The Sh0ut

by Stephen Leather

  ‘But how would the bin catch fire?’ asked Moses.

  ‘That’s why I was asking about the smoking,’ said Vicky. ‘I’d say one of your staff took a quick smoke without opening the door and popped the butt into the bin. Thought he’d extinguished it but hadn’t and it smouldered away happily without anyone noticing. Where do you normally empty the bin?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s the busboy’s job.’

  ‘And where does he empty it?’

  ‘There’s a skip in the alley.’

  ‘Did you check that he emptied it into the skip?’

  Moses sighed. ‘No.’

  Vicky nodded. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘The rain stops them smoking outside. Someone puts a lit cigarette end in the bin. It smoulders. It’s still raining so your busboy decides not to take out the rubbish. It catches fire late in the night. Bob’s your uncle.’ She looked over at Farmer and he smiled and flashed her a thumbs-up.

  ‘Shit,’ said Moses. ‘That’s some freaky detective work there.’

  ‘It’s just common sense,’ said Farmer. He handed his torch to Vicky. ‘Well done. Now pop the gear back in the van and we’ll do the paperwork.’

  ‘What about my insurance?’ asked Moses. ‘They’ll still pay out, won’t they?’

  ‘It was an accident, Moses,’ said Farmer. ‘It was stupid but it wasn’t deliberate. They’ll bitch and moan but they’ll pay out. And don’t worry about the cops. I’ll talk to them.’

  Moses slapped him on the back. ‘As soon as I’m back in business, you come back and see me,’ he said. ‘You can try my jerk chicken. The restaurant is vegetarian but I’ll make an exception for you.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Farmer as he headed to the door. Before they drove back to Dowgate, Farmer sat with Vicky at a fold-down table in the back of the van and went through the twenty-four-page A4 booklet that had to be filled in each time an investigator went to a fire. On the front page were the words FIRE INVESTIGATION SCENE CONTEMPORANEOUS NOTES with the incident number, the date and the name of the lead investigator. ‘That would be me, obviously,’ said Farmer.

  ‘Right,’ said Vicky, writing in his name in capital letters.

  The booklet required them to fill in details of who was doing the investigating, details of the weather, and a comprehensive risk assessment. They had to list any witnesses to the fire, and full details of the property including the types of alarms and sprinklers, details of the mains gas and electricity supplies. There were several pages left blank for witness statements.

  Vicky looked up at Farmer. ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Not needed at this stage,’ he said. ‘If the police SOCO team comes up with anything then we might start interviewing, but this looks open and shut.’

  Page 12 was devoted to possible sources of ignition with a list including electric supply, electrical appliances, gas appliances, naked flames, and smoking materials. The final section was Deliberate Ignition. Each possibility had Y/N next to it and a space to be filled in under REASON DISCOUNTED. ‘Okay, so we’re pretty sure it was a stray cigarette, but we need to discount every possibility with a reason,’ he said. ‘That way if it ever went to court and a QC asks you how you can’t be sure it was a rat chewing through a wire that caused the fire, you can point to the fact that we saw no evidence of a rodent infestation.’

  ‘Rats cause fires?’

  ‘Not maliciously,’ said Farmer. ‘They like to chew and if they chew through a live wire they can start a fire. I had one crawl into the back of a freezer and cause a short circuit.’

  The final section of Page 12 was for the investigator’s conclusion. ‘You can write “accidental ignition of rubbish in bin by discarded cigarette” or something like that,’ said Farmer.

  There were then several pages of grids so that the investigator could draw a map of the premises and Vicky did it from memory. Farmer nodded his approval.

  The subsequent pages were a log of all the photographs that had been taken. Farmer watched as Vicky took the number of each photograph and a brief description of what it showed.

  When she had finished she turned to the next page, which was where casualties were listed. ‘Obviously doesn’t apply here,’ said Farmer.

  The page after that was for details of vehicle damage, and again this didn’t apply. There was then a summary of the material forming the investigation, and a final page to be filled in if there had been a fire involving appliances or equipment. ‘That’s so we can chase up similar cases, say if we had a fridge malfunctioning,’ said Farmer. ‘Doesn’t apply in this case.’

