The Burning Man

by Edward Figg

  ‘Or newspapers,’ added Hollingsworth.

  Sergeant Tom Crane slid out of the driver’s seat and PC Barry Ambrose, from the other side. They came over into the lock-up.

  ‘Thought I’d just pop out for a bit of fresh air,’ said Crane. He looked around and rubbed his hands together, turned to Ambrose, and said, ‘Okay, let’s get this stuff loaded up and out of here, shall we?’

  ‘And while you two are doing that, I think you and I, Luke, should have a word with Billy and then go around and pay that security guard a visit.’ said Jill Richardson.

  ‘Yes, and then get back and get this lot catalogued,’ he said, looking at the stack of boxes that were slowly filling up the back of the van.

  ****

  Later that afternoon, Carter was leaning back in his chair sipping coffee from a mug with a picture of the Tower of London on it, while listening to Luke Hollingsworth and Jill Richardson relate the events that had unfolded during the morning.

  ‘Old man Silverman had no idea what Billy and the security guard were up to,’ said Hollingsworth. ‘No idea at all. After we finished interviewing Billy, we went and pulled in the security guard. Billy gave him up. Amos Harper. He protested his innocence, but when we told him that Billy had coughed to the lot, he fell apart. We got a full confession. Ten years he’s been with the firm. Before that, he was in the army. He even applied to join the force but got knocked back.’

  ‘I spoke to the security firm. They told me Harper had reported a radio missing three months ago. He’s admitted to nicking it,’ said Richardson.

  ‘So, who’re the brains behind this little venture?’ Carter looked at Richardson, then at Hollingsworth. ‘The pair of them haven’t got two brain cells between them,’ he said.

  ‘They met in a pub about eight months ago,’ said Richardson. ‘One thing led to another, and they hatched up this little plan between them. They’re both first-time offenders, none of them has any prior. Harper got himself into debt and needed the money. He got the idea from a television series. Billy’s excuse was the money was to help him get away because he was sick and tired of living on the dole. He was the one responsible for the break-ins. He found the old man’s lock-picking tools one day and then went on the net to find out how to use them.’

  ‘Most of the stuff they nicked was still in the lock-up,’ said Hollingsworth. ‘We’ve managed to recover ninety-five per cent of what was stolen. Billy’s flogged some of it on eBay. They share the profits, with Billy taking the biggest portion because, according to him, he took all the risks. We’ve got his laptop so we should be able to check what he’s nicked and sold.’

  ‘We’ve got full statements. They’re due to appear before the beak first thing Monday morning,’ added Richardson.

  ‘It could have turned into a very profitable little sideline if they’d hadn’t have been caught. Well done, Luke, Jill. Good result, you did well,’ Carter said.

  Chapter 24

  Monday 10.30 a.m.

  The frigid east wind set the newly fallen leaves piling up against the old grey headstones while trees shivered in the bitter wind, their bare branches dripping with rain. Peering out from under the dripping brolly, Kirby looked around the sea of faces as the mourners in the small graveyard started to disperse. She recognised some from the photos she’d seen in Hakim’s file.

  Standing under open umbrellas, protecting themselves from the light mid-morning drizzle, Hakim’s cousin and wife stood talking to the landlady, Mrs Habibi, and her husband.

  Kirby knew the face of Zayin Abbas, the Imam from the mosque.

  Abbas had conducted the service, none of which Kirby could understand as it was all in Arabic. She had seen him many times before around town. His long white beard blew from side to side as he strolled along the avenue of dripping trees towards the main carpark. Faces accompanied him that Kirby did not recognise, but from their garb, it was clear that they were all the same faith. The one face she’d been looking for and hoping for was that of Richard Eades. He was nowhere in sight.

  A gust of wind blew her hair across her face and eyes. She pushed it back, then started to follow the last of the mourners out of the churchyard, her feet crunching on the loose gravel. All around her, rows of tombstones stood silent and erect. They were to her left, her right, in front of her and behind her. They were monuments to a sea of dead. Some were crumbled and decaying from the weathering of centuries. Some were smooth marble with new black writing and laid with floral tributes. Most, though, were overgrown and unkempt. As she started walking past the broken tombstones, she thought of Mary Lampton. There would be no mourners for her. Just an unmarked pauper grave and a silent prayer!

