Some by Fire (3 page)

I said: ‘Did you know there’s a judge in Leeds who’s lost both his thumbs?’

‘Justice Fingers?’

‘That’s him.’ I sat on the wall alongside him and stared at the house. The smell of wet soot hung heavy in the warm evening. It should have been pollen and new-mown grass, but we got chemical fumes, carbonised wood and sopping carpets. And a memory of something else.

‘She was called Jasmine,’ he said. ‘Jasmine Turnbull.’

‘Was she?’

‘Mmm. They had a bedroom upstairs. And the attic. I bet it was the first time she’d ever had her own room.’

‘Don’t personalise it, Dave,’ I heard myself saying, as if quoting from the textbook. ‘Something like this happens every week somewhere. It’s just that we were here this time. That’s not a reason to feel any worse about it.’

‘You could smell them,’ he said. ‘When we went inside…’

After a silence I said: ‘They sent me the wrong way.’

‘Who did?’

‘Control. They told me to turn right at the lights. Not left.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’

‘It might have done.’

‘It’s an easy mistake to make.’

‘It wasn’t a mistake.’

‘So what will you do?’

I thought about it for a few seconds, then said: ‘Nothing, I suppose. But I’ll remember. I bear grudges.’

‘That’ll learn ’em,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you like being called Sparky?’ I asked, changing the subject.

He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘To be awkward, I suppose. I’ve a reputation to maintain.’

‘For being awkward? I’d noticed it.’

He grinned and nodded.

‘Well,’ I went on, ‘I don’t like being called Sarge. It’s Charlie, OK? Charlie Priest.’

‘If you say so,’ he replied.

‘How long have you been in the job?’

‘Nearly five years. You?’

‘About the same.’

‘Is that all? So when did you get your stripes?’

‘A fortnight ago,’ I admitted.

‘Honest?’

‘You mean it doesn’t show?’

‘I thought you were an old hand.’

‘Bullshitting doesn’t become you. I prefer it when you’re being awkward. My dad’s a sergeant at Heckley; it runs in the family.’

‘Is that why you joined Leeds City? To get out from under him?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What did you do before?’

‘I’d just left art college. I’ve a shiny new degree in art, if you know anyone who needs one. So far it’s earned me commissions for two police dance posters. What did you do?’

‘Three years in the army. Waste of time. Me and discipline don’t go.’

‘I can believe that.’ Something over the road caught my eye. ‘Come and look at this,’ I said. We walked across the street to the burnt-out house. The number, thirty-two, was written in chalk on one of the bricks beside the door. A patch of peeling paint showed where it had originally been.

‘That’s been done recently,’ I said, examining the numbers.

‘To help the postman,’ Dave suggested. ‘Maybe they received a lot of mail. It was a hostel…court papers, that sort of thing. Important stuff.’

I walked to next door. The number thirty was neatly painted on the wall. ‘Postmen can usually count in twos,’ I said. ‘Maybe someone chalked the number nice and clearly so someone else knew they’d found the right house.’

‘You mean…the arsonist.’

I sighed and felt myself deflate. ‘Nah,’ I admitted. ‘It’s just crazy guesswork.’

‘It might not be,’ Dave said, interested. ‘Just
suppose someone did come and write the number on the wall. What would they do with the chalk?’

‘Get rid of it.’

‘Right. Would you say chalk carried fingerprints?’

‘I doubt it. No, definitely not.’

‘So you might as well just chuck it away?’

‘As soon as you’d done with it.’

‘Right, but if you
lived
here you’d take it inside and put it back wherever you found it.’ Dave stood facing the door, pretended to write the number, turned around and mimed tossing a piece of chalk into the little garden.

The soil in every other yard was as hard as concrete, but this had recently absorbed a few thousand gallons of water and firemen’s boots had trampled all the weeds into it. We didn’t see any chalk.

‘Let’s look at the other side,’ Dave suggested.

