Night of Fire: Read online

  ‘You might have something there, Phil,’ Henderson said, ‘as our victim worked with fireworks. Although it would take us into the realm of rituals which I don’t want to think about just yet.’

  ‘It is peculiar,’ Wallop said. ‘I’ve heard of people dying in fires after their houses are deliberately set on fire, but never in a one-to-one.’

  Henderson paused to take a drink of coffee. If bought from the staff restaurant or made in the little kitchen the detectives used, it was perfectly drinkable, but the stuff dispensed by the machines dotted around the building, like the one in his hand, was as bad as those left behind at Sussex House.

  ‘The killer came up close and personal,’ Henderson continued. ‘It has to be someone who knew the victim well; knew his habits and movements. To find them, we need to take his working and private life apart. With the added complication of his membership of the Weald Bonfire Society, that gives three areas to concentrate on.’

  He looked around at the faces. They were alert and listening. Not bad for the end of the day.

  ‘Interviews will be conducted by two-person teams. Carol and Seb, you’ve been allocated Marc’s employer, Quinlan Fine Foods. Talk to his close colleagues, the boss and anyone else who knew him. We know he dated a woman in Accounts and according to his mother, she wouldn’t leave him alone after the split. Speak to her; find out if there are any others.’

  ‘Ok,’ Walters said.

  ‘Harry, I want you and Deepak to investigate his personal life. He apparently was a bit of a ladies’ man so there might be a long roll-call of ex-girlfriends to track down, and there’s an ex-wife to consider. Are any of his girlfriends married and perhaps he incurred the wrath of a jealous husband or an ex-lover? Also, make sure you talk to Guy Barton. He and Marc used to be the best of friends but they fell out. Find out why and if there is any lingering resentment.’

  He looked over at Harry Wallop and Deepak Sunderam who both nodded.

  ‘Sally, you and Phil will take on the Weald Bonfire Society. Did the victim get on with everybody? Is there strong rivalry between the societies? Maybe someone from another team expressed jealousy at what Marc was doing?’

  He let them absorb the tasks given to them while he drained his coffee cup.

  ‘So far,’ Henderson continued, ‘we’ve identified three ‘persons of interest’. I’m unwilling to call them ‘suspects’ at this stage, as we’ve got nothing to go on other than the opinion of a woman who has recently lost her son.’

  He wrote the first name up on the board, no picture as yet. ‘Jeff Pickering. The victim’s step-father. He and Marc didn’t get on, always arguing. Marc eventually moved out to get away from him. Does anyone know if we yet have access to Marc’s house?’

  ‘I tracked down a neighbour a few minutes before coming into this meeting,’ DC Phil Bentley said. ‘She says she’s got a spare set of keys.’

  ‘Good work Phil. To the team looking into his personal life, I’m talking about you, Harry and Deepak, I want his house given a thorough once-over. You’re looking for a diary, laptop, bank statements, love letters; anything to help us identify a motive.’

  ‘No problem,’ Wallop said.

  Henderson turned to the board and tapped the name written there. ‘Harry, see what you can find out about this guy. We know he didn’t like Marc, find out why and how the arguments panned out: are we talking handbags or did they get violent? When you’re done, I’ll interview him.’

  Wallop nodded.

  He turned to the board. ‘Our second ‘person of interest’ is Guy Barton. Marc’s mother, Mrs Pickering, says he works for the Council and he’s not averse to accepting the odd backhander. Harry, this is also yours. We know the two men fell out big time. Find out as much as you can about him and his relationship with Marc Emerson.’

  ‘Me and Sunderam will get to the bottom of it,’ Harry Wallop said, ‘don’t you worry.’

  ‘The third name to go on the board,’ Henderson said as he wrote, ‘is Christine, an ex of Marc’s who works at Quinlan Foods.’

  ‘Christine Sutherland,’ Phil Bentley said.

  ‘How do you know?’ Henderson asked. ‘Don’t tell me you went out with her as well?’

