Dead Heat Part 22

Two of the evening's customers were Ms Harding, the news editor from the Cambridge Evening News Cambridge Evening News, together with, I presumed, Mr Harding, the paper's overall editor. I hadn't seen them arrive and I didn't even realize they were in the dining room until Richard came to see me about their bill.

'She says you invited them to come for free,' he said, somewhat accusingly. Richard was never one to allow anyone to get away with something for nothing. That was one of the reasons I employed him.

'That's right,' I said, taking their bill from the plate he was carrying. I looked at it. They had ordered a bottle of wine but it was one of the cheaper ones on our list and I decided to allow that too. Richard wouldn't have approved.

I went over to the Hardings' table with a bottle of port and three gla.s.ses.

'Do you fancy a nightcap?' I asked.

'h.e.l.lo,' said Ms Harding warmly. 'This is my husband, Alistair. Max Moreton.' I saw him read the embroidered name on my tunic.

Alistair stood up and we shook hands.

'Thank you for the dinner,' he said. 'We've really enjoyed the evening.'

'Good,' I said. 'Can I join you for a port?' I held up the bottle.

In the end only Ms Harding had one with me since her husband was driving.

'I can't go on thinking of you as Ms Harding,' I said to her. 'But I don't know your first name.'

'Clare,' she said.

'Well, Clare,' I said, 'I hope you don't suffer any ill effects after eating here.'

She looked rather startled and then smiled broadly as she realized I was only joking. At least, I hoped I was only joking.

'I am sure I will be fine,' she said. 'I had the snapper with the pear and it was absolutely delicious.' Gary would be pleased.

'And I had the medallions of pork,' said Alistair. 'They were wonderful.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I am so glad you enjoyed it.'

We chatted for a while longer and then they departed, promising to be back again, and next time at their expense. And they hadn't mentioned anything about the intended prosecution. Perhaps things were indeed getting back to normal.

My mobile phone rang in my pocket.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said.

'h.e.l.lo, my darling,' said Caroline excitedly. 'I've arrived and it's beautiful. I have a lovely room overlooking the river. I wish you were here.'

I wished it too. 'Did you have a good flight?' I asked.

'Lovely,' she said. 'I slept for about three hours so I'm doing pretty well.'

'Well done,' I said. 'It's eleven thirty here and I'm going home to bed.'

'Where are you?' she asked.

'At the restaurant,' I said. 'I've been helping with the dinner service.'

'You're a naughty boy,' she said. 'You should be resting.'

'What, like yesterday?' I said, laughing.

'I've got to go,' she said. 'I'm meeting everyone else downstairs in five minutes. We're going out on a boat. I'm going to be exhausted.' She sounded excited.

'Have a great time,' I said. We hung up and I positively ached to be there with her.

I yawned. I was exhausted too, both emotionally and physically.

I changed and then Carl gave me a lift home and it was not until after he had driven away that I realized I had left my overnight bag in the office at the restaurant.

'Oh well,' I said to myself. 'I'll have to go to bed without brus.h.i.+ng my teeth.'

And I did.

I dreamt that I could smell toast. But someone had left it in my broken toaster for too long and it was beginning to burn. Burnt toast. My father had always rather liked his toast burned black. He had joked that it wasn't burnt, it was just well done.

I was awake and I could still smell the burnt toast.

I got up and opened my bedroom door.

My cottage was on fire, with giant flames roaring up the stairway and great billowing black smoke filling the air.

CHAPTER 14.

Oh s.h.i.+t, I thought. How am I going to get out of this? I closed my bedroom door. Perhaps it was all a dream. But I knew it wasn't. I could smell the smoke coming through the cracks around the door and I could feel the heat, even on the other side of the wood. It wouldn't be long before the fire had eaten its way through.

I went to the window.

My cottage had been built more than two hundred years before and the windows were the original leaded lights, small panes of gla.s.s held in place by a lattice of lead strips. The windows were themselves small with only a tiny hinged opening for ventilation that definitely wasn't large enough for me to get through.

I opened the ventilator and shouted at the top of my voice.

'Fire! Fire! Help! Help! Somebody help me!'

I couldn't hear if there was a response. The noise of the fire below my feet was becoming louder with every second.

I shouted again. 'Fire! Fire! Help! Help!'

There were no sirens, no hoses, no yellow-helmeted men on ladders.

The air in my bedroom was getting thicker with smoke and it made me cough. I stood up near the ventilator to get some fresh air from outside but, even here, smoke billowed up from the window below. And it was getting very hot.

I knew that people who died in fires usually did so from smoke inhalation rather than from the flames themselves. I wasn't sure whether this was comforting or not. I didn't want to die, and I especially didn't want to die like this, trapped in my burning house. Instead I got angry, b.l.o.o.d.y mad in fact, and my anger gave me strength.

The air in the room had almost completely filled with smoke. I dropped to my knees and found that it was quite clear near the floor. But I could feel the heat from below, and I noticed that my carpet was beginning to smoulder close to tie wall near the door. If I was to get out of this alive, it had to be soon.

I took a deep breath of the clear air, stood, picked up my bedside table and ran with it towards where I knew the window to be. I couldn't see anything as the smoke stung my eyes eyes. At the last second I caught a glimpse through the gla.s.s of the light from the fire beneath and made a slight adjustment to my path.

I crashed the bedside table into the window. The window bent and buckled but didn't move. I repeated the process and the window bent more and some of the small panes dropped out, but still the d.a.m.n lead framework held.

