The Sh0ut

by Stephen Leather

  Vicky pulled open the passenger door and peered inside. The floor carpet had burned as had the plastic seats. The plastic panels in the doors had burned, and so had the roof. The seats at the back had been scorched but not burned and the roof was less damaged there.

  Vicky straightened up. ‘It spread from the front.’

  ‘The engine bay?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t see any ignition sources here.’

  ‘Any smell of petrol? Oil? Brake fluid? Smell anything that shouldn’t be there?’

  Vicky put her head back inside and sniffed. All she could smell was burnt plastic and rubber. ‘No, nothing,’ she said.

  Farmer dropped what was left of his roll-up on to the ground, stamped on it, then went over to the car and pulled on a pair of green nitrile gloves. He then put a second pair on top of the first. Vicky followed his example. The bonnet had been forced open by the firefighters. Farmer touched it gingerly to reassure himself that it wasn’t still hot, then opened it. Vicky joined him and peered into the engine bay. It was blackened from the fire and the underside of the bonnet was thick with wet soot. Farmer put his head down and sniffed, then carefully inspected the sides of the engine. The cover of the battery had melted and he had to twist it to pull it off. The connections to the terminals showed no signs of sparking. The cover to the fuse box had also been damaged by the fire but when he removed it there was no apparent electrical damage. He examined the covers. Both were damaged on the outside and relatively unmarked on the undersides. He showed them to Vicky.

  ‘So probably not an electrical fire,’ she said.

  Farmer nodded. ‘But from the look of the damage to the underside of the bonnet, it clearly started in the engine compartment.’

  ‘The damage looks worse on this side,’ she said, pointing to the left.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Farmer. He peered down into the left-hand side of the compartment. ‘Ah-ha!’

  ‘Ah-ha?’ repeated Vicky.

  Farmer took a pen from his pocket and poked it down the side of the engine. ‘Down on your knees, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘With an evidence bag.’ He handed her a clear plastic bag and then pushed the pen down into the gap between the engine and the bodywork. Vicky knelt down on the tarmac. ‘Here it comes,’ said Farmer. He prodded again and a burnt piece of rag tumbled to the floor.

  Vicky put it into the bag and stood up, frowning. ‘That started it?’ she said. She sniffed it and smelt a mixture of burnt cloth, oil and grease.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Farmer.

  ‘So it’s a deliberate fire?’ said Vicky. ‘Someone set fire to the rag and shoved it on the engine?’

  Farmer grinned. ‘That’s a pretty haphazard way of setting a fire,’ he said. ‘I think we’re looking at accidental damage.’

  ‘How does a burning cloth accidentally get on to an engine?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘We need to talk to the owner,’ said Farmer. ‘The car was obviously running and the bodywork was in fairly good nick prior to the fire, doubtful he’d have anything to gain by torching it. In fact, from the look of it he took pride in his vehicle. Maybe even worked on it himself. The key is still in the ignition so we need to check if it was stolen from outside his house and if he was working on it at the time.’

  Realisation dawned and Vicky smiled. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘The owner was working on the car, steps inside for a moment and an opportunistic thief sees the keys in the ignition and drives off. What he doesn’t know is that there’s an oily cloth on the engine. It catches fire, the car burns and the thief bales.’

  ‘You can make some calls when we get back to the office,’ said Farmer. ‘But yes, that’s what the evidence suggests.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Right, how about lunch?’

  ‘I could eat,’ said Vicky.

  ‘That’s good because you’re paying,’ said Farmer.

  ‘Why am I paying?’

  ‘It’s tradition,’ he said. ‘First day on the job, the assistant buys lunch.’

  Following Farmer’s curt directions, Vicky drove the van to an East End pub and found a parking space across the road. It was a Wetherspoon’s and Farmer ordered steak and kidney pie and chips and Coke and Vicky asked for fish and chips and a coffee. The girl who took their order did a double take when she saw the scars on Vicky’s face, then stared studiously at her notepad and refused to look up until she left the table.

