A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (2 page)

The room was utterly black but still warm, humid, wisps of steam curling and it smelled of burnt rubber and nylon; so noxious it made their eyes water, suffocating like a pillow.

Roger feathered the torch around the scene, and as the fogged beam moved along the damp, sooty walls of what until recently was someone’s lounge, his eyes hovered for an instant on Paul, making sure he was okay. “This your first arson?”

“Yeah. It’s fucking…”

“Awesome?”

“Seriously awesome.” Paul smiled.

They’d arrived on scene at 9.10, and five hours had already vanished into a steamy black blur. “Learn anything?”

“Learned to carry on working even while my stomach’s shouting at me.”

“Could be worse,” he whispered, “could be your wife shouting at you.”

“Not married.”

“Ah, wise beyond your years. But I mean are you okay with excavating the seat of a fire?” Roger crunched over the charred remains of a foam-filled sofa, felt its brittle frame crumble beneath his steel-soled boots. He stood in a puddle of water and heard glass crack.

“I know what they mean by pool burning, at least,” Paul pointed his own torch to the piece of carpet now in a clear nylon bag but shielded from view by a film of condensation. They found it beneath the skeleton of an armchair. A small pool of burning petrol or kerosene had charred the carpet, and as the fuel burned away, it left a wavy melted edge as distinctive as a tidemark in sand. “And I’ll try to get down through the layers of burnt material quickly, to the floorboards, or to the carpet, keeping my nose open for accelerants,” he said, paraphrasing.

“Don’t forget scorch patterns on bare brick or spalled plaster, how the blackened ‘V’ of rising flames usually points to the seat. Don’t forget how things look completely different when burned – think laterally,” his torch picked out the remains of the TV. Curtains of molten black plastic draped over the exposed tube. “Find out if a door was open or closed by seeing if its edges are scorched. Look at broken window glass; wavy cracks indicate heat damage, but sharp, orderly cracks are from something more physical. That’s when you should be suspicious, that’s when you ask the fire brigade if they broke it while putting out the blaze.”

“And if they didn’t?”

“Heck boy,” Roger clapped Paul on the back, “then you fingerprint the glass and seize the milk bottle.”

Paul smiled, unsure. “The milk bottle?”

Roger nodded to the centre of the room. Farther back than the armchair, near the neat edges of carpet from where they sliced the pool-burnt sample, was a broken milk bottle. Spalled plaster partially covered it. “That’s your incendiary device. Your Molotov Cocktail.”

“Shit, yeah!”

“What you going to do with it?” Roger folded his arms.

“Same as all the other exhibits: nylon bag it.”

“Not forgetting to—”

“Swan-neck it.” After photographing the bottle, Paul dropped the broken pieces into a nylon bag which crackled loudly, too noisy to talk over. “Stinks of unleaded,” he shouted. Then he twisted the neck of the bag, folded it over to provide a seal and tied it off with string.

Roger adjusted his hard hat. “You wouldn’t have found it if you’d followed the burn patterns.”

Paul shrugged.

“Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don’t stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you’ve read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard.”

“But that’s how Chris always—”

“I know.” Roger removed his glasses; they were fogged up again. “He swallowed a book on forensic procedures, and that’s how he works. He gets good results, too. But there’s more to it than that, much more than procedure;
feel
the scene, absorb what it has to tell you.”

Later, after six hours of fire-scene examination, Roger Conniston trudged into the archaic Scenes of Crime Office at Wood Street Police Station and closed the door with a heel. Soot smeared his glasses, aluminium powder coated his nostrils and more streaked his forehead in a silver smudge. Paul was upstairs in CID, showing his fingerprint lifts and the sample of pool-burned carpet to some DC.

Through the rotten window frame, an icy breeze whistled accompaniment to a length of broken plastic gutter that tapped against the rippled glass. From across Wood Street, the Town Hall and the Crown Court buildings stared in sympathy.

Roger tossed a handful of exhibits onto his desk, and an envelope containing fingerprint lifts into the wire tray marked ‘Assorted Crap’. The tray below it declared ‘Lord Lucan Files’. He took off his waxed jacket and then noticed her. “Helen? Everything okay?”