  ‘Me? No, I looked her up on Quinlan’s website. She’s the only Christine working in the Finance department. She’s Finance Director.’

  ‘Excellent. Now Ms Sutherland used to be in a relationship with Marc Emerson and after they broke up, she bombarded him with texts and repeatedly came around to his house.’

  ‘I’ve known a few girlfriends like that,’ Phil Bentley said.

  ‘You’ve done it to a few ex-girlfriends, more like,’ Walters countered.

  ‘It might be something or nothing,’ Henderson continued, ‘but Carol and Seb, need to take a look. Also, get a sense of how the victim got on with other people in the business. It might not be an ex-girlfriend we should be looking at, but a co-worker, jealous of his success, or pissed off because he did something they didn’t like.’

  ‘I work beside a few people like that,’ Bentley murmured, glancing at Walters.

  ‘I hope I don’t need to impress upon you the importance of these tasks,’ Henderson said. ‘In most murder cases, we depend on help from witnesses, CCTV and forensics, but with this one, there aren’t any. We’ll find this killer with a dose of good old-fashioned plod-work and a large measure of perseverance. Good luck.’

  Henderson returned to his office. He sat down at his desk and picked up Marc Emerson’s thin post-mortem report and flicked through it once again. Much of the victim’s body was beyond analysis, or couldn’t be dissected by the pathologist’s scalpel as it would simply flake into pieces. If the killer had chosen this method with the intention of erasing all traces of forensic evidence, they’d done a bloody good job. They’d also done a good job disguising a motive, because as yet, Henderson didn’t have a clue.

  His thought processes came to a sudden halt when his boss, Chief Inspector Lisa Edwards, burst into his office. She threw a newspaper down on his desk and slumped into the visitor’s seat. ‘Look what the bloody Argus is printing now,’ she barked.

  He turned the paper around and there on the front page, the stark headline:

  ‘House Robbers Strike Again – Police No Closer to Catching Vicious Attackers.’

  ‘I heard about this one,’ Henderson said. ‘Gerry sent a forensics team over to the victim’s house straight away, but I gather they didn’t come back with anything.’

  Edwards ranted and raved for a minute before she stopped, her anger vented but not sated.

  ‘What do we do?’ she asked. ‘Every time they print this crap, the Chief gets a bollocking from some oik at the Home Office. He in turn calls in his ACC’s and gives them all a rocket. ACC Youngman then collars me and I get hell and on it goes. It’s my turn to shout at you, but I won’t as we’re wasting too much time with this as it is. We’ve got bigger and more important issues to worry about.’

  ‘I agree. Maybe we’re not looking at this problem from the right angle.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re doing all we can to catch these robbers. Can you remember the last time we sent a full forensic team into a house after a burglary? A quick dust of the broken window was all they got. Now, we’ve got them on standby and patrol cars are roaming the main housing estates ready to respond to a sighting, or God forbid, another robbery.’

  ‘I know, I know, and so does the Chief Constable and all those above him.’

  ‘What if we approach The Argus directly?’

  ‘What, and try to appeal to their better nature? Some hope.’

  ‘We could get the Press Office to talk to their contact at the paper and ask them to tone it down.’

  ‘Tried it. They’re not interested.’

  ‘What if we target the journalist who wrote the story?’

  ‘What, and throw the bugger in jail?’ She smiled. ‘Ah, now I see what you’re getting at. You could ask your journa
list girlfriend to talk to them, make them see sense. Who is it?’ She picked up the newspaper from his desk and pulled it round to look at the front-page story. ‘Rob Tremain. Do you know him?’

  ‘Aye I do, our paths have crossed many times.’

  ‘Does Rachel know him?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of involving Rachel.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘I could talk to Tremain. I could promise him some exclusive if he lays off the robberies.’

  ‘Hang on a tick, are you sure? It’s a dangerous game working with journalists, Angus. Before you know it, Professional Standards will be crawling all over you and this place, asking why The Argus has the inside track on your investigations. You could be suspended, dismissed even.’

