‘And how does Sam feel about that?’
McKinnon shrugged. ‘I hope it helps. He comes to the house about once a week and we talk about how things are going, and any concerns he might have. We usually start with a passage from the scriptures.’
‘Like what?’ Millie wasn’t really sure why she’d asked that, or what good it would do.
McKinnon reached across to a bookshelf, from which he took down a modern edition of the Bible, opening it to a bookmarked page. Millie couldn’t think of anyone she knew who kept a Bible in the workplace, though in fairness she’d never looked closely at Charlie’s desk. ‘And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32’, said McKinnon. ‘That was the one we discussed last.’
‘Which was when?’
‘Let me think – it’ll be two weeks ago tomorrow.’
‘So not every week then.’
McKinnon conceded it with a tilt of the head. ‘We did have an appointment for last Thursday, but Sam sent me a text cancelling it.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘It happens. We all have busy lives. I think he’d had to work late, or was meeting his friends or something.’
‘Did anything prompt that particular discussion?’ Millie was curious now about how this worked.
‘Not that I remember,’ said McKinnon. ‘Over the weeks we’ve been discussing the kinds of qualities that go to make up a successful partnership, and I happen to think that honesty is one of them. Are you married, Detective Khatoon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it won’t be news to you.’
‘When did you last see Sam?’ Millie asked.
‘That last appointment,’ said McKinnon. ‘We couldn’t make it to Charles and Helen’s on Saturday.’
‘And how did he seem then?’
‘Fine,’ said McKinnon. ‘He was looking forward to the wedding and getting settled into the new house.’
‘Excited?’
McKinnon smiled. ‘Sam’s pretty laid back. I’m not sure that he really does “excited”.’
‘Would you say that you’re close?’ Millie asked. ‘In the absence of his father—’
‘Oh, I don’t kid myself that I fulfil that role,’ said McKinnon. ‘Nor would I want to. Sam’s quite a private person, so I couldn’t claim to know him well. Clearly his childhood experiences have influenced his attitude towards his responsibilities as a husband, and his ability to live up to them. He worries about the weight of ensuring someone else’s happiness. It’s a big deal for him. I think Sam always has at the back of his mind his father’s desertion of the family, and is keen that history doesn’t repeat itself.’
‘Is he having doubts?’ asked Millie. It was an obvious question.
‘No, not at all,’ McKinnon said. ‘He’s being realistic and that’s refreshing in a younger person. I’ve been in this role a few years now and I’d be surprised if there weren’t some nerves about the wedding.’
‘And what else did you talk about?’ asked Millie. ‘After the scripture.’
‘As I said, we talked about his expectations when he’s newly married and all of that. Look, I’m not entirely comfortable going into details. My meetings with Sam are informal, but they are personal and if he thinks that I’ve shared the discussion with you, he’ll have no reason to trust me again, will he?’
‘So Sam wasn’t at church on Sunday?’ said Millie.
‘No, but I know he sometimes has other weekend commitments. I understand he was at Helen and Charles’ renewal on the Saturday. There’s no compulsion to come along every week, although I understand that will change when he and Gaby are married.’
‘You seem certain that Sam will show up,’ said Millie.
‘Of course I am,’ said McKinnon easily. ‘His wedding is less than two weeks away and there are other important people in his life. What’s always impressed me with Sam is his strong sense of duty. You’ve spoken to his sister?’
‘Not personally,’ said Millie. ‘But one of my colleagues has.’
‘Then you’ll know that he has other significant family responsibilities. One thing I have learned about Sam; he’s not the sort of man to let people down.’
Millie was down to her last business card; she needed to replenish her supply from the office. ‘If Sam does get in touch, please could you ask him to contact me,’ she said. ‘Hopefully I won’t need to come back.’
‘Of course,’ said McKinnon. ‘Though I’ll be off up to Glasgow tomorrow for a couple of days. My mother’s not been well, so I have to head up there fairly regularly at present. I’ll be back again early next week.’
