Playing With Fire

“Yes?”

Hatchley shook his head. “Poor bastard,” he said.

“What can you tell me?”

“His mother’s Sharon Siddons, a right slag if ever there was one. I thought the name rang a bell. They lived on the East Side Estate, where else? She died a year ago. Lung cancer.”

“Father?”

“Du

“Crazy Nick?”

“One and the same.”

Banks had indeed heard of Crazy Nick. You couldn’t be a copper in Eastvale for five minutes without hearing of him. Disturbing the peace, breaking and entering, assault, GBH, drunk and disorderly. You name it, and if it took no brains, Crazy Nick had done it. Stopping just short of murder. The last time he’d been arrested it had taken four strapping PCs to hold him down and bring him in. He never stopped swearing and struggling the whole time, and once he was in the cell he drove the custody section insane with his nonstop stream of curses and banging.

“Isn’t he a guest of Her Majesty at the moment?”

“Indeed he is,” said Hatchley. “Strangeways. And he won’t be out for quite a while. Whacked a night watchman with a hammer during a warehouse break-in and fractured his skull.”

“How long was he with the Siddons woman?”

“Until she started to show the cancer symptoms,” said Hatchley. “Then he was off like a shot. Died alone, and in agony, poor cow.”

“Was he around when Mark ran off?”

“Yes. Probably the reason. Believe it or not, Mark gave him a bloody good hiding. Enough to put him in hospital for a couple of days, at any rate. Broken nose. Couple of ribs. Twenty stitches in his scalp. Concussion. Took him by surprise. Went crazy on him, according to the neighbors. Even his mother couldn’t drag him off.”

“Good for him,” Banks said. “And Nick didn’t take his revenge? That’s not like him.”

“Couldn’t find the kid, then he got caught for that warehouse job.”

“But Mark’s got no form, himself?”

“No. We’ve had him in on sus for a couple of house-breakings, and he once got caught shoplifting in HMV. Charges dropped. That’s all.”

“Anything important we haven’t got him for?”

“No. At least I can’t find any rumors.”

And if anyone could, Banks knew, it was probably Hatchley, with his long list of snitches and a pair of eyes in practically every pub in Eastvale. “So he’s basically a clean kid?” he said.

“Looks that way,” Hatchley agreed. “He attended Eastvale Comprehensive, but was truant as often as not. Didn’t get into much trouble there, apart from a bit of a shoving match with one teacher, but he didn’t exactly shine academically, either. Good at games, though. Want me to keep on digging?”

“Anything to do with fires come up in co

“Not that I can find.”

“He didn’t try to set fire to the school, or to the house after he beat up Crazy Nick?”

“Just ran off. Never went back.”

“Sensible,” said Banks. Given the sort of background Mark had endured, both with his mother and her earlier men friends, and with Crazy Nick Papadopoulos, it was no surprise that he was willing to believe Tina’s tale of woe without question. It didn’t mean she wasn’t telling the truth, however, and Banks had certainly sensed something wrong in the Aspern household. There was another thing, too; from what Hatchley had told Banks, Mark certainly had a violent temper, no matter how justifiable his uprising against Crazy Nick had been. The lad needed watching.

“Okay, Jim,” Banks said. “Thanks very much.”

“Cheers,” said Hatchley. “My pleasure.”

By Monday afternoon, Mark was close to Sutton Bank, and starving. He was glad he had gone back into the pub for his lunch the previous day after the shock of seeing Tina’s image on the TV screen. The landlord had given him a dirty look, but other than that, his abrupt departure and return hardly raised an eyebrow. That evening he had eaten fish and chips and kipped down in another old barn. He had got up earlier on Monday morning, with only enough money for a chocolate bar left in his pocket. After walking a few miles, he realized he wasn’t trying to do the coast-to-coast walk, that was for anoraks, so he might as well at least try to get a lift.

Just outside Northallerton, a man towing a horse box gave him a lift to Thirsk. All the way he had been aware of the horse shifting nervously behind him, and he thought he could smell manure. The driver hadn’t said much, just dropped him off in the High Street, and now he was on the Scarborough Road hoping for another kind soul to stop for him.

It was a gray afternoon, the clouds so low and the air so moist it was almost, but not quite, raining. “Mizzling,” they called it in Yorkshire, describing that bone-chilling combination of mist and drizzle. There wasn’t much traffic, and most of the cars and vans that passed just whizzed by without even slowing down. If he got to Scarborough, Mark knew, there was a good chance he’d be able to pick up some casual laboring work. It didn’t matter what – ditch-digging, demolition, construction – he could turn his hand to almost anything as long as it didn’t involve being educated. School had hardly been more than a mild distraction throughout his childhood and adolescence.

A police patrol car cruised by and seemed to slow down a bit just ahead of him. Mark tensed. He knew the coppers weren’t going to give him a lift. Most likely beat the shit out of him and leave him lying bleeding in a field. He must have been imagining things, though, because the car carried on and disappeared into the distance.

Mark trudged on, hardly bothering to stick out his thumb. He must have walked a couple of miles, the steep edge of Sutton Bank looming before him, when he heard a car coming and remembered to stick out his thumb. The car slowed to a halt about ten yards in front of him. It was quite a posh one, he noticed, an Audi, and shiny, as if it had just been cleaned. It would make a nice change from the horse box. For a moment, Mark worried that it might be the killer, but how could anyone know where he was?

The driver leaned over and opened the passenger window. He was a middle-aged bloke, Mark saw, wearing a camel overcoat and leather driving gloves. Mark didn’t recognize him.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Scarborough,” said Mark.

“Hop in.”

He seemed a pleasant enough bloke. Mark hopped in.

Chapter 10

Banks grabbed his leather jacket, left by the back door and slipped behind the wheel of his 1997 Renault, thinking it was about time he had a new car, maybe something a bit sportier, if he could afford it. Nothing too flashy, and definitely not red. Racing green, perhaps. A convertible wasn’t much use in Yorkshire, but maybe a sports car would do. His midlife crisis car, though he didn’t particularly feel as if he were going through a crisis. Sometimes he felt as if his life was on hold indefinitely, but that was hardly a crisis. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was getting older; there was no doubt about that.

A snippet of interesting information about Andrew Hurst had just come to his attention. A

He slipped in an old Van Morrison CD to dispel the January blues – not entirely convinced that they were caused by the weather – and drove off listening to “Jackie Wilson Said.” It was just over a mile to the edge of town, past the new-look college, and another couple of miles of mostly open countryside to the canal. The road wound by fields of cows and sheep, drystone walls on either side, an occasional wooded area and stiles with signposts pointing the direction for ramblers. Not that it was rambling weather. You’d soon catch a chill and probably get bogged down in the mud before you got too far in open country. To his right, he could see the far-off bulk of the hills, like the swell before the wave frozen in a gray ocean.