And there it was – a half-inch piece of calcium carbonate, just the size teachers hate, nestling under the wall where the stomping boots couldn’t reach it. I braved the mud and picked up the evidence between my finger and thumb. ‘Exhibit A,’ I said, triumphantly.

Dave repeated his mime. ‘Maybe it’s at that side because he was left-handed,’ he concluded.

‘Possibly.’

‘And not very tall. I had to stoop to do the number.’

‘You’re as tall as me.’

‘I know, but it’s written two bricks below the painted number. I reckon he suffers from duck’s disease.’

‘Or he’s a she,’ I suggested.

Dave nodded enthusiastically. ‘Or he’s a she.’

We gave the piece of chalk to the PC in the car and told him to invite CID round. We left it at that, not going into our leaps of conjecture about the culprit. They’re supposed to be the ones with the imagination, not we poor woodentops.

‘Fancy a pint and a Chinese?’ I asked Dave, smiling with satisfaction as I dusted the mud and chalk from my fingers.

‘I’d prefer a curry,’ he replied.

‘Awkward to the last,’ I said. ‘Curry it is. Let’s go.’

In the car I asked him if he came from Leeds. He just said he didn’t.

‘So, is it a secret?’ I asked.

‘Heckley,’ he responded, and I could sense the amusement in his voice.

I glanced across at him. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘I don’t remember you.’

‘I remember you. I wasn’t sure at first. You played in goal for the grammar school.’

‘That’s right.’ I grinned at the memory. Recognition at last.

Dave said: ‘I played for the secondary modern. We beat you in the schools’ cup final.’

I was nearly laughing now. ‘Only by a penalty,’ I replied.

‘You let it in.’

‘It was a good one. Unstoppable.’

‘I thought it went between your legs.’

‘No it didn’t!’ I insisted, indignantly. ‘It was a cracker, straight into the bottom left-hand corner. I didn’t have a chance.’

‘Thanks.’

I pulled into the kerb and looked across at him. ‘Was that you?’

‘One of my finer moments.’

‘You big sod!’

We both ordered vindaloos. In those days it wasn’t curry unless it stripped the chromium plating off the cutlery. I took a big gratifying draught of lager and said: ‘So, how are you finding the job?’ I wanted a moan, so I thought I’d invite him to have first go.

He bit off a piece of chapati, holding it in his good hand, before replying. ‘It’s OK. I’ve never really wanted to do anything else. Just be a copper, ever since I was a kid. A detective, preferably, in the suit and the white socks…’ He fingered his imaginary lapels. ‘But after this morning…now, I’m not so sure.’

‘I don’t think there’ll be many days like today,’ I said.

‘One’s enough. Let’s just say I learnt something this morning, about myself. What about you?’

‘Me?’ I thought he’d never ask.

‘Mmm.’

I tipped some more pilau rice on to my plate. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Do you want this last bit?’

‘Please.’

I passed it across to him. ‘To be honest, I’m having second thoughts. I only came into the job to make my dad happy. Family firm and all that. I wasn’t under pressure or anything, but I knew that was what he wanted, not an art student for a son. And I didn’t want to be a teacher, nuh-uh. In a way, it was the easy option. My ambition was to make inspector, prove I could do it, but I don’t know if I’ll stick it that long.’

‘You make it sound easy.’

I shrugged and wiped my mouth. ‘That’s just the plan. Maybe I’ll fail. So why didn’t you join East Pennine?’

‘I tried. They wouldn’t have me.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ As an afterthought I added: ‘Perhaps they were full.’

‘Perhaps.’ He caught the waiter’s attention and ordered two more drinks.

‘Just an orange for me,’ I said, almost apologetically. I felt a prat, and deservedly so. I’d taken for granted what Dave had struggled for, but I never gave another thought to the lesson he said
he’d learnt that morning, not for another twenty-odd years.

