The woman was smartly dressed, with a cashmere hat and scarf and fine leather gloves. She explained that she lived in an apartment that overlooked the street, Cotton Street, and was up late last night unable to sleep.
‘I heard a man scream,’ she said, ‘and I looked out of my window and saw flames flickering inside the factory there.’ She indicated towards the little warehouse that the footprints had come from. ‘I just presumed it was some vagrants trying to light a fire and keep warm.’
‘Why did you think someone screamed?’ Andy asked her.
‘I thought they were probably drunk and messing around. So I went back to the kitchen to get a drink. A few minutes later I heard a bang and another scream, this time louder. I didn’t move at first because I thought it was just drunks fighting, but then I got up to have a look and saw this poor man running out of the building there. He was on fire - all over his body. And he just collapsed in the middle of the street, still burning. The entire street was lit up like Christmas.’
‘How terrible,’ Albrighton said. ‘Did you see anyone else?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I left the window and went to go outside the help him, but I couldn’t find my key at first. It was a few minutes before I could get down to him and by then he wasn’t moving.’
The woman explained that she had gone to kick snow over him in order to put out the flames, but she heard a noise from inside the little workshop and feared for her own safety. Instead she ran back inside her own building and phoned 999. Because of the heavy snow it had taken the ambulance, the police and the fire service quite a while to arrive and locate the scene.
‘Do you have any inkling to say who this could have been?’ Albrighton asked her. ‘I mean, you live opposite this old place. You probably have a better idea than anyone if someone frequently goes in there.’
‘Actually I do,’ the woman told them. ‘There’s a man, a homeless. He’s usually with two women. They sometimes sing in the middle of the road late at night but mostly they are quiet. I’ve seen them go in there when the weather is bad.’
‘Could you describe him to us?’
‘White man, big bushy beard, dirty face, always wears a black woolly hat, green coat... One of the women has short blond hair and the other has grey. They’re all about forty five to fifty five.’
Shari noted it all down in her pocket notebook and thanked the woman.
‘Other than those three,’ the woman carried on, ‘I’ve never known anyone to go in there apart from the odd security guard from the company.’
Shari looked at the building and noticed a small security sign high up. She noted down the number.
Three
Searching records of homeless people was nigh impossible in a city the size of Manchester, where the homeless population had exploded since the days of government austerity. They asked a few people sat on street corners in the city centre begging for money, but no one knew the three that they were describing.
‘We’ll have to wait for the DNA,’ Albrighton sighed.
Shari nodded glumly. They’re murder investigations were always bogged down early on waiting to find out who the victim was. Last time, when a body had been found in a reservoir, she had gone with her gut instinct and based her investigations around a young woman who had gone missing, even before the DNA hit had come back from the lab. Unfortunately, even that time her searching had led her from one suspect to the next without actually hitting the correct one, a man totally unrelated. For the second time during her short career as a detective, it was up to Ryder to discover the killer’s identity, but by then the culprit had already committed suicide.
Shari was determined not to see that outcome again, and to get a good lead on this case. She desperately wanted to solve this herself, if only to show Ryder that she could. Why did she care so much? She couldn’t say, but nevertheless, after everyone else had gone home, Shari found herself stalking the freezing backstreets of Ancoats in the dark.
She had gone home at first, her obligation to Anna greater than her desire to carry on working. Resentfully she had another evening with her friend eating takeaway and watching TV, but thankfully Anna had fallen asleep by ten, and Shari took the opportunity to creep out of the house and drive back to the city.
It had stopped snowing now, but it still lay thick and heavy on the ground away from the main roads. She tramped up and down the backstreets, looking for her prey, and after a long while she finally found them.
Two women were slowly walking up the Rochdale Canal away from Piccadilly Basin and the Dale Street area of the city centre, and out towards Ancoats. Both looked to be carrying cans of beer in their hands. One had a black bin bag over her shoulder with a duvet stuffed inside of it.
