A Taste For Burning Part 1

A Taste for Burning Jo Bannister.

I A rose bloomed in the darkness, tender orange and salmon-pink petals unfolding from its tight heart. It was only a tiny thing at first, a flower made of light blossoming in the black belly of a rotten building. But then with a soft explosion like an avid pant the bud of flame spread, and all at once there was a field of flowers -yellow and red and white -growing in the dark.

For a long moment the new-born fire was reflected in a pair of eyes, gleamed off teeth bared in a smile. Then the figure turned away, soft footsteps padded across the broken floor and a door opened and closed. After that there was just the fire, blooming and growing, and the urgent congress of little snaps and crackles as it debated its strategy.

No one called Detective Chief Inspector Frank Shapiro.

No one was ready yet to say it was arson. There was no stench of petrol in the charred wreckage, no blackened fragments that could have been a timer, no reports of an intruder in the derelict warehouse. But Castlemere Fire Brigade could normally expect a major incident like this once a year and this was the second in four days. So while n.o.body was yet saying arson, everyone was thinking it.

And while no one had called the head of Castlemere CID, Shapiro was nevertheless there.

It was Tuesday morning now, a pale October sunrise fighting its way through the sooty air. But when Shapiro was roused from his bed by siren after siren as every appliance Castlemere could muster raced across town to the warehouse in Viaduct Lane it was still Monday night, and he'd pulled on his warmest cardigan, a heavy tweed jacket he kept for the country walks he rarely took and his wellies. Also he needed a shave. With gloveless hands shoved in his pockets accentuating his naturally broad round-shouldered outline, in his comfortable old clothes and with a day's worth of greying stubble on his weary pensive face he looked like a tramp. A probationary fireman not long in Castlemere asked him if he'd been in the warehouse when it caught fire and if anyone else had been dossing there.

Leading Fireman Daniels interceded with a Ches.h.i.+re cat grin, advised the embarra.s.sed youth of his mistake and sent him off to rewind hoses. 'Sorry about that, Chief.'

Shapiro waved a tolerant hand. "The last time my wife saw this jacket she said I'd be irresistible to a Salvation Army s.n.a.t.c.h squad. That was three years ago. I don't expect it's improved much since.'

The fire was out. It had taken four tenders and nearly four hours, and in the end it had died mostly of old age. Once the wooden floors had gone, the wooden rafters had charred to mere blackened ribs framing the sky and ten years of rubbish had blown away as ash on the smoky wind, there was nothing more for it to feed on and so it died.

Stone walls still reached up through three storeys: it would take a demolition crew to bring them down. But with no floors and no roof the building was finished. It dated back to the heyday of Victorian mercantile expansion, it had worked hard for a hundred years and stood idle for another ten, but four hours of fire and water had damaged it past repair. In another week there would be nothing here but a pile of smoke-blackened rubble. The demolition experts would move in as soon as it was safe to do so. After another team of experts had learned all they could from what remained.

'What do you think, Tall?' said Shapiro. 'A torch?'

Daniels squirmed inside his oilskin jacket. 'You'd need to ask the Governor that, Chief.'

'Of course,' agreed Shapiro. 'When he's not so busy. But what's your best guess?'

Daniels shrugged. 'Off the record? All the time we were in there we were looking out for late-firing incendiaries.'

Water was still coursing down the walls, dripping from the charred beams. It was too soon to begin a serious search for evidence, which would anyway be carried out by people with a more specific expertise than either DCI Shapiro or Leading Fireman Daniels. So they were talking gut feeling, no more. But Tall Daniels had seen a lot of fires and Frank Shapiro had seen a lot of crime, and the gut feeling of both was that either the fire at Rachid's Eight-Till-Late in Milne Road or this one could have been accidental but together they amounted to arson.

'Yes,' Shapiro agreed. 'Thanks, Tall. Tell your governor I'll call him later. There's nothing more I can do here.' He was standing in a mora.s.s of fine ash and water: when he moved his boots gave a mournful gurgle, echoing his feelings exactly.

It was almost half-past seven and Castlemere was beginning its working day. People who clocked on at eight had heard about the drama on the breakfast news and come out early to see for themselves. Behind the fire engines was a thick wall of sightseers. Not that there was much to see now. Those who rose early and were here before six were rewarded with great fountains of fire breaching the roof and the satisfying crash of masonry. Now the best on view was the devastation of fourteen thousand square metres of warehousing, which was impressive but not as thrilling as flames leaping into the night sky.

