Some by Fire

by Stuart Pawson

  Taking the car into town was a mistake. I’d timed it so we’d arrive about ten o’clock, but every hour is rush hour in London, and people were killing for parking places. We eventually muscled into a space and I took Dave into the hallowed halls of the Serious Fraud Office. A quick phone call told me that Mo Dlamini would be in his office most of the day and I left Dave discussing tactics with his new friends, Graham and Piers.

  There was a tube train waiting at the platform, but I didn’t know which way it was heading. I jumped on and risked it. At the next station I got off and looked for the down line. I’m just a country bumpkin at heart. Southwark is just across the river, according to the map, but it still took me nearly an hour to find his office. It was in a purpose-built Community and Resources centre, with graffiti on the walls next to posters about needle sharing and benefit cheats. Thursday was basketball, and two teams of youths were charging about in a huge gymnasium and getting nowhere, in spite of all having the proper gear. Looking the part is all. Their shouts and the shrieks of rubber against wooden floor were deafening. I watched them for a few seconds with the door ajar and decided he wouldn’t be in there. A woman with two toddlers asked me where the toilets were. I’d noticed them when I came in, so I pointed and said: ‘At the end.’ If in doubt, ask a policeman. There were several other doors off the corridor, some padlocked, some open. One led to a kitchen where a youth with a shaved head and a bolt through his neck was mopping the floor. ‘Where’s Mr Dlamini’s office?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’ he replied.

  ‘Mo Dlamini.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Fortunately for me a human being came round the corner, wearing a dog collar, and he told me that Mo’s office was the last on the left. I knocked and a voice shouted:

  ‘Come in!’

  Everybody in this case is older than I expected. Not old, exactly, but more mature. In their prime. About my age. I imagined everybody as if frozen at the age they were in the seventies, before twenty-three years of striving to earn a living had taken their toll. Mo Dlamini’s hair was seriously greying, but he was as big as he’d looked on the photos and the expression was just as open and confident. He was a lighter colour than I thought he’d be, and his features were soft, almost European. He shook my hand vigorously and introduced me to his son, Ainsley.

  Ainsley was leaning on the wall because it was easier for him than contorting his frame into one of the little stacking chairs. Including his hair he must have been nearly seven feet tall and was built like a clothes prop. ‘Hi, Ainsley,’ I said, peering at the discreet logo on the left breast of his dazzling white T-shirt as we exchanged handshakes. It said calvin bolloCKs, and I warmed to him immediately.

  ‘Sit down, Inspector Priest,’ Dlamini invited, ‘and tell us what we can do for you. You’re a long way from Yorkshire so it must be important.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I coiled myself into the chair he gestured towards and took a quick glance at my surroundings. It wasn’t exactly the office of a hot-shot lawyer, with its transport cafe Formica table, bare walls and tiled floor. I decided that this was where he held his surgeries. The heavyweight bookcases, VDUs, coffee percolator and secretarial staff were elsewhere. I looked at Ainsley then back at Dlamini and said: ‘Some of the stuff I want to discuss is of a confidential nature…’ I left it hanging and they both took the hint.

  ‘I’ll see how the basketball’s going,’ Ainsley said, launching himself towards the door. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Inspector.’

  ‘Likewise, Ainsley,’ I replied. ‘Nothing personal.’

  ‘Ring your mum,’ his father shouted after him, followed by, ‘Kids, who’d have ’em?’

  ‘He’s a big lad,’ I observed.

  ‘Big? I work the first three days of the week just to feed him. So what’s this all about?’

  I dived straight in. ‘I’d like you to cast your mind back to 1970 if you can, Mr Dlamini. Can you remember where you were then?’

  ‘1970? Jesus,’ he replied. ‘First of all, it’s Mo. Everybody calls me Mo.’

  ‘And I’m Charlie.’ I told him.

  ‘Right. Let me see…in 1970 I was gaining work experience on company law with a firm of solicitors in Colchester, Essex. Do you need any more than that?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. Do you remember going to a party in April of that year? It might be helpful if I tell you that the party coincided with the Apollo 13 moon mission, which was the one that nearly ended in disaster.’

