Killing Christmas (2019 Reissue)

by Bill Kitson

  As they picked their way carefully through the debris, Curran gestured towards the kitchen. ‘Seat of the blaze,’ he explained.

  Although Nash knew the fire officer was shouting, the sound was muffled by the suits they were wearing, reaching him as little more than a whisper. He nodded to signify understanding; it was simpler than attempting a spoken reply.

  When they entered the room, Nash paused and looked around, assessing the scene, trying to visualize what the place had looked like before fire turned it into a reeking, blackened heap of twisted metal and charred timber. As he moved forward towards the part where the damage was most severe, something on the floor caught his eye. If the winter sun hadn’t been streaming in through the hole where a picture window had once been he’d never have spotted it. He bent forward, peering down.

  Curran joined him. ‘What is it?’ The fire officer roared as he knelt on the floor, careful to avoid the sharp edges of a chunk of fallen plaster. Several small strips of rubber, or plastic, he wasn’t sure which, had escaped the blaze. ‘Looks like insulation from around electrical cable.’

  Nash shouted back. ‘What do you reckon; DIY disaster?’

  Curran straightened up. His face, or what little of it Nash could see through the visor, was grim, ‘Either that,’ he screamed, ‘or we’re looking at arson.’

  As Curran spoke, Nash felt a familiar prickly sensation, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. ‘Which means we’ve got a double murder on our hands,’ he yelled.

  Upstairs, the damage was nothing like as severe. The bedroom, where Ramirez was supervising the removal of the corpses, had suffered worst. Through the hazmat suit, Nash could still smell the all too familiar aroma of burnt flesh. He suppressed a shudder and turned his attention to the other rooms until the pathologist and his team had completed their macabre task.

  When Ramirez signalled that they’d finished, Nash and Curran re-entered the bedchamber of death. They found little of significance, until Curran’s foot caught a small object on the floor and sent it spinning into the corner of the room.

  Nash followed it and picked it up, not without difficulty because of the gloves he was wearing. He examined the object for a moment, turning it over in his hand, before removing an evidence bag from one of the pockets on the suit. He placed the item inside, sealed the bag and pointed towards the stairs.

  Outside, both men removed their helmets and spent a few moments breathing in the clear, cold winter air. ‘What is it? What did you pick up?’ Curran asked eventually, glad not to have to shout.

  Nash held up the clear plastic bag. ‘It’s an inhaler.’

  Curran shrugged. ‘I don’t see the significance.’

  ‘I just thought it was curious. The inhaler isn’t damaged. Despite that, there are no markings on it. No manufacturer’s name, no retailer or chemist’s label. Don’t get me wrong. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But I thought something like an inhaler ought to have some sort of label. If it was prescribed by a doctor, the chemist has to label it, for legal reasons. And the makers would have put their own label on. So, if it wasn’t a prescription medicine, or a proprietary brand, where did it come from?’

  ‘Perhaps whoever used it removed the label.’

  ‘Even then, there would be a batch number or code stamped onto the casing to cover just such eventualities.’

  ‘As you say, there’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation.’ Curran was clearly less than impressed.

  ‘I’ll give it to Mexican Pete, get it checked out anyway.’

  When they reached Helmsdale, Ramirez dropped Nash outside the station. ‘Thanks, Professor, let me know what develops,’ Nash said.

  ‘I’ll do the PM the day after tomorrow, the examination of that inhaler might have to wait a day or two longer.’

  Chapter Four

  Viv Pearce was sitting at the computer. ‘Morning, boss. You were away early.’

  ‘Is that a way of trying to cover up the fact that you were late?’ He saw Pearce’s expression cloud over. ‘I was only kidding,’ he reassured him. ‘Speaking of late comers, where’s Clara?’

  Pearce grinned. ‘She phoned about an hour ago. She and David have been in Scotland. They’ve been delayed. She’ll be back in about an hour. Apparently, they’ve had a bit of snow.’

