Bridge to Burn

by Rachel Amphlett

  Lucas managed a smile. ‘That would be a first for me. No – it’s an exit wound. A scorch mark.’

  Kay took a step back. ‘No fingerprints, and an exit wound on his foot. He was electrocuted, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well done, Hunter. Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘Is that what killed him?’

  Lucas reached across and pulled a brightly coloured sheet over the mummified remains, leaving the head exposed. ‘Yes. I’m ninety per cent certain of that.’

  ‘And he sustained the crack to the back of his head afterwards?’ said Gavin. He gestured to the shrivelled form, the empty eye sockets pale under the laboratory lights. ‘I mean, when he was already dead?’

  ‘I believe so, yes,’ said Lucas. He tugged the sheet across the victim’s face and began to remove his gloves.

  Kay exhaled. ‘So, did you get any fingerprints off his right hand?’

  ‘I’ve emailed the results to you and your records officer.’

  ‘Fantastic, thanks.’

  ‘That building was crawling with contractors and site security during the redevelopment works, so why didn’t anyone report it?’ said Gavin.

  ‘The carpet fitters mentioned to Hughes in their original statements that they were delayed one morning because the power was out in the building,’ said Kay. ‘Maybe our victim here was electrocuted and someone else hid his body to cover up the fact they’d been there.’

  ‘But John Brancourt says he employed Sutton Site Security to keep a watch on the place after they threatened him.’

  Kay’s gaze returned to the form under the sheet and a shiver crossed her shoulders. ‘Well, he didn’t end up in that cavity of his own volition, Gav. Someone was there when he died and knew what happened to him. All we have to do is find out who that was.’

  Nineteen

  Upon returning to the police station on Palace Avenue, Kay elected to interview Tom Walsh, the carpet fitters’ supervisor.

  Carys managed to track down both carpet fitters before they’d reached the pub after an early finish from a job they’d been working on in Leeds village, and now they waited in separate interview rooms while Kay and Gavin faced their boss across the table in interview room three.

  ‘Thanks for coming in,’ said Kay. ‘To begin with, could you tell us about your job?’

  The forty-nine-year-old tugged at his collar, adjusted a half-smoked cigarette behind his ear, and then folded his arms on the table.

  ‘I’ve been working for the flooring company for about fifteen years,’ he began. ‘Worked my way up and then started training the apprentices. About eight years ago, they got me supervising some of the bigger jobs. Ones for corporate clients like Hill that made up for lulls in the domestic work.’

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  He shrugged. ‘S’all right, I suppose.’

  ‘How did you become involved with the work at the Petersham Building over the summer?’

  ‘We’d done work for John Brancourt before,’ he said, ‘so we didn’t have to tender for the job. He got permission from the owner, Hill, to employ us based on past results. So, once our sales team had a note of Hill’s preferences for the carpets and underlay he placed the order and then Brancourt told him when we’d need to be there. You know – in line with the project schedule.’

  ‘How much time did you spend at the site?’

  ‘A couple of days to start off with, to make sure the lads were all right. Sometimes you get to a place and the measurements haven’t been taken right or the client’s changed his mind during the other works so you turn up and all the angles are wrong. Luckily with this job, it was a simple case of checking the original measurements and then letting the lads get on with it. After that, I went back once a week until the job was done.’

  ‘What is John Brancourt like to deal with?’

  ‘He’s a good bloke. Old school, know what I mean? He does a good job trusting us to do our work and fielding calls from Hill.’

  ‘Oh? Does Alexander Hill tend to cause problems?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. He’s just one of those blokes who always has to know what’s going on. Likes to keep an eye on things on site. Doesn’t like it when the schedule gets behind. It’s his investment, after all.’

  ‘Was he ever aggressive in any way towards you or your men?’

  ‘God, no.’ His mouth quirked. ‘There were enough clauses in the contract that could hurt us if things went wrong. He’d never have to lift a finger.’

