by Russ Thomas
He becomes aware his fists are clenched, fingernails stabbing hard into his palms.
Doggett is suspiciously quiet, just watching him.
Tyler sighs heavily and realizes he’s made his decision. He can’t do this to her again. “I’m going to ask the DCI to reassign me.”
Doggett’s eyes narrow. His fingers begin a silent drumbeat on his thigh. “How long have you known the lad?”
Tyler isn’t even all that surprised. “When did you realize?”
“Come on, son, don’t take me for a complete mug. I saw the look on your face the minute I introduced the pair of you. Why do you think I had Daley look into him?”
He nods, relieved it’s over. “We met the night before last.” But that’s not enough. He won’t lie about this. “We spent the night together.”
“I see.” The only gauge to Doggett’s reaction is a slight increase to the tempo of his drumming.
“I’ll speak to the DCI tonight and remove myself from the case.”
The tapping continues. “If you think that’s best,” says Doggett. “Telling her what you should have told her yesterday.” He pushes a finger into Tyler’s chest. “You pushed your way onto this case; don’t you think you owe it to her to see it through?”
“I didn’t know Oscar was involved then.”
“Of course you bloody didn’t, and if I thought any differently, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Why am I here then? Why did you even want me on this case?”
Doggett is silent for a moment and seems to be considering his words carefully. “Your father was a good man,” he says quietly. “What they said about him being on the take, about why he did what he did. I didn’t believe it then, and I still don’t believe it now.” He sniffs, perhaps uncomfortable with this level of intimacy. “Anyway, seems to me we shouldn’t be too hasty here. Did Cartwright know who you were when you met?”
“I don’t . . .” Tyler is floored. He didn’t even realize Doggett knew his father, but he supposes they would have been about the same age, so it’s not all that surprising. It’s just . . . it never occurred to him they might have worked together. “No, I can’t see how he could have.”
“Then I don’t reckon there’s much of a problem. In fact, this might give us an advantage.”
“What?”
“You’ve reported the conflict of interest to your superior. You took your sweet time about it, but we don’t need to tell anyone that. The way I see it, this is my call. This . . .” He hesitates. “This business you had with the lad, it’s over?”
“We only slept together the one time.”
“All right. So maybe we use this relationship you’ve got with him to sound the lad out a bit, have a few off-the-record chats.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
“Fine. If that’s what you want, I’ll talk to Jordan. I’ll tell her what a pain in the arse you are and that I can’t work with you anymore. No need to muddy the waters by dragging conflicts of interest into it.”
“I don’t think—”
“Look. Take tomorrow morning to think about it. I’ve got court again in the morning anyway. Daley can handle things here.”
Tyler can’t bring himself to answer. The thought Doggett might be on his side is laughable, but he seems to be offering a way out. It’s hardly by the book, though. This is exactly the sort of thing Jordan warned him about. But if he stays on the case and they find the answers they’re looking for . . . it won’t just help him and Doggett but Jordan’s career as well. Maybe she’ll finally make super, and he can make it up to her.
Doggett loosens his tie even further. “Just think about it. As my old man used to say, ‘If in doubt, do nowt.’” Doggett turns to leave and then stops. “Where’s your little shadow gone, by the way?”
“My what?”
“Constable Rabbani.”
“I sent her home.”
Doggett just blinks at him.
“What? It’s been a long day, she deserves a bit of an evening.”
Doggett shakes his head. “That’s very considerate of you, son. Only, did it occur to you to wonder how she was gonna get home without a ride?”
That was why she was so pissed off with him! She needed a lift but was too afraid to ask. How the hell was he supposed to guess that?
He can hear Doggett chuckling to himself all the way out of the house.
day three
812 pageviews—3 posts, last published
Friday, 16 September—92 followers
Chicago, 1871
You lie among the overgrown, discarded vegetables and watch the shed as it begins to smolder. There’s a pumpkin, the size of a small dog, its unharvested carcass beginning to rot, lying inches from your face. The wizened husks of potatoes sit like blackened stones, their surfaces grown over with a furry gray fungus. The long grass that has grown up through every spare inch of ground tickles at your face and hands. Some unseen nighttime creature begins to crawl up your arm. You lie perfectly still and breathe in the faint smoke on the air.
The shed will not catch. You should go back, add more kindling, fan the flames. But you don’t want to move. You want to stay lying here, down in the dark undergrowth, looking up at the stars. You’re thinking of Ignatius Donnelly.
The Great Chicago Fire, as it became known, began in Patrick O’Leary’s shed when a cow kicked over a lantern. Another wooden city, more violent winds to fan the flames, more civic-minded officials too worried about keeping their jobs and too slow to act. The resulting fire killed more than three hundred people. It is remembered as one of the worst disasters in American history and is taught to schoolchildren for years to come.
Twenty years after the fire, however, a local newspaperman named Michael Ahern admitted he made up the cow story to sell newspaper copy. The true cause? The authorities couldn’t tell. A spark from a chimney perhaps. Or arson. It’s a possibility this time—some itinerant passing vagrant with a desire akin to your own. You like that idea.