As McKinnon opened the door to let Millie out, a people carrier pulled on to the drive and came to a halt. A woman in tight jeans and a strikingly patterned shirt climbed out and, calling out a greeting, went round to the boot, from which she lifted out several bolts of cloth.
‘This is my wife, Tanya,’ said McKinnon.
Millie was more attracted by the fabrics, and Tanya noticed this as she brought them up to the house. ‘I’m a dressmaker,’ she said. ‘It’s something I can do working from home, around the children, and it supplements the income a bit.’
‘This is lovely,’ said Millie, stroking one of the rolls of brightly coloured silk.
‘For bridesmaids’ dresses,’ Tanya smiled. ‘Or at least it will be.’
‘For Sam and Gaby?’
Tanya was surprised, but shook her head. ‘No, those have been done for a while.’
‘Detective Constable Khatoon came to talk to me about Sam,’ said McKinnon. ‘He’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Well, we don’t know that yet,’ said Millie. ‘We’re just trying to find out if anyone has seen him in the last few days.’
An unidentifiable expression crossed Tanya’s face. ‘He hasn’t been here for a week or two, has he, love?’
‘I was just explaining that,’ said McKinnon.
‘Well, thanks for your help,’ said Millie.
Vicky Jesson was at her desk, prevaricating. In Mariner’s absence she needed to attend the Fire Investigation briefing on Wellington Road, but was disconcertingly fretful about getting it right, so was preparing excessively by going over and over her previous notes for anything requiring clarification.
Brown had been watching her. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Jesson. ‘I just want to get this right, that’s all.’
‘Want me to come, moral support and all that?’ Brown offered. ‘I could write stuff down; make sure nothing gets missed.’
Jesson weighed it for a moment, trying to put out of her head what Millie had told her yesterday.
‘It would make a change to get out from these four walls,’ Brown added persuasively.
‘All right then, thanks.’ Vicky felt ridiculously relieved to have the back-up, even though it was only Brown, and even if he was behaving like a puppy on its first outing.
‘You look great,’ he told her, as they got out of the car at Wellington Road. He’d caught her checking in the rear-view mirror.
‘Something in my eye,’ Vicky said, but she could tell from Brown’s smirk that he didn’t buy it.
Gerry Docherty was waiting for them at the gate of 104. ‘There’s good news and bad,’ he said. ‘We’ve been systematically working our way into that ground-floor room, and the good news is; we’ve found accelerant, particularly in the area below the front window. Once we suspected it we brought in the dog team to confirm it and search for other traces. When I say team, that’s him, Dougal, with his handler, Lance.’
A blue roan springer spaniel, with what appeared to be plastic bags on its paws, was running around on a long lead. Brown immediately knelt down to pet him. ‘Clever fella,’ he said, as the dog jumped all over him. ‘How do you know when he’s on to something?’ he asked.
‘He has an indication signal,’ Lance told him. ‘He keeps his nose on the spot, whilst repeatedly looking up at me.�
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‘But hasn’t all the water from the hoses diluted any substance you find?’ asked Vicky.
‘You’d think so,’ said Lance. ‘But the water actually acts as a barrier to preserve accelerant. Dougal can pick up the tiniest trace; splashes on furniture, carpets or shoes. Once he’s got something, we swab the area for analysis then mark it up with spray paint. He’s trained to identify almost all flammable liquids.’ Lance grinned. ‘The irony is, I myself don’t have any sense of smell at all.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to come and have a look?’ said Docherty, keen to get on.
While they got kitted out in forensic suits, Vicky introduced Brown to Docherty. ‘DCI Mariner’s been called away,’ she explained.
‘And I’m just here to observe,’ said Brown, struggling to get his second foot into the suit and almost falling over in the process.
When they were ready Docherty walked them into the house and through into the charred cave that Mustafa Shah had described as once being his office.