  Kay ended the interview, then led the way to the next room and gestured to Gavin to begin the next round of questions with Michael Blake.

  Blake had been slouched in his seat when they’d entered, but now sat fully alert, his face eager.

  ‘Anything I can do to help,’ he said as Gavin finished reading the formal interview caution. ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘Who assigned the work to you on a daily basis?’ said Gavin.

  ‘Our supervisor, Tom,’ said Michael. ‘We’d have a quick chat on site with him when we got there each morning, make sure there were no problems from the previous day or find out if there were any changes to the rooms we were scheduled to work in.’

  Kay opened the manila folder in front of her and slid a page across the table to the carpet fitter.

  ‘This is the daily worksheet you provided on the day that the underlay in the office above the breakout area had been fitted, but that the carpets couldn’t be laid because the power was out. What happened?’

  Michael glanced at the worksheet before shoving it back towards her. ‘It happens sometimes – minor delays. Nothing to worry about as far as the contract was concerned ’cause we simply went and worked in another room at the building that day. The power was back on within twenty-four hours. It was only a dodgy old trip switch that had blown in the main fuse box but it took a while to find an electrician to get back to the site at short notice.’

  ‘When you went back to work in the office above the kitchen area, did you see or perhaps sense anything unusual?’

  Michael shuddered. ‘No, and it creeps me out to think we were working right above where he was.’

  ‘Did the underlay look disturbed in any way?’

  ‘No – that’s the thing. We’d pinned it down two days before, and I would’ve noticed if anything was wrong. That’s the thing with old buildings, you see – you expect the floors to be uneven. With that place, they’d redesigned the interior so the original floor had been ripped out. The new one was perfect. One of the easiest jobs I’ve worked on around here.’

  ‘You said in your original statement that you finished working in that room and the offices below a couple of days later,’ said Kay, reading the photocopied text in her hand. ‘Did you notice any unusual smells while you were working?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘I’ve been thinking about that since the copper asked me earlier this week. There was nothing. I mean, something like that – well, you’d think it’d stink, right?’

  Another shudder wracked the man’s shoulders and Kay felt a surge of sympathy for him.

  No doubt since the news broke, he and his work colleague had been wondering “what if” on a regular basis. His horror certainly appeared genuine.

  Satisfied that she would learn no more from Michael Blake, Kay terminated the interview, thanked him for his time and let Gavin show him back through to the reception area.

  When the detective constable returned, he sat opposite her with a loud sigh.

  ‘So, what do you think, guv?’

  Kay closed the folder and rested her hands on it. ‘We’ll talk to the other carpet fitter, Andy James, next to close that loop but I don’t think we’re going to learn anything new,’ she said. ‘Whoever hid our victim’s body in the cavity knew what they were doing and, even if they didn’t, from how Michael describes the state of the new flooring it wouldn’t have taken an expert to pin the underlay back in place afterwards. I’ll check with Harriet and her team, but my guess is the composition of
the underlay masked any initial smell of decay and then, like Lucas said, nature took its course and the body became mummified relatively quickly.’

  ‘You don’t suspect Michael or his colleague, then?’

  ‘No.’ Kay tapped her finger on the folder. ‘Everything he’s told us matches the worksheets on file. Unless Andy James tells us differently, I don’t think this lot had anything to do with our victim. And we need to monitor Alexander Hill. Have a look through the paperwork and see if we’ve got a copy of the contract for the carpet fitters. Find out how much Hill could hurt them by if they didn’t finish on time.’ Kay pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, tucking the folder under her arm. ‘All right – where is Andy?’

  ‘Next door.’

  ‘Grab a coffee for him, Gav – he’s been waiting a while.’

  ‘Guv.’

  Twenty

  By the time they’d returned to the incident room, Gavin’s features had lost the peaky colour he’d been wearing all day and the young detective constable was shovelling a double-sized hamburger into his mouth as Kay held open the door for him.