The waiter placed the drinks in front of us and asked if we’d enjoyed the meal. We nodded profusely and mumbled our thanks. When he’d gone I said: ‘Have they given you a sick note?’

‘Yeah. Just for a week,’ he replied.

‘It’s my long break.’ Four blessed days off and the weather was set fair. ‘Have you ever done any walking?’

‘Walking? You mean up mountains?’

‘We call them fells.’

‘Not since a couple of school trips. Ilkley Moor, Simon’s Seat, would it be?’

‘I was thinking more like Helvellyn, in the Lake District.’

‘I’ve never been to the Lakes. Would I be able to do it?’

‘’Course you would. And I’ll tell you something else: you don’t half enjoy a curry and a pint on the way home.’ I didn’t mention the aphrodisiac properties of a day’s pleasant exertion in the fresh air. He could discover that for himself, in different company.

And that’s how the West Yorkshire Police Walking Club was born, all those years ago.

Melissa wasn’t in London when the litre of petrol ignited, sending a fireball up the staircase of the hostel
and instantly consuming all the oxygen in the sealed-against-draughts building. The fire had faded briefly, starved of fuel, until the windows imploded and dense morning air rushed in to meet vaporised hydrocarbon in a conflagration of unimaginable ferocity. The news reports said that the eight occupants were overcome by fumes. They were being kind; fire is not a gentle executioner.

Melissa was in bed at the time, in the finest hotel Biggleswade had to offer, in the arms of Nick Kingston. They learnt of the fire on Radio Four’s
The World This Weekend,
sandwiched between a story about Lord Lucan being wanted for the murder of his child’s nanny and one that they didn’t hear because they were dancing on the mattress. They lunched in the dining room and took a bottle of champagne back to their room. Melissa wanted to make love, but Nick was discovering, to his dismay, that sometimes it took a day or two for the well to fill up again. And he preferred them younger.

Three weeks later they met again, at the same hotel. Duncan had received his two hundred pounds, as promised, and Melissa had told him that she was booked into the clinic for the abortion. After dinner, in the safety of their room, Nick handed her a thick envelope.

‘I’m to tell you well done,’ he said.

‘How much?’ she asked, glancing at the contents.

‘Normal rates. Two for the job, plus a bonus of a hundred each for the bodies. How’s your boyfriend?’

‘A cool thousand pounds. Thank you very much. How’s Duncan? I’m worried about him.’

‘Did he take the money?’

‘Oh, he took the money, no hesitation.’

‘He’ll be all right then. Don’t forget you’ll need a hundred from him for the abortion,’ he told her, grinning.

‘Well, let’s make sure they’ve got something to look for, Dr Kingston,’ she whispered. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him, then lowered her hands and started to undo his belt. Nick Kingston grasped her hair, pulling her head back, and explored her mouth with his tongue. If he imagined she were the nineteen-year-old maths student he’d shagged last night, he might just about manage it. He was beginning to find Melissa repellent and sensed it would lead to trouble between them.

I made inspector bang on schedule, but by then I had a wife, Vanessa, and a mortgage, and had been sucked into a way of working that wasn’t negotiable with much in the outside world. I’d had a brief spell in CID and enjoyed it, so when the opportunity came to head the branch at Heckley I grabbed it with enthusiasm and outstretched arms. The job fell into them and Vanessa fell out. My dad was dying of cancer at this time and I desperately needed a rock to lean on. I rang Dave Sparkington.

‘Could I speak to Sparky, please?’ I said when he answered.

‘Hiya, Shagnasty,’ he responded. ‘Congrats on the move. Sorry I didn’t make the bash but I wasn’t invited.’

‘We haven’t had it yet. Do you still want to be a DC?’

There was a silence, apart from his breathing, then he said: ‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly. There’s an aideship coming up. Interested?’

‘You bet!’

He did six months as a CID aide and sailed through the twelve-week course at Wakefield training college. The day he joined us he came into my office carrying six pairs of white socks and insisted that we change into them, right there and then.

