by Iain Adams
Macabrely, within many of the garments, the warped and twisted plastic hangers, deprived of their chrome hooks, had remained in place like distorted black skeletons. Looking up, McRae could see a line of hooks, bereft of their plastic shoulder pieces, still hanging pathetically on the bent and sagging clothes rails. Aha, he thought, maybe that explains it? The intense heat had resulted in the weight of the dresses pulling the softened plastic hangers away from their hooks. It made sense, and yet... on closer examination, many of the dresses at the base of the pyramid contained either completely intact hangers or no hangers at all? How had that come about?
Truth was, he didn’t get it. Still, no doubt Balfour would have more of a clue. He gave an inward shrug and moved into the adjacent aisle.
By now it was clear from the degree of distortion to the roof structure and the bleached appearance of the structural steelwork that he was very close to the seat of the fire. This area, between the second and third aisles, had been truly gutted.
Looking above his head, through the large openings in the roof left by the collapsed sheeting, McRae felt the rain washing his upturned face. The sky was, however, turning a lighter shade of grey and had acquired a subtle pink streak. The worst of the weather was over.
Checking his watch, he noted with alarm that the time had evaporated and that it was now just gone six. He realised he could no longer detect any sign of activity on the far side of the warehouse, so, pausing only to capture a few extra pictures, he hurried towards the administration block on his way to the canteen.
6
Walsall, May 2007
‘Fancy a coffee?’
McRae turned and was confronted by a spotty young woman wearing a floral headscarf and round pink-framed glasses. She appeared to be guarding a small selection of thermos flasks.
‘Oh yeah: definitely. Black with two sugars please,’ he replied.
The canteen, which turned out to be a poky, warm, almost steamy room, housed merely a sink stand, a microwave oven, a couple of Formica-topped tables and half a dozen bentwood chairs. It was, as Grim had suggested, relatively dry apart from the puddles of sooty water that had been dripped onto the vinyl floor from the boots of firemen – what it wasn’t – was quiet. The room was heaving. Firemen, a couple of disconsolate looking people who McRae assumed to be employees, George, Spiros and Grim were all standing awkwardly around sipping from polystyrene cups.
As the woman poured the drink, McRae glanced across the room towards Grim who appeared to be engaged in a conspiratorial conversation with a watch officer from the brigade. As Grim turned his head, McRae inclined his head towards the door. Grim nodded in acknowledgement.
A few minutes later as he stood in the entrance porch trying and failing to light a damp cigarette, Grim joined him.
‘So, what time is Balfour due? If he doesn’t get here soon, it’ll be too dark to even start!’
Grim glanced at his watch. ‘Should be here in about a quarter of an hour, if he’s still running to plan. I told him he’d need a generator anyway.’
‘Good, how are you getting on?’
‘Not bad, I’ve almost done as much as I can today anyway.
You?’
‘The same,’ replied McRae. ‘What we need is to get away from here and put our heads together. Lets’ wait for Steve, tell him what we need and get out of here.’
‘Good plan, I could murder a fucking drink,’ replied Grim.
Funnily enough, for what felt like the first time in years, it had gone six and McRae had not given a thought to alcohol. He had hardly had a cigarette all day, either – this case was interesting alright. Interesting, because there was some indefinable whiff in the air and it wasn’t just smoke. He had no idea why yet, but something was troubling him.
He looked across the sorry remains of the Hellenic business that lay scattered across the paved frontage. He saw that two of the appliances were in the process of departing. Just a single engine and a tender remained to ensure that the fire didn’t reignite. Fat chance of that with the number of hoses and oceans of water used, he reflected. Still, the brigade had managed to save the offices. In fact, despite looking more than a little sorry for itself, the whole administration area was still structurally intact.
Stepping away from the porch and looking backwards to gain a better view of the façade, McRae was amused to see that the plastic lettering that had proudly announced the existence of Hellenic Fashions to the world (or at least Walsall) now simply read “Hell”.
