Fire Pattern

CHAPTER 3

In the morning he got to within two blocks of the office before accepting that it was quite impossible for him to go in. Appalled by his own irrationality, he made a right turn at the next set of lights and aimed the car south. Whiteford was ablaze with sunlit familiarity, glowing with that aura of humdrum comfort, security and sanity which is special to small towns on summer mornings. People were abroad early, getting business done before the day’s heat set in. Jerome knew that in the reporters’ room at the Examiner the daily routine would be well under way, with Anne Kruger and her Castilian eyes absorbing every detail, especially the yawning emptiness at his desk. And what reason could he give her for his absence?

Well…you see, Anne…there was this funny looking pillbox…

Jerome squirmed with embarrassment as he visualized the editor’s reaction, but he continued driving towards the Starzynski house. The notion that SHC victims were linked by a medicine which radically affected their metabolisms was far-fetched on its own, and it was compounded in lunacy by the idea that in a matter of hours he could have hit on a truth which had eluded other investigators for centuries. But it was lodged in his mind like a fishhook, and the only way to free himself from the obsession was to check it out—even if he had to make a fool of himself in the process.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing, he thought as he pulled up outside the neat house atop its buttresses of blossom and stone. He sat for a moment as he tried to dissociate himself from the venture and then, feeling hag-ridden, got out of the car. The concrete steps seemed more steep than before and he was breathing noisily as he thumbed the doorbell. There was a delay of perhaps a minute before Maeve Starzynski appeared. She was wearing a flowered housecoat and her round face bore the uncertain expression of one who has just emerged from a long sleep.

“Oh,” she said. And then, anticipating his apology, “No, it’s all right—please come in.”

“Thank you.” Jerome went in and waited in the hall while she closed the door. More than a year of being a widower had heightened his sensitivity to such things, and in close proximity to the woman he found he could actually detect the smell of sleep from her. It was an evocative blend of warm bed linen, facial cream and light clean perspiration which made him realize how much he hated living alone. For one thing, with Carla around there would have been no midnight vigils at the computer…

“I took a sleeping pill last night and I guess it must have been a good one,” Maeve said. “I don’t much care for anything like that, but my doctor advised it.”

Jerome nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry about just showing up on your doorstep—it’s a habit I seem to be getting into—but…well…I need some extra information.”

“What is it?”

“I was wondering…” Jerome strove to overcome his embarrassment. “Can you tell me if your father was taking any medication?”

“Yes.” She gave him a quizzical look, went into the kitchen and returned with a bubble-strip of yellow capsules. “ColophazineD. I don’t know what kind of drug this is, but my father was prescribed it for abdominal pains.”

Jerome’s discomfort increased. “That’s not what I meant. Did your father use any pills that are packaged in a little heart-shaped box?”

Maeve smiled, openly incredulous. “From ye olde apothecary? Of course not.”

“I know how ridiculous all this sounds and I promise to go away and stop being a nuisance as soon as possible—but what did he keep in the box?”

“Which box?”

Jerome blinked at her. “The little violet one. I saw it on a shelf in there.” He indicated the closed door of the sitting room.

“I don’t remember seeing him with anything like that,” Maeve said calmly.

“But…” Jerome felt a strong urge to escape from the house, but now the obstinate side of his character was coming to the fore. “I definitely saw it on a shelf, along with some fossils, binoculars and foreign coins. I’ve got a very good memory for that sort of thing.”

“I’ve got a terrible memory for that kind of thing, so why don’t we just have a look-see?” Maeve gave a tight smile and opened the door to the sitting room, which looked exactly as he had seen it last time except that the square of hardboard had been replaced over the hole in the floor. “I don’t want to use this room again until the floor is fixed, and I’m not allowed to get it done until the coroner’s office says.”

“I understand.” Jerome went past her and walked straight to the bookshelf where he had seen the unusual box. All the other items he remembered were in place, but of the heart-shaped box there was no sign. He scanned the rest of the room then turned to look at Maeve, who was regarding him with watchful interest.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she protested humorously. “I haven’t hidden anything.”

