Ruthless (Cath Staincliffe) Read online

  ‘Body’s over here,’ Barton said, pointing. Gill followed her, taking care to tread only on the stepping plates. The figure, burned black, was partially concealed by a timber. Face and shoulders exposed, lying on its side, fist and forearm close to its neck. Pugilist pose – a side effect of the fire, the intense heat causing the muscles to contract. The wreckage covered the torso and abdomen but poking out below were the legs and feet, the feet curled like claws. No clothing remained.

  ‘No shoes?’ Gill said. ‘They’d burn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hyatt said.

  Here and there the scorched skin was split to reveal seams of meat. The lips had shrivelled back to expose long, discoloured teeth, an uneven skeletal grin. It was impossible for Gill to tell from the remains whether this was a man or a woman, to determine age or ethnicity. All questions for the pathologist.

  ‘Could it be accidental?’ she asked the fire officer.

  He shook his head. ‘Almost certainly deliberate. It looks like an accelerant, petrol or something, was used and we can tell by the spread that the seat of the fire was here,’ he gestured to the body, ‘and around this area.’

  So whoever had used the accelerant had been inside the building. It wasn’t a case of petrol poured through the doorway, which was three or four yards away.

  ‘Self-immolation?’ Gill wondered aloud. ‘They usually want an audience, don’t they? Act in public.’ And as for suicide, burning was an appalling way to die, our fear of fire as intense as the pain it delivered. She could not recall one sudden unexplained death she had been asked to investigate where the victim had set themselves on fire as a way to end it all.

  ‘The body was set alight?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a possibility.’ Hyatt was cautious. They were all cautious until they had the evidence, theories were no more than that. The job was about facts, science and hard data. The body on the floor might be a fatality due to some awful accident but for now the very presence of accelerant meant it was suspicious. And that meant Gill needed to inform the coroner and ask permission to carry out a forensic post-mortem.

  She coughed, hot inside her protective suit. The face mask did nothing to hide the smell.

  ‘When were you called?’ she asked the fire investigation officer.

  ‘999 came in at eight o’clock last night,’ he said, ‘no reports of occupants. Place had been empty for several years. Last officially used as storage for a carpet wholesaler in 2009.’

  ‘We will document as much as we can here,’ Theresa Barton said, ‘but there’s little chance of recovering trace materials after an inferno like that.’

  In the normal course of things they would hope to find evidence of any recent contact between the victim and other people. Fingerprints, DNA from hair or saliva, blood or sperm that might lead them to witnesses or, if foul play was suspected, to potential suspects. The fire compromised all that.

  ‘The remains are at risk of further disintegration when we move them,’ Barton said.

  ‘Just do your best,’ said Gill.

  ‘Seeing as it’s you,’ Barton said.

  ‘Let’s just suppose it was an accident,’ Gill said, ‘our victim decided they were going to make a fire, to keep warm.’

  ‘Not especially cold last night,’ said Barton.

  ‘Not outside,’ Gill agreed, ‘but in here it might be like a tomb. No heating for several years. Damp.’

  ‘OK, go on,’ the crime scene manager nodded.

  ‘So they build a fire, they’ve got some petrol, slosh it on and don’t realize they’ve splashed some on their sleeves or shoes. They light the fire and puff!’ She splayed her fingers wide. ‘Up in smoke.’

  Hyatt was pulling a face, not convinced.

  ‘But it is possible?’ said Gill.

  ‘Possible,’ he said slowly.

  ‘We found a container?’ Gill asked.

  ‘Not yet, still a lot of debris to sort through. It may have been destroyed with the heat,’ he said. ‘Third case of arson in the area in the past six months.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The mosque at the far end of Shuttling Way in December,’ he said, ‘and the school, the one over the road, in February.’

  Gill nodded. St Agnes’s, a little primary school, most of the kids on free school meals, a significant number on the at-risk register. Manorclough was dirt poor and beset by all the problems that came with poverty, including a high crime rate.

  ‘We’ll be comparing them,’ Hyatt said.

  ‘You think this might be the same person?’

  ‘Often is, and there are clear similarities with the first two incidents.’

