by M J Lee
‘I am, but on secondment to the coroner as her officer.’
The detective constable frowned. ‘Bit of a comedown for an inspector from MIT. Coroner’s officers are usually men at the end of their careers, not at the beginning.’ Realising what he had said, Pleasance touched Ridpath’s arm. ‘No offence, mate, it’s a bit strange, that’s all.’
Ridpath was sick of explaining. It had been a year since he was placed in the coroner’s office by Charlie Whitworth and he was still being asked about it. ‘No offence taken, mate. I was a probationary inspector with MIT and then had a dose of cancer. In remission now, touch wood,’ he tapped his temple, ‘so they asked me to help in the coroner’s office for a while.’
‘Claire Trent still your boss, then?’
He nodded. ‘Still biting my knackers on a daily basis.’
Pleasance laughed. ‘I heard she was a bit of a ball-breaker. What happened to the DCI? Wilson was his name, wasn’t it?’
The smile vanished from Ridpath’s face. ‘His name is Whitworth. Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Whitworth. He was injured in the Connolly case, run over by the perp. Broke both legs and knackered his spine.’
‘I’m sure he got a big payout.’ Pleasance was rubbing his fingers together.
The man was an arse. A young, inexperienced kid playing at being a copper. ‘Charlie Whitworth was one of the best coppers I ever worked with. He was my boss and a great man. Next time you want to be a tit, keep it to yourself, OK, Detective Constable?’
Pleasance touched Ridpath’s arm again. ‘No offence meant, mate. Just a joke.’
Ridpath took a deep breath. There was no point getting upset with idiots. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said with a sigh.
The crime scene manager approached them. It was Helen Charles, somebody Ridpath knew very well.
‘Morning, Ridpath, I thought the vampires would be out for this one.’
‘Morning, Helen. Have you finished yet?’
‘Nearly. Dr Schofield was here late last night and we already moved the body to the mortuary at four this morning. I presume you’ll be asking for a post-mortem?’
‘Dunno yet. Depends what we see.’
‘Hiya, Terry,’ she said to the fire investigator. ‘You’re out again, must be nice to get some air.’
‘Morning, Helen, can we go in?’
Helen Charles nodded. ‘But make sure you suit up. We’ve finished in the living room and the kitchen already. Just the bedroom left.’
‘You were quick,’ said Ridpath.
‘That’s the problem with fire. Not much left for us to find. And the water used to put it out doesn’t help. But most cons think us forensics can’t find anything after a fire. They couldn’t be more wrong. As long as we remove the soot carefully, we can use luminol to see blood or blood splatter, and even pick up fingerprints.’
‘So fire doesn’t destroy everything?’ asked the detective constable.
‘Not any more. We can even find DNA if the fire remains below eight hundred degrees Celsius. After that, it becomes difficult.’
‘So did you find anything?’
‘Not a lot,’ she admitted with a shrug. ‘But we tried.’
‘We should be done quick then,’ said Pleasance, rubbing his hands.
‘Before you go in… I couldn’t live like this man. No food in the fridge. Nothing in the cupboards. And we found a few final reminders from his electric suppliers demanding payment.’
‘You’ve bagged them?’
‘Of course. The neighbours said they hadn’t seen him for ages, then spotted him yesterday morning at about eleven, pissed as a fart apparently. Kept himself to himself, hardly ever saw him. Could hear his TV, though. Loud it were, according to them.’
They put on Tyvek suits inside the small white tent and climbed the flights of stairs to the top floor.
Ridpath followed Greene and Pleasance through the wrecked front door, stepping aside as one of the Scene of Crime officers came out carrying an evidence bag with a few burnt clothes inside. The floor was still damp and everything had the bitter smell of burnt smoke. The flat had the look of a bomb site: scorch marks on the walls, soot everywhere, boot footprints on the floor.
Dolan immediately began to take photographs, lots of photographs.
‘The resident was called Joseph Brennan. From the neighbours, his description matches the body we discovered,’ said Pleasance.
