The Fire Man Read online

  The Fire Man

  Iain Adams

  Copyright © 2015 Iain Adams

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

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  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to

  real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Matador®

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  For Mum and Dad

  Contents

  Cover

  Book of Job

  SUMMER 2011

  1

  2007

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  2009

  24

  2011

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  Epilogue

  Book of Job

  Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

  SUMMER 2011

  1

  London, July 2011

  McCartney’s double-tracked vocal was cut short by an irritated twist of the dial. He’d never liked the Beatles, couldn’t stand “Can’t buy me love”, and he certainly didn’t want to hear it now.

  Apart from that, he wasn’t even sure he accepted the adage that wealth doesn’t equate to happiness. He was prepared to bet that the majority of the population would prefer to discover the truth of this statement for themselves.

  McRae was indisputably amongst this number. When he wasn’t actively daydreaming about lottery wins and the effect such an unlikely event would no doubt have on his attractiveness to women, he was acutely conscious that a derisory half million or so would be a help. This thought invariably occurred to him whenever his Volvo decided to be uncooperative.

  It was certainly being a pain this warm Friday morning. The engine was running – it never failed –but the air conditioning fluid needed recharging, and, horror of horrors, the heated seats were malfunctioning. They wouldn’t quite switch off but remained stuck at a low simmer. On a rare July morning when the temperature was already in the seventies, in stop-go traffic on the Edgware Road, McRae really didn’t need his backside to be maintained at a casserole temperature. God knew he had a tendency to perspire at the best of times, being less than fit and a stone overweight, but now he was sopping. The glove-box supply of tissues had long since disintegrated and the neckband of his shirt had become increasingly sodden as his dark hair glistened. Perspiration trickled down his neck and gathered in the hollow of his back.

  What was really increasing both his temperature and blood pressure was the tension that accompanied a tailing exercise in Central London. Don’t lose him, was the abiding fear. This was an opportunity that had arisen out of the blue and would not be repeated. A split-second mistake would blow it all.

  McRae was hardly an expert. He had never attempted the like before; that was a job for others. Despite a lifetime’s addiction to the spy novels of Greene, le-Carré and Deighton, the real thing was proving distinctly taxing.

  The police or MI5 would no doubt have at least three cars and half a dozen ace operatives engaged in a single tailing exercise. All manipulated by some hi-tech coordinator who seamlessly switched his resources. At least, that’s what happened in the movies. He, on the other hand, was attempting to do the same job solo – on his Jack Jones! He didn’t know what he was doing; he really hadn’t a clue.

  The odds were not in his favour.

  The first twenty minutes had been easy. Hunched, sweating, in his tired green Volvo in front of the stucco-dressed houses of leafy Onslow Square, theatrically consulting a London A-Z for what seemed eternity, had been risky, but more from a parking violation perspective than anything else. If there was one thing that remained “world-class” about Britain it was the truly dedicated performance of the country’s traffic wardens.

  As anticipated, the tall, slim man with the blond, public-school haircut, looking cool and relaxed in a pink shirt and jeans, had emerged from the front door of his Georgian townhouse at around 11am. He had paused briefly to glance back at the house where a petite, dark-haired woman in sunglasses was standing in the doorway, before striding athletically to within a few feet of the Volvo. Tensed up behind his map, McRae had been immeasurably relieved when the man had stepped off the pavement to cross the road. A few moments after this, a silver Mercedes coupe had then nosed its way out of a parking bay.

  McRae had, somehow, been able to insert his Volvo behind a green Mini that had screened him from the coupe. He had barely been able to make it through the lights and onto the Brompton Road, but he was, by the skin of his teeth, still in touch with his man. Miraculously, he had maintained this position around Hyde Park without too much difficulty – until now. The cars were crawling a few at a time northwards along the Edgware Road, approaching road-works at the traffic light junction with the Westway and Marylebone Road. The direction the Mercedes chose at the junction would be interesting and could prove crucial to his ability to continue the pursuit.

  This is bloody ridiculous, he thought. What on earth could be gained from it? Why am I putting myself through this trauma?

  Seeking to relax his tension, he fiddled with the radio for a moment before dismissing the LBC phone-in show in which ill-informed, inarticulate punters were, as usual, being patronised by a bombastic host. Switching to the CD player, he distractedly selected a Leonard Cohen album. No sooner had Famous Blue Raincoat begun before he decided that the deathly drone was doing nothing for his mood. He clicked the audio off.

  A few silent seconds followed before he fumbled around the inside of the door pocket. Eventually, fishing out his di
sposable lighter, McRae lit a Camel – he reckoned it must be his fourth (or was it the fifth?) of the day. Either way, it was shaping up to be yet another full-packet day. He sighed heavily. He had been trying to cut down smoking, drinking and eating for six months. However, it seemed as if the effort always flagged in one direction or the other. Of course, recent events hadn’t helped. No, they certainly hadn’t done anything for either his physical or mental state.

  McRae was nervous. He was, he conceded, distinctly jittery. He really didn’t need to be doing this. And it was ironic that the cause of McRae’s anxieties – the man in the silver Mercedes, currently purring contentedly away only 30 feet or so in front of McRae’s Volvo – was himself no doubt cocooned in air-conditioned comfort.

  2007

  The youth knew precisely what he had to do. He had done it before.

  He ignored the high-pitched electronic whine of the siren as he pulled a king-sized cigarette from the pack of Marlboro. He stuffed the packet back into his navy blouson pocket and carefully lit the cigarette with a match torn from a new matchbook. He wasn’t a smoker, but, for a second or two, he drew deeply on the cigarette until satisfied that it was comfortably alight. He coughed, spat to clear his mouth of the filthy taste and meticulously laid the cigarette at a right angle across the unused matches. Carefully, he then refolded the cover of the matchbook and securely trapped the cork tip of the cigarette. When the cigarette burned down to the matches, they would flare.