  Nash had seen news footage of the blizzards that had swept across the Grampian and Highland regions. ‘I’m not sure we should let her get away with that, Viv. It’s a bit like you going back to Antigua and ringing to say it’s too hot for you to get home on time.’

  Having been assured that Clara would get a good ragging from Pearce, in addition to what he could dish out himself, Nash turned to business. ‘Viv, do me a favour.’ He passed Pearce a sheet of paper. ‘Run that registration number for me, will you? It’s from the car parked at the fire scene out near Gorton.’

  ‘I heard about that on Dales Radio as I was driving in. Have they found out if anyone was inside yet?’

  Nash nodded. ‘There are two dead. We need to try and establish identities, so we can find and inform next of kin.’

  ‘What about the voters roll?’

  ‘Curran’s already checked it. Said there was nothing shown for that address.’

  ‘How about the council? They must have paid council tax.’

  ‘I’m going to do that whilst you’re on the computer, seeing as Clara isn’t here.’

  His call to the local council took about ten minutes. When he put the phone down, Pearce was standing by his desk. ‘Well,’ Nash asked, ‘what did the DVLA come up with?’

  ‘The vehicle is registered to a firm of solicitors in Leeds, their name is—’

  ‘Richardson, Grace and Parsons,’ Nash finished off for him.

  They stared at each other in surprise. ‘OK, I’ll ring them; see if one of their partners lived out Gorton way.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a trek into Leeds every day; must take over an hour and a half. Unless you’ve got a Ferrari.’

  ‘This isn’t a Ferrari, nothing like it. When did you last see a solicitor driving a Ford Focus?’

  His call to the solicitors yielded nothing. ‘The house doesn’t belong to any of their staff, nor would they confirm that it belongs to one of their clients. All they would say is, “they’re aware of the situation”, heaven knows what that means. This client confidentiality lark is bloody frustrating.’

  ‘I reckon it means the owner is one of their clients, which doesn’t help us one little bit.’

  ‘When Clara eventually poles up, I’m going to send her across to Gorton. She can talk to the villagers, and check at the post office. There must be mail for the occupiers. Somebody must know who lives there.’

  The group standing in the hotel conference room were deep in conversation as the receptionist approached. ‘Excuse me, Dr Richards?’

  ‘That’s me.’ One of them acknowledged.

  ‘I’ve a message for you, sir. You’ve to phone your office. They said it was urgent.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He waited until the woman left. ‘Excuse me a moment.’ He plucked his mobile phone from his pocket as he walked a few yards from the others and pressed the speed dial number. ‘Dr Richards here. You wanted me?’

  He listened for a moment. ‘I understand. Any idea why? I mean I was supposed to be going straight home tonight.’ He waited, then continued, ‘All right.’ He looked up as the door opened; tension apparent in his expression. He saw who the newcomer was and relaxed. ‘OK, not to worry. I’ll be there.’

  He disconnected and smiled faintly at the woman who was strolling across the stage towards him.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just had an odd message from the office. They want me to go back there tonight instead of going home. The secretary wouldn’t say any more than that, and I can’t understand why, but she was most insistent.’

  ‘Probably something and nothing. Concentrate on getting this lecture out of the way; then we’ll ha
ve the whole afternoon to ourselves.’

  He smiled, the thought made his pulse race. ‘How would you like to spend the spare time? Admiring the beautiful architecture of this fine city?’

  She laid her hand on his arm, caressing it gently. She glanced round, saw no one was watching and slid it lower. ‘I thought we could take it in turns admiring the paintwork on your bedroom ceiling.’

  His heartbeat went into overdrive. ‘Caroline, you get some great ideas. After all people spend lots of money to look at the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll try and remember to open my eyes now and again.’

  It was early afternoon before Mironova arrived. Nash and Pearce were standing in the CID office, mugs of coffee in hand. ‘Nothing changes, I see,’ she remarked.

  Nash turned to Pearce. ‘The face looks familiar, and I think I recognize the voice. How about you?’