  Standing by the rear of the black hearse were two figures. One wore a black top hat the other in a flat peaked cap. Kirby recognised the man in the cloth cap. It was Wally Short from the Kingsport Advertiser. He wore a scarf of mismatched wool oddments that was about twice as long as it needed to be. It was wrapped twice around his neck with the ends dangling freely below his waist. He instantly reminded Kirby of Doctor Who. The other was the dour face of the funeral director, Cornelius Bradshaw. He stood there in a long black frock coat, his forlorn-looking face a perfect picture of controlled sadness. Like his long black frock coat, it was put on only for work. A nine-to-five look.

  She doubted it was that he was a cold person — quite the opposite, she thought. The man had to find a way not to be drained by the constant grief of the relatives. She had seen him in the Black Bear one Sunday lunchtime some weeks ago, after Dave Penrose had come up for the weekend. They had been up to West End the night before to see a show. Working day in and day out in the world of the bereaved, she guessed could wipe anyone out emotionally. You had to be a man with two faces. It was not a job for everyone, she thought. As she drew level with the undertaker’s hearse, Wally Short stepped out in front, blocking her path.

  ‘Sergeant Kirby. Good morning. I was surprised to see you here today,’ he said.

  She gave him a noncommittal stare. Noticing the drizzle had stopped, she started to fold up her brolly, first giving it several hard shakes to dislodge the worst of the clinging water.

  ‘Just here to pay our respects,’ she said, deliberately shaking the droplets in his direction. They ended up all over his trousers and his highly polished black shoes.

  ‘Are you any nearer to finding out who is responsible for the tragic death of Mr Hakim yet?’ he enquired.

  ‘I believe Detective Chief Inspector Carter is preparing a statement as we speak,’ she said. ‘You’ll be informed about it in due course.’

  She smiled and carried on across into the carpark, unlocked her car and got it. She sat for some time, asking herself why Eades hadn’t come to the funeral. Taking the phone from her pocket, she dialled Eades’s home number. It kept ringing until eventually the caller was asked to leave a message. She then tried his mobile. Still, he failed to answer and was again asked to leave a message. She called the control centre.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Marcia Kirby. Richard Eades’s tracker. Where is he?’

  ‘His location is Chalk Lane Farm.’

  She thanked them and hung up. Kirby sat thinking for a few moments. After coming to a decision, she switched on the engine and set the wipers to clear the wet windscreen. Waiting until the hearse had pulled away, Kirby put the car into gear and followed it out of the carpark and into the street. Instead of turning left and going back into town, she turned right and sped off in the direction of Chalk Lane Farm.

  As Dave Lynch sat at his desk staring out at the drizzle, his mobile buzzed. He took it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at the incoming number. Standing up, walked over to the window and gazed out, his head bobbing up and down listening to what the caller had to say. After a short while, he put the phone back in his pocket, then went over to Carter’s office, tapped on the door and went in.

  ‘Boss, forensics have just been on. They’ve managed to crack the phone they found in the pickup.
There were only two numbers on it. One belonged to Kelly, and the other was the number for Rafael Garcia in Spain.’

  ‘That sounds about right because he’d need to stay in touch with him about the legit side of the business,’ said Carter.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘the most interesting part of it is —’ he paused dramatically, looking at Carter, and said, ‘the phone is registered in the name of Richard Eades.’

  ‘Eades?’ Carter said in a surprised voice. ‘Christ. So that bastard’s been stringing us along all this time. He’s a part of it. He’s in it right up to his bloody neck. No wonder he wasn’t worried about Kelly going after him. I had a feeling all along; there was something not right with that bastard. He took everything to calmly.’ He brought his fist down hard on the desk.