Jerome could think of no reason for her to lie. “I don’t understand this. Has anybody else been in the room?”

“Nobody.”

“Are you certain?”

“Of course I’m certain. I don’t get so many callers that I lose track of them.”

“It doesn’t add up,” Jerome said, his bafflement increasing. “The box was sitting right here yesterday.”

He went on to give a detailed description of the missing object, and when asked to explain his interest reluctantly outlined the theory about the common factor in SHC incidents. He did so in a self-deprecating manner which was intended to ward off criticism, but to his own ears the theory sounded ludicrous in the extreme. The British word “barmy’ kept flickering in his mind as he spoke, making his delivery increasingly hesitant. There were further distractions in the form of Maeve’s polite incredulity and his niggling annoyance over the fate of the little box. He knew he had seen it, and yet he was almost positive that Maeve was not lying to him—which constituted a minor mystery as insoluble as the central issue of the fire death. His cue to leave came when he saw she was finding it difficult to suppress a yawn.

“I’d better go,” he said, wishing he could have made a full search of the room.

Maeve was apologetic. “I’m not usually as droopy as this, but the pill I took last night seems to…” She paused, looking surprised. “I’ve just remembered something.”

“About the box?”

“No—it’s just that Doctor Pitman was here yesterday afternoon. I’d forgotten about it, but then I don’t class him as a visitor.”

Jerome felt a furtive excitement. Was he your father’s physician?”

“Yes, but…”

“Did he come into this room?”

“Yes, but he isn’t a thief, if that’s what you’re trying to imply.”

“I’m not implying anything,” Jerome said placatingly. “Listen, Maeve—I hope you don’t mind me addressing you as Maeve—I know how weak this idea about medication is, but if we’re ever going to find out what happened to your father we’ve got to check out all theories, even if it’s only to eliminate them one by one. Now, do you know where I can find Doctor Pitman?”

“I do, but I’m not telling you.” Maeve walked determinedly into the hall, bringing Jerome with her. “Doctor Pitman is a fine man. He came here yesterday, without even being called, just to make sure I was all right and to give me his condolences—and now you want to go to his home and accuse him of stealing some dumb little box.”

“I’ve forgotten all about the box,” Jerome lied. “All I want to do is ask the doctor if he prescribed any unusual drugs for your father.”

Maeve opened the front door, creating a rectangle of multicoloured brilliance. “Mr Jerome, when I contacted the Examiner it was to let the people of this town know that my father wasn’t a whisky soak. It was not to launch you on a new career as a fantasy writer, busybody and general nuisance—and if I hear of you annoying Doctor Pitman I’ll complain to your editor and do my best to get you sacked.”

A few seconds later, without his being sure of how it had come about, Jerome found himself alone outside the house. During their first meeting Maeve Starzynski had claimed to be quick-tempered, and now he knew exactly what she meant. Something about the tone of her voice warned him that she was not inclined to idle threats, that she was quite capable of going to Anne Kruger and demanding his dismissal. As he went sideways down the high steps, easing the strain on his left knee, it came to him that anybody with a normal quota of commonsense would drop the matter right there. The trouble was that he was no longer in control of his actions. The quiet egotist in him had heard just enough to become an obsessional taskmaster whose orders simply had to be obeyed.

Jerome got into his car, selected DIRECTORY on the communications panel and asked for Pitman’s home address. A second later the machine said, Four-eight-four Hampshire Drive, Albany, Whiteford.”

Jerome nodded in satisfaction and drove off. Albany was an exclusive enclave where, as a kind of reaction to the strict grid pattern of the rest of the town, the roads had been laid out in meandering curves and given English county names instead of numbers. It took him several minutes to get there and to locate the address on a tree-lined avenue where the houses could only be glimpsed behind banks of shrubbery. He drove into the first opening of a semi-circular drive and stopped outside a substantial brick-built house which was clothed in Persian ivy. The doors of the adjacent garage were open and he could see that it was empty—first intimation that the doctor was not at home.

