Night of Fire: (DI Angus Henderson Book 6)

by Iain Cameron

  ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ he said rising from the settee and leaving the room.

  He leaned against the kitchen units while the kettle boiled. In the list of the many jobs he undertook, this one was at the shitty end of the stick and affected him more than seeing a dead body. Here were real people with busy lives, being forced to come to terms with a level of grief that often put the brakes on their world, while the rest of it continued to turn as if nothing had happened.

  Since leaving Hanover Street, he’d been thinking hard about Guy’s murder. He didn’t intend saying much more to Lily tonight, but it looked to him like an argument gone wrong and not a drugs or stolen goods deal that had turned sour. His reasoning was based on the way Guy died.

  The victim had been felled by a single shot. Not an assassin’s double-tap to the skull or a drug-dealer’s manic spray from an Uzi, but a single bullet to the chest. It was an area of the body not noted for instant death unless the heart or a main artery is pierced. In addition, they found the victim upstairs, near the door of a bedroom, giving the murder scene the aura of a domestic argument, and suggesting the shooter took a quick shot, or didn’t intend to kill.

  He returned to the lounge with three cups of tea, two sugarless and the other with four spoonfuls for Lily. Henderson had been so deep in thought, or the kettle so loud, he didn’t hear the arrival of the FLO, Helen Vincent, now sitting on the arm of Lily’s chair comforting her.

  ‘Hello there, Helen. I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Evening sir. I’m surprised as my husband says I walk with all the finesse of an elephant.’

  He smiled. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? There’s more in the pot.’

  ‘Oh yes, please.’

  He handed out the cups and walked back into the kitchen to fetch another. When everyone was sorted and slurping tea self-consciously, he took a seat on the settee and looked at Lily, awaiting the inevitable questions, or perhaps being able to ask a few of his own.

  ‘Who…do you know who shot him, Inspector?’

  ‘I don’t have a name yet, but two men were spotted fleeing the scene not long after the shooting. I’m confident we’ll find out who they are soon. Where did Guy say he was going tonight?’

  ‘He didn’t. We haven’t been talking much for the last few weeks; he often went out without telling me.’

  She began sobbing again, quietly this time with Helen saying soothing words and gently rubbing her back.

  A minute or so later Henderson tried again. ‘Do you know if Guy hung around with criminals or unsavoury characters?’

  ‘Other than the people he worked with at the council, you mean? He used to say they were all crooks,’ she said with a wan smile. She paused for a moment, thinking. ‘I suppose you could class his friend Ajay as an unsavoury character. I certainly don’t like him.’

  ‘Ajay?’

  ‘Ajay Singh. He’s a bloke Guy has known since his days at Varndean School. He’s done time for thieving cars and such, hence the reason I didn’t like Guy associating with him. Guy’s moved on but Ajay hasn’t.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘This is the problem. He’s never settled down. He lived with his mum somewhere in Patcham, but after being thrown out I think he’s been staying with various brothers and cousins.’

  ‘Is there anyone else you can think of? Someone who might wish your husband harm?’

  ‘Apart from me, you mean, for letting himself become involved in something above his head.’ She started to cry again.

  Henderson looked at Graham who seemed to be in agreement with him. They both stood. ‘We’ll leave you in Helen’s capable hands now, Mrs Barton. We’ll see ourselves out.’

  He turned and walked to the door.

  ‘Wait a second,’ Lily Barton said as she extricated herself with some difficulty from the seat. She came up to him, handkerchief in hand, her eyes red and raw.

  ‘Thank you for coming here and telling me this so quickly,’ she said. ‘I know it can’t be easy for you either.’ She reached over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re a good man, Inspector Henderson. Thank you.’

