A Taste For Burning Part 8

His face wasn't designed to do ingenuous but that didn't stop him trying occasionally. 'Nothing's going on. I found out where the oil can came from, I was told it was dumped in a skip a hundred metres from Younis's house and Younis stands to gain from one of the fires. I had every reason to see him again.'

'Why didn't you tell me first?'

He shrugged in what he believed to be a nonchalant manner. 'I was in the area, I thought I'd call on my way back.'

It all sounded quite sensible but Liz knew none of this had just happened, he'd planned it for reasons she hadn't yet fathomed. 'You knew how he felt about you. You must have known how he'd react to you turning up at his door.'

'Mm,' admitted Donovan.

'Now he's complained to G.o.d and G.o.d wants you off the case. I tried to argue but he pulled rank on me. So I came up here to break the news gently, and now I see this is what you wanted all along. Why?'

'You said yourself, we need the Chief back.'

Liz stared. 'How's it going to get the Chief back to have you watching from the sidelines?'

104.

'If I have some time, maybe I can get to the bottom of the Foot business. For all I can see, n.o.body else is trying to.'

After working with him for twelve months she could still be startled by his effrontery. 'Absolutely not! I have a direct instruction from Superintendent Taylor to keep out of that. If it applies to me, it sure as h.e.l.l applies to you.'

'Yes, OK,' he said casually.

Liz wasn't fooled. He didn't agree that easily to anything he actually intended doing. She scowled. 'I can't believe you did that. You know the trouble we're in: how little time we've got, how far we are from a result. How much I need all hands on deck. I can't believe you've been so irresponsible.'

His face grew stubborn, his accent as always thickening under pressure. 'I didn't plan it. Not exactly. It just occurred to me that, if this was the outcome, it wouldn't be altogether disastrous. The sooner the Chief's back, the sooner we'll nail this madman.'

Sometimes she almost despaired of him. There was in his make-up as a policeman, perhaps in the orientation of his brain, a slight deviation like the difference between grid and magnetic north. It wasn't huge: for much of the time his mind, like a compa.s.s needle, was true enough for all practical purposes. But on occasions this gap appeared -like a narrow, very deep chasm -as between police procedure and how Donovan did things. It was impossible to get him in line by explaining things. It was a waste of energy arguing with him, though she did it often enough. A direct unambiguous order stood a chance of curbing him, though not if he felt strongly enough.

He got away with it -in so far as he did, it was already there in his record and meant he wouldn't see another promotion -because (a) he genuinely cared about getting the job done regardless of the cost to himself; and (b) when he was right he could achieve things no one else could.

105.

Liz said, 'What about Younis and the oil can?'

'He said he hadn't touched it, of course. He said if he wanted an oil can he'd got plenty of his own without rooting through other people's skips.'

'Did you believe him?'

Donovan shrugged. 'I don't know. It's a h.e.l.l of a coincidence that we can trace the can used to set one fire almost to the back garden of another victim of the same arsonist. But Younis has no motive we know of to burn the timber- yard; and even if he had I can't see him wandering his back lane on the off-chance of finding the means. I guess I do believe him.'

'Where does that leave us?'

Donovan sketched a line at about eye-level with the side of his hand. 'About up to here in the--?'

'Thank you, Sergeant,' Liz said quickly. 'Go and do something useful. Pick up on some of the stuff we left off when all this started. Stay away from Asil Younis. Stay away from G.o.d.' She dropped her eyes to the papers in front of her. 'And if you can't stay away from the Foot business you'd better be d.a.m.n sure you're on your own time.'

Donovan could have pulled the file on Trevor Foot but not without word reaching Superintendent Taylor.

Despite often behaving in ways that made people wonder, he wanted to keep his job. And he didn't want Liz taking his flak. He knew she gave him more leeway than was customary -had wondered, in his sourer moments, if it were not so much leeway as rope -and didn't want to repay that by dragging her down with him when he finally pushed his luck too far.

So the files were out of bounds. The Foot case was closed before he came to Castlemere so he couldn't raid his own memory; and asking someone who'd been here longer would have the same effect as consulting the file -it would get back to G.o.d. So he went straight to the horse's mouth.

106.

Shapiro was surprised to see him. It was a little after 8 p.m. and, knowing how CID was fixed, he'd thought they'd be burning midnight oil. 'Time off for good behaviour?'

Donovan looked s.h.i.+fty. 'Not exactly.'

