DYING EMBERS an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘The forensics team gave me a couple of spares. I’ve got them in the boot of the car.’

  ‘Who’s the informant?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Security firm. New bloke, a bit keen, by all accounts. Mostly, they don’t much bother with these properties — they’re falling down anyway. The guards are told to concentrate on the occupied premises. He found a side door open and went to investigate.’ He nodded in the direction of one of the division cars. A pale shocked face stared out at them.

  ‘Poor sod,’ Thomas commented. ‘Where’s these suits, then?’

  ‘Mr Drayton said to wait till he gave the word, Boss.’

  ‘Did he?’ Thomas strode to Garvey’s car and pulled a thin white overall from the boot. He sighed. ‘I feel like Andy Pandy in these things,’ he said, sitting on the boot rim to get his feet into the leg holes.

  Garvey took the second suit. ‘It’s a bit wet underfoot, at least on the ground floor, so . . .’

  ‘Save the overshoes for indoors. Right,’ Thomas said. He went ahead of Garvey, nodding to the PC guarding the mesh gate into the passage at the side of the warehouse. He used a flashlight to pick a safe course through the rubbish and slime in the narrow passage. The beam picked out the blackened and rotting corpse of a rat, and Thomas gave an utterance of disgust.

  ‘How the hell did that get there?’ he demanded.

  Garvey peered over his shoulder. ‘Ran out after the fire?’ he suggested.

  They went inside, Thomas first, stepping too heavily over the threshold and splashing icy water into his shoes.

  ‘It’s fairly deep in places, Boss.’

  Thomas, resisting the temptation to make a sarcastic remark, sighed and went on, taking more care, heading for the ghostly light which flared from the direction of the concrete steps up to the first floor. Arc lamps had been set up to aid the pathologist’s preliminary examination. Occasional flashes and the whirr of an electric motor informed Thomas that the SOCOs were also at work; the soft murmur of their voices carried down to them. Thomas paddled over to the staircase.

  ‘Is that you, Chief Inspector Thomas?’

  Thomas recognized the gravelly voice of the Home Office pathologist, Timothy Drayton. Thomas identified himself.

  ‘You can come up, if you’re properly attired.’

  ‘Left my dicky-bow at home.’

  He heard a dry chuckle, reminiscent of rocks skittering down a mountainside.

  ‘Don’t forget the overshoes,’ Drayton said.

  At the top of the steps, Thomas and Garvey stood blinking in the light. The floor was littered with splinters of wood, some blackened by the fire, as well as fragments of fabric and tufts of some sort of fibrous material. In addition to taking photographs, the SOCOs were videotaping the scene, holding tape measures next to various items and giving details of their position in relation to the body.

  The air reeked of accelerants, charred wood and the sweet smell of burnt pork — except Thomas realized, with a sickening jolt, that it wasn’t pork.

  ‘Inspector!’ Dayton’s appearance matched the voice: he was craggy-featured, and his skin had a desiccated look. He shooed a couple of the crime scene team to one side, and Thomas resisted — just — the impulse to close his eyes and turn away.

  ‘Not pretty, I’m afraid.’

  Thomas cleared his throat. ‘How long?’

  ‘Difficult to say, but more than a few days. You will have noticed this poor chap isn’t as badly burned as the first. But only because of the blast.’

  ‘Blast?’ Thomas echoed.

  ‘Much of the debris you see was, we believe, originally here.’ He indicated a pile of rubbish near the body. ‘Our friend here was probably lying face down on top of what appears to have been a bonfire.’

  Thomas’s neck bristled and he felt a chill of recognition. ‘The body took the main force of the blast. If you’d care to come around here, you’ll see what I mean.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  Drayton smiled sympathetically. ‘There was a container of camping gas under this pile of junk,’ he went on. ‘It exploded when the fire got going and more or less put out the blaze.’

  ‘So you could get more forensic evidence from this boy?’

  Drayton looked at the corpse. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘But there is extensive soft-tissue damage.’