  ‘I know, but I would only pass on to him something about to be revealed or something not materially important to the investigation. It shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.’

  She sighed. ‘We need to do something, we can’t just sit around here waiting for the next round of vindictive bile. You never know, another one like this,’ she said pointing at the newspaper, ‘and it could be the last straw for the Home Secretary. He may decide Sussex could do with a new Chief Constable.’

  She paused, thinking. ‘Right Angus, talk to this Tremain character, see if he’ll take the bait, but listen, this can only be between you and me. I can’t pass it up the food chain. If the shit hits the fan, you’ll be on your own. I won’t be able to help you.’

  FIVE

  Guy Barton walked into the kitchen, the smell of last night’s empty Chinese takeaway cartons almost making him puke in the sink; difficult to do with it being full of dirty dishes. He groaned. He’d meant to deal with them last night but he’d been too pissed to think straight. Now the kitchen stank like the bins at the back of China Garden down on the High Street.

  Despite the cold, bleak October day outside, he opened a window and let a blast of chilled air come into the room before slumping into a chair. He liked to rise early, even after a night on the tiles, getting up an hour before his wife, Lily, who commuted from their home in Lewes to London.

  Lily worked for a major book publisher, in charge of one of its most profitable divisions. Some weeks she went into the company’s offices near London Bridge, and at other times travelled to book fairs in Europe and the US, attended meetings with authors and was often interviewed by journalists and radio broadcasters. Today, he didn’t know where she was going. She might have told him before she went out last night, but he couldn’t remember.

  He got up from his seat, filled the kettle, switched it on and stood near the open window, the chilled air cooling the hot flush breaking out all over his face, but not reducing the anguish he felt. His relationship with Lily was in a bad place, fights and silences, snippy comments and too many meals for one. She’d accused him of having a hang-up because she earned more than he did, but in response he would call her a highly-strung bitch who didn’t know how to argue like a normal person.

  In a way, they were both right. He did feel emasculated, a word his father used even to his face, at not being the principal bread winner in his own house. She, on the other hand, had grown up in the shittiest of households, much worse than his, with a domineering, bullying father and an alcoholic mother, and now Lily couldn’t argue without losing her rag or bursting into tears.

  His mate, Tony in the office reckoned it was something called the seven-year itch. Guy and Lily had been married only six years, but the symptoms were the same. He now found other women attractive, and this from a man who told everyone at his wedding that he had married the most amazing woman he had ever seen.

  He failed to notice the kettle boiling, and in return for his inattention the bubbling, shaking machine gave his face a sauna-blast of hot air.

  ‘Are you making tea or planning to stare at our untidy garden all day?’

  ‘Morning love.’ He turned to look at her. ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re asking me. I came home long before you.’

  ‘Did you? I don’t remember.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t drink so much, should you?’

  She squeezed past and reached into the bread bin. The slim, curvy figure, ensconced today in a bright dress decorated in a floral print, an effective antidote to the cold, dull weather outside, tempted him to put his arms around her waist, but he thought better of it. She didn’t do mornings, coming awake around eleven, and would use any excuse to wriggle free. Not that she needed an excuse today. Despite luxuriating in a long shower with copious amounts of Lynx soap, applying a large dose of antiperspirant and brushing his teeth for at least three minutes, he probably stank of booze, garlic and monosodium glutamate.

  For breakfast, Guy would usually fill a bowl with cornflakes or Weetabix, but today he would make do with some toast after Lily left for work or maybe just a cup of tea. Lily would eat only toast in the morning with jam, butter or peanut butter. She told him she would buy something from the staff restaurant mid-morning, but he knew she often didn’t.

  Five minutes later, with her mug drained and a plate full of crumbs, she picked up her briefcase, rushed out of the door and embarked on the short walk to Lewes Station. Despite earning a high salary, she didn’t own a car as she liked walking and they didn’t live far from the station. In addition, theirroad,St John’s Terrace, had permits, pay and display machines and parking restricted to one side of the road; not the strongest encouragement for multiple-car ownership.