The firemen and Shapiro were not the only ones with more to do there than gawp. A reporter from the Castle- mere Courier recognized him in spite of -or,disturbingly, because of -his informal attire and asked what she was to make of the presence of a detective chief inspector.

'Search me,' said Shapiro, 'I haven't had a report on this myself yet. Can I talk to you later, when I have?'

'If I call you about ten?'

'I might have something by then. At least whether we're looking for a careless smoker or a pyromaniac.'

She nodded. Her name was Gail Fisher, and she'd worked on other papers in other towns and knew that the price of a helpful DCI was above rubies. 'What about Rachid's shop? Is there a connection?'

Shapiro, who didn't wear gla.s.ses, looked at her as over the top of some. 'Ten o'clock did you say, Miss Fisher?'

She smiled, accepting her dismissal with a good grace. 'Ten o'clock, Chief.' She couldn't resist adding, 'But don't tell me you haven't wondered if you were too quick to write off Rachid's fire as an accident.'

Shapiro's expression was pained. 'We don't write off anything as anything, Miss Fisher. We try to find out what's happened. Rachid's was an empty shop with a rickety back entrance in an alley frequented by drunks: it seemed likely that the fire there wasn't deliberate. In the light of this' -he winced -'of course we'll look again to see if we can learn anything more from Rachid's. But until the fire investigators tell me what happened here I can't say whether there's a connection or not. If you need a more positive quote than that you'd better make one up.'

'The same as usual, you mean?' They exchanged an amiable grin. 'I'll call you.' She went looking for firemen to interview.

Shapiro headed for his car. He wanted to go home and clean up before going to the office. But as he turned he saw something from the corner of his eye that was both familiar and out of place, though when he turned back to see what he couldn't immediately place it. The firemen tidying away their equipment, Gail Fisher talking to Station Officer Silcott, a couple of photographers prowling the edges of the devastation exploding intermittent flashes, the wall of watching faces beginning to break up now the fun was over. Nothing remarkable.

Recognition hit him like a boot in the ribs and he sucked in a sharp breath. 'David?' He wasn't sure if he'd spoken aloud; certainly no one answered. Caught off guard, for some seconds he couldn't think what to do. His thick body swayed as if it wanted to continue with the day as planned, go home and then go to the office. He took a step towards the car. Then, ashamed of himself, he swung round and squelched after the slight figure weaving between the fire engines, light footed in filthy trainers.

The young man with the camera was seeking a way into the warehouse that wasn't guarded by firemen. A fire at its height is an awesome sight but a burnt-out building is just another kind of derelict until you go inside. He'd been here early enough to get the powerful shots of men on gossamer ladders silhouetted against the arching flames; now he wanted the companion piece of blackened rafters framing the morning. That meant getting inside, and that meant not being seen.

But when he pa.s.sed behind the fire engines there wasn't a side door as he'd hoped; or rather, there had been until it was bricked up. With a muttered curse he turned on his heel, and almost walked into the man following him.

'David. What are you doing here?'

He was surprised but not that surprised. His face closed quickly, became wary and noncommittal. 'Working. Do I need CID's permission?'

Shapiro shook his head. 'No. But you do need to be careful. There's a lot of stuff in there could still come down.'

'I'll remember that.'

Shapiro sighed. Conversations with his son had been like this for as long as he could recall. There hadn't been many of them recently, but they were still all like this: verbal fencing between people too mistrustful to be rude. 'You're wet through. Have you been here all night?'

'Most of it.'

Shapiro despaired of getting any information from the young man. 'I'm going home -clean up, get some breakfast. Why don't you come? At least you could get dried out.'

David shook his head, just once, without taking his eyes off Shapiro. He hefted the camera. 'I have to develop these.'

'Later, then, if you have time. You know where I am.' Shapiro didn't wait for his son to make more excuses but turned and walked to his car; and the last thing he was thinking about was whether the warehouse in Viaduct Lane had been torched and, if so, by whom.

L.

He spun out breakfast as long as he could but no one came so at nine fifteen he left for the office.

There was a message from Superintendent Taylor on his desk: when he had a moment would he pop downstairs? Shapiro straightened his tie in the mirror. He'd only had it on ten minutes but already the knot was under his ear. Superintendent Taylor's ties stayed put all day long. Shapiro didn't think his beard grew during office hours either.

Liz Graham was coming up the stairs as Shapiro descended. 'Good afternoon, Inspector,' he said pointedly.

She was inured to his gentle sarcasm. 'I just heard about Viaduct Lane. Anything I can do?'

