Episode 6 - Mother's pride

Wednesday cont.

Nigel had spread out his notebook on the far table in Gary’s old office. Roger sat down at Gary’s desk from where he could observe Bryn Thomas. He wanted to take a good look at the guy before asking any questions.

Mr Thomas was led in and stopped in his tracks when he saw Nigel in has police uniform.

“Who the hell’s that?” he said.

“Remember me, Mr Thomas?”

“Yes, you bastard. You turned me down.”

“I did, didn’t I? But our losers get a second chance, Mr Thomas.”

“I’m not a loser, but I’ll take you up on that. You did not see my best presentation.”

Call me next week then,” said Nigel. “And come to the show on Saturday. That will give you an idea of what we expect of our performers.”

Gary tried not to show his amusement.

“But this comes too late to stop what you did last night, doesn’t it?” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Not about the posters. We replaced them,” said Gary. “And we think we know who wrote or instigated that anonymous threat.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” said Mr Thomas.

“Of course it was your idea. Those women are friends. Why should one need to threaten the other?”

“That’s what women do,” said Thomas.

“So you’re an expert, are you?” said Roger, getting up from the desk to approach Thomas. “What about making fires, Mr Thomas? Do you confine them to grates?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My villa,” said Gary. “Why did you go there?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you knew I owned it.”

“Hilda said you did. Come into money, I expect.”

“There’s evidence to prove that you did go there last night, Mr Thomas,” said Gary, ignoring Thomas’s comment.

“So what?”

“Does the name Harry Marble mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“I did some homework,” said Gary. “You shared a cell with Harry Marble.”

Everyone looked surprised.

Gary pressed on.

“You spent a couple of years in prison, didn’t you, Mr Thomas?”

“What if I did?”

“And you told Harry Marble all about the villa, I expect.”

“Why should I do that?”

“One creep to another, I expect,” said Gary, getting his own back.

“I’ll get you for that.”

“You won’t.”

“Wait and see.”

“Is that a threat?”

“More of a promise,” said Thomas.

 He could put the fear of God into a woman but he wasn’t having the desired effect on this cop. He expected to be reminded of one or two hate crimes on women, but he was in luck.

“You burnt a haystack out, just for fun, as a kid, didn’t you?”

“That was 30 years ago. And I did not go to prison for it.”

“First offence and underage, Mr Thomas. So what happened  after that?”

“I got a whipping from my father, if you want to know.”

“You wouldn’t be the first kid to be fascinated by fire, but most of them grow out of it,” said Gary.

“What are you on about?” said Thomas.

Gary was improvising at that moment, but his guesswork was based on an investigation into a series of fires the other side of Huddlecourt Minor, a village situated higher but close to Upper Grumpsfield and mainly a farming community.

“I’ll explain,” Gary said to Roger and Nigel. “A little guy just like him 30 years ago went round the houses telling the occupants that his father had run out of matches for his pipe. One or two were generous enough to give the little guy a box of matches. Armed with his incendiary devices, he visited local farms when he should have been in bed asleep and set fire to hay and straw, sometimes in shelters that served as extras for the livestock. That must have been a pretty sight – fired burning in the middle of field. Then he set fire to a pigsty that had been strewn with fresh straw. The pigs squealed in fright and fortunately someone rescued them. The little guy was caught rooted to the spot, frightened by the squeals of those poor pigs. I don’t know if he repeated the fire-kindling in those days. He probably didn’t he did because he had been caught and punished. Some little guys grow up to be big guys with pyrotechnical ambitions, and some are not caught before they can wreck real havoc, Mr Thomas. Does that apply to you? Did you take walks aroun d Huddlecourt Minot after you moved into Hilda’s house?”

Thomas did not answer that question, but he broke out into a sweat and the salty beads rolled down his cheeks.

“I was not that kid. I lived in Cardiff.”

“Did you? Does your mother still live there, Mr Thomas?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“Just wondering, Mr Thomas. I expect she misses you.”

“Not her. She’s too busy with God and her bloody church.”

Gary was actually thinking that he had managed a breakthrough. The guy’s mother was still alive and he knew she was religious, so that definitely narrowed down the search considerably. He was also gratified to see that Thomas was unnerved by the little boy story. Arsonists usually have a history of lighting fires.

“You should know that we’ve already collected enough evidence to charge you with arson, Mr Thomas.”

“You can’t have.”

“Why not? I expect you looked back from a safe distance and watched the flames for a moment.”

“What flames?”

“Don’t you know about the fire? I can’t believe that.”

“I admit going there with Hilda because she said she was going to do the cleaning and wanted to look at the place.”

That was a lie and Gary knew it. If Hilda had told him that, she had been lying, and if he made it up, he was lying.

“So you broke in, did you?” Gary continued.

“The back door was not locked.”

“It’s illegal to enter someone else’s property even if the door is wide open.”

“But Hilda said it would be all right,” said Thomas.

“OK. So why did you leave her there?”

“She wanted to tidy the office room.”

“So you went into the office, did you?”

“I just had a quick luck.”

“What did you find in the other rooms?”

“Apart from a big bed with the cover all rumpled, nothing. There was a stack of wallpaper and stuff on the landing,” Thomas added.

That puzzled Gary. The bed was a new purchase to celebrate the house-move. Cleo had draped it artistically with a counterpane.  Admittedly they had made love there once when their joy at owning the villa overcame them, but there was no question of them leaving the bed untidy.

“So Hilda took you all over the house in the middle of the night, did she?” said Gary. “I don’t believe a word.”

“I don’t care what you believe. She wanted to look round and I went with her. That’s how it was.”

