The Sh0ut

by Stephen Leather

  40

  Vicky thought that the newspaper interview might have put Farmer off taking her home, but at finishing time he knocked on her door. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  They went down to her car and he sat in silence as she drove to Bethnal Green. She found a place to park and Farmer took her into the house and upstairs to his flat. He let them in and opened the spare bedroom door and stepped to the side so that she could go in first. She stood in darkness until he flicked the light on. She blinked as she tried to focus, then jumped as he closed the door behind her with a dull thud.

  ‘Other than Willie Campbell, you’re the only other person who’s ever seen this,’ he said from behind her.

  ‘Willie was helping you?’

  ‘Not really helping, but he let me talk it through with him.’

  She folded her arms as she stood looking at the collection of photographs, reports and newspaper clippings interlined with threads of different colours. ‘What did he think?’

  ‘He thought I was seeing patterns where there weren’t any.’

  Vicky nodded as she scanned the pictures and cuttings.

  ‘So, first impressions?’ asked Farmer.

  ‘You’re as nutty as a fruitcake,’ she said. She turned and grinned at the way his face had fallen. ‘Joke.’

  He jerked a thumb at the door. ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously, you can fuck off.’

  ‘I’m taking it seriously, guv, don’t get your Calvins in a twist.’

  ‘I get my underwear from Marks and Spencer,’ he said.

  ‘As I know all too well, remember?’ said Vicky. She turned back to look at the display. In the centre of the wall facing her was a map of the United Kingdom. There were fifteen pins in the map, eight in London, three in Leeds, two in Manchester, one in Edinburgh and one in Belfast. She was fairly sure the Edinburgh and Belfast cases had been added since she was last in the room. A thread ran from each of the pins to a separate display of pictures, cuttings and Post-it notes covered with scribbles. She counted the pins. ‘So fifteen cases, all fires,’ she said. ‘And all women victims.’

  She walked up to the map. Underneath each pin was a small card with a date on it. The first date was under the pin in Manchester. November 2011. The most recent was in Camden. The victim was a pretty blond called Diana Hewson. All the London dates were within the past three years.

  ‘So you think these fires are connected?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘I don’t think. I’m sure.’

  She walked to the left and studied the pictures and cuttings of a house fire in Bayswater. According to a fire brigade spokesman quoted in the Evening Standard, a cigarette dropped down the back of a sofa had started the blaze and the owner of the flat, a thirty-five-year-old woman, had died from smoke inhalation. Farmer had managed to get a photograph taken during the post-mortem and it made gruesome viewing. All the hair had been burned off, the flesh was charred and the teeth were exposed down to the roots. Vicky shuddered.

  A photocopy of the initial fire report was pinned to the left of the Evening Standard cutting. Vicky pointed at the signature at the bottom. ‘You were the investigating officer?’

  ‘I was pretty sure it was an accidental death when I first got there,’ said Farmer, walking over to stand next to her. ‘Cigarette falls down the back of the sofa, smoulders, smoke incapacitates the victim, fire takes hold. It happens all the time. One in three fire fatalities involve cigarettes.’

  Vicky scanned the report and the conclusion. ‘You said it was a cigarette fire. That was your conclusion.’

  ‘It was. No question. But then I attended the post-mortem.’ He pointed at another report pinned to the wall. It was from the coroner. Vicky read the typewritten report and then frowned. ‘I don’t see the problem,’ she said. ‘Death by asphyxiation, body burned from the fire, smoke in the lungs, which suggested she was still breathing as the fire burned.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s exactly what you’d expect to see, isn’t it? She falls asleep with a lit cigarette, the cigarette ignited the sofa, the smoke knocks her out, the fire kills her.’

  ‘And why didn’t she wake up when the fire started?’

  ‘Because she was …’ She leaned forward and scanned the report. ‘Ah. She hadn’t been drinking.’

  ‘And the cigarette was a regular cigarette. No drugs.’

