The Circle (12 page)

Thomasine was having a torrid time as the stand-in chair. For help she looked towards Bob.

Caught again. Bob wasn't used to all this procedural stuff. He'd always avoided union meetings if he could. He dredged deep and said, 'There's one thing no one has mentioned.'

'What's that?'

'Tea break.'

'Lovely suggestion,' Thomasine said. 'We can talk things over informally and come back to Anton's proposal later -if we really need to.'

Bob was outside having a smoke when Thomasine found him.

'Sorry about all that, springing it on you,' she said. 'You were great in there.'

'I know sweet f.a. about the press,' he said, offering her a cigarette. 'I once saw a cartoon I liked. This woman has just come home and is saying triumphantly to her husband, "Only my second week at the writers' circle and they've made me treasurer!'"

'Yes, and it's bloody unfair, but you'll do it in style, I know you will. What can I do in return - be your slave for a day?'

'I'll think it over.'

'A day and a night, then?'

He looked. She was smiling, and the remark was joky, but there was something there he hadn't seen in a woman's eyes since Maggie died.

In the Lewes Arms, opposite the law court and built into the ramparts of the castle, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond spilled some beer as he threaded a route through the tiny front bar. This was where lunch was being taken. Lawyers, witnesses and relatives needed an escape.

DCI Hen Mallin was saving seats by the window, and that was where Diamond was heading. The pair of them had given evidence in what was known to the press as the Wightview Sands case, and it was over apart from the sentencing. The jury hadn't taken long over the guilty verdict.

'Hope you wanted lemon in this,' Diamond said as he handed Hen her gin and tonic.

'Always. It stops me getting scurvy. Are you staying another night?'

He shook his head.

'Duty calls?'

'The Wasps.'

'Sounds dangerous.'

'Rugby. I'm a Bath supporter.'

'All right for some,' she said. Til be checking in at Chichester.'

'Why - do they have a team?'

'Chichester nick. I took a call this morning. Series of arson attacks.'

'I thought you were based at Bognor.'

'I am, but Chi is up a gum tree. What are you smiling for?'

'I was picturing it. Sounds like a panda.'

She took a long sip of the G&T. 'Whatever. They're getting a new keeper.'

When they returned to the meeting room and Thomasine called for order, Anton said, 'We're not all here.'

'Who's missing, then?'

'Zach.'

'And Naomi,'Jessie said.

'We can wait a few minutes,' Thomasine said.

'I don't think Zach is coming back,'Jessie said. 'I saw him putting on his motorcycle clothes.'

'He didn't say he was leaving.'

'I saw Naomi get on her bike and ride away,' Dagmar said.

Tudor said, 'It's a bit off, leaving like that without letting us know why.'

'It's about what we were discussing before the break,' Dagmar said with her way of seeing to the heart of things. 'Zach was talking about freedom of expression. I think they expected to be outvoted.'

'Did she say anything to you about leaving?' Thomasine asked Basil.

'I'd be the last to know,' he said. 'Naomi is her own woman. But the two of them met the other day to talk about a project, so this may have something to do with it.'

There was a pause while the others took this in.

'Hoho. Sounds to me as if we've got a couple of dark horses in our midst,' Tudor said. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all if they're planning something. This wasn't about freedom of expression. They've done a deal with the papers - dishing the dirt on the rest of us.'

Jessie gave a strangled cry and put her hand to her throat.

Thomasine said, 'Tudor, you're at it again, letting your imagination run riot. We discussed talking to the press and they said nothing.'

'Too guilty to own up.'

'You're talking about two of our colleagues. Let's have some loyalty here. They probably each had other appointments they had to hurry away for.'

'If you believe that, you'll believe anything.'

'I'll speak to them later and find out.'

Through his clenched teeth Anton drew in a long, audible breath. 'Madam Chair, before the break I put a proposal to the meeting. I now move that we put it to the vote.'

'There are only nine of us here,' Dagmar said.

'Eight if you exclude me,' Bob said. 'I haven't joined yet.'

Thomasine said, 'I was hoping you wouldn't insist, Anton. Perhaps as temporary chair I shouldn't express a view, but I think Zach had a point about censorship. There is a larger principle at stake. It would be a pity if we painted ourselves into a corner.'

'I agree,' Dagmar said.