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s like a gannet,’ said Barnes, thrusting a wad of paperwork at Kay as she passed his chair.

  ‘Tell me about it. That’s the second one he’s had,’ she said. ‘The canteen will run out at this rate.’

  ‘I didn’t have any breakfast, guv – remember?’ said Gavin between mouthfuls. He swallowed. ‘I don’t know how you lot do it.’

  Barnes winked at Kay. ‘I reckon he should go every time to toughen up.’

  Gavin froze, the burger halfway to his mouth. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘He is. We take turns.’ Kay wagged her finger at Barnes. ‘And you’re next.’

  Barnes emitted a theatrical groan, then gestured to the report in her hand as she sat. ‘Carys has a couple of people working through the fingerprints Lucas sent through with his report. I understand that it might’ve been an accidental death?’

  ‘Maybe. It sure as hell wasn’t an accidental cover-up, though,’ said Kay.

  Carys joined them, then passed around a packet of biscuits and rolled her eyes as Gavin helped himself to three.

  ‘We’ve started the database search for our victim’s fingerprints,’ she said. ‘We’re concentrating on West Kent to begin with, and then we’ll take a look further afield if we don’t find anything.’

  ‘Widen the search to Sussex, Surrey and Greater London if that comes up blank,’ said Kay. ‘If that doesn’t yield any results we might have to consider putting in a request to Interpol.’

  ‘I hadn’t even thought of the fact he might not be British,’ said Gavin.

  ‘I’ve drafted the paperwork,’ said Carys. ‘All it needs is your signature, guv, if we want to go ahead with that. A warning though – I’ve heard there’s at least a four-week delay on getting results.’

  ‘All right, thanks,’ said Kay. ‘I guess we cross our fingers that he was a local. How did uniform get on this morning interviewing the previous tenants of the building? Anything of interest?’

  Carys wrinkled her nose. ‘Not really. A couple of the employees from the bloodstock racing agency were a bit pissed off about losing their jobs because the owner relocated out of the area, and because the employees were on temporary contracts they weren’t compensated. I don’t think they had anything to do with hiding that body though. The woman who owns the boutique is now working from home running a home shopping business and told Hughes and Parker that she’s never been happier because she doesn’t have to deal with the public face to face.’

  ‘Sounds like the construction work didn’t ruffle any feathers, then.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Carys. ‘There were a few small protests that happened at the time of the various redevelopments works around town – nothing came through here because uniform dealt with it and there were only a couple of minor infringements that happened. It’s just that I can’t find anything in the statements to suggest that anyone uniform spoke to had motive to kill or hide our victim.’

  ‘What about DNA?’ said Kay. ‘Has anyone started to coordinate with Missing Persons to see if we have a match there?’

  ‘We started that at the same time as cross-referencing the fingerprints,’ said Barnes. ‘Of course, if our victim was adopted—’

  ‘Then it’s a wasted task,’ finished Kay. ‘Yes, I know but we have to rule it all out.’

  ‘Surely somebody is looking for him,’ said Gavin. ‘I mean, he’s been in that ceiling for, what – five or six months at least?’

  ‘Six and a half,’ said Carys. She wandered over to her desk and returned with a copy of an invoice. ‘This is a copy of the final bill from the carpet fitters dated mid-July that Tom Walsh gave to me. They’d finished the week before.’

  ‘And no-one’s reported any sign of disturbance in that carpet, so he was definitely placed in the floor before that went down,’ said Kay.

  She picked up a photograph of the mummified body from the papers Carys gave to her. ‘You poor bastard. Electrocuted, and then shoved into a building cavity.’

  She sighed and handed back the photograph and documentation to Carys, then ran her hand through her hair and glared across the room at the whiteboard depicting the timeline of events that were known to date.

  ‘All right. Get onto John Brancourt and set up an interview with him this afternoon if you can. Tomorrow morning at the latest – I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing, I want to speak with him.’