  ‘She was tired and fell asleep?’

  ‘So tired that a fire didn’t wake her up?’

  She turned to look at him. ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that she was unconscious when the fire burned her.’

  Vicky frowned and looked back at the post-mortem report. ‘There’s no suggestion she was knocked out. No physical trauma other than that caused by the fire.’

  ‘I think she was drugged.’

  ‘There’s no mention of drugs in the system.’

  ‘Because the coroner wasn’t looking. Why would he? It was a cigarette fire, he’d check for alcohol but there was no evidence of drug-taking so he wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘But you think she was drugged?’

  Farmer nodded. ‘Rohypnol, maybe. Even a bog-standard sleeping tablet.’

  ‘Couldn’t the coroner test for that?’

  ‘I asked but he said he didn’t have the resources.’

  ‘It was down to money?’

  ‘He said it would be a waste of time. He said it was cut and dried. An accidental death.’ He took a pre-rolled cigarette from his tobacco pack and lit it. He blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘We had a bit of a set-to.’

  ‘A fight?’

  ‘He was being an arsehole. I might have pushed him. I was escorted off the premises. I tried to get my bosses on side but they agreed with the coroner so the body was cremated and that was that.’

  Vicky folded her arms and looked at a head-and-shoulders photograph of the victim. She was blond with high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, probably in her mid-thirties. ‘Pretty,’ she said. She moved across the display, seeking out photographs of all the victims. All were blond. The youngest was a teenager, the oldest was in her mid-forties. ‘So you think there’s a killer targeting blonds?’

  Farmer blew smoke but didn’t reply.

  ‘Sometimes you can see patterns where there are no patterns,’ said Vicky. ‘What do they call it?’

  ‘Confirmation bias,’ said Farmer. ‘The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. You sound like Willie.’

  ‘You see the point, though? You think there’s a killer killing blond-haired women. So you look at those cases where a blond died in a fire and you think they’re connected.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re connected. They are connected.’

  ‘Or they appear to be because you’re concentrating on those victims that fit your criteria. You might find a similar pattern if you looked at elderly Asian men, for instance. Or pensioners in their eighties. Most fire victims are eighty and older, aren’t they?’

  Farmer sighed. ‘Two-thirds of all fire deaths are over seventy, yes. And one-third have mental health issues. But these women weren’t in their seventies. They weren’t elderly or infirm, they weren’t mentally ill, they were all in the prime of their lives.’

  ‘And they all died in fires that looked accidental?’

  Farmer nodded. ‘And there’s something else they have in common. See if you can spot it. It took me a while.’

  ‘Something in common? With the victims?’

  Farmer shook his head. ‘The crime scenes.’

  Vicky turned back to the display. She went over to the details of the Manchester victim. Her name was Sophie Bone. There were half a dozen photographs around a news report clipped from the Manchester Evening News. One was a head-and-shoulders shot. She was blond and in her twenties. There was a view of the outside of the house, and several shots from the inside. Sophie had died on her bed in a fire that had started while she had been smoking heroin. She lived at her p
arents’ house but they were on holiday. The coroner decided she had been smoking heroin, burning it on strips of silver foil. Chasing the dragon. She had been using a candle to ignite the heroin and the coroner figured she has passed out and the candle had fallen on to the bed.

  One of the photographs was a close-up of a smoke alarm, a battery-powered model.

  She looked at the case linked to Belfast. Clare Knight. A student. She lived in a small bedsit not far from Queen’s University, where she was in her final year. There was a washing machine in her bathroom and she had put a load of washing in before she went to sleep. The circuit board had ignited and a laundry basket containing more clothes had caught fire and by the time the fire brigade had been called, Clare was dead. There was a photograph of a badly burnt body on what was left of a single bed. The room had been full of books and magazines and a large vinyl record collection, which meant it had burned quickly and fiercely. Again there was a close-up of a badly burnt smoke detector. It was open and the batteries were clearly visible.

