Firetrap

by David Hodges

  No, his only chance lay in freeing himself and for the next few minutes, he strained against the tapes that held him with all his strength. But it was hopeless – they loosened hardly at all – and in the end he gave up trying. If this had been a movie, he mused, he would have been able to pitch the chair over on to its side and cut the tapes on a conveniently placed knife or saw-blade, but this wasn’t a movie and he knew that if he did pitch over, he was more likely to crack his skull open on the concrete floor than anything else.

  So what did he do apart from just sit there in the dank gloom of the cellar and wait for the killer to return to finish him off? Well, there was one other option open to him and though with his inbuilt scepticism it had to be a long-shot, he came to the conclusion that anything was worth a try. Closing his eyes and drawing on as much of his schoolboy memory as he could summon, he began, slowly, and at first hesitantly to mumble an incoherent Lord’s Prayer.

  Kate’s heart was hammering against her ribcage like an out-of-control tumble-drier as she quickly slid her credit card upwards until the antiquated window catch prevented it going any further. Then, wiggling it under the catch and twisting it slightly to one side, she tried to prise the tiny brass lever upwards. Instead, she felt a corner of the card snap off. Sucking in a mouthful of oxygen, she tried again. Keys now jangled on the other side of the door and she heard a curse as someone dropped them on the floor. Come on, Kate, get the bloody window open!

  Perspiration stood out on her forehead despite the coldness of the night air and she was conscious that her hand was shaking. Then, as a key slammed into the door lock, she felt rather than heard a ‘click’ and the window catch flicked open. Success, but only just. Willing the window not to stick, she gripped the edge of the frame again and pulled.

  To her relief, it swung back easily with just a faint scraping sound and at the same moment the door opened, sending a shaft of yellow light out to join the moonlight. Kate only just managed to scramble up on to the sill, using a projecting water pipe as a step, before a heavy shadow was thrown across the paving just feet away.

  But then she was through the window and crouching on her knees among the folds of a heavy curtain, one hand reaching up to gently pull the window to behind her and wincing at the waves of pain surfing through her ribcage.

  Gritty footsteps on the paving directly outside now. She closed her eyes tightly, her heart making peculiar squishing noises like a misfiring water pump, as she prayed that the insecure window would escape detection. Silence for what seemed an age and then, with the pressure building up inside her making her want to scream, the footsteps moved away across the yard, gradually fading.

  For a few moments she remained where she was, almost too frightened to move, but, then forcing herself to straighten up, she peered round the curtain into the moonlight. She saw the heavy-set figure at once. He had his back to her and seemed to be checking the gates at the far end of the yard. Time to move before he came back.

  The heady perfume from the wreaths enveloped her as she advanced further into the room and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Ordinarily she loved flowers, but somehow the smell of them in this place was overpowering, their rich cloying scent nauseatingly intoxicating. Yet even as her senses swam and her stomach heaved, she was drawn by a kind of morbid curiosity towards the coffin and the next instant found herself standing directly under the flickering ceiling light, staring down at the corpse.

  The old woman was dressed in a plain white robe with her arms dutifully folded across her shrunken breasts and her sparse grey hair combed out over the tiny pillow-like strands of steel wool. The ends of the thin bony fingers and the lips and marbled face had a bluish tinge, indicating that deterioration had already set in. Kate shuddered, drawing back quickly, as if she half-expected the eyes of the corpse to open and the mouth to twist into an obscene rictus grin. Being a police officer, she had seen death many times – had attended any number of grisly crime scenes and post-mortems – yet had always managed to remain professionally detached from it all. But now, in her present heightened state of anxiety and with the emotional baggage she was already carrying, the suffocating atmosphere of this heavily perfumed room really got to her, almost inducing a sense of panic.