  Vicky finished the paperwork and she and Farmer signed it. ‘There you go,’ said Farmer. ‘It can be a pain at times but it has to be done. Everything we do has to be detailed and recorded. Partly because sometimes our evidence ends up in court, but also because the damage is usually made good pretty quickly, so we need a full record of what happened. Right, let’s head off.’

  21

  As they pulled into Dowgate, Danny Maguire was heading out, carrying his tunic and helmet. ‘What’s the story?’ asked Farmer as he climbed out of the van.

  ‘Meth lab in Hackney.’

  ‘Are you single-handed?’

  Maguire nodded. ‘Tom got called in to an inquest today.’

  ‘Why not take Vicky with you? Be good for her to see a meth lab at first hand.’

  ‘I’ve seen meth labs before,’ said Vicky.

  ‘But not as an investigator,’ said Farmer.

  ‘Happy to have her along,’ said Maguire. He nodded at Vicky. ‘Do you want to drive?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Vicky. She put her helmet, tunic and boots in the back of the van and climbed into the driving seat as Farmer headed upstairs.

  Maguire took the passenger seat, pulled the door shut and tapped the address into the satnav. Vicky laughed and Maguire looked over at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She nodded at the satnav. ‘Des refuses to use it.’

  ‘Yeah, the Grouch has his own way of doing a lot of things. Rank has its privileges.’

  ‘You’ve worked with him for a while?’

  ‘Three years, but it feels longer.’

  ‘What station were you at before? I don’t remember seeing you around.’

  ‘I transferred down from Leeds. More action down here.’ Vicky drove off. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said Maguire. ‘Des is one hell of an investigator. He’s just a bit tetchy sometimes. That’s why all his wives end up leaving him.’

  ‘How many wives has he had?’ asked Vicky.

  ‘Three that he admits to, but I suspect there might be more.’ He laughed. ‘His maintenance payments must be a nightmare. I told him it would be cheaper to just bump them off, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny.’

  Vicky looked across at him. Maguire caught the look and flashed her a shamefaced smile. ‘I was joking.’

  ‘It’s not that funny, Danny. I can see why Des might take offence. What about you?’

  ‘Do I kill my ex-wives?’ He chuckled. ‘I’ve never been married.’

  ‘How come?’

  He shrugged. ‘No rush,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if I have a biological clock ticking away.’

  ‘I guess it’s not easy meeting people in the brigade,’ she said. ‘The ratio of men to women isn’t in your favour.’

  ‘Whereas you’ve got plenty of hunky men to choose from? I think my problem is that I’m too fussy. I see plenty of girls in the gym but none of them take my fancy.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s your type, then?’

  He opened his mouth to speak but then seemed to check himself. ‘Difficult to say. I guess I’ll know when I see her.’

  As Vicky followed the satnav’s instructions, Maguire studied a written report. ‘Breaking Bad has a lot to answer for,’ he said eventually.

  Vicky frowned. ‘The TV show?’

  Maguire nodded. ‘It glamourised methamphetamine production. That and the Internet meant all sorts of idiots started messing around wit
h chemistry kits. If they were lucky they’d start a fire and lose their eyebrows. Unlucky and …’ He shrugged. ‘Luckily we haven’t had many deaths yet in London. Just a few fires. The firefighters found glassware and tubing in the attic. That’s usually a pretty good indication that someone has been going all Walter White. Pretty small scale and they put the fire out quickly.’

  They arrived at the fire scene. The traffic had been cleared from around the house that had burned and police bollards placed along the pavement fifty feet either side. There was a lone uniformed policeman standing in front of a door criss-crossed with police tape. He was in his twenties, stick-thin with a wispy moustache, and was playing with his smartphone when Vicky drove up and parked.

  Vicky opened the rear of the van. ‘SOCO are here already so we won’t need the lights,’ said Maguire, nodding at a police van.

  ‘Right,’ said Vicky, handing him gloves and overshoes.

  ‘We need full fire-fighting kit,’ he said. ‘There can be all sorts of hazardous stuff in there.’

  She put on her kit, grabbed the camera and flashlights, and slammed the door. The policeman looked up from his smartphone as they approached.

