The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘The important bits. Not the parts where you were finding out what the competition was up to.’

  He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘I just like to know who else I’m going to be working with.’

  ‘Bullshit. You like to know who else is going to be trying to get the boss’s attention.’ And I know that because I am exactly the same …

  ‘No sign of Belcott yet.’ He couldn’t suppress a grin of triumph. Peter Belcott was one of the more irritating members of the team: ambitious, ruthless, awkward if you gave him the opportunity. Much too keen. Omnipresent, usually. There was some comfort in the thought that he’d been caught napping this time.

  I tapped the map. ‘Come on. Concentrate. Where do I go from here?’

  He peered at the street signs, then down at the page, flicking frantically as he realised he was looking at Poplar, not Vauxhall.

  ‘Left at the lights. No, straight on.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, sounding anything but. I went with it anyway, and as far as I could tell, we didn’t double back on ourselves more than a couple of times on the rest of the journey.

  Unencumbered by the media, we got to Stadhampton Grove long before the boss arrived, and flashed warrant cards at the uniform on the cordon.

  ‘At least we have a secure scene this time. That’s something,’ Rob remarked.

  I nodded, pulling in to park behind a police car. ‘I wouldn’t like a repeat of the Charity Beddoes one.’

  That had been a fuck-up of epic proportions. It was the fourth murder, the body dumped in Mostyn Gardens, between Kennington and Brixton. The responding officers had seen the hallmarks of the Burning Man straightaway. Unfortunately, one of them had a nice sideline in tipping off a tabloid journalist, who had turned up with a video camera before the forensic team got there. Scotland Yard had to move very quickly indeed to prevent footage of the body and crime scene from being broadcast on the twenty-four-hour news channels; it was on the Internet if you looked for it, though we did try to get it taken down wherever it appeared. The forensic evidence was hopelessly compromised. A woman had died and we’d learned nothing that helped in the hunt for our killer. All because some plod had been partial to making a bit of extra cash.

  It was easy enough to spot where we needed to be; the forensic team were already there, moving screens and lights into position around a patch of blackened grass on some waste ground about a hundred yards from where we’d parked. A tall, lanky figure in a boiler suit was stepping delicately around the area that they’d marked off, his attention focused on the ground where the body presumably lay.

  Rob was looking in the same place as me. ‘Glen’s here already.’

  ‘So I see. Godley will be pleased.’

  Glen Hanshaw was the pathologist who had examined all four of the other victims. He was also one of the superintendent’s best friends. They were around the same age and had worked together for ever, including long hours on most of the cases that had made Godley’s reputation in the first place. We had standing orders to summon Dr Hanshaw to every crime scene. He’d been in Cyprus for one of Godley’s murders a couple of years ago and had come back on the next available flight, abandoning a family holiday with what appeared to be relief. I would not have been Mrs Hanshaw for any money, not least because I found the balding, beaky pathologist unsettling. He had a habit of looking past you while you were talking to him, as if whatever you were saying was so predictable and dull that he had already got to the end of the conversation in his own mind, long before you had stammered out your final question. I didn’t like being made to feel thick, and Dr Hanshaw managed it every time. Presumably Superintendent Godley was more intellectually secure than me.

  Dr Hanshaw’s concentration was total, and he didn’t look up as Rob and I walked towards him, following Kev Cox’s instruction to keep to the common approach path the SOCOs had marked out through the lank winter grass. They’d put down a plastic platform where we could stand, the lead investigator had told us, and I stepped onto it carefully, feeling it flex under Rob’s weight as he joined me.

  There was no point in saying hello to Dr Hanshaw. We might as well not have been there. His assistant, Ali, was standing nearby, scribbling notes as he spoke.

  ‘The body is lying face up in a shallow depression and shows signs of violence ante-mortem and post-mortem. It appears to be a female, but an estimate of her age will have to wait for the PM.’ He crouched. ‘Limbs drawn up and in towards the torso, but I’d suggest she was laid out flat originally; that’ll be muscle-contraction from the heat. Look at the pugilistic pose, the claw-shaped hands. Classic characteristics of exposure to high temperatures.’

  The woman’s skin was blackened and split, disfigured with patches of red and white where the lower layers of the skin had been exposed. The fire had burned her but not from head to toe; it was hard, the experts said, to make a human body burn without other sources of fuel, but you could certainly do a lot of damage. She was wearing what looked like the remains of an expensive dress. The dress had been black, long-sleeved, cut diagonally across the neckline and high on one thigh (– she wore no coat, though it had been a cold night.) The fabric was folded and twisted into a rose at the waist that had stubbornly refused to burn. It was a miracle of design and tailoring that would have flattered the slender figure in life, and still clung tenaciously to it now, even though the dress was in shreds, burned and stained. She had worn high heels, black patent, tiny straps. One had fallen off and was lying on its side beside her. There was dirt on her insteps, damage to the thin skin that stretched over her anklebones. The hands Dr Hanshaw had commented on were hooked and blackened, held just under the woman’s chin as if she’d been trying to ward off the flames. I swallowed, my mind suddenly filled with fire, with fear, with pain. Ali – who was far too posh and pretty, you’d have thought, to be standing beside a dead body at that hour of the morning – was looking pale.

