Gideon's Fire Read online

  He had killed quickly and mercifully, first kissing his unsuspecting mistress, holding the kiss, and bringing up his hands, and pressing against the windpipe. It was surprisingly quick, unconsciousness seemed to come within sixty seconds. There had been the problem of disposing of the body, but Harrison had overcome it easily enough. Not far away from the spot where he usually met his loves was a disused sand and gravel quarry, and the sides of the quarry had been filled with big holes. Some old tools had been left there, too, and he had dug a deep grave within half an hour, and buried the girl. Two years later, when it had been necessary to kill again for the same reason, the obvious place for the body had been in the old grave which had been undiscovered for two years.

  It had been after this that Harrison had begun to hate Pamela, partly because she was so quiet and submissive, without any spirit, partly because it was becoming obvious by then that the children weren’t likely to settle at home. It did not once occur to Harrison to blame himself; keeping the home going was Pam’s job.

  His third killing, of Florence Denny, had been for different reasons. She had started to blackmail him, and he had just let her have it. He could remember to this day how startled she had looked - and how he had wished that he had been squeezing Pamela’s neck.

  Harrison had stayed home in the evenings for a few weeks after that and Pam had been unbearable. He came to hate the sight and sound of her.

  Then he had met Chloe Duval at a dance at the Gala Ballroom. At first he had seen her only as a little bit of stuff shaped rather like an egg timer, and possessed of a wiggle which suggested that she would be pretty good on the dance floor and in other places he could think of. She was exactly what he needed to relieve the monotony. Chloe had come to live in Brighton recently, all her relatives were in London, and she was running her own little flat. Everything was just as he liked, especially as she seemed to have a bit of money of her own, and did only occasional modelling. She had never said so, but he believed that she was an artist’s model used to posing in the altogether, but the important point was that she had taken his mind off his problems.

  He had never known anything like her, in or out of bed. Before he knew what was happening, he was desperately in love with her.

  He wanted to marry her ...

  So he wanted Pam dead.

  He had not yet made up his mind when or how to kill her, but he kept up the breezy act, to make sure she suspected nothing. Pam looked up from the ironing, and gave her patient smile.

  ‘Hallo, dear,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect you home for lunch, but I can soon get you something.’

  ‘Sandwich and a cuppa, that’s all I need,’ said Harrison, and he went to the ironing board, gave Pamela a perfunctory squeeze, and went on heartily: ‘I’ve got a special job on tonight, Pam. Got to take a bomb up to London for an old geezer with more dough than sense. So I’ll be home late. That okay with you?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Pamela said. ‘Whatever you say, dear.’

  He watched her go into the kitchen, and his fingers itched for her throat.

  Pamela Harrison stood by the kitchen table, beating an omelette, and trying not to break down. The loneliness without the children was almost unbearable, and now Tony had started an affair with yet another woman. For years Pamela had steeled herself to put up with this kind of situation, because she loved him as much now as she always had.

  She would still have to keep her self-control, she knew, would have to wait until the affair was over, but - why wasn’t he satisfied with her? What did he find in these other women? Would the time never come when he would realise how much she wanted him, loved him, felt lost without him?

  She was smiling demurely when she took him in a ham omelette and some fried bread. When Harrison left, just after two o’clock, he was whistling gaily at the wheel of a Riley with trade number plates on. That was the car he would collect Chloe in, later.

  He had not the slightest idea that the radio service van which followed him out of the street was being driven by a policeman, but he noticed the van. He was a bright, alert man, and no fool; and the radio van puzzled him. He forgot it when he reached the showrooms, because it drove past. When he went to pick Chloe up from her flat in Hove, a post office van kept on his tail, and he noticed that without thinking very deeply about it.

  Chloe opened the door, hugging a dressing-gown across her chest, and when he was inside and the door closed, she let the front of the gown fall open. That was all she was wearing.