‘Any ID on the body?’
The detective constable laughed. ‘If you saw what it looked like you wouldn’t ask.’
‘One of those, huh?’
Pleasance nodded. ‘Not a pretty sight. Like a bit of steak that had been on the barbecue far too long.’
‘What time did you get here?’ Dolan asked.
‘Just after midnight. Dave had put out the fire by then and entered the flat, discovering the body.’
‘Late night?’
‘All night. Gets me out of the station, though.’
‘You decided to treat it as a crime scene. Why?’ asked Dolan.
‘None of the other rooms showed any sign of damage. Only the living room caught fire. A couple of things not quite kosher, as Dave will explain.’
‘Can we look at the other rooms first?’ asked Dolan.
‘In any investigation of death, we normally start with the body and work out from there,’ answered Ridpath.
‘But this is a fire investigation. I like to move inwards, checking as I go.’
Ridpath shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fine by me.’
They pushed open a door on the left. The kitchen had a small amount of smoke damage but otherwise was untouched by the fire.
‘Was the door closed, Dave?’
‘It was, Terry. See, there’s a bit of scorching on the paint, but the fire didn’t get in here.’
‘Or start here.’
Ridpath glanced around the small room. As Helen said, it was spartan: one mug, one plate and one spoon lay beside the sink. A small table with one chair was pushed up against the wall.
Dolan opened the doors of a cupboard. It was almost empty: a couple of tins of soup and a few out-of-date herb jars was all that was on the shelves.
‘Didn’t have much, did he?’
They exited the kitchen and instead of heading across the hall to the living room turned left to walk down to the bedroom. It was as spartan as the kitchen: one single bed, clothes folded on the floor next to it. A dressing table with a single chair in front of it and an empty waste bin by the side. A small cupboard on the right.
Ridpath often thought you could learn a lot from the way a person lived, particularly their bedroom, the most personal room in any house. A cave where people escaped into the world of dreams.
This room had no personality at all. An empty room for an empty person.
Dolan opened one of the cupboards. A few dark-coloured clothes were folded neatly on shelves inside.
He was about to close it when Ridpath stepped forward. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He pushed the door open wider. On the shelves were two framed pictures, one above the other.
In the first, a man smiled shyly at the camera, dressed in a white coat in front of a row of test tubes.
Beneath it, another framed image. The classic photo of a kids’ five-a-side football team and their beaming tracksuited coach. One of the kneeling boys was proudly holding a trophy aloft. A sign in front of them proudly proclaimed they were the Manchester champions for 1994.
Ridpath flashed back to his own childhood, playing football twice every weekend at Turn Moss, once for his school and the second game for St Matthew’s Youth Club. The coach at the youth club was a roly-poly man called David McCarthy who had once been a winger for Bradford City. He couldn’t jog for more than three yards without running out of breath, but he knew his football. Ridpath could have been a junior, even went for a trial with United, but his mother wasn’t keen. ‘Football, it’s not a proper job, is it?’ he remembered her saying. It may not be a ‘proper job’, Mu
m, but it pays millions and it’s a whole lot easier than spending a day investigating a man who burnt to death.
He beckoned to Pleasance. ‘Take a picture of the man in the lab coat, I bet it’s Joseph Brennan. You’d better get Helen to bag both of the pictures too.’
Ridpath stepped back as the flash of Pleasance’s camera phone activated.
‘Can we go through to where the body was found now?’ he asked Dolan.
The fire investigator nodded. ‘It’s time to get to work.’
Chapter Nine
All four of them trudged slowly down the hall into the living room. As they entered, Ridpath saw that the wall on the right, above a burnt-out armchair, was blackened heavily with smoke. A layer of water covered the charred carpet. Three of the windows were broken and the smoking skeleton of a television stood in one corner. On the mantlepiece, the clock had stopped at 10:06 p.m.
‘Who reported the fire?’ Dolan was asking all the questions as he shot more photographs.
Dave Greene answered. ‘A phone call to 999, didn’t leave a name, though.’