Jerome went to the front entrance and pressed a white ceramic button set in a ring of antique brass. Chimes sounded within, but nobody came to the door. Unable to face the idea of being brought to a standstill in his investigation he pressed the button again and again, straining his ears for a response. More than a minute went by and the only movement was the flowing and fragmenting of his own reflection in the pebbled glass of the door. Jerome was about to admit defeat when a man’s voice came from directly behind him, stopping his breath.

“Doctor Bob ain’t here,” it said.

Jerome turned quickly and saw a young man who was dressed in work clothes and carrying garden shears. He was almost bald, a few wisps of colourless hair lying across his scalp, and his complexion had the silty coloration which comes when very pale skin is overlaid with a tan. Jerome received the impression that the young man was no stranger to illness.

“Can you tell me where the doctor is?” he said. “Do I need to go to the Medical Arts Building?”

“Hell no, you don’t need to do nothin’ like that.” The young man laughed as though Jerome had made some comical blunder. “Doctor Bob only drove over to Mason’s to pick out some new shirts for himself. “Ten, fifteen minutes should take care of it.”

“In that case I’ll wait in my car.”

“What you wanna do a thing like that for? You’ll melt away to a grease spot in there ’fore long. You come round here and I’ll show you where to wait.” The young man beckoned to Jerome and without waiting for his reaction walked away and passed out of sight at the side of the house. Jerome followed him to the rear of the premises where there was a sizeable and well-tended garden which featured box hedges and beds of white roses.

“You go in there and take a seat.” The young man indicated open french windows leading to a shady room which was furnished as a study or office. “You make yourself comfortable in there.”

“I don’t think I…” Jerome hesitated, seeking a tactful way to explain that he was loth to enter the room on the authority of a gardener.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” the young man said, unoffended. “All you got to say is Sammy Birkett gave you the okay. Doctor Bob leaves all this kinda thing to me. Honest.”

“Thank you, Sammy.” Jerome went into the coolness of the house and sat on a leather chair facing a knee-hole desk. The patient sound of shears from the garden showed that Birkett had resumed work. The walls of the room were largely taken up by floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with a mixture of medical texts and general works. Between the bookcases were dozens of framed certificates, old family photographs and pale mezzotints of sporting scenes. A chess table sat in front of a slate fireplace. It was the kind of room which had either vanished from the electronic age or was consciously maintained for status reasons, but Jerome sensed it was Pitman’s natural working environment and he found himself predisposed to like the doctor.

He waited for ten minutes and then, becoming edgy, got up and examined the photographs in the hope of identifying Pitman. In several of the groups was a likely candidate—a white-haired, apple-cheeked figure in a conservative black suit—but there were no captions to confirm his guess. As the minutes continued to slip by Jerome, although still in the grip of his compulsion, began to be oppressed by mental images of Anne Kruger’s face, each time looking angrier than before. Feelings of panic gripped him every time he remembered he was risking his job by being in Pitman’s house, and what made matters worse was that he had no genuine hope of having his theory proved right. It was just that he had to have it proved wrong before he would be his own man again.

His mounting agitation drove Jerome to prowl around the room, and it was on his third circuit that he observed the envelope with the semi-circular stamp in a waste bin beside the desk. The only source he knew for stamps of that shape was Amity, the USA/UK condominium in the Antarctic. Never having actually seen one of the stamps, Jerome picked up the envelope and was surprised to note that it had come from the Amity headquarters of CryoCare Incorporated.

In the last decade there had been renewed interest in the freeze-preservation of disease victims in the old hope that medical science would one day be able to revive and cure them. CryoCare maintained a body storage and research facility in the Antarctic, where natural conditions aided the work, but in spite of undeniable progress the whole venture was suspect in Jerome’s eyes. He had an instinctive distrust of any scheme which involved people in mortal fear being separated from large sums of money. Pitman having dealings with CryoCare hardly squared with the picture Jerome had formed of a benevolent family doctor of the old school, but perhaps the envelope had contained nothing more than promotional literature. Frowning, Jerome dropped it back into the waste bin and walked to the window.

