A Cast of Vultures

by Judith Flanders

  I knew the next bit without notes, but I pretended I was reading. I don’t know why I thought it would make me look more official to Jake, who couldn’t see me. ‘The house is owned by a company called AJW & Son, and the company director is a man named Arthur Winslow. The man Victor interviewed in that flat on Talbot’s Road is named Arthur Winslow. He was a rag-and-bone man, and then he had a shop. That Arthur Winslow also knows Mo, who gives him free salads, and Mike, who does electrical repairs for him. I think it’s safe to conclude that the Arthur Winslow we know in Talbot’s Road is the director of AJW & Son, which owns the empty house.’

  ‘That sounds unarguable, and anyway it can easily be checked in the morning. But it’s a big leap from him knowing Mo and Mike to deciding that he’ll let them take legal possession of his property. People in the property business tend not to give up assets like that.’ Jake’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘And it makes arson even less likely.’

  ‘I’m not done.’ He waited. ‘When the empty house burnt down, the police said they’d been told it was empty because it was “awaiting redevelopment”. I wondered then how a tiny house like that could be “redeveloped”, and I remembered that again tonight, when I saw that AJW & Son’s finance director was a man named Frederick Winslow. AJW doesn’t own any other properties on Talbot’s Road, but Frederick Winslow is the director of a company that owns more than a dozen houses along the street.

  ‘So I checked the council’s website for planning permission, and found there is a project pending approval, one which will see that whole stretch of Talbot’s Road, together with the next street, re-zoned for commercial usage, knocking down the houses and replacing them with shops and office space. And the company name on the plans is R&B Property.’

  Jake was trying to be patient. ‘Sam, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Arthur Winslow owns property. So does Frederick, who is somehow related to him. Frederick Winslow’s company, also a property business, is planning a redevelopment. How does that get us to burning down a house his relative – maybe his father – owns? And more, how does that get us to drugs, and to you?’

  ‘Here’s the thing. R&B’s plans for redevelopment of the site include the empty house on their schematics. There is no contingency for the redevelopment to go ahead without that corner plot, no alternate plans, no nothing. They just show it as though R&B owns the property, even though it doesn’t, and even though AJW & Son didn’t contest the squatters’ claim, so it looks like they never will.’

  I rushed on, in case Jake had some killer rebuttal I hadn’t thought of. ‘That’s the property side. The drugs side is that – well, the drugs side is that there isn’t a drugs side.’ Jake began to interrupt. ‘Wait,’ I said, with all the authority of a lollipop-lady eyeing down a teenager hustling along late to school. He waited. ‘Mo said Dennis Harefield was helping them to stay in their house. If they’d filed a claim, therefore, he would have known about it – he may even have filed it for them. That means he knew who owned the house, and that it wasn’t R&B. On top of that, he worked in the council’s planning office, and so it seems likely that he would also know that plans had been filed to redevelop the street.’

  Jake was sharp now. ‘How do you know he worked in the planning office?’

  ‘Because when he went missing, before anyone knew he was dead, when Viv had me looking for him, I rang his office and the man who answered the phone said “Planning”.’ I ventured a small smile. ‘Sherlock Holmes would be so proud.’ Jake didn’t respond. ‘His name was Bill Hunsden,’ I offered. ‘The man who answered.’

  Jake was now taking me seriously, so I went on. ‘As I was coming home this evening, I saw the roadworks by the station, and I was thinking that the contractors must have paid off someone at the council to get a permit to drill at midnight.’ He waited for me to tell him what that had to do with anything. ‘Thinking of paying people off made me think that it wouldn’t be unheard of for a planning officer to be paid off, perhaps to take a pay-off to not notice that one of the buildings on a redevelopment plan has no Land Registry certificate that matches all of the other properties on the proposal.’

  ‘And you think that was Harefield?’

  ‘No, I think the opposite. I think Harefield found out that the ownership of the properties involved in this plan did not tally, that one of his colleagues had approved the paperwork anyway, and he was going to notify his superiors.’