Helen too was a Scenes of Crime Officer, though she had problems peeling her arse from the office chair. She sat hunched over her desk, sweater sleeves pulled way past her fingers and her greasy hair falling forward to obscure all but her chin. She ignored him. But it was nothing personal. She ignored everyone equally.

Sighing, he threw his CID6 report book on his desk. “How’re things with—”

“Don’t mention his name, Roger. I don’t want my aura polluting.”

“Your what?”

“Just leave it; I feel delicate right now.”

Roger rubbed his glasses on his waistcoat. “Delicate. Right.”

He perched on the chair next to her, replaced his glasses. “You know, Helen, if you need to talk. I know a really good brick wall…”

For a while, she said nothing, and it was a long enough while for him to feel awkward. Then she whispered, “Roger?”

“I’m here.”

She didn’t speak for a long time. Then, “Never mind.”

He came closer. “Can I ask you something?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Why would a woman put make-up on if she wasn’t going out?”

“Maybe she’s expecting a visitor.”

“But…” Annoyingly, it made sense. “Any other reason?”

“Why, what’s all—”

“Just wondering, nothing to fret about.”

“Is this woman married?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a hypothetical question.”

“Is this hypothetical woman married?” Helen didn’t move. The words could have been coming from a loud speaker wired up near her desk.

“Could be. Yes.”

“How come men are so thick?”

“Beg your pardon,” Roger said.

“Why do
you
think she puts make-up on, Roger?”

“She never used to—”

Paul barged into the office.

The privacy shattered, Roger blew an exasperated sigh. “It’s okay, Paul, we have spare doors.”

“Just enthusiastic, that’s all.” Paul hung his coat up.

“Yeah, well stop it; you’re annoying those of us who don’t give a shit.” Roger returned his attention to the tip of Helen’s chin. “You okay?”

She looked up. It was the first time today that he’d seen her face. She flicked her sweater-covered hand in his direction.

“Don’t fool me,” Paul said. “I know you give a shit.” He straightened his purple tie. “Hey, if you get this promotion, will you still come to scenes with me?”

Roger laughed, “Nope.”

“Won’t you miss it, being a Scenes of Crime Officer?” Paul asked. “You’ve had a month of acting-up, of pretending to be a boss. Which do you prefer?”

Roger rubbed the scars that ran across the bulbs of his left fingers, licked his lips, and said, “Retirement.”

Paul pulled at his tie again. “Chris’s turn now.”

“I wish him well.”

Jon Benedict, another SOCO, as much a stranger to work as Helen, appeared in the doorway. He stared at Roger.

“What now?”

Jon came closer and whispered, “Heard the Bulldog on the phone just now.”

“Saying what?”

“Dunno, exactly. All I caught was ‘meeting’, and ‘half an hour’.”

“Meeting?”

“Don’t know what about though,” Jon shrugged.

“That it?”

“He’s just left his office. Looked very suspicious to me.”

“Your mother looks suspicious to you.”

“The info’s there, mate, if you choose to use it.”

Roger thought for a second or two, then grabbed his coat and left the office, hurrying down the corridor, already searching in his pocket for the van keys.

Inspector Colin Weston sat at his desk watching the slivers of cold sunlight glint through the blue lights of patrol cars parked in the back yard at Wood Street. It turned them a curious liver colour. Another forty minutes and the sun would be kissing the Wakefield horizon. He spat a chewed nail across the room then drummed his fingers.

The phone startled him.

“Weston.” He recognised the caller’s voice, listened intently to the caller’s words. “When’s he due for release?” He listened, nodded. “Where? Right, I want a meeting. Half an hour.” He stood and leaned against his desk, was about to hang up when he paused. “You still there? Good,” he said. “Don’t ever call me on this fucking line again.”

The floodlights buzzed, blinked into life and then glowed almost humbly across the car park, slowly growing in intensity as Roger sat in his van and watched Weston’s BMW reverse out of its allotted space and snake towards the gate.

Roger started the van’s still warm engine and followed.

Weston nosed the BMW out of the junction and broke into the line of traffic.

A moment later, Roger tried to follow but Weston had already vanished. “Bastard!” He thumped the steering wheel and abandoned any thought of trying to find him now. He decided to wait for a better opportunity to arise. Where was he heading, Roger wondered, and who was he going to meet?

