Standing Still

by Caro Ramsay

  Anderson was slipping his wet shoes off inside his front door, aware of the stink of smoke. He felt dirty and grimy and he realized that his trousers were soaked up to the knees. He looked at them for a long time, hearing the flames and the crashing of the fire. He held his hands out and realized he was shaking. That summer night on the loch came back to him. He recognized the feelings and he let the horror sweep over him, it was easier to roll with it. He had learned that the hard way. He let the sweat pour down his back, let the panic tighten his lungs. His brain would always make that link. Fire. Death. It hurt.

  He was still staring at his trouser legs, thinking how to get up the stairs and across the plush cream carpet of the landing without making a mess. Helena immediately came to mind, her world view where white carpets were functional. It never bothered her. He supposed she always had the money to get them cleaned. Or did Alan, her husband, genuinely never feel really at home here. He was so rarely in. Maybe things were less ideal than he thought. Nobody ever really knew what was going on in anybody else’s marriage.

  ‘Where have you been?’ The voice behind him was low and feminine, husky with sleep.

  He jumped for a minute thinking that it was Helena standing on the stairs, but it was Claire, still dressed as she had been before. ‘Where have you been? You smell of smoke, you been to the Vinicombe Street fire?’

  ‘The aftermath of the fire. How do you know? Facebook?’

  ‘Yip. Was it anything to do with David?’

  ‘No. It’s a bloody awful sight to see something like that go up in flames.’

  Claire grunted in dismissive amusement. ‘Tough shit. That arse only bought the place last year, and he didn’t really want any of its artistic heritage. He wanted a nightclub. Like the West End needs another nightclub. He was ripping the guts out of the Vinicombe Street Theatre, so no, I don’t feel all that sorry for him.’ She gave him that teenage look when they encounter parental stupidity. ‘He prevented the family taking their own stuff back, you know, the plans and the models made over the generations. He threw it all in a skip. Nice man not! So yeah, do we have the right to own our own art?’ Then added: ‘Actually.’

  ‘Why are you so cynical?’

  Claire shrugged. ‘Me? Cynical? A hundred years’ worth of art and craftsmanship and beauty. People who lived and breathed the stories, made them come to life. The artistic soul of the city is being ripped apart for another drug dealer’s nightclub.’

  Anderson was going to argue, then remembered the truth and the single-mindedness of youth, the certainty of their world view.

  ‘OK, so a serial killer and a beautiful piece of art are both in a room and the room goes on fire. The work of art could disappear forever. Which one would you save?’ She looked at him, arms crossed in confrontation. At times she was very like her mother.

  ‘Human life above all else, Claire.’

  ‘Crap. I’d let Ian Brady toast and save the Sunflowers. In fact I’d stand on his head to reach up to the Sunflowers. I bet Costello would agree with me.’

  Anderson felt his mouth twitch and stifled a giggle. ‘I don’t doubt it but she’s not exactly the voice of reason, is she?’ He sat down on the stairs, pulling the wet fabric of his trouser leg away from the skin on the front of his shin.

  She slid down the wall, and rested her weight on the step two above her dad. ‘People got very upset by it, the whole Insanity thing.’

  Anderson was thinking of the blonde woman in tears, heartfelt tears. ‘Like who? Who are the kind of people who get upset by the whole Insanity thing?’

  ‘Anybody with a soul.’ Her brown eyes, deep as chestnuts, regarded the goddess Ceres. ‘Without art we are animals, Dad, worse than animals. So get with the programme, go on Facebook and see the storm this Fraser idiot has created, some people have no respect. No respect for art, for work.’ And with that she trotted upstairs. He got out his phone and put in a reminder to get Wyngate or Mulholland to check it out. At this time of night it was all beyond him. He didn’t think the dawning of a new day was going to help him so he followed his daughter upstairs to ask her to log into her Facebook page for him. He wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight anyway.

