The Burning Men

by Will Shindler

  ‘Interesting. He could just be boasting though – people never like admitting their parents helped them out. We need to have a look at his finances, see how well his business was doing. At the very least we should establish how he did manage to fund this. How much more work needs to be done on site here, by the way?’

  ‘Forensics should finish off later but the fire and the water in the toilet area hasn’t made it easy. I’m not sure how much they’ve got.’

  ‘Alright, I’ll go and talk to them – see where they’re at. What about the fire investigation team?’

  ‘Been and gone – we should get something back fairly soon from them. There’s still a lot of people who were here on the day who we need to take witness statements from. Quite a few of them have already disappeared into the wind.’

  ‘We’ve got a complete guest list though, haven’t we?’

  Before she could reply she was interrupted by her phone ringing. She answered it and listened for a moment.

  ‘Okay, thanks for letting me know, we can be there inside half an hour,’ she said, before turning back to Finn.

  ‘Stephanie Kaul, the bride – she’s awake and wants to talk to us.’

  Finn and Paulsen set off across south London to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, after Finn had checked in with the forensic team in the burnt-out toilet. The scene was a mess and he didn’t envy them their task. It was hard not to consider the irony of Adesh Kaul’s last moments – surrounded by firefighters whose uniform he’d once worn.

  Roadworks meant the journey was taking considerably longer than it should. Sitting behind the wheel, Finn could feel the frown on his face beginning to ache.

  ‘Better call the hospital and let them know we’re running late,’ he told Paulsen, who was staring absently out of the window. She nodded without reply, and made the call. He refocused on the road. Paulsen certainly hadn’t made any extra efforts to ingratiate herself since they’d left the hotel. Over the years he’d seen every kind of response from a new officer on their first day. There were the eager-to-please puppy dogs, the measured ones who kept something back and the loud brash types keen to impress. She was giving him something new. He’d spent most of the journey trying to figure out whether it was an affectation or genuine. With the traffic reducing them to a slow crawl, he decided to test the waters.

  ‘So how are you settling in?’

  ‘Hard to say – first morning of the first day. But I’ve only heard good things about Cedar House so it’s good to finally get started.’

  ‘Your accent – I can’t quite . . .’

  ‘Father’s Swedish, mother’s from Croydon. I grew up in south London, so not as exotic as you might think.’

  ‘Holiday romance?’

  ‘No, they’re both scientists. They met on a research project.’

  ‘Not tempted to follow in the family footsteps, then?’

  ‘No. But one of the things I like about detective work is the methodology. Investigative work of any kind has a lot of shared principles with the sciences. Besides . . . I like fast cars.’

  She said it in the same quiet monotone as before, and it took him a moment to register. He glanced across at her, and was rewarded with an unexpected lopsided smile, as she gestured at the non-moving traffic ahead of them. He smiled back, despite himself.

  Half an hour later they arrived at St George’s, and after another ten minutes working through a maze of identical corridors, they arrived at a small reception area. A youngish doctor with a mop of red hair was sat studying an iPad intently.

  ‘Doctor Edwards?’ said Paulsen.

  Edwards stood and turned.

  ‘I’m DC Paulsen, we spoke on the phone earlier. This is DI Finn—’

  ‘How’s she doing?’ asked Finn, skipping the pleasantries.

  ‘Not great, as you can imagine. You know what happened?’

  Finn turned to Paulsen for a steer.

  ‘When she heard what was going on in the toilet she ran to try and help her husband. She suffered some burns in the process.’

  ‘There was smoke inhalation too. We’ve given her a lot of painkillers and kept her sedated for the most part,’ said Edwards. Finn nodded.

  ‘Probably no bad thing.’

  ‘This morning she expressed a wish to talk to the police. She hasn’t said a word since. She’s refused food, but she’s drinking water at least.’ Edwards paused. ‘I appreciate you’ve got a job to do, but her mental state is extremely fragile so please use some common sense, eh?’

