Where There's Smoke

He didn’t have to say what he was thinking. Ellis had only sent her clients the poster. He hadn’t set fire to anyone’s premises. So far.

Collins drained his teacup and set it down with finality on the coffee table.

“Would you like another?” Kate asked.

“No, thanks. I’d better be off. My wife’s expecting me.”

He made no attempt to leave. He nodded at Kate’s stomach. “How’s the, er...”

She glanced down at herself. “Oh, okay. Thanks. It doesn’t really feel like I’m pregnant yet. Apart from the morning sickness.”

“My wife was like that. Started early, and went right on until she was eight months. Not that that means anything,” he added.

Kate smiled. “How many kids have you got?”

“Just the one. A daughter, Elizabeth. She’s a doctor.” He said it with automatic pride.

“In London?”

“Manchester. Husband’s a surgeon there.”

“Any grandchildren?”

“Two grandsons. They’ll be six and four now.” His smile was fond and sad. “Don’t see much of them, but it’s difficult, I suppose. With both parents being so busy.” It had the sound of an old rationalisation, used to brush over a lingering pain.

“How about you?” Collins asked. “Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“No, there’s just me.”

“What about your mum and dad?”

“They’re both dead. But even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t go running to them for help now, if that’s why you were asking.”

He didn’t bother to deny it. “Didn’t you see eye to eye?”

Kate looked into the gas fire, trying to put the complex emotions into a simple sentence. She remembered a similar conversation with someone else, and the subject was suddenly uncomfortable. “Not really,” she said. “Anyway. Past history now.”

“But wouldn’t you like them to have seen their grandchild?”

There was an intense curiosity about him, almost a bewilderment. His daughter, Kate realised. He still doesn’t understand what went wrong. And all at once, as Collins sat there, she saw him as a father instead of a policeman, stranded on the wrong side of a generation, unable to fathom the hurts inflicted by his own blood. Was I like that? She had only ever considered the pain and injustices she’d received, not any she might have caused. The thought was disturbing, and she had enough to think about with the present. She pushed the doubts away from her, uncomfortably aware now that they would never completely go.

“All things considered, it’s perhaps as well they can’t,” Kate said, making light of it. “They’d share your views on how I got it.”

The Inspector looked down at his hands, smiling. “It’s probably an age thing.”

It was the closest they had come to acknowledging their differences. The concession made them awkward. Abruptly, Collins’s stomach gave a rumbling growl.

He looked startled. “Pardon,” he mumbled, patting it. Kate was amused to see him blush. “Well,” he said, putting his hands on his knees and standing up, “I’d better be going.”

Kate walked downstairs with him. He examined the freshly painted entrance. “Glad you got rid of the cat flap,” he commented, tapping the new door. He went out onto the path. “You remember what I said, now. Watch yourself.”

She was surprised to find she appreciated his concern. She wanted to tell him she’d enjoyed talking to him, but the words wouldn’t come. “Goodnight,” she said, and closed the door.

The young man was waiting on the other side of the road to the agency. Kate noticed him as she walked up the street, but after her first quick glance she paid him no further attention. Collins’s visit the night before had left her in an odd mood. She had gone to bed and, unusually, fallen asleep straight away. Even rarer, she had slept right through to her alarm clock going off. But she had woken with the dispersing memory of a dream, in which her father had stood outside the ruins of a house and accused her of burning it down with her baby inside. She had tried to tell him that she couldn’t have, because she was still pregnant, and she had looked down to see her naked and swollen stomach. Then, in the smouldering rubble of the house, she had seen a figure, and even though it was an adult she had known it was her baby. She had been happy, because that meant it had escaped the fire, but then she had seen it had Ellis’s features, only strangely unformed. And she had been frightened, because she knew he had started the fire, and also that it hadn’t happened yet. But when she tried to tell her father, she saw that he had become Collins. He stood in front of the smoking house and told her that things could be worse, they could always be worse, and then the alarm had gone off and woken her.

The dream had been disturbing, and rekindled unwelcome memories of bonfire night, when the man had thrown himself into the flames. Kate was still trying to shake off its pall when she became aware that the young man across the road was openly watching her.