THIRTY-SEVEN

'Do you want the good news or the bad news?' Chipchase whispered to Harry as Enslow took himself off to the loo straight after placing an order for dessert and coffee.

'Are they both connected with that phone call you took?'

'Yeah.'

'Give me the good, then. I could do with some after drawing a blank on the password.'

'Helen Morrison is more than ever convinced we're innocent and Plod's barking up the wrong tree.'

'That was her on the phone?'

'It was.'

'She didn't call just to say that?'

'No. That's where we get onto the bad news.'

'OK. Spit it out.'

'She's in Cardiff with her mother. When she heard about it on the local news this morning, she double-checked, so there's no—'

'Heard about what?'

'I'm trying to tell you. There was a fire at Askew's flat last night. The place was gutted. Everything destroyed.'

'Good God.'

'The Fire Brigade suspect arson. So do I, come to that. The question is—'

'Who did it? And why?'

'We shook Tancred's tree yesterday. Cause and effect, do you reckon?'

'Could be. Then again—'

'Hold up. Cliff's back. Smile, Harry. You're on Enslow-vision.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry and Barry said little as lunch drifted to a close. Enslow took up the conversational slack with his less than riveting observations on the changes he had seen in Henley over the years. Eventually, even these petered out. Harry paid. Enslow thanked them. They left.

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry walked out with Chipchase onto Henley Bridge. They gazed up the regatta course and watched Enslow's beetling progress along the riverside in the direction of Belle Rive. The sun was out, making a pretty scene of the lawns and the weeping willows and the graceful sweep of the Thames. But gloom had settled on Harry. Every question they asked either went unanswered or raised more questions. With every step they took, they slipped back at least as far.

'Well, he got a free lunch out of that,' growled Chipchase, pointing with his thumb at Enslow's receding figure. 'What did we get?'

'You got a free lunch as well, Barry. Since you ask. I got… precious little.'

There was a pause, during which Chipchase apparently decided to ignore the reference to his freeloading. 'Nixon and Maynard were both after the same thing in Scotland, weren't they?' he asked.

'Probably.'

'But we haven't a clue what that was.'

'Oh, we've got a clue. On disk. We just can't get at it.'

'Do you think Askew's flat was searched before it was torched?'

'Who knows? Maybe that's why it was torched. To destroy the evidence of a break-in.'

'But the disk is what they were after?'

'Has to be.'

'Then we've got to find out what's on it.'

'If you know how to do that without the password, Barry, now's the time to say.'

'I don't.'

'Somehow, I thought you didn't.'

'But I know a man who might.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Chipchase's 'man who might' was Andy Norrington, former fellow inmate of Channings Wood Prison. A bank clerk who had siphoned money from clients' accounts to fund his cocaine habit, his credentials as a manipulator of computer technology were undeniable. Released several months before Chipchase, he had written to his old cell-block neighbour urging him to make contact when he got out. 'But that was the last thing I wanted to do. He'd only have reminded me of the whole ghastly bloody experience just when I was trying to forget it.' So, Norrington had gone uncontacted. Until now.

—«»—«»—«»—

Four trains and three hours later, they arrived at the Beckenham bungalow of Norrington's parents, fervently hoping he had not moved on to a place of his own. The mobile-phone number he had given in his letter was no longer active and his e-mail address was of little use to the low-tech pairing of Harry and Barry. Tracking him down was more than a little hit or miss.

The door was answered by an elderly, gentle-voiced lady who confirmed that she was Mrs Norrington. When Chip-chase mentioned Andy, however, her face froze. All she managed to say was, 'Oh dear, oh dear. Oh Lord.' Chipchase was halfway through a stumbling explanation of how he knew her son when Mr Norrington, a stooped and shuffling old man with vast, greasy-lensed spectacles as thick as milk bottles, appeared in the hall.

'You're a friend… of Andy's?' he wheezed.

