Scared to Live bcadf-7

by Stephen Booth

  Before he switched off his computer, Cooper checked the Matlock Bath webcam to see if it was still running, as the site claimed.

  When the picture came up, he saw it was already dark in Matlock Bath. He looked at his watch. Six o’clock. He hadn’t realized it had got so late.

  When he looked back at the screen, the webcam picture was reloading. Now the headlights of two cars were approaching the camera. But the only other colour in the image came from strings of lights hung along both banks of the river, and across the road. Some of the illuminations came close to the camera, mounted on the roof of Life in a Lens. Coloured lights also framed the iron girders of the Jubilee Bridge. The bridge was reflected on the surface water as a black, shapeless mass that disappeared into the trees on the other side of the river.

  Across the river and into the trees. Where did that phrase come from? It must be a song, or possibly a book title. It made him think about the gunman who’d shot down a harmless middle-aged woman. If he was a professional, then there was something that no one was admitting out loud. He would be long gone from the area by now.

  Never mind across the river and into the trees — their suspect could have been on the other side of the world before the clock even began to tick on the Shepherd enquiry.

  Later that evening, Liz Petty sat in the upstairs room of Aitch’s Wine Bar in Bakewell and accepted a glass of Merlot.

  ‘Thanks, Ben.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Cooper sat down next to her with his bottle of beer. The remains of their dinner had been cleared away, and he was starting to wonder whether chocolate truffle cake would go all right with the plum-and-chilli sauce that had been on the char-grilled chicken.

  ‘Anyway, Quinton Downie was right,’ said Petty. ‘Fire can be one of the most difficult things to investigate. So many factors influence its behaviour that a scene can be very misleading.’

  She took a drink of wine and gazed out of the window at Buxton Road. Liz lived just off Fly Hill, a couple of minutes’ walk from the wine bar, in a three-storey terraced cottage she rented from her uncle. The third-floor bedroom had a terrific view beyond Bakewell towards the golf club.

  ‘I remember something we were told on the course I did,’ said Petty. ‘It was a real incident, with photographs. A young child who’d died in a fire. It made me think of that case when I heard there were two children involved at Darwin Street. I know these two weren’t burned to death, but still …’

  Cooper waited, recognizing that she needed to sort her feelings out before she put them into words. Whatever it was that she wanted to tell him, it might be the first time she’d talked about it to anyone. He’d learned when to listen and not interrupt.

  ‘You know that under the effects of intense heat, your brain expands?’ Petty said at last.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Cooper put down his glass. He had a feeling it was going to be worse than he’d imagined. Chocolate truffle cake was suddenly less appealing.

  ‘Well, a child’s skull is a lot weaker than an adult’s. The bones are very soft at first, you know. They showed us some photographs from this scene, where the young boy had died. The fire was so rapid and the temperature so high that when the child’s brain expanded, it burst the skull. The captions said skull failure and brain protrusionin a two-year-old fire victim. And I was thinking, if you came on a scene like that, your assumption would probably be that the child had died from a serious head injury before the fire.’

  ‘And that a fire had been started to conceal the evidence,’ said Cooper. ‘It happens.’

  ‘Right. But it would be a wrong assumption. Chances are, it might just have been the fire.’ Her voice dropped lower. ‘It might only have been skull failure and brain protrusion. Only that.’

  Cooper heard the break in her voice, and let the silence settle. It was as if a bubble had formed around their table, insulating them from the rest of the wine bar. He felt he could almost reach out and touch that rare thing, the ability of two people to think the same thoughts and share the same emotions without having to speak them out loud.

  Then Liz reached out for his hand. ‘You didn’t want dessert, did you, Ben?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Let’s pay the bill, then.’

  Stella Searle looked away from the TV set in her bedroom towards the shower, where she could hear water running. Darren had bought her the TV himself. He’d do almost anything to keep her happy, except the one thing she really wanted.

  ‘Daz!’ she called. But she only heard him humming some tune to himself, like a cocky child, and she had to call him again. ‘Darren!’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Come out here.’

  ‘I’m having a shower, darling.’

  ‘Come out here. There’s something on the telly you’ve got to see.’

  ‘It’ll wait. I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘No — now,’ she said, using the tone of voice she knew he’d recognize.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

  The water stopped, and after a moment he padded out into the bedroom with a towel wrapped round his middle, his hair wet and feet making damp marks on the floor.

  ‘What is it, Stell?’

  She looked back at the screen, but the news-reader had moved on to another item, something about petrol prices.

  ‘It’s gone off now.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, darling. If I don’t get finished in the shower, I’ll be late home. Fiona will throw a bloody fit.’

  Stella took no notice of his mood, or his swearing. Darren was all mouth. She knew she had total control over him.

  ‘They were doing a bit about the woman who got shot in the village the other night.’

  ‘Oh, that. Yeah, I heard about it.’

  He turned and began to head back towards the shower, clutching at the towel to keep it in place. His backside was too big, excess fat padding out his hips. Darren thought he was fit, but he spent too much time driving, or sitting around with his mates drinking beer.