  ‘Can I speak frankly, without you bursting into tears and going running to the bosses?’ said Farmer when the waitress finally left.

  ‘Sure,’ said Vicky.

  ‘I’m serious, sweetheart. I’ll put my cards on the table, but if I do that, I don’t want you alleging constructive dismissal or whatnot.’

  ‘I don’t think you can sack me, guv.’

  He waved a hand. ‘I don’t want you blabbing, that’s what I’m saying. But I want to tell you the way things are.’

  ‘I’m all ears. And I’d rather you were straight with me.’

  Farmer nodded. ‘Good. Okay, here’s the thing. Fire Investigations isn’t a dumping ground. Never has been and never will be. I don’t understand why my boss allowed it, but I’m guessing he wasn’t given a choice. It’s bloody hard to get into investigations. There’s a waiting list of highly qualified men and women who deserve a place in the unit. There’s an intensive selection procedure to get through, and a lot of studying to be done. And yet you were dropped into the unit like an unwanted turd.’

  ‘Thanks. That image will stay with me for a long time. But I take your point. I was foisted on you and I get that no one is happy about that.’

  ‘Okay.’ Farmer nodded slowly. ‘And you were serious, you’ve read the manuals back to front?’

  ‘Like you said, I’m a firefighter not an investigator. So when they told me I was being assigned to the investigation department, I figured I should at least be prepared.’

  ‘It’s a different job completely,’ said Farmer. ‘And not everyone can do it. It’s not just about the manual. It’s about understanding fire and how it operates. Fire can be like a living thing: sometimes it follows the rules, sometimes it doesn’t.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Vicky.

  He squinted at her. ‘That’s easy to say, but do you really?’

  ‘Guv, with the greatest of respect I’ve been a firefighter for almost ten years. I was at Grenfell Tower. I’ve seen what fires can do.’

  ‘Fighting fires and understanding fires are two different things,’ said Farmer. ‘The big difference with what we do is that we are working backwards, whereas firefighters are working forwards. Firefighters arrive and make predictions. They look forward. I get there when it’s all over, and I have to work backwards. I have to work out how the fire started. And why. We need to know why the fire happened. Because a big part of this job is to make sure that future fires don’t happen. We’re always looking for causes so that we can prevent the same thing happening again. We’re looking for links, for patterns of behaviour that can lead to fires, for faulty products, for materials that increase the risk of a fire.’

  ‘Fire prevention?’

  ‘That’s the end result, yes. It partly explains why the death toll from fire is down forty per cent in London over the past ten years. That’s what we do, Vicky. We save lives.’

  A bearded waiter brought their food over. He approached from Vicky’s right side and he gave her a beaming smile until she turned to face him. The movement pushed her hair away from her cheek and revealed all her scar tissue and he grimaced and almost dropped the plates he was carrying. ‘Oh God, sorry, sorry,’ he muttered, putting the plates on the table and rushing away.

  ‘Does that get to you, the way people react?’ asked Farmer.

  ‘It’s not their fault,’ she said, picking up her knife and fork. She tilted her head down so that her hair swung over her face. ‘It’s not as if they’re being deliberately hurtful. I’m probably the same. You see something you don’t expect an
d you react instinctively.’ She shrugged. ‘I probably react the same way when I see something that takes me by surprise. It’s what you do afterwards, that counts. Some people just can’t look at me again, like the waiter. Others just accept it for what it is and ignore it. Or at least they pretend to ignore it. It’s impossible to not see it, obviously.’ She grimaced. ‘What can I do? My face is a mess, I just have to deal with it.’

  She raised her eyes and saw that he was looking at her scarred cheek. He shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he said. He dug into his steak and kidney pie. ‘So, back to the manual. Tell me about the Fire Triangle.’