  **

  Henderson dropped Sally Graham off at her flat in Queen’s Park and headed home. It was after midnight when he called DS Walters, still at the scene in Hanover Street, but beginning to pack up, and most of the forensics team were doing the same. Henderson didn’t have a problem with them wrapping up only a few hours after arriving there, as given what they knew now, a fingertip search of surrounding areas was unlikely to reveal better clues than they found in the house. Door-to-door enquiries had done sterling work in finding their star witness, Daniel.

  He was now in possession of fingerprint and DNA samples, the car registration plate and Ajay Singh’s name. Unless the killer or killers were heading to the Continent or had good underworld contacts willing to hide them, he felt confident they would be in custody within the next few days.

  In his head, he was clear about the way the murder investigation would progress, but utterly confused as to why anyone would target Guy Barton. With her lover burned to death and now her husband gunned down, a sane man would start to believe some kind of macabre vendetta was being targeted at Lily Barton. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why, as he believed her to be one of the nicest and sweetest women he had ever met.

  He arrived home and, as expected, Rachel was in bed. He didn’t feel tired so he went into the cupboard under the stairs and pulled out a bottle of Adnams Ghost Ship, a beer recommended to him by Harry Wallop, their resident expert on all things East Anglian. He selected a glass from the draining board and walked into the lounge.

  Rachel had obviously been using the fire earlier as the room still felt warm. He took a seat on the settee, poured the beer and picked up a pad and pen. There were several of each lying around the house, not surprising for a place inhabited by a journalist and a murder detective, both of whom liked to sketch out ideas, concepts or mind maps whenever the notion took them.

  At first he outlined the steps necessary to catch Guy Barton’s killers. The more he considered it, the more it reinforced his view the killing didn’t bear the hallmarks of a deliberate hit, but a dispute gone wrong. The search would focus on finding two desperate criminals not two big-time shooters. He would fast-track the DNA samples discovered in the house tonight, research Ajay Singh and shake-down his known haunts, and be ready to respond to an ANPR, Automatic Number Plate Recognition system, sighting of the car once they discovered its full registration number.

  He then wrote, ‘Why?’ He knew how Guy Barton died but didn’t know why. Did the presence of the jewellery in the Hanover Street bedroom indicate his involvement in the robbery at Fenton’s, and if so, did he fall out with his fellow robbers when it came to dividing the spoils? Or, maybe he knew the robbers and went to the house to blackmail them.

  Many scenarios looked possible, but the DI couldn’t see past the council planning official married to a woman who published romance novels. Guy Barton possessed a rough streak for sure, but it would be a huge leap to believing such an individual was capable of murdering Marc Emerson and then staging an audacious jewellery heist. If true, he was a serious criminal masquerading as a Local Government Official, and not the other way round.

  The Emerson killing could be rationalised as a crime of passion, done in a fit of jealousy when Guy discovered Marc was still having an affair with his wife, even if his method of dispatch came from the pages of a horror novel. If true, Henderson had not only lost his prime suspect, but the Marc Emerson case was now closed. He should now feel the sweet taste of success, a bright light shining at the end of the tunnel, but he didn’t.

  Could this be because it was late at night, at the close of what had been a difficult and tiring day, or because he didn’t believe Marc Emerson’s killer was now lying in Brighton Mortuary?

  TWENTY-TWO

  Henderson yawned before pulling open one of the double doors leading to his floor
. He’d got to bed at two last night, and in the past, the alarm going off at six rarely fazed him. Today it had, perhaps the first signs of getting old.

  He entered his office and switched on the lights. He turned and headed for the Brew Room for a coffee, as tea at breakfast had done little to pep him up this morning, when DS Edwards appeared in the office doorway.

  ‘Morning Angus.’

  ‘Ah, morning, ma’am.’

  ‘I heard the good news… well the good and the bad news, if you catch my drift.’

  Henderson leaned on the edge of his desk. He didn’t sit down; maybe his boss would take the hint and realise he wanted to be somewhere else.

  ‘Yes, it’s a two-edged sword,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost our main suspect so we don’t have the luxury of re-interviewing him, but at the same time, the clues left behind at Hanover Street will go a long way in helping us solve the Fenton’s jewellery robbery.’