A loud blast from a car horn interrupted his moment of silent mirth. McRae turned to see that the cavalry had finally arrived in the somewhat dumpy, bespectacled shape of Dr Stephen Balfour BSc. PhD. The best forensic investigator known to McRae was now stepping out of his Saab estate, while waving a greeting.
‘Looks like a nice case, Drew, but a bit out of your league,’ he jested as McRae approached.
‘It better hadn’t be out of yours!’ the adjuster retorted.
Grim had also heard the car and was picking his own way across the parking area towards them.
‘Oh my God, if it’s not the Grim Reaper as well,’ said Steve, stretching out his hand towards Cairns.
Grim smiled. ‘Nice to see you too, Steve.’
‘Right, time is obviously pressing, Steve,’ said McRae, ‘and Grim and I are off for important deliberations in the nearest watering hole, so can we just tell you quickly what we know so far and what we are looking for here? Then we’ll let you get on with things, while we start planning our next steps.’
They climbed into the fortunately roomy Saab while the two proceeded to give Balfour a rapid rundown on the case.
After providing as much detail as he could, McRae summed up their concerns. ‘The thing is, it’s obviously arson; the spread and the obvious use of accelerant are a dead giveaway, even to us lesser mortals,’ he stated, looking to Grim for assent. ‘However, the devil is in the detail, so what we want to know is everything else you can tell us. If there’s any initial conclusion you can reach, with all the usual caveats of course, we need it tonight as we’re gonna be giving an initial report to CFG tomorrow morning.’
Balfour looked at McRae with incomprehension writ large on his round face. ‘Drew, it is now just gone six. It’ll be dark in no time and even though I’ve brought a lighting set, it will be bloody difficult, if not impossible, to establish anything at all before tomorrow. If – and it’s a bloody big ‘if’ – you two are right, and frankly that’s unlikely, I may be able to give you an indicator by late this evening, but don’t count on it!’
‘I knew that’s what you’d say,’ replied McRae,’ but this is massive for us, Steve, so do what you can, eh?’
‘No promises, Drew. I’ll call you at ten either way,’ said Balfour. ‘Now, let the dog have a chance to see the bloody rabbit.’
After introducing Balfour to George, who had been openly observing the Saab summit from the window of the canteen, McRae explained the forensic expert’s role and requested that the Greek provide all necessary assistance to him. Once the niceties were dispensed with, Balfour waddled off into the recesses of the warehouse with Gallo, leaving the adjusters alone.
‘Before we leave, I think we’d better have a ganders at the executive offices,’ suggested McRae, and so they trudged carefully up the open-sided staircase to the first floor. The doors leading to the designers’ and directors’ rooms were both ajar.
‘Kanelos is right,’ remarked Grim. ‘No real structural damage here.’
It was heavily smoke-logged, with a thick coat of greasy soot coating every conceivable surface. In the gloom of the unlit designers’ room, a large drawing table was littered with blackened sheets upon which garment designs could be dimly discerned. Various fashion magazines were open with notes of differing colours acting as page markers or highlighters. On a high-level rail that ran around the circumference of the room, the pathetic remains of dresses and blouses dangled from pitifully distorted plastic hangers. McRae pull
ed several of the clothes to one side and began inspecting them; in particular, he noted the brands.
At a superficial glance it seemed that almost all the garments were high-end continental marques, such as Dolce and Gabbana and Chanel, but then, as he looked more closely, McRae could see there were equivalent similar items from high street retailers like Marks and Spencer, Next, Topshop and so-on, all interspersed with unlabelled garments that he guessed were Hellenic’s own.
Standing back from the rail, he thought he could perceive a crude pattern in the arrangement. For most articles, there appeared to be one Hellenic own-brand item that, in essence, broadly matched the others. A bit of piracy? he wondered, before quickly concluding that all fashion was essentially copycat stuff anyway. Distracted from his cogitations by a shout from Grim, he realised his colleague had wandered next door into the executives’ office.
