Destroying Angel (7 page)

Tweed studied the magazine, quickly forgetting de Vergy and Ruddock. Half an hour later he pulled the main gates shut and activated the alarm system before taking up his torch for his first patrol of the night.

The estate proved secure, as it almost invariably did. Once or twice he had had to chase groups of kids off the roofs of the industrial units and, when he had first worked there, a burglary had happened. The thieves had been caught, the result of the network of video cameras that covered every warehouse door and every alley on the estate. None had tried since, presumably because word had gone round of how well protected the estate was. With the Grand Union Canal to one side and the railway to the other, the estate was hard enough to access as it was, while it would be impossible to get a van in and load up with anything really worthwhile.

He returned to his box, sat pensively for a while, and then once more took out his magazine, scanning the pictures of naked girls with a wistful hopelessness that came from a knowledge that the time when he might have aspired to such blatantly sexual women was long gone, if indeed any women had been so easy when he was a young man. Why, he asked himself, did women have to be so precious with their bodies? Surely a fuck or a suck wasn’t a big deal?

Tweed put the magazine away, feeling depressed instead of turned-on. He turned to the bank of video screens behind him, watching the changing pictures, none of which showed more than the expected empty yards and corridors.

The night wore on, as dull and uneventful as any other; Tweed drinking the occasional coffee and doing his hourly rounds. By three a.m. he was feeling thoroughly fed up as he stared out into the night, listening to the distant rumble of a train. He had just finished his round and was considering another coffee and wishing he could risk a nap, as he had so often done in the days before surveillance cameras became commonplace.

Another sound caught his attention, so faint that he was unsure if he had actually heard it. It was the tinkle of breaking glass, somewhere off in the distance. He turned back to the screens, letting each cycle twice before deciding that it must have been a bottle breaking or something. Feeling bored and frustrated, he once more retrieved his magazine from under the desk, trying to regain something of the thrill that pictures of naked women had once inspired.

The distant clang of an alarm bell cut suddenly into his thoughts. It was on the estate, the warning light on his panel showing for one of the big warehouses that backed onto the canal. It was de Vergy Fine Wines, he realised as he got to his feet. He swung around to glance at the screens, but the camera that covered the front of the wine warehouse showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Or did it?

Tweed peered more closely, only to have the picture change to one from another camera. He waited with a flush of annoyance, his hand poised over the button that would summon the other guard and the police. The picture returned to the wine warehouse, still showing no movement, but he immediately realised what had caught his eye. The windows at the very top of the picture showed an odd shifting light, which could only mean one thing.

Tweed stabbed his hand onto the button even as he reached for the telephone to call the fire brigade.

Ted Gage woke to the incessant ringing of the telephone. He cursed as he slowly stirred, hoping it was something trivial but knowing full well it wouldn’t be. A glance at the clock showed it was nearly half-past three in the morning, and one ominous thought immediately came uppermost in his mind: fire.

Sure enough, a wine warehouse in Park Royal was burning. Gage hurried to dress, ignoring his wife’s complaints as he turned on the lights to make things easier for himself. Within five minutes he was more or less ready and clambering into his car.

He drove west, gaining at least some satisfaction from his wailing siren and the pleasure of doing a ton on the Westway. As he approached Park Royal he saw the fire, orange flames lighting the horizon and a pillar of black smoke rising against the night sky.

‘Shit that’s a big one,’ he swore, cursing the fire-raiser who in all probability was even then watching and crowing with delight over the destruction he had caused.

It was easy to find the trading estate. Flames were visible for miles, licking up through the shattered roof of the warehouse with sparks trailing high into the windless night. Fire engines thronged the yard outside the warehouse, the team’s hoses turned onto the face of the burning building.

With the warehouse backing directly onto the canal it was difficult to get at the heart of the fire, but after a long struggle it was brought under control and finally checked, leaving the warehouse a burnt-out shell.

As soon as the worst of the crisis was past, Gage identified the white helmet of the senior fireman and walked over to him.

‘DI Gage,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’m in charge of an investigation into a series of these warehouse fires. Any idea how it started?’