Slowly, I built up the team I wanted. Gilbert Wood arrived as our new superintendent and gave me a free hand to run the show my own way. We rewarded him with the best arrest rate in the division, and some of them were big fish. I’d worked for Gilbert before. He was one of a dying breed – the old school – who believed that we were there to catch villains and protect the public, and if this meant we upset a few local politicians, or failed to keep within budget, so be it.

Trouble was, Gilbert had no time for meetings, either. Somebody had to go, which was why I was now sitting at the bottom end of the long polished table that graced the conference room at City HQ, while he cast a fly across some lake filled with tame but hungry trout. It was nearly six o’clock and the deputy chief constable was drawing proceedings to a close.

‘As you know…’ he was saying, ‘…this will be my last Serious Crimes Operations Group meeting, so I’d like to take the opportunity…’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Les Isles whispered to me, leaning closer. Les is another one of my protégés who leap-frogged past me in the promotion stakes.

I’d spent nearly three hours doing sketches of the DCC on my note pad, and the last one had his likeness to a T. He was leaving at the end of the month and I knew that the day before he went somebody would ring me and ask for a cartoon illustrating some inglorious moment from his past. They thought I could churn them out like Barbara Cartland novels. I slid the pad across to Superintendent Isles.

‘Brilliant. Can I have it?’ he hissed.

‘Mmm,’ I mumbled.

‘Sign it.’ He slid the pad back my way.

With a few deft strokes I gave the DCC a quiff of black hair falling over one eye, added a Penny Black of a moustache, scrawled
L. Isles
across the bottom and pushed it in front of him again.

‘Was there something, Inspector Priest?’ the DCC was saying, his head tilted forward so he could see me all the better through his bifocals.

‘Er, not really, sir,’ I improvised. ‘Superintendent Isles was just commenting that you’ll be sorely missed.’

A murmur of amusement ran round the table and
the assorted chief supers and bog-standard supers who represented their divisions at the SCOG meeting took it as a signal and closed their notebooks. They eased their chairs away from the table to notify the chairman that he was pushing his luck if he thought he was going to keep them here much longer.

‘Before we finish…’ the boss remonstrated, determined to show us that he wasn’t gone yet,’… could we just wind up by going round the table. Anything you’d like to raise, George?’ he asked the person sitting on his immediate left.

‘No, I think we’ve covered everything,’ George replied, clipping his pen into his inside pocket for emphasis.

‘No,’ the next in line added.

Shakes of the head and various negative expressions answered the DCC’s query as his glance moved round the table, towards me.

I couldn’t resist it. Not often do I have so many bigwigs hanging on my words while slavering in anticipation of the pre-prandial gin and tonic that the little lady was no doubt mixing at that very second. The bifocals flickered in my direction and moved on, but not quickly enough.

‘There is just one thing, sir,’ I said.

They stopped, hesitated, swung back and settled on me like the searchlight at a PoW camp finding a luckless escapee. There was a rumble of groans and
the clump of chairs falling back onto four legs. I had them in the palm of my hand.

‘If we could go back to item seven on the agenda…’ I continued. Papers were retrieved from
executive-style
briefcases and shuffled impatiently.

The DCC said: ‘Item seven? Retrospective DNA testing? I thought we’d given it a good airing, Mr Priest. You made it quite plain, if you don’t mind me saying so, that Heckley was way ahead of the rest of us in reopening unsolved cases where DNA evidence was available.’

‘Yes, sir, and with a certain amount of success. As I told the meeting earlier we were able to associate two rapes with a villain already in custody, and a murder with a dead suspect. However, if we examine the statistics, I believe they lead us to consider new lines of enquiry.’

The person on my left sighed and tapped his pencil, but the chairman leant forward on his elbows and Les Isles said: ‘Go on, Charlie.’

