Chapter One
London ... Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots,
making a soft black drizzle,with flakes of soot in it as
big as
full-grown snowflakesβgone into mourning, one might
imagine, for the death of the sun.
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
It took no more than a match, nestled beneath the crumpled
paper and foil crisp packets. The flame smoldered, then
flared and crackled, and within seconds tongues reached
out for the bottom layer of furniture stacked so
conveniently on the ground floor of the old warehouse.
Nothing burned like polyurethane foam, and the cheap
chairs, sofas, and mattresses removed from the flats on
the upper floors of the building were old enough not to
have been treated with fire retardants.
A gift. It was a gift. He could hardly have asked for more
if he had assembled the ingredients for a perfect fire
himself. The furniture would generate enough heat for
flashover, then the old wooden floorboards and ceiling
joists would blaze with a beautiful fury. The fire would
take on a life of its own, separate from its creator.
And the fire had power, that he had learned early on,
power to ex-hilarate, power to transform, power to induce
wonder and terror. He had first read about the great
Tooley Street fire of 1861 in school, which seemed to him
now an odd place to have discovered a life's calling.
The conflagration had burned for two days and consumed
over three hundred yards of wharf and warehouse, damage
unequaled since the Great Fire of 1666, damage not to be
seen again until the Blitz.
There had been other fires, of course: the Mustard Mills
in 1814, Topping's Wharf in 1843, Bankside in 1855; it
seemed to him that fire was as necessary to Southwark as
birth and death, that it provided an essential means of
growth and regeneration.
Heat began to sear his face; the skin across his
cheekbones and forehead felt stretched, his nostrils began
to sting from the smoke and escaping gas. The blaze was
well under way now, burrowing deep into the pile of
furniture, then licking out in unexpected places. It was
time for him to go, but still he lingered, unable to tear
himself from the energy that gave him more than a sexual
charge -- it was a glimpse into the heart of life itself.
If he gave himself up to it, let it consume him, would he
at last know the truth?
But still, he resisted complete surrender. Shaking
himself, he blinked against the stinging in his eyes and
took a last look round, making sure he had left no trace.
Satisfied, he slipped out the way he had come. He would
watch from a distance as the fire mounted to its
inevitable climax and then ... then there would be other
fires. There were always other fires.
Rose Kearny liked night duty best, when the station was
quiet except for the muted murmur of voices in the staff
room as everyone went about their assigned tasks. There
was something comforting about the camaraderie inside held
against the dark outside, and in the easing of the
adrenaline rush after a call-out. And she considered
herself lucky to have ended up at Southwark, the station
where she had trained, and the most historic in the London
Fire Brigade.
She and her partner, Bryan Simms, were checking their
breathing apparatus after the first bell of the night -- a
little old lady in a council flat, having decided to make
herself a bedtime snack, had dozed off with the chip pan
on the burner. Fortunately, a neighbor had seen the first
sign of smoke, the blaze had been easily contained, and
the woman had escaped serious injury.
But every fire call, no matter how minor, required a
careful examination of any equipment they had used.
Tonight she and Bryan had been assigned BA crew and their
lives depended on the efficiency of their breathing
apparatus -- and on each other. Simms, at twenty-three a
year older than Rose, was as steady and reliable as his
square, blunt face implied, and not inclined to panic.
He looked up at her, as if sensing her regard, and frowned
in concentration. "'What's in a name?'" he asked, as if
continuing a conversation. "'That which we call a rose by
any other name would smell as sweet.'"
For a moment, Rose was too startled to respond. Not that
she wasn't used to being teased about her name, or her
fair looks, but this was the first time one of her fellow
firefighters had resorted to Shakespeare.
Taking her silence as encouragement, Bryan went on,
grinning, "'But earthlier happy is the rose distilled,
than that which withering on the virgin thorn grows,
lives, and dies in single blessedness -- "
"Piss off, Simms,"Rose interrupted, smothering a laugh.
She had to admit she was impressed he'd gone to the
trouble of memorizing the line. "I'd never have taken you
for a Shakespeare buff."
"I like the second one. It's from A Midsummer Night's
Dream," said Simms, and she wondered if she had imagined a
blush in his dark skin as he bent again over his task.
"You don't say," Rose retorted with a smile. "And Romeo
and Juliet as well.Aren't you the clever one."Her father,
a high school English teacher, had begun quoting
Shakespeare to her before she could talk. "Look sharp
there," she added, glancing at his neglected
equipment."You don't want to miss a crack in that hose."
She'd started with the Southwark Fire Brigade six months
before Bryan, and she never missed an opportunity to
remind him of her seniority. It was hard enough, being
female in what was still basically a man's profession, and
she certainly couldn't afford a partner with some half-
baked romantic idea about their relationship.
Rose meant to go far, perhaps even divisional officer one
day, and she wasn't about to let an entanglement stand in
her way ...
In a Dark House. Copyright Β© by Deborah Crombie.
© 2003-2026