  Spotting a pair of white doors, framed by swags and tails, on the far side of the room, she headed straight for them, but her haste was ill-advised. Decorative brass vases containing artificial white lilies stood on pedestals on each side of the doors and the one to her right was almost buried in shadow. As a result, she walked straight into it, bowling the pedestal over and sending the vase crashing into the wall with a reverberating clang. Cursing her stupidity, she quickly righted the pedestal and replaced the vase on top of it, but she felt sure someone must have heard the noise and she strained her ears for the sound of approaching footsteps, ready to scramble back through the window should she hear anything. But there was nothing and, taking a deep breath, she reached for the brass knob of one of the doors – only to freeze in the act of pulling it open. The knob itself was already turning in her hand. Someone was holding it on the other side.

  Twister had heard the loud crash as he’d headed back across the yard. So his visitor was in the chapel of rest, was he – how appropriate – and he flexed his fingers in anticipation.

  Turning the hall light off to avoid being silhouetted in the chapel doorway, he approached the double doors cautiously and reached for the handle. He immediately felt resistance on the other side. Well, well, well, he mused, great minds think alike, it seems. He withdrew his hand and, stepping back a couple of paces, waited for the intruder to emerge into the hallway, but nothing happened and, gripping the handle again, he found it turned easily.

  The room beyond was empty, that much seemed apparent, and he scowled, crossing swiftly to the window. He could see that it was at least a quarter open even before he got to it. Pushing it wide, he stared at the paving below the sill before scanning the yard again. Someone was playing silly buggers with him and he didn’t find it at all funny. There had been two attempted break-ins on his property over the past few weeks, one involving the use of an acetylene torch on his garage doors. What they had been after was a mystery, unless there was a market in stolen hearses or body parts, but he would have loved to have got hold of the culprit or culprits red-handed. A little recreational violence, he’d always felt, was good for the soul.

  He saw the broken stems of his plastic lilies when he returned to the door and swung round again to study the chapel, not entirely convinced that his intruder would have had time to flee via the insecure window. But there was nowhere for anyone to hide – except maybe under the table bearing the coffin. Turning up the dimmer switch controlling the lights, he dropped on to his hands and knees to pull the cloth aside and check under the table. Crouched on the floor just inches away from him under the cloth, Kate held her breath and waited for the inevitable.

  chapter 25

  THE THUNDEROUS KNOCKING was so sudden that it made Twister jump and he cracked his head on the upper frame of the table as he scrambled to his feet. A pulsing blue light radiated off the walls and ceiling of the chapel like the intense eerie glow from a flying saucer in a science fiction film. Striding across the room, he stared through the window and saw that the top of the wall at the far end of the yard was bathed in blue light. The next instant the heads and shoulders of a couple of uniformed figures appeared in view, apparently having climbed the wall from the other side. Powerful flashlights raked the yard before the figures disappeared again.

  More heavy pounding. He swore savagely. The bastard police seemed to be at the front door of his place as well as the back. He felt his stomach muscles tighten. What the hell did they want? Surely they couldn’t be on to him? He had been so careful not to leave any incriminating traces behind. Yeah, but what about the tracker? Maybe they’d had it all along and their forensics had picked up a print? Well, if that was what had brought them to his door, there was no escape anyway; they were a
ll round the place. All he could do was try and bluff his way out.

  Throwing the chapel door wide, he walked into more pulsing blue light. It poured into the hallway through the wide-open door of the reception office. He shielded his eyes as he strode into the river of blue. A police car was parked directly in front one of the big windows that faced the main road and he glimpsed a white face pressed against the glass for a moment before it disappeared again and the pounding resumed.

  He turned the key in the door and opened up. A hatchet-faced woman stood on the pavement, flanked by a uniformed police sergeant and a constable. She made to push past him, but he threw a muscular arm out in front of her. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ he snapped.

  She flashed a wallet in front of him. ‘DCI Callow,’ she said. ‘I’ve just seen someone climb over your back wall.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’

  She pushed against his arm without success. ‘Well, we have to check it out. You’ve obviously got an intruder.’

  He emitted a humourless laugh. ‘As long as no one is trying to leave,’ he said. ‘I’d be a bit worried if one of my clients tried to do that.’

