The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’ Rob tapped my knee. ‘We’re concentrating on Nicola first.’

  The place where he’d touched me tingled. Without thinking about it, I covered it with my hand. When I looked up, Rob was frowning. Quickly, I went on.

  ‘This report from the psychologist suggests that the murderer might be on foot because the bodies are discovered so close to where the victims were last seen in very public places; highly risky for our killer. So either our murderer is impulsive and unwilling to remove them to a quieter location, or he gets a kick out of the risk involved in murdering them in the open, or he has no means of transport. Whether he was on foot or in a car, our best guess is that she didn’t know him – we’ve traced and spoken to practically everyone she’d known since she was at school, and no one rang any alarm bells.’ The file was fat with interviews with her friends, relatives, chance acquaintances, other passengers who had been on that night bus and had come forward. No one had seen anything. No one had heard anything. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. ‘Somehow, he persuaded her to trust him.’

  ‘She was a nice girl, by all accounts. Gentle.’

  ‘The ideal victim. No sign of a sexual assault but he did take a trophy – a heart-shaped locket. She always wore it and we know from the photos of the hen night that she had it around her neck that evening. It hasn’t been found.’ I flipped through the pictures from the crime scene. Establishing shots. Close-ups. A jigsaw puzzle of body parts, each injury carefully catalogued, measured, captured in colour for posterity. Something that had been a girl named Nicola, once. Before Nicola became prey.

  Rob’s voice called me back to the conversation. ‘The accelerant used was common-or-garden petrol. Analysis of the chemical profile came back to BP. There’s about a million BP petrol stations in the greater London area, so that didn’t help much.’

  ‘Seventy-five, actually. And the nearest ones are here.’ I flattened out the map and pointed. ‘Kennington, Camberwell, Peckham Rye, Clapham Common. Further out, you’ve got Tooting, Balham, Wandsworth, Wimbledon Chase. And there’s nothing to say he bought the petrol in that area. It wouldn’t have been an exceptional amount, either. Not more than a can.’

  ‘No one is going to remember selling that,’ Rob agreed. ‘Besides, we don’t know what we’re looking for. There was no sign of a container at any of the crime scenes.’

  ‘Except the one this morning. They found a red can hidden in a front garden nearby.’

  ‘But we’re not sure it connects.’

  ‘We are not.’

  I leaned back and tilted my beer to my mouth. Rob was watching me. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘If I was walking home on my own in the middle of the night, there’s no way I’d stop to chat. How is he getting them to trust him?’

  ‘If we knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because we’d have found him by now,’ Rob said flatly. ‘He’s got to have some trick. Like Ted Bundy had the fake broken arm – you know, “Can you help me with my luggage?” And then next thing you know, lights out.’

  ‘Nicola was a nanny. Victoria Müller, victim number three, was a care assistant. Both of them were used to helping people. Maybe he’s making himself look vulnerable.’

  ‘Could be. See any cripples on the CCTV?’

  I shook my head. ‘There were very few pedestrians at all. We traced a lot of them. The Crimewatch appeal was good from that point of view.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was the only way it was useful.’

  It was after the third murder that Godley had gone on television to plead for the public’s help. We had got literally hundreds of phone calls but if there had been anything truly useful, we’d missed it in the welter of cranks and oddballs that a TV appeal always seemed to attract.

  I flipped Nicola’s file closed and slid Alice Fallon’s out from under it. ‘Our youngest victim. Alice Emma Fallon, nineteen years old, murdered on Saturday the tenth of October. Her body was left in a recreation ground in Vauxhall, not far from the New Covent Garden market.’

  The pictures showed swings in the background, a slide, brightly coloured play equipment. The foreground was a hideous contrast. Her body was found by a white-painted wall at the back of the recreation ground and the flames had scorched a semi-circle on it that was a testament to the ferocity of the fire. Alice, who in life had been sweet-faced and plump, with straight light-brown hair that she wore long and parted in the middle, was not the Alice in the pictures from the crime scene.