‘I checked with the call centre, the mobile number is registered to Joseph Brennan,’ added Ron Pleasance.
Dolan seemed to think about this for a moment.
‘Do you think he called it in himself?’ asked Pleasance.
‘I’m not paid to think about stuff like that, just stuff like this. He picked up a piece of carbonised plastic and crumbled it between his fingers. ‘What time did you get here, Dave?’
‘22:12.’
‘And what time did the call come in?’
Dave Greene scanned his log. ‘22:01.’
Dolan raised his eyebrows. ‘Eleven minutes, pretty quick, you must have been motoring, Dave.’
Ridpath was about to say something, but decided to keep quiet.
The fire investigator pointed to the clock. ‘I presume that was stopped by the heat. And you said one engine was already here when you arrived?’
‘Norman Harrison’s crew got here about a minute before us. Smoke was already pouring out of the top flat. We evacuated the neighbours and put the fire out quickly. Fifteen minutes after we got here, we stabilised the situation and entered the flat.’
‘And this is what you found?’
‘Pretty much. Except there was a body.’
‘Where?’ interrupted Ridpath.
‘Sitting in the armchair, facing the television.’ Greene pointed to the right. The armchair was now a skeleton of charred springs and a scorched metal frame. Strangely, though, some fabric on the seat and back of the chair was still attached to the metal. The fabric was in the shape of a human body. ‘He was in an upright position, as if he were just watching a programme.’
‘But the body was completely incinerated?’ Dolan asked.
‘Right. We checked for cigarette burns on the armchair, but there were none. The usual cause of death in this case is someone falling asleep while drunk with a lit cigarette in their hand.’
‘And in this case?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Not an electrical fire?’
‘No way. You can see for yourself.’ Greene and Dolan moved over to the television. ‘The sockets, wiring and wall above the TV set are all normal, no evidence of electrical burns at all.’
‘What did you do next?
‘We looked at the body again. I remember taking off my helmet and the stench of burnt meat was heavy in the air. But I could also smell accelerant.’ He touched the side of his nose. ‘This schnozzle, one of the best fire detectors there is. Not as good as a dog’s, but smarter.’
‘Accelerant?’ asked Ridpath.
‘Petrol, lighter fluid, something like that.’
‘Methylated spirits? Kerosene?’ added Dolan. ‘We’ll have to test which one was used.’
‘Already in progress,’ shouted Helen Charles from the doorway. ‘Should have the results back from the lab tomorrow.’
‘OK. Can you let me see them?’ asked Dolan.
‘No problem. Leave me your email and I’ll send them on to you.’
‘What do you think, Terry?’ asked Ridpath.
Dolan scanned the room. ‘Well, in the absence of any damage in any other room, it’s obvious the fire started in here.’ He walked across to the chair and examined its charred springs and fabric, as well as the scorched area on the wall above. ‘I’d say it started at the chair itself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘See the scorch marks above the armchair?’ Dolan indicated the darker patch of smoke and soot residue on the walls. ‘He either set himself alight’ – a long pause – ‘or was set alight.’
‘It was suicide?’ asked Ridpath.
Dolan laughed. ‘That’s for you to decide, not me. All I’m saying is, if an accelerant was used, as Dave thinks, the fire started in the area of the chair.’
‘Actually, it’s the coroner’s decision, based on evidence from the police. My job is to advise her whether or not to hold an inquest,’ Ridpath corrected him.
Pleasance laughed. ‘Sounds like you have a cushy number, Ridpath. Where can I apply?’
The man was an arse. Ridpath felt the fingers of his right hand clenching to make a fist.
Luckily, Greene spoke before he could do anything stupid. ‘Well, it was clear to me when I saw the body that there was accelerant present and the ignition of it was what caused the fire.’
‘Could he have poured it on himself?’ Ridpath asked.
Helen was still standing in the doorway. ‘We found no metal containers on or about the body. But we did find the remains of what looked like a lighter still on his lap.’
‘A lighter?’
