Playing With Fire

Holding her own breath, A

It was the middle of the night when A

Banks wasn’t out of danger yet. He still wasn’t conscious, for a start. A

A

When she caught a glance of herself in the mirror, she was surprised at the muddy hair, sooty face and the frightened eyes that looked back at her. The doctor who had examined A

Phil. Phil Keane had done all this. He had enlisted his old polytechnic pals McMahon and Gardiner to help him with the art scam, and they had got together and turned on him. For that, he had killed them. It had to have happened that way. It was the only thing that made sense now. Philip Keane, not Leslie Whitaker, was Giles Moore. Philip Keane, not Leslie Whitaker, had assumed William Masefield’s identity, and perhaps even killed him, too.

A

She realized that Phil, or whatever his name really was, was one of those rare creatures indeed: part charming con man, part cold-blooded killer. Con men didn’t usually kill, not unless they were cornered and could see no other way out. And that was what must have happened. The threat of exposure. Of ruin. Of prison.

Phil Keane made people feel special so that he could manipulate them. Chameleonlike, he metamorphosed from one identity to another, leaving chaos in his wake. And he did it for profit and self-protection. A

And he made you feel special.

A

And to cap it all, the bastard had got away.

There was a huge manhunt going on, even now, but A

But the reporters were on the scene almost as quickly as the fire brigade. This was big news. Banks was a well-known local detective with a number of successful cases under his belt. In no time flat, the local news on TV and radio was informing the good citizens of Eastvale and, no doubt, the rest of England, that DCI Alan Banks had been pulled from his blazing cottage by his heroic DI A

A

She stripped her clothes off and dropped them in the laundry basket. Already, she noticed, her foot was turning yellow, black and blue. At least it wasn’t broken. The doctor had told her that much.

A

Taking a plastic bag from the cupboard under the sink, she dropped the toothbrush in it. You never knew. It could contain Phil Keane’s DNA. Because one day they’d catch the bastard, and then they would need all the evidence they could get.

It was two days before Banks was allowed visitors at Eastvale General Infirmary, and A

Banks lay propped up on his pillows, one side of his face bandaged and smeared with antibiotic salve, looking at the rain through his window. He looked spent, A

He had lost everything. Banks’s cottage didn’t exist anymore. She had seen it with her own eyes reduced by fire to nothing more than a roofless shell. Everything he owned had gone up in flames: his CDs, clothes, furniture, stereo, all his memorabilia, family photographs, papers, letters, the lot. He had nothing left except his car and whatever personal effects he kept in his office. Did he know this? Surely someone must have told him.