Nothing would have stopped me. ‘If I could just invent some figures, to illustrate my point,’ I responded. ‘If we go back, for convenience, for, say, twenty unsolved major crimes – murders – in the Yorkshire region. There might be four of those where old DNA samples are available which were of little significance at the time of the offence. The new techniques allow us to link crimes in a
way which was unheard of just a few years ago. Our experience at Heckley indicates that of those four crimes with DNA availability, it is highly probable that we will find links. Supposing, for example, we link two of the crimes to the same villain. All well and good. We rope him in, present the evidence, and he gets a few more years on his sentence, probably running concurrently with what he’s already serving if he’s in custody.’

There were murmurs of approval at my disdain for concurrent sentences. It proved they were listening.

‘But!’ I went on, raising my hand as if plucking a plum, as I’d seen the Prime Minister do. ‘But what about the other sixteen cases where there is no DNA evidence? The statistics indicate that eight of those crimes could quite easily have been committed by the same person. Maybe we should be taking a new look at all of them. DNA testing isn’t the only new tool we have.’

They were silent. They had been listening, unless they’d fallen asleep. ‘Profiling,’ someone mumbled.

‘Is that what you’re thinking, Charlie?’ the DCC asked in an uncharacteristic show of intimacy. ‘That we should set a profiler loose on the files?’

‘Some call it profiling, sir,’ I replied, resisting the urge to call him Clarry. ‘I prefer to call it good detective work.’

‘But that’s the sort of thing you have in mind?’

‘Yes, and computerisation of all the information.’

‘Going back how far?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Thirty years?’

I sensed a collective
Sheest!
In theory, unsolved murder inquiries never close, but it’s in our interests to conveniently forget the occasional one, and staying within budget earns more medals than pinning a forgotten murder on some old sod who is in a nursing home in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. I could see the cogs going round in the DCC’s head. A serial killer would be a fantastic high note to go out on, but he was already on notice, and I was talking about results in three years, not three weeks. There was nothing in it for him.

‘Right, Charlie,’ he concluded as the wheels ground to a standstill. ‘It looks like you’ve got yourself a job.’ He gave his famous smile, like a chimpanzee threatening a rival, and closed his file. Everybody laughed.

‘You walked into that,’ Les Isles told me as we strolled out into the sunshine.

‘I’ll never learn,’ I concurred.

‘Mmm. You could have a point, though.’

‘I’m sure I have. It’ll give Sparky something to do.’

‘How is the big daft so-and-so?’

‘Just as big. Slightly dafter.’

‘Mr Priest!’ Someone was calling my name.
I turned to see a PC following us out of the front entrance. ‘Telephone!’ he shouted at me.

‘See you, Les,’ I said, turning to go back.

Tell him he’s missed you,’ he urged.

‘It might be a woman,’ I replied.

‘Fair enough. S’long.’

It wasn’t, of course. It was Nigel Newley, my brightest sergeant. There’s been another,’ he told me, as I leant over the front counter, the telephone cord at full stretch.

‘What, a burglary?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Old couple tied up and robbed, some time this morning.’

‘In Heckley?’

That’s right.’

‘Who rang in this time?’

‘The BMW showroom on the high street, about fifteen minutes ago. An ambulance is taking them both to the General for a check-up. I’m going straight to the house, while it’s daylight.’

‘Have you done the necessary?’

‘Had a word with traffic about the videos; told the woodentops to keep off anything that might take a tyreprint; sent for Scenes of Crime. Maggie’s on her way to the hospital’

‘Good show. Give me the address, I’ll see you there.’

I knew what to expect. Not the details, just the
overall picture. This was the sixth robbery of its type in as many months; three outside our parish and now three inside. Elderly couples, well off, living in comparative luxury in large, secluded houses. Two villains drive up, pull balaclavas on and threaten them with baseball bats. They tie the terrified householders into chairs and steal anything of value, loading their own vehicle and, in two of the robberies, also taking the victim’s car. They grab all their cash cards and force them into revealing the PIN numbers, threatening to come back if they don’t work. Several hours later, when well clear of the scene, they telephone someone from a callbox and suggest that the police go to such-and-such an address.