“Where did you go after that house inspection, Mr Thomas?”

“Home.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you mean Hilda’s house.”

“My house.”

“Ah yes, your father left half of it to you, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

So he knew about you, if you were in his will.”

“He left us when I was nine. I found the deeds with his signature. I didn’t know before that.”

“How did you know about the house?”

“My mother knew about it. She told me to go there and get what I could.”

“Did Hilda show you the deeds?”

“Hilda went out shopping, the silly bitch, leaving me alone in the house.”

“So you had a good look round, I expect.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” said Gary.

“I found a metal box in her wardrobe. All her papers were in there, so I looked through them.”

“And came across the deeds…”

“Yes. Nothing wrong in that, is there? My father had lived with the woman for years, so I thought some of his stuff would be in there.”

“And you discovered that Hilda had given your father half the house, didn’t you?”

Thomas nodded.

Hilda Bone is very generous, isn’t she? She must have loved your father.”

“I expect she did,” said Thomas.

Gary had used the present tense and was waiting for Mr Thomas to correct his words, but he didn’t.

“You’d like to have it all, wouldn’t you, Mr Thomas?” said Roger.

“All what?”

“Hilda was in the way, I suppose,” said Gary.

“I would have bought her out,” said Thomas.

“With your prison pay, Mr Thomas?” said Roger.

“With a mortgage.”

“Did Hilda agree with that idea?”

“She would have had to agree. Or ….”

“Or what?” said Gary. “Why the past tense, Mr Thomas?”

“I want a lawyer.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Nigel from his corner.

Gary signalled to the guard to take Bryn Thomas back to his arrest cell.

“You’d better think about things, Mr Thomas,” said Roger. “You’re in quite a sticky mess.”

Thomas did not reply and actually looked perplexed.

***

When he had gone the triumvirate discussed Thomas’s obvious bafflement. It was as if he knew nothing about the fire. Asking for a lawyer was routine; every US crime series was teeming with attorneys.

“But that interview could have gone better,” said Roger.

“Unless he had nothing more to say,” said Nigel. “The questioning reads like a radio script.”

“He’s nervous, Nigel, and we need more information before we can crack him.”

“Always assuming there’s something to crack,” said Roger. “He’s an nasty little runt, but I’m not sure he gets beyond issuing threats.”

“ But we now know where his mother is and that bed might be significant. Did someone else stay the night there and did Thomas know who it was?”

“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” chirped Nigel. “Better not go down to the woods tonight.”

“Take some bread for the birds if you do, Nigel. Did you get everything down?”

“You didn’t bring in the travesty show, Gary.”

“But you did, Nigel. Well done! He was waiting for me to say something after you had made him that offer. He’s in a quandary. If he burnt the villa down to avenge Dorothy for inviting you to put show on, his action was pointless. If he just knows the villa was burnt down, he’s in just as bad a position because he made no attempt to save it.”

“You’re still assuming that he lit that bonfire,” said Nigel.

“Do you doubt it?” said Gary.

“He might have had something else on his mind,” said Nigel. “He looked startled when you mentioned Harry Marble.”

“He was certainly on edge,“ said Roger. “I’d keep him locked him up while you find out more about him.”

Nigel found Thomas very distasteful. He would no doubt have to make sure the guy was looked after during his visit.

“Just look at him,” he said. “He’s a sight for sore eyes and a wimp. I don’t believe he lit that fire and I can’t think why he had to drag that poor woman to the villa, especially if he was going to meet someone else there. It doesn’t fit.”

“She dragged him, didn’t she?” said Roger.

“Cleo calls that kind of a theorising doing a Dorothy, Nigel.”

“My thinking of Thomas the diva slobbering around on stage while the Lucky 13 guys fell about laughing – but not because it was funny; it was pathetic. No Sir.”

”But you could use a clown in your show, couldn’t you? said Gary.

“Not that kind!”

“Of course, it hardly bears thinking about, but Hilda Bone might have tried it on with him,” said Roger.

“Wasn’t Hilda over 60?” said Nigel.

“Queers often like older women because they aren’t as promiscuous as young girls, but there are exceptions to every rule, Nigel.”

“I read somewhere that they go for young men because it makes them feel young,” said Nigel.

“If I were a woman, I’d be terrified of him, especially if he had tried to throw me out of my home, but he may have hit her because she said something he did not like,” said Roger. “And having hit her so that she fell dazed or even unconscious, he got scared and made a run for it. Do you think that happened?”

“It’s possible, but there must have been someone there to finish the job,” said Gary. “What if he had agreed to meet someone there? Who could it be?”

“In that case he would have left Hilda at home, surely,” said Roger.

“Not if he needed her to take him to the villa at dead of night. He isn’t local,” said Gary. “What if he was telling the truth about Hilda?”

“We seem to have a choice,” said Roger. “Either he told the truth and the fire was caused by someone else, or he did it all by himself and then made a quick getaway thinking Hilda was following him.”

 “It doesn’t explain the locked office door, though,” said Gary. “If he was running away, he would hardly have stopped to lock the door. Who else should be considered?”

“Who else would he know?” Nigel said.

“I’ve got a good idea what Cleo will say, but we’d better wait for her to say it,” said Gary. “It will sound less farfetched coming from her.”

“Are you going to let Mr Thomas go home in time for the show?” Nigel asked. “He gestured to me not to forget the offer.”

“Lucky for you he kept his gestures clean, Nigel. Would you let him go free?”

“No.”

“Neither would I,” said Gary, “but if you keep him hoton the trail of the next show, I don’t think he’ll disappear.”