Without looking up from her sketching, Sharon said, 'Me, too.'

'And me,' Basil said.

'Looks as if we're far from unanimous,' Thomasine said.

Dagmar said, 'And I think we need a two-thirds majority to change the constitution. There's something in it about freedom to write on any subject and in any style we choose.'

'Sorry, Anton,' Thomasine said, 'you're out of order.'

14

Reading isn 't an occupation we encourage among police
officers. We try to keep the paper work down to a minimum.

Joe Orton,
Loot
(1966)

A
All right, boys and girls, settle down and be grateful it isn't my holiday pictures.'

Detective Chief Inspector Henrietta Mallin - better known as Hen - from Bognor, had taken over as Chief Investigating Officer on what was being called the Chichester arson case. It was a pity the city's own CID couldn't handle this one, but Hen had a good clear-up rate, and it was agreed that the local man, DI Johnny Cherry, wasn't the brightest fruit in the basket. He looked blighted before meeting Hen, and bruised after.

'This is the cottage on the Selsey Road where the publisher died,' Hen said, as the image of a burnt-out ruin appeared on the video screen. The entire CID team was watching, together with Stella Gregson, a DS from Bognor who had arrived with Hen. 'Victim was asleep upstairs and died in bed.'

She took them quickly through a sequence showing the space where Edgar Blacker's front door had been. Nothing was left of it. The floor, walls and ceiling were black and disintegrating. 'The seat of the fire,' Hen said. 'Our perpetrator stuffs some oily rags through the letterbox and puts a flame to them. From here it spreads through the main room, which was lined with books wall to wall, and into the kitchen and bathroom.'

It was difficult to make out one room from another in the blackened debris. She paused the videotape.

'We go upstairs now. People of a nervous tendency, look through your fingers.'

They were shown the head and shoulders of the dead man, the face stained by smoke, yet untouched by flames. The skin was undamaged, the eyeballs still white. 'If you were expecting roast publisher, this will come as a surprise,' Hen said. 'The bedroom escaped the worst of the fire damage. He died of a cocktail of toxic fumes. Never even got out of bed.'

The camera panned slowly around the bedroom. The used shirt draped over a chair was a touching reminder that its owner had gone to bed expecting a peaceful night's sleep. 'The thatch above this room caught fire and took out the roof, but fire burns upwards and outwards, and the door you see was closed. The fire service got here before the flames from downstairs could burn through, but the fumes seeped in through the cracks.'

'Who raised the alarm, guv?' Stella Gregson asked.

'A passing motorist with a mobile.'

'No connection, I suppose?'

'None, but you're right to mention it. The person who reports the fire is often the perpetrator. In this case, he wasn't. He was a local radio guy on his way in to present the breakfast programme.'

Some close shots in the bedroom showed how little damage there was. A framed photo of two men still hung on the wall. 'Is one of those the victim, ma'am?' a keen DC asked.

Hen referred the question to DI Cherry. 'Johnny?'

'Er, apparently ... in his younger days.'

Hen said, 'I didn't notice this when I visited the site this morning. Was it removed and bagged up?'

'Must have been,' Cherry said.

'I'd like to see it. I should have mentioned that Mr Blacker was fifty-two, and a bachelor.'

'Say no more, guv,' the keen DC said with a grin.

Hen's eyes flashed. 'Have a care, my beauty. I don't do homophobia, and in case you're wondering, I'm unmarried and I'm straight. What's your name?'

'Humphreys, ma'am.'

'No need to blush, Humphreys. Anyone can tell you're straight as well, straight back into uniform if you make another crack like that. But let's return to someone of more importance: Edgar Blacker. His publishing company is called the Blacker List, ha bloody ha. He spent his entire career in the industry, starting as tea boy. Worked up to packer in a Birmingham warehouse. Moved down to Essex and got some editorial experience producing magazines. Do we know any tides, Johnny?'

Cherry smirked. 'Not
Woman's Own.'

'I get you. Top-of-the-shelf stuff?'

'Mostly.'

'Then he goes upmarket into educational publishing and only recendy branched out on his own.'

'Was the Blacker List a public company?' someone else asked.

'No. He owned the whole thing, put some money of his own into it and took out a loan. How long he would have survived like this we don't know, because a publisher employs loads of specialists: designers, editors, proofreaders, printers, salespeople.'

