’d been to the launderette that morning, and had gone upstairs, Tolpuddle shadowing him. Twenty minutes later, a change of outfit and a shower hadn’t taken away the red-rimmed eyes, the hacking cough and the worry etched onto his cut and bruised face.

  ‘I don’t have time to go to hospital. We’ve got work to do.’ He accepted the mug of tea she was holding out and followed her into her office, both of them taking seats before the computer.

  ‘You’re convinced it was deliberate then, the fire?’ Delilah couldn’t believe she was asking, when in her gut she already knew.

  ‘Totally. Harry was lying on the floor in the hallway when I got there. He should have had time to make it as far as the door, unless—’

  ‘Unless he was already unconscious when the fire started. I saw the cut on his head. You think someone knocked him out and then set the building alight?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

  ‘What if it’s simply the case that he was careless handling the fireworks? Then slipped, in his rush to escape the fire he’d caused?’

  Samson stared at her and she bit her lip.

  ‘Sorry. I just don’t want to believe…’

  ‘That we placed Harry in danger? Well, we did. Imagine how I feel.’ Samson looked bleak. ‘I was the one who twisted his arm into making up the numbers for Speedy Date night. If it hadn’t been for that, I doubt any of this would have happened.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ said Delilah, staring at a list of client records on the screen. ‘I made sure no one could contact Hannah or Sarah. So how—?’

  ‘Hannah Wilson was there.’ He said it almost reluctantly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the rugby club. I saw her driving away as I arrived. She was in a hell of a hurry…’

  ‘So what are you suggesting? That she set the fire?’ Delilah couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice.

  Samson shrugged, a wave of fatigue washing over him. ‘She was there. She’s a suspect. In my line of work, that kind of coincidence usually means something.’

  Hearing the lack of conviction in his argument, Delilah persisted. ‘But why? Hannah has no connection to Harry. Why would she single him out?’

  It was the question he was asking himself. How had Harry Furness become a target, when Delilah had made sure that the two suspects were corralled behind a virtual cordon?

  He shook his head, the throbbing behind his eyes intensified with the motion. ‘I don’t know. Is it possible Harry managed to get around your modifications somehow and contact her without you knowing?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ Despite her certainty, Delilah’s fingers were flying over the keys, checking and double-checking her program. ‘Look.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘You were the only one to get in touch with her. So it doesn’t make sense that she’s involved. Besides, you were happy to dismiss her as a suspect after the Speedy Date night.’

  ‘I did warn you,’ Samson said with a hint of exasperation, ‘that when it comes to women, my judgement has been known to be flawed—’

  He broke off, fragments of conversation, vague and shifting, tugging at his memory. Something about flawed judgement …

  He pulled out his phone. The lawyer answered on the first ring.

  ‘Matty?’ Samson paced the office as he spoke. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Thanks. But I need your help. You said something the other day – something about Richard Hargreaves having poor taste in women … Yes, and you mentioned an exception…’

  Delilah waited as Samson, voice rasping, conducted his conversation with Matthew Thistlethwaite. When he finished the call, he stood staring down into the backyard.

  ‘What is it?’ she finally asked.

  He turned to her, face haggard. ‘We’ve been looking at the wrong people. We assumed Hannah Wilson and Sarah Mitchell were the only common link to your dead clients.’

  ‘But they are. I’ve been through the records countless times and no one else dated all three men.’

  ‘Dated them, no. Rejected them…’ Samson reached out and clicked on one of the names on the computer, making a folder open onto the screen.

  ‘Lucy?’ Delilah stared at the man next to her. ‘You think she had something to do with this? You have to be kidding!’

  But Samson’s expression was far from jovial.

  * * *

  ‘Goodness, what a morning!’ Lucy Metcalfe untied the strings on her apron and slipped it over her head. Leaning against the counter, feeling as though she’d done a full day’s work already, she looked out over her cafe, which was crammed full of customers.

  ‘That’s what tragedy does for you,’ said Elaine, helping herself to a lemon-and-ginger scone while she manned the till. ‘Brings everyone together for a cup of tea and a gossip.’

  ‘You can say that again.
I’ve never known the place so busy. I’ll owe Harry more than just a cheese-and-onion tart when he gets out of hospital. Poor bloke…’

  ‘Lucky bloke, is how I’d put it.’

  ‘Don’t! I can’t bear to think what might have happened if Samson hadn’t been there.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Mrs Pettiford from the bank was waiting to pay. ‘They’re saying it was foul play.’

  ‘What, the fire? I thought it was simply the fireworks that went up?’ Elaine raised an eyebrow in disbelief, but Mrs Pettiford was undaunted.

  ‘Apparently not. Mrs Hargreaves was in, paying in a cheque, and she said she’d heard from her nephew, Ian, that there’s reason to believe the fire broke out in the kitchen, nowhere near the fireworks. And that an accelerant might have been used to start it.’

  ‘Petrol?’

  The bank clerk nodded. ‘Mrs Hargreaves was in a right state about it. What with her suspecting her Richard was … you know. She was telling anyone who’d listen that Bruncliffe has a killer in its midst.’

  Lucy shivered while Elaine continued to eat her scone.

  ‘All seems a bit too dramatic for round here,’ said Elaine. ‘Ian Hargreaves, volunteer firefighter or not, should know better than to be spreading such tales. Sometimes I think the uniform goes to their heads.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Pettiford, taking her change and leaving a tip in the jar by the till. ‘But there must be something in it when the police have decided to put a guard outside Harry Furness’s ward. The minute he comes round, they’re going to be questioning him.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Elaine, finally impressed. ‘Someone might have tried to kill Harry? Why would anyone want to do that?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Any of it.’

  ‘And me being here covering your lunch hour doesn’t make sense, either, if you’re going to stand around for the entire time,’ said Elaine, looking pointedly at the clock on the wall.

  ‘Okay! I’m off. Are you sure you’re all right to do this for me?’

  ‘For the tenth time, yes! And are you sure you’re okay with me eating all these scones?’

  Lucy laughed, threw her apron at her friend, picked up the cake box that was sitting by the till and, with her handbag over her shoulder, headed for the door.