Across the busy street, silhouetted against the window of Mum’s Pantry, an old man ambled by, leaning forward as though walking into a private gale, the streetlamps glinting on his balding head. “Be careful out there, Hobnail.”

Inspector Weston could have walked. But he chose to go by car because there was less chance of Conniston following. He parked the car in a narrow street behind the Theatre Royal and Opera House, and punched a hole through crowds of shoppers and rugby supporters. Any other day, the short journey on foot would have taken ten minutes; today it took twenty, and elicited countless profanities through Weston’s clenched teeth.

During the walk, he removed the epaulets from his white shirt and tucked them away in his coat pocket, followed by the clip tie. He slackened his top button. Weston was off-duty now. Head down, shoulders forward, he moved past the blackened façades of Victorian buildings and cobbled alleyways that shrieked in the wind, barging aside inattentive people.

Redundant Christmas lights stretched across Westgate and looked cheerless like pendant skeletons. And then he walked the periphery of the Bull Ring, a two-hundred-yard wide pedestrianised circle of banks, travel agents, pharmacies and beauty shops, glistening jewellers’ windows; filled with the smells and noises of cafes and delis, of newspaper vendors,
Big Issue
sellers. Busy introspective people.

A greying statue of Queen Victoria overlooked all this. Plastic benches surrounded her, and fake gas lanterns glowed in the twilight. The Town Hall clock spat four bells as Weston stepped onto Northgate. The Joker, his favourite town centre pub, loomed up on his left, its caricature sign creaked back and forth in a northerly breeze. He checked the Cartier that dangled next to a thick gold chain on his wrist and quickened his already rapid stride, hurling himself at the bland crowds.

The Joker was a proper pub, not one of these new fangled theme pubs. The beams in here were real, take them away and the ceiling would fall down. Behind the bar, Mac pulled ale from real pumps. The shine on the carpet was genuine one-hundred-percent blood, beer and puke. It added to the ambience – and kept the wine-drinking ‘elite’ away in their droves.

Weston strode for the far left corner, which afforded a good view of the only entrance, a place away from the public phone and the toilets, a place where he had met this man before. A double whisky waited for him. He removed his glasses, stared through heavy smoke and swallowed the scotch, revelled as it burned his throat.

“You’re late.”

A wooden chair creaked under Weston’s weight. “Tell me about this kid.”

The man’s hand reached out of the seclusion, placed a pint glass on the table and flicked cigar ash onto the floor. “He’s fresh. Wants to play in my gang.”

“I want it doing right. I don’t want no kid having a go just to impress you.”

“Everybody’s got to learn—”

“Not on my job. Break him in on a fucking ram raid or something.”

“This is where I break him in. My man, Colin, my rules.”

“I want someone else.”

“Take it or leave it.”

Pub noise blared. “What makes you think he can do it?”

“Because he’s desperate. Jess told me all about him.”

“Jess? If
he
was so fucking clever, he wouldn’t be in the clink.”

“Like I said, take it or leave it.”

Weston’s jowls wobbled above his shirt collar. “Better not let me down.”

“This Conniston, family man. Going for promotion you said.”

“You lost your best source because of him,” Weston said.

He nodded thoughtfully, “He’s the one grassed you up, eh?”

“Straight to my DCI.” His eyes narrowed, “I had to threaten him with the magic words ‘compensation’ and ‘publicity’.”

“But you’ve traded with me since—”

“No smoke without fire… One-offs, here and there. I’ve had to pull my neck right in!” He looked around at the crowd. No one paid him any attention.

“Just be careful—”

“I’m trapped. Every time I leave work to do business, he’s there following me around like a fart in a space-suit.”

The contact drained his beer, snapped his fingers at Mac. “He sounds like a pleb, Colin. Threaten him. Usually works with his sort.”

Weston drained his whisky, then peeled a cigar from his breast pocket, lit it and added to the smoke. “I caught him following me once; said if he ever came near me again outside work I’d pull his innards out through his arsehole.” He flicked ash every couple of seconds, hands always moving, fingers feeling the sticky grain of the table.