  ‘I didn’t know this. I was talking about Guy Barton’s murder and the loss of suspect number one in the Marc Emerson case. How does it impact the jewellery robbery?’

  ‘Can we do this on our way to the coffee machine? I was heading there when you came in.’

  ‘Sure, I could do with one myself.’

  On the way, he explained about finding jewellery at the murder scene, close to Guy Barton’s body. ‘There’s nothing to connect it to the Lewes jewellery robbery as yet, but we’ve put a request into the Robbery Squad for a list of all the items taken from Fenton’s.’

  ‘It sounds like a good lead,’ she said, ‘pieces of jewellery scattered over the bedroom floor and the killers seen fleeing with heavy holdalls.’

  ‘I think so too. Milk no sugar?’

  ‘Yes. I’m meeting the ACC this afternoon, I’ll give him the good news.’

  ‘I would temper the ‘Marc Emerson’s killer found dead’ side of the story for the moment.’

  ‘What do you mean? He is, isn’t he?’

  ‘We didn’t take things that far. Guy Barton is, was, a strong suspect, for sure, but one with a good alibi that we’ve been trying to unpick ever since without much success.’

  ‘Hang on a sec. I came down here thinking one murder had been solved, and now you’re telling me it’s not, and in fact we now have another one to add to it. It doesn’t sound much like a good news story to me.’

  ‘Put it this way, we’ve found more clues about the jewellery robbery in one night than a couple of weeks’ work into Marc Emerson’s murder.’

  She placed her coffee down, untouched. ‘I’ll have to tell the ACC we’re expecting a quick result on the jewellery robbery and Barton’s murder, and see if it’ll placate him, but if we don’t nab them soon,’ she said wagging a finger at him, ‘there’ll be hell to pay and no mistake.’ She turned and walked out.

  Henderson strolled back to his office, his mind more on the restorative effects of his beverage than Edwards’ threats. He worked until eight-thirty before heading into the Detectives’ Room for the morning team briefing. By the time everyone had assembled, he’d wiped one of the whiteboards clean and headed it up, ‘Guy Barton.’

  ‘Last night, for those who don’t know,’ Henderson said, ‘Guy Barton, our prime suspect in the Marc Emerson murder enquiry, was found dead at a house in Hanover Street, Brighton. He died from a single bullet wound to the chest. Two people were spotted running from the house carrying sports holdalls and they are now our main suspects for his murder.’

  ‘I got angry with a planning official once when he turned down the extension for my kitchen,’ Harry Wallop said, ‘but this takes the biscuit.’

  ‘If everyone did that, they’d be dropping like flies in our street,’ Phil Bentley said, ‘my neighbours are always having work done.’

  ‘We have two good leads,’ Henderson said. ‘As I go through them, Carol, please feel free to add any new information you might have.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Henderson paused to take a drink from his coffee mug, the second of the day. For some strange reason, it never tasted as good as the first. Perhaps some university don could conduct a research study and find out why, but knowing the amount of useless studies that came out of many universities, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that such a thing had already been done.

  ‘The first lead we have is jewellery found in a bedroom at Hanover Street. A list of jewellery stolen from Fenton’s on Saturday night has been requested from the Robbery Squad and I want you, Sally, to see if any item recovered from Hanover Street matches anything on that list.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Also, have the larger items fingerprinted, but you’ll need to eliminate the big mitts of a PC on the ladies watch as I saw the idiot handling it. Carol, did you take Haslam’s prints last night?’

  ‘Yep, I did.’

  ‘Liaise with Carol after this meeting, Sally.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Phil, how are you getting on with the hunt for their car?’