  ‘It said the police are looking for a car. And a man that someone saw in the village that night.’

  Darren hesitated with his hand on the door of the shower cubicle. ‘Good. They’ll get the bugger that did it, then. We can’t have blokes walking about shooting old women dead like that.’

  ‘She wasn’t all that old,’ said Stella. ‘Sixty-odd, they said. It’s nothing these days.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Darren slipped off the towel and went back into the shower. The water had started to trickle from the shower head, but she knew he heard her when she spoke again.

  ‘I reckon it was your car that someone saw,’ she said. ‘Daz, I think it’s you they’re looking for.’

  ‘Give over.’

  ‘I think you should go to the police,’ she said.

  ‘You must have got it wrong. It wasn’t anything to do with me.’

  ‘I’m only telling you what it said.’

  ‘Well, what did it say exactly?’ he snapped.

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. It was something about a blue Vauxhall Astra. That’s your car, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it might be,’ said Darren. ‘What else did it say?’

  ‘A man in a parka — that was it. Aged about thirty-five.’

  ‘I’m not thirty-five.’

  ‘You look it, though.’

  He gave her an incredulous stare. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘It was you, Darren,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Well, it sounded like you. Your car, and a man in a parka, seen in the village about the time of the incident. That’s exactly what it said. I think.’

  ‘And they reckon this man in the parka did the shooting? That’s ridiculous, Stell. That’s stupid.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t quite it.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why can’t you remember anything properly? You’re so bloody thick, Stella. I don’t know why I bother with you.’

  ‘Piss off, Darren.’

  He stamp
ed off sulkily, but came straight back again. ‘I need to know exactly what they said, Stella. This is important.’

  ‘Witnesses, that was it. They said the police were looking for witnesses. And they particularly wanted to speak to the bloke in the parka, with the blue Astra.’

  Darren didn’t reply. She glanced at him, and saw that he’d gone pale. He still wasn’t fully dressed, and the water was drying in patches on his arms. He shivered, like somebody had walked over his grave. She remembered him saying how much he hated being next to a graveyard, and all those dead bodies and stuff.

  ‘A witness, that’s what they reckon you are. Maybe the police think you might have seen something important. Did you see anything, Darren?’

  Darren was silent for longer than she thought was natural. For him, anyway. He wasn’t the sort of bloke to be stuck for a word, even if it was to tell her to ‘eff off’. He was staring at the TV screen, though the news had long since finished, and there was some football match on.

  ‘Did you, Darren?’

  ‘No,’ he said finally. But he didn’t sound too sure.

  Stella touched his chest, then flinched away at the coldness of it.

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Was there anybody about in the village when you left that night?’

  ‘I just told you, I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘You might be able to help the police find who did it.’

  He grabbed her arm then, and for the first time Stella felt a chill of fear. He was stronger than she thought, and he had that possibility of violence in him, after all.

  ‘Get it into your head right now,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see anything that night. Got it, Stell? I didn’t see a bloody thing.’

  Cooper always woke automatically to the sound of sirens, even when he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He listened for a few moments, until he recognized the distinctive rasping bullhorn of a fire tender approaching a road junction somewhere to the north. So it was nothing to do with him — not for a while, at least. At this time of year, the call-out was probably to a bonfire that had been prematurely set alight. It happened every year; some people just couldn’t wait for the fifth of November. Soon there’d be fireworks, too. Night after night of explosions over the town. Complaints to the police about youths pushing bangers through pensioners’ letter boxes.

  The sirens receded gradually into the distance. Cooper remembered where he was, sighed, and turned over again. He felt the comfort of a warm body beside him in the bed, the reassurance of steady breathing that meant he wasn’t alone in the middle of the night.

  It made a big difference, not to be alone. And for once, it wasn’t the cat.

  15

  Wednesday, 26 October

  It was Jimi Hendrix. When Cooper saw the can of Swan lighter fluid next morning, he knew immediately where he’d seen one before. It featured in one of those classic rock posters. Hendrix setting fire to his white Stratocaster at the Monterey Pop Festival.

  Could it have been 1967? Somewhere around that time. The legend said that Hendrix felt upstaged by The Who, because the British group had ended their set by smashing their equipment. During his own last number, the guitarist had grinned at the audience, squirted lighter fuel on his guitar and struck a match, playing the final notes through the flames. It was one of the seminal moments in the history of rock music. Mad, and dangerous.

  ‘You can buy the hundred millilitre can for about three pounds, but it isn’t stocked everywhere,’ said Fry, when he’d examined the can.

  ‘That gives us a chance of tracing the shop it was bought from, then.’

  ‘Yes, it would do, if we had the manpower.’

  In the poster Cooper remembered seeing on a friend’s bedroom wall, the can had been clearly visible in the guitarist’s hands. It was just like this one — square-sided and yellow, the same colour as Hendrix’s frilly shirt.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got an initial report faxed through from Downie’s people at the FSS lab this morning.’ The neutral tone of Fry’s voice didn’t give away whether it was good news or bad news.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘I’ll read it for you: “The laboratory received two evidence containers of debris taken from the suspected seat of a fire. A head space sample from each container was subjected to gas chromatograph analysis. The chromatogram shows characteristic peak patterns of a common hydrocarbon fuel, n-Butane.”’