Shapiro had known him long enough to be able to tell when Donovan was up to something a respectable police officer wouldn't want to know about. It would be politic, he thought, to stay well away from whatever it was that was making him glance about as if someone might be following him. After all, Shapiro was on holiday, specifically debarred from engaging in police business for a week or so.

With a sigh he opened the door wide. 'Come in. Tell me about it.'

He reacted as Liz had done: with disbelief, anger, finally with resignation. 'You don't need me to tell you this is not a good career move.'

Donovan's lip curled. 'Careers are for inspectors and above. Sergeants have jobs. My current job is looking for three televisions, two VCRs and a dish-washer that walked after a van hit the window of Pearson's Electrical while trying to avoid a Staffords.h.i.+re bull terrier. I'll do it, but I won't work sixteen hours a day to do it. This is my off-time.'

'If you succeed in discrediting this witness, Mr Taylor's going to have to know. Have you thought what you'll say then?'

Donovan didn't see a problem. 'I'll tell him the truth. Once he knows it's only one loony out to avenge another, that'll be the end of your holiday.'

Shapiro had never been a slave to procedure but he paled at the risk Donovan was running. If it didn't work out there'd be h.e.l.l to pay. If it did work out Taylor would hold it against him for as long as they were both in Castlemere. 'Maybe. But he won't like you for it.'

The younger man sniffed. 'He doesn't like me now.'

Against his better judgement Shapiro began to smile.

107.

'It's not that he doesn't like you, Donovan. It's more that you offend him. Your hair's too long. You lean on things. You spit in the eye of convention. In spite of all this you're a good copper. He finds that most offensive of all.'

There was no doubt in Shapiro's mind what he should do: thank Donovan for his offer, send him back to his missing electricals with the advice that he should do what he was told and let those paid to decide the comparative importance of inquiries get on with it.

The snag was, that wasn't what he wanted to do. Like Donovan he thought Taylor was making some poor decisions. He didn't see why he had to leave Queen's Street at the height of a crisis. Perhaps the allegation against him did need investigating, but he couldn't think what was taking so long. He'd heard nothing for two days. He hadn't been asked any questions yet. What kind of inquiry was it that didn't involve interviewing the suspect?

So he warmed to the idea of someone on his side looking at the matter. He knew Donovan couldn't close the case, but he could speed the process that would put Castlemere's DCI back where he belonged. Feeling that way coaxed him into a dubious decision of his own. He persuaded himself that what Donovan was doing wasn't really insubordination, and that the end would in any event justify the means.

'All right. But for pity's sake be discreet. All I need to know is who's produced this photograph and what it's supposed to show. It has to be someone close to Foot: the chances are that if I had the name I could tell Taylor just how much his new evidence is worth.'

'I'll get you a name,' promised Donovan. 'But I need somewhere to start -I know nothing about the case. Tell me what happened.'

It was the mid-Eighties, there was a lot of Awareness about. Fur coats were out, ozone was in and people marched in Whitehall with inflatable whales. Some 108.

people felt so strongly about man's inhumanity to animals that they were prepared to commit mayhem on people who felt differently.

BioMedical Technology was a commercial research laboratory which, because it held a Home Office licence for animal experiments, attracted a campaign of protests which became increasingly violent over a span of about three months. It began with graffiti on the walls and progressed to paint on the director's car and threats in the post. Matters reached a head when the director, exasperated and genuinely believing in the necessity of his work, decided he'd kept a low profile long enough and went on television to put his case.

Antic.i.p.ating trouble, Castlemere's newly arrived DCI Shapiro had a squad car make regular visits to the laboratory. The following evening at dusk a van drew up outside and men in balaclavas got out. Then, finding themselves under police surveillance, they piled back in the van and took off at speed.

After three miles of hot pursuit, suddenly the van pulled over. The driver claimed he hadn't realized the car behind was a police vehicle, had thought it was just anxious to overtake. The men in balaclavas were a student darts team with the arrows and a small silver trophy to prove it. They had a fixture against a local pub but the driver had lost his way.

Though it was plainly a decoy, Shapiro could never prove the connection between those in the van and what happened at BMT. The planning was meticulous. The match was genuine, the other team waiting in the pub. The young men in balaclavas were real darts players: they won the rearranged fixture and retained the silver cup.

But while the police were chasing the van another group was breaking into the laboratory, removing the animals and setting incendiaries. While the darts players were protesting their innocence an explosion lit up The Levels for miles around. By the time the Fire Brigade 109.

arrived BMT was reduced to cinders and an asthmatic night.w.a.tchman was heaving his lungs out on the gra.s.s.