This office turned out to be of comparable size. It was similarly ruined and oily smoke revealed, as it invariably did, a disturbing number of otherwise invisible cobwebs. A suggestive but nominally “artistic” calendar took pride of place on one wall. The space was dominated by a single large conference table, as well as a number of mismatched chairs, filing cabinets and what looked as if it had once been a rather swish set of matching suede-leather settees positioned on either side of a glass coffee table. Grim was using his torch to illuminate the contents of one of the filing cabinets. In particular, he was keen to draw McRae’s attention to what seemed to be a file of bank statements. As McRae drew close to him, he carefully opened the file but was disappointed to see that it was empty. The pattern of smoke staining showed that whatever had been inside had been removed after the event.
‘Bit of a pity eh?’ he remarked.
‘Yeah, might have been useful.’ He peered at his watch. ‘Anyway, if you can tell Spiros that we’re leaving for the evening, I’ll bring the car up and we can get off,’ suggested McRae. ‘Oh, and maybe it would be just as well to tell him we’ll be back tomorrow, eh?’
‘Oh great,’ sighed Cairns. ‘Just what I need – a deluded optimist.’
* * *
It was a little after 6.30pm when the Audi pulled onto the forecourt of The Fountain pub. A bit rundown, but that was the way Grim liked his pubs. All that mattered to him was an ostentatious absence of pretension and the quality of the ale. They had driven well out of their way in order to satisfy Grim’s arcane requirements. It had turned out he hadn’t visited The Fountain before and he wanted to see whether it lived up to its reputation in the CAMRA Guide as a true drinkers’ pub.
Hardly likely to get a decent glass of wine in here, thought McRae as he gazed around the unashamedly brutal interior of the public bar. He eventually settled on a bottle of Stella Artois for safety, while his expert colleague debated whether or not to select the Wadworth 6X or the Hook Norton. Finally, nursing their respective drinks, accessorised with packets of dry roasted nuts, the men chose a heavy teak-topped, cast iron table in the corner of the snug. The filthy overflowing ashtray reminded them both that within a few short months the new fascist-inspired no smoking laws would be coming into force. In the meantime, however, they were overdue a smoke and like the condemned men they were, they duly lit up.
‘So, any thoughts?’ opened McRae.
‘Plenty, but none of them good,’ responded Grim. ‘My main worry is obvious. We should have got back to CFG this afternoon and warned them of the scale of the loss – not just sailed on regardless. If they chuck us off the job now, we’ve wasted a day and they’ll never touch us again!’
McRae gave a deep sigh. He knew only too well the risk they were running. From the moment they had stepped through Hellenic’s doors, he had been debating with himself how best to manage their client insurer’s expectations.
Over the next ten minutes he outlined his thinking to Grim, before eventually summarising his conclusion. His view was that if they were able to go back to CFG the following morning with a well-thought-out and thorough report, and with a solid reserve that covered every base, there was at least a chance CFG would leave them to complete the handling of the case. God only knew, he hoped so.
Grim, while patently continuing to harbour his own doubts, decided there was nothing to be gained from further debate. He gazed morosely at the shiny, shabby, gum-encrusted Wilton carpet through the base of his quickly emptied glass and finally spoke. ‘Refill?’
Returning from the bar with the replenished glasses, the adjusters turned to considering the detail of the case. In particular: the cause.
Both agreed the fire had, without doubt, been deliberate. The senior fire officer, with whom Grim had been in a huddle in the canteen had confirmed as much, although the brigade’s own enquiries were continuing. Interestingly, the fire brigade had been called to a number of small deliberate fires in other units throughout the estate over the last few months, which they had attributed to some local yobbo’s idea of recreation. This fire had been different, though, both in terms of the apparent sophistication and the scale of the damage.
‘Did you spot that broken panel in the right-hand loading bay door?’ asked McRae.
