Naked Flames

by Graham Ison

  Martina Dawson nodded and turned away.

  I briefed the team to be back at the Pretext Club at eight the following day, a Sunday, and ignored the groans that always greeted similar inevitable orders. But I often think back to the words of my first detective inspector when I joined the CID as a fresh-faced detective constable. ‘If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined, mate,’ he would say. Frequently.

  I took a chance on Lydia still being up and rang her to say that I’d decided against returning to Esher, as I didn’t want to disturb her, and that it would save time and trouble if I went home to Surbiton. After teasingly saying that she rather wanted to be disturbed, Lydia expressed her disappointment but understood. For my part, I’d missed another of her splendid dinners. All I could hope for now was to find a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s somewhere.

  I finished my chat with Lydia by suggesting that she should expect me when she saw me, a phrase which, regrettably, she was hearing all too often.

  I arrived at the Pretext Club on the stroke of eight the next morning, more by luck than skilful route planning, London’s traffic being totally unpredictable, even on a Sunday. It came as no surprise that Martina Dawson, the fire investigator, was already at the site and was talking to Linda Mitchell. Henry Mortlock arrived five minutes later, grumbling as usual about having to work on a Sunday. But that wasn’t a surprise either.

  ‘Good, the gang’s all here,’ said Martina. ‘Now we can get started. I understand from your Inspector Ebdon, Harry, that nothing of evidential value was found by the police who searched outside the walls. That means that either petrol wasn’t the accelerant or some other method was used to bring it in.’

  She entered the canvas structure that the crime-scene guys had erected the night before and began her investigation by walking all around the outside of the chalet, absorbing everything she saw. That done, she went inside, through the gap where the door had been until the fire brigade opened it with an axe, and for the next half hour or so examined the entire scene without touching anything. I decided to let her get on with it because I knew from previous suspicious fires that anything she found that needed to be bagged and tagged as an exhibit would be passed to Linda straight away. And it was at that point I would become actively involved.

  Martina Dawson must have spent about two hours altogether in the chalet.

  ‘You can move your cadaver now, Doctor,’ she said to Henry Mortlock when eventually she emerged.

  ‘Anything to tell me, Marty?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d rather keep it until I’ve analysed what I’ve found, Harry, but I can say with some certainty that the fire started beneath the bed on which the cadaver was found. There was some sort of accelerant, but I’ll have to wait for the laboratory findings to be certain, although I’m pretty sure I know what it was.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ I had no alternative but to accept what she said, even though it was essential to get on with the enquiry as soon as possible if, in fact, it turned out to be a murder or manslaughter. The first twenty-four hours are vital in murder investigations.

  Martina Dawson pursed her lips. ‘I hope we’ll get some indication from the lab late tomorrow.’ She paused and then grinned. ‘If I put a squib up their arse.’

  ‘Good grief! You should never play with fireworks, Marty,’ I said with mock severity, ‘they’re dangerous.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that, Harry. I spend every Bonfire Night in the pub.’

  Plainly there was more to Martina Dawson than was immediately apparent.

  ‘What’s next, guv?’ asked Kate Ebdon.

  ‘I’d like you to start interviewing those club members who were here yesterday and are still here, Kate. I understand that some more members have started to come in already today. How many of our people d’you need to take statements?’

  ‘I reckon two teams of two will do. Liz Carpenter and Nicola Chance on one team and Charlie Flynn with Sheila Armitage on the other. I suppose all the members will be naked.’ Kate looked gloomy about the prospect. ‘Well, I’m not joining in just to make them feel relaxed.’

  ‘You never know your luck, Kate. Some of them might be dishy men,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, Dave and I are off to interview Madison Bailey.’

  ‘Remind me who she is. I think I’m losing the plot already.’ But Kate was being disingenuous; she always knew exactly what was going on.

  ‘She’s the black girl who arrived with Robert Sharp, but left yesterday morning before the fire was discovered.’