  5 FIRE CHIEF

  Carmichael’s club, Gideon had soon found, was one of the older ones in a big building near the Embankment, with great high ceilings and huge marble and tiled pillars, the statues of famous men in their party, portraits of the famous, an air of quietness and almost serenity. Voices were not exactly hushed but none was raised. The service was quick and efficient without being slick and without the middle-aged waitresses being pert. The dining-room overlooked a terrace which in turn overlooked the Embankment and the Thames, about half a mile from Gideon’s own office, but here the stark modern outline of the Festival Hall, and the big clock above the main building of Waterloo Station, took the place of the London County Hall.

  Carmichael was a fastidious eater; Gideon a trencherman. Here the steak pudding had an appetising richness almost forgotten in the average restaurant. Carmichael picked at a grilled trout, and was rather finicky as he took the skin off. They had walked here, talking a little about the Lambeth fire, but it was not until Gideon was nearly through, all but satiated by the steak pudding, that Carmichael said:

  ‘I wanted to see you, Gideon, because several features of the Lambeth fire seem to me - and some of my senior officers - peculiar, to say the least. Has anything in the case so far known suggested that to you?’

  ‘The first obvious thing is that there couldn’t be any insurance motive, so the probable motive was murder,’ Gideon said, and Carmichael nodded. There was a gleam in his pale eyes which suggested that he had something up his sleeve, and Gideon was trying to decide whether to allow him to score a little triumph, or whether to come out with the notion which had entered his own mind. He decided to let Carmichael have his moment.

  ‘Yes,’ Carmichael encouraged.

  ‘The second thing is that the firebug wasn’t anyone who lived in the tenement - everyone’s been accounted for, according to the report from Division.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Carmichael. The gleam became brighter. ‘You may think that I am making a mountain out of a molehill, Gideon, but some of my senior officers and I have been rather puzzled by three and possibly four similar fires in the past five months.’

  Ah, thought Gideon. ‘Other fires?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. And arson was only seriously suspected in one of them,’ said Carmichael.

  ‘There was the outbreak in Bethnal Green, in November, when seven houses scheduled for demolition but still occupied were burnt down with the loss of two lives - a woman and her daughter.’

  ‘I remember that one,’ Gideon said. ‘Put it down to kids trying to make fireworks in one of the back rooms. Some sticks of dynamite they’d stolen from a dump blew up in the room, after everyone had gone to bed. Sparks from a fire according to you chaps.’

  That’s right,’ Carmichael agreed. ‘The next one was in Whitechapel. No person was seriously injured, but two tenement buildings, rather like those that were destroyed last night, were gutted.’

  ‘I remember,’ agreed Gideon. ‘A kitchen boiler burst, didn’t it?’

  ‘That was the theory,’ Carmichael answered. ‘The third fire was in Canning Town, and on this occasion more slum houses were destroyed. Most of the houses were already empty and scheduled for demolition, but a dozen were occupied, and the occupants all escaped in reasonable time.’

  Gideon said: ‘I think I’m beginning to see what you’re driving at.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would take you long,’ the Fire Chief said dryly. He glanced round, beckoned a wait
er, and went on: ‘What will you have to follow? A sweet, or some cheese - or both if you feel inclined.’

  ‘That golden pudding with syrup I saw you with just now looks good,’ Gideon said to the waiter.

  ‘It’s always very good sir.’

  ‘I wish I had half your appetite,’ Carmichael complained. ‘Bring me a small caramel pudding, and then we’ll both see the cheese board.’ The waiter went off, and Carmichael continued with the subject of fires as if there had been no interruption. ‘The fourth fire was in a similar area near Bethnal Green. All of them have been in slum areas, you will realise, and in buildings which were scheduled for or should have been scheduled for demolition. There is one other factor which you may not have any reason to be cognisant of.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Gideon.