‘Don’t quote me on it yet, but it looks like a petrol bombing job,’ the officer replied. ‘And I think I can tell you why the roof went up like that.’

‘Oh?’

‘Brandy. Apparently there was a pallet of it stacked by the office. The whole lot would have gone up like a bomb.’

‘How do you know it was there?’ Gage asked.

‘There are bits of brandy bottles all over the place – blown clear by the blast.’

Gage sighed, preparing for the sixth round of futile investigation followed by criticism from his superiors and the media.

‘Susan! Wake up!’ Paulette called, the words barely registering to Susan as she drifted slowly out of her sleep. ‘Annabella’s warehouse has burnt down!’

‘What? You’re joking?’ Susan managed, her sleepiness draining away as the adrenaline began to run.

‘No, I’m not,’ Paulette insisted from the kitchen. ‘It’s on the radio. De Vergy Fine Wines, in Park Royal – that must be it. They’re saying it’s another attack by the Fire Ghost.’

‘I’m coming.’ Susan rolled out of bed and dashed into the kitchen in time to catch the end of the report.

‘I can’t believe that’s a coincidence,’ she said as the newsreader moved on to another item.

‘Surely you don’t think Annabella did it?’

‘It needn’t be that simple. What I’m saying is that there’s a high probability of a causative link between our visit to Annabella and the fire. It would be wrong to speculate on the nature of that link, but right to investigate it.’ Susan hurried from the kitchen.

‘Well, er – yes,’ Paulette agreed, although slightly lost.

‘I’m going over there…’ Susan called from the bathroom over the sound of water cascading into the basin. ‘Would you find me the address?’

‘Inspector Gage, can you confirm that this is another attack by the Fire Ghost?’

Ted Gage paused, trying not to show his annoyance to the cluster of cameramen and reporters facing him. ‘At present,’ he said, speaking clearly and slowly, ‘I can only say that we are investigating a warehouse fire as part of normal police procedure.’

‘But it looks like the work of the Fire Ghost, doesn’t it?’ another demanded.

‘I have no further comment at this juncture.’

‘Are you saying it’s not the Fire Ghost?’

‘As I said,’ his annoyance grew a little more, ‘I have no further comment at this juncture. A full statement will be released in due course. Now, if you will excuse me, I have several important matters to attend to.’

Gage turned and walked away, ignoring the continuing barrage of questions and crossing back into the haven of police tape. Despite his comments to the press, he was depressingly sure that the fire was the Ghost’s sixth strike. The MO was pretty well identical to the others. A rear window had been broken and a petrol bomb hurled through it. Forensic had already identified the shards of the bomb, despite the sea of broken glass inside what remained of the warehouse.

The difference with this attack was that, instead of landing on material that was merely flammable, the bomb had landed within feet of a pallet of brandy. According to forensic, the cardboard boxes must have caught, burning until the brandy started to boil inside the bottles and then exploded with enough force to blow out the roof and scatter burning debris over everything else. The result was a revolting mess of half-burnt cardboard, shattered wine bottles and charred pallets, all of it swimming in an inch-deep sea of ruined wine and water from the fire hoses. Gas cylinders in the Portakabin that served as an office had also gone up, adding to the mess and completely gutting the office. The smell was abominable, making the normal mixture of smoke and melted plastic seem quite inoffensive.

The last people to leave had been the owner, Annabella de Vergy, and the manager, Philip Ruddock, who had shut the warehouse several hours before the fire started. Both had been at home when the fire happened. Both lived alone and so could not provide alibis, but Gage hardly felt he needed them to. The arson attack was, after all, too similar to the other Fire Ghost attacks to be anything else.

As he walked towards his team he saw a pretty female talking to Sergeant Yates. Expecting a pushy reporter, Gage sighed and steeled himself to get rid of her. ‘Excuse me,’ he began as he approached, only to have the sergeant turn and address him.

‘This is Susan MacQuillan, guv,’ the sergeant said. ‘Used to be a DC with central, a few years back.’

Gage turned to her, unable to avoid having his eyes drawn to the lovely swell of her breasts beneath a tight T-shirt. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss MacQuillan. I’m DI Gage.’

‘Hi,’ she smiled. ‘Can we have a quick word?’