  Claire set up her laptop and they settled down with Nesbit and a box of Jaffa Cakes. He scrolled through the Facebook page called The Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre. It had been set up by somebody called Pauline Gee, a real aficionado of all children’s puppets and puppet shows. She had put up a special petition to stop the building being sold for redevelopment. He had flicked through photograph after photograph; Vinicombe Street in the sixties and seventies, up to the nineties. They scrolled through them together looking at the dragons, the dinosaurs, the grand dames and the principal boys, Bo Peep, Pinocchio and assorted dwarfs. All framed by the bright sunflower tiles he had seen darkened and fractured after the fire. He saw the big window, draped in red velvet curtains like a stage just as he remembered it. Across the top of the window was a forest of brightly coloured animals and birds, all individual, all beautifully crafted, all carefully numbered. There were a few pages of the production posters. It looked like it had been a little powerhouse of fun. He felt very melancholy all of a sudden, the world had got from this to gaming in a generation. Anderson looked closely at some of the marionettes, named and numbered as if the puppets themselves had been individuals. He had never liked puppets, tending to think that they were a bit creepy. Even folk walking around like the Thunderbirds gave him the willies. His sister was phobic about clowns. No wonder their mum and dad had never taken them to the circus. But he had enjoyed scrolling through the pictorial history of the Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre as it had been called in its heyday. It certainly looked a lot more wholesome than Call of Duty. And a lot more fun. Puppets were scary and most kids like to be scared witless.

  At five a.m., Anderson was fed up trying to sleep in the heat, his mind drifting to counting the number of phobias he might gather as he got older. Lying here in the darkness it was the noises that were getting to him. But he knew that the flames, the cracking of burning wood, were not welcome companions and not conducive to sound slumber. They were memories, and memory is a mere construct of the mind; harmless. He was trying to silence the noises in his head by thinking about the events of the day and Vinicombe Street before it went on fire. He really would have to pass this on to another team; the guys in the good suits who worked out of West End Central.

  He needed to track down Pauline Gee and with a bit of luck she’d have a blonde bob cut and a history of mental instability – but he doubted it. People didn’t set things on fire because they were annoyed at planning permission being granted. People set things on fire for money.

  He turned over, snuggling deep into the pillow but sleep was still elusive. His mind wandering here and there but always back to Vinicombe Street. It ran at right angles on to Byres Road. The junction was marked by a raised area of concrete that made the pavement continuous and hinted to drivers that there was no point in turning up there unless you had a well displayed and up-to-date resident’s permit. Mentally he revisited the scene where the car had dropped him off last night. The tiny old theatre was right on the corner of Vinicombe Street and Vinicombe Lane, the next junction down was Byres Road, cross that and … Mentally he turned off the noise of the fire, the banging and the crashing. He tuned out the hiss and whoosh of the flames. In his mind’s eye, the car drove away and left him alone, standing still in a silent world. Everybody frozen in time and space, flames jagged tongues into the dark night. He looked at what was to the left and to his right; Byres Road wound north to Queen Margaret Drive and south to the Expressway and the river. If he stood there and looked slightly north there was the gap between Waitrose and the posh hotel – whatever it was called nowadays – the locals still called it One Devonshire Gardens. That was the location of the CCTV camera that had given them the footage of David’s abduction. The images floated through his mind. He tried to think where that lane went, but he co
uldn’t quite get there. He had a vague suspicion but he needed to be sure.

  He needed to go for a walk

  By six a.m., he was walking in the cool, early morning air down the lane, the sky was clearing, it was going to be another scorcher of a day. He started at Byres Road. He passed through the concrete spike that stopped cars using it as a shortcut. He admired the neat little cottages, the rear of the huge tenements towering above. He walked through the dogleg and ahead of him saw the whitewashed building jutting out, where the body of Mr Hollister had been found, bent neatly into a tea chest, a tea chest that had been designed to transport delicate cargo. Nobody had reported him missing. O’Hare and Costello had made no more progress about his identity. He was unmissed, unloved. He had come and gone as an autumn leaf caught in the breeze.

  He walked past the building, ignoring the bit of police tape that was left. The marks on the ground that showed where the InciTent had been. The boy in the chest had been almost forgotten, such was the impact of Irene Kerr on the case. My boy, my boy. The other boy was already dead, but there was still hope for her son. And Anderson couldn’t say that his actions would be any different.