  ‘After each of these fires, and as far as I have been able to judge, only after these, a call has been made to the nearest fire station by someone who has dialled 999 and asked for the Fire Service without giving a name. The caller has spoken to the operator in charge, given the exact seat of the fire, and rung off without further explanation. In each case there was a comment by the operator: ‘Suspected hoax,’ because of the calmness of the caller - most genuine reports are hurried and excited. You know that we have more false alarms than genuine calls, don’t you?’

  Gideon nodded.

  ‘My attention was first drawn to the fact that these were all slum fires, and that no motive could readily be seen,’ Carmichael said. ‘Moreover, there was a rational explanation of how they started except in the one in Canning Town, where petrol was known to have been taken to the scene of the outbreak. Even then there was a suggestion that someone was using the empty houses as an unofficial warehouse, and kept petrol on the premises. We can now prove that last night’s fire was due to arson, and each of the other cases could have been. Last night, also, there was a telephone call from a call-box some ten minutes walk away from the seat of the fire. The caller explained exactly where the fire was, and rang off. Now it was quite impossible for anyone to have seen the fire from that call-box, Gideon, and there are dozens nearer the seat of the fire.’

  ‘Sure?’ asked Gideon, sharply.

  ‘I am positive.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Gideon said, and watched Carmichael instead of starting on the golden pudding, oozing with syrup, which was placed in front of him. ‘I’ll take your word for it that these jobs could be by the same firebug, too. Can you let me have all the reports you’ve got, down to the smallest detail, and arrange for one of your chaps to contact us at the Yard? I’ll put Margetson on the job, he’s our best man on arson.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to assist you,’ Carmichael promised, and smiled quite broadly. ‘In my brief-case I have copies of all the files, I felt sure that you would not want a great deal of persuading.’

  ‘Any more theories?’ asked Gideon.

  ‘I think it’s a little early for that,’ Carmichael demurred, ‘but if there is any connection between the series of fires in slum areas, well - it could be that you are faced with a fanatic who sees it as a kind of duty to take action more quickly than the authorities. We have had several such people to deal with, and usually they are soon caught. I have often wondered what a really clever man could achieve if he were driven by that compulsion. That is why I felt I should discuss the situation with you. We are very proud of our welfare state and our slum clearance programmes,’ went on the Fire Chief, ‘but you probably know as well as I do how shocking the conditions are in a great number of districts. I was studying the statistics the other day. My Department regards the fire risk in central and east and south-east London as twice as great as that in any other residential district, due entirely to old buildings and old properties where there are no satisfactory precautions against fire, where there is grave overcrowding, where in some cases water is only laid on to one floor of a house. We are nothing like as civilised and advanced as we like to think. But don’t let that concoction on your plate get cold.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said Gideon. He picked up his spoon and plunged it into the gooey mess, which was exactly what he liked, while he concentrated on Carmichael’s theory. He could recall several cases of fire-raising by men with twisted minds, not always with a material motive - sometimes simply because the perpetrator liked to see things burn.

  When he finished eating, his mouth was tacky, but there was some pale ale left in the glass. He drank it. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ he went on musingly, ‘whether the places which have been burned are owned by the same people.’

  ‘I can’t really say,’ said Carmichael, and his eyes showed his interest. ‘You think that it could be an attack on an owner who is making money out of these appalling conditions?’

  ‘Don’t know what I think yet,’ replied Gideon. ‘You put the idea into my head.’

  He was still pondering at three o’clock that afternoon, when he sent for Chief Inspector Margetson. Margetson was a middle-aged man who might reasonably have had a grievance against the Yard’s promotion system; he had little or no book-learning, so there was no examination that he could pass. His spelling was atrocious, and anyone looking at his handwritten reports must have believed that they were written by a schoolboy. Reading them gave a different impression; they were models of conciseness, and the difficult and technical words were always accurately spelt. ‘Even I can use a dictionary sometimes,’ Margetson would say. His spelling and his lack of academic knowledge would stop him from further promotion; only stringent efforts by Gideon and others who knew his quality had pushed him into the inspectors’ ranks. He was a chunky man of medium height, his face had deep lines and some of the chasms in it defied the electric razor which he always used a few hours later than he should. His straw-coloured hair was badly cut, partly because it seemed to grow in several directions; he boasted cheerfully of having three crowns.