  Vicky quickly scanned all the photographs on the wall. In each group of photographs there was at least one of a smoke detector. She turned to look at Farmer. ‘They all had smoke alarms?’

  ‘There’s hope for you yet,’ said Farmer.

  Vicky frowned. ‘But if they had smoke alarms, how come they were overcome by smoke?’

  ‘A good question.’

  ‘Were they working?’

  ‘And another good question. We’ll make a fire investigator out of you yet.’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’

  ‘No. They weren’t working.’

  ‘Had the batteries been removed from any of them?’

  Farmer shook his head. ‘Nope. There were batteries in all of them. But they were dead.’

  ‘All of the victims had smoke alarms with dead batteries?’

  Farmer flashed her a tight smile. ‘Still think it’s confirmation bias at work?’

  ‘When the batteries in smoke alarms die, the alarms beep,’ said Vicky. ‘You have to ignore the beep for days and it’s annoying as hell. Most people replace them but some idiots just pull the batteries out.’

  ‘You’re getting there,’ said Farmer. He took a pull on his cigarette.

  ‘So you’re saying what? Someone disabled the smoke alarms?’

  ‘You’ve got it,’ said Farmer.

  ‘Someone removed the batteries and replaced them with dead ones? Then set the fires?’

  ‘Bingo,’ said Farmer.

  ‘Did you check the batteries? For fingerprints?’

  Farmer grinned. ‘Yes, I did. Want to take a guess at what I found?’

  ‘The batteries had been wiped clean?’

  His grin widened. ‘Clean as a whisker. Now who the hell wipes batteries before putting them in a smoke detector?’

  ‘No one,’ said Vicky.

  ‘A killer,’ said Farmer. ‘A killer who wanted his victim to die in a fire without an alarm sounding.’

  Vicky rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Wow,’ she said.

  ‘Yup.’

  She turned to look at him. ‘But that’s hard evidence? Why haven’t the cops started an investigation?’

  ‘I spoke to a mate at the Met and he reached out to Homicide and Serious Crime and they spoke to the chief and I was called in and given a serious kicking for ignoring the chain of command. I was told that I was wasting my time and the Met’s and that I was to drop the investigation. Except they didn’t call it an investigation. A wild goose chase were the words he used. Wasting the brigade’s time and resources. I was to cease and desist with immediate effect.’ He grinned. ‘That was about six months ago.’

  Vicky folded her arms. ‘That doesn’t make any sense at all,’ she said. ‘There’s clearly a killer who is targeting blond women and using fire to cover his tracks. It’s a serial killer. No question.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Farmer. ‘But your opinion counts for nothing in the grand scheme of things.’

  ‘But why doesn’t the chief see it?’

  ‘Because he’s always hated my guts, for one. Because if the press gets a hold of the story there’ll be a panic, plus add to that I’m saying that at least fifteen fatal fires were classified as accidents when they were actually murders. That makes the brigade and the police look incompetent.’ He took a long pull on his cigarette. ‘But at the end of the day, he simply doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m imagining things. We have more than three hundred fire deaths a year, he thinks that I’m guilty of confirmation bias. I only look at the cases that fit my hypothesis. He doesn’t give a shit that I went through every single fire death in the UK over the past ten years. I looked at every one and the only ones on the walls are the ones I’m certain about.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’ asked Vicky. ‘You’ve clearly not stopped.’

  ‘I work on it on my own time,’ he said. ‘I did ask my opposite numbers for them to dig out any similar cases and I got a couple before the chief found out and put his foot down. I’ve got a few mates who’ll help me on the QT but I can’t get anything officially.’ He shrugged. ‘I know I should just knock it on the head, but I can’t. There’s a killer out there and he’s getting away with it and if I don’t do anything then he’ll carry on getting away with it.’

