Third Degree

by Claire Rayner

  Rupert Dudley saw her and came across at once, the fireman on his heels. ‘Dr Barnabas, we’ve got a body upstairs, severely burned, dead of course. We thought it a fire death but Mr Knight here thinks it might be more than that.’

  The fireman pushed forwards. He had a snub nose rather ludicrously tipped with soot between round cheeks similarly adorned. He looked more like a child dressed up for Halloween than a senior fire officer, George thought. Until he spoke. Then his clear authority removed any hint of immaturity from his appearance. This was a man who knew his job and all its ramifications.

  ‘Morning, doctor,’ he said. ‘Sorry we had to get you out so early but it seemed a good idea, seeing as the observations I’ve made don’t tally with the situation we’d expect. You see, we found –’

  ‘If I might interrupt,’ Dudley said. ‘It’ll be easier to explain if we go up. Doctor?’ And he stepped back and indicated that George should lead the way.

  ‘You go first,’ she said. ‘You know where we’re going.’ She fell into step behind him as he led the way to the main entrance of the flats, which had not, so far, been burned. He was being remarkably polite, she thought; last time he called me out early he was tickled to death with himself, thought he’d caught me out. Why is he being so charming? Well, charming on his terms, if not on anyone else’s …

  ‘We can use the staircase safely,’ Knight said. ‘The upper floors aren’t so good, the stairs are badly affected there. But this flight’s OK. The fire went upwards.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’d expect?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Knight said and she looked at him over her shoulder, for there was a grim note in his voice.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It will be better if we look first, talk later,’ he said and obediently she followed Dudley up the stairs, with Knight walking close behind her as though to catch her if she fell.

  The smell of charring was stronger and now there was the reek of dirty water too. The first floor, when they reached it, was awash; what had once possibly been costly carpet was now a thick squelching colourless mess, and water splashed around her shoes as she moved along the corridor, still sandwiched between the two watchful men.

  She was glad of them when her foot slipped on a particularly sodden patch and she nearly lost her balance. She found herself hanging on to Rupert Dudley’s shoulders with both hands, her bag swinging from one of them so wildly that it caught Dudley a sharp blow on the ear. He swore and grabbed for his ear and almost toppled her, but fortunately Knight was hanging on to her by now, so they all remained upright. Dudley threw her a furious glare over his shoulder and perversely she felt better; he hadn’t been behaving charmingly to her at all. Roop in a rage was one of the comforting things in life; made you feel you knew where you were.

  The flat they reached had been almost burned out. The floor near the door was safe enough, but Knight set her aside and insisted on going first. Someone had set long thick planks over the remainder of the floor (which was severely charred, so much so that in places the joists, or what remained of them, could be clearly seen) using an unburned area on the far side to hold them, and he made his way gingerly on to one of them and held out his hand.

  ‘You’ll be safe on this, but don’t set foot on the floor whatever you do. It’s as strong as paper, only crumblier,’ he warned. ‘This way.’

  She followed him carefully, not taking her eyes from her feet as she set them one in front of the other, until Knight said, ‘OK. Here we are. Can you see from here?’

  The plank had brought her to the bottom of a bed, which tilted dangerously on the wrecked floor. It had been, she suspected, brass; she could still see the balls on each corner and the lattice work of metal rails that had made the head and footboards, but they were cruelly twisted and blackened. Between them were the remains of the bedding, a very thick mattress and what had been a large duvet. It must have been its thickness that prevented it being entirely consumed; certainly she could still see its shape. It had covered a body, which now lay in all its blackened, singed horror, a travesty of a human form, the head curved back against a pillow which was little more than a heap of ash and debris.

  ‘I reckon that’s one of the most burned bodies I’ve ever seen,’ Rupert Dudley said after a moment in a low voice, but Knight laughed and his commonplace voice was a comfort in the thick atmosphere of the room.