'And the writers.'

'Well, his idea was to get the writers to cover the cost. It's known as vanity publishing. Believe it or not, there are millions of people whose greatest ambition is to see themselves in print. Personally, I'd rather spend my money on a really good cause like shopping in Knightsbridge, but we're all different. Vanity publishing is okay by me so long as the writer knows what he's getting into. Blacker's writers didn't. We're holding a first-time author called McDade who was asked for five grand shortly before his book was due for publication. He didn't pay up and he was dumped. You nicked him, Johnny. Maybe you'd like to say some more.'

DI Cherry looked as if he'd prefer to say nothing, but there was no get-out. 'When we charged him he was looking bang to rights. He'd been to the house and had a run-in with Blacker on the day of the fire, and he's got form as a fire-raiser. There wasn't anyone else in the frame.' Cherry hesitated and cocked his head, as if listening to his own voice played back to him. 'However, these other fires have raised a few doubts.'

'Cue another fire,' Hen said. 'This one may appear to be unrelated. There's a link that I'll explain.'

The remains of the boat house appeared on screen with wisps of smoke still rising from the damaged roof.

'Not a private dwelling, but one of the two boat houses used by the local canoe club. It's beside the canal, a stone's throw from here. A week ago last Friday a middle-aged woman called Amelia Snow takes a call from a voice she doesn't recognise. Male. The caller says he can prove Maurice McDade is in the clear if she'll meet him at the boat house at eight next morning. I should explain that McDade is the chairman of the Chichester Writers' Circle and Miss Snow is the secretary. An extremely loyal secretary. But she's also a canny lady and she asks someone else to go in her place. He's Bob Naylor, a Parcel Force driver who recently joined the circle. Naylor gets there as arranged. The door's open, so he goes in. Through this end.'

She shone a point of light at the screen.

'Soon as he's inside, the door slams behind him. It's a strong metal door and there's no way he can force it open. In minutes, the building is on fire. Some kind of accelerant was placed in the space under the floor and it spreads quickly. Luckily Naylor is pretty fit and climbs up a boat rack and batters his way out through the roof with a canoe paddle. According to his statement he saw no one.'

A long shot of the exterior, showing the hole in the roof and the blackened source of the fire in the space below the building.

'It's safe to assume Miss Snow wouldn't have got out of the boat house if she'd acted on the phone call herself. She was wise, or lucky, to ask Naylor to go in her place. Her luck ran out a week later when her dinky little town house went up in flames with her inside.'

The shell of Miss Snow's house appeared on screen.

'The fire service categorised this as a fire out of control. They were called too late to make any difference, except to limit the damage to the neighbours. A clock in the kitchen stopped at four twenty a.m., so it's a fair estimate that the fire-raiser struck up to thirty minutes before that. I went to see the building this morning. You often hear the word "gutted" used about a fire. In this case, it's accurate. There's nothing left inside except ash and some objects that resist fire. The conditions were special. A mixture of convection and radiation produced an effect known in the service as a firestorm. All that's left of Miss Snow is a few powdery bones, including parts of the skull.'

'And the teeth,' Stella Gregson prompted her.

'And the teeth. We're checking them against dental records.'

'Do we know where the fire started?' a sergeant asked.

'Front door, same as the fire at the cottage. Forensics are checking to see if the same accelerant was used.'

'Witnesses?'

'None so far, which is surprising in a built-up area like this, but Chichester isn't exactly a hub of night life. We'll be making the usual appeals for information. It was on local telly and radio and that may help.' Hen switched off the video. 'To sum up, we have two victims, one near-victim, and a suspect, and all four have a connection to this writers' circle.' She turned to a DC in the front row. 'What do they do in a writers' circle?'

'Write, ma'am?'

'They can't spend all the time writing.'

'Do they drink?'

"Do they drink?Ml
the writers I've ever heard of are winos, and most of them are weirdos as well. However, we're dealing with part-timers here, so they may not all have got the habit. Johnny, how often does this circle meet?'

'Once a month,' Cherry said. 'In the New Park Centre. Blacker gave them a talk at the July meeting. We've got it on video. They did it themselves.'

'Useful. I'll watch it after this. And was that the last meeting they had?'

'Last but one. August was the last proper meeting.'