The young gardener was just a few paces away. He had paused in his work and was staring into the distance, his head tilted as if he were straining to hear faint voices. Again Jerome received the impression that Birkett had been battling against illness or was recovering from an operation. He studied the young man sympathetically, suddenly appreciative of the fact that his own ailments could have been much worse. Birkett, unaware of being observed, tucked his shears under his arm and took a small box from the hip pocket of his jeans. He opened it and removed a pill-sized object which he put in his mouth.

Jerome, whose corrected vision was good, recognized the box at once by its distinctive coloration. The scene seemed to flow outwards from the fleck of violet as though his eyes were performing a high-powered zoom, then he was out of the house and striding across the short expanse of patio.

“Sammy,” he said breathlessly, abandoning all notions about propriety, “what kind of pill did you just take?”

“Pill?” Birkett gaped at him for a moment and began to smile. “Hell, this ain’t no pill.” He bared his teeth further, precariously gripping in them a small peach-coloured confection. There was the scent of cinnamon on his breath.

Jerome, abruptly restored to the world of rationality, was both deflated and embarrassed. “I…I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Birkett said, unconscious of anything odd in Jerome’s behaviour, and handed him the box. “These is good. Help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Jerome examined the box and saw that in spite of its unusual shape it was a mass-produced item. The lid bore the words Regency Cachous, and in smaller print: T. J. Grant & Co., Chipping Norton, Oxford. He opened the box and tried one of the cachous. Its spiciness brought a feeling of warmth to his tongue, but it was highly unlikely, he told himself—now bitterly self-critical—that sucking it would cause him to burst into flames. He had built a ridiculous edifice of fantasy on a small-town doctor’s avuncular habit of distributing confections to his patients.

“Doctor Bob gets ’em all the way from the Old Country,” Birkett said, taking the box and replacing it in his pocket. “Full carton at a time. He says they’s good for the stomach.”

“I’m sure he’s absolutely right.” Jerome glanced at his watch and quailed as he saw it was only five minutes before 11.00. He had behaved like an idiot, but had been fortunate that he had learned the truth without having spoken to Pitman or having identified himself to the gardener. If he got to the office quickly and gave a plausible excuse for being late the whole ludicrous episode might be safely buried, and with any luck it would be years before he experienced a similar mental aberration.

“Sammy, I’ve decided not to wait for the doctor,” he said. “I’ll contact him another time.”

Birkett looked concerned. “He’ll be back any minute. It don’t take him long to pick out shirts.”

“It’s all right—it was nothing urgent.”

“You should make goddamn sure about that.” Birkett moved forward unexpectedly and gripped Jerome’s arm. “You gotta look out for your health.”

“I’ll do that,” Jerome said, made acutely uncomfortable by the physical contact with a stranger who was beginning to seem more than a little disturbed.

“Doctor Bob will fix you up good.” Birkett tightened his grip and when he spoke again it was with an expression of ingenuous pride. “I’ve got cancer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jerome said unhappily, realizing it had been made even more difficult for him to depart quickly. There was a strange protocol to such things.

“I’m gonna be fine, though. Just fine. Doctor Bob is fixin’ me up good, even though I got no money for the treatment. That’s why I tend his garden. I got no money, but I got a green thumb and I’m a good worker. I keep the garden lookin’ good.”

“You certainly do.” Jerome eased the young man’s fingers off his arm, but decided to risk staying an extra few minutes. Birkett seemed hungry for conversation and, in spite of his protestations, was possibly afraid for his life. If Pitman arrived in the meantime it should be possible to concoct a cover story for his visit. Jerome led off by asking Birkett’s advice on the cultivation of roses and walked further into the garden with him to examine prime specimens. Finally, deciding he had met his obligations, Jerome made a show of consulting his watch.

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Sammy,” he said, “but now I really must go.”

Birkett did not reply. He was standing in the attitude in which Jerome had seen him earlier, his sparsely-covered head raised and tilted as if in response to a distant call. His eyes were unfocused, and it was obvious he had not heard Jerome’s words. Jerome began to feel trapped. He debated simply turning and hurrying out to his car, but in an indefinable way he had accepted responsibility for the gardener’s welfare and he had an uneasy conviction that a crisis was on hand. He looked all about him, desperate for inspiration, and saw that they were close to a small, open-fronted summerhouse.