I again dropped to my knees for a breath. The s.p.a.ce beneath the smoke had diminished to just a few inches and I knew that this was it. Either I broke out now or I would die.

This time the table went right through the window and fell out of sight into the smoke and flames below, taking the remains of the window with it. There was no time to think or worry about what I was jumping into. I clambered through the opening and leapt, trying to jump away from the building, away from the fire.

One of the advantages of having such an old property is that the ceilings were very low and, consequently, the fall from my bedroom window to the lawn below was only about ten feet. Quite far enough, I thought. I landed with my knees together and my body moving forward, so I kept on rolling like a parachutist over the gra.s.s and into the road beyond. I got to my feet and moved to the far side of the road and looked back.

Flames were clearly visible through what was left of my bedroom window. I had jumped, literally, in the nick of time.

I gasped fresh air into my lungs, coughing wildly. I was cold. I stood s.h.i.+vering on the gra.s.s verge and only then did I realize that I was completely naked.

My neighbour, roused perhaps by my shouts, was outside watching and now walked towards me. She was a small elderly lady and I could see by the light of the flames that she was wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown with matching pink slippers, and her white hair was held neatly in place with a hairnet.

I looked for something to cover my embarra.s.sment and ended up just using my hands.

'That's all right, dear,' she said. 'I've seen it all before. Three husbands, and a nurse for forty years.' She smiled. 'I'm glad you got out all right. I'll fetch you a coat.' She turned to go. 'I've called the fire brigade,' she said over her shoulder. She seemed totally unperturbed at finding a naked man on the side of the road in the middle of the night, next to a raging inferno no more than fifteen feet from her own bedroom window.

The fire brigade arrived with flas.h.i.+ng lights and sirens but there was little they could do. My cottage was totally engulfed in flames and the firemen spent most of their time and energy hosing down my neighbour's house to ensure the searing heat didn't set that alight as well.

I sat out the rest of the night at my neighbour's kitchen table wearing one of her ex-husband's coats and a pair of his slippers. I didn't ask her if he was ex by death or ex by divorce. It didn't matter. I was grateful anyhow, and also for the cups of tea that she produced for me and the fire brigade at regular intervals until dawn.

'Just like the Blitz,' she said with a broad smile. 'I used to help my mother provide refreshments for the police and firemen. You know, WRVS.'

I nodded. I did know, Women's Royal Volunteer Service.

The morning brought an end to the flames but little other comfort. My home was a sh.e.l.l with no floors, no windows, no doors and nothing left within, save for ash and the smouldering remains of my life.

'You were lucky to get out alive,' said the chief fireman. I knew. 'These old buildings can be death traps. Timber stairs and thin wooden doors and floors. Even the interior walls are flammable, plaster over wooden slats. Death traps,' he repeated, while shaking his head.

We watched from the road as his men sprayed more water over the ruin. The stonework of the exterior walls had survived pretty well but it was no longer whitewashed as it had been yesterday. Great black scars extended upwards above every windowless void and the remainder was browned by the intense heat and the smoke.

'Can you tell what caused it?' I asked him.

'Not yet,' he said. 'Still far too hot to get in there. But electrical, I expect. Most fires are electrical, or else due to cigarettes not being properly put out. Do you smoke?'

'No,' I said.

'Did you leave anything switched on?' he asked.

'Not that I can think of,' I said. 'I suppose the TV would have been on standby.'

'Could be that,' he said. 'Could be anything. Have to get the investigation team to have a look later. Thankfully, no one was hurt. That's what really matters.'

'I've lost everything,' I said, looking at the black and steaming mess.

'You haven't lost your life,' he said.

But it had been a close-run thing.

At eight o'clock I used my neighbour's phone to call Carl.

'It has not been your week,' he said after I told him.

'I wouldn't say that,' I said. In the past seven days I had been informed of an intended prosecution, written-off my car in a collision with a bus, spent a night in hospital with concussion, lost my house and all my personal possessions in a fire, and now stood wearing nothing but my neighbour's ex-husband's coat and slippers. But look on the bright side, I thought. It was only seven days since I had taken Caroline out to dinner at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. I may have lost plenty, but I had gained more.

'Can you come and collect me?' I asked him.

'Where do you want to go?' he said.

'Do you have a shower I could use?' I said. 'I smell like a garden bonfire.'

'I'll be there in five minutes,' he said.

'Oh, Carl,' I said. 'Can you bring some clothes?'

'What for?' he asked.

'I escaped with my life,' I said. 'But with absolutely nothing else.'

He laughed. 'I'll see what I can find.'

I stood for a good ten minutes in Carl's shower and let the stream of hot water wash the smoke from my hair and the tiredness from my eyes.

The fire brigade had arrived on the scene at 3.32 a.m. I knew because the chief had asked me, as the property owner, to sign an agreement that the fire service investigation team had my permission to access the property later that day, when the building had cooled.

'What would you have done if I'd died in the fire?' I'd asked him.

'We wouldn't need your permission then,' he'd said. 'We have automatic right of entry if there has been serious injury or a death.'

Convenient, I had thought.

'And we can always get a warrant to enter if you won't sign and we believe that arson is involved.'

'Do you believe it was arson?' I'd asked him, somewhat alarmed.

'That's for the investigation team to find out,' he'd said.

'Looks just like a normal domestic to me, but then they all do.'

I had signed his paper.