'The last proper meeting. Do they have improper meetings?'

Laughter.

'There's a serious point here,' Hen said. 'The meetings certain individuals have outside the regular meetings could be the key to this. For example, Amelia Snow must have met the Parcel Force driver to persuade him to go to the boat house in her place. What was going on between those two? Was someone else made jealous?'

Cherry said, 'Unlikely.'

'Why do you say that, Johnny?'

'Miss Snow was an old maid.'

He regretted it.

'As opposed to a nice bit of skirt?' Hen said. 'Or a dolly bird? Or crumpet? I thought you people might have got the message that I don't do labelling. How many are in this circle?'

'Eleven now.'

'That's eleven potential suspects, right, and each one is an individual. So we're not calling them old maids or fat gits or, em . . .'

'Winos and weirdos, guv?' Stella Gregson said.

After a moment's extreme tension, Hen's lips softened into a slow smile. 'Thank you for that, Stell.' She made the shape of a gun with two fingers and pointed it at the side of her head. 'Let's all agree to treat them as human beings, shall we? We're going to get to know them, who their friends are, what they do for a living, where they live and what sort of writing they do. From now on, this is the incident room. I want the usual display board on this wall with all the names on it. Pictures, too, if poss.' She paused, and looked around the room. 'As for you lot, you're just a faceless murder squad, so you're going to get labels. Johnny, you're my office manager. Get us up and running today. Stella is my admin officer. I'll also be appointing a receiver, an action allocator, statement readers and indexers. Cheer up, kiddos. This could be a positive experience. At this point, I'm going out for a smoke. Ten minutes - and then I want your theories.'

Hen's smoke was a small cigar. The bliss on her face as she took the first deep drag left no doubt that this was serious dependence. 'How did they take it, Stell?'

Stella Gregson was a non-smoker used to standing among the fag ends with her boss. 'Mr Cherry's pissing his pants that you've taken over, but no one else seems to mind.'

'He thought the case was done and dusted.'

'Are you going to talk to the guy he nicked?'

'Have to. I'll read the paperwork first. It should be a feature of this case, the paperwork. Instead of "I am John Smith, unemployed, and I was proceeding up the street" we're going to get stuff like "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again". Some of the statements could be worth a fortune in years to come.'

Stella smiled. '"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."'

'Who wrote that? We don't want crazy stuff.'

'George Orwell.
Nineteen Eighty-Four.''

'As long ago as that?' She spoke without a smile. Stella would never know if she was serious.

'Right,' she said to her murder investigation team, 'you've heard from me. I want some input from you now. Why does a decent, clean-living litde lady like Miss Snow get incinerated?'

No one was rash enough to speak.

'Come on. You've had longer to think about it than me,' Hen said. 'A semi-retired accountant who also does a bit of charity work. Secretary of the writers' circle.'

The keeno, DC Humphreys, decided this was the moment to redeem himself. 'An accountant gets to know a lot about a person's finances. Could someone have panicked that she knew too much?'

'Someone with money problems? Good thought. Do we know whose accounts she managed?'

DI Cherry said in a dismissive way, 'Only a few clients she'd known for years.'

'Like?'

'Like Miss Peabody's, the private dress shop in Crane Street. I'm certain Miss Peabody doesn't have a money problem. Neither does the dentist, Michael Wheatley-Smith, nor the podiatrist, Anita Jacques.'

'Podiatrist?'

Stella said, 'Feet, guv.'

'Have you looked at any of these people's balance sheets?' Hen said to Cherry.

'No need. In Chichester, we know who's doing okay.'

'So what other accounts was she auditing?'

'Probably looked after the women's refuge she supported.

She'll have done that without a fee.'

DC Humphreys said, 'Maybe she'd taken on someone else we don't know about. I was thinking how convenient it would be if the accounts were dodgy and they went up in the fire at the same time as she did.'

'Good thought, too,' Hen said, 'only let's not forget the killer had two tries. The first time, Miss Snow was invited to the boat house. There weren't any account books stored there, far as I know.'

A sergeant at the back said, 'Here's another theory, ma'am. You said she worked in the refuge. You get some hard cases ending up in those places. Junkies, alcos, illegals, you name it. What if one of them decided Miss Snow was a soft touch, and it turned out she wasn't?'