Because the action was claimed by BEAST in the cause of saving animals from torture there was a reluctance to condemn it even among people whose natural inclination was to support the law. When security man Stan Belshaw died two weeks later from the effects of smoke inhalation there was a feeling that it was more a misfortune than a crime.

So Shapiro was denied the co-operation he'd have had if Belshaw had been hit over the head by safecrackers. The darts team stuck to their story of an innocent misunderstanding and Shapiro failed to identify a single member of BEAST. He believed that, like the darts team, it was primarily a student group based at Cambridge, but his enquiries were stone-walled at every turn. Everyone questioned had heard of BEAST, many approved of its aims, but no one admitted being members or knowing people who were.

Until twelve days after the raid, with Stan Belshaw still drawing ragged breath in the Intensive Care Unit at Castlemere General, when Trevor Foot was heard boasting of his involvement in the bar of the Ginger Pig.

If he was to be believed he'd had the idea, drawn up the plan, led the raid and also knitted the darts team's balaclavas. There was a general concensus that BEAST was the child of a half-mythical Herne-like figure called Red Kenny. Without exactly signing autographs, Foot left his audience in little doubt as to who Red Kenny really was. Since at that time the only acknowledged casualties of the incident were the property and profits of a company involved in vivisection, he had a not unsympathetic hearing as he described how he had outwitted the law, risking his own liberty for that of the laboratory animals.

Despite his boasts, Shapiro never believed that Foot masterminded the raid. He wasn't the type: then aged thirty, he was a small ferrety individual with a record for 110.

1.petty theft and disturbing the peace. But he did believe he was involved. Foot had a fondness for this kind of activity -every lunatic fringe group in Castlemere had enjoyed his support at some time. The pattern never varied. He went to a meeting, got swept away with revolutionary zeal, joined, volunteered for active service, got in the way, criticized the founder members for lack of commitment and got thrown out. Before BEAST it was the National Front. Before that it was the Moonies. Shapiro reckoned that under questioning he would reveal the names of his fellow conspirators.

Foot submitted to arrest cheerfully enough. He had confessed to glamorous crimes before, been interviewed by the police and released without charge. He expected the outcome to be the same this time.

But during questioning the news came through that Stan Belshaw had died. Immediately Foot changed his story. Now he denied everything. He wasn't a member of BEAST, he didn't plan the raid, he wasn't at BMT, and he had never had too much to drink in the Ginger Pig and claimed he was.

But there were witnesses to what he'd said, and he had no alibi for the time of the raid. In fact, he'd been missing from his job as a painter and decorator all that day and the previous one. He claimed to have gone to London for a dirty midweek. He didn't know the girl's name, except that it was Sue, or where she lived except it was a tower block. He got a train home from King's Cross but didn't keep the ticket.

It was as poor an explanation for two missing days as Shapiro had ever heard from someone accused of a serious crime. Still he tried to check it. None of Foot's colleagues had heard him mention a girl named Sue. No one in the Ginger Pig saw him pick her up. No one at the station remembered him getting off the London train at about the time the raid was taking place.

Nor was it true that he knew nothing about BEAST.

Ill He knew not only their aims and objectives, as anyone who read the papers might, but was also familiar with their phraseology. Expressions like 'mankind's ruthless greed' and 'sentience in all its forms' tripped off his tongue too easily for a man who claimed to know no more than had appeared in the Courier.

There was also forensic evidence. One of the incendiaries failed to ignite; because it was in a filing cabinet it survived the blaze intact. a.n.a.lysis revealed that one of the active ingredients was paint-stripper, of a brand used in Foot's workshop.

Even if Foot wasn't a mainstay of BEAST, Shapiro hoped that he'd name those who were rather than do time for them. But he never did. He tried obvious lies he knew nothing about BEAST, was stringing the people in the pub along. He tried a subtler mix of lies and truth -he was a minor figure in the organization, so minor he didn't know who the others were. He tried fantasy -they contacted him by means of anonymous messages left at his work. He tried righteous indignation, he tried bribery, he tried tears.

But he never tried telling the whole truth. So he was charged with arson and manslaughter, and the jury was unimpressed by his claim that he was fitted up. He got twelve years.

Donovan said, 'He must be about due for release.'

'You get remission for good behaviour,' said Shapiro. Trevor's been in every kind of trouble available in prison short of knifing warders. He's even been on the roof a couple of times. He can't resist joining things, even rooftop protests. He'd have been out by now if he'd kept his head down.'

'This photograph. What's it likely to be?' Shapiro shrugged. 'I imagine it's supposed to prove that he was in London during those missing days. But we weren't shown a picture, and Foot's brief never made any 112.

reference to it. I just don't believe in photographs that surface after eight years.'