  ‘Was she dead when the fire started?’

  He took out a tiny torch and shone it into the body’s mouth and nose, drawing down the jaw gently. ‘No sign of inhalation. I’d say probably, but we’ll have to take a look at the lungs under a microscope.’

  The torch went into a pocket and his white-gloved hands stretched out, probing through the matted fairish hair on the victim’s head, teasing out knots so he could feel what lay beneath. ‘Skull fractures,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘All at the back of the head. No trauma to the facial bones or tissue ante-mortem. Marks on the face are caused by scorching.’

  That was new. I leaned in, trying to see what he was indicating to Ali. The other victims had been battered beyond all recognition before they were set alight. The Burning Man had done his best to obliterate their features, breaking bones, cartilage, ripping flesh, so they were hideous and somehow interchangeable. He made them into something they weren’t before; he shaped them. Wanton destruction was part of the fun.

  ‘Maybe he was disturbed before he could go through the usual ritual,’ Rob suggested.

  ‘He still had time to set her on fire.’

  The pathologist twisted around and glared at us. ‘Speculation might usefully wait until after the examination, don’t you think? Or would you like me to move out of the way so you can conduct your own assessment of the body?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, embarrassed. Rob mumbled something beside me. The sound of feet approaching was a welcome distraction.

  Hanshaw looked past us and his frown disappeared. He raised a hand and sketched a salute. ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Morning, Glen. What have we got?’ The superintendent stood beside me, listening gravely as Dr Hanshaw ran through his observations. Ali was following him through the notes, ready to prompt, but the pathologist didn’t miss anything out. He never missed anything.

  ‘I’m going to presume you want me to compare this body to the others that we have attributed to your active serial killer,’ Hanshaw said, winding up. ‘Obviously, there are certain poi
nts of difference. Damage to the face is incidental. We also have no signs of restraint used on the hands. No ligature marks, no tape, nothing that he might have used to bind her. But we do have a mark from a stun gun – here.’ He lifted up her hair to show a small burn on her shoulder.

  The stun gun was part of the Burning Man’s signature; we had allowed that detail to be released just to warn potential victims. A jolt from a stun gun would be incapacitating, paralysing, and it was terrifyingly easy to do to someone. Easy, too, to get hold of one, even though they were illegal. We had circulated images of them, hoping that someone would recall seeing a man with a similar device.

  We hadn’t, however, mentioned in the press that the serial killer we were hunting had a distinctive way of tying his victims’ hands, palms outward, thumb to thumb in front of their chests, using generic gardening twine that cut into their flesh. He took no chances that they might fight back. But this woman’s hands were loose. He had been able to control this woman, whoever she was. He should have been finding it harder, not easier. He should have been coping with a terrified victim who knew what to expect, a woman desperate to escape certain death. The element of surprise – the hope of survival – should have been gone by now.

  ‘Other things we might note: the position of the body. This is a much more organised disposal. The others gave the impression of being thrown to the ground – the clothing dragged out of position, grazes on the bodies and so forth. I’d guess that this one was laid out with some care. Face up as well – the previous two were prone.’

  Images flickered through my mind of splayed limbs, twisted torsos, blackened clothes and trees.

  Hanshaw was completing his examination briskly. ‘No ID with the body that I can locate – no bag, nothing in the pockets.’

  ‘Signs of sexual assault?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not at first glance. The underclothing is still in place. I imagine this one will be the same as the others.’

  The psychologists told us that the man we were looking for wasn’t a conventional sexual predator. There was a thrill in what he was doing that was entirely titillating for him, but that didn’t mean he wanted to rape the women he killed – the opposite. He despised them, we were told. He hated them and what they stood for. He channelled his rage into violence. None of the victims had shown signs of sexual assault. The appetite of our killer was entirely satisfied by blood, by breaking bones and charring flesh and leaping flames. It made it worse, somehow. It was one step further removed from anything I could understand.

  Something else was bothering me. ‘He doesn’t seem to have taken anything. Unless he took her coat.’

  ‘What?’ Godley turned to look at me, blue eyes sharp.

  ‘Both earrings are there.’ Gold knots glinted in her ears under the arc lights. ‘And her watch. Her ring.’ An amethyst and diamond eternity ring was on the woman’s right hand.

  ‘Maybe he took a necklace – a pendant or something,’ Rob suggested.

  ‘No.’ Ali spoke at the same time as me, sounding sure. ‘She wouldn’t have worn one, not with that neckline.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have wanted anything else,’ I agreed, and smiled at the pathologist’s assistant, grateful for the backup. I got a cool look in return. She wasn’t easy to get to know, Ali, and I’d never managed any kind of general conversation with her. She was her boss’s creature; her thinly disguised hostility matched his precisely.

  Godley, who had been staring at the body as if he wasn’t really seeing it, as if he wasn’t really there, came to life. ‘No chance of fingerprints, I take it.’

  The pathologist peered at the withered, contorted hands and shook his head. ‘DNA identification, I’d say. Or we can match dental records if someone takes the time to report her missing.’