There’s another theory, though, one you like even more. The Chicago fire, despite its infamy, was actually only one of several fires in the same area at the same time. It wasn’t even the largest. A little further north, on the shores of Lake Michigan, a forest fire developed into a firestorm the likes of which has never been seen again. This time two and a half thousand people were killed. In the small town of Peshtigo so many died there weren’t enough residents left alive to identify the bodies. Hundreds were buried in mass graves. One and a half million acres of land scoured clean.
But that was only the beginning. On the east coast of the lake, the town of Holland was razed to the ground, along with the lumber community of Manistee a hundred miles further north. Further east still, on the shores of Lake Huron, another fire swept through the town of Port Huron, and a few days later both Urbana, Illinois, just south of Chicago, and Windsor, Ontario, were also ravaged.
What chances? All these separate fires in the same area at the same time. Ignatius L. Donnelly had his own theory about that. He was a U.S. congressman and what might generously be called a bit of an eccentric. You wonder if you will get off that lightly. He had some interesting thoughts concerning the lost city of Atlantis, though, and his theory of catastrophism posited that the ancient civilization was destroyed by a global catastrophic event, a volcano or meteor strike. As evidence for his theory, Donnelly put forward the simultaneous fires of the Chicago area of 1871. He placed the blame for the fires on a single cosmic event, the periodic Comet Biela that broke up as it passed over America, raining fiery death upon the population in the form of methane-rich meteorite fragments.
The thought some future scholar might place the blame for your actions on a cosmic event appeals to you. But, you have to admit, that isn’t likely unless you upscale a bit; hard to imagine anyone constructing an elaborate theory about the
destruction of an old shed on an allotment.
You look up into the clear night sky and you think perhaps you catch a glimpse of a shooting star. At the same time something in the shed catches, and all of a sudden the structure is fully ablaze. You sit up and feel the displaced creature fall out of your sleeve. The shed is blazing brightly, the heat licking at your face and warming your skin.
The scream returns long before the fire is out, though, even before you hear the sirens tearing ever closer through the quiet dark of the night. He wants more, so much more. He needs feeding, and his appetite is far greater than an old shed, or a run-down bus shelter. These things are too easily overlooked, too easily written off as accidents or pranks.
Tonight, you think, will be different. Tonight, they are going to notice you.
POSTED BY thefirewatcher AT 5:46 AM
4 COMMENTS
Gengen97 said . . .
Wow! That is soooooo cool!!!
RDAtack said . . .
Meteorites are cold to the touch when they reach the ground. There are no credible reports of them ever causing fires. The weather conditions at the time—a long period of high temperatures, and widespread drought, combined with the fact that the predominant industry in the area, logging, meant the countryside was littered with sawdust and stacks of dry timber—is a far more likely cause.
Babelicious69 said . . .
Wat u gonna burn next?
Firebug69 said . . .
Love u man! I burned a shed once but it wun’t tak. What petrol u using?
The receptionist in the Medico-Legal Center on Watery Street eyes Tyler suspiciously, like he’s an out-of-date bottle of milk she’s just found in the communal fridge. He tries to reassure her with a smile but feels the scar pull at the corner of his mouth. If anything, this seems to raise her suspicions further.
A door opens and Elliot arrives, his skin jaundiced, gray bags suspended under his eyes; he reminds Tyler of the portrait at the Old Vicarage. “DS Tyler, do me a favor, man,” he says, yawning and cracking his neck with one long-fingered hand. “Never, ever, ring me again.” He ushers Tyler through to the morgue. “Where’s Jim?”
“In court.”
“What did they get him for this time? Let me guess, missing alimony payments.”
Tyler ignores him. “Thanks for pushing this through.”
“Your DCI Jordan is a persuasive woman. I had to call in a favor from a colleague. Forensic dentist.” His tone suggests forensic dentists are something of a rarity and that they’re lucky he managed to find one. Perhaps they are, but he’s thanked the man already, what more does he want?
“I’m sure DI Doggett will appreciate it.”
Elliot nods, apparently satisfied. “So, anyway, it’s him, all right.”
“Gerald Cartwright.”
“Aye.” Elliot opens the freezer door and wheels out a trolley.
Tyler stares at the corpse. He has, of course, seen pictures and video footage of the live Cartwright, but it’s difficult to make a connection between those and the loose collection of bones and skin in front of him.
“I can’t really tell you much more.” Elliot reaches up to his ear for a cigarette that isn’t there. He tugs at his earlobe instead. “We can rule out the fire. There’s no evidence of smoke damage to the lungs, what’s left of them.”
This is not a surprise; they know the fire didn’t occur until six months after Cartwright’s disappearance. By that time the investigation was already being downgraded; Cartwright would have been long dead.
“The wound on his head wasn’t severe enough to kill him outright, but it wouldn’t have helped.” Elliot absently pats himself down but comes up empty. “If you twisted my arm, I might be tempted to say dehydration.”
“How long?”