  ‘Lighter fluid, then.’

  ‘Right. Specifically, butane lighter fluid. The positive samples were taken from a section of carpet in the Mullens’ sitting room, and from the toy box in the corner near the video. Not much accelerant used — but then, it wouldn’t have needed a lot.’

  ‘It could have been an accidental spillage, couldn’t it?’ suggested Cooper.

  ‘Have you tried accidentally spilling lighter fluid, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t even smoke. I never have.’

  ‘Well, it comes in an aerosol can like this one, with a pressure valve that fits into the lighter.’

  ‘OK, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘The most you can do accidentally is create a bit of mist that makes your fingers feel cold. To spill it, you have to prise the top off the can.’

  ‘Even so, Diane, one of the Mullens’ kids could have done that.’

  ‘Maybe. So which of the Mullens was a smoker — Brian or Lindsay?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The answer is, neither. And why didn’t the SOCOs find a lighter fluid can in the house? They’re metal, so it wouldn’t have been destroyed in the fire.’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘Because there wasn’t one, Ben. The only can that’s turned up is this one, which was found in a wheelie bin down the road. And if this is the right one, then it wasn’t put there by accident.’

  Fry had called a meeting of what was left of her team. They were waiting for Murfin, but he was finishing a phone call, typing one more paragraph of a vital report, trying to make the point that he had too much work to do already.

  ‘Right, there are things to be done in the Darwin Street arson enquiry,’ she said.

  ‘Such as?’ asked Murfin.

  ‘We need to chase up forensics from the fire scene — particularly that sitting room. Brian Mullen swears that he never went in there that night. If we find any evidence of his presence in the room after the fire started, then we can demonstrate that he’s lying.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Obviously, somebody will have to interview this Jed Skinner. That should happen as soon as possible, before it occurs to Mullen to contact Skinner and they get their story straight.’

  ‘I’ll do that, if you like,’ said Cooper.

  ‘No, let Gavin go.’

  ‘OK. What, then?’

  ‘You can come with me to the hospital. I want your opinion on Mr Brian Mullen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised — it isn’t the first time I’ve asked for your opinion, Ben.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Also, Mullen’s story is that he arrived home from the Broken Wheel in a taxi, which dropped him off at the end of the street. I’ve already spoken once to the next-door neighbour, Keith Wade, but I want to know about a conversation they supposedly had. Wade must have witnessed Mullen going into the house on his abortive rescue mission. It would be useful if he happened to see his neighbour arriving in the street, too.’

  ‘From the taxi?’

  ‘That’s another thing — ’

  ‘You want us to find the taxi driver.’

  ‘Exactly. Confirm the time and place he picked Mullen up, and where he dropped him off. And then I’d like to know what happened to Skinner. Did the driver see him outside the club? Did he and Mullen share a taxi, even?’

  ‘I wonder if Mr Wade is aware of any problems between Mullen and his wife?’ said Cooper. ‘If he lives in an adjoining semi, he might have been close enough to hear
any arguments.’

  ‘We should ask all the neighbours that,’ said Fry. ‘Discreetly, of course.’

  Cooper looked at the map to check the relative locations of the fire and the wheelie bin where the lighter fluid can had been found.

  ‘By the way, this isn’t the Shrubs,’ he said, pointing at the map. ‘The area’s called that because of the names of the streets.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Well, since when has Darwin been a shrub?’

  ‘It’s close.’

  ‘Close? In an evolutionary sense, or what?’

  ‘Geographically. Look, Lilac Avenue is just over there, no more than three hundred yards away. Myrtle Drive is next to it. It’s nothing to make a fuss about.’

  ‘No one on Darwin Street would consider themselves to be living in the Shrubs,’ said Cooper. ‘These things are important to people.’

  Before they left, Cooper saw that two bin liners full of clothes had also been brought back from the Mullens’ house by the SOCOs for examination, though no one seemed to have any idea what they were expecting to find. Sometimes they took protect and preserve a bit too far.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ said Brian Mullen when they entered his room at the hospital. His voice sounded a bit better now, but for a slight tendency to squeak on the last syllable of a sentence.

  ‘Sorry to bother you again, sir,’ said Fry. ‘This is my colleague, DC Cooper.’

  ‘Do you have some information?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said you’d keep me informed.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, I’m afraid it’s still early days yet. But I do have a few more questions.’

  ‘Questions again?’

  ‘I’m trying to get things straight in my mind. To clarify what happened the night your family died. Is that all right, sir?’

  He lay back wearily. ‘I suppose so. As long as I can get out of here.’

  Fry opened her notebook. ‘According to what you told me previously, you arrived home at about one thirty after your taxi dropped you off at the corner of Darwin Street. You saw the fire, but didn’t realize it was your own house until you were closer.’