  ‘Vaguely, Mike, only vaguely.’

  ‘All right, all right. I might have known I’d get some stick. The thing is—’

  Nash cut in. ‘She’s going to tell us about the atrocious weather, Viv. About the fifteen-feet high snowdrifts, the impassable roads, the drifting pack ice in the Firth of Forth.’

  ‘Polar bears sighted near Stonehaven.’ Pearce’s imagination was beginning to work.

  ‘And near Ullapool.’ Nash lowered his voice dramatically. ‘Out in the snow, a footprint is found. Human, or not? Surely it is too large to be human. Could it be the tracks of that mythical beast, “The Abominable Scotsman”?’

  Clara stared at them, stony-faced. ‘I might have known better than to expect any sympathy from you two morons,’ she stated in exasperation. ‘Anyway’– she indicated the mugs – ‘it doesn’t look as if you’ve exactly been rushed off your feet.’

  ‘We have been busy,’ Pearce protested, ‘this is our break.’

  ‘What she’s trying to say,’ Nash corrected him, ‘is, have we missed her? The answer’s no, but now she’s condescended to join us, I think I can find something for her to do.’

  Luck was on Clara’s side when she reached the village. Not only was the small post office-cum-village shop quiet, but the postman had just arrived to empty the post box. After interviewing him and talking to the postmaster, Clara learned that mail delivered to the house had been addressed to R and S Richards. ‘What can you tell me about them? How old were they, for instance? Do you know if they had any children?’ Clara asked the shopkeeper.

  ‘I guess they’d be in their early forties,’ the man thought for a minute. ‘But I’m no good on people’s ages. I think there are a couple of children. The boy would be grown up now. The girl’s away at school, I think. She’ll be about seventeen or eighteen. Not that I know too much about them. They didn’t socialize in the village, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Any idea what Mr Richards did for a living? Or where he worked?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Like I said, they didn’t mix much.’

  Despite asking round, even to the extent of visiting the pub, Clara gleaned no further information.

  By the time Clara got back to Helmsdale it was late afternoon. The street lights were reflecting from the road, made shiny by the sleet showers that had been falling most of the day. She pulled into the station yard and hurried across to the building, as a fresh burst of stinging sleet, driven by the wind, hurled itself into her face.

  There was no sign of Pearce, but Nash’s door was open. Mironova paused in the doorway, staring at her boss with concern. The expression on his face was one she’d not seen for a long time. It was one she hoped she’d never see again. A sad, defeated look. A look of hopelessness.

  ‘What’s matter, Mike? Has something happened? Something gone wrong?’

  Nash roused himself, with an obvious effort. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The look on your face, that’s all.’

  ‘I started thinking about the fire at Gorton, wondering if there’d be any relatives to face. I’ve seen my share lately. Just after Christmas I’d to escort Sergeant Hirst; the soldier whose family was killed by that carbon monoxide leak, to do the identifications.’

  ‘That must have been an ordeal. For you, I mean. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for him.’

  Nash acknowledged the truth of this with a nod. ‘After we left the mortuary, I brought him back to Helmsdale and met one of his neighbours, a young woman with three children whose husband was killed in action recently. Anyway, before I knew it, I was telling them about Stella, and how she died.’

  Clara grimaced. ‘I can see why you did it, establishing a common bond, but I was beginning to hope you’d got over that.’

  ‘I’m not sure you ever do, not completely. You go on for ages without thinking about it; then something happens that brings it all back. In this case it was the senseless waste of young lives. And something else; in a way I was trying to use it as a distraction because of the look on Hirst’s face. Only at times, but it was a look I didn’t like. To be honest, it scared me.’

  ‘Scared you? What sort of a look was it?’

  ‘A sort of latent violence and hatred: a promise of what he could do. More than that, that he isn’t just capable; that he will do it, as soon as he allows himself off the leash. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just my imagination working overtime.’

