Destruction of Evidence (3 page)

‘Thanks, girls. And, thanks for working on your night off, Pam. I’m grateful,’ Tim assured her.

‘I had nothing better to do.’

‘She’d forgotten it was singles night at the Castle Hotel,’ Alice teased.

‘I’ve just dumped one husband in the divorce courts, I’m not out to get myself saddled with another…’

‘See you tomorrow, Pam,’ Tim cut her short before she embarked on her favourite subject. The cruelties and sins of her ex.

‘I’ll be here but don’t expect me to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.’ She gave a theatrical yawn.

‘I’ll be enjoying a lie-in,’ Alice crowed.

‘Rub my nose in your day off, why don’t you?’ Pam turned right into the one-way system. The moment she left, a police car pulled in and blocked the entrance to the yard. Two constables climbed out.

‘Dai, Paula,’ Tim nodded. ‘What’s brought you out of your cosy station and away from your cups of tea at this time of night?’

‘Guess?’ Paula questioned.

‘Complaint from May Williams about shouting outside the pub?’ Tim looked across the road at the first floor windows of the house next door to Ken’s. The blinds twitched marginally wider. He stretched out his hand and wiggled his fingers in a parody of a “hello”. The blinds immediately snapped shut.

‘Bloody woman has nothing better to do than sit in her window day and all night watching the street. If a dog barks she’s on the phone to the station to report animal abuse.’ Dai walked under the archway and nudged Larry’s leg with his foot. ‘Dead to the world,’ he pronounced sourly.

‘He staggered in as I was closing. Started performing when I wouldn’t serve him so I showed him the door.’

‘Where’d he been to get in this state?’

‘I have no idea,’ Tim retorted. ‘But there are one or two landlords in this town who are happy to keep serving as long as the customers keep paying, no matter what condition they’re in.’

‘Don’t we know it,’ Dai grumbled. ‘You knock him out, Tim?’

‘The fresh air did for him. You’re welcome to take him home.’

‘And risk him throwing up in the car, not likely. I’m off duty as of five minutes ago and I’ve no intention of putting in overtime to clean up a drunk’s mess.’ Dai turned to Ken. ‘Off fishing?’

‘Skateboarding.’

‘Nothing like Welsh wit,’ Dai quipped. ‘Got any pies or pasties left, Tim?’

‘Not sure. Want to come in and take a look?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Dai answered. ‘Paula, fancy a pie and a pint?’

‘No thanks,’ she refused. ‘If I don’t crawl into bed in the next ten minutes I’ll be joining Larry there, under the arch.’

‘Want to take the car?’

‘If that’s your way of asking me to return it to the station because you want to drink more than the limit…’

Dai interrupted. ‘As you’re so tired I thought I was doing you a favour offering it to you.’

‘All right, you’ve twisted my arm. I’ll drive it back to the station.’ She opened the car door.

‘Pick me up at four tomorrow?’ Dai asked.

‘On condition you do the paperwork on May’s call,’ she negotiated.

‘You know how to screw a hard-working copper.’

‘You taught me. Well, hello there, important businesswomen.’ Paula greeted a crowd of women who were leaving the pub by the front door. ‘If only the clean-living townsfolk could see you high-society matrons now.’

‘No jokes please, Paula, my head’s already beginning to hurt,’ Anna Harding one of the town’s GPs pleaded.

‘If any of you are going my way, I can offer you a lift.’ Paula climbed into the driving seat of the squad car.

‘I’ll take you up on that,’ Judy Howell went to the front passenger door of the squad car.

‘What to the police station? You could walk it in the time it’ll take you to climb in,’ Police Inspector Carol March laughed.

‘I’m whacked. Bye, most adored father and thank you for doing us proud.’

‘Sure you won’ stay the night, Judy? I’ve a spare room.’

‘Positive, but thank you for the kind invitation, Father,’ she slurred.

Dai closed the door on her and Paula drove off.

‘Night, Tim, lovely meal, see you soon,’ Carol waved and set off briskly up the street to the taxi office. Anna and two others followed her.