  ‘Guv, you might want to see this first.’ Phillip Parker hurried between the desks towards her and handed her a page still warm from the printer.

  She took it from him without a word, her brow creasing as she scanned the lines of text across the page. She emitted a gasp when she read the last words.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Carys.

  ‘Fingerprint results.’ Kay flipped the page around and held it up so Barnes and Carys could read it, then raised her gaze to where Parker stood, his face eager. ‘Are you absolutely sure about this? There’s no mistake?’

  ‘No mistake, guv. I got Sergeant Hughes to check it.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gavin pushed back his chair. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The fingerprints match those of Damien Brancourt,’ said Kay, handing him the report. She brushed past him and swept her jacket off the back of her chair. ‘Barnes, with me. We’d better go and break the news to John Brancourt and his wife.’

  Twenty-One

  ‘What the hell was Damien Brancourt doing at a protest twelve months ago?’

  Barnes turned over the photocopied page of the original charge sheet as Kay indicated right and turned into a narrow lane off the Loose Road.

  ‘He must have been, what – twenty-three? Twenty-four?’ He folded the page and shoved it in the inner pocket of his jacket. ‘Old enough to know better, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that he was at a protest about the redevelopment works?’ said Kay. ‘Especially as his father was project managing the bank building renovations?’

  ‘Think he was doing it just to antagonise his dad?’

  ‘Maybe. Something worth bearing in mind. I take it he wasn’t convicted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any trouble after that?’

  ‘No. Not until he turned up dead, anyway.’

  ‘Remind me to ask Carys go through the records and see who else was arrested with him. I’d like to hear what they’ve got to say for themselves.’

  Barnes flipped open his notebook and scrawled across the page, before snapping it shut and pointing out of the windscreen at a converted barn that came into view as they rounded a bend. ‘This is the place.’

  ‘Very nice, too,’ Kay murmured as she drove between two brick pillars and then braked outside a floor-to-roof height window arrangement.

  She craned her neck as she climbed from the car and walked across the gravel towards an oak front door,
but realised that darkened privacy glass had been fitted to the frames.

  Checking that Barnes was ready, she reached out and pressed a button to the left of the double doors, noticing a small camera set into the wall above it.

  She kept her face impassive, then turned back to Barnes. ‘It’s one of those security features you can link to your mobile phone. They might not be in—’

  Kay fell silent as a locking mechanism was released, and then one side of the doors swung inwards and a woman in dark blue jeans and a black shirt appeared, her expression perplexed.

  ‘Yes? What do you want?’

  Kay held up her warrant card. ‘Mrs Brancourt? I’m Detective Inspector Kay Hunter. I wondered if I could speak with you and your husband?’

  The woman peered at the card through reading glasses, then rested her shoulder against the doorframe. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Is your husband in, Mrs Brancourt?’ Barnes stepped forward, his voice calm. ‘We’d like to speak to both of you, please.’

  The woman sighed, then pulled the door open. ‘Come in, then.’

  Kay wiped her feet on the doormat, then followed her across slate tiles.

  To her right, a timber staircase led up to a minstrel gallery that overlooked the hallway, while to her left a large fireplace glowed from a bundle of logs that blazed behind a glass window. Heat washed over her as she passed, and left her with a longing to remain in the hallway.

  ‘Who is it, Annabelle?’

  John Brancourt’s voice resonated from further along the hallway, and his wife gestured to Kay and Barnes to follow her through a doorway that led to a large bespoke kitchen.

  At one end, a modern range gleamed from within a brick recess. The surrounding cabinetry had been left in its natural colours, brightening the walls while a large table filled the far end of the room, a threadbare sofa next to it lending a rustic charm to the space.

  A chair scraped across the tiles as John Brancourt rose from where he’d been working on a laptop at the table. As he did so, Kay’s attention was caught by a Border Collie that raised its head from its sleeping position on the sofa. It blinked and then closed its eyes once more as John Brancourt murmured a command to it.