'So someone doctored it to make it look like Foot was innocent,' agreed Donovan. 'Why wait till now?' But Shapiro didn't know. 'What family does he have?'

'Eight years ago he had a father in the Rosedale Nursing Home and cousins living in Cambridge. Neither were any help to him then, I don't know why they'd lie for him now.'

'What about this woman?'

'The elusive Sue?' Shapiro shook his head. 'A figment of his imagination. If she'd been real she wouldn't have waited eight years. There's nothing she can do now that she couldn't have done when this started, and it'd have looked a d.a.m.n sight more convincing then.'

Donovan was thinking. 'I don't suppose I can see Foot without G.o.d finding out. Known haunts, then. The Pig, you said. And his work: where was that?'

'Willards, behind Castle Place. I suppose you could try some of his fellow cranks. The local Moonies packed up but there's still a branch of the National Front. The secretary's called Huddleston, he dates back to when Foot was a member.'

'I'll get on to it tonight.' Donovan kept it out of his voice, but in the pits of his eyes was the knowledge of how difficult this could be: picking up threads that had been eight years in the ravelling. 'I'll be in touch when I've some news.'

Shapiro saw him out. 'Sergeant, I appreciate what you're doing but don't stick your neck out too far. Sooner or later I'll be vindicated. I don't want to get back and find you're out on your ear.'

113.

Nothing much had changed at the Castle Mews yard since Foot was last there. Mr Willard senior had handed over the reins of office to his son but still came in when the order books were full. A couple of apprentices had grown into journeymen but still wore the same T-s.h.i.+rts and made the same jokes. Foot's mug was probably still among those ranged round the kettle. If he'd come in and quietly picked up a brush, quite possibly no one would have commented.

He was remembered with a certain affection, Donovan learned from young Mr Willard who was working late on his books in the silent workshop. This was not because he was a good worker, a good mate or even a reliable source of tips for the 2.50 at Newmarket. He was lazy, undependable, slapdash, s.h.i.+fty and a bore. But the case had afforded them a few weeks of vicarious celebrity, and nothing more interesting had happened in Castle Mews in the eight years since.

'Had he any close friends here? People he might have kept in touch with?'

Young Mr Willard, now in his late fifties, shook his head. 'I don't think he had any friends at all, here or anywhere else. n.o.body ever came asking for him or called him on the phone.'

'He claimed BEAST used to leave messages for him here.'

Willard smiled gently. 'Sergeant, the first thing we 114.

found out about Trevor was never to believe a word he said. He was a congenital liar. Nothing ordinary ever happened to him. He never dropped the last tin of Flamenco Red: somebody pushed him or distracted him or left something to trip him up. He never took a bend too fast and sc.r.a.ped the van: he had to swerve to avoid a lost puppy. If you showed any sign of believing him he'd spin it out until you knew what kind of puppy it was, what colour it was and how its eyes filled with terror when it thought its last minute had come. He'd end up believing it himself. He was a fantasist, Sergeant. Real life was a disappointment so he made up something better.'

'Did you know about all these organizations he joined?'

The painter nodded ruefully. 'Oh, yes. He'd come in every few months and try to convert everyone to the new cause. It was the same as the stories: if you didn't know better you'd swear he'd finally found his life's work. But after a few weeks he'd be complaining about how the other members were letting him down and soon after that he'd come in with a silly grin and his pockets full of somebody else's literature.'

'Did you know he'd joined BEAST?'

'Actually, no. He must have been sworn to secrecy on his mother's life, normally he talked about nothing but his latest cause. And the girlfriends, of course.'

Donovan p.r.i.c.ked his ears. 'There were girls, then.'

'None at all,' said Willard blithely. 'But he always talked as if he had Madonna and Kylie Minogue waiting for him in the lite Caf.'

'What about Sue?'

'The one he was supposed to have spent the missing days with? No such person, Sergeant. Sue was just the last in a long line of beautiful women who couldn't keep their hands off Trevor Foot. We used to say, Trevor, if you've got so many bring them here and share them round. But we never saw him with anyone except his old dad. Bit sad, really. I suppose we might have made more 115.

effort. Not that we've that much social life, any of us, but at least we don't need imaginary friends.'

'So you can't think of anyone who liked him well enough to do him a favour?' Willard shook his head. 'Did you ever hear about a photograph that might have cleared him?'

Willard looked surprised. 'I thought it was an open-and-shut case. You're not telling me he didn't do it after all?'