‘Yeah, course, got a couple of pictures of it, too’ came the response. ‘Place reeked as well, didn’t it? Couldn’t make out whether it was petrol or diesel but it had an oily smell, I thought. Didn’t spot any obvious container though.’
‘No,’ said McRae, ‘you’re right. No sign of any container, but there is so much crap about that it could be anywhere. Anyway, when I went through the stock, some of the dresses at the bottom of the piles had a really strong odour of some form of accelerant. Anyway, Steve will be able to tell us what it was, no doubt. The other thing that bothered me was the quality of the stock. God knows I’m no expert, but some of it didn’t strike me as being quite as upmarket as Mr Kanelos implied. What do you reckon?’
‘Not a clue,’ said Cairns, ‘I didn’t pay much attention to the stock, to be honest, but I can tell you that some of the forklifts seemed past their best. It was a bit hard to tell, with the extent of the smoke. Appeared to be a load of lock-stitch and other types of sewing machines in one corner of Bay A as well, which I couldn’t understand the necessity for.’
‘So, what do you reckon for the reserves?’
‘Mmm,’ Grim murmured, leafing quickly through his annoyingly neat site notes. ‘My first thoughts are about £1.5 million for the building and somewhere around half a million for the plant. What about the stock?’
‘Well, if we believe Kanelos, the stock stood at £8 million last Friday and I don’t reckon there is more than a few hundred grand’s worth of salvageable material, if that. So effectively, we must be looking at an overall £10 million reserve, plus fees. So, let’s say £10.5 million to be on the safe side.’
‘CFG are going to be sick.’
‘Absolutely, but the main thing is how we tell them. It’s obvious to me that we need to fix an appointment with that claims manager, Smyth.’
‘Smythson… Derek Smythson,’ interrupted Grim.
‘Okay, Smythson… Anyway, we need a meeting with him mid-morning and it needs a decent report, plenty of photos and us looking totally on the ball.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes. Us, we have to look credible. If I show up alone, we may look a little lightweight, don’t you think? One man band? The sodding nobility usually roll up with a complete bloody army of techies on their major jobs.’
‘Fair point, but it’s gone seven now and we haven’t even got back to the office – let alone started the report!’
‘Best get cracking then,’ said McRae, draining the remains of his lager. ‘You’d better tell Moira not to expect any nookie c’est sois.’
‘Actually, I think I’d better stay at your place tonight. We’re going to be seriously late and I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb or whatever they say.’
‘Fine, let’s get out of here.’
By the time the pair had arrived back at Castle Street, it was 7.30pm.
The basement car park had been secured for the night, so McRae took a chance and left his car on a side street where the parking limitation had ended. He was a little uneasy about leaving the Audi parked in this part of Birmingham late at night, but it couldn’t be helped. While he let himself into the main communal doors to the office block using his out-of-hours pin code, Grim wandered off out of hearing range to make his apologetic call to his wife. Bet she’s as good as gold about it, conjectured McRae enviously. Not for the first time, he envied his colleague. Moira was what he would consider a truly ideal wife. He wasn’t personally attracted to the woman, but he couldn’t help admiring what he considered to be her essential qualities. Of course, his view from the outside was flawed, but it seemed to him that she really was a domestic goddess. Sensuous, attractive, hard-working, good-humoured; she never, ever nagged and – was a great cook to boot. She definitely deserved someone better than Grim; someone more like himself, really. Strange that he always attracted the difficult type. He must, he concluded, be a masochist. It only rarely occurred to him that his own qualities could in any way be deficient.
Entering their own office, McRae made a beeline for the kitchen. He had just switched the kettle on when he heard Grim clatter in.
‘Everything okay?’ he called.
‘Yeah, no problem, she’s chilled.’
Bloody typical! thought McRae.
7
Birmingham, May 2007
By 10pm, two draft copies of the Fairclough Preliminary Report on the Hellenic fire, in all its rough and ready glory, were being read and marked up with alterations by the adjusters. Both of them were checking the copies independently, in their respective offices. By 10.45pm, they had agreed upon the final version.