They didn’t risk calling us themselves, choosing to ring small firms that had switchboards but wouldn’t be expected to record calls. So far, they’d been lucky. The people who received the calls had been responsible and passed the information on. It was only a matter of time before some dizzy telephonist, chosen for her off-the-switchboard talents, put it down to an ex-boyfriend taking the piss and hung her nails out to dry. Then two people would have a lingering death.

The target this time was on Ridge Road, between the house where our football manager lives and the home of Heckley’s only pop star. He sprang to fame with a song called ‘Wiggle Waggle’ which earned him third place in the Song for Europe contest. The
following year he destroyed his career by winning it with ‘Jiggle Joggle’, or something. He’s a nice bloke, but alcohol and fast cars have earned him a few hours of contemplation in our cells. Nigel was waiting outside the grounds.

‘They’re called McLelland,’ he informed me. ‘Audrey and Joe, late seventies. He ran a printing business until about five years ago. Sold out and came to live here.’

‘McLelland?’ I said. ‘They had a shop in town, and a couple more in Halifax and Huddersfield. Sold stationery, artists’ materials, that sort of stuff, and did small printing jobs. We used them now and again. Have you been in?’

‘No, not yet.’

The PC who’d answered the call and found the couple came with us, explaining exactly where he’d been and what he’d done. The house was mock Georgian, with pillars flanking the entrance and windows that would be a bugger to paint. Four bedrooms, two en suite, and what estate agents describe as a minstrels’ gallery. They have the monopoly on midget minstrels. It wasn’t your average retirement home.

‘I can imagine you living somewhere like this, Nigel,’ I said, casting my gaze towards the chandelier and flamboyant Artexing as we stood inside the doorway.

‘Cheers,’ he replied, with a scowl.

The PC showed us the two chairs in the dining room, at the back of the house, where the couple had been tied. Bundles of string lay on the floor between the chairs’ legs. ‘You cut the string,’ I said, bending down to examine it.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ The knots were evidence. ‘Did you touch anything else?’

‘In the kitchen, sir. I took a knife from a drawer. And I found a dressing gown for the lady, from the bathroom.’

‘This would be about, what…five thirty?’

‘Five thirty-seven, sir.’

‘Cut out the sir, please. You make me feel like Mr Chips.’

‘Sorry, er, Mr Priest.’

‘Charlie will do. So Mrs McLelland was still in her nightclothes?’

‘Yes, she was.’

‘So they could have been here from, say, eight this morning. Ten hours.’

‘It looks like it.’

‘How were they?’

‘Bad, I’d say. In shock.’

Nigel returned from scouting the rest of the house. ‘It’s been well and truly turned over,’ he announced. ‘Just like the others. Stuff lifted out of drawers in a
bundle, almost neatly. Mattresses disturbed. Circles in the dust on the sideboards and suchlike. We won’t know what’s missing until we talk to them.’

I looked at the chairs, imagining two frail people tied to them all day. He’d risen early, perhaps, like he usually did. Made a pot of tea to take to his wife. A little ritual they’d fallen into after they’d retired. He’d have heard the tyres on the gravel drive; maybe thought it was the postman with a parcel. When he answered the door he was bundled aside as they rushed in. They roughed him up a bit – terrifying the victim was part of the
modus operandi
– and then one of them would dash upstairs to find his wife. We could never imagine how she must have felt when he burst into her bedroom, masked and armed.

I stood in the doorway to their lounge and let my gaze run round the room. A lifetime’s accumulation was there. It wasn’t to my taste, but everything was good quality, some of it old, some newer. Mrs McLelland’s mark was on the place. She liked frills and bows and flowery patterns of pinks and lilacs. His pipe sat in an ashtray on the hearth, within reach of his favourite chair. This was their home.