  ‘And he was killed?’ Jake was sceptical, and I couldn’t blame him.

  ‘Possibly accidentally. According to the inquest, Harefield died of smoke inhalation, but he had also been hit on the head, it was presumed by falling masonry or a beam. But maybe he confronted the developer, or even the person in planning who had authorised the application. There was a fight, he was hit on the head, and after that someone had the bright idea of putting him in the shed by the empty house, and torching it. That would have the advantage of getting the squatters out of the property as well as getting rid of Harefield. People would think – people did think – that this was just one more fire in a series of fires. Add in some drugs and lots of cash, and voilà, Harefield was a drug dealer, so …’ I didn’t want to say, so a trail of breadcrumbs had led everyone astray, especially as the police had only been too happy to scamper after the tasty little morsels.

  I heard the indicator again. ‘The chronology doesn’t work. Harefield didn’t turn up at his office on Thursday, but he was alive and breathing enough to inhale smoke on Saturday night when the house burnt down. Where was he in between? And why?’ Jake was thinking aloud, and continued on. ‘Let’s summarise. You think Frederick Winslow expected to buy a property his father owned, or at least be permitted to incorporate it into his plans. Instead he discovered that his father was ceding legal possession of it to the squatters. It’s a corner property, and without it his development is in jeopardy. He then learns from his contact in the council’s planning department that a colleague is aware both of his father’s plans to cede ownership of the house, and that R&B’s plans can’t proceed without it. He meets Harefield, somehow keeps him out of circulation for a few days and during those days he sets up a scenario to make it look like Harefield was a drug dealer who had been caught in, or had caused, a fire, the fire serving the dual purpose of eliminating both Harefield and the squatter problem.’

  ‘Yes. But now you say it, the money he left in Harefield’s flat – the £25,000. It’s an awful lot, isn’t it? He’d never see it again.’

  Jake made a dismissive sound. ‘How many houses did you say were going to be torn down to create this retail area?’

  ‘About two dozen.’

  ‘And property prices, even for residential, would rate that at what – twenty, twenty-five million if they were just sold as houses?’

  I knew that from Land Registry site. ‘At least.’

  He was bland. ‘So he’s protecting a deal where the land value is twenty-five million. Once the properties were turned into shops, the rental value would double, or treble. So no, spending a thousandth of that initial sum to ensure his deal goes through doesn’t seem excessive. If he was paying off planners, he’d be spending that already.’

  Put like that, no, it didn’t. I mentally copied Jake’s dismissive sound: Pffft.

  Then there was a thump, a car door, and Jake’s voice came through more plainly. ‘I’m at Talbot’s Road. I’ve parked and I’m going to have a look around. I’ll be home in twenty minutes or so. Will you write everything out for me, make notes?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded. I always stayed out of Jake’s work, but this wasn’t his work.

  ‘Just having a look around.’ It didn’t sound any more concrete by virtue of being said twice. ‘Give me the house numbers. Which ones are part of the redevelopment scheme?’

  I read them out and he repeated them, writing them down. Then he said, ‘Twenty minutes,’ and hung up.

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I hadn’t told him any of the importan
t parts. Important parts like why someone wanted me dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE PHRASE ‘WHY someone wanted me dead’ echoed in my head. I looked at my laptop, still open to the squatting websites I’d been researching. While I’d been figuring out the details, it was as though it had happened to someone else. Now I was back to reality: people I knew had been burnt out of their house, their friend had been murdered, and someone wanted me dead. I decided I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I shut everything down.

  I undressed and got into bed. I pretended to myself that I was going to read until Jake got home, even though I knew that there was too much rattling through my head. And then I was out like a light, asleep even before I finished the thought: ‘I’ll never manage to rea—’ If my life had been a cartoon, the remainder of the panels would have been filled with Zs.

  I’m not a heavy sleeper, though, and I was vaguely aware of the front door opening and footsteps coming down the hall. But while I was used to Jake coming in late, I wasn’t used to him sliding into the room in the dark and putting his hand over my mouth. A low voice in my ear, so low it was almost a vibration rather than a sound, said, ‘Don’t make any noise.’