  ‘Similar injuries to Nicola; similar MO. He used a stun gun on her. She was missing an earring, a peacock-feather mounted in silver with a turquoise bead. Very distinctive. Bought on a family holiday in Colorado, so while it isn’t quite one-of-a-kind, I think we could be fairly sure that it was the only one knocking around South London in October.’

  ‘Alice was a student and lived in Battersea. She was killed between eleven o’clock and midnight. She had been walking back from a night out with friends in Vauxhall and she never made it home.’

  ‘And that was all she had in common with Nicola. Apart from long hair. And being dead.’

  ‘Thanks for clearing that up,’ Rob said ironically.

  ‘Pleasure.’ I flipped open the third one. ‘Next up: Miss Müller. Aged twenty-six, single at the time of her death, originally from Düsseldorf but had lived in the UK for five years. She was renting a flat in Camberwell. On the night of the thirtieth of October, Victoria was working a late shift at a nursing home in Wandsworth. She finished work at four in the morning and accepted a lift home from a colleague who lived in Hackney – Mrs Alma Nollis, forty-three. Rather than driving her right to her door, Mrs Nollis stopped at the traffic lights at Stockwell tube station and let her out. Victoria should have walked about a mile to her flat, but she ended up in a small, very overgrown park in front of a condemned apartment block – no residents to notice anything out of the ordinary, and no one else saw anything, naturally. Her body was found at twenty past six by a jogger who almost ran through the crime scene before he noticed what was in his path.’

  The jogger had been sick when he realised what he was looking at. When DI Judd had played the 999 call in our briefing there had been loud amusement as he gulped and retched on the phone. I did not feel like laughing, looking at the pictures in the file and the pathologist’s report, where an outline of Victoria’s body was dotted with marks indicating injuries. The care worker had been savagely beaten before she died, with multiple fractures to her eye sockets and her nose. He had broken her jaw in five places. He had knocked out several teeth. He had fractured her skull, her left arm, her ribs and her collarbone. He had kicked her repeatedly, the pathologist believed, given the injuries she had sustained. He had stamped on her right hand. He had used his fists and his feet as well as the hammer. He had taken two silver rings off her left hand; they were unique because she had made them herself, a little fact that made me sad every time I thought of it. He was learning to take his time, Godley’s tame criminal psychologist had said. He was gaining in confidence. He had wanted to linger over the killing. He had wanted to enjoy hurting her. He had wanted to obliterate her features and punish her for existing.

  Victoria Müller had been a slight girl, only five foot one, and delicate. She had weighed just over six stone. She had struggled with a stammer, her parents had told the family liaison officer; she had not been confident with men, or with her manager at the care home who had refused to allow her to work day shifts even though she didn’t own a car and found it hard to get home in the middle of the night. She had been bullied in school. She had liked black-and-white films and Hello Kitty knickknacks. She drank white wine, when she drank, but she hadn’t been out much since moving to Camberwell a year ago. She had had wide-spaced eyes and a turned-up nose, elfin rather than pretty but essentially attractive. She had been shy. She had been gentle. She had put up a fight that night, if the story told by her injuries was to be believed. And she had died wher
e he burned her, in a thicket of trees in a small park, not far from the road but hidden from view.

  ‘He found a better place this time,’ I commented. ‘He could take longer over it. Maybe spend some time watching the body burn.’

  ‘Sick fuck.’

  Rob was shaking his head. I wondered if, like me, he had thought about Victoria’s last moments. Her fear. Her pain. Her total helplessness in the face of an assault so violent that I literally couldn’t imagine what would make one human being want to do such damage to another.

  The food seemed to have turned to lead in my stomach, a dull dragging weight that made me suddenly nauseous. I put my drink down and leaned forward, affecting to look more closely at the files.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  I dredged up a smile. ‘Sure. Never better. Why?’

  ‘You’ve gone very pale.’

  ‘That’s my Irish heritage. I don’t tan easily.’