‘One of the cheap ones you buy at a petrol station. Plus there was what seemed to be carbonised ash there too.’
‘That’s a match, in case anybody was wondering,’ said Dolan, kneeling down in front of the chair.
‘A bit larger actually. Probably a wooden spill rather than a normal match.’
‘But if he set himself alight, wouldn’t there be a can of petrol or a bottle of meths nearby too?’
‘We didn’t find anything,’ said Helen.
‘If the liquid was kept in a thin plastic bag, that would have gone up in the fire too.’ Dolan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can think of easier ways to kill yourself. Pills. Alcohol. Slitting your wrists. Jumping out of the window. But burning yourself to death? I’ve been a fireman for twenty years and I’ve heard of it, but never actually seen it myself.’
Ridpath scratched his head. ‘So let me get this clear, Terry. You’re ruling out an accidental death?’
‘I’ll know more when the tests come back on the accelerant, but I don’t see how it could have been. You don’t just accidentally pour petrol, or something like it, on yourself.’
Ridpath turned to the detective constable. ‘You agree?’
‘Makes sense to me.’
‘So it could have been suicide?’
Pleasance nodded. ‘He could have reported the fire to 999 and then set himself alight.’
‘It’s possible,’ conceded Ridpath.
‘If he did, he left behind a bloody strange suicide note.’ Pleasance turned through 180 degrees and pointed to an alcove on the wall behind them. The soot had been cleared by the Scene of Crime team to reveal a message in clear, bright orange letters.
PLAY THE GAME.
‘Christ,’ was Ridpath’s only response.
Chapter Ten
‘Anybody find a can of spray paint?’ Ridpath asked the crime scene manager, who was hovering around the entrance.
‘Yeah. Over in the corner, near the window. Probably exploded from the heat. But we’ll be able to tell which colour was inside and what the brand was.’
Ridpath stood back and stared at the wall. Had this man become so depressed he had decided to take his own life? Why not just leave a note rather than spraying on the walls? And why choose this way to die? As Terry Dolan had said, taking a bunch of pills would hav
e been much easier. But what if this was a murder? Had somebody entered the flat and set the man alight?
Ridpath found himself taking charge. ‘Better hurry Dr Schofield along with the post-mortem if you can, Helen. And prioritise the accelerant tests. The sooner we know what was used, the quicker we can track where it was bought.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The crime scene manager saluted ironically.
‘How soon can we have your report, Terry?’
‘You’ll have it tomorrow, Ridpath, as soon as I know what the accelerant was.’
‘Great. It seems to me it’s either suicide or a murder. If it’s the former, we need to know more about this man—’
‘Joseph Brennan,’ interjected Pleasance.
‘Interview the neighbours, find out where he worked, talk to his GP, check if he had any mental health issues.’
‘And if it was a murder?’
‘Well, then you’ve got a problem, Ron, a big problem.’
The detective constable sucked in his breath and leant into Ridpath, whispering, ‘Could we have a word?’
They moved out of earshot of Dave Greene and Terry Dolan.
‘Can you help me out here? It’s my first case. I’ve never done anything this big before.’
He looked like somebody fresh out of school who had suddenly realised he was miles out of his depth.
‘Just ring your gaffer back at the station. Tell him what we talked about and he’ll send somebody more senior out to take over.’
‘You don’t realise, Ridpath. He’s already on my case. If I go back to him with nothing, he’ll know I’m useless. At the moment he just thinks I am. And besides, there is nobody else, that’s why I’m here.’
Ridpath frowned.
‘We’re stretched at the moment. Got a couple of robberies, a missing postman and a stabbing. The boss sent me because he thought this was probably an accident.’
‘Who’s your boss?’
‘Detective Inspector Wharton.’
‘Ian Wharton?’
‘You know him?’
Ian Wharton had broken more young cops than Ridpath had had hot dinners. His combination of withering sarcasm and the ability to apportion blame had caused more good policemen to leave the force than the rotten pay and antisocial hours. But somehow, as ever at GMP, Wharton had survived. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew.
