After the Fire (Maeve Kerrigan)

by Casey, Jane

  ‘I met Miles – my husband – when I was at Cambridge, before I met Geoff.’

  John Grey gave a short, cruel bark of amusement. ‘How could Geoff begin to compare to Miles?’

  She flushed. Consciously or not, she was fiddling with her rings. ‘Miles is a philosophy professor. He’s not like Geoff. He lives in his own world a lot of the time. But he’s an excellent husband.’

  ‘He never minded her spending all her time with Geoff,’ Grey said. ‘We should all be so lucky with our partners.’

  ‘Geoff and I were friends for a long time. We worked together very closely. He was part of my family and I was part of his.’ Elaine pressed the tissue under her eyes carefully once again. ‘People saw him as a monster but he wasn’t. He was a good man. He wanted to make a difference.’

  ‘We’ll never know what he could have achieved if he’d had the time,’ John Grey said. ‘Ah well. C’est la vie, as they say.’ He drained his coffee and set the mug down on the table with a bang.

  Chapter 15

  THIS TIME ROUND I walked into the meeting room and found Derwent had got there first. He was sitting in the middle of the front row, right in front of Una Burt. His hair was suspiciously neat, his tie pushed right up to his collar. Immaculate. Irreproachable.

  Up to something.

  Una Burt had her back to him. She was busy writing on the whiteboard, her marker squeaking as she went. I took the seat behind him, close enough to risk nudging him if I thought he was going too far. I liked working with Derwent and I had missed him more than I’d expected when Burt had kept us apart but he wasn’t the hill I was going to die on. If he fought Burt and lost, he was on his own.

  The whiteboard was filling up: names, times, lots of question marks. Armstrong’s name was in the centre, blocked from my view by Burt’s square body. Time to tell the class what we’d found out, I gathered. It was unintentionally revealing of how Burt thought about this case: Armstrong at the centre, the other victims incidental. And if I wasn’t sure she was wrong, I wasn’t altogether sure she was right.

  The rest of the team filed in, all tired faces and crumpled suits. The initial investigative rush was slowing, the fast-time enquiries winding down as the tedious painstaking work reasserted itself. So many cases unravelled for us because of something as mundane and administrative as reading phone records or checking CCTV or analysing automatic number-plate recognition, not to mention the old routine of door-to-door inquiries that eventually turned up a witness who didn’t realise the importance of what they’d seen. That was our job, and knowing it could solve a crime was what kept me going when I was ready to come apart at the seams from the dreariness of it all.

  ‘Okay,’ Burt said, eyeing the latecomers as they hurried to fit themselves into the last remaining spaces. ‘The purpose of this meeting is to focus our inquiries now that we’ve started on this investigation. There’s a big picture here and you can’t see all of it at once, so this is your opportunity to stand back and see how your part of the puzzle fits into the rest of it.’

  The door opened to admit a man I didn’t recognise. He murmured an apology and leaned against the wall rather than trying to find a place to sit. He had untidy dark hair and soft brown eyes.

  ‘I know you’re all tired,’ Una Burt went on, ‘so we’ll keep it brief. But we have a lot of ground to cover. Let’s start with the fire. Colin? Anything on the CCTV?’

  ‘I’ve only just started looking at it,’ Colin Vale said apologetically. ‘It took us a while to get it from the estate. I’ve got footage from ten cameras to review and obviously we can widen that out beyond the estate once we know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘So nothing useful so far,’ Burt said, her manner impatient.

  ‘The opposite of useful.’ Colin gave us a lopsided smile. ‘As luck would have it, a lot of the footage from Murchison House is unusable. The camera on the tenth floor hadn’t been working for months. They were waiting for a part, they said.’

  There was a groan from the officers in the room, but there was no surprise in it. CCTV was often far more useful as a deterrent than as an investigative tool. The image quality was wildly variable, and that was assuming it was working in the first place.

  ‘The camera above the entrance that should have shown us everyone coming in and out of the building had been vandalised more recently.’

  ‘Who by? When?’