  Finn nodded in acknowledgement, and the doctor led them into the ward.

  There was only one bed curtained off from the rest of the room, and Edwards pulled the curtains apart to let Finn and Paulsen through. Just for an instant, Finn’s thoughts turned to another woman in another hospital bed, but there was no time to dwell. His eyes narrowed as he saw the condition of the woman lying there. Though they’d been warned of her injuries, it was still shocking to see. There was a dressing over the left side of her face and on her left arm. Both her hands were bandaged and the hair on the left side of her scalp was scorched away. What struck him most wasn’t the physical injuries, it was the look in her eyes – dead and expressionless. Terrible as her injuries were, she looked as if she was barely aware of them. Barely aware of her surroundings even.

  ‘How bad are the burns?’ whispered Finn to Edwards as they approached.

  ‘She should make a full recovery, but the next few weeks are going to be painful.’

  That was an understatement, thought Finn. He tried to imagine how the woman in front of them would have looked on Saturday afternoon. In her wedding dress, committing to the man she loved. They were supposed to be in Bali now – lying on a beach without a care in the world. He walked carefully over and took a seat next to the bed.

  ‘Hello, Stephanie, I’m DI Finn and this is my colleague DC Paulsen. How are you bearing up?’

  She stared ahead, as if she hadn’t heard him. He recognised that expression; when your mind was working so hard to absorb something, it was almost impossible to articulate anything. He’d felt like that himself enough times recently.

  ‘How’s Neeta?’ said Stephanie eventually in a dry voice. Finn glanced up at Paulsen quizzically.

  ‘His mother,’ Paulsen whispered in his ear. She turned to the woman in the bed and smiled reassuringly.

  ‘She’s being looked after by the family.’

  Neeta Kaul, by all accounts, hadn’t stopped sobbing for the first twenty-four hours after her son’s death. The family liaison officer said she was sat alone in her bedroom rejecting all attempts to console her. An awful lot of trauma counselling was going to be needed and Paulsen wondered whether it would ever be truly enough. Finn gave Stephanie a gentle smile.

  ‘I’m told you wanted to speak with us?’

  ‘Who did this?’ she said finally.

  ‘We don’t know. We’re still looking into the circumstances.’

  There was truth to that too, thought Finn. There was still a possibility it was all some sort of tragic accident. It was highly unlikely though. Adesh Kaul neither smoked or vaped. The early forensic work showed no evidence of a phone or any other electronic device which might have exploded, and nobody was seriously going down the spontaneous human combustion route.

  ‘Someone did this to him, didn’t they?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. We’re not ruling anything in or out at this stage. We’ll wait and see what evidence the forensics give us and also what the post-mortem shows before we start building a picture.’

  ‘What do you think though?’

  ‘I don’t. Or at least we don’t. It’s a misconception from movies and television that we throw around theories and hunches. The reality is we try to be guided by the facts and by evidence, then let that direct us.’

  Paulsen was watching Finn as he spoke. His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him, and his tone was easy and conversational. If you’d walked in on them then you might be forgi
ven for thinking he was family, or at least a close friend. It struck her randomly how smart his appearance was – the closely trimmed hair, the crisply ironed shirt, the carefully moisturised skin. She reminded herself this was a man who’d just cremated his own wife. If he was falling apart, it wasn’t showing. Outwardly, anyway.

  ‘But you think he might have been murdered?’ said Stephanie.

  ‘Like I say, until we know more, nothing’s off the table. Did he have any enemies you can think of?’

  ‘No. That’s just it . . . Adesh was the most easy-going guy you could ever meet. He never really lost his temper.’

  ‘There’s nobody – no situation – you can think of then?’

  She stopped to properly consider the question, then shook her head.

  ‘Is there anyone who might have had a problem with the wedding?’

  ‘No, why would there be?’

  ‘An ex-boyfriend maybe? Someone else who liked you?’