He hesitates. “Two days max. The wound would have made him groggy, perhaps even hallucinatory.” He seems determined to limit Cartwright’s suffering. Tyler likes the man a bit more for that. “I can tell you he was definitely alive when he went in, though. There’s severe damage to the nails on the left hand; his right arm was broken, so he wouldn’t have been able to use it as effectively. And it was dislocated—pulled right out of the socket, I’m guessing when he was dragged behind the wall.”
“Cartwright was a big man, wasn’t he?”
“Eh?”
“In your opinion, could a fifteen-year-old boy have put him there?”
Elliot exhales a loud blast of air. “Depends on the boy, I suppose. It’s not impossible. It would explain why he was dragged and not carried. And there’s always the possibility he had help, of course.”
Tyler thanks him, and the doctor accompanies him out of the building, having finally extricated a cigarette from some unknown orifice. He lights it before they’re fully clear of the building, risking the wrath of the eagle-eyed receptionist. While they were inside, a brisk wind has developed and taken the edge off the heat. Elliot draws the nicotine into his lungs, exhales slowly, and blows the smoke onto the breeze.
“Were you around six years ago?”
Elliot breathes in deeply before answering. “I was ‘around,’ as you put it. But there wasn’t a body six years ago, remember? I wasn’t involved in the investigation.”
A supermarket delivery lorry reverses past them, its shrill alarm bouncing off the walls of the surrounding buildings. Tyler turns back to find Elliot studying him.
“I must say, Detective Sergeant, you’ve come a long way from playing with toy cars under the dining table.”
He’s puzzled for a second and then puts it together. “It seems everyone knew my father.”
Elliot laughs. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember. Loretta and I came for dinner at your house, oh, let’s see, it would have been years ago now. Of course, that was before your mother . . .” He trails off and takes another fortifying drag on the cigarette. “I was sorry about your father’s death. It was . . . out of character.”
That was one way of putting it.
The lorry stops with a hiss of air from its brakes. The wind gathers the litter from the gutter and dances it round the oversized wheels.
“You knew Gerald Cartwright as well, didn’t you? At least, that was the impression I got the other day.”
Elliot’s eyes narrow. “Aye. We played golf together a few times. Not often, mind; he wasn’t exactly in my league. Eight handicap,” he says, quite literally blowing smoke. “I’m going for the club championship this year.”
“Impressive.” Tyler has no idea if it is or not.
Elliot coughs. “Aye. Cartwright was strictly amateur status.”
The driver of the lorry jumps down from the cab and looks at a clipboard. He glances up and down the road a couple of times and then back at the information in his hands.
“Look at this joker.” Elliot drops his cigarette butt on the ground, where it joins a hundred others. He stamps it out with a foot and shouts at the driver, “Are you picking up or dropping off, man?”
The driver looks up for a moment, winces into the sunlight, and then looks back down at his clipboard as though it alone holds the answers he seeks.
Elliot huffs. “I’d better sort this out. We’re expecting a meat delivery of our own any minute.” He claps Tyler on the shoulder and starts toward the lorry. But as he walks he turns and raises his voice. “If you want any more info on Gerald Cartwright,” he says, “I suggest you ask Jim Doggett. I seem to remember he was in Gerry’s league.” He smiles and turns back to the driver.
The orange spark of his cigarette butt flares once on the wind and goes out.
* * *
—
Constable Rabbani lives with her parents in one of a short row of newly built terraced houses in Sharrow. Tyler parks on a side street overlooking the back of the houses where the gardens have been paved over and joined into one shared courtyard. A group of young b
oys are playing cricket between rows of drying washing. When they see Rabbani get in the car they begin shouting at the house.
“Cousins,” she explains as she gets in, “telling the whole family some bloke’s just picked me up.”
“Do you want me to go in and explain?” he asks.
“Fuck, no! Sorry, sir. It’s just . . . sometimes they forget I’m with the police.”
He smiles. “No need to remind them, eh?”
It takes them no more than ten minutes to reach the university. Finding somewhere to park takes nearer fifteen. Sophie Denham is a law student who’s agreed to meet them strictly on her own terms. Her suggestion to Rabbani was that they meet her in the coffee shop at the student union. Tyler doesn’t want to meet the girl at all, but he can’t just ignore the possible lead. He tells himself his interest is professional. They were at school together—Oscar and this . . . so-called fiancée—which means she’s likely to have known Gerald Cartwright as well. And anyway, as uncomfortable as the whole interview is likely to be for him, better he talks to her than Doggett.
They find a table close to the door. Rabbani huddles round her corrugated cup of tea while he watches a handful of students and lecturers meander their way through the building. Term may not have started in earnest yet, but already the institution is beginning to wake from its long summer slumber. He knows Sophie Denham the minute she walks in. She’s tall and blond and very beautiful. She’s wearing a pair of dark jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and unbranded trainers. Her hair is tied back in a functional ponytail, and she carries a brown satchel-style briefcase that no doubt contains her lecture notes meticulously organized and color coordinated. She already has lawyer written all over her. She’s one step away from a designer suit, paid for by her corporately negligent clients.