  But that would take days, he didn’t have to say. The DNA would be quicker if she was on the database. I hoped she was. We deserved a break of some kind. The media would be savagely critical when they realised there was a new victim. It wasn’t fair; we had worked for long days and nights analysing CCTV footage, interviewing sex offenders in the local area, talking to probation officers about people who were of concern to them, stopping and searching lone males on the streets. I had done hours of door-to-door enquiries myself and come up empty-handed. We had leafleted public buildings and local business. There had been roadblocks, appeals for witnesses, press conferences. And we had nothing.

  Godley turned to us. ‘Right. Rob, I want you to go and talk to the first officers on scene. Maeve, can you speak to whoever found her? Find out if they saw anything useful. I’ll finish up here.’

  ‘Right,’ Rob said easily, and turned to go. I paused for a second before following suit, knowing that I wouldn’t get another chance to take in the scene before it was disturbed. Photographs weren’t the same. And there was something off about this one, something that jarred me, even if I couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  After one last long look, I gave up, picking my way across the grass in my unsuitable shoes, wary of twisting an ankle. By the time I made it back to the cars, Rob was already deep in conversation with a couple of uniformed officers, taking notes. I recognised one of them; he had worked out of the same station as me in my first year on the street. I couldn’t remember his name and settled for a brisk nod in his direction, glad that Rob had the job of talking to them rather than me.

  ‘Where’s my witness?’

  The two officers jerked their thumbs in the direction of the police car that was behind them. A shadowy figure was sitting in the back with the doors closed so he couldn’t escape.

  ‘Did you arrest him?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘Almost,’ the one I knew said, and chuckled.

  ‘You’re in for a treat,’ the other officer said. ‘Never met anyone with less to say for themselves.’

  ‘How come?’ I was interested.

  ‘You’ll see. Not the most forthcoming witness.’ He was old enough and experienced enough to have seen plenty.

  ‘Deliberately obstructive?’

  ‘You might have more luck than we did.’

  I frowned, not understanding why he thought that. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Michael Joseph Fallon, Micky Joe to you. He’s an IC7.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was starting to understand. There was no official IC7 designation on the police national computer; it was cop slang for a traveller. ‘And you think he’ll talk to me because …’

  ‘You’re Irish too, aren’t you? Paddies always get on.’

  ‘Great,’ I said bleakly. My name was the giveaway – that and my wild hair, typically Irish, I’d been told. From the first day I walked through the door at Hendon, I’d been called Spud, or had to listen to jokes about how stupid the Irish were, or even fucking Riverdance, for God’s sake. It was all too petty to make a formal complaint, but it bothered me. I’d grown up in England – I had an English accent – but I still didn’t fit in and they made sure I knew it. I had been more than happy to live up to the reputation for having a fiery temper, but it got me in trouble and I was trying to keep it under control, so on this occasion I said nothing else.

  Rob gave me a sunny grin that said more clearly than words I’m glad I’m not you. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue and headed for the car.

  Micky Joe Fallon was twenty-five, not wanted on any outstanding warrants, recently released from prison after a two-year term for burglary and clearly regretting whatever instinct of social responsibility had made him call 999 when he found a woman’s body smouldering in the grass. I let him out of the back of the police car and leaned against the boot, trying to look friendly.

  ‘Can you tell me in your own words what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know what you want with me, I’ve been straight with you,’ he muttered. He had a battered black cap pulled down low over his eyes, and in spite of the cold morning, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that showed off the flickering muscles in his arms.

  ‘You’ve
been very helpful, but I need to get another statement. It’s normal procedure.’ He was edging away from me even as I spoke. ‘You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what you saw and you can go.’ It was almost word-for-word what I’d said to Kelly Staples. This time I was reasonably sure I was speaking the truth.

  He had been out early, he told me, because he was looking for his dog, which had gone missing.

  ‘I saw the smoke first and came over to see what it was.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Had a look around. Once I saw what – it was.’

  ‘Had the fire been burning for long?’

  ‘Don’t know. It was smoking, though. I could smell it from over there.’ He pointed. ‘Thought it was a barbecue at first.’

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust, though in fact he was right. There was still the faintest trace of it in the air.

  ‘And you didn’t see any cars, or anyone else on foot?’

  ‘Nothing.’ And even if he had, I wasn’t going to get to hear about it.

  ‘Have we got an address for you?’

  He gave it to me again, his voice gruff. ‘Can I go?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ I said, resigned, and watched as he crossed the road and disappeared.

  ‘Get anywhere?’ It was one of the uniformed officers who had spoken, the one I didn’t know, and I smiled at him though with gritted teeth.

  ‘Not really. He didn’t have much to say for himself. Even to me.’

  ‘Turns out a pretty face will only take you so far,’ the other one commented.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that it’s harder for some people to get on to murder squads than it is for others.’

  I felt my face flame; it wasn’t the first time I’d had that sort of remark, but it usually wasn’t so brutally put. The other officer laughed, covering it with a cough. There was nothing I could say in response, or at least nothing I wanted to. Ignoring it was the best option. But that didn’t mean I had to be pleased about it, and I swore under my breath as I walked away, quickly.