  ‘So, if Eades has Garcia’s number, then Garcia has to be in on this as well. It’s slowly beginning to make sense. So much for Inspector Perez and his ringing endorsement about how he was a well-known, well-respected member of the community that had served on the town committee and as Deputy Mayor. Legitimate businessman, my arse!’ said Carter.

  ‘Garcia is out of our reach, so, for the time being, we keep this under our hats. We have no solid evidence about his involvement in any of this, but I can pass all that on to DCI Carver later. He can handle that. It’s Kelly we want at the moment. We know where Eades is, so he’s not going to be a problem.’

  ****

  Kirby drove slowly up Chalk Lane, turned in under the tunnel and continued on until eventually pulling in behind the old barn.

  The first thing she noticed as got out of the car was a yellow trail bike propped up against the side of the barn. Had Kelly finally come? she thought. She took out her phone and called Carter. His phone was engaged. It went to voicemail, so she left a message. She looked towards the house. All was quiet. Nobody had come out to meet her. Whoever was inside had maybe not heard her drive up.

  Parked a short distance away, in the stable, she saw Eades’s Honda Civic. She walked over to it and looked in through the open window. Strewn around the passenger’s footwell was some CDs. Sitting on the passenger’s seat was a security video recorder. She stood looking at it, then all of a sudden it started to make sense.

  This had to be the missing recorder from Compton Furniture. But why did Eades have it? She pondered on it for a while. There could only be one explanation for it, she thought.

  Eades had to have been down to Compton Furniture. He must have killed Kelly’s brother and started the fire as pay-back for Kelly killing Ajmal Hakim, or was it that he just wanted to take over the whole operation himself? Was Kelly the next target? The camera would have recorded his presence there, so he took the only piece of evidence there to link him to the crime. Yes, she thought. It all makes sense.

  She took out her phone and again called Carter. There was still no answer. She hit speed dial and called up Dave Lynch. He picked up straight away. She started telling him what she’d found and the conclusions she’d come up with. After the call, she walked back to her car. The plan was to meet up with the others at the end of the lane as Lynch had suggested. She was just about to open the door of her car when she felt something cold and menacing press into the back of her neck. She froze.

  ‘Not leaving on my account are you, Sergeant. How disappointing,’ said Kelly, pressing the two barrels of the shotgun into her neck. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them and walk towards the house.’ She turned around, letting her hands drop to her sides. He prodded her in the back with the shotgun all the way across the courtyard and through the front door of the house. Kelly pushed her down the passage and into the kitchen. ‘Stand there,’ he commanded. She stopped. ‘Now turn slowly around and look at me.’ She slowly turned to face him.

  ‘Where’s Richard Eades?’ she said. ‘His car’s here. What have you done to him?’

  ‘He’s quite comfortable. He’s down in the cellar waiting to meet his maker.’ Kirby looked at him. It came as a surprise. When the house had been searched earlier by forensics and by their own team, neither of them found any signs of a cellar.

  ‘I see by the look on your face you had no idea there was a cellar. Well, that’s where he is! He’s sitting on three cases of dynamite — stuff us lads in the IRA never got around to using. He killed my brother so now he has to pay. It’s a fitting end, don’t you think?’

  ‘How do you know he was responsible for your brother’s death?’ she said.

  He stared at his bruised knuckles. ‘He admitted the whole thing to me not more than half an hour ago. He said it was his payback for killing that worker friend of his, Hakim.’

  ‘So, you admit to killing him? Hakim didn’t know what was in those pallets. He didn’t even know that Eades had even taken the stuff. He knew nothing about you and Eades’s enterprise. You murdered an innocent man!’

  ‘Eades was greedy,’ he said, spitting out the words. ‘He had big ideas about branching out on his own. He should have stayed with us. We had a good thing going.’

  ‘Us?’ she frowned. So, the boss had been right after all. It took a while, but she had also come to that conclusion. ‘So, he was part of this all along?’ she said. ‘And what about your Spanish friend, Garcia?’

  ‘Ah. So, you know about Garcia. You, coppers. You’re not as smart as you think you are, are you?’

