by Chris Simms
Hell’s Fire
by Chris Simms
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Orion
Copyright © 2007 Chris Simms
The right of Chris Simms to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662
Chapter 1
Jon Spicer reached up, turned on the interior light and examined the top third of his face in the rear view mirror. He sighed. It looked like a fine red gauze had settled over each eyeball.
He turned the light off, soothed by the dark, glad to be back in its comforting folds. A minicab ghosted past his parked car, its driver scanning the deserted streets for one last fare, but the clubs had kicked out over half an hour ago. Jon glanced to his left. Even Canal Street was devoid of life. As the cab neared the set of traffic lights in front they switched to amber, then red. The vehicle’s brake lights glowed briefly in response, but there was nothing waiting to emerge from Sackville Street and the rear lights died as he scooted through anyway.
‘Naughty, naughty,’ Jon muttered, leaning to the side and looking up the front steps of the renovated warehouse. Come on Rick, the bloody church will be a pile of ash at this rate.
He tapped his forefinger impatiently on the knob of the gear stick. His presence here in the middle of the night was part of a prearranged plan of action. Three local churches had been torched in as many weeks and evidence of satanic rituals had been discovered in the smoking remains of each one. The Christian community was outraged and media interest had reached national levels.
Following a meeting of senior officers of the Greater Manchester Police, it had been decided that if another church was attacked the Major Incident Team would take over the investigation. Jon was on call when this latest fire had been reported forty minutes earlier. He glanced at the building again. Where was Rick? He considered tooting his horn, but then remembered how much it annoyed him when taxis resorted to that tactic outside his house.
Leaning his head back, his eyes drifted to the rear view mirror where they caught on the reflection of the child’s seat behind him. Holly. He thought of her at home, asleep in her cot. Christ, was she really nine months old already? He smiled to himself, picturing her high-speed crawl round their house, determined to open every cupboard, explore every corner. He almost laughed aloud, thinking of her frustration with the stair gate, which denied her access to the top half of her miniature universe. How simple his daughter’s life was. How free of concern and complication. If only he could keep it that way forever, save her from the shit which one day would inevitably find her. The thought of someone or something making her cry caused a clenching in his chest. At times, he concluded, that was the real consequence of parenthood. A continual low-level hum of anxiety – increased by every unguarded plug socket, every swinging door, every flight of open steps. God, what will I be like when she can walk? Go to the playground on her own? He shook his head. Too much even to contemplate.
Movement to his side. The door to the building was opening. The limited view through Jon’s side window only allowed him to see a very shiny pair of black shoes emerge on to the top step. As the wearer began jogging down, perfectly creased suit trousers were revealed, then a light overcoat, smooth as though it had just been pressed. Definitely Rick and, shit would he regret coming out in his best gear! Next into view was a crisp shirt and perfectly centred tie. The side door opened and Rick leaned in.
‘Morning.’
Jon took in the clean-cut looks and slightly damp hair. ‘You been in the fucking shower while I’ve been sat out here?’
Rick slid into the passenger seat. ‘I dipped my head in a sink of cold water. Needed something to wake me up. Four thirty in the morning. Christ.’
‘You asked to come along if a church went up on my shift.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He pointed a finger upwards. ‘I could see the glow from my windows. Looks like a big bloody blaze.’
Jon put the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb, thinking of Rick’s penthouse apartment, wondering how much it cost. ‘The Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic church in Fairfield. All those fancy altar cloths and wooden carvings no doubt.’
‘From the direction I thought it was the big empty one by the side of the track if you’re on the train going out of Piccadilly. Next to Ashbury’s station, I think.’
‘The huge great thing with the green spire? That’s Gorton Monastery.’
‘Is that what it is? A monastery?’
‘Was. A load of monks used to live there. They built the church part and a school too. It was a kind of a religious centre for the local community.’
‘But no longer, I take it.’
‘No. Like so many churches round Manchester, it’s been derelict for a while now. My mum used to attend mass there right up to the Eighties. She could tell you all about it. Where we’re heading is about a mile east, along the Ashton Old Road.’
Waiting at a set of lights, he stared across towards the figures huddled on Fairfield Street as it ran round the back of Piccadilly Station. ‘Working girls are still out.’
‘Quick handjob to put you in a good mood for work, sir?’ Rick said in a high voice.
Jon smiled wryly. He knew that in a few hours many commuters would be receiving that exact offer as they walked from the station towards their sterile city-centre offices. Some must accept, or the girls wouldn’t keep asking.
‘No need for any of that,’ he replied, imagining Alice curled up in bed, strands of her long blonde hair lying across the pillow. Thank God their sex life was on track again after the long drought brought on by Holly’s birth and his wife’s subsequent post-natal depression. She’d been back to her old feisty self for a few months now, though it would be a couple more before she was weaned off her medication completely.
‘Oh yeah?’ Rick smirked.
Jon glanced at his partner, about to ask if he was getting any action in the sack, but the fact that Rick was gay caused the question to sink back. Try as he might, Jon just couldn’t chat to him about anything sex related without feeling awkward.