  ‘D’you reckon they were an item, guv?’

  ‘That’s something I intend to find out.’

  Madison Bailey lived in a flat at Harlington close to Heathrow, a distance of about nine miles from the naturist club, and we arrived there at two o’clock.

  A young brunette answered the door and smiled at Dave. ‘Are you Madison’s new boyfriend?’ she asked before we’d had a chance to introduce ourselves.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re police officers,’ replied Dave.

  ‘Oh no! There’s not been a crash, has there?’

  ‘We wouldn’t necessarily know, we’re not traffic police,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t mean a car accident, I meant an air crash. Madison’s a cabin crew member on a long-haul flight. She went on duty at oh-seventeen-hundred Zulu last evening.’

  ‘I assume you mean six o’clock yesterday evening.’ Dave was always irritated when people did not speak plain English, particularly when he thought they were showing off.

  ‘I take it you’re in the airline business, too?’ I said, basing my guess on her use of the term Zulu to indicate Greenwich Mean Time. ‘We’re from—’

  ‘Yes, I’m cabin crew, too. How did you guess?’

  ‘We’re from a murder investigation team …’ I began, struggling to get our enquiries on the right track before any more confusion arose.

  ‘Oh, God! She’s been murdered?’ The woman blanched and put a hand to her mouth. ‘What happened? Have you caught her killer?’

  ‘If you’d let my chief inspector finish, we’ll tell you exactly why we’re here,’ said Dave, who had already categorized the woman as an airhead, and was getting mildly annoyed by her grasshopper assumptions. He was one of those men who liked a woman to be attractive and intelligent. But if only one of those qualities existed then, as far as Dave was concerned, it had to be intelligence.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock,’ I said, ‘and this is Detective Sergeant Poole. May we come in?’

  ‘Oh, I’m awfully sorry. Yes, of course.’ The woman showed us into a comfortable sitting room and invited us to take a seat.

  ‘Perhaps we could start with your name,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I should’ve told you that, shouldn’t I?’ She smiled sweetly at Dave. ‘I’m Jeanette Davis, but everyone calls me Ginny.’

  ‘We’re investigating the unexplained death of a man that took place sometime yesterday at the Pretext Club near Harrow, Ginny. It’s a naturist club and we’ve been told that Madison Bailey arrived there on the fifteenth of July. That’s last Monday.’

  ‘She had a few days off and she told me that’s where she was going.’ Ginny did not seem at all fazed at learning her flatmate went to a naturist club and I assumed her generation regarded nudity rather differently from the view taken by older generations. My mother would have been appalled if I’d suggested going to such a club and would have attached the direst motives to the whole concept.

  ‘Did she say if she was going with anyone?’

  ‘No, she didn’t, but she was always a bit secretive about boyfriends. Perhaps she thinks I’ll steal them from her. It was most likely someone she’d met on a flight, because that sort of thing’s always happening to us girls. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been chatted up on a flight. I’d put money on her dating a different guy by tomorrow.’

  That I could understand. Ginny Davis was a statuesque young woman with curve
s in the right places but did not seem to be all that bright.

  ‘D’you know her current boyfriend’s name?’ asked Dave.

  ‘No idea, but, like I said, she always played her cards close to her chest.’

  I decided not to prompt Ginny by suggesting that Madison’s new boyfriend could have been the Robert Sharp whose death we were investigating. At least, that was the inference I drew from what Rosemary Crane, the receptionist, had told us. I wanted to tell Madison face-to-face of Sharp’s death in order to gauge her reaction. If his death was not accidental, Madison Bailey might have had something to do with it.

  ‘When will she be back, Ginny?’ I asked.

  ‘Tomorrow midday, I should think. Not that I’ll be here. I’m on duty at LHR at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. Er, that’s Heathrow.’

  ‘Zulu?’ queried Dave sarcastically.