  Vicky turned back to look at the map. ‘You’ve found fifteen but there could be more,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No way of knowing,’ he said.

  She put her head on one side and frowned. ‘This could just be the tip of an iceberg. There could be a lot more.’

  ‘Like I said, there’s no way of knowing. But I’m sure they were all killed by the same man.’

  ‘Or woman,’ said Vicky.

  Farmer shook his head. ‘I don’t think a woman would do this,’ he said. ‘Women kill, there’s no doubt about that. And there have been female arsonists. But I think he’s using the fire to cover up his kills and I think he’s using fire because he wants to destroy any physical evidence.’

  ‘You think he’s raping them?’

  ‘Raping them. Or doing something that could identify him. So he sets the fire and kills two birds with one stone. He makes the murder look like an accident and destroys any evidence.’

  ‘The perfect crime?’

  Farmer flashed her a tight smile. ‘If it was the perfect crime it wouldn’t be plastered over my walls, would it?’ He handed her an envelope containing photographs that he’d taken that afternoon and several photocopied sheets and gestured at the display. ‘Make yourself useful while I go get us some beers.’

  41

  Vicky was putting photographs of Jayne Chandler’s house on the wall when Farmer returned with two cans of lager. Among the details he’d given her was a copy of the initial report by one of the investigators who had been on the night shift. Dale Robertson had joined the investigation team a few months before Vicky. They had only really crossed paths when shifts changed over and he always greeted her with a nod and a curt smile. Other than when Farmer had introduced him, he hadn’t said a single word to her. Vicky had the impression that he resented the fact that he had waited several years to join the team but she had apparently waltzed in with next to no training. ‘Does Dale know you’re looking at this case?’ she asked. She ran a yellow thread from the report to the pin on the map, marking the position of Jayne’s house in Clapham.

  ‘Hell no,’ said Farmer, putting his can of lager down on the table.

  ‘Garry’s helping you?’

  ‘He thinks I’m mad, but he humours me.’

  She waved at the map. ‘Have you shown him this?’

  ‘I don’t want word getting out. I trusted Willie, but …’ He shrugged.

  ‘But the evidence you’ve got here, cops like your friend must realise the significance?’

  ‘No one likes being second-guessed, do they? If I’m right, they’re wrong.’

  ‘So why does Garry help you?’

  Farmer shrugged. ‘Because he’s a pal. And
I think he’s hoping that eventually I’ll realise I’m wrong.’ He took out his tobacco pack and began to roll a cigarette.

  ‘But you’re not wrong, are you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. But my bosses say that I’m to drop it, so I have to stay below the radar. And that means not mentioning it to Dale, right?’

  ‘My lips are sealed.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you talking about this. To anyone.’

  Vicky’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think it might be an investigator who’s doing this?’

  Farmer held up his hands. ‘It could be anybody,’ he said. ‘But whoever it is clearly knows a lot about fires. He knows how to set them without being discovered, which means he could well be a firefighter. Or an investigator.’

  Vicky looked back at the map. ‘And the first was in 2011?’

  Farmer nodded. ‘Manchester.’

  ‘So he started in Manchester and moved to London?’

  ‘They started in the north and then moved south, yes,’ said Farmer. ‘Three in Leeds. It could be that he realised if he stayed up north there was more chance of him being found out.’

  ‘And Edinburgh. And Belfast.’

  ‘I’ve just found those two,’ said Farmer. ‘It would be easy enough for him to visit another city.’

  ‘Yes, but it takes time, doesn’t it? To stalk and to plan? Which means a fireman’s shift system would suit him, right? Four days on and four days off.’

  Farmer smiled thinly. ‘That had occurred to me.’

  Vicky frowned and looked at the three pins in Leeds. ‘Danny Maguire was in Leeds.’

  ‘That had also occurred to me, sweetheart. But Dale has family there. And he used to work in Glasgow which isn’t that far from Edinburgh. People move around.’