  It was as if Mr Hollister had never come this way; he had left no footsteps in death, and none in life. None that they could follow anyway. The forensics team had proposed that this should be ruled as a disposition site, not the murder site, and as such, they were finished. Archie Walker, the fiscal, had agreed, with one eye on the budget. Little of evidential value present, he could hear Walker’s clipped voice in his ear. Anderson paused at the end of the lane and looked up the hill, over Athole Gardens to the nursing home at the top of the hill. The fiscal’s wife was in there now, probably being woken from a deep medicated sleep to be kept awake long enough to eat her breakfast, to then be given some sedatives to send her back to the land of nod.

  He turned round and retraced his steps, back to his car. It would have been quicker walking up to the station from here but there was something troubling him, some link he wasn’t seeing yet.

  He drove up by the Rock to where Jeffries had been … well, what had he been? Stalked, then chatted up, then injected by Blondie who may or may not have a Facebook identity of Pauline Gee. Mulholland would be on the track of all the Pauline Gees in the area as soon as he stepped his bad leg into the office.

  Anderson got out of the car and strolled up the lane to the side of the pub, concrete underfoot, broken wooden fencing to his left, trees with a few parked cars underneath to his right. Nothing to be seen, tyre marks of all kinds of cars, but he was getting a sense of it. People talking over the half fence, drifting in conversation. Jeffries drunk, the back door of the pub open on a warm summer night. She approached, she engaged him, asking him for help as she had done with David Kerr, and maybe Amy and Mr Hollister too. But Jeffries had fallen and knocked himself out. He was too big, too heavy, for her to move without some assistance from him. She wasn’t stupid, she would have realized that. So why select him? Was it about him?

  Was this personal to him?

  Amy’s thyroid condition might have affected her metabolism of the drug. Then Mr Hollister, what had gone wrong there? Then David Kerr, the first perfect victim. Anderson could see no connection.

  He turned round to walk back to the Beamer, deep in thought. He saw a poster for Paige Riley, fixed to a lamp post, protected by a laminated screen that clicked slightly in the breeze. Paige Riley? Maybe David wasn’t the first perfect victim.

  By 7 a.m., Anderson was in his own office and the preliminary report on the theatre fire lay on his desk, but it was the brown envelope lying beside it that intrigued him more. He recognized Elvie McCulloch’s precise heavy handwriting. The note was short and to the point. ‘Ask them to think about Curarium. Paracurarium? Epicurarium? Used to relax smooth muscle under anaesthetic.’

  He walked into the investigation room and wrote that up on the board, with a note for it to be actioned. They sounded like drugs for hospital use; that fitted some of their ideas about Blondie.

  He looked at Amy’s photograph. Amy was told by the alien to come and see him. So the abductor knew him; a cop. And the abductor knew her, which should narrow the search a bit surely. Then Alistair Jeffries? Another cop. Both DCIs. There was some kind of a circle there. Not as difficult as the old days though, now anybody could be found. A to B to Z was a matter of a few key strokes.

  Amy was not a stupid girl. She woke up somewhere, her brain saw something, or somebody, and interpreted it as an alien. Somebody dressed in silver? Green above her? Out in the open somewhere? The fancy dress of parade day could easily explain that.

  He wrote the name Diana on the board, under Blondie and Pauline Gee. Diana. The goddess of hunting.

  He looked out of the window, the sky was darkening again after the early light. Maybe the thunder would be here today. It was needed to clear the air, it might help clear his head.

  He went back into his own office and opened the fire investigation report. They had found an incendiary device on the floor of the old theatre. It was definitely arson. The delay on the device was familiar to Anderson; a small bundle of cigarettes to create a slow fuse and a box of matches to start a flame. The arsonist had left it on top of a pile of the banners that were still boxed for the opening of the new nightclub. The report went on to say that the job lot of publicity flyers had been made in China and did not fulfil the trading standard for fire retardation. The toxic fumes had contributed to Fraser’s breathing difficulties at the scene and there was a footnote to the effect that he would not be available for interview for the foreseeable future. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  Anderson looked at the ever-growing pile of paperwork and crowded wall space. An arsonist, a delay device and Fraser tied to a radiator. Attempted murder? Deliberate placing of the device on that box of banners? He texted Batten and told him to get there as soon as possible. He needed some expert advice on this.