  Maguire looked up at the top floor and shielded his eyes with his hand. There was a pitched roof and parts of it had fallen in to reveal jagged burnt beams. Both windows on the top floor had been smashed. There wasn’t much broken glass on the pavement, which suggested that the firefighters had broken them to get water in.

  ‘Officer, I’m a bit light on details,’ said Maguire. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  The policeman nodded at Maguire. ‘Your guys pulled out two men, both very badly burnt. They’re in the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster.’

  ‘They were on the top floor?’

  ‘One was, the other was in the attic.’

  ‘Is it known as a drug den?’

  ‘Not specifically, but this whole area is rife with it. If they’re not making speed they’re growing marijuana or cooking crack. The ones that don’t make it, sell it. It’s a cottage industry around here.’

  ‘Good to see the spirit of enterprise isn’t dead,’ said Maguire, his voice loaded with sarcasm.

  He took Vicky over to the door. It had been kicked in, probably by the firefighters. The building had once been a single house but had been converted into small flats, two per floor. There was no smoke or fire damage in the stairway but there was the stench of burnt wood and plastic and the carpets were soaked. The doors were closed on the first floor but on the second floor the door to the right had been broken in.

  ‘Right, first rule of any drugs den, be it crack, or meth or marijuana, is to watch out for booby traps. They set them for the cops and other gangs but they’re just as dangerous for firefighters or investigators. Sometimes they wire doorknobs up to the mains or put razor blades in the floorboards. Just be careful what you touch, okay?’

  ‘Got it,’ said Vicky. ‘I’ve attended my fair share of drugs labs over the years.’

  ‘Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying. If anything happens to you, I’ll get the blame.’

  They heard a scuffling sound and a man in a white overall appeared. He was in his early forties. His hood was up so Vicky couldn’t see his hair but he had a neatly trimmed goatee. The man smiled when he saw Maguire. ‘How’s it going, Danny?’ asked the man.

  ‘Busy, busy, busy as always,’ said Maguire. ‘This is the new member of the team. Vicky, Garry Harding.’

  Vicky smiled. ‘Hi, Garry.’

  ‘So you’re Robin to Danny’s Batman?’

  ‘She’s been assigned to the Grouch,’ said Maguire.

  Harding grinned. ‘My sympathies, then.’

  Maguire smiled. ‘Okay, let’s check out the scene,’ he said to Vicky. ‘I’ve no doubt Des has already told you we photograph everything, distance shots first and then close-ups. Can you pay particular attention to the burn marks on the ceiling?’ He looked at Harding. ‘We don’t need masks?’

  ‘The air’s fine,’ said Harding.

  Maguire stepped into the flat and Vicky followed him. There was a small hallway with a bathroom at the end of it, and directly opposite the door was the sitting room. There were burnt remains of a plastic sofa, a table and chairs, and a melted flat-screen TV. There was a soaking wet carpet covered in a thick sludge and the walls were black with soot. The ceiling was charred and blackened. There was broken glass on the floors that suggested the windows had been broken from the outside. Maguire bent down and picked up a piece of charred cardboard. He held it out for Vicky to look at it. It was part of a package of lithium batteries. He bent down again and lifted up a piece of melted plastic. There was enough of the label left intact to see that the bottle had once contained sodium hydroxide drain cleaner. He found several more melted bottles with similar labels. ‘I’m thinking this was the storage area,’ said Maguire. He pointed at a hatch in the ceiling above a metal stepladder. ‘They probably did the cooking in the attic. You know how to make methamphetamine, right?’

  ‘Not really.’ She snapped away with the camera, though there wasn’t much to see.

  Maguire grimaced. ‘It’s not rocket science, or the scumbags around here wouldn’t be making it in their attics. Basically, you start with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, which you have to separate out from cold medicine tablets. That’s why Boots won’t let you buy more than a couple of packs. You grind them into a powder and mix them with any number of solvents, all of which are highly inflammable. The scumbags forget all the warnings and let the solvent near a naked flame and whoosh, game over. But if they get past the first stage, they have to filter out the pure pseudoephedrine which is then mixed with red phosphorus and hydriodic acid. You can make your own red phosphorous from match heads but you’ve got to be careful because it can burst into flames just from friction. You filter out the red phosphorous and neutralise the remaining acid with sodium hydroxide and after a bit more jiggery pokery you end up with crystal meth. The problem is that a lot of the stuff used in the process is highly inflammable, not to say toxic.