‘Might be as well if you wait here,’ Docherty said to Brown. ‘Not much space where we’re going.’ He stepped carefully along the inner wall, using a row of stepping plates, through a ravine no more than eighteen inches wide that had been cut between the wall and the mound of debris that was still piled almost up to the ceiling. Once he reached the window, Docherty squatted down, so that Jesson, following behind him, could see over his head, the black circular stain underneath the window sill, highlighted with fluorescent paint. ‘Accelerant has pooled here.’ He pointed to further purple marks on the concrete floor that had similarly been marked out. ‘Then we’ve got a few spots trailing to another, bigger pool, back there.’
‘So it could have been put through the window,’ said Jesson. ‘What Mrs Shah reported as glass breaking could have been exactly that.’
‘It could,’ agreed Docherty.
‘But there are more spots over here,’ Brown pointed to several other orange marks to the sides of the stepping plates.
‘The broken window would allow the perpetrator to throw accelerant deeper into the room,’ Jesson speculated.
‘That’s one explanation,’ said Docherty. ‘There seems to be less of it in those areas, which could be because it’s soaked through the carpet on to the floor below, instead of seeping down the side. But that’s the bad news; there’s a complicating factor with this room, especially as most of the carpet was destroyed.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Jesson.
Brown was ahead of her. ‘It used to be a garage,’ he said.
‘So there could potentially be all kinds of flammable chemicals on this floor: oil, petrol, white spirit – anything like that,’ added Docherty. ‘Any of those traces could be there legitimately, and until we’ve had each swab analysed we can’t eliminate it.’
‘Shit. Sorry.’ Jesson didn’t know why she was suddenly self-conscious about her language.
‘Shit indeed,’ Docherty agreed. ‘The Detection, Identification and Monitoring team should be able to identify the constituents of each for us, but that is going to take more time.’
‘Wouldn’t the Shahs have cleaned up the floor before they laid the carpet?’ asked Jesson.
Docherty shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look as if they bothered much. I guess if it was always intended to be an office or store room it didn’t matter. It would have cost money to get it properly cleaned and put down new flooring. Normally we’d take samples of the carpet as a control, but there wasn’t much left except for odd scraps of molten underlay, which probably won’t yield anything. But as we progress, we’ll swab down the concrete for any further traces of accelerant, and when there’s enough space for him to move around more freely, we’ll get Dougal back in to help.’
‘So how sure can we be that this was arson?’ said Jesson, crouching down to get a better look.
‘We’re definitely edging in that direction,’ Docherty said. ‘I can be about ninety per cent certain. It’s that stain under the window that clinches it. So far it’s unlikely that the residue left over from previous use would be enough to ignite a fire, especially at ground level. It just complicates things for us in trying to determine absolutely what was used to start it.’
‘So this attack could relate to the previous one,’ said Vicky.
‘It could,’ said Docherty. ‘The porch was unsuccessfully targeted last time, so it’s possible that someone got wise to what would work, and this is completely at the other end of the scale. We’ve collected up the glass from the floor just under there too,’ he said. ‘Most of it will have come from the window panes, but we’ll look out for anything thicker; sometimes you can identify a corner or base that suggests a glass container of some kind; a bottle or jar.’
‘Like a Molotov cocktail?’ said Brown.
‘Exactly,’ said Docherty. ‘The pieces will get sorted into window glass and “other”. Who knows? On some lucky occasions we can even get prints. My lads haven’t come across any discarded bottles in the immediate area – it’s one of the things we’re always on the lookout for in this situation – but you might want to put some of your officers on looking further afield. Any liquid receptacles, like pop bottles that have been thrown away, might be what we’re looking for. Arsonists can be surprisingly careless after the event. And if it was an arson attack, it could have been two-pronged. For anyone who knew what they were doing, access to the back of the house would have been easy enough around the side. We’ll keep looking for clues.’
‘The family have asked us to fetch some of their things for them,’ said Jesson. ‘Is it OK with you if we do that?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Docherty. ‘We’re really only concerned with this side of the property at the moment.’