  For a moment, Ginny looked puzzled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘nine o’clock local time. As a matter of interest, why did you want to see Madison? D’you think she had something to with this death you’re talking about?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! We’re interviewing everyone who was there on the day of the incident,’ I said, deciding to refer to it as an incident, rather than a murder. But the more I thought about Marty Dawson’s opinion that the fire had started underneath Robert Sharp’s bed, the more inclined I was to think that we were dealing with a murder. ‘It’s just routine,’ I added, coining a useful but completely meaningless phrase beloved of fictional detectives.

  ‘Well, Dave, what d’you think of Ginny Davis?’ I asked when we returned to the car.

  ‘She’s a dimbo, guv, but you couldn’t exactly describe her as a flatmate, could you? Not with a figure like she’s got.’

  THREE

  Dave and I returned to the Pretext Club and were greeted by Kate Ebdon. As usual, she was dressed in the man’s white shirt and jeans that I said may have irritated Jane Mansfield, the HAT DI, and most certainly displeased our beloved commander. He was, however, ill-disposed to say anything to her because I’d once suggested that any comment about her style of dress might be viewed as sexism – or, given that she was Australian, even racism – by the Scotland Yard diversity police. It did not, however, alter his view that when a woman was promoted to inspector, she immediately became an officer and a lady, and should dress accordingly. It’s a pity that he’d not seen her at the Old Bailey, attired in black skirt-suit and black tights, with high heels and gold earrings. She would step into the witness box and smile fetchingly at the judge. Her appearance had been described on more than one occasion by defence counsel as affording the Crown an unfair advantage. But I don’t think the commander had ever been to the Old Bailey – assuming, of course, that he knew where it was.

  ‘What’s happening, Kate?’

  ‘Linda had a message from Marty Dawson to say that the lab results won’t be available until tomorrow morning. Dr Mortlock’s removed the remains of the victim and hopes to do a post-mortem on what’s left of him, probably at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, but he’ll let us know. From what he was saying, it depends on the state of the cadaver once he gets it on the table.’

  ‘How did your interviews go, Kate?’

  ‘It didn’t take long for my two teams to talk to all the members who were here yesterday, and I can summarize the statements. The majority seemed not to know Robert Sharp other than by sight, but those who did have contact with him said he was amiable and courteous. Some of them also mentioned that he appeared to be very friendly with Madison Bailey and that the two of them spent a lot of time together. They remembered her in particular because she was black and was described, even by the women, as a beauty.’

  ‘Did any of them strike you as knowing more than they were telling, Kate?’

  ‘Not particularly. Most of the women in Sharp’s age group – even some who were a few years older – admitted to being chatted up by him when Madison wasn’t there, but said he didn’t persist once they told him to get lost, in the nicest possible way, of course. Nearly all of them said that they found Sharp to be personable and sexy. One or two of the younger women described him as good looking and one of them went overboard about his six pack. Another even went so far as to admit that if she hadn’t been married, she’d happily have had a fling with him. Incidentally, the first any of them knew of the fire was when they were herded out to the car park and the fire brigade arrived. No one saw anything leading up to it. And that’s about it, guv.’

  Kate always called me ‘guv’ in the presence of other officers but would call me Harry when we were alone. This stemmed from a weekend in Paris – on official business – when my friend Capitaine Henri Deshayes of the Police Judiciaire and his wife Gabrielle, a former Folies Bergere dancer, entertained us to dinner at their apartment. Henri, a self-confessed oenophile, was a little too liberal with the wine. At least it was too much for Kate, who needed my help to get her to her hotel room.

  ‘I suppose I’d better visit the address the Pretext Club had for Robert Sharp,’ I said, ‘in case there’s anyone there who should be told about his death. According to Rosemary Crane, the receptionist, he was unmarried, but I think that was only her assumption. All the personal papers he had with him will have been destroyed in the fire, but we might find something at his address that’ll put us on the right road to finding a motive if, in fact, he was murdered. From what Marty’s discovered so far, it would appear likely.’