  ‘Garry, are we okay to go upstairs?’ asked Maguire.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Harding. ‘It’s pretty bad but the floor is stable.’

  Maguire pointed at the ladder. ‘Ladies before gentlemen.’

  He held the ladder steady as Vicky climbed up and hauled herself into the attic space. Maguire followed her and pulled himself through the hatch. There was a metal table at the far end of the attic around which was a lot of broken glass and smashed laboratory equipment. Vicky snapped away with the digital camera. There was plenty of light coming in through the holes in the roof so Maguire switched off his torch.

  He walked the length of the attic, staring at the parts of the roof that hadn’t fallen in, then checked the floorboards. Then he examined the broken glass and ashes under the table. ‘I’m not seeing much in the way of specialist glassware or metal tubing,’ he said. ‘This has the look of a Shake and Bake operation.’

  Vicky frowned. ‘How does that work?’

  ‘It’s a small-scale meth-manufacturing method,’ said Maguire. ‘It uses one container for the mixing. A two-litre plastic pop bottle will do the trick. You put in your ground-up tablets, the beads from a gel cold pack, hydrochloric acid, lighter fluid, sodium hydroxide – that’s caustic soda drain cleaner – and lithium strips from inside an AA battery. You’ve got to be careful that you don’t get any moisture on the lithium because it’ll burst into flames. You put everything but the cough tablets in the bottle and give it a shake. Then you add the ground-up tablets and shake again. Any air inside the bottle and the whole thing can blow up in your face. It takes about an hour for the reaction to take place but there’s an increase in pressure and if you don’t release it you get an explosion. Looks to me like that might have happened here.’

  ‘Causing all this damage?’

  ‘Probably stored their chemicals downstairs and did the mixing up here. Rookie mistake. They should have done the
mixing downstairs and kept the windows open for ventilation.’ He pointed at the charring around the hatch and the blackened roof above it. ‘That’s where most of the heat was,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing he was doing the mixing and had an explosion. He drops the bottle down the hatch and it ignites the flammable materials down there. He manages to get out with his pal while the fire rages upwards.’

  Vicky was scanning the floor as Maguire was speaking. She stiffened as she spotted a small melted piece of metal. She went over and picked it up and carefully sniffed it. ‘Lithium battery, what’s left of it,’ she said.

  ‘Well spotted,’ said Maguire. ‘Photograph everything and then I’ll go through the contemporaneous notes with you. I’ll go and have a chat with Garry. No need to put anything in evidence bags, Garry’ll do that.’

  22

  As Vicky left her office at just after eight o’clock she saw Farmer and Maguire heading down the stairs.

  ‘We’re off to the pub, fancy a jar?’ asked Maguire.

  ‘She’s driving,’ said Farmer.

  ‘I can leave the car here,’ said Vicky. ‘I could do with a drink.’

  ‘Thirsty work being Mr Farmer’s bag-carrier?’ asked Maguire.

  Farmer threw him an annoyed glance but Vicky wasn’t sure if he was upset at the jibe or the invitation. She smiled brightly. ‘He keeps me on my toes.’

  ‘And did Des explain that the newest member of the team buys the drinks?’

  Vicky laughed. ‘No, he said lunch. But I can stand my round.’

  ‘Nice one,’ said Maguire. ‘Lagers it is.’ He patted Farmer on the back. ‘You’ve got a keeper here, Des.’

  The Steelyard pub was next door to the station, set under the arches of Cannon Bridge, which ferried trains to and from Cannon Street. There was a printed notice on the front door warning that drugs weren’t allowed, which struck Vicky as overkill as drugs weren’t allowed anywhere. ‘What’s the story?’ asked Vicky, nodding at the sign.

  ‘It’s a nightclub when the sun goes down,’ said Farmer. ‘Different sort of clientele.’