  ‘Boss,’ Garvey said excitedly, catching up with Thomas at the bottom of the steps. ‘Didn’t Mrs Connelly say something about a bonfire?’ Thomas slipped off his overshoes and stepped into the inky water on the ground floor.

  ‘She also said something about the place being flooded,’ Thomas said. ‘The significance hadn’t escaped me.’

  DCI Thomas called an early morning briefing on Thursday. The main office was packed: CID and uniformed officers sat at or on desks, a few stood at the back of the room, or leaned against filing cabinets. Thomas turned his sad gaze on them, and the room fell silent.

  ‘The body discovered last night at Norton’s warehouse has been identified as Frank Traynor.’ There was a murmur of surprise from the few officers who had got in too late to hear the news in the staff canteen.

  ‘We haven’t had the PM results, but the body was burned, and it was also—’ he searched for the right word — ‘damaged as a result of an explosion. There were accelerants at the scene, and the explosion was almost certainly caused by a full bottle of camping gas.’

  ‘Was he sniffing that an’ all?’ PC Mayhew asked.

  There was a ripple of laughter, and Thomas fixed him with a rheumy eye. ‘Was that a serious question?’

  Mayhew straightened up. ‘Yeah, Boss, I mean, these kids’ll sniff anything to get high, won’t they?’

  Thomas stared until Mayhew blushed.

  ‘Likely not, in this case. Forensics think it was buried under a pile of junk. We’ve got a batch number on the bottle — I’ll need someone to check with the manufacturers — find out which retailer it went to — see if we can trace the purchaser.’

  Nita Dhar volunteered, and he moved on. ‘Now, it was wet in that warehouse, swimming, you might say. So maybe the lad climbed on top of the rubbish to keep out of the damp, but the injuries—’ He pointed to a photograph of the body, pinned to one of the noticeboards. ‘The injuries are mainly to his chest, so he must’ve been lying face down when it went off. I don’t see it myself. He might lie on his side, or curl up to keep warm, but lying face down like that . . .’

  ‘You think he was put there?’ Vince asked.

  ‘Of course, we have to wait for Dr Drayton’s findings, but for now . . . The official line is we’re treating this death as suspicious. Garvey, see if we can hurry up the tox reports on Ryan Connelly, will you? Remind them we’ve been waiting two weeks, and now that we’ve got Frank as well, they might like to treat this as urgent.’ He returned his attention to Vince. ‘Have you okayed the interviews at St Michael’s?’

  Vince nodded. ‘The headmaster’s having the assembly hall set up with desks so we can interview as many as possible at once.’

  ‘Start with the Sixth Form,’ Thomas said. ‘I want to know if Frank’s been in touch with anyone since he disappeared last Tuesday. Has anyone been acting strangely? Anyone been off sick, whatever. Anything out of the ordinary.’

  Garvey spoke up. ‘Should I get on to The Tribune, see if they’ll run an appeal for information?’

  ‘It can’t hurt, but I don’t want any hint that we’re treating this any differently to the first death. We’re not sure it is any different, and if there are other people involved, I’d like to keep them feeling complacent about the investigation.

  ‘Vince,’ he said. ‘You were trawling the railway station a couple of days back, weren’t you?’

  Mayhew stifled a snigger.

  ‘Did you get anything useful out of the lads?’

  ‘Not as much as she would’ve liked.’ It was said in a low growl, but the officers around Garvey heard it and a couple of them laughed. He had seated
himself a little in front of Vince, and he now turned back, trying to catch his eye. Thomas made a mental note to have a word with Garvey after the briefing.

  Vince looked past Garvey as if he were invisible. ‘Nothing useful, Boss,’ he said. ‘We left a contact number with some of the lads.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  Thomas lost his temper. ‘Have you got something to say, Garvey, or is that just flatulence I hear?’

  There was general laughter at this, and Garvey said, ‘No, Boss.’

  ‘No, you’ve got nothing to say, or no, it wasn’t flatulence?’

  ‘Neither. I mean, no to both.’

  Thomas let his gaze rest on Garvey’s shining face, until he squirmed uncomfortably and added, ‘Sorry, Boss.’