  The corner of his mouth twitched, but I couldn’t tell if it was a stifled smile or embarrassment or something else. He tried to speak, hesitated, and tried again. ‘Party?’ he mumbled, his thoughts miles and years away.

  ‘Apollo 13,’ I prompted.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ he admitted, struggling to appear impassive.

  ‘Can you remember anybody else who was there?’

  He thought about it, but all he could remember was that he was a lawyer. ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head.

  ‘Maybe I can jog your memory. Did you meet a young lady called Melissa Youngman there? She was quite distinctive-looking. Had dyed red hair.’

  The description was unnecessary because he was already holding his head in his hands. He pulled at his hair in a parody of despair and cried: ‘A lawyer! My kingdom for a lawyer!’ When he recovered from the shock he said: ‘What’s she doing? Kiss ‘n’ telling?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ I replied. ‘Her name keeps cropping up in our investigations and they brought us to you. What can you tell us about her?’

  ‘God!’ he croaked, grinning at the memories. ‘If this gets out I’m finished. What can I tell you about her? Nothing, Charlie. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Didn’t you have an affair with her?’

  ‘An affair! We had one night of rampant lust and that was it. She left me gasping for release, trying to beat the door down to escape. I never went out with her or anything because I stayed well away. That’s all.’

  ‘I believe you were interrupted,’ I said.

  He suddenly looked grave. ‘You know about that?’ he replied. ‘God, that was awful. Her parents came marching in. It was very unpleasant. I tried to be reasonable, said I loved her, we were engaged and stuff like that, but she didn’t give a toss. She called them names. And her language…it was fucking this and fucking that…to her parents! Not a night or a young lady I choose to remember, Charlie. Thanks a bunch for reminding me.’

  ‘It had to be done. So how did you meet her? Were you introduced?’

  ‘Yeah. This so-called friend introduced me to her. I think she had been his girlfriend and he wanted rid of her. She looked interesting and she was bright, very bright. We both had a bit – a lot – too much to drink, and that was that.’

  ‘What was this friend called?’

  After a long pause he said: ‘No. I’ve told you enough for the moment. You tell me a bit more about the reason for all this.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I replied. I told him about the fire five years later, and the girl with purple hair that we thought was Melissa Youngman. If she’d put Duncan Roberts up to the fire, who was she working for? It was enough to convince him.

  ‘OK,’ he replied. ‘The person who introduced us was called Kingston. Nick Kingston. He lectured in psychology.’

  Kingston rides again, I thought. ‘How did you meet him?’

  Mo sat back in the chair, which was invisible under his bulk, and folded his arms. He raised a knee and pressed it against the table, which moved away from him so he had to put his foot back on the floor. ‘Let me tell you about my background,’ he began. ‘You have, here before you, a member of the royal family of Swaziland. Now, before you are overwhelmed with respect and deference let me tell you that my grandfather, the king, had two hundred wives, of whom my grandmother was about number one hundred and seventy. He died in 1983 after ruling for fifty-two years, which made him the longest-serving monarch ever. I was a bright child, so I was sent to Engla
nd for my education and was expected to take up a position in government after I’d qualified.’ He held his arms wide and proclaimed: ‘I could have been Prime Minister by now!’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Usual story. I fell in love with a white girl in the office. Couldn’t really see her baring her breasts at the annual Reed Dance, so we settled here. She was a bit of a radical; espoused what our enemies call left-wing causes, as if that were an insult, and here we are.’ He waved a hand at the walls. ‘Business is good, as you can see.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I told him, because it was. ‘You have a colourful background.’