  But she didn’t appreciate the joke. ‘Let me past,’ she rapped, bristling with aggressive authority. ‘Don’t you understand – someone is in the process of breaking into your property?’

  Twister smiled. Now he knew he was not the reason for the visit, his confidence had returned in abundance. ‘He won’t find much in here,’ he retorted, ‘unless he’s into necrophilia.’

  ‘We still need to give your place the once over.’

  ‘And you have a warrant, I suppose?’

  She stared at him in astonishment. ‘A warrant? Why would I need one of those? We’re here for your benefit and we’re already wasting time.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, I don’t need your help, thank you, and I certainly don’t want your lot stamping all over my clean carpets. I’ve got a funeral tomorrow.’

  The DCI was so taken aback that for a moment she seemed lost for words.

  The sergeant sensed the tension building and coughed discreetly, his own uneasiness palpable. ‘If the gentleman doesn’t need us, ma’am, perhaps we should – er – go.’

  ‘Go?’ Callow almost spat the word. ‘We’ll do nothing of the sort. There’s a bloody crime in progress.’

  Twister shrugged. ‘Well, you’re not coming in anyway,’ he said firmly and started to close the door.

  Immediately Callow’s foot shot out and jammed itself in the gap. Twister’s smile vanished. ‘If I were you,’ he said softly, ‘I’d remove that foot. Unless you’d like to discuss your illegal entry with my solicitor.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ the sergeant put in hastily, touching her arm. ‘We’d best be on our way.’

  For a moment it seemed that Callow would ignore her colleague and force the issue. But then abruptly warning bells jangled in her brain, bringing her sharply to her senses. She was well out of order here and she knew it. Reluctantly she stepped back from the doorway.

  ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ Twister said, as he closed the door. ‘Now you have a good night, won’t you?’

  The sergeant was already turning towards his patrol car, speaking quickly into his personal radio. Callow heard the words ‘All units resume patrol’, as if it were part of some impossible dream. This couldn’t be happening to her. She’d had Hamblin totally banged to rights and now at the crucial moment had had the rug pulled out from under her, leaving her powerless to do anything. What the hell was the funeral director’s problem? Most people would have been only too pleased for the police to check their property out in such a situation. But he had seemed so rabidly anti. She just couldn’t understand it.

  She watched the sergeant open the door of the patrol car and in her frustration nearly called out to him to tell him the full story – that the intruder was not just some random burglar, but one of their own. But she stopped herself in time. That wouldn’t change anything – they would still be unable to gain entry – and unless she managed to catch Hamblin red-handed, she would have no case at all anyway. Blurting out what she had seen without a prisoner at the end of it would only make her look stupid and raise uncomfortable questions as to what she had been doing following Hamblin in the first place.

  She acknowledged the sergeant’s wave with a curt nod and watched the patrol car head off towards Bridgwater, shortly followed by the big police van that had been sent to the back of the premises. She was alone, spitting feathers, but determined to nail Kate Hamblin, whatever the cost. OK, so she couldn’t catch her actually on the premises, but little Miss Perfect would have to come back out to the car eventually – maybe with a bagful of nicked gear too – and that would be just as good a collar. Returning to her original spot in front of the wheelie bins, she leaned against the corner of the wall with her gaze fixed on the back gates and slipped two extra strong mints between her bared teeth as she waited.

  Kate scrambled out from under the table even as Twister left the chapel, but she hesitated in the even stronger pulsing blue light which now poured down the hallway beyond the chapel’s open door. What on earth were her colleagues doing here? They couldn’t possibly know about Wadman – or could they? Maybe the SOCO who had handed her the envelope had had second thoughts and reported his discovery elsewhere. But even if he had, how could the inquiry team have connected Wadman with the murder investigation?

