The Burning Men

by Will Shindler

  He’d known about this place for a few months now after visiting it on another job earlier in the year. The company who ran it were in administration and he knew it was unmanned. He’d hoped to try and persuade Farmer to back off, maybe even meet Spinney for himself and make his own arrangement with him. But there was clearly no chance of that, and he’d been left with little choice.

  As he got closer he could see the pain etched on Farmer’s face. Shock was setting in and he was white as a ghost. He’d sustained a cut to his forehead and blood was streaking down into his eyes but it was his leg which made Godden wince. The angle was all wrong, folded and bent, and blood was pooling beneath him.

  ‘Mike . . . call an ambulance. I think my leg’s bust.’

  ‘How can I?’ He held up his handcuffed wrists. Farmer fumbled in his pocket and managed to slowly extract the key. Carefully Godden lowered his wrists close to the injured man’s hands, and Farmer unlocked the cuffs.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jim, I really am.’

  ‘It’s okay, just call an ambulance.’

  It wasn’t what Godden meant. He walked round behind him and placed his hands over his mouth and nostrils. Farmer flailed feebly at him, but Godden easily held him off. He kept his grip tight enough to do the job, light enough not to leave any marks.

  ‘Shhh, Jimmy. Shush now.’

  When it was over he gently let the head fall back on to the ground. When the body was eventually discovered, everyone would assume there’d been an accident and he’d slipped. He picked up the discarded handcuffs and their key and carefully put them back into Farmer’s pocket, wiping his fingerprints off them with the dead man’s shirt. He took back his car key fob and straightened up. The walk uphill in the heat seemed to take forever, and not once did he look back at the broken heap of a body he’d left behind.

  Chapter 42

  ‘She said what to you?’ asked Jackie Ojo. Finn and Ojo were in YoYo’s. She’d been updating him on a line of inquiry she’d been following when she noticed he was barely listening to a word. That’s when she caught just how angry he was. Finn was frequently irritable or tetchy, but furious was unusual. It’d been her suggestion to take it out of the building, and so once again her mother was on emergency child-minding duties. Ojo sipped her tea and listened with incredulity as he explained his confrontation with Paulsen earlier.

  ‘You can’t let that go. You’ve got to bring her in tomorrow and read her the Riot Act.’

  ‘That’s just it. I’m not so sure that is the way to handle it. I think it was a cry for help in its own way.’

  ‘Funny way of showing it. Grinds my gears a bit . . .’ she said, looking irritated.

  ‘It’s alright, I’m a big boy. I can handle a child DC having a temper tantrum.’

  ‘With respect, that’s not what I meant. Do you know how careful I have to be about showing any excess emotion? If you’re a bloke, it’s fine. If you’re a woman, it gets commented on. If I’m happy, if I’m sad, if I’m angry – I can’t bring it to work. First, they poke you and want to know why. Then they don’t let it drop: ‘‘Jacks – what was up with you yesterday?’’ And finally, they spend half their day talking about it among themselves. Most of them are actually decent blokes – yet a female colleague shows a bit of emotion and it’s like a Martian’s landed. It’s not like half of them don’t have wives, girlfriends or daughters either. If Paulsen speaks to any of them the way she spoke to you, it will kick off big time – trust me.’

  Finn looked at Ojo guiltily. He’d always made certain assumptions about her, he realised. He thought she was naturally demure. Now he realised how much she was actually suppressing her true personality, her cool reserve merely a front.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she cut in. ‘That’s just how it is in the Met. Sometimes I wonder if I worked in a bank, whether it would be the same. Not so much institutional sexism, as institutional pubescence.’

  Finn smiled, despite himself.

  ‘I’ve never noticed. If anything, I’ve always thought you command a lot of respect in the room.’

  ‘Now I’m a DS I do. They’ve all worked with me for a bit too, so they know me. But Paulsen’s new, junior and doing everything she can to piss everyone off. It’s not a good mix.’

