Insidious Intent

by Val McDermid

  He passed the box over to Paula. A dozen Intimate Moment condoms, the box said. ‘Probably should have bagged it, Karim. He might have touched it. Scrabbling around to get a condom in the heat of the moment…’ She took out a pen and flipped the box open and tipped the contents out on the worktop.

  ‘Looks like they’re all there,’ Karim said.

  ‘Lucky for you.’ Paula turned the box over. ‘Sell-by date’s nearly three years off. If my memory serves me well, condom shelf-life is three to five years. So it looks like this box isn’t a hangover from the boyfriend who legged it to Cardiff three years ago.’ She pointed to the calendar. ‘Looks like she might have hooked up with someone at this wedding she went to a fortnight ago. We need to check that out when we get back to the office. But before we go, let’s do a quick look through the drawers in here. Everybody’s got an “all drawer”.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Karim asked, turning and opening the drawer behind him.

  ‘You know. The drawer where you put everything that doesn’t have a home anywhere else. String. Fuses. Those clips you fasten bags with. The little daggers you stick into sweetcorn. Batteries.’

  ‘Right.’ He pushed the drawer closed. ‘This is cutlery.’ He opened the next.

  ‘But most importantly, keys. Your spare front door set and all those odd ones that don’t fit any lock in the house but you don’t want to bin them in case they turn out to be important.’

  ‘Dishtowels and dusters.’

  Paula opened the end drawer on her side. ‘Aha. Now, when the fairy godmother turned up at my christening and asked whether I’d rather be lucky or beautiful, I chose lucky. And even after all these years, I have no regrets. Look, Karim. The “all drawer”.’ She pulled it out to its full extent. ‘Even the obsessively tidy have to keep their crap somewhere.’ She raked around among the random detritus of things Kathryn had inexplicably hung on to. In the far corner, she found three bunches of keys, each with a plastic label on its ring. ‘House, Parents and Flat,’ Paula said. ‘Well, that’ll make locking up after ourselves a lot easier.’

  Karim looked over her shoulder. He was careful to keep out of her personal space, she couldn’t help noticing. Unusual in a man, extraordinary in a copper. ‘Good find, skipper.’

  Paula gave the contents of the drawer one last shuffle then pushed it closed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever done a search with so little to show for it,’ she grumbled. ‘Come on, let’s see what Stacey can make of our mysterious David. If she did pick him up at that wedding, somebody must have snapped them.’

  Karim groaned. ‘Why do I see an endless trawl through somebody else’s wedding pix on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram?’

  ‘Don’t forget WhatsApp.’

  Another groan. ‘And then there’ll be the official photographer.’ He trailed after Paula as she made for the door.

  ‘Still glad you signed up for the elite squad?’ she asked as they descended the stairs.

  He snorted. ‘The thrill of the chase, skip. You can’t beat it.’

  12

  T

  hey found the fire investigator in a tiny office off his lab in a private forensics facility a stone’s throw from the A1 in a business park landscaped with struggling trees and low hedges darkened by traffic pollution. From the outside, it had the anonymous air of a call centre or the administrative arm of an internet retailer. But as soon as they left the car park, it was clear this was a different sort of set-up. The building was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence that was almost invisible against the greys and greens of the foliage. They had to wait by the electronically controlled gate while someone in a distant security office checked the ReMIT IDs they held up to the camera.

  When they finally arrived at the reception desk, a man with iron-grey hair and the muscular build of someone twenty years younger frowned at them. ‘You’re supposed to book an appointment ahead of time, not just turn up on the doorstep,’ he grumbled, pushing a visitors’ book towards them. ‘Sign in here. And I need to scan your ID.’ He held out a hand.