  ‘So maybe this is them,’ Gill pointed to the body, ‘the fire-setter, and we’re looking at a case of arson that went horribly wrong. We need an ID, whatever cause of death is, doesn’t get us very far if we don’t know who this is. Right, I’ll let you get on.’

  Gill made her first call, waited for the coroner to answer. ‘Mr Tompkins, it’s DCI Gill Murray. I’m at the site of an unexplained death at the Old Chapel, Manorclough. I have a body discovered in a suspicious fire, accelerants found. Identity unknown as yet. I’d like permission for a forensic post-mortem in order to determine cause of death.’

  ‘Go ahead, DCI Murray.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ He liked to be called sir and it was no skin off Gill’s nose to be respectful. Best to keep on the right side of the coroner. It was his dead body now: the body officially belonged to the coroner, not the police, not the family, and the coroner would determine whether and when the body could be released for burial or cremation, when an inquest was required, and whether to interrogate the police on their actions.

  Next she rang Garvey, the home office pathologist. ‘Got a victim, burned to a crisp but I still need a doctor’s certificate of death.’

  ‘Be there in five,’ he said.

  ‘Express service? I’m honoured.’

  ‘I’m heading into the General, you’re on my way,’ Garvey said.

  ‘That’s it,’ she joked, ‘destroy the moment.’

  It was a matter of minutes for them to complete the documentation Gill required, once Garvey had pronounced the death. She liked working with him, he was meticulous, pleasant company, had a sharp intelligence that she appreciated and was easy on the eye too, more than easy. Sadly for Gill he was also gay and happily ensconced in a civil partnership.

  ‘Doesn’t seem much point taking body temp,’ he said. The measurement was routinely used to help estimate time of death of the victim, but given he or she had been consumed by fire the body had undergone catastrophic changes. ‘And could be destructive to try.’

  Theresa Barton agreed with him. ‘Leave it. Suggest we bag the victim and recover all material beneath and around the body,’ she traced an oval in the air, ‘say two metres either side.’

  ‘Pray it doesn’t rain.’ Gill nodded to the open roof.

  ‘We’ll erect shelters in any case,’ said Hyatt. ‘From our end we’ll want to spend several days examining the scene.’ In the same way that the work of the crime scene manager and CSIs was to find the evidence to try to build the narrative as to how someone died, so the fire investigating officer would be doing the same to establish the story of how the fire started and developed.

  ‘Buzz me,’ Gill said as Garvey peeled off his protective suit outside the building, the all-in-one smudged with soot and ash despite his efforts to disrupt the scene as little as possible.

  She watched him leave, taking the chance to lower her mask, breathe some less tainted air and let her face cool a little before returning to the chapel. Most people who died in a fire died of smoke inhalation, not from the ravages of the flames. Losing consciousness and dying before the heat reached them. But if this victim had been doused in accelerant and then set alight it would have been a truly horrific death.

  Garvey rang as soon as the post-mortem was ready to start and Gill attended along with Pete Readymough, who would be exhibits officer for
the investigation. She had briefed her syndicate to stand by in case they were unable to rule out foul play. And she had met with the press officer to instruct her as to the facts that could be made public at such an early stage: Unidentified body recovered from a fire at Old Chapel in Manorclough. A post-mortem will be carried out later today, after which police hope to release further details. The fire itself would have made the front pages of the local paper. With news now of a body, interest would be even keener.

  The smell filled the dissection room, the stink of burned bone and charred meat overpowering the background smells of bleach and disinfectant. Gill listened to Garvey dictating notes as the body lay on the mortuary table, in exactly the same pose as it had been in at the chapel. The effects of the heat had fused the body in position, carbonizing the flesh. Once the external exam was over it would be necessary to break the limbs to gain access to the internal organs, most of which were likely to be cinders, Gill thought.

  Garvey measured the body in sections to ascertain the height. Crown of the head to top of the spine, the curved back, the zigzag of the cramped-up legs. Added together it translated as six foot two inches. ‘Victim presents in the foetal position, left side uppermost. Cranial base evaluation and angle of the pelvic bone tells us victim is male.’ Garvey analysed the shape of the skull and concluded that the man was Caucasian. ‘Substantial charring, absence of clothing, body hair. Visible fractures to the lower ribs on the presenting left thorax. Dislocation to the hip.’ From the beam that had fallen, crushing the man where he lay. Fragments of rib poked through the frazzled skin, reminding Gill of the gaping roof at the chapel.