  ‘You want me to go back — talk to them again?’ Vince asked.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘You know the St Michael’s kids better than any of us,’ he said. ‘Let’s take advantage of that special relationship. You’ll lead the interview team at the school.’

  Ten minutes later, tasks assigned, the office emptied. Vince found that a way parted for him as he walked down the stairs, some of the non-uniformed officers pressed back against the wall to let him pass. ‘Vince thinks he’s in heaven,’ he heard from behind him. Garvey.

  ‘Why’s that, John?’ an obliging crony asked.

  ‘Being ordered to take advantage of his “special relationship” with the kids.’

  Vince swung round, nearly bumping into WPC Dhar. She shot him a sympathetic glance and then hurried on.

  ‘What the hell are you driving at?’

  ‘Just making an observation.’

  ‘You can take your observations and shove them where the sun don’t shine.’

  ‘Not my bag,’ Garvey said, camping it up. ‘Shows how wrong you can be, though,’ he went on, looking at Vince, but addressing the others who were enjoying the entertainment. ‘Here’s me, thinking it was guilt made you volunteer for drugs liaison officer at St Michael’s, when you had different reasons altogether.’

  Vince blanched, seeing in a vivid flash the boy in his dream tumbling backwards.

  The door opened and DCI Thomas stepped through. Onlookers started to shuffle past the two men. Thomas didn’t have to speak. He looked from Garvey to Vince. Vince was the first to move; Garvey held his ground, only following a few seconds afterwards, and Vince knew that he would see it as a victory in what was beginning to look like a campaign.

  29

  It was a toss-up between driving and going by bus. The car was almost out of petrol, and she didn’t fancy queuing to get on and off the petrol station forecourt on her way to work. The weather forecast was for rain later, which made getting the bus a less attractive prospect, but for now it was dry, and Lauren decided to take a chance.

  She was feeling more relaxed and optimistic than she had been for weeks. She had visited her mother on her day off, and the trip home to Frodsham had helped her to recover her sense of proportion in a way that her counsellor and her own endless inner arguments could not.

  ‘Work, a man, or that voluntary stint you do?’ It was said out of the blue, as they shared the washing-up in her mother’s narrow kitchen after lunch.

  ‘Samaritans,’ Lauren said, feeling a little sheepish. She thought she had put in a convincing performance of ease and jollity during the morning.

  ‘Well, I won’t ask ’cos you’ll not tell me. I don’t need the details, but you’ve said it often enough yourself, Lauren: do your best, then walk away.’

  ‘I’ve tried, Mum . . .’

  ‘It’s not your problem, love. It’s someone else’s that they’ve brought to you. They’ve talked it over, you’ve given what help you can, now it’s up to them.’

  Lauren had thought about that a lot since her mother had said it, knowing it to be true, and wondering why she found it so hard, in Frank’s case, to let go. It was partly because he kept telephoning, asking for her, and partly because he was one of Geri’s pupils — and knowing what had happened to Ryan didn’t help. But Frank was not her responsibility, and however painful that knowledge was, she had to accept it.

  She turned right at the bottom of Gresford Avenue, in the direction of the main road. It was tough on Geri, she knew, but she couldn’t tell her friend even that she’d spoken to Frank last weekend. How could she? Apart from breaking the confidentiality of the caller, she would be putting Geri in the invidious position of knowing that he was alive and well, but unable to tell anybody.

  As she paid for a newspaper at the newsagent’s next to the bus stop, she decided she would talk to Geri that night, tell her that she couldn’t say any more about Frank, but she hoped it wouldn’t drive a wedge between them.

  She leafed through the paper, thinking about her day ahead. Thursday was busy for her: a school party was due in from ten until eleven-thirty for a session on using the library for research, then the University of the Third Age were having a guest speaker to talk about exercise and joint pain. They would need access to tea- and coffee-making facilities, but they organised themselves and always cleared up afterwards — Lauren would only have to make sure the chairs were set out in the meeting room on the ground floor. The bus arrived, and she folded her newspaper and got on board, still planning her day.