‘Great evening…’

‘Bye, Tim, Ken, Dai…’

The three men watched the remainder of the women stagger on their four inch heels to the end of the road where they separated into groups at the crossroads.

‘And they say men can drink. I just hope none of that lot end up like our friend on the pavement here.’ Dai nodded at Larry.

‘It’s good to see women out enjoying themselves,’ Ken said feelingly. He gathered his bag and rod. ‘Hope the rest of your night is quieter, Tim, Paula, Dai.’

‘Catch enough to keep a couple back for me.’ Tim entered the pub and Dai followed.

Ken turned left at the end of the street and walked over the old stone bridge that crossed the river below the town. He unclipped Mars’s lead as he stepped on to the path that ran alongside the riverbank. The collie raced ahead. Ken walked on, smiling at the sound of the women’s laughter echoing from the town.

His “spot” was a clearing in a copse of trees, a fifteen-minute walk from the bridge. When he reached it he unpacked his gear, lowered his net into the water, and weighed the handle down with stones.

Mars continued to sniff around the long grass. Ken knew the dog wouldn’t wander out of sight. He completed his set-up ritual by packing his pipe with tobacco. Phyllis thought he had given up smoking ten years ago. He hadn’t disillusioned her.

After lighting his pipe, he cast his line into the centre of the river, sat on his portable stool, drew a deep breath of fresh, night air and looked up at the back of the buildings bordering Main Street, half a mile in front of, and above, him. Shadowy lights shone from behind the blinds and curtains of the upper stories of the Georgian town-houses.

A car engine roared in the distance and he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a siren. An ambulance? Or the officers who’d relieved Paula and Dai answering a call? Had the burglars who were targeting the houses in the countryside around the town finally been caught?

He reached for a cheese sandwich and bit into it, savouring the lashings of French mustard he’d used instead of butter. He dribbled crumbs down his sweater. Phyllis would have scolded him for making a mess had she been watching. That knowledge made his sandwich taste all the better.

He lived for the spring, summer and autumn nights he spent on the river. He was free to enjoy the silence, to think of nothing and everything and, throughout it all, he was conscious of the line in the water. Any moment there could be a tug – and who knew what he might land. Trout, tench, bream, sewin… salmon.

He finished his sandwich and continued to sit, as still as the bronze statue in the town square, waiting for a bite.

The hours ticked past. The net he’d lowered into the water grew heavy with wriggling catch. Four trout and a salmon. Two trout for Tim, who’d slip him a bottle of brandy in return and two for Alun. He enjoyed helping out at the auction room. Being on hand at house clearances had netted him some good bargains, particularly in fishing tackle and flies.

Hoping to tempt one more unwary salmon, he changed his fly and cast his line out again.

CHAPTER THREE

2.55 a.m.

Ken knew something was wrong when Mars charged up and knocked over his flask. He looked up and caught a flash of light in the attic window of one of the houses above him. Too bright to be an electric bulb, the flare moved, dancing a vivid red, blue and orange. It was a full minute before he realised the blaze was in the top floor of Alun Pitcher’s house.

He’d helped shift furniture for Alun and knew the layout of the house. The cellar was for storage, the next floor up, which opened on ground level on Main Street, housed the Pitcher Auction Rooms’ suite of offices. The family lived on the third and fourth floors. But Alun’s eldest son, Lee, a goldsmith, had converted the old servants’ quarters in the attic into a studio apartment for himself with kitchen, bedroom and workshop areas and shower room. Had Lee been working late and grown careless with a soldering iron?

A second light suddenly burst into flame two floors below the attic, in the kitchen James had recently re-fitted. Seconds later, a window exploded. The air was still. Even from half a mile away Ken could hear the roar of flames. A dark shape emerged from the attic and clung to the fire escape at the side of the house before beginning its descent.

‘Thank God.’ Ken pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled 999.