  A wedding ring on the victim’s left ring finger, thick with sooty grease, was photographed in situ then Garvey removed it, small crumbs of flesh dropping from the finger as he did so. He peered at the band under one of the powerful lights above the table, took a sample swab from inside and out, then cleaned it up. ‘Inscribed,’ he said, ‘R.K. and J.S. 23.4.72.’ He glanced at Gill and sketched a bow. Gill smiled: this could be a useful lead, to identity if nothing else. Pete got an evidence bag ready and placed the ring inside.

  As well as photographs of the victim, a number of X-rays were taken of different sections of the body, Garvey, Pete and Gill withdrawing from the room each time while the scanner did its job. The resultant images came up on the computer screen. Garvey clicked on the first, the skull.

  ‘Forensic odontology?’ Gill said, suggesting another route to identification. The teeth were uneven, some missing, some broken. ‘Doesn’t look like he had a check-up every six months.’ Must cancel my check-up, she thought, the day after tomorrow but she’d be up to her neck with this. Garvey clicked on the second picture. The hand and neck.

  ‘Some evidence of wear in the vertebrae,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Middle-aged?’ said Gill.

  ‘Most likely.’

  Then the third image. The mesh of broken ribs, the main part of the chest. Gill noticed the dark smudges at the same moment as Garvey said, ‘What have we got here, then?’

  He clicked closer. The smudges were clearer now, two of them, small cylindrical forms with a conical nose, the size of cigarette butts.

  Gill’s heart missed a beat. ‘I think we can safely rule out accidental death, or suicide,’ she said. ‘The poor bugger’s been shot.’

  3

  They were ready and waiting in the incident meeting room when the boss arrived, having sent word that she was launching a murder inquiry. Rachel had been part of DCI Gill Murray’s syndicate for three years now. Could’ve been sergeant if things hadn’t conspired to make her miss her exam. But there’d be chance again if she stuck at it. And she was determined to do so. Things had been rocky and Godzilla had been on her back on more than one occasion, making Rachel feel like shit, but she’d not yet been chucked out. Janet reckoned that the boss rated Rachel as a keeper, someone who’d fly up the career ladder if she put her mind to it, but Rachel wasn’t so sure. She’d been on the receiving end of Godzilla’s tongue-lashing so many times that she sometimes thought the boss had it in for her. Though to be fair there had always been good reasons for the bollockings. Not as if they were trumped up, bullying or whatever.

  ‘This morning I attended the scene at Old Chapel, Lower Manorclough.’

  ‘There was a fire,’ Rachel said, interrupting without thinking, ‘last night.’

  ‘There was indeed,’ the boss went on after a short pause, ‘reported on the local news.’

  ‘No,’ Rachel said, wanting to set the record straight, ‘I saw it, I was there …’

  Janet, on the other side of the conference table, raised her eyebrows at Rachel, either querying why she’d been there or warning her about butting in when the DCI was speaking.

  ‘… that’s how I know,’ Rachel tailed off.

  ‘Glad we’ve cleared that up,’ the boss said smartly. ‘What you won’t know is that our victim, male, Caucasian, identity unknown, was inside the building and initial evidence suggests he was shot, twice, then doused with accelerant and set alight. I must warn you the photographs are not particularly pleasant and are not required viewing. Avoid looking at them if you wish. Garvey found no soot inside what remained of lung tissue, which suggests the victim was already dead when the fire started.’

  The photographs were projected on to the large screen. Kevin Lumb, on Rachel’s right, reared back. ‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘Barbecued or what?’

  What a knob.

  Kevin, dim though he was, realized he’d spoken out of turn when stony silence greeted his adolescent comment. ‘Shock innit?’ he said weakly.

  It wasn’t enough.