  ‘No, nothing like that either. And both our families were just thrilled to bits. There was no one who was opposed to the marriage, quite the opposite.’

  ‘Did Adesh have any financial problems?’

  ‘No. His business was a success and we were all so proud of him. It was a big risk when he quit the fire brigade but it turned out to be the best thing he ever did. He loved being his own boss.’

  She started to cough suddenly, clearly in some discomfort. Edwards poured her a glass of water from a jug on a side table and passed it across, giving Finn a warning glance as he did so. They all waited a moment while Stephanie gulped it down.

  ‘Why did he quit the fire service?’ asked Paulsen.

  ‘Why put your life on the line every day when you’ve built up the expertise to earn good money much more safely?’

  ‘Some people don’t like the quiet life?’

  Stephanie shook her head.

  ‘There was one fire . . . it was quite traumatic for him, I think. It wasn’t the reason he quit but I think it helped make up his mind.’

  ‘Can you remember anything about it?’ asked Finn.

  ‘He was one of the first responders at One Pacific Square.’

  Paulsen saw Finn react.

  ‘What was it about that one that was different?’ he asked.

  ‘A man died. They were too late, I think . . .’

  Finn nodded, but Paulsen could see an intensity about him now, as if a switch had been flicked.

  ‘One more night . . .’ said Stephanie, almost as if to herself.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ said Finn.

  ‘We wanted a baby, and we always said that the most magical thing would be to conceive our child on the night we got married.’ The tears were beginning to come now, streaming down her face as she spoke. ‘Now it can never happen and I’ve got nothing.’

  Finn nodded his understanding. He was looking her right in the eye as he did so, making a point of it, Paulsen noticed. He wasn’t just here acquiring information; he was acknowledging her pain. That it mattered.

  ‘I’m not supposed to make promises. It’s the first rule of my profession; never make a promise you might not be able to keep. But I’ll say this to you: we’ll do our utmost to find out the truth. You have my word on that.’

  His words seemed to have the desired effect and she found her equilibrium again.

  ‘The wake is tomorrow. I’d like you to come. You need to see. Then you’ll understand. Everyone loved Adesh.’

  Chapter 11

  When they returned to Cedar House, Finn assembled his team in the incident room for a briefing. It was his first opportunity to address them as a group since he’d returned, and he was keen to show it was business as usual. More importantly he wanted to pull together the disparate strands of the investigation and work out a plan of attack.

  He looked across at Paulsen who was standing awkwardly on her own, her head buried in her phone. It was the first time she’d properly met the rest of the team, and she was showing precious little interest in integrating. Finn could see the disquiet on some of the older faces around her. There was a protocol to such situations which she was wilfully ignoring. It would need watching. Rub people up the wrong way early on, and she’d have a problem for the rest of her time here. More positively, he was grateful to see Jackie Ojo in there. The Thornton Heath murder was now in the hands of Trident, which meant she was free to link up with Finn on the Kaul investigation.

  He tried to read the room as he waited for everyone to gather. With the exception of Paulsen, they were all officers he’d worked with for some time. While not all of them necessarily liked him, there was a relationship of mutual trust there. Police officers respected results and he’d led them to enough of those over the years. He watched as they drank their coffees and chatted among themselves. He could sense an undercurrent; his bereavement provoking an unspoken discomfort. He’d led countless briefings over the years, but this time he felt strangely uncomfortable. He looked down at the forensic report he’d just been handed, focused on it and took a discreet breath.

  ‘Kick some arse,’ whispered Karin, and he looked up, cleared his throat and waited for the hubbub to quieten down.

  ‘Right – forensics have given me their preliminary findings. I’ve also spoken to the fire investigator. There were traces of an accelerant in the hotel toilet cubicle. Not enough to say for certain it was thrown around, but their working theory is the victim was doused in it. We’ll know more after the PM.’

  There was a ripple around the room. ‘That’s what happens if you bring cheap booze to a wedding,’ said a voice at the back to a few random chuckles, but most were now concentrating. If there’d been any remaining doubt this was somehow an accidental death, it was now gone.