  ‘No wonder I’m lucky,’ he would say; so he became ‘Lucky’ Margetson.

  He tapped on the door of Gideon’s office, and when Gideon called ‘come in’, entered with caution, closed the door with care, and gave the impression that he wondered what he was on the carpet for.

  ‘Hallo, Lucky, take a pew,’ Gideon invited, and a face which until then had been set in lines of uncertainty changed to one like a beaming schoolboy’s. Nothing about Margetson’s face was quite even; one side of his mouth was higher than the other, one nostril was more pinched than the other, his eyes were slightly different shades of greeny-brown.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said, and pulled up a chair. ‘I thought you had eyes at the back of your head, Mr. Gideon.’

  ‘What have you done wrong now?’

  ‘Went over and had a look at the Lambeth job this morning when I was out on that warehouse arson fix. You can tie that one up and put it in your pocket.’ Margetson’s voice was a much more pronounced Cockney even than Lemaitre’s, yet he chose his words with care. ‘Insurance job, the storage firm is right in the red. I’ve put in my report.’

  ‘Good. What took you over to Lambeth?’

  ‘Bloody funny thing,’ said Margetson. ‘I was going to have a word with Joe Bell about it. Bell was out of the office for once. Fifth slum fire in five months.’

  ‘If you’d told me about it this morning, I could have passed it on to Carmichael of the Fire Service, instead of having him tell me,’ said Gideon, dryly.

  ‘He on to it? No flies on Carmichael, I must say. Well, send me for a brown ale,’ exclaimed Margetson. ‘How much did he know? About the warning telephone calls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what puzzled me first. Went over to have a look at the call-box used last night - that’s one good thing, when they use a kiosk you can check back,’ Margetson said. ‘The operators know all the call-box numbers. This one’s at the corner of Sussex Street and Hemp Road, mile and a half from Hilton Terrace. Seventeen public call-boxes are within a mile radius, so it wasn’t used because it was the nearest
. I borrowed a bike from the Divisional chaps and cycled round to Hilton Terrace four different ways, the only ways you can go,’ the chunky man went on. ‘Unless there was a blaze showing against the sky you couldn’t have seen that fire until you were practically on the spot. My guess is that the chap who startled it cycled off and phoned a warning when he felt sure he couldn’t be copped. So he wasn’t simply a man who enjoyed watching a fire.’

  ‘Any ideas about why he should give a warning?’ Gideon asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Margetson. ‘I’m not sticking my neck out that far. Could be he just likes lighting fires. When you get down to it, that’s usually the answer. Funny thing, one of my own kids is a little terror. Put him anywhere near a match-box and he has to strike a match and start a blaze. Tanned his hide only last week, I did, but when you come to think of it, most kids are the same - if they’re not scared stiff of fire they love playing with it. And not everybody grows up, do they, Commander?’

  ‘I see what you mean. Have you checked the ownership of the different places that were burnt down?’

  ‘No,’ answered Margetson, and his eyes rounded, his lips formed an ‘O’. ‘Strewth, what made me miss that one? As a matter of fact, I haven’t really given it much thought, just kind of wondered. The Lambeth do gave me a jolt.’

  ‘All right, Lucky,’ Gideon said, and handed over the duplicate files Carmichael had given him. ‘Call your contact man at the Fire Service H.Q., Carmichael’s already briefed him. Dig as deep as you can. You’re looking for evidence of arson, motive, ownership of the property concerned, any other common factors - such as, are there relations living in these different places? Check all the possibilities, and don’t go to sleep on it.’

  ‘I won’t go to sleep,’ Margetson promised earnestly. ‘How about the Lambeth job?’

  ‘It’s yours, with the Division.’

  ‘Ta,’ said Margetson, and put such feeling into the simple word that it told Gideon how much he had been hoping to be put in charge.