Shari went down the steps to catch them up. The canal towpath at this time of the night was a menacing place to be, even though it was illuminated well from the nearby street lights. She passed beneath a bridge which smelt of urine and hurried to catch the two women.
They grunted at her when she stopped them. Both appeared haggard and dirty, and looked at her with untrusting eyes. One of them, however, had short blonde hair, and the other had grey.
‘I work for the police,’ Shari told them. The women started to hurry away but Shari caught them. ‘You’re not in trouble. I just wondered if you were okay.’
‘We’re fine, dear,’ the grey woman told her, with a gummy smile. ‘Leave us be, we ‘ant done no harm.’
‘It’s about a man who died last night,’ Shari told them, ‘in a fire on Cotton Street. I have a witness who might possibly have seen the victim hanging around a nearby empty building at night – a homeless man with two women. You both look like the women this witness has described.’
‘Not us,’ the blonde woman said, hastily.
Shari sighed. ‘I really need your help on this, this is serious. A man has been burnt alive.’
The grey woman cursed and began to walk away, no longer a willing participant in this conversation. The blonde woman, however, remained rooted to the spot, as if she was waiting for something else.
‘Cotton Street, an empty old building,’ Shari said to her. ‘Do you ever go in there?’
The woman hesitated. Her narrow eyes looked Shari up and down mistrusting, looking for a trap.
‘You can be honest,’ Shari told her, ‘I’m not bothered about the building.’
The woman took a swig of her can, and burped. ‘Irene,’ she said, abruptly. ‘My name is Irene.’
It was late, but Shari found a nearby pub just off the canal which was still open, though it was empty. The barman didn’t look too pleased about the two women accompanying her, but Shari gave him an extra tenner along with what she paid for their drinks, and he told her they could stay.
Irene and her companion, Doll, sat in the booth by the window and supped on their respective pints of lager. Shari had wanted to buy them hot drinks or fruit juice, but Irene had insisted they would only talk over beer. Reluctantly, Shari had agreed.
At first the ladies seemed to be trying to pull a fast one. Neither of them spoke, and only belched occasionally in answer to DC Ansari’s questions. Shari checked her phone, it was just after midnight and the barman looked to be cleaning up already. It was Thursday night, but the Northern Quarter pub trade didn’t seem to survive into the small hours these days.
‘What was he called?’ Shari asked.
‘Gravy Davy,’ Irene said, matter-of-factly. ‘Everyone knows.’
‘Gravy...?’ Shari asked, puzzled.
‘He’s called Gravy Davy,’ Irene repeated. ‘We’ve known him for years, haven’t we Doll?’
Doll nodded, huddled around her pint like it was a warm coal on a freezing cold night. ‘He was rum.’
‘Rum?’
‘A bit naughty at times,’ Irene translated.
‘And you haven’t seen him since last night?’
Irene shook her head. ‘He’s the dead one. There’s no doubt in my mind, that’ll be him the
re burnt in the street. I always knew something would catch up to him.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Last night,’ Irene said, as if Shari was stupid. ‘We were in the empty building. It was starting to snow and we were freezing our tits off. So we went to crash there like always. But it was still fucking freezing, even inside. Gravy starts to light a fire doesn’t he, but he can’t get it fucking started. So after a while I says to him that me and Doll are going to the train station and kipping there.’
‘So you left him there?’
‘Yep. He was still trying to start a fire,’ suddenly Irene began to sob loudly.
Shari patted her hand is a feeble attempt to comfort the poor lady. Doll rolled her eyes.
‘It’s sad,’ she told the detective, agreeing with her companion with words only. ‘Gravy was a bastard, but he was a good laugh too. It’s a shame when someone dies though, someone you know.’
‘You ladies already seem to think your friend is dead,’ Shari said with a nervous laugh. ‘We’ve not identified the victim yet - it could be someone else.’ Irene only cried louder.