The unanswered question lingered in the car and Rick turned away to look out the side window. Idiot, Jon cursed himself. Now on the A6, they passed the gently undulating glass front of the old BT offices, reflections of street lamps gliding across the smoky panes like comets crossing a night sky.
‘So, looks like he’s added a fourth to his list,’ Jon said, taking refuge in the safety offered by work.
‘Suppose so. When did the call come in?’ Rick was now looking ahead as they sped along the empty road.
‘An hour or so ago. There are three fire engines at the scene.’ A few minutes later Jon tapped a knuckle against his side window, just able to make out the tapering point of Gorton Monastery’s spire as it thrust up against a sky tainted orange by the massed city lights. ‘That’s the monastery. See the silhouette?’
Rick leaned forward. ‘God, it’s massive.’
Soon a bright patch of light became visible up ahead. It shimmered slightly against the bruised amber sky, the occasional spark carried heavenwards by hot air billowing up from below.
‘That’ll be our church,’ Jon said, turning off the main road. They passed a couple of playing fields, and then the road jinked to the right round some houses before revealing what looked like a massive bonfire celebration gone wrong.
The church was burning fiercely, flames emerging from
its many windows and shooting out of the roof at one end where it had begun to collapse. Three fire engines, two police cars and an ambulance were parked up, their flickering blue lights muted by the glare of the blaze. Several dozen residents stood beyond the cordon that stretched across the road, many in dressing gowns and slippers. A group of children were dancing in the puddles by the hoses, which snaked along the road before disappearing down open manholes. Jon pulled up behind the last emergency vehicle.
‘Quite a sight.’
Rick nodded. ‘No more wine and wafers in there for a bit.’ They got out of the car, and a faint wave of heat hit their faces, even though they were a good hundred metres away from the flames. Mixing with the low roar created by the blaze itself was the diesel chug of the idling fire engines and, above that, occasional groaning sounds of wooden timbers being tortured by the heat.
‘Should have brought some marshmallows,’ Jon said, holding his palms towards the church and then rubbing them together.
Rick looked him up and down, taking in his ragged coat, old rugby shirt and battered jeans. ‘Dressed like that, you’re lucky it’s not November. They might have mistaken you for the guy and chucked you on the bloody fire.’
Jon held his sides and mimed a ho, ho, ho. ‘Never attended a fire, have you?’
Rick’s grin faltered. ‘No. Why?’
Jon nodded at his partner’s suit. ‘That’ll need to be dry cleaned for a start. Something about jets of water hitting red hot mortar, brick and wood. Creates a right stink.’
Rick turned towards the church, registering for the first time the billows of steam, black smoke and fine particles of ash drifting down all around them. ‘Bollocks.’
Chuckling to himself, Jon began to survey the onlookers, searching for any lone males who hadn’t obviously just pulled on a tracksuit over their pyjamas. Profit, vanity, vandalism, crime concealment, psychological compulsion, prejudice, revenge: Jon knew the motives for arson. But these fires weren’t about any jilted lover getting back at his ex. They weren’t an insurance job, nor were they lit to hide an earlier crime. Prejudice seemed the most likely reason; someone harbouring a deep-seated hostility towards Christianity. The satanic symbols further backed up the theory. Jon also knew many arsonists couldn’t resist hanging round the scene to witness the results of their actions. Some, he gathered, even got sexual satisfaction from seeing the blaze. He and Rick headed towards the uniform with the clipboard, ‘DI Spicer, DS Saville, Major Incident Team.’
The officer looked at their warrant cards, signed them in, then stepped aside, allowing them through to the inner cordon.
‘Who’s in charge?’ Jon asked.
‘Sergeant Thompson, Sir. Over there talking to the Fire Investigation Officer.’
‘Cheers.’ Jon led the way towards the two men, pausing to address a firefighter who was filming the scene through a camcorder. ‘Got some footage of the crowd?’
The firefighter tilted his head to the side, camera still trained on the church. ‘Yeah, I’ll do another sweep in a second.’
Jon nodded, then stepped over to the pair of men. ‘DI Jon
Spicer, MIT. This is my partner, DS Rick Saville.’
The two men turned to him, their faces glowing in the heat, and introduced themselves. Sergeant Andrew Thompson was a slim man with thinning hair; the Fire Investigation Officer, Station Commander Dean Webster, was a stoutly built bloke of about fifty with black hair shorn short – a style so many in the police and fire service seemed to favour. Jon noticed his olive skin and the slight slant at the edges of his eyes. It gave him the look of a Pacific Islander, someone from Fiji or Tonga, or perhaps Samoa. Jon couldn’t help wondering if the guy had played rugby.
‘So what’s the sequence of events?’ he asked as they shook hands.
Sergeant Thompson spoke up. ‘The occupant of number seven on the road behind us called in at twenty-five past three. She’d noticed the glow of flames on her bedroom ceiling, looked out the window and saw the side windows of the church were alight.’
‘As in the flames were on the inside of the church?’ Rick asked, wrinkling his nose as a wave of acrid smelling steam washed over them.
‘Correct. She rang nine nine nine immediately.’