'I'm not sure there's anything for any of us to do.'

'But with Rachid's--'

'I know, it makes you wonder. Silcott's got his people going over it: if they decide it's arson we'll need to take another look at Rachid's as well. In the mean time,' he added significantly, 'I have an interview with Sir.'

Liz was surprised. Superintendent Taylor didn't interfere much with CID. 'What does he want?'

'I don't know, but I could make an educated guess. He wants to know if it's occurred to me that the fire at Rachid's may not have been an accident after all.'

'I don't want to interfere,' said Superintendent Taylor. After thirty years of living and working in England he still strangled his vowels in a tortuously refined Edinburgh accent. 'You know I don't like to interfere with your side of the business, Frank. There's no point having experts if you're going to tell them how to do their job.' He paused, his eyes keen, his head on one side, apparently waiting for some expression of grat.i.tude.

Shapiro just said, 'No.' He had nothing against Taylor, except his ability to look smart at the end of a long day, but when they talked he never felt to be in the company of greatness. He had no worries about Taylor outsmarting him.

'I just wondered if you'd formed any opinion about last night's fire yet.'

'It's not a question of my opinion, sir. The Fire Brigade will tell me if there's likely to have been a crime.'

'Yes, of course. You haven't heard from them?'

Shapiro let Taylor see him looking at the clock over the mantelpiece. 'Hardly been time yet, sir. They only put the thing out a couple of hours ago. They'll want a good prowl round in daylight before they commit themselves.'

'Quite,' said Taylor. 'At least no one was hurt. There wasn't, was there -anyone hurt?'

'Not as far as I know. Unless they find bones when they start poking through the ashes.'

Along with his strangled vowels the Superintendent had rather refined sensibilities. He considered that in bad taste. 'No question of that, is there, Frank?' His manner was cool.

'There's always the possibility,' Shapiro said apologetically. 'We're not aware there's anyone missing, but Cas- tlemere has as many tramps as any other middle-sized town and they all sleep somewhere. What we think is an empty building may be somebody's home. But they're not the sort of somebodies who'll be looked for when they don't turn up for work this morning.'

Aware that raising the issue had cost him Brownie points he decided to pre-empt the suggestion he felt sure 10.was coming. 'I thought I'd have another look at the shop fire in Milne Road on Friday night, see if there's any connection.'

'Rachid's?' Taylor's voice climbed. He seemed genuinely taken aback. 'Wasn't that an accident?'

Shapiro kept a straight face. 'Yes, probably.' He thought: Perhaps he's very good at making reports on time and keeping the expenses within budget. 'How are the wedding arrangements coming?'

Taylor darted him a hunted look. 'You've done this, haven't you? Your Rachael.' Shapiro nodded happily. 'h.e.l.l, isn't it?'

'Sheer h.e.l.l. Still, only another week to go.'

'Another week of this and I'll be a nervous wreck,' said the father of the bride. 'And her mother'll go into withdrawal when she's finished shopping. You'll keep next Tuesday free?'

'Wouldn't miss it for the world,' Shapiro said truthfully. He hardly knew Taylor's children, wasn't sure he'd recognize them in the street. But he wanted to see if the man could get through his only daughter's wedding with his tie still in place.

When he got back to his office Liz was waiting. 'Silcott phoned.'

'And?'

'It probably was malicious. Nothing too sophisticated no signs of a timer, anything like that. But the fire seems to have started simultaneously in three different places. There was no electricity in the warehouse, and it's hard to imagine three different dossers dropping three different cigarettes at the same time. So it looks like it was deliberate. And he said--'

'I know,' interrupted Shapiro wearily, 'I know. We should take another look at Rachid's.'

Before he left Queen's Street he spoke to Superintendent Taylor again and took Gail Fisher's call. 'We're treating the warehouse fire as malicious, and we're looking 11.again at the fire in Milne Road on Friday night but it's too soon to say if there's a connection. As you know, we had no reason to believe there was anything suspicious about the first incident.'

'Do you know who owns the warehouse?'

Shapiro hadn't asked himself that. 'It's been derelict ten years: I suppose it belongs to someone but I don't know who.'

'I'm told it's owned by Hereward Holdings, which is in turn owned by Asil Younis through the Cornmarket Trading Company.'

From the way she said it, it was meant to convey more than it did. 'Yes. So?'

'Could that be the connection? That both properties were owned by immigrants?'