  I didn’t. I bit the hand.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the voice. Then, ‘It’s Sam. Stop that.’

  Sam? The hand loosened enough that I could turn my head. It was Sam all right, kneeling beside the bed. He put his mouth to my ear again. ‘Your man’s been knocked out,’ he breathed. ‘There were two of them, so I came here. Where’s your phone? We’ll call the cops but we have to get out first. One of the men is in the next room. Do you understand?’

  He waited until I nodded.

  ‘Can we get out the window?’

  I nodded again. It opened on a light well, and we could jump down into the garden from there. I wasn’t sure what we’d do after that – there was no street access from the garden – but I’d burn that bridge when we came to it. Sam took his hand away and stood and I got out of bed, snatching my phone from its charger as he gently eased the window up. I joined him, and we were both out, and Sam had the window closed, before I even knew I’d moved.

  The tar-paper surface of the light well was gritty under my bare feet. Sam pushed me back against the wall between my bedroom window and that of the spare room, putting his finger to his lips and then pointing to the room I used as an office. He was right. A light danced inside. A torch? I gripped my phone tighter.

  I nodded, an acknowledgement that I’d seen it and understood. I was ready to move, but again Sam pulled me back. This time he didn’t gesture. He unbuttoned his overalls. I’d never seen him in anything but homeboy jeans, but by the ambient light he was wearing what looked like a uniform. He shrugged out of the top and pulled off the T-shirt he wore underneath, holding it out to me as he looked in the other direction. Christ, I was naked. I’d been too startled, first, and then too scared, to notice, but here I was, standing with an adolescent boy in a light well at two in the morning, with only a phone to cover myself with. And phone coverage, as we all know, is never very reliable.

  I’d have to be embarrassed some other time. I put the shirt on and, still silent, we moved to the open end of the light well. Sam looked over the edge and then jumped the few feet, gesturing to me to follow. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I did as I was told.

  There was nowhere to hide in the garden. We stayed pressed to the wall of the house, but if anyone looked out of the kitchen door, they’d see us. Sam breathed in my ear again: ‘Is there any way to the street from here?’

  I shook my head and moved my mouth to his ear. ‘That house’ – I pointed to the left – ‘that’s the end of the terrace.’ I’d never been in their garden, and didn’t know if it had street access, but I knew for sure the garden on the other side had none. And if we could get over the fence, then at least we’d be hidden from the person in my house, and I could call the police without being heard.

  I saw Sam work it out too, and then he nudged me towards the fence. I looked up. It had to be two and a half metres high. And I’m – well, I’m not. More like one and a half. And despite zapping around the treetops at Kew, I’m not athletic. Sheer terror had made me agile then. I wasn’t terrified now, just afraid.

  Sam gave me no chance to think. He patted his thigh. ‘One foot here. Next on my shoulder, and you’re at the top.’

  I looked at him. He was less than half my age, he’d barely left school, and had none of the education that I’d been taught to think was what mattered. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks.’ And then I was up and at the top of the fence before I knew I’d even started. And, happily, before I remembered I wasn’t wearing underwear. Instead of that I focused on how I was going to get down the other side without Sam as my climbing frame. That resolved itself quickly when I overbalanced, and half-slid, half-fell. Sam dropped lightly down beside me a moment later.

  Without speaking, we crossed the neighbours’ garden. Once we were around the side of their house I clicked at my phone to give us some light. A second outing for the torchlight app. I’d have to write an online recommendation: ‘Handy for fleeing household invasion!’ But that could wait. The light showed a gate closed with a deadbolt. We were out, and on the street.

  Even so, I live on a dead-end street, and we would have to pass my house to get to the main road. I pulled Sam back into the shadow of the neighbours’ front steps. Voices carry at night, so I kept mine low. ‘I’ll ring the police from here.’ I had begun to hit 999 when I saw his head go up.