It turned out to be helpful having two people to collect together the things, as everything taken from the house had to be recorded. Vicky collected each item, while Brown wrote it down and bagged it. Most of what they needed was clothing for all the family and toys for the children, and it didn’t take long to locate almost everything on the list and pack it into carrier bags. The one thing they hadn’t yet found were spare asthma inhalers for Yousef.
‘Bathroom cabinet?’ suggested Brown.
Jesson handed him her bags. ‘You start taking this lot down to the car, I’ll catch you up,’ she said. The inhalers were indeed in the medicine cupboard, along with the usual everyday family remedies, but also a couple of packets of prescription medication, which Vicky bagged up too. It wasn’t certain at this stage whether the toxicology report on Soltan Ahmed would reveal anything, but they might be helpful if it did.
TWELVE
From the McKinnons’ house Millie had gone out into the open air, in pursuit of the man both Gaby and Fiona had nominated as Sam’s best mate. Nathan Dornham, who was a landscape gardener, worked for Birmingham City Council parks division, and Millie tracked him down to his base, a park just up the Bristol Road from the police station. He was out working somewhere in the locality, so she had to sit in her car and wait for him to return for his lunch. She watched as a number of mowing machines came and went in the compound, until finally she saw the gaffer approach one of them and speak to the driver, nodding in Millie’s direction as he did so. She got out of the car.
‘What’s this about?’ Dornham asked straight away, as he came towards her.
‘I just need to ask you a couple of questions,’ said Millie. ‘It won’t take long.’
‘Do you mind if we walk down the park a bit?’ he said. ‘I can have a smoke.’ They walked down to a bench overlooking the lake and woodland, where a couple of dog walkers were wandering the footpaths.
‘I’m trying to locate Sam Fleetwood,’ said Millie. ‘Any idea where he might be?’
‘At work, probably, like the rest of us,’ said Dornham simply. He was a few inches under six feet tall and chunky, with mousy hair and freckles.
‘Actually, he’s not,’ Millie told him. ‘And he hasn’t been there at all this week
. As far as we can ascertain, nobody’s seen him since last Saturday night.’
He pulled a face. ‘What about Gaby, his girlfriend?’
‘She and Fiona reported him missing,’ said Millie. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Friday week, well … nearly two weeks ago. We sometimes have a drink in the Hare and Hounds of a Friday night, though not so much since he’s been with Gaby.’
‘What about last Friday?’ asked Millie.
‘He texted me to say he couldn’t make it; said he’d got too much to do with all the wedding stuff. She’s got him running round all over the place. She’d have me at it too, given half a chance. I’m supposed to be his best man.’ Despite the complaint, there was a hint of pride in his voice.
‘So you’re organising the stag do?’
‘Oh, we’ve already had it,’ said Nathan. ‘Madam wanted it early so that there was no chance of it ruining the big day.’
‘So you know Gaby too?’ Millie asked.
‘Not that well. She started coming along to things, y’know. She’s classy and a good laugh, but the God-bothering’s a bit of a turn-off. Not that it would have mattered. She and Sam were pretty tight from the start.’
‘So you’re not surprised that they’re getting married?’ said Millie.
‘I’m not surprised that she wants the whole big white wedding and all that, but it was a bit of an eye-opener that Sam would go for it. He’d never really seemed that keen on the idea of marriage, on account of happened with his old man. And he’s always been a free spirit; likes to keep his options open.’
‘But he’s what, thirty-two?’ said Millie. ‘Maybe he thinks he’s done all that, and it’s time to settle down.’
‘Maybe,’ said Dornham, but he didn’t sound very sure.
‘What are you not telling me?’
Nathan took in the scenery. ‘I don’t know. Sam has a bit of a history of mature, unattainable women, if you get my drift.’
‘You mean married?’ said Millie.
‘Yeah. He had some serious thing going, round about the time he was at uni. It was pretty full-on, and I’m not sure that it’s ever completely ended.’
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