  ‘Kids, last week.’ Vale shrugged as a general mutter arose. ‘I know. I was hoping it would be our arsonist too.’ It wasn’t unheard of for a criminal to give us a perfect shot of their faces as they tried to deal with a security camera. ‘I don’t think it’s connected, I’m afraid. They’ve had a problem with kids damaging the cameras for a while. They know who did it and I’ve had a word but it doesn’t lead us anywhere. No one asked the boy to do it. He was just bored. He’s eleven and a very promising fast bowler, apparently. He hit it with a cricket ball and it was all over.’

  ‘So what have we got?’

  ‘Bits and pieces. The usual.’ Colin smiled. ‘There’s a camera in the car park that should show us most of the people who came out from a distance, and I’m trying to match up the footage with the rest of the material we have. I’ll be able to patch it together but we might not have the best quality images at the end of it all. Enough to give us some direction, though.’

  ‘What about local petrol stations?’ I asked. They generally had very good CCTV so they could trace drivers who try to drive off without paying. ‘Isn’t it worth getting hold of the footage in case our arsonist bought a can or two of petrol?’

  ‘Already done,’ Vale said. ‘What I’d like is to know what I’m looking for. If I see someone I recognise, we’re home and dry.’

  Burt stood back and used the end of her pen to tap Armstrong’s name. ‘What have you found out, Josh?’

  Quietly, calmly, Derwent explained what we’d found out at the post-mortem and from Armstrong’s wife, not to mention his secretary. We had briefed Una Burt first so she knew it was murder already. She nodded while everyone else muttered.

  ‘It does complicate matters for you.’ For you. I got the hint. ‘I still wouldn’t rule out the fire being set to target Armstrong.’

  ‘But they couldn’t have known how he’d react,’ I objected. ‘If he’d evacuated the flat along with his girlfriend, he’d be alive now. Embarrassed, but alive.’

  ‘So it’s just a coincidence that he’s there and he ends up dead. That seems more likely.’ Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘That’s not what I said. But I don’t think it’s necessarily all about Armstrong either. There are other victims of this fire, other people on the tenth floor who might have been targets. Without the fire, Armstrong might not have been murdered, but that doesn’t mean whoever set the fire even knew he was there. No one else did.’

  ‘Except his secretary,’ Burt pointed out.

  ‘She didn’t know where he was. She thought she did, but she was wrong. He’d told her he was at a meeting with Levon Cole’s mother and her supporters. I rang Mrs Cole to check and there was no meeting yesterday. More to the point, she said Armstrong had never been at any of their meetings and he wouldn’t have been welcome if he’d turned up.’

  Derwent turned round in his seat to give me one of his hard stares. ‘I thought he was their biggest supporter.’

  ‘Not according to Mrs Cole. She said he’d been hanging around after the TSG unit got shot up on the estate in September but she’d made it absolutely clear she wasn’t interested in being whatever Armstrong wanted her to be. A figurehead for a people’s revolution, he’d suggested.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘What a user.’

  ‘Why was he so interested in Claudine Cole’s campaign?’ Una Burt asked, puzzled.

  ‘If I had to guess, it’s was protective cover for him. It was a reason for him to be on the estate. We know he was with a woman in the flat and according to Mrs Hearn, that woman was black. Where do you think he might have met her? Probab
ly not at his club, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Someone involved in the Cole campaign,’ Derwent said.

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘So we can get a list of names from her.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, right. Because Claudine Cole has so many reasons to cooperate with the police. I barely got her to speak to me on the phone once she heard who I was. The only reason she gave me any time at all was to make it clear that she’d had nothing to do with Armstrong and she was adamant he’d never worked on the campaign. If I tell her I need names, she’ll tell me to back off.’

  ‘Try in person,’ Una Burt said. ‘You might be able to convince her if you’re face to face. It’s easier to say no on the phone.’

  I made a note. Another visit to the Maudling Estate. I could hardly wait.

  ‘We might be able to get something from MI5,’ Burt went on. ‘I’m sure they’re monitoring Claudine Cole and her supporters in case their activism takes an illegal turn.’

