The floor had burned away from a point just beyond the counter and a ladder had been placed to give access below. Kerr climbed down the ladder. The cellar was filled with a mass of sodden, charred rubble and pieces of glass from the hundreds of shattered bottles. Most of the water had been pumped out, but some still lay around in puddles. The smell was both acrid and sickly sweet, a mixture of fire and highly aromatic liqueurs. Work had begun in clearing some of the rubble, then the body had been discovered.
Kerr stared at the body and tried to view it unemotionally, but he had not learned how to separate the sight of death from the knowledge of the pain and suffering which had preceded it. One arm was raised over the face and one of the legs was slightly crooked, in the classic pugilistic attitude that looked so much like a last vain attempt at physical defence rather than what it was, the result of the final muscular contraction. The face was completely blackened and practically without features: the mouth was open and the teeth looked white so that it macabrely seemed as if he were smiling.
A fireman, with the two shoulder pips of a station officer, clambered over the debris and came up to Kerr. “Nothing’s been touched from the moment we found the body.”
Grimly, Kerr thought that there could have been no greater contrast between his mood of elated happiness earlier that morning and his present sense of revulsion at the sight of the person, almost certainly male, who had burned to death. Why, he wondered with angry resentment, did there have to be tragedy in life and death?
There was a job to be done and he forced himself to do it. He searched round as much of the body as was exposed, careful not to disturb it. Most of the clothing had been burned away, or charred to the point of disintegration, but it was fairly certain from one scrap that had escaped that the shirt had been a light green. He could see no signs of violence.
When he had finished, Kerr spoke to the station officer. “Have you any idea who lived upstairs and whether he’s missing?”
“The manager and his wife live there. The wife discovered the fire and her husband telephoned the alarm. When the pump arrived, they were out on the pavement scared three parts silly.” The station officer spoke wearily. “We stopped the fire from burning out the upper floors, but I’d say the shell of the building has been too badly damaged for anyone to go back to living there.”
“D’you know where the two of them have gone?”
“They told one of my blokes they were going to their married daughter until things get sorted out. They gave him the address. It’s that chap over there.” He pointed to a leading fireman who was standing in the far corner of the cellar. Kerr clambered over the wreckage and spoke to the leading fireman, who gave him the address. He wrote it down. “How did they take the news of the dead body in the cellar?”
“They was too bewildered to say or do anything,” replied the other. “They all gets like that when their place goes up in smoke.” He sounded as if he could not understand this. “I suppose you’ve had a look at the grating up there?” He jerked his head in the direction of the wall to their right.
“No — what about it?”
“You haven’t seen it — and you’re the detective?”
Kerr ignored the other’s facetiousness and went round to examine the grating. The roof of the cellar was set three feet above the level of the ground outside. Most of this three feet was a brick wall, but in the centre had been a half-moon window which opened from the bottom upwards and inwards. Outside were iron bars to guard the window and the two centre ones had been forced apart to the point where they touched the bars next to them. Clearly there had been a break in, and in all probability the body was that of the intruder. Kerr turned back and looked at the body and this time he knew little revulsion at the sight: although quite illogical, the knowledge that the dead man had probably been a thief lessened by far the disgust at the nature of the death.
“If you ask me, Mr. Holmes,” said the fireman, with leaden humour, “someone came in here for a quick tot and ended up with more than he bargained for.”
“What started the fire?”
“These old places are like tinderboxes. Show ’em half a naked light and they break out in flames.”
“But this must have been a hell of a fire?”
“This one? Doesn’t make the grade. Now I was out at a fire last week…”
Kerr ceased to listen. Even to his untutored eyes, this fire had been one of unusual severity. Then he remembered something that should have been very obvious: spirits burned. But what had the thief been doing or carrying to start the fire? Thieves no longer went around with dark lanterns which could fall over: they didn’t light up a cigarette and carelessly throw the match into a pile of combustible material.
He crossed the cellar to where the station officer now stood, by the ladder. “Have you any ideas on how this fire started?”
The station officer shook his head. “Once it got going, obviously the spirit fed it, but as to what started it… Would you like someone to come along from H.Q.?”
“The request will have to come from my D.I., but he’s certain to make it.”
“So you’re wondering if it was arson?”
“I’m just wondering at the moment. For instance, once the fire got going, what caught this bloke and stopped him climbing out?”
“He could’ve panicked? Or got temporarily knocked out by something?”
“Such as what?”
“Luckily, that’s your problem.”
“That’s for sure,” answered Kerr. “Have you finished here?”
“I’ll keep a pump standing by for a while, but all my blokes can clear out of the cellar if that’s what you want?”
“It would be best.” Kerr mentally checked that he had taken all necessary preliminary steps because if he hadn’t Fusil would very soon point out the fact. He watched the firemen climb the ladder, then stared up through the burned-out hole at the ceiling of the shop. What a terrible thing was a fire in a wine shop, he thought: all that booze just going up in flames. He could have done with some of the bubbly for an engagement party.