  He considered what she was saying. Whatever Paulsen’s problem was, it clearly went deep. It would be easy to ignore it, write it off as a personal issue that he didn’t need to worry about. Or, he could treat her outburst as a moment of indiscipline and bollock her for it, but that didn’t feel right either. His every instinct was telling him that to turn a blind eye would be negligent.

  ‘How do you get on with her?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s curious about me – I can see that at times. The opportunity for a proper chat hasn’t come along yet. In fairness, most of the time she’s been as off with me as she has with everyone else. I can try and grab her at some point though, if you’d like.’

  ‘Might be an idea. She’s got a first-class brain. She’s not frightened to take the initiative, and having somebody who stands a little bit apart from everyone else . . . I quite like that,’ said Finn.

  ‘Course you do – because that’s exactly what you’re like.’

  Finn smiled.

  ‘She doesn’t fit a mould. She thinks a little bit out of the box. We can get jaded, old dogs like us.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Pleasure. I mean it though – she’s brought an extra dimension to this investigation, something fresh, but what I saw earlier was disturbing. She didn’t care about my rank or hers. When she was yelling at me all I saw was raw pain.’

  Ojo shook her head. ‘I don’t care how good she is – you can’t let that stand. She has to know it was unacceptable. When you do talk to her, maybe you could use what happened as an excuse to delve deeper. I tell you one thing – you’ll see something different tomorrow. Give her a night to sleep on what she did and she’ll be bricking it by the morning.’

  Before Finn could reply, his phone started ringing. The name Mattie Paulsen was flashing up.

  ‘Maybe sooner,’ he said.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Mattie,’ said Nancy as she took a bite of the slightly soggy stir-fry she’d made for them. It wasn’t the greatest meal, but then she hadn’t really been concentrating on what she’d been doing. They’d been too busy arguing while she was cooking. Mattie told her about the argument with Finn pretty much as soon as she’d come through the door. It was Nancy who’d pushed her into calling Finn to apologise. The fact Mattie acquiesced so easily suggested she’d known how stupid she’d been, even if she couldn’t admit it. She was now sat on the opposite side of their round glass dinner table, holding her phone with a pensive look on her face, her food untouched.

  ‘He’s not answering.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ said Nancy, trying to contain her own anger. History showed getting angry with Mattie achieved precisely nothing. Despite all the talk of learning and changing, here they were again.

  ‘You could lose your job for this.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘And you know this because . . . ?’

  ‘Because Finn’s not that kind of bloke. He won’t make a big deal out of it. He’ll wait until tomorrow, I’ll apologise, then he’ll bollock me, and then we’ll get on with it.’

  ‘You seem pretty sure of that.’

  ‘He’s not petty. He’ll be pissed off, and he’s not answering his phone because he wants to make me sweat.’

  ‘Looks like it’s working.’

  ‘I don’t need this, Nance.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong about him?’

  ‘Then I’ll be wrong, won’t I?’

  ‘Just tell me why you did it?’

  ‘I already have – he was patronising me. He’d been doing it all week. I got angry because . . .’ She looked lost for words.

  ‘What?’ Nancy asked gently.

  ‘. . . he got to me. I kept thinking about being
on that roof . . .’

  ‘Jesus wept, Mat – I don’t need to say it, do I?’

  Mattie bowed her head.

  ‘You can’t lose your temper there. Besides, do you know how it looks? The woman who gets emotional when things get difficult?’

  ‘That’s not fair, and you know why.’

  ‘The point is, no one else does. The point is, you don’t want anyone else to know. Unless they already do?’

  Mattie shook her head. ‘How can they? If anyone at Dunlevy Road suspected something, it would have reached Cedar House by now. And I can tell – with Finn, Skegman, Ojo, all of them – they don’t know anything. They’re too busy working the investigation or trying to figure out what makes the new girl tick, but they know nothing.’