‘It’s him,’ Doll told her, wiping her nose on her gloved hand. ‘Otherwise he’d have found us by now. We never go far and neither does he.’
Shari checked her phone again, impatiently. ‘You keep saying this Gravy was a bit rum, a bit dodgy. Why’s that?’
Irene sniffed and wiped her eyes. Doll looked at her, hesitating, but decided to speak anyway. ‘Everyone has people who don’t like them. Gravy had a few lads after him for this and that. Nothing special.’
‘Do you know the circumstances of why he became homeless?’
Both women now rolled their eyes and groaned, as if the conversation was getting tediously boring now. Finally Irene pushed her half drunken pint of beer away from her and leaned back in the booth with folded arms. ‘Why does anyone become homeless? Because society is full of selfish bastards, that’s why! Some bankers crash the economy and so they put up the rent, bring down the dole, make it harder to see a doctor, take away the help you can get for your problems. So you’re struggling with this and that, unable to pay your bills, eat proper food, take care of yourself. Before you know it you’re sleeping under a fucking bridge next to a canal, sucking people off for coins. And to take the piss completely, they close the shelters!
‘Gravy was no different,’ Irene continued, coldly. ‘He had a house and a family, but he lost it all to debt and then smack. You want to know if anyone would have wanted him dead? Yeah, plenty of fuckers. But would anyone miss him? No. Not a single bastard!’
The three left the pub shortly after, Shari not entirely satisfied with the information she had weaned out of the two drunken women, but happy enough to have some idea of whom the victim might be. She offered to drive them to a homeless shelter but, like Irene said, there weren’t any near the city centre.
Instead, Shari gave them the rest of her money, twenty five pounds in total, and they promised to get a taxi later on in the night to a shelter they knew over the river in Salford. But she watched Irene pocket the notes and her and Doll walked casually back up the canal towards the red-brick mills of Ancoats. It was strange to see in this day and age, and for a second Shari imagined that she had a window into the past.
Four
Andy Albrighton breezed into the office five minutes late the next morning. He smelt fresh, like shampoo and mouth wash. He beamed at Shari as she looked at him from the shadow of her computer screen. She was exhausted, having only caught four hours sleep, but she tried her hardest to respond to his smile with her own and try not to appear a complete mess.
‘You okay?’ he asked her. ‘You look tired.’
‘Thanks!’ she said, feigning insult, though really was glad that he only thought she looked ‘tired’ and not something worse. She felt rough and dirty, like she should be sitting on a park bench throwing cats at people. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Heavy night?’
Shari smiled. Andy was always handsome, but today he practically oozed sex-appeal. Working with Ben and then Andy was like emerging from a dark cave onto a deserted tropical beach. ‘No. I just went to sleep late.’
‘Have you been demoted?’ he asked, indicating the lanyard around her neck.
Shari frowned and looked at it. Inside the lanyard was her old I.D. card from when she was a Police Community Support Officer, something she had kept as a memento. This morning, dressing in the dark, she had obviously picked up the wrong one from the table top. She closed her eyes and sighed – the picture was old and deeply embarrassing. ‘Shit. No, I’m just a loser.’
Andy laughed and went to make a brew for himself. Shari took the lanyard from around her neck and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.
Albrighton was impressed when Shari told him about meeting the two homeless women late last night, but he warned her not to tell Ryder and especially Abbott. ‘If they find out you’ve been out alone in Ancoats at night they’ll shit themselves. Abbott will probably take you off the case.’
‘Why?’
‘Safety. Suppose someone had attacked you. Suppose you got stabbed?’
Shari snorted. ‘It’s not that bad an area! It’s not south central L.A!’
Andy shrugged. ‘It’s just not done. We veterans of the CID will tell you, never take work home with you. That means,’ he said, pointing a finger, ‘when the shift ends, drop everything.’