  It took another five minutes before they were escorted to Finn Johnston’s office. The fire investigator looked too young to have such a senior post. He had fine mousy hair draped limply across a narrow head. His face seemed to be in retreat from a sharp nose, as if he’d been caught in the teeth of a gale at birth. But his expression was alert and he had an air of stillness that inspired confidence even though Carol estimated he couldn’t be much past thirty. Under his white lab coat, he wore a T-shirt that proclaimed ‘Firefighters don’t work from home’, which made her want to roll her eyes and groan.

  ‘Well, this is an unexpected honour,’ Johnston said in a broad Yorkshire accent. ‘They still talk about you in East Yorkshire, DCI Jordan.’

  She wondered momentarily what they said. It hadn’t been her easiest posting and she didn’t think she’d made many friends. A good detective had died under her command; it had been one of the heaviest burdens she’d had to carry. ‘I guess they’ve not seen much action since,’ she said coolly. ‘But we’re not here to reminisce about ancient history. I need everything you can tell me about the car fire on Sunday night.’

  He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desk, hands clasped. ‘How much do you know about fires?’

  ‘Let’s pretend we’re absolute beginners,’ Tony said.

  Johnston raised his eyebrows at Carol, wanting to know whether Tony was allowed to take the lead.

  She nodded. ‘What he said.’

  ‘When we attend a fire, we kick off by looking externally. When there’s a body involved, we automatically start from a place of suspicion. And that’s what I did on Sunday. There wasn’t much point in trying to establish a forensic cordon around the car because of the entirely legitimate activities of the firefighters, so I concentrated on the car itself. The first question I always ask myself is which part is most damaged. Whether it’s a house or a car. Now, your car, that consists of separate compartments. The engine. The boot, if it’s a saloon. And the compartment where the driver and passengers sit. You don’t often find a car with equal damage to all three parts.’

  ‘And in this case, it was where the people sit,’ Carol said. ‘We’ve seen the pictures.’

  Johnston smiled. ‘Right. And the area of most damage is usually the indicator of where the fire started. Now, most people, what they think they know about cars going on fire is what they see on the telly or in films. Somebody throws a match in the petrol tank, and boom! Up it goes like an explosion in a fireworks shop.’ He shook his head, an expression of amused pity on his face. ‘Your petrol tank is full of petrol vapour but it won’t go up unless it’s got oxygen present as well, to feed it. It’s even worse with diesel. You can actually put out a match or a fag in a puddle of diesel.’ He mistook the blank look on his listeners’ faces for interest and continued. ‘Now if you stick a rag in with a bit of space around it and set fire to the rag, you will get a fire to start but that’s just like a torch and it’s unlikely to set the whole car on fire.’

  ‘So, let me get this right,’ Tony interrupted, sensing Carol was losing her patience and not wishing that on someone who seemed mostly harmless. ‘For the passenger compartment to burn the way it did, the fire would have had to start there?’

  Johnston beamed at his star pupil. ‘Exactly. Now, sometimes you get kids wanting to burn out a car after they’ve nicked it and what they often do is stick a box of firelighters in the footwell. And that does a right good job, except that it leaves the chemical signature of the kerosene behind. Which is a dead giveaway to any investigator worth their salt. I’ve not found that telltale here, which, if I’m honest, made me lean more towards the idea of some kind of bizarre accident. An electrical fault in the dashboard maybe. But I couldn’t find any evidence of anything like that. Or a dropped cigarette. So it’s not at all clear at this point.’

  ‘And then you discovered she was dead when the fire started,’ Carol cut in. ‘With that in mind, what do yo
u have for us?’

  ‘I know it’s tempting to think about the fuel tank, but forget the petrol. With a fire like this, you’re looking at the inside of the cabin for all your fuel sources. So I started thinking about that. And I’ve been doing all sorts of chemical analyses over the past few days.’ He cleared his throat and turned to face his computer screen. ‘I can show you…’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Carol said. ‘Send it to me. But for now, give me the headlines.’

  Crestfallen, Johnston turned back, the slope of his features even more pinched and pronounced. ‘I think there was a plastic bag full of packets of crisps under the victim’s legs.’