  It was about six o’clock when Dave and I arrived at Sharp’s address, which we had obtained from the club. It was a three-storey house that had been converted into flats, and was in one of the streets that was a turning off The Vale in Acton, West London. Sharp lived in a flat on the ground floor.

  I rang the bell at least twice and Dave and I were on the point of trying other flats to see if anyone knew anything about Sharp when the door was opened by a woman. She was probably in her early thirties but her careworn face and lack of make-up made her appear a good ten years older. Her lank hair, already showing signs of greying, was dragged back into a rough ponytail, her sweater had a stain on the front and her jeans were torn, but not ‘distressed’ in the way youngsters thought was fashionable. This was a woman who had probably been quite attractive once, but her slovenly appearance gave the impression that she no longer cared. A small boy, perhaps five years old, had an arm around the woman’s leg while the thumb of the other hand was firmly in his mouth. He gazed up at us with the enquiring eyes of young innocence.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but does a Mr Robert Sharp live here?’

  ‘Occasionally,’ said the woman. ‘I’m his wife. If you’ve come for money, I’m afraid there isn’t any.’

  ‘We’re police officers, Mrs Sharp. May we come in?’

  ‘Suit yourselves.’ She turned from the door and grabbed the child’s hand, pulling him after her. I doubted that her attitude towards us was one of rudeness, but rather one of complete resignation, as though wondering what the fates were about to throw at her now.

  We followed her into a room that seemed to be a sitting-cum-dining room and general workshop. There were piles of clothing on a table, and the ironing board had another pile of clothing on one end. Perhaps she took in washing, but on reflection, I don’t suppose that anyone did these days, given that washing machines were comparatively cheap to buy, although probably beyond this woman’s means.

  ‘Do you occupy the whole of the ground floor?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Just this room and the one next door. That’s the bedroom. I’d ask you to sit down, but unless you want to move some of that stuff yourselves, you’ll have to stand.’ Mrs Sharp waved an arm listlessly at the few chairs piled up with all manner of household linen and towels. ‘What is it you want? If it’s Bob, I haven’t a clue where he is. Off with some fancy woman probably. That’s what he’s usually doing. I suppose his view is that it beats working. He’s not had a job in years. I don’t know where he gets his money from, but none of it co
mes my way.’

  This was rapidly developing into a delicate situation and I was bent on trying to be as gentle as possible, but there’s no easy way to tell a woman that her husband has been burned to death at a nudist camp.

  ‘Mrs Sharp, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant David Poole. We’re investigating a death that has occurred when a fire broke out. I’m sorry to have to tell you that we believe the dead man to be your husband, Robert Sharp.’

  This awful announcement was met with utter silence. There was no startled response. No fainting. No screams of disbelief and no tears. She stayed in this motionless and silent state for some moments.

  ‘Was he with a woman?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘No, he was the only casualty.’

  ‘Where was it, this place where it happened?’

  There was no alternative but to tell her the truth before she learned it from the media.

  ‘It was a naturist club called the Pretext Club about seven or eight miles from here.’

  ‘He’s still up to his old tricks, then.’

  ‘D’you mean he’s been there before?’

  ‘I don’t know about one called the … what did you say it was called?’

  ‘The Pretext Club.’

  Mrs Sharp shook her head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell, but it was at one of those places we met.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘You might not believe it now, but I could look quite presentable without clothes ten years ago.’

  ‘Did you go there with someone else?’

  ‘No. Most of these places accept women on their own, but men usually have to have a partner.’

  ‘How did Robert Sharp get membership, then?’

  ‘He paid for a non-existent wife so they thought he was half of a couple. He was a very personable, charming man and he could talk anybody into anything. He certainly talked me into his bed that same night and then to a register office the following week. Who was he with this time?’

  ‘We’re still making enquiries about that.’ I decided not to mention Madison Bailey.