Twenty-five minutes later, hampered by his rod, tackle and a plastic bag of wet fish, and by Mars pulling on his lead, Ken lurched into Main Street. The closer he drew to the Pitchers’ house, the thicker the smoke. Black, blinding, dry and acrid, it clogged his nose, throat and lungs and stung his eyes. When Mars hung back and stood his ground, he physically dragged him.

Ken blinked hard, rubbed his eyes and made out the outline of a fire tender parked in front of the Pitchers’ house. The firemen had attached hoses to the hydrants and were thrusting the nozzles through the smoke billowing from the axed front door.

When his eyes became accustomed to the searing atmosphere, Ken saw three parked police cars. Two blocked off either end of Main Street, the third blocked Church Street, a narrow thoroughfare that opened opposite the Pitchers’ house and led around the side of the Anglican church.

Tim Pryce, the local police sergeant, Frank Howell, and Dr Edwards who lived in the manor at the end of Main Street, were standing behind the police car barricading the bridge end of the street. Two constables were shepherding a crowd of residents, including his wife, Phyllis, in her familiar green and red dressing gown, past the police car that blocked the entrance to Church Street. Ken ducked out of his wife’s sight.

‘The vicar’s opened the church hall, his wife’s serving tea and biscuits,’ Frank Howell informed Ken mechanically before turning to look at him. ‘Sorry, Ken. Didn’t recognise you there.’

‘Not surprising in this smoke.’ Tim clamped his hand over his mouth.

‘Are the Pitchers all right?’ Ken asked urgently.

‘None have come out that I’ve seen, and I’ve been here since the first tender arrived and went around the back of the house,’ Dr Edwards volunteered.

‘They didn’t come out the back way. Frank and I reached there just after the blaze started,’ Tim answered. ‘The paramedics are kicking their heels, waiting on the firemen.’ Tim pointed to an ambulance parked behind the police car at the opposite end of the street, close to the entrance to the lane that ran at the back of the terrace.

‘I saw someone leave the attic by the fire escape.’ Ken coughed when smoke hit his lungs.

‘There are trained paramedics among the firemen. No doubt they’ll be seeing to whoever it was around the back.’ Tim looked at Frank. ‘You said my call was the second emergency services received. Was the first from the Pitchers?’

‘Fisherman down by the river.’

‘You?’ Tim asked Ken, who was watching the ambulance parked behind the tender in the hope of catching sight of Alun or his family.

‘I saw flames in the attic then the kitchen just before the kitchen windows blew.’

‘Kitchen window, that settles it. Three boys in the house, it’s a chip-pan fire,’ Frank affirmed.

‘There were flames in the attic before the kitchen,’ Ken reminded him.

‘The fire in the attic could have spread upwards from the kitchen and you just happened to see it first,’ Frank suggested.

Ken wanted to dismiss Frank’s idea but living with Phyllis had given him a reluctance to argue, even when he was certain he was right.

‘There are two boys in the house, not three. Michael’s spending the night with Alison in her parents’ place. Ken and I spoke to them as they left,’ Tim informed him.

‘I’d better let the firemen know. I told them five people were inside. They’ll keep sending people in until all the family are accounted for.’ Frank walked over to the senior officers who were directing operations from the front of the building. He spoke to them for a few minutes and one of them accompanied him when he returned.

‘Frank said one of you saw someone on the fire escape?’ The fireman pulled off his helmet and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm but as he was wearing protective clothing all he succeeded in doing was smearing black smuts over his face.

‘I did,’ Ken confirmed.

‘When was this?’

‘When I phoned the emergency services. Half an hour or so ago.’

The fireman checked his watch. ‘Thirty three minutes ago according to the switchboard. I just contacted the boys at the back of the building. There was no one in the yard when they arrived and no one’s come out since they’ve been there.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ken was stunned.

‘The first thing we check is the location of residents who could be trapped in the building. The boys on this street are still trying to reach the first floor but it’s hopeless, fire’s spread down from the floor above at the back of the building and the stairs are ablaze. The cellar’s blazing too and flames are coming up through the floorboards to the ground floor.’