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen ‘em worse’n that!’ he said. ‘At least you can see this was a bod. Sometimes it’s worse than if they’ve been through the crematorium ovens. No shape at all, really. You’d be amazed.’

  ‘What is it you want to point out to me?’ George said crisply, wanting to get on with the job.

  ‘Well, she’s there, do you see,’ Knight said, and George looked at him sharply.

  ‘How do you know it’s a she?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah, no pulling of any wool over your eyes, right?’ Knight sounded jovial. ‘I don’t know, I’m guessing. But it’s an informed guess. The tenant of this flat is listed as a Miss Lisa Zizi, aged thirty-seven, exotic dancer.’ He glanced at George then. ‘And possibly a bit of a part-time lady on the side, if you get my meaning. The same sort of – you know …’

  ‘A Tom,’ Dudley said flatly. ‘Expensive one, if she was.’

  ‘How can you be sure that’s who that is?’ George said, tilting her chin at the body. ‘Or that she was a prostitute?’

  ‘I said, we can’t. But it seems a fair guess. Anyway, you don’t often get men around five foot three, give or take a few centimetres, sleeping in rooms with pink satin curtains. See? There’s a scrap left over there.’

  ‘That is amazing,’ Dudley said, looking from the shred of curtain at the window to the bed. ‘That there should be this much damage here but curtains at the windows should be …’

  ‘Oh!’ George said, and stared again at the body.

  ‘Exactly!’ Knight sounded like an approving schoolteacher. ‘You’ve spotted it, doctor, right?’

  ‘Why should this bed and the person in it be so badly burned and there still be curtains at the window?’ She looked over her shoulder at them, then around the rest of the room, which was illuminated by the police photographer’s Tilley lamps as he gingerly photographed where he could. ‘It’s a bit odd.’

  ‘Odder than a bit. It’s as odd as Dick’s hatband – which went round three times and never met.’ Knight looked smug. ‘I’m glad you spotted it, doctor. Shall I tell you what I think? Before you look at the body? It might help you.’

  ‘Try and stop him,’ Dudley said.

  Knight grinned at him. ‘Well, you could be right. When I get on to something I really do … look, doctor, when there’s a fire what do the people caught in it usually do?’

  ‘Try to get out,’ George said. ‘But just tell me, please. Let’s not have any quiz games.’

  ‘Who’s playing games?’ Knight said. ‘Just look at this. Here’s someone who had to be woken, surely, by a fire as fierce as this was, but lay there in bed and let herself get frizzled up. Not one of your hide-in-the-corners-and-try-to-escape-it, hmm? Not one of your leap-out-of-the-window-and-take-your-chance, eh? Just lay there.’

  ‘So you think she – he – might have died before the fire,’ George said. ‘It’s not uncommon. We’ve seen it before. A body set on fire to hide a murder.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ Knight said. ‘So have I, lotsa times. But this one’s different. I’ve had a good look here, and I have to tell you that I think the fire started in the body itself.’

  ‘Started where?’ Dudley said. ‘Are you saying this was arson?’

  ‘You can never be sure,’ Knight said. ‘But I’ll tell you this much. This wasn’t electrical, because we’ve been able to check right back to the fuse board which hasn’t been touched. There’s been no overloads or short circuits. I’ll stake my pension on it and I’m going to be top of the Brigade before I retire, so it’ll be a hell of a pension!’ He laughed, happily relaxed in spite
of his surroundings and for a moment George marvelled, until she remembered that this was the man’s daily work. He was as comfortable here as she was doing one of her post-mortems, and most people found that extraordinary.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ Knight said. ‘This fire spread upwards almost entirely. Hardly down at all. Generally a fire in a building like this will go both ways – out from the centre, if you see what I mean. This seemed not to affect the flats beneath – or very little. Our water’s done more harm downstairs than the flames did. It all adds up to a very unusual fire.’