  ‘I certainly hope so by what you’ve said.’ Clara didn’t voice her other thought, the one that really concerned her: the fact that Mike was rarely wrong when it came to reading people’s thoughts and emotions.

  Their concern would have multiplied into alarm, had they known that Hirst had already slipped the leash.

  Nash seemed anxious to change the subject. ‘How did you go on?’

  ‘Gorton is one of those villages where the houses either belong to people who commute or they’re holiday homes, so there were very few people about. The village shop was the only place I got any joy. I don’t think, from what the sub-postmaster told me, that we’ll have much luck even when we do catch up with the house owners in the village. He told me the couple’s name, but said they’re hardly ever seen, and never socialize, or attend local functions. He thinks they’re in their early forties, with two children.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Richards. No Christian names, or for the kids. Boy would be a young adult, girl about eighteen. Now you know as much as me.’

  ‘OK, Clara. Get Viv to contact the Registrar’s office in the morning, and check the PNC as well. Even a driving conviction would be a help.’

  The next day brought more frustration. Pearce reported to Nash and Mironova. ‘The problem is there are no births registered to a couple named Richards that tally with the age groups Clara suggested. Nor is there a record of a couple with those initials marrying in the sort of timescale we need.’

  ‘Forensics reckon they’ll have some fingerprints from the parts of the house that were least damaged,’ Nash told him. ‘When they send me them, try for a match through our computer. Failing that, Richards must be an assumed name.’

  ‘Why do you think they’d not be using their real names?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Could be one of several reasons. One or other of them might be a convicted offender trying for a fresh start. Or they might be on the run. They could be political refugees, although that seems unlikely, or they may have been relocated in a witness protection programme.’

  ‘Any idea how long they’ve lived there?’ Pearce asked.

  ‘The locals reckon about seven years. They couldn’t tell us much.’

  ‘As you say, it seems a bit fishy. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem results and try to get a match to those fingerprints. I’m going through to Netherdale to watch Mexican Pete at work,’ Nash told them.

  He was still out when the fingerprints arrived. He returned, to find Pearce studying the results, his brow furrowed. He looked up. ‘There were three set of fingerprints identified by the SOCO boys,’ Pearce told him.

  ‘Di
d you get any matches?’

  ‘Just one,’ Pearce paused.

  ‘So, who is it?’

  ‘That’s the problem. I can’t tell you. One set got a positive match, but instead of the name, I got an error message.’

  ‘What sort of a message?’

  ‘It just said “access denied”.’

  ‘Denied, by whom?’

  ‘That’s another problem. I don’t know. Someone wants the person whose prints are in that house to remain anonymous.’

  ‘This is getting weirder by the minute.’

  Two days later Nash got the post-mortem findings. He set off through the offices to the far side of the building, part of a complex built to house all the emergency services, taking the file through to Curran’s office. ‘Listen to this,’ he began. ‘Mexican Pete’s report is like everything else in this case. It doesn’t answer any questions, just raises a whole load more.

  ‘“Analysis of the victims’ blood reveals oxygen depletion, together with concentrations of carbon monoxide and cyanide. Carbon monoxide is also present in the lungs, suggesting the victims were alive when the fire started. The reduction in oxygen levels, together with the amounts of carboxyhemoglobin and cyanide, point to the fact that death would have occurred very rapidly. It is difficult to say whether the cause of death was a natural outcome of the fire, or whether it was induced. The reasons I cannot state the cause with any degree of certainty are as follows:

  I understand the building dates from the early or middle of the nineteenth century.

  That being the case, I cannot understand how cyanide came to be present in the victims’ bloodstreams.

  The reason I am querying this is that hydrogen cyanide is a product of fires where the buildings concerned are of relatively recent construction. This is due to the introduction, in significant quantities, of synthetic polymers into building materials over the last fifty years.

  Given that this house is much older, that issue remains unresolved. Without samples of the building materials and/or the fixtures and fittings, this issue remains unresolved.