“Sammy, I think you ought to sit down,” he said. “Then I’ll get you a glass of water.”

He grasped Birkett’s arm and urged him towards the white-painted structure. Birkett offered no resistance. Still without speaking, he stumbled alongside Jerome to the summerhouse and sat down on a wooden bench, his back to the inner wall. His eyes stared straight ahead, unseeingly, and his posture was that of an outsized doll propped in a corner.

“I’ll be back in a few seconds.” Jerome took several paces towards the main house, then turned back as he heard Birkett give a deep retching moan. “Are you going to be all right?”

Gazing strickenly into Jerome’s eyes, Birkett opened his mouth and emitted a writhing, roaring tongue of blue flame.

Jerome sank to his knees, both hands pressed to his heart, unable to avert his gaze, groaning an instinctive animal protest at a spectacle which was an affront to reason and the whole of creation. A human being was burning like an oil-soaked torch. Mercifully the enclosed space of the summerhouse filled with dense blue smoke which obscured detail, but Jerome saw enough to germinate a thousand bad dreams. He saw bright fire spread radially from the gaping mouth to annihilate the face. He saw the torso swell, collapse and swell up again as it was consumed by a terrible heat which, miraculously, was slow to ignite the constraining clothes. He saw the nastic twitching of the limbs as they were consumed, turning the body into an obscenely dancing puppet…

Jerome had entered a timeless dimension of horror, but a tiny cowering fragment of his mind was aware that the reduction of Sammy Birkett to crackling cinder was taking place at an incredible speed. A minute went by…perhaps two…then the visitation was over.

The fire had done its work and had departed.

Still in the kneeling position, Jerome waited for the painful jolting of his heart to subside. When it seemed certain that he too was not going to die he stood up. A shrieking silence had descended over the garden and was cupped in the high perimeter hedges. He moved forward timidly. The blue smoke was dispersing with rapidity, billowing out on a light breeze which brought the sweet stench of it to Jerome’s nostrils. He tried to turn himself into a visual recording machine, a dispassionate observer.

The scene in the summerhouse was one of his SHC reference photographs translated into sickening three-dimensional reality. Of Birkett’s head and torso there remained only a fine ash heaped in a depression which had been charred into the thick wood of the bench. An incredible degree of heat would have been needed to achieve the degree of destruction in so short a time, and yet the typical SHC anomalies were present. The timber of the summerhouse was dry, but it had not caught alight—and there were large unburnt scraps of the dead man’s blue checkered shirt mingled with the ashes.

The legs of Birkett’s jeans had also survived as two tubes of material crumpled on the floor, although the flesh and bone inside them had all but vanished, wasted to a powdery residue. Jerome could almost have surmised that the victim had been a mannikin woven from straw or some other equally flammable material had it not been for the other classical feature of the scene. Birkett’s hands—all too human—were lying on the bench, one on either side of the mound of ash. Fire had severed them at the wrists and had cauterized the blood vessels in the process, but one of the black cross-sections had cracked and was oozing crimson.

Suddenly Jerome had had enough. His nervous system had been savaged by shock, by grisly images and nauseous smells, and now it had begun to react. He turned away from the abomination in the summerhouse and was violently sick. The first irresistible heave voided his stomach, yet spasm after spasm followed in seemingly endless succession until he had to clutch a nearby sapling for support. And his mind, as though taking action to distance itself from the bodily turmoil, began to fashion cold, clear thoughts:

Spontaneous human combustion was an extremely rare event. Only a few cases were reported worldwide in any given year, without any discernible pattern. It was, therefore, highly remarkable for two residents of the same small town to be stricken within a week of each other.

And it was even more remarkable that both had been receiving treatment from the same physician…

Jerome pushed himself away from the tree and—still retching, but impelled by a thunderous sense of urgency—ran towards his car. He had been searching for a link between fire deaths, for a common factor, but he had not considered a human agency.

And he was not prepared for an encounter with the enigmatic Doctor Pitman.