  She looked at the floor and the severe damage there, and frowned. If it was worse than that upstairs, then upstairs must be in a bad state. But she couldn’t concentrate on that thought, because Knight was speaking again.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think. You can pooh pooh it if you like, and I dare say you will. I know that scientifically it’s never been proven, but if that isn’t a form of spontaneous combustion then I’m not here but lying in bed at home and dreaming.’

  There was a long silence and then George said carefully, ‘Spontaneous combustion.’ Dudley said nothing. He just stared.

  Knight looked a little pugnacious. ‘Well, it’s something I’ve read about. Amazing cases, few and far between, I’ll grant you, but not unheard of.’

  George blinked. ‘Um,’ she said, trying not to sound as dismissive as she felt about the idea. ‘The only proven case I’ve read of involved the build-up of flammable gases in a decomposing corpse, and then there had to be an igniting spark of some kind. There’s no sign here that this body had started that process. I have to say I think spontaneous combustion unlikely. There has to be some other reason, surely …’

  There was another silence as the three of them contemplated the body on the bed, and behind them the flashes of the Soco’s camera started again. Then he came over to Dudley and said, ‘I think that’s it, sir. You can take over now.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Dudley abstractedly. Soco picked his way back over the planks and went, leaving just the three of them and another uniformed policeman waiting for instructions.

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ George said, and moving carefully crossed to the adjoining plank, so that she could get nearer to the head of the bed, and stood staring down at the skull.

  There was a bulge on one side of the crown and, amazingly, remnants of black hair low on the other side. Very little, but it was there; as though the fire that had attacked this body had been as one-sided as the fire that had attacked the buildings. For a moment she wondered, though only briefly, if the fire officer’s idea could have any basis in fact. It certainly looked as though one part of the body had flared into flame suddenly, consuming the face and part of the skull, but leaving only less severe marks on the rest of the body.

  She reached for her bag to see if she could make some sort of preliminary examination before the body was moved; Dudley handed it to her and then leaned over the body himself.

  ‘That lump on the head,’ he said shortly. ‘Could she have been bashed?’

  George had her bag open by now and had pulled out some of her instruments. She reached over and carefully probed the lump. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I can’t be sure till I get her back to the mortuary, but I would have thought not. This is likely to be a heat haematoma.’

  ‘A what?’ Dudley was fascinated. He had come round to the other side of the charred bed to watch her.

  ‘It’s nasty,’ she said. ‘If the scalp is burned as this one is, it’s possible for blood to boil out of the diploë and the venous sinuses.’

  ‘Diploë?’ Dudley said and George, not thinking about the effect of her words, nodded.

  ‘Uh huh. The red-marrow-bearing material between the inner and outer tables of the skull. And the venous sinuses are the –’ She stopped as she saw Dudley’s face pale. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘The blood boils out, did you say?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said hastily. ‘Anyway it isn’t due to a blow, though it looks like a contusion. So if she was dead before the fire it wasn’t likely to be because of a hit on the head. But as I say, I can tell better back at the mortuary when I do the PM.’

  ‘But you don’t think it’s this spontaneous combustion, then?’ Knight asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ George said, wanting to be diplomatic. ‘It’s pretty rare, if it’s ever happened – we’ve no proof of it, I’m afraid. Sorry, Mr Knight. But I do take your point that this woman was perhaps dead before the fire started. It certainly would seem so. She stayed in bed and her damage from the fire is … Well, I really can’t say much more, though I can’t deny it’s a little bizarre. The PM, that’s the thing. I’ll do a few simple things here just for the report, Roop, and then if you’ll arrange to get the body to the mortuary first thing in the morning, I’ll make the PM a priority.’

  Dudley didn’t seem to have noticed she had used his hated diminutive, and indeed she’d hardly noticed herself. ‘OK, doc, I’ll get the rest cleared here. There’s another body in the flat above and –’

  ‘Another?’ She looked up sharply. ‘You didn’t say!’

  ‘Didn’t get the chance,’ Dudley said. ‘Old man, found in the corner, no fire damage that we can see, but he’s very dead. Have a look when you’re ready, OK? We’ve had to bring the body downstairs. Couldn’t leave it in situ. The floor’s likely to fall in.’