  By 9 a.m., Batten was giving Anderson, Wyngate and Mulholland a full lecture on arsonists, pulling his chair up to the big table and placing both hands on the top, palms down. ‘Well, it’s a fascinating field.’

  ‘Not when it dragged me out of my comfy chair at one o’clock this morning,’ said Anderson.

  Costello wrestled the coffee pot onto the table one-handed, then took her own seat, cradling a can of coke in her elbow, her phone to her ear. On hold.

  ‘Well, “profiled” arsonists, fire setters, have a below-normal IQ, usually between seventy and ninety. They tend to be both mentally retarded and very angry.’

  ‘So not clever then?’

  ‘That’s the ones that have been profiled and studied. The clever ones get away with it for years. Arsonists are angry, white and they are male.’

  ‘Not female?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘No, male. That tends to exclude females,’ added Batten dryly. ‘I doubt this is a woman. It’ll be a man, an extremely bright man. As a wee boy he’d play with matches and turn it into a game. It’s his illicit thrill, it’s dangerous and he is told so. That ups the ante. It feeds his flame, if you pardon the pun. The fires themselves are the behaviour of a single individual. He’ll have started when he was about fourteen or fifteen. You need to look at your timeline. You need to look at past fires.’

  They all stared at him.

  Wyngate suggested. ‘We have the new Sherlock search engine.’

  Costello, the phone still to her ear, started scrolling down a screen. Ears on this, eyes on that.

  ‘So do we search for some fires? Then find a connection. How can we find that out when I don’t know any questions to ask? It’s all bloody beyond me,’ said Anderson.

  Wyngate pulled himself up in his chair. He looked like he had slept even less than Anderson; he had two young children. He had another fifteen years before he had to suffer the teenage nonsense of his boss. ‘All we need to do is set some parameters,’ he said quietly.

  ‘So arsonists start early, it’s a teenage thing.’ Batte
n settled in the chair, his chain of thought clarifying. ‘So if we think that your mystery blonde is associated with him, with whoever. What about between now and what? 1970? 1960?’ They looked at Wyngate as he grandly pressed ‘Enter’. And waited.

  ‘Too many,’ said Wyngate.

  ‘OK. Let’s narrow it down. What postcodes would you be wanting to look at. All G11 and G12s?’ Wyngate typed it without waiting for an answer.

  ‘There will be a pattern,’ said Batten, reaching for the coffee pot. ‘Look for targets that are public or abandoned buildings. Hospitals, churches, private garages and sheds, all that kind of thing.’

  ‘But in this case, was the man the target? I mean him rather than the building. He was tethered to the radiator,’ pointed out Anderson.

  ‘Both,’ said Batten, ‘I would say both. They would be linked in the arsonist’s mind.’

  ‘That kind of victim selection suggests revenge of some kind …’

  ‘So when he was younger, he was humiliated in the children’s theatre? The singing kettle sang out of tune? The hungry caterpillar got a bellyful?’

  ‘Your best guess, Mick, was this a man that did this?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘Yes, for many reasons,’ Batten replied as he flicked a thumb at the wall.

  ‘So who is Blondie then? Beside the building, crying her eyes out? Who is she?’

  ‘Somebody adored? Here is my offering. I love you?’ Batten said, ‘Something like that. Look at her face.’ He pointed at the still photograph from the fire officer’s film. ‘Her heart is breaking. It was a children’s theatre. Look at the emotion here. She is hurting? I don’t know. It seems very sane for an insane mind. So maybe she is the key but he is the arsonist. And he—’ he emphasized the word – ‘he will live within a five-mile radius of the fire cluster – once Wyngate has isolated it. And he has been unable to resolve an issue with the man in the fire, something that he feels he can’t tackle in any other way.’