*
Fusil held the telephone receiver to his ear with his left hand and tapped impatiently on the desk with his right. “Yes, sir, I know…”
Kywood, detective chief inspector, interrupted him. “Bob, it’s a big job. That’s fact.” The telephone slightly distorted his voice and gave it a whining quality not otherwise apparent.
“I realise that, of course…”
“And it was pulled inside the boundaries.” There was no arguing round that one, thought Fusil resentfully. The Jack of Hearts café was just a hundred yards inside the Fortrow borough boundaries: if only the villains had pulled the job sooner, the investigations would have been the county C.I.D.’s pigeon, not his.
“It’s the fourth hijacking in the past two years, so people are getting worried.” Kywood’s voice became warmer. “The other three were in county territory and no one ever got anywhere in solving ’em so this gives us a real chance to show ’em. I’m betting you’ll nail the villains well and truly and show the county boys what we’re made of.”
Any moment now, thought Fusil, he’d call for three cheers.
“The first thing, of course, is to concentrate on tracing where and how they flog the whisky. Don’t forget it’s all export stuff.”
“D’you know if that means it’s a different proof?”
“I wouldn’t know, Bob. You’ll be able to find that out, won’t you? Now I don’t mind telling you, I’m relying on you and your blokes really pulling out your fingers.” Kywood rang off.
Fusil replaced the receiver, stood up, yawned, and stretched. The stolen whisky was the kind of a bitch of a case that no ambitious D.I. welcomed. The hijacking had probably been carried out by a London mob who took the whisky straight up to London and their only contact with Fortrow was the site of the actual theft. The chances of the borough C.I.D. latching on to anything of significance were slim to the point of non-exis
tent, but because the robbery had taken place within the borough boundaries, it would appear on his crime sheets. If it remained unsolved, the finger would be pointed at him.
He took his pipe from his pocket, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. He was hungry for promotion and hated anything or anyone who might get in the way of it. His fellow D.I.s might see themselves ending their careers, if they were very lucky, as detective superintendents, but he wanted to make assistant chief constable and if he didn’t do so he would count himself a failure. He was a sufficient realist to know the odds against him. Apart from anything else, he was too sharp for his own good, as witness the Burchell case when he’d pursued criminals beyond the permitted boundaries and had been found out: one of these days he might go that little bit further which would spell disaster.
The telephone rang. It was Kerr. The dead man appeared to have broken into the cellar by forcing the grating of a window. Should an expert from the fire brigade be called to give his opinion on the cause of the fire? What about contacting the police photographer?
After answering Kerr and ringing off, Fusil telephoned the coroner’s officer, reported the facts, and said there would have to be a P.M. He then contacted the pathologist, said the police doctor had been called, and tried tactfully to express the hope that the pathologist would get out to the wine store before too long. The pathologist curtly answered that he’d get there when he could and not before.
Fusil’s pipe had gone out and he re-lit it. He left and went into the next room, Braddon’s, to find the detective sergeant was out. He wrote a note and left it on the desk to tell Braddon where he was going and to ask Braddon to speak to county H.Q. and ask the C.R.O. whether any useful facts had come to light from the previous whisky hijackings. He hesitated, then added a further request to contact the C.R.O. at New Scotland Yard and ask them for any help they could give. County H.Q. should have done this, but he did not have much faith in their lines of communication.
Chapter 3
Wakely, from the fire department, was a middle-aged man who had the appearance of one who’d met more than his fair share of suffering: there was a withdrawn expression in his eyes, and he often looked as if he’d suddenly lost himself in memories. He stood in the cellar of the wine shop and spoke to Fusil in his low, pedantic voice. “Once the spirits caught, they obviously fed the fire and stoked it up to the intensity it reached. What isn’t obvious is what started the fire in the first place.”
“Could a small fire set the whole thing in motion?”
“It doesn’t seem very likely. The bottles were in wire racks round the walls, the walls are brick, the floor is stone. The only wood was in the roof and the chute. Unless there was a pile of old rubbish down here… ?” He looked at the D.I.
Fusil shook his head. “We’ve had a word with the manager who swears he kept the cellars spick and span. According to him, there wasn’t a single scrap of loose paper around.”
“Then it brings us back to the problem of the initial fire.” Wakely gestured at some of the rubble. “I did think I caught the smell of paraffin in one piece of charred wood, but I couldn’t detect the taste of paraffin when I used a bit of bread. I’d send several bits of wood from various parts of this cellar to the laboratories and see if they can tell you anything about them.”
“I’ll certainly do that.”
“By the way, there’s something interesting over here.” Wakely stepped across to a conical pile of rubble and bent down to point beneath a shattered bean. “That worm-like thing is the remains of a candle wick.”
Fusil squatted on his heels and saw the charred remains which were about two inches long and coloured grey.
Wakely spoke still more pedantically. “It’s an odd fact that if a candle is consumed all at once the wick often gets preserved because the supporting stalk skeleton makes it relatively tough.”