  At nine-thirty, he closed the front door and walked to his car. Guy Barton worked as a planning officer with Lewes District Council, responsible for approving building applications and making sure large developments were in line with the region’s strategic plan. During this short walk, he was often accosted by neighbours concerned about their loft extensions or conservatory plans, but today the chilling wind kept them indoors and he reached his car unmolested.

  He drove to the east of Lewes to inspect a large house being constructed there. In the Planning Office it was referred to as Pritchard’s Folly, as the cost had exceeded the initial estimate by over one million pounds, the builders having to overcome several seemingly insurmountable obstacles along the way. Dale Pritchard made his money buying and selling oil on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a guy so rich he bought the site while the previous incumbent, a timber company, were still trading and relocated them to the north side of the town.

  In common with many modern architects, the man Dale Pritchard employed conceived a building that eschewed the style of the traditional country house with its multiple floors, the use of local materials and traditional chimneys and fires. He instead had created a unique building with symmetrical lines, ten-metre long sheets of glass on every wall, flat roofs and tons of concrete, a material not seen in house construction since the 1960s. Locals called it ‘the glass factory,’ on account of the material’s dominant presence in the house design and its factory-style shape, an unkind epithet which would wear off once they saw the completed structure.

  He could see the site long before he got there, on an elevated position, surrounded by flat land with no high buildings close by. Most of the work and expense had been invested in the foundations, inserting steel rods and encasing them in concrete, ensuring the chalky soil could support the heavy weight of the house and not tip the entire construction into a small lake nearby. With the ground work complete, the house rapidly took form and shape as most of the materials were prefabricated in factories in the UK, Holland and Germany.

  There had been grumblings in the local press about the size of the house, occupying as it did a space of over five hundred square metres, and his boss regularly received letters from concerned residents. The ‘lonely of Lewes’ he called them, before throwing their missives in the bin, later to be retrieved and filed by his secretary. Often in large developments such as this, local residents overestimated the size and scale of the building, despite public access to plans and a model mock-up,
causing much resentment and annoyance. It was Guy Barton’s job to reassure them.

  He bumped his car on to the building site and parked beside the project manager’s car. Experience had taught him to avoid the space beside lorries and diggers if he didn’t want his car covered in dust and mud, or to find out later it had a nasty scrape down one side.

  He walked into the house and before seeing anyone, he heard someone shout, ‘No, no, no!’ in a voice that sounded like that of the project manager. ‘You fucking idiots. The bloody thing’s upside down!’

  By the tone and volume of the shout, Guy reckoned he wasn’t referring to one of the four two-tonne windows, but something less important. A couple of months back the builders did fit one of the panoramic windows the wrong way round and his voice and anxiety levels had reached heights way above this.

  Guy clambered over a small pile of rubble, the brick dust leaving a thin film on his clean shoes. He had wellingtons and a pair of steel toe-capped boots in the boot of the car, but the weather had been dry for the last few days and, as anticipated, the site didn’t resemble the quagmire it had been on his last visit in early July.

  ‘Ah, Mr Barton,’ Rod Walker the project manager said, walking towards him, his Hi-Vis jacket and hard hat covered in mud and dust, making it difficult to determine their original colour.

  ‘Those two fucking idiots,’ Walker continued, jerking a thumb behind him, ‘couldn’t tell if a plant holder was upside down or not despite it saying ‘top’ on the top and ‘bottom’ on the fucking base. The bloody thing weighs ten kilos so we can’t expect Mr Pritchard to turn it around himself when he moves in, can we? I ask you, do schools still teach people to read nowadays?’

  ‘They do, but not everybody listens.’

  He smiled, revealing a small gap in his front teeth. ‘You’re right there, mate. Listen, Mr Pritchard is running late. He said he’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Why don’t you and I take a look round and I’ll show you everything that’s been done since your last visit?’