  I nodded. ‘And Dr Early has sent swabs off to the lab to check for DNA. We might get a hit that way. There’s more than one way to track her down. We’ll find her.’

  ‘Speaking of finding people, any update on Melissa Pell’s husband?’ Derwent’s voice was casual but he was pressing his thumb on the top of his pen so hard that it had bleached white.

  ‘Why should we care about him?’ Una Burt’s voice was tight.

  ‘Because she was hiding from him in Murchison House.’

  ‘He was possibly abusive,’ Pettifer added. ‘So we should keep him on the list as a potential suspect.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Derwent exploded and I kicked the seat of his chair as hard as I could without being observed.

  ‘Yeah, possibly.’ Pettifer stared Derwent down. ‘We’ve spoken to the officers who dealt with the family in Lincolnshire. They said it was a difficult situation. Mark Pell struck them as a decent bloke struggling to cope with a wife who’d basically lost the plot. She accused him of all sorts of things but then backed out of pressing charges. She suffers from depression, apparently.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, if her old man was beating her senseless.’ Derwent’s jaw was tight. ‘Did they investigate whether she was telling the truth with her original allegations?’

  ‘They didn’t find any evidence of it. She admitted that she self-harmed from time to time. He had no record of any violence. He reported his wife and son missing a few months ago.’

  ‘And it didn’t hit the headlines? A vulnerable woman with her son – you’d assume they were in danger,’ Una Burt said.

  ‘They’d been assigned a social worker, who backed up Melissa,’ Mal Upton explained. Derwent made a small, satisfied noise in the back of his throat. ‘According to her, Melissa was a few days away from being sectioned when she took on the case. The social worker didn’t see any sign of insanity or instability or whatever her husband alleges. She didn’t feel the boy was in danger. And when Melissa left, she contacted the social worker and told her she was going. The social worker did try to reassure the husband, but didn’t get very far with him. He complained to her supervisor that she’d become too close to Melissa and wasn’t behaving in a professional way. He got her into a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Pell’s spent a fortune on private investigators trying to track his wife down,’ Pettifer said. ‘Like I said, he seems like a nice bloke.’

  ‘Or a husband trying to get control of his wife after she’s run away from him,’ I said tartly. ‘I don’t know why you’re taking him at face value.’

  Pettifer glared. ‘And I don’t know why you aren’t.’

  ‘Because when I spoke to Melissa Pell in the hospital she was terrified of him. Not faking. Not insane. Terrified.’

  ‘Why were you talking to her?’ Burt was frowning. She was speaking to me but looking at Derwent. ‘I thought I told you—’

  Pettifer’s innate sense of fairness resurfaced in the nick of time. ‘Kerrigan helped us out. Mrs Pell wasn’t all that keen on talking to two men.’

  ‘It didn’t take long,’ I added, lamely.

  ‘Can we find out if the husband has an alibi?’ Derwent was still very tightly wound. ‘Or if he knows a bloke who knows a bloke who’s good at setting fires?’

  ‘It’s worth a look,’ Pettifer admitted. ‘You can see a motive there. Make her feel unsafe, make it clear the boy’s better off at home – get custody, if it comes to that.’

  ‘And her injuries?’ Derwent looked round. ‘Maybe it was a good way to get rid of her for ever so he could have the boy to himself.’

  ‘Assuming he knew where she was,’ Burt pointed out. ‘Assuming he knew someone who was prepared to attack her and start a fire that killed three people. I know a lot of bad guys and I’m not sure I could find someone to do that all that easily, even if I could afford to pay them what I’d need to.’

  ‘I don’t get the impression money is a problem,’ Pettifer said. ‘We’re going to Lincolnshire to speak to him tomorrow. We’ll see what we can find out.’

  ‘Okay, who else?’ Burt said. ‘Oh, the family in 101.’

  ‘The Bellews,’ I said. ‘There’s something strange about them but we haven’t got to the bottom of it yet. The dad says he’s a handyman but he was a bit vague on the details. They seem to have plenty of cash. The granny was worried about a safe in her flat, but wouldn’t say what was in it.’

  ‘Proceeds of crime?’ Burt suggested.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past them. You thought the same, sir, didn’t you?’

