Where There's Smoke

Collins’s face gave no indication of his thoughts as he studied the poster. It had ragged edges from where it had been torn from the wall, but most of it was intact. From the street came the wet hiss of the steam cleaner as it blasted the front of the terrace. Even with the windows closed, the office was humid with the smell of damp paper.

The Inspector put the poster down on the desk. “Well, I think we can safely say he’s putting his work experience at the printer’s to good use.”

Kate looked away from the upside-down image in front of her. “I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

The chair protested as Collins tried to ease his bulk into a more comfortable position. He gave up and sat uncomfortably, his big hands resting slackly on his thighs.

“I don’t think it’s particularly funny. Miss Powell. Though I’d rather he occupied himself making posters instead of lighting fires. Upsetting, I know, but not as bad as burning the building down.”

Kate didn’t answer. The fire at her flat had shaken her, but this seemed worse, somehow.

“Do you recognise the picture? The one of you, I mean?” Collins asked.

She nodded, still without looking at it. “It looks like one of the ones he took at Cambridge. From the same day as the one I gave you. I don’t think he had any others.”

The memory seemed to belong to another person. It gave her a dull ache in her chest, like heartburn.

“Does it matter where he got it from, anyway?” she snapped, to dispel it. “The point is that he put the bloody posters up! What happened to the patrols you said were going to keep watching for him?”

Collins rubbed the bridge of his nose with a thick forefinger. “None of them noticed anything out of the ordinary when they were in this area.”

“They couldn’t have been in the area very long, then. How could they have missed him, for God’s sake? He must have been here half the night!”

“King’s Cross isn’t the easiest area to police, Miss Powell. Our officers do the best they can, but they can’t be everywhere at once.”

“It doesn’t seem like they were around here at all.”

Collins looked at her, reproachfully. He had a shaving nick on one of his jowls, she noticed. “Actually, Miss Powell, we kept a car stationed here and near your home for several nights after the arson attempt. But we’re a police force, not night-watchmen. We can’t mount twenty-four-hour surveillance indefinitely, just on the off-chance. I’m very sorry this happened, and we’ll step up our patrols again, but someone like Timothy Ellis isn’t what you might call predictable at the best of times. And if he’s stopped taking his medication to treat his schizophrenia, as we’ve got to assume, he’s going to be even less so.” He fixed her with a bland stare. “Particularly now he believes you’ve had an abortion.”

The pointed reminder brought colour to Kate’s cheeks. She didn’t say anything as Collins handed the poster to the sergeant, who had been keeping an even lower profile than usual.

The Inspector pushed himself heavily to his feet, wincing slightly as his knee joints cracked. “We’ll take this away and see if we can find anything out from it,” he told her. He didn’t sound hopeful.

Clive waited with her as she locked up that evening, insisting on walking her to the station. She had closed early, almost as soon as the steam cleaners had finished. The atmosphere at the office had been subdued all day. Caroline and Josefina had had to be given some explanation, and although there was a brittle attempt at normality whenever Kate went downstairs, she recognised it as a facade. No one knew quite what to say.

She set the burglar alarm and pulled the door shut, then stepped back and looked at the front of the building. The pavement was littered with scraps of paper left by the cleaners. Water dripped from the walls and pooled on the floor. The door and window had been scoured clean, but tiny flecks of white still clung to the rougher surfaces of the bricks and mortar.

“Not too bad now, is it?” Clive said. He didn’t sound convinced. Kate shook her head, not trusting her voice. She tried to imagine the figure working in the darkness with its brush and paper. She wondered what had been in Ellis’s mind as he went about his business, and realised with a jolt that she was now thinking of him by that name. Ellis. Not Alex. With a subtle tug of loss, she finally understood that Alex Turner was dead. There was only Timothy Ellis now.

Kate turned away. As she did she saw that a scrap of poster had stuck wetly to her shoe. She scraped it off with her other foot and stepped away. “Let’s go,” she said.