  ‘The DVA came up with zilch when we gave them Ajay Singh’s name so the car we’re looking for doesn’t belong to him. We then did a search of all the Vauxhall Vectras in the area with a prefix BX57. There are hundreds, but by eliminating all the light colours, we’ve cut it down substantially. We’ve split that list into two smaller lists, one dark green and the other the remaining dark colours. The dark green list is 55 cars and this has been sent to the DVLA to expand reg numbers and give us the addresses of the owners and then it’s down to the door-to-door team.’

  ‘And if you don’t find a match,’ Henderson said, ‘I assume you’ll move on to your list of dark coloured cars?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And if there’s still no match, expand the geographic range?’

  ‘Yep. The second strand of the investigation is to look through CCTV pictures on the night of the murder. Not knowing the suspects escape route is a big hindrance but we’re slowly digging our way through them.’

  ‘Keep on it Phil. We need that number.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Carol, did I miss anything?’

  ‘You mentioned the jewellery. I spotted a few bits with a cursory search, but SOCOs found more in the house and some in the garden. Unless someone accidentally upended a woman’s jewellery box, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the pieces we have match the stuff taken from Fenton’s.’

  ‘Or another robbery,’ Harry Wallop said.

  ‘Could be,’ Walters said. ‘The door-to-door around Hanover Street didn’t uncover much more than our car witness, but SOCOs discovered plenty of prints around the house and our analysts over there,’ she said pointing across the office, ‘are banging them into the system. I think everybody knows but I’ll mention it anyway, we found Ajay Singh’s prints all over the house. Last night, we only had Mrs Barton’s suspicions that Guy was involved with Singh, we now know both men were in that house.’

  ‘What do we know about Singh?’

  ‘Petty criminal, small-time drug dealer. He’s done time for receiving stolen property and selling class C drugs. Not a hardened criminal by any stretch, but a persistent offender.’

  ‘Dig out his last known address, his mother’s address and any other addresses we can find for him and get uniform to start knocking on doors. At every address they visit, they are to ask for the addresses of his numerous relatives as he and his associate could be holed up in any one of them.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Harry, call DS Steven Rhodes in the Robbery Squad and find out how they’re getting on in their search for the robbers. Don’t say anything yet to them about Guy Barton’s murder, but if our investigations uncover some information about the robbery, such as Sally being able to match one of our pieces to Fenton’s list, I want you to keep them informed. I don’t want them thinking they’ve being side-lined and making a complaint to the ACC. Ok?’

  ‘Right boss.’

  ‘Anything
else? No? We’ll meet again at six this evening. Hopefully we’ll have something more by then.’

  Henderson returned to his office and picked up the phone. He dialled the number of Helen Vincent, the FLO assigned to Lily Barton.

  ‘Hello Helen, how are you?’

  ‘I’m a bit bored to tell you the truth. In cases where there’s a house full of kids, I spend my time playing games with them or running round the garden, but of course here at the Barton’s place there’s only Lily.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Morose, tearful, unable to concentrate; not an unexpected reaction after receiving a double-dose of bad news, in my view.’

  ‘I understand. Where is she?’

  ‘In the kitchen pottering. I’m out in the back garden having a cigarette so she can’t hear me.’

  ‘There’s something I’d like you to do for me. I can’t get over the odds against Lily losing a lover and a husband, the two people closest to her, in the space of a few weeks.’

  ‘It does seem like awfully bad luck.’

  ‘What if it has nothing to do with luck? What if it’s deliberate?’

  ‘Like a curse or someone who might be carrying out a vendetta against her?’

  ‘Forget the curse. I don’t believe in magic, but I’m considering the idea of a vendetta. I’m only flagging it as a possibility, a small one if I’m being honest, but I think we need to consider it.’

  ‘I suppose you do, in the circumstances.’

  ‘See if you can find any information lying around to support this theory. I’m thinking about death threats, stalking texts or emails, a hate campaign on social media, anything like that. Alternatively, you could ask Lily in some diplomatic way if someone or something is bothering her, that is if she’s up for some gentle questioning.’

  ‘I doubt it at the moment. She’s taking this really hard.’