  Derwent had been staring into space. He came back to the present with a start. ‘Yeah. They’re on my list. Can’t forget the fire started beside their home.’

  ‘How’s the little girl?’ Burt asked.

  ‘The same. Still in intensive care. We haven’t gone near her,’ I said. ‘We did speak to her mother.’

  ‘This is where we got the description you gave me,’ Colin Vale said. ‘The man with the cap and the zip-up jacket.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I haven’t found him yet,’ Colin said. ‘I have a few possibles, but nothing definite. No caps at all.’

  ‘Give us whatever you’ve got and we’ll show it to her,’ Derwent said. ‘I don’t think she’s a great witness but the sooner she has a look the better.’

  ‘Right.’ Una Burt looked at her board. ‘I want to talk about the eleventh floor. Who’s been dealing with the bodies in flat 113?’

  Ben Dornton raised a hand. ‘That would be me. And Liv and Pete.’

  ‘Has Dr Early done the posts yet?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dornton looked sick at the memory. ‘For some reason I’ve gone right off barbecue.’

  There were worse things than a body that had fallen out of a tall building I thought, staring at my notebook. At least I hadn’t had to get through a PM on burned bodies. I’d never have made it.

  Dornton was still talking. I tuned back in to hear him say, ‘The fire actually splits bones if it’s hot enough. The doc said their brains would have boiled. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.’

  ‘Did she find anything suspicious about the bodies?’

  ‘Two things,’ Liv said, composed as ever. ‘They were both young women who hadn’t had children. Both had a number of old injuries – broken ribs, a broken arm in one case, a fractured jaw. She noted it but she couldn’t really tell us very much about the injuries or how recent they were because of the heat damage to the bones. They were definitely old, healed fractures, but the broken arm hadn’t been set properly, she said.’

  ‘Okay. What else?’

  ‘The dental work. Dr Early called in a dentist friend of hers who had a look. In her opinion, one of them was Russian or had spent time there. They looked at the second victim too. From her skull shape and the condition of her teeth, they were fairly sure she was African.’

  ‘You mean she was black. That doesn’t mean she was African,’ I pointed out. ‘Plenty of British people with African ancestry.’
r />   ‘Yes, but the dentist said the wear pattern on her teeth was distinctive. He said she was probably from somewhere in West Africa – Nigeria, somewhere like that.’

  Two young women from very different backgrounds, living together in a small flat where the door was locked from the outside.

  ‘Trafficked,’ the man by the door said. His arms were folded and he had one foot braced against the wall behind him. He looked completely relaxed to be addressing a room full of strangers, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry to the back. ‘Almost certainly trafficked. Brought to the UK to work in the sex industry but the chances are they don’t see a penny of what they earn. They’ll have started out as economic migrants and more than likely the UK won’t be the first place they’ve worked as prostitutes or strippers or whatever these girls were doing.’

  ‘Sorry, everyone, I should have introduced Tom Bridges,’ Dornton said. ‘I asked him to come along because he knows a bit more about people-trafficking than I do. He’s a DS on the human traffic task force the commissioner set up last year.’

  ‘The fact that your victims weren’t known to their neighbours and they were locked in the flat tells us they were effectively imprisoned,’ Bridges explained. ‘Their movements were strictly controlled by whoever was using them to make money.’

  ‘How can you tell they were working in the sex trade?’ Liv asked. ‘Just because they were young women, that’s not a safe assumption, is it?’

  ‘It’s more than likely.’ He sounded apologetic, which was nice of him as it certainly wasn’t his fault. ‘The majority of people trafficked into the UK are here to work in the sex industry, and the majority of them are women. Women also work in domestic slavery – housekeeping roles, but they aren’t paid. These women were at home in the middle of the day. They worked at night.’

  ‘Somewhere there’s an empty street corner or a deserted pole,’ Belcott said. ‘What a waste.’

  I whipped around. ‘They weren’t just sex workers. They were people.’

  ‘People who could have told a customer they didn’t want to do what they were doing. If they were walking the streets they could have walked away. They made their choices.’