  Paulsen prodded her food around her plate for a moment, and then lifted a forkful to her mouth.

  ‘I fucked up, didn’t I? I think he probably was trying to help me and I misread it.’

  ‘Can I say something, without being shouted at?’

  ‘Can’t guarantee it . . .’

  ‘Maybe you do need to tell someone what happened.’

  Mattie stared at her incredulously.

  ‘Are you off your fucking head?’

  ‘Maybe there’s someone you could trust. Get some advice from.’

  ‘No one would understand, no one.’

  ‘You can’t control yourself. So you need people around who’ll protect you, if you can’t protect yourself.’

  ‘I barely know anyone. I’ve just started there.’

  ‘What about this guy, Finn?’

  ‘No. He’s the last one who’d understand. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying about him? There’s something a bit damaged about him.’

  ‘Come on, Mat, didn’t you say his wife had just died? I just think . . . someone like that might just be the right guy at the right time. You could use what happened today as an excuse. Show some humility, try and get his trust.’

  Mattie pulled a face.

  ‘Look the word up,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Which one? Trust or humility?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Alright, I’ll make things right with him. But telling him what happened . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think you’ve thought that through. What that would mean for me. What it would mean for us.’

  Finn left YoYo’s shortly after eight in better humour than when he’d arrived. It felt like he’d spent most of his day thinking about Mattie Paulsen and he’d been starting to bore himself. It was time to refocus on the task in hand. He wondered why Phil Maddox needed to talk to him so urgently. Was the pressure starting to tell? He remembered how fragile he’d seemed when he’d visited him before. There was also the Handyman to consider. As much as Finn dismissed him at the start, he was hanging over this investigation like a spectre. And right at the back of his mind, there was still that damned blind dog in the forest nagging at him. He smiled to himself. He didn’t need to be doing any of this – he could still be at home on leave. But he’d wanted it, and it still felt like the right choice.

  He made his way to the tube and caught a train to Vauxhall for his rendezvous with Maddox. One Pacific Square caught his attention as it always did now in this neck of the woods, and he made the ten-minute walk past it to the large oblong of a building where Maddox lived. He could see people dotted around the exterior, sat in small boxy balconies on a warm summer’s night. He approached the main entrance and saw it was ajar. The locking mechanism was broken and the door swung open as he pushed it. Quickly running up the staircase to Maddox’s flat, the smell of fumes hit him immediately – a suffocating petroleum cocktail. He reached the front door and banged his fist on it. He could hear a fire alarm shrieking inside.

  ‘Phil! It’s DI Finn!’ he shouted.

  To his surprise the door opened suddenly and he almost fell forwards. Smoke poured out and he found himself face-to-face with a man in black leathers wearing a dark motorcycle helmet. He started to cough violently as the smoke and fumes hit his lungs. The black-clad figure was holding what looked like an iron crowbar, and there was barely time for Finn to react as it came swinging round and the world went black.

  Chapter 43

  Five Years Ago

  ‘It’s a no-brainer, what are we waiting for?’ said Maddox. He was like a little boy hopping with excitement at Christmas. Elder ignored him and focused on Kaul.

  ‘Adesh, there’s thousands here, millions possibly . . .’

  ‘So? Not our problem, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it? We’ve got time. There’s a skip outside, next to the west side wall. I saw it from the window. All we have to do is take the sacks down a level and chuck them out.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Kaul.

  ‘We’ll worry about that later, let’s just get them out first.’

  ‘Have you lost your fucking mind?’ said Walker. He would replay these moments in the years that followed, and this was the instant he knew he should have stopped it.

  Elder turned and strode over, gesticulating as he spoke.

  ‘It’s just a big building site, Marty. There’s no one else here . . . we wouldn’t be putting anyone at risk.’

  ‘You don’t know it’s empty,’ said Walker.

