The Tinder Box

Also by Minette Walters

THE ICE HOUSE

THE SCULPTRESS

THE SCOLD'S BRIDLE

THE DARK ROOM

THE ECHO

THE BREAKER

THE SHAPE OF SNAKES

ACID ROW

FOX EVIL

DISORDERED MINDS

First published in Dutch 1999 by dc Boekerij by, Amsterdam

First published in English 1999 in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, New York

This edition published 2004

byBCA

by arrangement with Macmillan

an imprint of Pan Maemillan

CN 128552

Copyright © Minette Walters 1999

The right of Minette Walters to be identified as the

author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this public.irion m.iy he

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

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For our goddaughters

Holly, Laura and Olivia,

Author's Note

In 1998 CPNB, the Organization for the Promotion

of Books in the Netherlands, invited me to write a

promotional suspense novella for the 1999 Book Week.

I called the story The Tinder Box and it first appeared in

Dutch translation under the title De Tondeldoos. I was

already working on ideas for my next novel, Acid Row, and I took the opportunity of the novella to explore

themes of prejudice, incitement and vigilantism that

would re-occur in the novel. The Tinder Box portrays

immigrant Irish tinkers as hate figures in a wealthy

Hampshire village, but a similar hatred is demonstrated

against a convicted paedophile in a sink estate in Acid

Row. Both stories depict the dangers of ignorance,

and how unrelated, misunderstood events combine to

trigger violent reactions. Re-reading The Tinder Box for

this publication, I was struck by how little human nature

changes. When I conceived the idea for the plot, the

Good Friday Peace Accord had just been signed, and

the people of these islands were optimistic that terrorism

was at an end. How quickly that optimism was dashed

when the twenty-first century exploded in flames across

our television screens.

Minette Walters

One

Daily Telegraph - Wednesday, 24 June 1998

Sowerbridge Man

Arrested

Patrick O'Riordan, 35, an unemployed Irish

labourer, was charged last night with the

double murder of his neighbours Lavinia Fan

shaw, 93, and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins,

67. The murders have angered the small

community of Sowerbridge, where O'Riordan

and his parents have lived for fifteen years.

The elderly victims were brutally battered to

death after Dorothy Jenkins interrupted a robbery

on Saturday night. 'Whoever killed them

is a monster,' said a neighbour. 'Lavinia was a

frail old lady with Alzheimer's who never hurt

a soul.' Police warned residents to remain calm

after a crowd gathered outside the O'Riordan

home when news of the arrest became public.

'Vigilante behaviour will not be tolerated,' said

a spokesman. O'Riordan denies the charges.

Monday, 8 March 1999, 11.30p.m.

Even at half past eleven at night, the lead news story

on local radio was still the opening day of Patrick

O'Riordan's trial. Siobhan Lavenham, exhausted after

a fourteen-hour stint at work, listened to it in the

darkness of her car while she negotiated the narrow

country lanes back to Sowerbridge village.

' O^Riordan smiled as the prosecution case unfolded...

harrowing details of how ninety-three-year-old Lavinia

Fanshaw and her live-in nurse were brutally bludgeoned

to death before Mrs Fanshaw's rings were ripped from

her fingers . . . scratch marks and bruises on the defendant's

face, probably caused by a fight with one of the

women . . . a crime of greed triggered by O'Riordan's

known resentment of Mrs Fanshaw's wealth . . . unable

to account for his whereabouts at the time of the murders

. . . items of jewellery recovered from the O'Riordan

family home which the thirty-five-year-old Irishman still

shares with his elderly parents . . .'

With a sinking heart, Siobhan punched the Off

button and concentrated on her driving. ''The Irishman . . .' Was that a deliberate attempt to inflame

racist division, she wondered, or just careless shorthand?

God, how she loathed journalists! Confident of

a guilty verdict, they had descended on Sowerbridge

like a plague of locusts the previous week in order to

prepare their background features in advance. They

had found dirt in abundance, of course. Sowerbridge

had fallen over itself to feed them with hate stories

against the whole O'Riordan family.

She thought back to the day of Patrick's arrest,

when Bridey, his mother, had begged her not to

abandon them. 'You're one of us, Siobhan. Irish

through and through, never mind you're married to

an Englishman. You know my Patrick. He wouldn't

hurt a fly. Is it likely he'd beat Mrs Fanshaw to death

when he's never raised a hand against his own father?

Liam was a devil when he still had the use of his arm.

Many's the time he thrashed Patrick with a stick when

the drunken rages were on him, but never once did

Patrick take the stick to him.'

It was a frightening thing to be reminded of the

bonds that tied people together, Siobhan had thought

as she looked out of Bridey's window towards the

silent, angry crowd that was gathering in the road.

Was being Irish enough of a reason to side with a man

suspected of slaughtering a frail bedridden old woman

and the woman who looked after her?

