Free Losing Ground by Catherine Aird Page B

time, I’m sure.’ She gave both men a dazzling smile. ‘Now, what you need to watch out for are two fellows calling themselves loss adjusters and loss assessors. They’re like Kilkenny cats together and they’ll each want access here before the other and you’ll be darlings, won’t you, and not let either of them on site until I give the word.’
    ‘Right,’ said Burton before Sloan could speak.
    ‘Certainly not,’ said Sloan stoutly.
    Dr Colleen Murphy turned round and indicated Detective Constable Crosby, still guarding the entrance to the fire-damaged site. ‘Now, do you think that the dear boy over there would let my two assistants through that barrier of his? I can see that they’ve just arrived.’
    This time the glow did not extend to Detective Inspector Sloan.
    ‘Well?’ said Jeremy Stratton, the planning officer, when Melanie Smithers arrived back, hot and dusty, at the Berebury Council offices. ‘Tell me all. Who’s done what exactly?’
    ‘Someone’s set the Victorian bit alight,’ said the conservation officer, wrinkling her nose, ‘that’s for sure, but I couldn’t get near enough to see if the ballroom had been obscuring a cross-wing on the older part.’
    He smiled faintly. ‘We all have our priorities.’
    She flushed. ‘Don’t be beastly. The fire hadn’t got that far anyway.’
    ‘Bad luck.’
    ‘It’s all very well for you, Jeremy,’ she responded hotly, ‘with your one-man crusade to meet all government house-building targets with the least possible bother to all concerned but let me remind you some of us have other things to consider.’
    ‘So presumably had the fire-raiser.’
    She frowned. ‘That’s what’s so funny. You see, Berebury Homes aren’t planning to do anything they shouldn’t for the old house conservation-wise.’
    ‘Bully for them.’
    ‘We haven’t had to object to anything in our department.’
    ‘That’s suspicious for a start,’ he said sarcastically.
    ‘Don’t be like that, Jeremy. We’ve always found them very…well, very cooperative.’
    ‘I should say that makes a change, too.’
    ‘Yes, it does,’ she admitted, ‘but we at conservation aren’t the stumbling block anyway, are we?’
    ‘No,’ said Jeremy Stratton immediately, ‘but we at planning are. Seeing as it’s a greenfield site they want to develop and not one in the local plan. I wouldn’t put it past them to argue that the estate is just a garden and therefore a brownfield site.’
    Melanie Smithers sighed. ‘No, but large brownfield sites aren’t all that thick on the ground any longer, more’s the pity.’
    ‘You can say that again, my girl.’ Jeremy Stratton jerked his thumb in the direction of his own office. ‘Every patch of waste land that I can find that isn’t in the flood plain has got its new houses…’
    ‘It’s awful little boxes,’ said the conservation officer.
    ‘…on it already and now the developers’ land banks are running low, too.’
    ‘So that only leaves the greenfield bits like Tolmie,’ she said, adding without heat ‘and by the way I’m not your girl.’
    ‘And the flood plain. Don’t forget the flood plain, although it isn’t popular with everyone. The insurance companies for starters.’
    ‘Which should make enabling development for Tolmie Park good news all round,’ she said.
    ‘But especially for Berebury Homes,’ said Jeremy Stratton. ‘They wouldn’t stand a cat’s chance in Hell of building in those grounds otherwise.’
    Melanie Smithers might have been young and inexperienced but she wasn’t silly.
    ‘Which makes the fire there funnier still, doesn’t it?’

CHAPTER EIGHT
    ‘Well, sir,’ temporised Detective Inspector Sloan in response to another urgent demand for a progress report from Superintendent Leeyes, ’so far all we’ve got is a sort of a go-ahead from the fire brigade.’
    ‘Called their dogs off, have they?’
    ‘Not quite, sir, but they’ve turned their hoses off,’ said