Shari nodded. She wanted to tell him that it was her new ambition in life to out-wit Steve Ryder, and to do so she needed to go into overdrive. From now on, she decided, she would have to keep things like that secret.
They drove back to the scene on Cotton Street which was still blanketed in a thick layer of snow, except where the body had lay, which was bare to the stones from the fire. The police cordon around the scene had been reduced somewhat, so now it just sat between the two nearest junctions, between Blossom Street and Loom Street, but also now included the entire building at the side, the little workshop. Whatever the building used to be no one seemed to know, but it was decrepit and tired, a relic from the seventies maybe. Part of it was covered in pebble-dash painted white, and the rest was brick, newer than the ancient mills nearby, but far less appealing and very utilitarian. Metal cages covered the windows to prevent break-ins, and a large purple buddleia sprouted from a rusty old drainpipe.
Two PCSOs stood guarding the scene, shivering in the snow. Shari smiled at them apologetically.
There was nothing in the building, nothing at all. The floor was a little dusty, a little dirty, and on the first and only upstairs floor, there was a pile of wood, old magazines and sticks, and a large patch of black scorching on the wooden floorboards.
‘That’s where this Gravy Davy must have been lighting a fire,’ Shari said, examining the scorching. It looked deep, like the fire had been successful. ‘It seems he got something burning, for a while too. But what? There’s no ash.’
Andy pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘That might be where he was when he caught fire.’
‘So what?’ Shari asked, puzzled. ‘He just stood there for a while burning.’
Andy pointed up with a blue-gloved hand. A roof beam directly above was steel. There was nothing remarkable about it other than a hook, but there was smoke damage there – the ghost of flames that had licked its ancient surface. ‘Maybe.’
They had a good look around for little while longer. There were broken bottles, a few cigarette butts, a couple of spoons and other general litter, including some needles and food packets, but not a great deal of it. It really didn’t look like it was a building frequented very often.
Back outside, Andy looked up at all the surrounding buildings. ‘CCTV,’ he muttered, as if he needed to explain what he was doing. ‘There must be some.’
There was.
A camera fifty metres away down Cotton Street, attached to a newish apartment building, looked directly towards the old workshop. The on-site security guard showed them the footage
of the night in his booth, and when they saw it, Andy and Shari looked at each other with astonishment.
They took a copy to the nick in Newton Heath and showed Ryder and Abbott. Like usual, the footage wasn’t perfect, but this was as good as any that they had seen. It was clear, in colour and, most of all, pointing perfectly down the street so as to catch the entire scene.
They found the point at which the informant, the woman in the nearby apartment, could be seen coming out to greet the approaching police car. Next to her, difficult to be seen, was something black lying in the snow.
Andy rewound the footage further to the point where a man came running from the workshop building, his clothing entirely aflame - the flames even enveloped his head and feet, not an inch of him was spared. He came at great speed but collapsed quickly onto his stomach. It was possible to see the flames still flickering as he flailed about desperately, even at the distance of the camera.
‘So we know he came from that building, and that he was already on fire inside it,’ Abbott commented. He looked around, aware of a growing crowd of cops and office staff watching the horrific footage too. ‘Can we all get back to work, please!’
‘If I take it back two minutes,’ Andy said, showing them on the computer, ‘then...’
Now they could see a calm street scene. Snow blanketed the floor completely and a cat could be seen prowling the foreground in these peaceful pre-horror moments.
But then, a dark figure could be seen emerging from the workshop door, closing it carefully behind him. It was a man, unmistakably, and he walked casually away, turning right onto Blossom Street and out of shot. It was impossible to identify anything about the figure from this distance.
‘That’s two minutes before the fella comes out in flames?’ Abbott asked.
‘Yep,’ Shari replied. ‘And the scorching in the building we saw indicates that whatever was on fire in there was on fire for a while. From the burns and the amount of time the victim was on fire before he collapsed, we reckon he must have been on fire while this bloke was still in the building.’
The Fire In the Snow Page 2