‘Our first appliance arrived fourteen minutes later,’ Webster said. ‘After assessing the situation, they called for back-up. By then the fire was well established. Residents in the nearest homes were evacuated and we commenced containing the fire within the church itself.’
Jon surveyed the stricken building, with its narrow graveyard and pleasant looking vicarage to the side. A fireman stood in front of the house, playing a stream of water over the windows, dampening the wooden frames in case of stray sparks. ‘Any sign of the priest?’
‘None,’ Sergeant Thompson shook his head. ‘His phone number is on the noticeboard at the front gates of the church. No reply on his phone and no response from hammering at his front door. I requested an ambulance as a precautionary measure.’
‘What’s his name?’ Jon asked, eyes on the deserted property.
‘Father Ben Waters.’
Turning back to the church, he said, ‘Reckon the same guy set this one alight?’
Webster shrugged. ‘Seems likely. Once it’s burnt itself out we can go in and get some answers.’
‘How soon do—’
A loud cracking sound came from the church and the exposed timbers in the roof shifted. Suddenly the beams collapsed with a massive crash. A cloud of sparks surged up, veering off into the night like a plague of angry fireflies. From the crowd behind them came a couple of whoops.
‘Not long, now that’s come down,’ Webster replied. ‘Just a case of pumping in enough water through the windows.’
Jon thought about the crime scene, any evidence obliterated by a flood of biblical proportions. A young officer appeared at their side, an agitated man standing just behind him. Jon spotted the white dog collar round his neck. He appeared to be in his early fifties, though the anguished look on his face was adding a good few years to his appearance. His neat, side-parted hair could have been blond, or maybe light brown and tinged with grey. It was difficult to tell in the unnatural light.
‘Sir, this is Father Waters. It’s his church,’ the officer announced.
‘Father. We’re glad to see you. We were getting worried you might have been inside the church,’ Jon said.
The priest raised a hand and rubbed at a spot just above one eyebrow. ‘No. I’ve been with a parishioner. St Mary’s hospice.’ The hand dropped, then was held outwards towards the burning building. ‘What on earth has happened? Was it deliberate?’
Gently, Jon took him by the shoulder and tried to turn him away from what remained of his church. ‘We’re not sure yet. Can we talk somewhere more quiet?’
‘I just can’t understand . . . I mean, someone has done this, have they not?’
Firelight caught in the lower rims of his eyes as tears welled up. At the edge of his vision Jon saw Webster turn away in embarrassment at the priest’s show of emotion.
‘Sir . . . I mean Father, let’s sit down somewhere.’ Jon looked about. No incident wagon was at the scene. He started back towards his vehicle Rick behind him and the vicar alongside, shoulders sagging in defeat.
‘We can sit in my car and I’ll run through what I know. I’m sorry you’ve had to suffer this shock. How long has it been your church?’
‘Twenty-one years.’ The reply was flat, all emotion now drained away.
Jon was familiar with the tone. It was that of someone who’d just been informed a loved one was dead. He thought of how the vicar had come from the bedside of a dying parishioner. How to console a person who spent his life comforting others?
‘Did you walk here from the hospice? I’m not sure where Saint
Mary’s is.’
‘About a mile away. No, I drove. I’ve only just parked . . .’ His words fell away and Jon turned in the direction of the man’s crestfallen sta
re. A blue Volvo estate was parked at the opposite side of the road to Jon’s. Shattered glass lay like jewels on the tarmac by its back wheels.
‘My car.’
Jon looked about. Everyone’s attention was on the church at the end of the close. If anything, the fire made the shadows behind the vehicle deeper, creating an inky space into which a thief had obviously crept. The little bastard, using an incident like this for a bit of robbing. And of all the fucking cars to choose. ‘What was in your boot?’
The man’s head was bowed and Jon could see his shoulders rise and fall as he gulped in air. ‘A sports bag full of hockey gear.’
Jon was impressed the man was still playing. He was about to say so when the priest took a step backwards, hands going to his chest.
‘Father?’
The priest looked at him and Jon saw pain and fear in his eyes. Oh shit no, not a heart attack. Jon grabbed his shoulders.
‘Rick! Get the ambulance crew.’ He hooked an arm around the other man. ‘Can you walk? Would you like to sit?’
‘Can’t breathe . . .’
‘It’s OK, we’re getting the ambulance. They’ll have oxygen.’
He’d half carried him ten or so steps when the paramedics ran over.
Jon lowered the priest to the tarmac, keeping a hand between the man’s head and the surface of the road. Fragments of gravel dug into the back of his hand as the female paramedic began to loosen Water’s dog collar and unbutton his shirt. The priest squirmed under her touch, short gasps coming from his half open mouth. He clamped a hand over the paramedic’s wrist, preventing her from undoing the next button down.
‘Sir, please try to relax.’
The priest’s eyes were shut tight.
‘Sir, what can you feel?’
‘My chest is tight,’ he panted in reply.
The male paramedic crouched down and placed a finger on the side of the priest’s neck. ‘Any pains in your chest?’
‘No.’
‘Tingling in your arms?’
‘No.’
‘Just shortness of breath?’ He nodded.