  ‘Not cops. Fire.’

  Everything became simpler. Now we didn’t need to be quiet, unseen, we needed to make as much noise as possible, to get everyone up and out of their houses. ‘I’ll take this side, you do that one,’ I shouted to Sam, and even as I reported the fire with my phone to my ear, I was already ringing bells and banging on doors. I sprinted to my house first. There was no doubt where the fire was – the light I’d seen in my office hadn’t been anything nearly as anodyne as a torch – and we had to get the Lewises and Mr Rudiger out fast.

  The 999 operator was calm, promising an engine was minutes away. I didn’t need calm, I needed the police. I disconnected and scrolled down to Jake’s work number as I ran. I didn’t know if anyone would answer at that hour of the morning, but at the very least, I hoped the call would be forwarded. A voice replied on the second ring, ‘CID,’ so I was already ahead of the game.

  ‘I have to speak to Chris,’ I blurted, still banging on doors as I worked my way down the street. I must have heard Chris’ last name several times, but it had never stuck. Then I backtracked. ‘Inspector Jacob Field has been assaulted, and a house has been set on fire. Chris is in charge of the case. Please locate him.’

  This voice was calm. ‘Where was the assault? Where is the inspector now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I—’ I looked around. Sam had deputed several neighbours to check that everyone was out, and was back beside me. ‘Where is Jake?’

  ‘Talbot’s Road. By the roadworks at the junction of the high street.’

  I relayed the information as the fire engines arrived, my voice rising to be heard over the sirens. I began to run towards Talbot’s Road, Sam moving alongside me at a jog.

  ‘Officers are on their way. Do not approach the scene,’ said the voice on the phone, but I had no plans to pay any attention to it. It was a matter of minutes from my house to the roadworks, but when I reached the crossing, there was no one there. I stood, staring at the empty road: cars parked, houses dark, no Jake.

  I was both winded and frantic. ‘Where?’ I shook at Sam’s arm. ‘Where did you see him?’

  He pointed to a spot on the pavement, and I described it over the phone. ‘There are dark marks on the pavement where the assault took place.’ I wasn’t ready to say ‘blood’. ‘But there’s no one here.’

  And I was off and running again, the answer obvious. ‘He’s in the flat,’ I called. I don’t know if I wa
s telling Sam or the man on the phone. ‘They’ve put him in the flat and they’re going to burn it down. Again.’

  My bare feet slapped along the pavement. Neighbours were spilling out along the adjacent street, drawn by the sirens, just as they had for the pub fire. I kept running as I turned into my street, running until I was stopped by a fireman who was moving everyone away from my house.

  ‘He’s in the flat,’ I said again, this time to anyone who would listen.

  Wearing nothing more than a T-shirt has advantages. I slipped out of the man’s grasp and ran up to the house, only to be blocked by another fireman on the front steps. ‘There’s someone still in there,’ I gasped.

  He gave me that Crazy Lady look that men reserve for any women over the age of twenty-four who behave in ways they don’t think appropriate. ‘Everyone’s out,’ he said.

  I was leaning over, hands on knees, panting, but I had enough breath for this. ‘No, he’s unconscious. He wouldn’t have heard anything.’ I stood up straight, to explain both to him and the man on the phone, who I suddenly realised was still there. ‘They’ve taken him from Talbot’s Road where he was knocked out, and carried him to the flat. It’ll burn down, and he’ll be dead. It’ll be like the last fire.’ I was shrieking at them both, even though I knew it gave them more reason to think I was a Crazy Lady.

  I grabbed Sam, who had stayed beside me the whole time. ‘Sam, explain it to him.’ I pushed him towards the fireman on the path, distracting him enough to give me the seconds I needed to run up the stairs and into my flat.

  The fire had barely had a chance to take hold. If Sam hadn’t woken me, if we hadn’t called the fire in, it would have been a different story, but this was the story that we were reading now. The place was filled with smoke, and there were firemen everywhere, but there was no urgency in their movements.