  Seeing her colleagues actually on the spot, she was tempted to rush to the front door to enlist their help, but then she heard DCI Callow’s voice shouting about an intruder and her spirits sank. Hell’s bells! The evil bitch must have followed her to Wadman’s place and seen her climb over the wall. Well, she could expect no help from this particular DCI, that was a fact. All Callow was likely to do was arrest her for burglary and, whether the charge held up or not later on, by then Wadman would have had time to finish poor Hayden off, if he was still alive in the first place, and dump his body somewhere far away. No, she had started this thing on her own and, whether she liked it or not, she would have to finish it the same way.

  Taking a calculated risk – hoping that Wadman and her colleagues would be too engrossed in their stand-off to spot her among the rippling blue flashes produced by the police car’s powerful strobe – she edged out of the doorway, then suddenly cut across the hallway to another small door opposite, brushing against a wheeled stretcher left against the wall. No one shouted after her and the door opened easily, the darkness inside exhaling an unpleasant rancid smell reminiscent of rotten meat mixed with the sharp bite of antiseptic, that seemed to envelope her like a poisonous miasma as she closed the door again behind her.

  The thin beam of her torch touched on the white tiled walls and floor of a small oblong room, with a stainless steel table in the centre straddling a gully that cut into the floor for half the room’s length, and ended in a sunken drain. A pair of glass-fronted cabinets fitted with shelves holding numerous bottles, a selection of books and what looked like surgical instruments, occupied one wall and a nest of stainless steel taps hovered over a peculiarly shaped sink in the far corner.

  The place had a distinct hospital feel to it and when she moved closer to the cabinets, the titles of the books seemed to leap out at her: Human Anatomy, Embalming For Morticians, Chemical Preservatives. She shuddered. She had been in enough mortuaries in her career to know that she stood in just such a place now – one that almost certainly doubled as an embalming room – and, swinging her torch towards the opposite wall, her suspicions were confirmed when the beam bounced off a row of three steel refrigerator doors.

  For a moment she kept the beam trained on the doors, unable to take her eyes off them and thinking of Hayden. Surely not? He couldn’t be…?

  Driven by a kind of morbid compulsion, she crossed the room and grasped the handle of the first door, her stomach churning as she pulled it open. She was met by a blast of cold rancid air, but the three steel trays provided for the cadavers insi
de proved to be empty. It was the same story with the next refrigerator, but when she checked the last one, she got a shock she certainly hadn’t expected. The trays inside had all been removed (she could see them leaning against the side of the refrigerator) and in their place someone had actually stacked three cardboard boxes, labelled Chardonnay.

  She shuddered again. A cadaver fridge used as a cold store for wine? How gross was that? But at least Hayden’s corpse was not inside, which was the main thing, and she muttered a brief prayer of thanks to whoever happened to be listening in such an awful place.

  Her gratitude turned out to be premature, however. Even before she could turn round, she heard the crack of a floorboard in the hallway outside and a second later the squeak of the door handle. She had company!

  With no time to look for somewhere to hide, she did the only thing she could think of under the circumstances. Crouching right down, she clambered backwards into the icy maw of the fridge, pulling the door to behind her and holding on to the inside catch to prevent it swinging open again – this time praying that whoever was entering the room would not notice that the fridge door was ajar and decide to push it shut completely. Then, propping herself on top of the boxes of Chardonnay, she sat shuddering in the icy darkness, listening to the scrape of shoes on the tiled floor and the sound of heavy breathing as the fridge’s forty degree breath seeped into her bones and the rancid smell of death enveloped her in its sweet nauseating embrace.

  DCI Callow felt even colder than she had during her vigil outside the cottage in Burtle. The frosted lids of the wheelie-bins had now developed a hard crust that felt like a burn when she touched them and she was convinced her legs and feet were going the same way. But she was determined to continue her vigil, even though there had been no sound or sign of movement since her colleagues had left fifteen minutes ago. After all, the prize was well worth it, wasn’t it? Kate Hamblin on a plate facing a charge of burglary. It was an ideal outcome. Disgrace and obscurity for the meddlesome cow who had had the impudence to interfere in matters that were no concern of hers and a nice tidy detection and ‘case closed’ for the detective super and his top-notch DCI.