  Finn continued. ‘That means somebody reached him, overpowered him and soaked him in petrol before setting him alight. All within a matter of minutes. The victim wasn’t somebody frail or infirm. This was a former firefighter who’d kept himself in shape. Whoever did this was a match for him.’

  He looked around the room and let the implication sink in, then turned and gestured at the whiteboard behind him. There were two photographs of two different men pinned up. On the left was a youthful picture of Adesh Kaul taken from his firefighting days.

  ‘This is what we know about Kaul. Born and bred in Harlesden, he was with the LFB until five years ago, when he quit to set up his own fire risk consultancy. Early indications are that it was a success. He worked on his own, but given how he died, I’d like to know if he made any mistakes. Any major blazes where someone died or was put out of business, for example. So let’s talk with the LFB and cross-check with his client list.’ He took a sip from the glass of water on the table next to him, his earlier nerves starting to dissipate now he was in full flow. ‘Let’s also have a dig through his personal life. Sami, I’d like you to look into the family. See if there’s been any issues. I’m not specifically thinking this is a hate crime, but let’s establish if they’ve had any problems recently.’ A young DC sat near the front nodded and started to scribble furiously in his pocketbook.

  ‘What about the widow?’ said one of the older men who’d been viewing Paulsen with such suspicion earlier.

  ‘Stephanie Kaul, or Stephanie Clough as she was known up until the weekend, works . . .’ he looked uncertainly down at his notes, ‘. . . as a content manager for some firm in Fitzrovia. You all know me well enough by now to know I haven’t got an effing clue what that involves.’ There was a murmur of laughter which buoyed him a little more. ‘But Rog, can you go and pay them a visit – see if she had any admirers who might not have liked the idea of her getting hitched.’ He turned to face the room again. ‘One further detail: Adesh Kaul quit his job not long after attending the blaze at One Pacific Square.’

  ‘He was there?’ said Ojo immediately.

  Finn nodded.

  ‘I doubt there’s a connection, but it’s worth noting he was one of the first responders at the scene, one
of the first who actually went into the building.’

  He looked around the room again and noted the raised eyebrows on one or two faces. He wasn’t surprised.

  Most people remembered or knew the story because it was a cause célèbre at the time. One Pacific Square was supposed to herald a new commercial dawn for London. Its lofty ambition was to expand the financial service sector south of the river from its traditional home in the Square Mile. The skyscraper at the centre of the complex was intended to become as iconic as One Canada Square in Canary Wharf. So it was more than just the semi-built tower that the flames destroyed – a dream of sorts died too. There was a rebuilding project after the fire, but it faltered as fears over Brexit gave its investors pause for thought. When it was finally completed two years late and over budget, One Pacific Square was no longer the new economic hub once imagined, but was confined to the single high-rise building that bore its name – home to a handful of finance firms, but no more than that.

  ‘For those unfamiliar with what happened, the fire took place while the tower was under construction. The cause was an old kettle being used by workmen which was left plugged into an even older extension cable. The fire burnt for nearly two days and it took over two hundred firefighters from stations all over the city to extinguish it. There was just one fatality though . . .’ Finn pointed to the second picture up on the whiteboard. It looked to have been taken somewhere on the African continent. A bare-chested man with curly golden hair was standing proudly with a rifle, next to the bloodied corpse of a dead giraffe. He was staring down the camera lens with a barely disguised leer.

  ‘As many of you may recall, the dead man was an individual called Erik Whitlock. Whitlock was well known to police at the time as a money launderer, and a good one as well. He was widely believed to be the same individual who’d laundered the proceeds of a high-value raid on a security van in Hertfordshire earlier that year.’

  ‘The Stansted heist?’ said a voice at the back. It belonged to Dave McGilligott; a young, slightly facetious detective constable, who in truth wasn’t one of Finn’s favourites.