  Vicky put down her knife and fork and poured ketchup over her food. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I need to know how much you know about the mechanics and chemistry of fire. I know you know how to fight fires, but I need to know if you really understand them.’

  Vicky sighed. ‘The fire triangle or combustion triangle sets down the three elements that a fire needs to ignite. Heat, fuel and an oxidising agent.’

  ‘The most common oxidising agent being?’

  ‘Oxygen.’

  ‘Other examples being?’

  ‘Nitrates. Chlorine. Iodine. Peroxides.’

  Farmer nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But the triangle model is now regarded as old school, correct?’

  Vicky nodded. ‘They talk about a fire tetrahedron now. The fourth element is chemical chain reaction.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘There has to be enough exothermic reaction energy to produce ignition. Without the chain reaction there is no fire.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Though actually, on the pump we always thought it was more of a fire pentagon.’

  He frowned. ‘How so?’

  ‘We always reckoned there were five elements to a fire. Heat, fuel, an oxidising agent, a chemical reaction and senior officers. Remove any of the five and the fire would go out a lot quicker.’

  Farmer chuckled. ‘Nice one.’ He popped a chip into his mouth. ‘So take me through the stages of a fire.’

  ‘Incipient stage, smouldering stage, and flame.’ Vicky grinned. She knew that Farmer was testing her, and on one hand she was offended that he had so little faith in her abilities. But she also knew how well prepared she was and she was fairly sure there was no question that he could ask that she couldn’t answer. She was serious when she had said she had read the manuals front to back and back to front. She had gone through Kirks Fire Investigation manual from the front to the back, then reread it from the last chapter to the first. It was a trick she’d learned at school, changing the order she read things helped her memorise them.

  Framer nodded as he hacked away at his pie.

  ‘Any more questions, guv?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not at the moment, no.’

  15

  Vicky drove the van back into Dowgate station. The station’s pump had gone and Farmer spotted Vicky’s car. His jaw dropped. ‘What the fuck is that?’ he said, gesturing at the blue two-door coupé with a massive downward wedge on the sloping bonnet and bulbous buttresses over the rear wheels.

  ‘That’s mine,’ she said. ‘A BMW i8.’

  ‘You bought it?’ He climbed out of the van, took a roll-up from his tobacco pack and lit it as he looked at the car.

  ‘You think I stole it?’

  ‘How much does a car like that cost?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. A hundred grand or so, I guess.’

  ‘How can you buy a car and not know how much it cost?’

  ‘I just gave them the credit card and said I wanted it.’

  He blew smoke at the car. ‘How fast does it go?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t really driven it fast. It’s just a great car. It’s a hybrid, and there’s no congestion charge, which is a bonus.’

  ‘I’m in the wrong job,’ said Farmer. ‘I’d never be able to afford a car like that, no matter how much I saved.’

  ‘I got the car because of this,’ she said, turning her scarred cheek towards him. ‘I’d give up the car in a heartbeat if it meant I could get my face back.’

  ‘A hundred grand?’

  ‘Give or take.’

  Farmer shook his head and took another drag on his roll-up. ‘So you sued the bastards did you? The bastards that owned the hotel.’

  ‘No, they gave it to me. Paid me the money while I was still in the hospital.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I can’t say. There was a confidentiality clause. I’m not supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘But it was a lot, yeah?’

  ‘I didn’t want the money and I didn’t ask for it. I just wanted to be a firefighter.’

  ‘You’re a funny one, Vicky Lewis. If someone gave me a shed-load of cash you wouldn’t see me for dust.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t believe you. I think you enjoy what you do, same as I enjoyed being a firefighter. It gets in your blood.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Farmer. ‘Like hepatitis.’ He dropped the remains of his cigarette on to the ground and stamped it out with his boot.

  As she and Farmer walked over to the main building, Watson the spaniel ran over to them. ‘Get away from me you flea-ridden mutt,’ scowled Farmer.

  ‘You don’t like dogs?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘Only between a roll with mustard on it,’ said Farmer.