  ‘What are we saving here? Some office space a few Russian oligarchs have spunked their rubles on? Let it fucking burn.’

  ‘What’s happening, guys – you’ve gone very quiet?’ said Connelly over the radio.

  ‘We’ve cleared two floors,’ replied Walker. ‘Has the ambulance arrived? I think the casualty might still be breathing.’

  ‘It’s here. You need to get him out fast, Martin – we’ve got to start tackling the fire itself. We’re waiting on you. You’re okay for air, but you need to get moving.’

  ‘Understood. We’re on our way,’ said Walker.

  ‘Just wait, skip,’ said Elder. ‘Think about Christine. Her MS. There’s enough money here to take care of her for the rest of her life.’

  Walker was silent.

  ‘What about Stu?’ asked Kaul quietly.

  ‘He’s one of us. We deal him in. He’ll be fine with it. Why wouldn’t he be?’ replied Elder. Walker looked over at the unconscious man again.

  ‘And him? We’ve got to get him down.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Elder.

  ‘What do you mean we can’t? We’ve got time to get him and the money out.’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Elder. ‘Who is he? Where does that money come from?’

  ‘He doesn’t need to know – if he asks afterwards we tell him it went up in smoke. We don’t even tell him we saw it.’ Walker could hear the words coming out of his mouth, even if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying them.

  ‘And you think he, or whoever this cash belongs to, will believe us? You think they won’t notice when we start spending it? If we’re going to do this, then no one can know.’

  ‘How long’s he been out – ten minutes?’ said Maddox. ‘I’m guessing there’s already brain damage, if he isn’t already dead.’ He checked for a pulse.

  ‘Martin – what the hell’s going on? Are you guys okay?’ said Connelly over the radio.

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Elder quickly into his radio. ‘The casualty’s dead and the body’s trapped. We’re just trying to move it now.’

  Walker bit his tongue. Something else he’d reflect on later.

  ‘You’re starting to run low on air – if it comes to it, leave the body and get out.’

  The heat in their suits was becoming unbearable. Whatever they were going to do, they needed to do it now.

  ‘We’re not leaving this man,’ said Walker.

  ‘How many people have we had to leave over the years? The ones we couldn’t save?’ said Elder.

  ‘We owe it to his family to get him out.’

  ‘Do you want to change the rest of your life, or do you want to carry on risking it every day?’

  ‘He’s dead. I’m
telling you,’ said Maddox.

  ‘Adesh, have you got anything to say?’ said Walker.

  ‘What are we waiting for? I’m in.’

  ‘It’s a win-win, Marty. No one loses,’ said Elder.

  Walker looked at the body and Maddox shook his head again. He thought about every trip he and Christine had made to the hospital, those moments in front of the TV at night when he’d caught her staring pensively into space, the fear etched on her face.

  ‘Alright. Let’s do this.’

  Chapter 44

  Today

  It was a myth that when fire sprinklers were set off in a flat, they went off in the whole building. Jackie Ojo was stood in Phil Maddox’s sodden front room and realised many of the other residents would probably have little idea of the horror that’d taken place here. In the end it was the young couple in the flat below who’d called 999. Smelling smoke, they’d gone up to investigate and found Finn’s unconscious body on the stairwell.

  ‘We thought he’d burnt his dinner,’ they’d said in their statement. Ojo could understand why; the stench of roasted meat and burnt fat still hung heavy in the air.

  The irony was Maddox hadn’t forgotten his roots. There was a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher still hanging in the hallway, smoke alarms, and carbon monoxide detectors on the walls. Much good any of it was to him in the end. Two SOCOs in white protective suits, both wearing masks, were working in the bathroom. Ojo braced herself, gagging at the smell and coughing as she turned the corner. She used a handkerchief to cover her mouth and entered. One of the SOCOs glared and Ojo held up a hand to acknowledge she knew why. Even though she was wearing the full protective apparel it was a tight space and they didn’t want her going any further.