‘Sure.’ Gage found himself immediately drawn to her friendly manner. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s to do with the fire,’ Susan began. ‘A friend of mine – a reporter – has been investigating a wine scandal. Now, she took over the investigation from another writer who recently died of food poisoning, leaving Paulette, my friend, with very few leads. One lead was that the original writer had thought that Annabella de Vergy was one of the victims of the fraud. Only yesterday Paulette and I interviewed de Vergy. Given that the warehouse fire occurred only some twelve hours after Paulette and I saw her, it seems highly probable that our transmission of information is in some way linked to the fire. Annabella de Vergy herself appears to have no knowledge of the scandal, although she cannot be ruled out. More probable is a case in which she mentioned that the scandal was still being followed up to a third party, who then panicked and set the fire in an attempt to destroy any evidence. So—’

‘Hang on, hang on,’ Gage interrupted, Susan having reeled off the explanation at a speed that had left him far behind. ‘So you’re saying the fire was deliberate and caused by someone involved with de Vergy Fine Wines?’

‘More or less, yes.’

‘And this is based entirely on speculation?’

‘No,’ Susan replied indignantly, ‘it’s based on an analysis of probability. I have no hard evidence, but the probability of the three events – Alan Sowerby’s death, Paulette and my interview with de Vergy, and the fire – not being causally linked are tiny. I would estimate—’

‘Stop, hold on. Who’s Alan Sowerby?’

‘The writer who died of food poisoning.’

‘And you don’t have any hard evidence?’

‘No…’ Susan admitted, ‘but—’

‘Miss MacQuillan,’ Gage broke in once more, ‘I cannot base an investigation on such vague speculation. You must know that.’

‘Sure,’ Susan conceded, ‘I don’t expect you to. But bear it in mind when you’re interviewing.’

‘Fortunately,’ Gage was becoming slightly irritated by the pace and intensity of Susan’s approach, ‘there isn’t any need for further interviews. The fire has an MO that fits perfectly with the previous five warehouse fires started by the arsonist they’re calling the Fire Ghost.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Susan persisted, ‘but that in no way alters my reasoning.’

‘What reasoning? Your theory is pure speculation. Any three events might be linked, the way you put it. It’s obviously just chance—’

‘No, no, you don’t understand—’

‘Stop!’ Gage had heard enough. ‘Look, I know you were in the force and I do have some respect for your opinion, but if I go off on some hare-brained side-track the Super will have my guts for garters. If you can bring me some more concrete information, then I’ll listen. Until then, be a love and leave it out, okay?’

Susan made to say something more and then stopped, leaving Gage with the satisfied feeling of having won the argument, and a slight sense of unease because he hadn’t entirely understood her explanation.

Susan walked across the slowly drying puddles of the yard, feeling intensely irritated. The disinclination of the police to follow lines of reasoning based on probabilities had always infuriated her. It was not as if she thought such intangible ideas should be acceptable in court, merely that, in the absence of hard evidence, using probability as a tool often produced results.

Shrugging off her annoyance, she turned her mind to the main question raised by the fire. Was Annabella de Vergy involved in some way? After interviewing her and then playing with her, Susan had been convinced of her innocence. Following the fire, it was no longer possible to be so sure. Assuming that a link existed, then anybody who had spoken to Annabella also became suspect. There had been only twelve hours between them leaving Annabella’s house and the fire. If her reasoning was correct, then there could only be a small number of possibilities.

One of those possibles had to be the man Annabella was now standing with at the far side of the yard. He was shorter than de Vergy, red-haired and very red-faced. Dressed smartly, carrying a briefcase and with the subtle air of natural arrogance that Susan had learnt to associate with English public-school types, she found herself filled with an instant dislike. Telling herself not to be irrational, not to say prejudiced, she approached the couple.

‘Susan, what are you doing?’ Annabella asked in surprise as Susan greeted her.

‘I wondered if I might help,’ Susan offered, deciding on a pose of friendly usefulness. Of course, if Annabella was linked to the fire, let alone Sowerby’s death, then she would hardly hire a private investigator to look into it. Bearing this in mind, an acceptance from her would put her innocence beyond any reasonable doubt. In Susan’s experience, no criminal, however confident, would actually hire someone to investigate them.

