Playing With Fire

“Is this true, Mrs. Aspern?” Banks asked.

Frances Aspern nodded.

“Look,” said Dr. Aspern, “you can see we’re upset over the news. Can’t you just go away and leave us in peace for a while, to grieve?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to save that for later,” said Banks. “When I’ve finished here, I’d like one or both of you to follow me up to Eastvale and identify the body.”

Mrs. Aspern touched her chalklike cheek. “You said it was a fire.”

“Yes,” said Banks. “I’m sorry. There is some disfiguration. Not much, but some.”

“I’ll go, darling,” said Aspern, resting his hand on her knee. “I can cancel surgery. I’m sure everyone will understand.”

She shook him off. “No. I’ll go.”

“But you’re upset, dear. I’m a doctor. I can deal with these things. I’ve been trained.”

She shot him a scornful glance. “Deal with? Is that all this means to you? I said I’ll go, Mr. Banks. Can you take me and have someone bring me back? I’m afraid I’m far too upset to drive myself.”

“At least let me drive you,” her husband pleaded.

“I don’t want you there,” she said. “Christine was my daughter.”

There. It was said. And it lay heavily between them like an undigested meal. “As you wish,” said Patrick Aspern.

“Are you certain it couldn’t have been an accident?” Mrs. Aspern asked, turning to Banks. “I still can’t believe that anyone would want to harm Christine.”

“Anything can happen when drugs enter the equation,” said Banks. “And that’s another angle we’ll be looking at. There’s also a strong possibility that Christine wasn’t the intended victim.”

“What do you mean?” asked Aspern.

“I can’t say much more at this point,” said Banks. “We still have a lot of forensic tests to do and a lot of questions to ask. At the moment, we’re simply trying to get as much information as possible about the people who lived on the boats. When we know more, we’ll know where to focus our investigation, which line of inquiry to follow.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Aspern.

His wife stood up. “I’m ready to go,” she said to Banks, then added, looking at her husband, “you can get back to your patients now, Patrick.”

He started to say something, but she turned her back and walked out of the room.

Mark’s cell was small and basic, but comfortable enough. It smelled a bit – a hint of urine, vomit and stale alcohol – but they were old smells. At least it was clean, and he wasn’t shut in with a gang of sexually frustrated bikers with fourteen-inch penises. There were a couple of drunks down the corridor, even at that time in the afternoon. One of them kept singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart” over and over again until one of the officers made him shut up. After that, Mark could hear them snore or call out in their sleep from time to time, but other than those few irritations, things remained fairly quiet. All in all, it wasn’t so bad. The only thing was, he couldn’t go out when he wanted. It was like home, until he plucked up the courage to take on his mother and Crazy Nick and made his final break.

Mark tried, but sleep just wouldn’t come. Most of his thoughts centered on Tina and the news the policeman had given him of her death. Of course, he had known it, known as soon as he got to the woods and saw the firemen and the smoldering barges that she had to be dead. But he had tried to deny it to himself; now he had to face it and accept it: he would never see Tina again.

And it was his fault.

Tina. So gentle, so frail and so birdlike, it broke his heart that he had been unfaithful to her and hurt her and would never get the chance to put things right, to tell her he was sorry and that he loved her, only her, not Mandy or anyone else. Tina trusted him, needed him and depended on him. He got her through the bad times, and when there were good times – which there were – they laughed together, and some-times went on walks in the country and drank screw-top wine and ate cheese-slice sandwiches beside a crystal stream.

Sometimes they seemed to live an almost normal life, the kind of life Mark wanted for them. In his dreams, he got a steady job in Eastvale, maybe working on church restoration, got Tina straight, then they rented a little flat. When the first baby came, they had saved enough for a small semi, maybe by the sea. At least that was how he saw their life developing. He knew he’d be taking care of Tina forever, because she would always need that, even if she got straight, she was so badly scarred inside; but he could do it, he wanted to do it, and once she kicked the habit she couldn’t help but get stronger. She was intelligent, too, much brighter than he; maybe she could get into the college like Mandy and get a job as a secretary or something. He bet she could work with computers if she put her mind to it.

Sometimes they even made love, but that was hard for Tina; she was never far from the hunger and the darkness at the center of her being. The wrong word or gesture, and she was burrowing deep inside herself again, scrunching up in the fetal position with her thumb in her mouth, on the nod. And when she was like that, it didn’t matter if he was there or not. Which was why he hadn’t been there last night.

Tina wasn’t much interested in sex, partly because drugs do weird things to your sex drive, but mostly because of her stepfather. When Mark thought of Patrick Aspern, his stomach knotted and rage surged through him. One day he’d…

Despite what the policeman had said, Mark wondered if Tina could have started the fire accidentally. She heated her spoon over a candle to prepare her fix, and she’d been careless once or twice in the past. But he’d been there then, not like this time.

But no, he realized; it couldn’t have happened that way. He remembered that he had been careful to snuff out the candle himself before leaving her on the nod, in a sleeping bag, her eyes glazed, pupils dilated, to all intents and purposes lost to the world, wrapped in a warm cocoon of safety and oblivion, without a care, until it started to wear off and she started to itch and her stomach knotted up and her every pore oozed with craving for more. He’d been through it all with her so many times, and he knew he’d have gone through it again when he got home, if it hadn’t been for the fire.

He’d told Tina he was sick of her and her junkie ways, and if she didn’t get into some sort of rehabilitation center or methadone program he was leaving her. She didn’t care when he said it because the heroin was kicking in and flooding her veins and that rush, that golden warmth, was the only thing she cared about in the whole world when it spread through her like an orgasm. So he stormed out. Out to Mandy and her tantalizing, lithe young body. Tina didn’t know where he was going, of course, and she never would now. But he knew, and that was more than enough.

At least he knew the fire couldn’t have started on their boat. Did she know it was happening, that the flames were creeping closer, the smoke enveloping her? Even if she had come round when she smelled the smoke or saw the flames, would she have had time to get her head together and jump for land? Or water? Perhaps then she would have drowned. Tina couldn’t swim.

Mark curled up on the hard bunk, and the thoughts and fears tumbled around in his tired brain. When the drunk started up again with “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” he put his hands over his ears and cried.

“Is the music all right?” Banks asked Frances Aspern.

“Pardon?”

“The music. Is it okay?”

They were entering the Dales landscape beyond Ripon, and the distant shapes of the hills rose out of the mist in shades of gray, like whales breaking the water’s surface. Banks was playing Mariza’s Fado em Mim, traditional Portuguese songs, accompanied by classical guitar and bass, and he realized they might not be to everyone’s taste. Frances Aspern had been staring out of the window in silence the whole way so far, and he had almost given up trying to start a conversation. He couldn’t help but be aware of the weight of her grief beside him. Grief or guilt; he wasn’t certain which.