  ‘The thing I can’t work out it why kill Mary Lampton? What did she have to do with this?’

  ‘Mary who?’ He looked blank for a moment. ‘Oh yes… her?’ Kelly said. ‘You mean that silly old cow who thought she could get the better of me. Old Mary was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The stupid cow saw me up in Plimpton Woods that night, didn’t she. Tried a bit of blackmail. She told me to meet her up in that old shed in the woods with a thousand pounds. Getting rid of her was easy. She was off her head with booze, anyway. No one will miss her, not even her silly badgers. Oh yes, I knew all about her friends in the woods,’ he chuckled. ‘She called them “her family”.’

  Kirby thought, So, I was right? Mary Lampton did try to blackmail you.

  ‘After the fire, we found a syringe outside the phone box on Mill Lane. That was the start of your downfall.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I wondered where that had gone to. When I got back, it wasn’t in my backpack. So that’s where I dropped it?’

  ‘Why did you report the fire?’

  ‘Old IRA trick. We’d did that back in the old days sometimes, after planting a bomb.’

  ‘But this was a fire, not a bomb. Why bother?’

  ‘Bomb, fire, what does it matter. They’re all the same. It’s what we did. Old habits die hard.’

  ‘You like living in the past, do you, Martin? You’re a sick man. You do know that, don’t you, Martin?

  ‘If you think you can mess with my head, you’ve got another think, dearie. That’s not going to work.’

  ‘Martin. You need help.’

  He took a step back, shut the door and then came slowly across the room to her. He stood only inches from her face. She held her ground. ‘My colleagues are on their way here so don’t do anything stupid. It’s all over Martin.’ She pulled out her handcuffs. ‘Turn around and put both hands on your head. You’re under arrest.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘You have to be kidding me. You and whose army. I don’t know what game you think this is, but in my game, shotgun beats handcuffs, every time. Sorry, darling, you lose.’ He grabbed them from out of her hand and threw them across the room.

  He gave a wolfish grin and brought his fist across her face and rammed the butt of the gun into her shoulder. She staggered back and slammed up against the wall by the door and fell into a heap on the flagstone floor.

  ‘Let them come. Let your whole bloody army come. No one will be leaving this place alive, I can guarantee you that.’ He slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a small black box. ‘All I have to do is press this little red button, and it’s all over. There’s enough explosive under this flo
or to destroy this whole house and all of us with it.’

  ‘So that’s where your little setup is,’ she said to herself. ‘All this time it’s been sitting here right under our very noses.’

  He took a few paces towards her and sunk his boot into her side. She groaned loudly. The intense pain was like a bolt of electricity running through her body.

  Hearing the sounds of an engine, Kelly went to the window and pulled aside the curtain and looked out down the drive. He saw a car approaching. It came fast and pulled up in the courtyard. He watched the two men get out and look around. While he was distracted, Kirby started to pull herself upright using the edge of the table. Half dazed with pain and bleeding slightly from the nose, she tried to lean over and open the kitchen door.

  With her head swimming and her vision blurred, she found she couldn’t unlatch it. Her fingers were jumping rhythmically as if in spasm. And then her legs gently folded and she subsided slowly back onto the floor like some ungainly marionette. Her bladder suddenly felt strange. Oh God, she prayed, don’t let that happen, not now. She lay fighting against losing control of her bladder and the need to vomit.

  Hearing her groan, Kelly laid the shotgun down on the table, then came over and dragged her bodily away from the door. From somewhere he’d produced a knife. It lay gleaming in his other hand. She looked up into his face. A final glance into his angry eyes confirmed the outcome. He’s going to kill me, she thought.

  The back door of the kitchen suddenly burst open, hitting Kelly in the back. Carter rushed in followed by Dave Lynch. The door knocked Kelly off balance, causing him to drop the knife. It slid to the floor.

  Without hesitating, Carter slammed his fist directly into Kelly’s face and sinking another into his soft underbelly. He yelled at Lynch to help Kirby. Lynch bent down and tried to lift her, but her face creased up in pain. She groaned.