  The timing device – crude, but remarkably effective – was ready.

  He stooped and carefully positioned the cigarette and its matchbook overcoat just inside an open plastic sack standing on the floor. The concrete floor glistened and the stench of accelerant was becoming ever more pronounced as the solvent slowly vaporised. The sack contained an unremarkable yet artfully selected assortment of floor sweepings, crumpled paper and loose pieces of polyurethane packing. It would go up like a rocket once the smouldering cigarette eventually ignited the matchbook. The whole process would take approximately three minutes. The stuff on the floor would help it from there.

  It was time to go.

  He left by the same route as he had entered; crossed the car park, stepped over the crumbling wall and walked swiftly but carefully across the dark, nettle-ridden field, his white trainers glinting in the blackness. Soon, he reached the main road. At this time of the morning, scarcely dawn, there wasn’t a single car in sight – only the sodium street lighting leavened the gloom. He turned and stared back towards the warehouse. No one was yet paying attention to the alarm, which in any event was scarcely audible from his position. He checked his watch. Any minute now....

  2

  Birmingham, May 2007

  The call had appeared inconsequential at first.

  Fairclough and Partners was appointed to investigate around twenty new cases of theft, flood, fire or whatever catastrophe was in vogue for the time of year every working day. Client instructions usually arrived by email but occasionally, as in this case, where the potential loss was either more urgent (or, from the Fairclough perspective, of greater value), the client insurer would phone the case through. Even so, with an estimated reserve of only £20,000, there was no undue sense of celebration or anticipation as Andrew McRae, known to all as Drew, fingered the newly created file that nestled in a pale blue manila folder.

  As the recently promoted manager of Fairclough in Birmingham, McRae was still familiarising himself with his new territory, having previously been in charge of a less strategic, albeit longer established, outpost in Preston.

  Fairclough had, historically, been a northern-biased partnership, the founding partner a proud (some said bigoted) Yorkshireman. The partnership had only started to seriously expand following Arthur Fairclough’s premature death two years earlier. That same death had created the opportunity for McRae and one of his peers to become junior partners.

  Loss adjusters such as Fairclough are professionally responsible for negotiating the settlement of complex insurance claims. The company had never been a big player outside of the North of England, but as the major insurers and underwriters began to pursue a policy of employing only those companies capable of providing a truly nationwide service, the time had been deemed right for Fairclough to expand. The old man would no doubt have turned in his grave at the thought that his tight, highly professional and exceedingly profitable company was now hell-bent on catching up with the leaders in the market, and almost at any cost. It was a strategy which was not without risk, but which undoubtedly presented serious opportunities for ambitious young men. Had Fairclough ever deigned to employ a single qualified woman, no doubt she too would have had an opportunity, but the old man had maintained somewhat traditional views concerning the role of women. Well, he was Yorkshire through and through, rationalised McRae.

  At the age of 37 he was well placed to capitalise on the company’s new growth strategy – so, too, was Terry Donoghue, his fellow junior partner and, hence, theoretical rival. In practise, McRae and Donoghue got on pretty well, being of a similar age and background, and any potential competitive issues were a distant future concern. In May 2007 all that mattered to either McRae or Terry, who was now heading up another new office in Cardiff, was simply to survive in their demanding new roles.

  Expense had been the number one consideration when the Castle Street office had been selected. It was cheap; the maintenance charges were stunningly low, and low charges naturally equated to little or no maintenance – as the frequently inactive lift could testify. Fortunately, occupying what the landlords wittily referred to as a “suite” on the first floor, the lift, working or otherwise, was not an insuperable problem. McRae had spent a modest sum seeking, unsuccessfully, to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse by redecorating the walls and replacing the original carpet tiles. Though it was a little small, the place looked professional enough and it was indisputably well located.

  McRae’s own office could only be described as poky. He personally preferred the term “bijou”. It had a cosy feel. The crisp white painted walls had been enlivened – if that was the correct expression – with two of his own watercolours. One was a Highland scene that he had shamelessly and painstakingly copied from a “Learn to Paint in a Day” guide; the other was a muddy, but rather striking mess of deep blood reds, pale blues and heather greens, which, if asked, he described as an abstract. In truth, the “abstract” was an attempt at an interior still life that had gone badly wrong.

  He had an irrational affection for both pictures. Although his painting skills had improved, marginally, over the years, he had no intention of discarding these, his first attempts, which many visitors presumed to be the work of his non-existent children.

  McRae pulled his gaze away from the artwork and glanced out of the window, across Castle Street, to the construction site immediately opposite. Despite consistently poor May weather, the building of the new block, which would render the natural light in his office even less when complete, was racing ahead. As he watched, a cherry picker was being used to lift a hard-hatted foreman to a third-floor window opening, where, without apparent concern, the same man leapt the small, but potentially fatal, gap and disappeared into the building. Good God, he thought, the Health and Safety wallahs would have had a fit if they’d seen that!

  It was, he concluded, safer in his own line of business. Safer, but not necessarily longer lived, unless the financial numbers started to stack up. McRae loved his job with a passion but he was well aware that the Birmingham office was both a massive opportunity and a threat. He had to succeed.

  There was a small team: Graeme Cairns, the office surveyor and his deputy; Dave Jensen, aka the “man in the middle” as he chose to style himself; two junior adjusters, Kevin and Mike; as well as office staff that included Karen, office manager, and Jenny and Puri who basically did everything else. With the exception of Kevin, who drove McRae insane with his sloppy report-writing, he was happy with them all – particularly so with his ke
y lieutenants Graeme and Karen, who as well as looking after most of the administration was effectively McRae’s PA.