‘Help?’ Annabella asked, sounding puzzled.

‘I didn’t mention it yesterday,’ Susan replied. ‘I used to be in the police. I’m a private investigator now.’

‘Really?’ Annabella’s tone of slightly amused disbelief annoyed Susan, even though it was by no means the first time she had faced such a reaction.

‘Are you really cut out for that sort of work?’ the man asked.

‘I have a moderate track record,’ Susan replied, trying not to sound defensive.

The man merely gave her a look of scepticism; Annabella responded instead. ‘It’s very sweet of you, dear, but I’m afraid there’s not much to do. The police think it’s the work of that serial arsonist, the Fire Ghost. They’ve been after him for months, so I don’t suppose you could do anything, anyway. Oh, by the way, this is Philip Ruddock, my warehouse manager. Philip, Susan MacQuillan. She’s terribly sweet; she and a reporter friend of hers thought we might be being cheated in some sort of wine scandal and came over to tell me yesterday.’

‘I hardly think they’d be qualified to judge such a thing,’ Ruddock answered with an arrogance that further infuriated Susan.

‘Oh, no,’ Annabella continued, ‘it was Alan Sowerby who thought he’d found a scandal, something to do with an exporter selling table wines as quality wine. Of course, I said it was nonsense; just poor old Alan being an idealist.’

‘Sowerby did at least have a moderate palate,’ Ruddock put in, ‘but he was no businessman. Now if you’ll excuse us, we are very busy.’

Susan left, seething at their attitude, particularly Ruddock’s. Annabella had been condescending, and probably more so than she would have been had Susan not submitted to her sexually. That was a common reaction though, if annoying; many of Susan’s partners had expected her to be meek and submissive in ordinary life, just because she enjoyed sex that way. Such relationships never lasted. Annabella was arrogant, but Ruddock was both rude and arrogant. He was an unpleasant little shit, but she still knew that next time she fantasised over being sexually humiliated by a man, Ruddock’s image would creep into her brain, whether she liked it or not.

What had been a casual interest in an investigation, done purely to help Paulette and fill in time until another case came her way, had now turned into a burning need to get to the bottom of things. Of course, there was also the chance that the fire genuinely was another Fire Ghost attack and that, by further investigation, she would only make an idiot of herself. There was also the fact that nobody was paying her to make the investigation, yet her natural stubbornness wouldn’t let her back down.

No, she would see it through, and preferably with police help. Paul Berner, for all his cock-sure arrogance, had a brain, and it was possible he could be persuaded to take an interest in the case. Given that the investigation into the Fire Ghost was obviously getting nowhere, it should be easy for anyone involved with the metropolitan detection squad to get onto the team. That was what she intended to get Berner to do, even if it meant sucking his cock for him every day for the next year.

Bob Tweed watched as the small, curvaceous woman walked towards him. On a normal day he would have knocked off some hours earlier. But with the fire at de Vergy Fine Wines, an apparently endless succession of policemen and reporters had wanted to talk to him. All in all, he felt thoroughly pleased with himself. He would now be on television and in the papers: famous, if only briefly and only by chance. Still, it was a good feeling.

He half-expected the woman to come and speak to him, as so many of the other people who had visited the fire site had done. Looking at the way her big breasts strained against the fabric of her T-shirt he was hoping she would, too, if only so he could admire her at close quarters. But instead she turned towards the rank of cars drawn up against the trading estate fence and made for the small black one she had arrived in.

As she bent a little to open the door he was treated to a view of a bottom every bit as round and shapely as her breasts, the contours shown off beautifully by tight blue jeans. He sighed, imagining how it would feel to get his hands on such a ripe young body. Any woman who dressed the way she did was asking for trouble, he considered, and then decided he was wrong. She wasn’t actually dressed all that provocatively; it was just that with a body like hers it was hard not to look sexy.

She smiled and nodded as he raised the barrier for her, a friendly easy-going gesture, very different from the way most people treated him. Watching the car go, he shook his head, wishing once more that he was young enough to be able to set his sights on such gorgeous women.