  ‘DC Lumb,’ the boss said, no iron in her voice as yet but Rachel could tell it was coming, ‘our role as members of a major incident team is to represent the interests of victims of serious crime and attempt, to the best of our ability, to determine who perpetrated said crime. To make every effort to see a suspect apprehended, charged and, God-and-the-jury willing, convicted of that crime. And we carry out that role with professionalism, affording every victim the respect and dignity that any one of us might expect if it was one of our own in the mortuary. So just close your gob and put your brain in gear. Got it?’

  Pete Readymough, to Rachel’s left, put down his breakfast butty and wiped his fingers on a tissue. Put off by the photos, she imagined. Pete could do with skipping a few meals, Rachel thought. He could probably survive several weeks on his reserves of body fat.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Kevin said. He gave Rachel a sideways, shamefaced look, as though he expected her to feel sorry for him. Ever since Sean had chosen Kevin as best man (fuck knows why, he barely knew the guy) Kevin had acted like he was one of the family. Chumming up to Rachel, oblivious to her put-downs, thinking she was joking when she told him to do one. Like his mind couldn’t really compute a universe where he wasn’t at its centre, loved by one and all. She might feel sorry for him if he had the nous to learn from his mistakes but he just repeated them.

  The boss resumed, ‘Our priority is to establish identity: who is this man? Once that’s clear we may be able to establish who had reason to want to kill him.’

  ‘Could he have been killed elsewhere and dumped there?’ Mitch asked.

  ‘It’s possible,’ the boss answered.

  ‘Any sign of how they got in?’ Rachel said. ‘The place was boarded up, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No answers yet,’ the boss said. ‘Find out who the current owner is, talk to them, any history of break-ins and so on. CSI and fire investigation still ongoing. Could be some time. What we do have is a gold wedding ring recovered from our victim, inscribed R.K. and J.S. 23.4.72.’

  ‘Forty years,’ said Pete.

  ‘To that end, Kevin,’ Her Maj’s beady eyes bored into Kevin’s head, ‘start a trawl of the marriage records, beginning locally, that date and those initials.’

  ‘Narrows it down,’ Lee said dryly.

  ‘I know,’ the boss agreed, ‘without an ID, moti
ve is likewise obscure. But perhaps Kevin will be able to help us with the name and next of kin and we can trace the widow. Rachel, Janet, Lee and Mitch, house-to-house in the area. Janet, you’re still acting sergeant, you coordinate it,’ Godzilla instructed. ‘Did anyone see any activity at the chapel on Wednesday? I’ll be meeting with the area intelligence manager.’

  ‘Use of a firearm,’ said Mitch. Ex-army was Mitch, good on hardware. ‘That size – we’re talking a small handgun.’ Mitch pointed to the magnified image of the two bullets that had been taken once they were recovered from the body. ‘Do we know what weapon?’

  ‘At the lab now,’ Godzilla said.

  ‘Could be a hit,’ Mitch said. ‘Though no bullet to the head, which is a little unusual.’

  ‘An assassination?’ the boss said. ‘Why burn the body? With an organized hit half the intention is to send a message, “Look what big scary fuckers we are, anyone else tries it gets the same.”’

  ‘Setting the fire, that’s quite different, that’s twisted,’ Rachel said. ‘The desire to hurt, isn’t it?’

  Lee nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, think of all the ex-partners who stuff burning rags into houses, kids upstairs in bed. Whole families.’

  ‘Personal,’ Her Maj mused, ‘which doesn’t sit easily alongside the organized hit scenario.’

  ‘Drugs?’ said Rachel. Drugs and guns, like fish and chips, rum and Coke.

  ‘Mitch,’ the boss said, ‘have a chat with the drug squad, find out what little sleaze-ball’s running the supply on Manorclough. We should know later today or tomorrow what weapon we’re looking for and whether there’s a tie-in to any other shootings. The first call to the fire service was from a Zainab Muhammad at the flats opposite. Several more calls came in after. So house-to-house, speak to Mrs Muhammad and her neighbours.’

  ‘Any reports of gunfire?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Nothing logged,’ said the boss, ‘see what the locals tell you. The residential properties are across the road from the chapel, no homes on the chapel side. Our colleagues in the fire service are also looking into similarities between this arson and two prior incidents.’