  ‘But what’s it got to do with Kingston? I’ll tell you. King Sobhuza, my grandpa, was a very wise man. He embraced modern technology, where possible, but strove to maintain traditional values. Witch doctors – the ones who cast spells on people and dabbled in the black arts – were outlawed, but the more benign ones are still tolerated and even encouraged. For instance the iNyanga are herbalists, and the iSangona are foreseers of the future. I wanted to explore the psychology of traditional medicine and started attending Kingston’s lectures. I’d approached him and he said it was OK, which I thought was very kind of him. Unfortunately, as I got to know him better, I changed my mind. He was more interested in the witch doctors than I was. He was forever asking me about their powers and the type of things they could do. He believed in astral travel and all sorts of oddball stuff, and thought they had the key to it and the knowledge would be lost forever if someone, namely him, didn’t write it down. He saw me as his key to that knowledge.’

  ‘Was this after the party?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so. I was starting to have doubts about him by then, though.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I realised he was strange. He was into keep-fit and martial arts, things like that. Yoga. He didn’t feel pain. He could snuff out a candle with his fingers, very slowly. It was his party trick. And the same with cold. Christmas Day he used to join the swimmers in the sea at Southend or somewhere. I tell you, Charlie, Nick Kingston is a weird cookie.’

  ‘It sounds like it. You don’t know where he is now?’

  ‘No, ‘fraid not.’

  ‘Did you fall out or just drift apart?’

  ‘It was a fairly gradual process. I saw him one evening and Melissa was with him again. We fell into conversation, naturally, but it was obvious that she’d told him all about that night. They were laughing at me behind their hands, so to speak. I decided he’d been patronising me; I was just another backward nigger to him. They weren’t my kind of people, so I split.’

  ‘They sound a lovely couple.’

  ‘Made in heaven, Charlie. I’ll tell you who might be able to help you. A girl called Janet…Wilson, I think it was. She had been to school with Melissa. They shared a house. She was a lovely person, just the opposite of Melissa. I have an address somewhere, but it’ll be twenty years out of date. God, she’ll probably have a grown-up family by now.’

  ‘I’ve met Miss Wilson,’ I told him, unable to hide my grin.

  ‘You’ve met Janet?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Did she…’ A broad smile spread across his face, like the sun breaking through and illuminating the savannah. ‘Was it Janet who put you on to me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Hey, that’s great,’ he declared. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s fine. Family grown up and her husband’s left her, but she’s doing nicely.’

  ‘Fantastic! She was a lovely girl; a real sweet. Not like Melissa. Will you give her my number, please?’

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  I thanked him for his help and left. Outside, I rang Dave on my mobile and told him that Kingston had dominated the conversation once again. He said he’d put his new friends on to it and agreed to meet me at the car.

  He was waiting when I arrived, eating an ice-cream while sitting on someone’s garden wall with his jacket over his shoulder, hooked on a thumb.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said.

  ‘That’s OK. Graham had a quick look at the Nicholas Kingstons; there’s only a handful of them. Going by approximate DOB, making him in his fifties, the most likely one is a Nicholas James William Kingston who lives in Kendal. They’re having a closer look at him right now. Anything else?’

  I told him about Kingston’s fascination with the witch doctors, and his indifference to pain. It was stop-start motoring along the Marylebone Road and no better along the Edgware Road, except that we were now heading north. Every junction was controlled by traffic lights and the bits inbetween were clogged with buses trying to get past parked vehicles, for mile after mile. It was nearly as bad as Heckley High Street when the school turns out.

  I was hungry, and Dave can eat anything, any time. He’s what they call a greedy so-and-so, unless he has a twenty-foot tapeworm eating away inside him. I said: ‘They’re paying, so which do you fancy; the Savoy Grill or the Little Chef?’

  ‘If it’s on the SFO,’ he replied, ‘we might as well splash out. Bugger the expense.’

  ‘Right,’ I agreed, ‘so Little Chef here we come.’

  * * *

  All the postman had brought me was a credit card statement and there were no messages on the answerphone. Dave’s wife, Shirley, had invited me in for some supper when I dropped him off, but I’d declined. Sometimes they’re just being polite. The all-day breakfast had been over two hours ago and I was peckish again, so I had a banana sandwich with honey and a sprinkling of cocoa. ‘Condensed milk,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Why can’t you find condensed milk these days?’ The cut-and-thrust of the Ml, plus three hours of near-total concentration, had left me on edge. I was stiff and tired, but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Jacquie’s number was still on the telephone pad, and I thought about ringing it. For a friendly chat, that’s all. Make sure she was all right.