Then he realized what she was saying. 'You mean, some flower of Anglo-Saxon manhood who failed his GCSE in graffiti because he couldn't spell wog thinks a couple of Asian businessmen are lowering the tone of the neighbourhood?' Silence was her answer.

Shapiro wanted to say it was nonsense, she was looking for headlines where none existed. People in Castlemere were neither better nor worse than elsewhere, they had their virtues and their vices, but they'd never gone in for racism. They didn't take their children out of school when the number of permanent as against seasonal suntans reached some arbitrary threshhold, they didn't put pigs' trotters through the letterbox of the little mosque on Rosedale Road, and they'd never shown the sort of resentment that led to petrol-bombing small businesses. But the fact that it hadn't happened before didn't mean it couldn't happen now.

'In that case,' Shapiro said grimly, 'he'll be really cheesed off at being arrested by a Jew, won't he?'

The more he looked at the remains of Rachid's Eight Till-Late, the more sure he was that Gail Fisher was mis 12.taken. Not because there couldn't be a rabid racist with a box of firelighters in Castlemere, but because if there was he wouldn't have chosen Rachid's as a target. He could have done so much better.

For one thing the shop had been closed for six months, victim of a recession that had shut businesses up and down the country. The stock had been removed and the premises boarded up; all that remained to show it had been run by an Asian was a faded name over the shuttered window.

Also, it wasn't where it would attract attention. Though the address was Milne Road, in fact it was in a little alley off the thoroughfare: you had to know it was there to find it. Only a customer, of the shop or the cobbler's which shared the same alley, would be aware it was there. That meant if it was a racist it was a local racist, and most of the people in Milne Road had used the Eight-Till-Late and missed it when it closed.

The winos were another possibility. As a rule winos are too concerned with where the next bottle is coming from to worry about the colour of the man selling it. But the autumn frosts meant that people who had been happy pursuing their hobbies out of doors all summer were now seeking indoor venues: the back door of the shop would have been easy to force, and once inside the combination of drunks, spirits and roll-your-own f.a.gs was a recipe for disaster. The winos denied being inside Rachid's at all, but -as someone once observed in slightly different circ.u.mstances -they would, wouldn't they?

'No,' said Shapiro slowly, concluding several thoughtful minutes with a shake of his head. 'I don't believe it. I don't believe anyone burned either this shop or the Viaduct Lane warehouse because they used to be run by Asians. It makes no sense. A racist would burn thriving Asian businesses, not ones that were washed up and, in the case of the warehouse, where you'd have to search the Register of Companies to discover who the owner was 13.anyway. There's no name over the door there. To find Asil Younis you'd have to go through Hereward Holdings and Cornmarket Trading. Does that sound like a skinhead between soccer matches to you?'

Donovan said, 'Did they know each other?'

He had a reputation -among his other reputations -for being obscure but it wasn't often he left Shapiro floundering. 'Did who know who, Sergeant?'

'Rachid and Asil Thing. They're both -what, Pakistanis?'

Shapiro bristled just perceptibly. 'So?'

Donovan flashed his sudden alarming grin. 'Hey, Chief, we're all minorities here, OK? I know pretty well every Irishman in town, I guess you know every Jew, so maybe they knew each other too. If they did that's three things they had in common. No, four.'

Tour?'

'They come from the same community. They were both in business. They both had buildings that were excess to requirements, and now they're both expecting big cheques from the insurance.'

'Good G.o.d,' said Shapiro, genuinely surprised. 'You think they hired someone?'

'Could be. The first thing any minority learns is, you stick together. You want a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer or a son-in-law, you look to your own people. You need to talk about something as delicate as burning your premises for the insurance you do the same thing. If so, the guy they hired should be a Pakistani too.'

Shapiro was thinking. Mainly to fill the time while he was doing it he murmured, 'Isn't that contrary to the Fair Employment legislation?'

'Only if he put an advert in the paper,' said Donovan, deadpan.

People who'd known them for years still didn't understand the relations.h.i.+p between Detective Chief Inspector Shapiro and Detective Sergeant Donovan. Half of them 14.thought Shapiro could have found a better leg-man than a string-thin Irishman with an att.i.tude problem, and the other half wondered how a restless spirit like Donovan could harness himself to a thirty-year man who'd already gone as far as he was going and whose primary interest these days must be his pension.

Both missed vital points. The problem with Cal Donovan's att.i.tude was that he cared more about his work than most of the people he worked with so that frustration made him intolerant; while Shapiro had spent those thirty years honing his skills so that he could now think more quickly, deeply and intelligently than any detective on the division without breaking sweat.