  ‘Crisps?’ Tony looked startled. ‘You mean, like salt and vinegar, cheese and onion?’

  ‘The flavour doesn’t matter. The bags catch fire easily and the crisps themselves are loaded with oil. They’re like dozens of miniature firelighters but they don’t leave a kerosene residue. It’s a completely different chemical signature.’

  ‘Who knew?’ Tony muttered.

  ‘Fire investigators, obviously,’ Carol said. ‘So this whole fire started from someone setting light to a bag of crisps?’

  ‘A bag of bags of crisps,’ Johnston corrected her. ‘There must have been quite a few to really get it going. And there’s lots of traces of other flammable stuff that looks perfectly reasonable to find in a car. Newspapers. Glossy magazines. What looks like the remains of a couple of plastic bottles of spirits.’

  ‘And that’s all it took? It doesn’t sound like much,’ Tony said.

  ‘You’d be surprised. Don’t forget the interior of the car itself is another fuel source. Upholstery, foam padding, plastics, the victim’s clothes – it all adds up. And if the perpetrator left the window open a few inches, all the oxygen you need to feed the flames. But we can’t be sure about that, because windows start to deform at five hundred degrees centigrade. Anyway, that’s beside the point. What happens is, you get off to a vigorous start, you have enough of a fuel load – and oxygen – to maintain that and then you get what we call flashover. The point where a fire in a room, or in this case, a car, becomes a room on fire. That can happen inside a minute if the conditions are right. And a flashover is not a survivable event.’

  There was a long silence while Tony and Carol digested the information. Then Carol said, ‘So he knew what he was doing.’

  Johnston nodded vigorously. ‘Oh yes, he knew his stuff. Once upon a time I would have been sitting here telling you that your perp was likely a firefighter or someone with a professional knowledge of chemistry. But these days, half an hour on the internet and everybody’s an expert. There’s nothing here that a lay person couldn’t work out for themselves with a bit of online research. And nothing specialist in the way of ignition sources or accelerants. It helps if you know a bit about chemistry, but honestly? Anyone with half a brain could come up with a strategy to turn a body to ash without leaving a clue.’

  13

  H

  e’d chosen Leeds for his second outing. He’d always had an eye for detail; it would, he thought, be a mistake to look for all his victims on the same ground. Apart from anything else, it increased his chances of someone recognising him. Weddings in the same circle of acquaintance often happened in a cluster. And there were only so many hotels big enough to host the scale of wedding where an interloper wouldn’t stand out. Eventually a waiter or a barman might clock him on a return visit, especially if the police ever came asking. Going back to the same city time after time would be taking too much of a risk.

  It wasn’t hard to crash a wedding. Most hotels of a certain size had at least one every Saturday. He’d worked out not to go too posh because chances were they’d have some form of control on the door. A guest list or someone checking the gilt-edged invitations. But he also knew not to go too far downmarket because he wouldn’t fit in. He’d be exotic enough to be noticed. Somewhere in the middle, that was the way to go.

  He’d already discovered how easy it was to find out the names of the happy couple. Catch the florist delivering the table arrangements. Are these the flowers for Mary and Paul’s wedding? ‘No, they’re for Jackie and Darrel.’ Bingo. Or the bakery delivering the cake. Same routine. There was always someone to blag. People were so trusting. Like he had been once.

  The secret of successful infiltration was not to turn up too early. He had to time it perfectly. Wait till they’d finished the meal, when everyone was milling around, going to the loo, staking their claim to the tables round the dance floor. Then he’d make his move. Shirtsleeves, top button undone, tie loosened. A man enjoying himself among friends. He’d head for the bar. Get himself a drink, strike up a casual conversation with another bloke. Then scope out the room. This was the most exciting part of the day. The adrenaline buzz, the knowledge that he’d made it this far, and now he was on the high board, teetering on the edge of a spine-tingling dive into action.

