Free Bright Spark by Gavin Smith Page A

turn traffic were testing
their stun guns. He crossed the bare concrete floor, passing sleek, high
performance traffic cars, battered, low performance patrol cars and barely
legal, unmarked bangers reserved for low profile work and fast food runs. The
keys had been left in the ignition of a badly mauled Mondeo on a ‘T’ plate. The
windscreen was cracked, a wing mirror was missing and the tyres were almost
slick. Harkness took the keys and pocketed them. 
     In
a badly lit corner behind cars parked three deep, he found
the                               overspill from the property officer’s store.
Bicycles, jerry cans, lead cladding and copper cable were piled against each
other in an area demarcated by a lavish leather suite seized as proceeds of
crime from some well to do ne’er do well. Harkness flopped into his habitual
thinking space, a lavish, four berth sofa which could accommodate him from head
to toe without overhang. There must have been another seizure since he was last
down here. The familiar aroma of diesel and leather was underlined by something
sweet and pungent enough to make his eyes water and his fingers itch for a
cigarette; a decent crop of cannabis, not sticks and seeds from the school
gate.  
    He
stretched his arms above his head, levered his back straight and felt the
stiffness in his upper spine dissipate with a crack like a distant gunshot. He
held the ecstasy of uncoiling pain on his lips as his eyelids fluttered shut.
Peace and quiet, space to think, cool and comfortable, mind clear, ready to
reassess, reorder, get a grip on things; the mantra might work better if his
inner voice didn’t sound so much like a stage hypnotist at a working men’s
club. 
    Had
the arsonist really intended murder? How had they ensured the victims were
under lock and key and behind the most secure double-glazing in the East Midlands before setting the blaze? If it was Murphy, could he really have murdered his
own family in so calm and orderly a manner? Normally, there’d be intimate and
bloody hatred involved in the killing of a loved one.
    The
fact that Murphy was missing didn’t automatically make him the suspect; he
could be an undiscovered victim.  If not Murphy, then who would hate him enough
to stray into a nice area and attack his home and family? That kind of hatred
didn’t spring from one drunken spat, it needed deep roots. A quick, drunken
rumble in the saloon bar was too shallow a pretext, unless it flowed from
something older. There must be a name in all that paper on his desk, a
signpost, a reason. Perhaps Biddle would find it, if he could take a break from
drafting a list of learning points.
    His eyes closed again and with
a protesting gasp he toppled into sleep.
     
     
     
    He should have set his alarm as
there was no time to sleep, no time to eat, no time to think and no time to get
it wrong. A clock on the wall was encircled by gunpowder which flared and
sputtered in time with the second hand. Something bright and noisy would happen
when it got to twelve again, and even though the spark and the second hand were
moving far too slowly, as if he had an ocean of time in which to rest, he knew
he’d wake very soon in a spitting panic, brain even more addled than it was
now.
    The clock had to be attached to
something, so flock wallpaper in nicotine yellow appeared and he was back in
the medium’s front parlour, lately the favourite venue for his night terrors.
Ceramic ladies and gallants, frozen in blushing dalliances, jostled for space
on the mantelpiece with faded photographs of children, frowning, grinning and
grimacing in sagging school jumpers and not understanding the need to strike a
pose and pretend to be something or someone else. Every ten seconds, a parakeet
let fly a piercing whistle and listened like a sonar operator for an answering
echo from silent depths.
    A gas fire hissed, brown frame
bronzed in places and white elements blackened as if it were