  Rob made a sceptical noise deep in his throat, but to my enormous relief he didn’t push me further. I didn’t want to admit how much these murders upset me – I didn’t want to admit it to him nor to myself. But there was something pathetic about Victoria Müller that got me every time. She had deserved more from life than she’d got.

  ‘As far as we know, she had nothing in common with Nicola Fielding or Alice Fallon; no friends, no acquaintances, no colleagues …’

  ‘They never lived in the same areas at the same time. They didn’t share any interests.’

  ‘And nor did victim number four. All of which tends to suggest that they were selected by chance,’ I finished. ‘They crossed the path of our killer and ended up dead.’

  ‘Before we go on to unlucky number four, do you want another beer?’

  ‘Why not,’ I said, and Rob headed into the kitchen, returning in a very short space of time with two bottles that were frosted with condensation.

  ‘Victim four was Charity Beddoes, the LSE student – mixed race, very pretty, very clever by all accounts, lived in Brixton. She died on the twentieth of November, at some point between ten past two, when she left her boyfriend at a house party in Kennington after an argument, and five, when her body was found by a taxi driver who was passing Mostyn Gardens. He thought at first that someone was burning rubbish. Then he put two and two together and called us.’

  Rob was reading the boyfriend’s statement. ‘She was pissed, according to this. And royally pissed off with him. He’d been upstairs with another girl and Charity “jumped to conclusions”. I don’t blame her. Still, that is bad luck, isn’t it? Not only are you brutally murdered, but you find out your boyfriend is cheating on you beforehand.’

  I was about to reply but someone else got there first.

  ‘Who said anything about cheating?’

  Ian was standing in the doorway, staring at the two of us with what seemed to me to be a hostile expression.

  ‘You’re home,’ I said unnecessarily. ‘I wasn’t expecting you yet. How was the film?’

  ‘Fine.’

  I waited, but Ian didn’t offer any more details. His mouth looked tight; always a danger sign. ‘Er … sorry I didn’t make it to the cinema. You know it’s not my kind of thing, though.’

  He was staring at the photos on the coffee table with disgust. Rob quietly closed the folders and stacked them at one end of the table, and Ian switched his attention to him without noticeably altering his expression. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Rob came over to talk about the case. You remember Rob, don’t you?’ They had met at the team barbecue last summer. It had not been a conspicuously successful meeting, I recalled a little too late.

  Ian looked at him without enthusiasm. ‘All right?’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Silence. I filled it with, ‘So, how were Julian and Hugo?’

  ‘Fine.’ He unbent slightly. ‘Hugo’s just got back from the Maldives.’

  ‘The Maldives,’ Rob repeated. ‘Lovely.’

  You would have had to know Rob very well indeed to spot that he was taking the piss. I managed not to react. Fortunately, Ian didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t react to it.

  ‘It sounded like a good holiday.’ He looked at me. ‘I left early because I wanted to make sure you were OK.’

  ‘Thank you. That was so sweet of you. You really didn’t have to.’

  ‘Yes, I realise now I needn’t have bothered. You should have told me you were having a quiet night in.’

  ‘We were working.’

  Instead of replying, he raised an eyebrow, staring pointedly at the empty beer bottles on the table in front of me. Just like that, I was angry – furious, in fact. ‘Do you really want to do this now? In front of my colleague?’

  Rob got to his feet and stretched. ‘I think that’s my cue to leave,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I’ll see myself out. See you on Monday, Kerrigan.’

  ‘Take the rest of the beer with you. It seems a shame to waste it on us.’ Rob nodded to me, and edged past Ian, who stepped out of his way but didn’t take his eyes off my face. I listened to Rob’s footsteps in the kitchen, then on the stairs, and after a moment heard a faint thud that was the front door slamming.

  ‘Nice, Ian. Thanks a lot.’

  He tilted his head to one side. ‘Sorry. You should have told me you wanted the flat to yourself. Did I come back at a bad time?’

  ‘For God’s sake, does it look as if we were having fun?’

  ‘I’d say you were having a certain amount of fun, yes. Get down off the cross, Maeve. I know you’d rather be working than doing pretty much anything else. Don’t tell me you were sorry that you couldn’t go out with me and the boys.’