  It didn’t take long to identify the likely candidates. Once the dancing started, couples and little knots of friends coalesced and the outliers became obvious. The table where he’d spotted Kathryn McCormick had initially been colonised by a mixed group of women and men. Half an hour in, and she’d been the only one left, alone at the table, toying with a half-empty glass of wine. Over the next hour or so, some of the others had returned briefly to finish drinks, hang jackets over chairs and grab vapes before slipping outside. They exchanged a few words with Kathryn. One even made a determined attempt to get her on to the dance floor, but Kathryn had resisted.

  She wasn’t unattractive but she would never have stood out in a crowd. Hell, she wouldn’t have stood out in a couple. She was, he thought, pretty much perfect. And so he’d made his move. And it had gone perfectly. She’d been wary for a few minutes. She probably knew he was out of her league. But he was good with people, he knew that. He’d learned over the years how to pay attention to what they said, how to interpret their body language, how to win them over with a few well-aimed quips. And so Kathryn had allowed herself to be drawn to him. He’d neatly extracted her from the body of the wedding and escorted her to the bar on the pretext of being able to talk more readily.

  Three dates and she was ripe for the plucking.

  It had gone without a hitch. And it wasn’t beginner’s luck. He’d proved that by already acquiring his second surrogate. Amie McDonald – ‘That’s Amie with an i e, not a y, not like the singer.’

  ‘The singer?’

  ‘You know, the Scottish one. “This Is the Life”.’ She burst into song. ‘“Where you gonna go, where you gonna sleep tonight?”’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Sorry, passed me by.’

  ‘Anyway, she’s Amy with a y, and I’m Amie with an i e.’

  What was it with these women and their insistence on spelling their names in ridiculous ways? Did they really think it made them special? Though in a way, of course, they were special. Because they were his.

  And they were his because he’d done his homework. He’d put in the hours online, researching what he needed to do to avoid leaving a trail for the cops to follow right to his door. Once he started looking into ways to subvert investigative tools, his contempt for criminals who let themselves be caught grew incrementally. If you were going to commit a crime, why on earth would you not prepare as thoroughly as possible? It wasn’t rocket science. When you really started looking, there were no shortage of strategies to avoid detection.

  For example, he’d set himself up with a bundle of pay-as-you-go phones, bought with cash in a scruffy hole-in-the-wall shop on a recent trip to the West Midlands. He’d used a new one the day before the wedding, in Leeds. If the cops ever connected the dots and started looking into the victims, they’d find messages from him. Well, from Mark to Amie. And they’d contact the network providers to gain info about the phones. What numbers they’d called, where they’d been calling from. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d only ever put the battery in the phone he’d used with Kathryn in and around Bra
dfield. He’d called restaurants and the theatre box office to give them more wild geese to chase.

  So next time, they’d find themselves chasing Mark whose phone only ever showed up in Leeds. He wondered whether they’d be convinced it was the same killer or whether they’d come up with some mad, convoluted theory about a bunch of different men carrying out murders in the same way. A sort of League of Gentlemen Killers. He was sure one of the newspapers could be lured into some mad speculation of the sort.

  Tonight, he was meeting Amie for dinner. He’d booked a table in an Ethiopian restaurant outside the city centre in an area that wasn’t well endowed with CCTV. He’d checked out where to park so he’d have a clear run to the restaurant door. Just one camera and that would only catch his profile for a couple of seconds. He’d pretend to vape as he went past, avoiding the possibility of the camera capturing a recognisable image. He’d worried whether he could be identified from his walk, but a brief research trip round the internet had convinced him that so-called forensic gait analysis was pretty much junk science. It wasn’t ever going to convict him on its own. And he’d made damn sure there was no other evidence to tie him to his actions.

  He’d be the perfect gentleman over dinner. His cover story was a beauty. His wife of seven years had died from breast cancer a year ago. She’d made him promise not to shut himself away like a hermit, but it had been hard to get out in the world again. Finally, he’d started to come out of his pit of grief. The wedding had been the first proper social occasion he’d taken part in since the funeral.