'Patrick admits he stole from Lavinia,' Siobhan had

pointed out.

Tears rolled down Bridey's furrowed cheeks. 'But

not her rings,' she said. 'Just cheap trinkets that he

was too ignorant to recognize as worthless paste.'

'It was still theft.'

'Mother of God, do you think I don't know that?'

She held out her hands beseechingly. 'A thief he may

be, Siobhan, but never a murderer.''

And Siobhan had believed her because she wanted

to. For all his sins, she had never thought of Patrick

as an aggressive or malicious man - too relaxed by

half, many would say - and he could always make her

and her children laugh with his stories about Ireland,

particularly ones involving leprechauns and pots of

gold hidden at the ends of rainbows. The thought

of him taking a hammer to anyone was anathema to

her.

And yet. . .?

In the darkness of the car she recalled the interview

she'd had the previous month with a detective

inspector at Hampshire Constabulary Headquarters,

who seemed perplexed that a well-to-do young

woman should have sought him out to complain

about police indifference to the plight of the

O'Riordans. She wondered now why she hadn't gone

to him sooner.

Had she really been so unwilling to learn the

truth . . .?

I

Wednesday, 10 February 1999

The detective shook his head. 'I don't understand

what you're talking about, Mrs Lavenham.'

Siobhan gave an angry sigh. 'Oh, for goodness

sake! The hate campaign that's being waged against

them. The graffiti on their walls, the constant telephone

calls threatening them with arson, the fact that

Bridey's too frightened to go out for fear of being

attacked. There's a war going on in Sowerbridge

which is getting worse the closer we come to Patrick's

trial, but as far as you're concerned it doesn't exist.

Why aren't you investigating it? Why don't you

respond to Bridey's telephone calls?'

He consulted a piece of paper on his desk. 'Mrs

O'Riordan's made fifty-three emergency calls in the eight months since Patrick was remanded for the murders,'

he said, 'only thirty of which were considered

serious enough to send a police car to investigate.

In every case, the attending officers filed reports

saying Bridey was wasting police time.' He gave an

apologetic shrug. The realize it's not what you want to

hear, but we'd be within our rights if we decided

to prosecute her. Wasting police time is a serious

offence.'

Siobhan thought of the tiny, wheelchair-bound

woman whose terror was so real she trembled constantly.

'They're after killing us, Siobhan,' she would

say over and over again. 'I hear them creeping about

the garden in the middle of the night and I think to

myself, there's nothing me or Liam can do if this is

the night they decide to break in. To be sure, it's only

God who's keeping us safe.'

'But who are they, Bridey?'

'It's the bully boys whipped up to hate us by Mrs

Haversley and Mr Jardine,' wept the woman. 'Who

else would it be?'

Siobhan brushed her long dark hair from her forehead

and frowned at the detective inspector. 'Bridey's

old, she's disabled, and she's completely terrified. The

phone never stops ringing. Mostly it's long silences,

other times it's voices threatening to kill her. Liam's

only answer to it all is to get paralytically drunk

every night so he doesn't have to face up to what's

going on.' She shook her head impatiently. 'Cynthia

Haversley and Jeremy Jardine, who seem to control

everything that happens in Sowerbridge, have effectively

given carte blanche to the local youths to make

life hell for them. Every sound, every shadow has

Bridey on the edge of her seat. She needs protection,

and I don't understand why you're not giving it to

her.'

'They were offered a safe house, Mrs Lavenham,

and they refused it.'

'Because Liam's afraid of what will happen to

Kilkenny Cottage if he leaves it empty,' she protested.

'The place will be trashed in half a minute flat... You

know that as well as I do.'

He gave another shrug, this time more indifferent

than apologetic. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but there's

nothing we can do. If any of these attacks actually

happened . . . well, we'd have something concrete

to investigate. They can't even name any of these

so-called vigilantes . . . just claim they're yobs from

neighbouring villages.'

'So what are you saying?' she asked bitterly. 'That

they have to be dead before you take the threats

against them seriously?'

'Of course not,' he said, 'but we do need to be

persuaded the threats are real. As things stand, they

seem to be all in her mind.'

'Are you accusing Bridey of lying?'

He smiled slightly. 'She's never been averse to

embroidering the truth when it suits her purpose, Mrs

Lavenham.'

Siobhan shook her head. 'How can you say that?

Have you ever spoken to her? Do you even know her? To you, she's just the mother of a thief and a

murderer.'

'That's neither fair nor true.' He looked infinitely

weary, like a defendant in a trial who has answered the

same accusation in the same way a hundred times

before. 'I've known Bridey for years. It's part and

parcel of being a policeman. When you question a

man as often as I've questioned Liam, you get to

know his wife pretty well by default.' He leaned