  ‘Not particularly,’ I allowed. ‘But that’s just because I don’t have a lot in common with them.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Ian said levelly, ‘I wonder what you have in common with me.’

  If I had said anything at all in return, it might not have been so bad, but the words fell into the space between us and I couldn’t think what to reply. Nor did I know what to say when we went into the kitchen and found that the middle shelf of mugs had been rearranged so that it spelled out, unforgivably, a word that I had often heard Rob use. There was nothing I could say.

  Not when that particular word seemed to say it all.

  LOUISE

  I was halfway up a ladder stripping wallpaper when my mobile rang. I might not have bothered to answer it if I hadn’t been glad of a rest – my arms were aching – and I hopped off the ladder to see who was calling, raising my eyebrows when I saw the name on the screen.

  ‘Hi, Tilly.’

  ‘Oh, Louise. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning. I hope I didn’t get you out of bed. I don’t like ringing people too early at the weekend, but given the circumstances I thought I’d better.’ Her voice was breathy and she gabbled, the words tumbling over one another so I had to listen closely to work out what she was saying. ‘Isn’t it awful about Rebecca? I just can’t believe it.’

  I mumbled something about how I couldn’t take it in either.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Gerald and Avril about this service for Rebecca.’

  Gerald and Avril, also known as Mr and Mrs Haworth, Rebecca’s parents. I felt unreasonably irritated. Tilly had gone to school with Rebecca; her mother had been best friends with Rebecca’s. That didn’t mean that she was somehow a better or closer friend to Rebecca, but she acted as if it did.

  ‘They hadn’t made definite plans yet. I spoke to them about it on Friday.’ I couldn’t resist telling her when we had talked, from a childish desire to let her know I’d spoken to them before she had. She breezed on, unmoved.

  ‘Oh no. I’ve been working on it for them. I really love the idea of getting together with everyone who loved Rebecca so they can remember her and celebrate her life and whatever. It’s on Wednesday.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit soon?’

  ‘It gives everyone something to distract them. I’m picking the music. Ga
vin is finding nice readings for people to do.’ Gavin was her boyfriend, a recent acquisition, and I couldn’t quite see what business it was of his; he had barely known Rebecca.

  ‘I don’t think I’d be able to do a reading.’ I was hoping to forestall the request.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to ask you anyway. I’ve already got all the readers lined up. I just wanted to let you know it was happening. It’s at the Haworths’ parish church – have you ever been to their house?’

  ‘Many times,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Well, it’s the one at the top of the lane when you turn off the main road. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been to the church before too.’

  ‘Oh good. It’s supposed to start at twelve noon, and then everyone’s to come back to the house for something to eat.’ I could hear her flipping pages. ‘I’ve got a list of Rebecca’s friends from when I organised her twenty-fifth birthday party, but if there’s anyone you can think of who should be included – people from university, I suppose – can you let me know who and how to get in touch with them?’

  I said I would have a think and get back to her, not meaning it. ‘Who else will be there?’

  ‘Everyone who was important to her.’

  I hesitated for a second, then plunged. ‘Even Gil?’

  ‘Of course. He was the first person I called.’ She sounded surprised that I even asked. Of course she had invited him. I swallowed, trying not to overreact. There was no reason to be frightened of seeing him. The dry mouth was unnecessary.

  I said goodbye to Tilly and went back to stripping the muddy orange paper that must have been on the walls of the spare bedroom since the eighties. I had plans for the room that included billowing curtains, white-painted floorboards with a sheepskin rug in place of the brown carpet that I had just ripped out in a fog of dust, new pillows and a new mattress for the bed, and pale pink wallpaper with a delicate pattern that would make anyone waking up there feel as if they had slept in a cloud. It was hard work, but satisfying, and I had found myself singing under my breath earlier in the day, but after Tilly’s phone call I didn’t have the heart for that. I finished the wall, because I’d promised myself I would, and gave up for the day.