'That's right. From… Well, er, we met… inside, if you know what I mean. He may have mentioned me. Barry Chipchase.'

Norrington looked blankly at his wife and she looked blankly back at him. 'I… don't think so,' he said.

'Oh dear, oh dear. Oh Lord. You tell them, Perce. I can't …' With that Mrs Norrington turned and tottered away out of sight.

'Tell us what?' Harry prompted.

'Well…' Norrington swayed slightly and placed one hand against the door to steady himself. 'Thing is… Andy's no longer… with us.'

'He's moved away?' Chipchase responded.

'No, no. I mean… he's…'

'No longer with us,' Harry whispered into Chipchase's ear, having already grasped what the old man meant. 'Passed away. Gone to a better place. Dead.'

'It was the drugs,' said Norrington. 'He went back on them … when he couldn't… get on as he'd hoped. Only it… was worse than before and… one day he…'

—«»—«»—«»—

The exact circumstances of Andy Norrington's fatal overdose were never spelt out. They hardly needed to be. He would not be cracking codes for anyone. Harry and Barry made their way back to the station with nothing to show for their visit.

'A waste of time, I'm afraid,' said Harry, for no very good reason beyond breaking the silence that had settled glumly upon them.

'And bloody depressing too,' said Chipchase. 'I'd have backed Andy to make it on the outside. I thought he had what it took. I thought I had what it took. I'm not so sure any more, Harry. I've got the skids under me. Maybe the bastard who did for Danger would be doing me a favour if—'

'For God's sake, Barry, it's not that bad.'

'Isn't it?'

'While there's life, there's hope.'

'Yeah. Trouble is, it's false hope every bloody time.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The journey back to Swindon did nothing to boost Chip-chase's spirits. The rush hour's encroachment into early evening made it sweatily crowded as well as agonizingly slow. Conversation was ruled out by the seats they managed to find being widely separated and none was stimulated by their weary trudge from the station to Falmouth Street. Chipchase stopped short at the Glue Pot, where Harry undertook to join him after phoning Donna.

—«»—«»—«»—

He caught her on her mobile at the University, as he had banked on doing.

'Do you think your colleagues in the chemistry department will have heard of a drug called MRQS, Donna?'

'What does it stand for and what does it do?'

'No idea on both counts.'

'It's going to be a tough call, then. I'd have to persuade one of them to spend a chunk of time checking their databases.'

'What about that guy Samuels? Isn't he a chemist? The way he was looking at you at the Christmas party, I'd say he was eminently persuadable.'

'I don't actually want to encourage Marvin, Harry. How important is this?'

'Could be very.'

There was a lengthy pause before Donna said: 'Oh God. All right, then. I'll see what I can do. On one condition.'

'Which is?'

'Take extra care, OK? Just for me, hon. I'm still worried about you, you know. If not more so.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Taking extra care, as Harry had promised to do, was easy in one way. There were no other avenues left to explore. All they could do now was sit tight in Swindon. And tight he and Chipchase certainly were after an evening in the Glue Pot imbibing a beer with the ominous name Monkey's Revenge. When they returned home, Harry found a message from Donna waiting for him on the telephone. 'Marvin's on the case. Speak to you tomorrow. Lots of love from me and Daisy.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry slept poorly, disturbed by vivid dreams and Chipchase's snoring in the next bedroom. His brain began grinding its way through possible nine-letter passwords to no avail. Then the past closed around him, as it was always likely to do in that bed and that room and that house, where he had slept both as child and adult and where virtually nothing had changed in all the years of his life.

—«»—«»—«»—

When he heard the noise he thought at first he was dreaming, even though he believed himself to be awake. There was a crash from below, a whoomph of ignition, a slowly growing roar. His senses responded sluggishly, his brain wrestling stiffly with what it could not assimilate. The night grew lighter, bewilderingly so. There was a crackling now, buried within the roar. He sat up. And saw, through the half-open door, the source of the sound and the sallow, flickering glow. Fire was climbing the stairs.