  Vicky knelt down and let the dog lick her face.

  Farmer grimaced. ‘You know what else they lick, right?’ He walked away in disgust.

  Vicky carried on petting the exuberant dog until she heard an urgent whistling from behind her. She stood up and turned to see Jamie Hughes. He waved at her and walked over. ‘How is your first day?’

  ‘I’m on a steep learning curve,’ she said.

  ‘Just don’t tell him I called him the Grouch.’

  Vicky grinned. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘Cool. Anyway, hopefully we’ll be working together sooner rather than later. If you need a dog, give me a call.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ She looked down at Watson who was still pawing at her knees.

  Hughes whistled and bounced Watson’s ball and he went running over to him, tail wagging.

  Vicky headed up the stairs. Farmer was already at his desk. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, but he waved her apology away with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘Before you get settled, pop along to the tea room and get me a coffee, will you? Milk, two sugars. And if there are any Hobnobs, a couple of them.’

  ‘Right, guv.’ She went back along the corridor. There was a kettle so she switched it on and took two mugs from a cupboard and a jar of Gold Blend. There were several packs of biscuits in a cupboard, including Hobnobs, so she took two and put them on a plate.

  The man in the next office popped his head around the door. ‘I thought I heard the kettle,’ he said. He was in his mid-thirties, with close-cropped dark-brown hair. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a fire brigade tie that was loose around his neck. ‘Black. One sugar.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Vicky.

  ‘Coffee. Black. One sugar.’ He had a soft Yorkshire accent.

  ‘And you are …?’

  He stuck out his hand. ‘Sorry, Danny Maguire. I’m in the office next to the Grouch. You’re his gofer, right?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes,’ said Vicky.

  She turned to shake his hand and for the first time he saw her scarred face and he flinched. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  Vicky shook her head. ‘I’m happy enough to make you coffee but I draw the line at a fuck.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Des didn’t say anything and I … I’m so sorry.’

  She frowned. ‘Sorry about what? That I was injured in the line of duty?’

  ‘He just said he had been given a new assistant. That was all he said.’ His jaw dropped as realisation dawned. ‘You’re Vicky Lewis.’

 
‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘The Grouch isn’t one for chit-chat,’ said Maguire. He held out his hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Vicky. Hell, it’s an honour.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘And forget about the coffee. I can make my own.’

  Vicky shook her head. ‘Nah, I’m the new girl, I’m happy to make the coffees. I’m here to learn the ropes.’

  ‘Well, Des knows his stuff, that’s for sure,’ said Maguire. ‘It’s just the social skills that he’s missing.’ He shook his head. ‘Vicky Lewis. Bloody hell. You deserve a medal for what you did, pulling that guy out of the building.’

  ‘I was just doing my job. Same as any firefighter would have done.’

  ‘And the whole building fell on you?’

  ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘The floor collapsed under me.’

  ‘You were lucky,’ said Maguire.

  Vicky put her gloved hand up to her scarred face. ‘Yeah, I suppose I was.’

  ‘So now you want to try fire investigation?’

  She shook her head fiercely. ‘I want to be a firefighter, but they won’t put me back on a pump, so here I am.’

  He leaned towards her and smiled conspiratorially. ‘If you get fed up with Des, I’d be more than happy to take you under my wing.’ He winked. ‘I know how difficult he can be.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Vicky. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Black, one sugar?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Hobnob?’

  He laughed. ‘Why not? But don’t tell the Grouch, he thinks they’re his personal property.’

  Maguire went back to his office and Vicky made three coffees. She took Maguire’s into his office with a couple of biscuits. Maguire’s office was much tidier than Farmer’s, but again there was nothing of a personal nature other than a gym bag on the floor by the door with a pair of running shoes on top. He thanked her and nodded at a row of reference books on a shelf by the door. ‘I know Des isn’t one for the manuals, but I’ve got some books there you might find useful. Feel free to borrow anything you want.’