  But it would have been self-indulgent and inconsiderate of her feelings, so the phone stayed where it was. Part of me wished I’d gone in for that coffee at Elspeth’s. It would have ended in tears, probably, but would that matter? Is ending in tears worse than never happening? I doubt it. In fact, I’m sure of it. I wondered if she’d finished her painting.

  Dave was right. I’d make an excuse to see Mrs Holmes again. Time it so we could repair to the riverside pub for a ham sandwich, with salad and a glass of orange juice; unless she had eventually developed a taste for beer. Then, perhaps, she’d show me some more of her drawings.

  Things were moving on all fronts, which is how I like it. I found my box of oil paints in the back bedroom and a stretched canvas, about two by two, which hadn’t been used. All this talk of pictures had inspired me. I underpainted the canvas with a big red circle and then divided it into segments. It was going to be an abstract inspired by a cross-section of a tapeworm. I edged the segments in blue, didn’t like it and tried orange. That was better. By one o’clock it was mapped out and I knew exactly how it would look. The circle had become broken and scattered, a jumble of interlocking triangles and rectangles. All it needed now was the colour piling on, thicker than jam. It was a happy and optimistic me that fell into bed, still smelling of natural turpentine, to dream of girls and art galleries and long student days.

  Sparky was rapidly becoming the bringer of good news. I was having my morning coffee with Mr Wood when he knocked and came in, looking pleased with himself. ‘Pour yourself a cup, David,’ Gilbert invited. ‘Not often we see you up here.’

  ‘No thanks, boss,’ Dave replied. ‘I prefer it from the machine. It has this pleasant…undertaste of oxtail soup.’

  ‘Don’t know how you drink the damn stuff,’ Gilbert declared.

  ‘He doesn’t drink it,’ I said. ‘He drinks mine. What is it, Dave? You came in grinning like a dog with two bollocks, so you’ve obviously something to tell us.’

  He tilted his head to one side, thought about it for a few seconds and stated: ‘Generally speaking, dogs d
o have two bollocks.’

  ‘Not on the Sylvan Fields estate,’ I snarled.

  ‘Oh, right. Nobody has two of anything there. Nicholas Kingston. The one with a Kendal address, that is. Our little friends at the Serious Fraud Office have done the homework that I set them yesterday and scored ten out of ten. They’ve got better contacts than we have, that’s for certain.’

  ‘Go on,’ I invited.

  ‘Well, first of all, this Nick Kingston earns a respectable income as a university lecturer, which is what we had hoped for. Bit more than you take home, Charlie, but not quite as much as Mr Wood. The interesting bit is the university. He’s at Lancaster.’

  ‘Lancaster!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Struth!’

  ‘What’s special about Lancaster?’ Gilbert asked.

  ‘On Monday,’ I replied, ‘or perhaps Tuesday, we had a phone call from Duncan Roberts junior, known as DJ. He’s the teenage son of Andrew Roberts, brother of Duncan senior who topped himself after putting his hand up for the fire in Leeds.’

  Gilbert nodded, pretending he understood.

  ‘He wanted to talk about his Uncle Duncan, see if we could tell him anything. His parents live in Welwyn Garden City,’ I continued, ‘but when we checked, young DJ was ringing from Lancaster.’ I turned to Dave. ‘Can you see if he’s at university there, please?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunnit. He is, reading mechanical engineering.’

  ‘Blimey!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s interesting. I don’t know what it means, but it’s interesting.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence,’ Gilbert warned. It’s his job to remind us of the mundane possibilities. It’s mine to go off on wild flights of fancy; to soar with the eagles and wage war on the forces of evil. That’s how I see it. I turned to Dave. ‘Well done, Pissquick,’ I said. ‘You’d better take a day off this weekend.’

  He pulled a glum face and said: ‘But…don’t you want to know what I came to tell you?’