Fusil stared at the wick. A candle was a favourite tool of the arsonist since it provided a time fuse. But he remembered an advertisement he had often seen of a man judging the quality of a wine or sherry by holding the glass in front of a candle. Did that sort of thing really go on in the cellars of a wine shop which was one of a chain — if anyone did judge drink like this, wouldn’t it be done at head office, not in one of the branches: He stood up. “What’s your general impression of things?”
“With nothing definite to go on, I’d say the fire was deliberately set.”
“Are you likely to be able to be more specific?”
Wakely shrugged his shoulders. “It’s impossible to say at this stage.”
Fusil stared round again at the debris. It would all have to be sifted as carefully as possible and that would require several men — who would mostly have to come from the uniformed branch. The duty inspector was going to moan like hell.
A P.C. called down from the floor above. “Detective inspector, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Message from the station. Will you please contact the detective sergeant on the pocket radio.”
“Have you got a W.T. set?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hang on up there for me, then.” Fusil turned and called Kerr over. “See that there, under the beam? It’s a charred wick. Lift it very carefully — after it’s been photographed — and get it into a tube. And see it’s wedged with cotton wool and the tube’s kept horizontal.”
Kerr nodded.
“When you’ve done that, cut along to the house where the manager of this place is staying and see what he can tell us.”
Fusil left the cellar and climbed up the ladder. He called the P.C. over to the counter, on which the till was ironically recording ‘No Sale’. “Let’s have your set.” The P.C. handed him the pocket radio and he switched it on, called up the station, and asked to speak to Braddon. Braddon told him that the hijacked lorry had just been discovered in the hills above the chest hospital. Fusil said he’d get over there and asked for explicit directions, which he was given.
Would the pathologist turn up soon? Wondered Fusil. Or had he time to get out to the lorry and have a quick look around: He decided to risk the other’s wrath, should he arrive early, and drive over to the lorry at once.
A P.C. motor cyclist, from traffic division, was guarding the lorry. “I was sent here by H.Q., sir. They had a call from the owner of the woods, who found the lorry. I checked the number with Records and they said it had just been put on the latest list of stolen vehicles.”
Fusil looked round. The clearing in the woods was oval in shape and about fifty feet at the widest point. The ground was covered in wild grass but for no readily discernible reason the wild growing brambles, bracken, and rosebay willowherb, did not start until close to the edge of the clearing. The lorry was parked over to the right and its track through the grass was still visible if looked at obliquely. He knelt down and checked the ground. Although the grass was wet from the recent rain, now stopped, the ground was still rock hard so that the chances of any worthwhile impressions were virtually nil. He went across to the lorry and opened the off-side cab door, using his handkerchief to prevent the smudging of any prints. There were some papers and the log book of hours in one of the two compartments and some crumpled up paper on the floor, but otherwise he could see nothing. He was hardly surprised. Modern villains had learned the vital necessity of leaving no traces behind, not even a thread of cotton from a coat.
Men would have to be drafted up here, he thought, to search every inch of the ground in case something of importance was lying about. That meant more P.C.s — the duty inspector would do his nut and probably there’d be a first-class row. The police photographer must come here after he’d finished at Verlay’s Wine Store. Braddon would have to take charge of things because he, Fusil, must concentrate on the case involving the dead man — potentially the more important case because the reason for the man’s being burned to death had not yet been ascertained.
As he stood in the centre of the clearing, to the side of the lorry, sunlight came t
hrough a small patch of blue sky and it picked out the sharp lines of determination in his face, lines which sometimes made him falsely appear stern in an unthinking, harsh manner. There was no surplus flesh on his face or body, such as often burdened men in their early middle age, yet he certainly did not look younger than he was. He lived and worked too intensely for the years not to mark him. He spoke to the P.C. “Hang on here until Sergeant Braddon arrives.”
“I’m due back at H.Q. in fifteen minutes’ time, sir.”
“Then you’ll be late, won’t you?”
He left the clearing and walked back down the track to his car. He called up county H.Q. on the radio and asked them to contact eastern division H.Q. by telephone and tell Braddon to come straight away to the lorry to start investigations.
When the call was over, Fusil sat back in the driving seat and just for a few moments relaxed. The view spread out before him was an attractive one. To the west was a typical patchwork of green countryside, partly in sunshine now, which contained fields of every shape and size and several small villages. To the south was Fortrow and beyond the sea, somewhat hazy so that horizon and sky melted inconclusively into each other. There was beauty, peace, and a sense of continuity here — a far cry from his work. Some of his fellow policemen, he knew, thought him to be a man without emotions, shocked by nothing, unmoved by distress, incapable of appreciating any beauty. They failed to understand how single-minded he was when trying to bring to justice a criminal: he could appreciate things just as well as they, but he would not normally give up the time to do so.
He took out his pipe from his pocket, lowered the window, and tapped out the ash, filled it, and lit it. Why did man everywhere do so much to try to destroy the peace and beauty which surrounded him? A naïve question? Not if one had ever had to tell a woman that her husband had just been killed, or a father that his daughter had been attacked and raped.
Guilt Without Proof (C.I.D. Room Book 4) Page 2