  ‘Now he tells me!’ George said. She looked up a little fearfully. Above her head the ceiling sagged alarmingly and in places she could see light above where the floor had burned through. ‘I’ll get going.’

  She did what she could swiftly, taking her usual pictures and making notes about the position of the body and confirming the fact that it was indeed female. The other men hadn’t disturbed the covering enough to check, but their guesses had been right. Below the duvet it was still possible to see the shape of her external genital cleft and though her breasts had gone, there was the evidence of the bones. George would confirm that when she got the body under her lights at the mortuary. She closed her bag at last and made her way back over the planks to the door, ready to go and look at the other body from upstairs, puzzling as she went. It was one thing to dismiss, albeit kindly, Fireman Knight’s absurd notion that this was a case of spontaneous combustion, quite another to account for what were undoubtedly some of the oddest fire injuries she had ever seen.

  8

  It was Danny who came up with a more rational explanation for the injuries on the woman when he first saw her on the PM table, and heard what Knight had had to say about the cause of the fire. George, wearing a mask – something she often didn’t bother with, but felt the need for this morning – was carefully separating the small lock of remaining hair from the scalp so that it could be examined; Danny looked at it once she had it in its sample envelope, and then squinted at what remained of the woman’s face.

  ‘Indian, is she?’ he said. George lifted her head and looked at him. Across the room, Norman Vale, the young man from the coroner’s office standing in today for Harold Constant, who – luckily for him – had a migraine, looked at him too. DC Wheeler, who had been sent from Dudley’s team to observe, remained as he was, his head down and his eyes fixed on the floor. It was the only way he could ever cope with post-mortems, pretending he wasn’t there.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ George asked.

  ‘Oh, we ’ad a little spate o’ them a few years back. I remember it well. One after another, like it was in fashion.’ He carried the sample carefully to the tray at the side which he had prepared for the reception of such items. ‘Old Dr Royle, ’e got quite expert at ’em.’

  ‘Oh, did he?’ George said, bristling a little at the mention of the predecessor who had caused her some problems in her first months at Old East. ‘Tracked down an arsonist, I suppose.’

  Norman Vale, an ambitious man, perked up considerably. Reporting arson would make him a man of some note at the coroner’s office, he reckoned
. He sidled a little closer.

  ‘There wasn’t no arsonist.’ Danny was dismissive. ‘It was a lot of dowry battles. Nasty, they was. The local Race Relations lot stepped in, sorted it out.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ the coroner’s officer asked.

  ‘It was a big scandal at the time.’ Danny settled to a luxurious gossip of the sort he liked best. ‘Indian girls from poor families, see, brought here for their arranged marriages. Their parents had to pay dowries to the husbands, didn’t they? Then if there wasn’t enough money or the husbands’ families got greedy, the wives burned themselves. Or got burned. Self-immolation, Dr Royle used to put on the certificates.’

  There was a long silence and then George said, ‘Mr Wheeler, could you check on this with Inspector Dudley? I was told the woman who rented the flat was called … I think I wrote it down somewhere. Show me the notes, Danny. Yes, here it is, Lisa Zizi. I thought that was a stage name but, well, see what you can find out.’

  Wheeler departed with alacrity, and the room settled to quietness as George went on with the job. It wasn’t an easy one. The severe burning was all in the top half of the body, where the damage was bone deep in many places; the teeth, which were in good condition, and the jaw could be clearly seen as far back as the mandibular joint on the left, and the neck on that side was also destroyed down to the vertebral column. On the other side, however, it was not so severe, and she dictated her notes very carefully indeed, putting in all the details she could.

  Further down the body the damage petered out. The legs were hardly burned at all in comparison though there were several patches of second-degree burns, as well as wide areas of first-degree damage with great red flares in the tanned skin and on the edges of the more severely affected areas, where the burns were more clearly third degree.