  * * *

  He had watched her go down the hill, holding back until she turned the corner before gunning the engine and following. He pulled up at the junction with the main road and waited to see if she would cross over. When she went into the newsagent’s, he had to signal a car to pass him while he watched to see where she would go. Satisfied that she was staying at the bus stop on the near side of the road, he turned into the main road and switched off the engine.

  She queued with her back to him, reading her newspaper. Not so much as a twitch of the shoulder blades to hint that she sensed his presence. He felt mildly disappointed: he felt that his commitment to her deserved some degree of recognition.

  Following the bus was more of a problem than he had expected. The bus lanes weren’t available to him at this time of day, although he risked using them once or twice when the traffic was badly snarled, and he was in danger of losing the bus.

  He decided to take a chance on being stopped by the police, and followed the files of buses into the new bus station, waiting until he saw her get off, then he zipped out into the traffic and took the next road left, where he parked the car. She couldn’t be going far, and he would be less conspicuous on foot. He ran back to the corner and almost bumped into her coming the other way. He carried on for a few yards, then doubled back, and watched her cross the road and walk up the steps into the memorial gardens. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and even paused for a few minutes to look at the snowdrops that were just beginning to flower. Museum, library, or art gallery?

  He amused himself for a moment or two guessing her occupation. When she went into the library, he was surprised. She looked too classy to fit his idea of a librarian — he had half convinced himself she was the arty type, expecting her to trot up the steps of the art gallery. He waited a few minutes: she might be returning overdue books, after all — then he used his mobile phone to call the library.

  ‘Hi, I’m over at Lauren’s place. I thought she wasn’t working today, but I must’ve got the days mixed up.’

  The woman who had picked up the phone said, ‘I saw her come in a few minutes ago. I’ll try to find her for you.’

  ‘No! No . . . I hate to bother her at work.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Thing is, I wanted it to be a surprise. When does she get off?’

  ‘She’s working late tonight, love,’ the woman said, sorry to disappoint him. ‘She won’t finish till nine. But she’s off at five o’clock on Friday and Saturday, if that’s any good.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks, you’ve been a great help.’

  He punched the disconnect button. It was tempting to go in and see her. Watch her going about her work, see how she dealt wi
th the public, but he didn’t want to alert her — if she saw him here, and then again near her house, she might make the connection; it could spook her, and he didn’t want her to be forewarned.

  30

  The mist and drizzle of the previous night had dispersed after sunrise, but the early part of the day had been grey and overcast and Adèle had done little trade during the morning and early afternoon. Then a short cloudburst was followed by an unexpected parting of the clouds, and the sun twinkling on the puddled pavement seemed to prompt a change in mood — the crowds became more cheerful, and individuals more generous. She sold four magazines in half an hour to office workers on their way home — more than she had sold all day.

  Since the Taxman had first put the squeeze on her she had been careful, moving about, selling at different times of day, making it harder for him to creep up on her. She hadn’t seen him in four days, and that was just fine by her. Today she was outside Marks & Sparks, and at the rate she was going, she’d be finished in less than an hour.

  The sky was beginning to tinge with red, and here and there streetlights flickered into life. A woman came over, her pound coin ready; it was still warm to the touch. Adèle wished her a pleasant evening, and she rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t know my lot,’ she said. Simple contact like this, a brief exchange with someone who had a normal family, a normal life, was what gave Adèle confidence that she did have something to offer. There had been times when she thought she was marked in some way — like the man in the Bible, cursed to wander the world, branded with his sins, but since she’d started selling the Big Issue, she had recovered some of her self-respect, and there were times when she actually enjoyed the work.

  ‘You seem to be doing a brisk trade.’

  Adèle turned, smiling, taking the coin offered by her next customer, another woman, and handed her a copy of the magazine. ‘At this rate, I’ll be able to retire to my mansion in Cheshire by the end of the month,’ she said.

  Only two more to sell. She dropped the coins into the deep pockets of her waterproof and heard the satisfying jingle as they made contact with the others.