by Iain Cameron
Night
of
Fire
Iain Cameron
Copyright © 2017 Iain Cameron
ISBN:
The right of Iain Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
To find out more about the author, visit the website:
www.iain-cameron.com
For Evelyn, for your unstinting support and encouragement
Also by Iain Cameron
One Last Lesson
Driving into Darkness
Fear the Silence
Hunting for Crows
Red Red Wine
Night of Fire
The Essential DI Angus Henderson Box Set
(Books 1-4)
All books are available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback format.
In the UK: here
In the US: here
In Australia: here
In Canada: here
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
About the Author
Also by Iain Cameron
ONE
He walked out of the building to his car, a smile on his face and no trademark scowl at the overflowing metal cigarette holder on the wall. Old man Quinlan, the MD of Quinlan Fine Foods, was as pleased as punch that he, Marc Emerson, had landed the Steels Supermarkets account when others had failed. Quinlan lauded him as the ‘best salesman ever’. If Quinlan wasn’t such an irascible sod, Emerson might have asked him to say it again. Compliments were as rare as a solar eclipse in this business and he basked in its warm glow; only last week Quinlan had called him a ‘bleedin’ moron’ for losing a customer’s order.
Emerson had come into the office at four and enjoyed a late lunch in the company canteen. There, he selected a salad and included a mini pork pie and a scotch egg from the Quinlan Fine Produce range, costing him nothing as the food was free, saving him making a meal that evening.
It didn’t take long to drive from the company offices in Moulsecoomb Way in Brighton to the A27, and on reaching the junction, he headed east. The weak October sun of earlier was nowhere in sight, a thin mist and darkness making the sea in the distance look shadowy and indistinct. When he arrived in Lewes, he didn’t take the first exit towards the town but carried on until the road crossed the River Ouse, before taking a left at the Southerham Roundabout and turning into the Cliffe Industrial Estate.
Emerson often visited similar estates and industrial complexes, but he had a special affection for this one, nestling as it did under the white chalk cliffs that characterised this part of southern England. He parked in front of a warehouse with no markings or insignia, nothing to suggest it was occupied by the Weald Bonfire Society. Not because anything illegal was going on inside, but he and other members of the Society wanted to keep their ideas secret.
November 5, Bonfire Night, is a time of great celebration in the UK, a night when the failure of Fawkes and his catholic confederates in 1605 to blow up King James was remembered. In nearly every village, town and city in the land, the event was marked by cheering crowds, bonfires and fireworks, although the reason why children held sparklers and whooped with delight at crackling Hell Raisers and exploding War Hawks was long forgotten by many.
A strong sense of history was still evident in Lewes, home to the largest and most famous Bonfire Night celebration of them all. At around eight o’ clock in the evening, it kicked off with a parade by the six Lewes bonfire societies through the streets of the town. Their members wearing costumes, carrying lighted torches and banners and accompanied on their slow, dignified walk by a loud marching band.
The origin of Lewes Bonfire Societies dated from Victorian times, but despite the passing years, all six societies were fiercely protective of their identities and highly competitive in their attempt to put on the best display of the evening. The march culminated in a bonfire where the effigy, which had been tirelessly carried through crowded streets, was burned to the howls and jeers of a boisterous crowd.
Emerson opened the door and walked in. The air felt warm, his colleagues working here earlier in the evening had been using the heaters. The effigy being crafted by the Weald Society this year, a three-metre image of the prime minister, Ashley Stevens, was starting to take shape. The PM had been the first choice of nearly all society members, and no wonder. In the first three months of office, not only did raise university tuition fees by five thousand pounds a year, but failed to take action in the summer when striking airport workers caused holiday chaos.
Emerson took a seat at a long table. Fire had always interested him, from accidentally burning down the garden shed, to developing explosives from fertilisers and weed killers and using them to fell trees. He loved the way it consumed everything in its path, the relentless energy with no concern for an item’s utility or worth. His job was to harness this raw power and use it to excite and invigorate their viewing public. Knowing the capabilities of various commercial fireworks, a few months back he’d outlined the planned display on sheets and stuck them to the wall, partly to let him see how it would look and to give others the opportunity to comment.
He spent a couple of minutes looking to see if anyone had added any more comments, not that he could do much about it now, as a recent email informed him that the fireworks were arriving in two days time. After emailing members and asking for volunteers to help him unload and set up the firework delivery, he started work on his second task for the evening: incorporating a diversion into the procession route as a result of emergency road works.
He looked at his watch: ten past eleven. He continued to work for another fifteen minutes before deciding to call a halt. He closed the laptop, tidied his papers and headed for the door. Before stepping outside, he stopped, took a final look around the warehouse and reached for the light switch. A noise behind him caused him turn. A black figure and thousands of little bubbles came rushing towards him.
‘Agh!’ Emerson screamed. ‘What the fuck is it? What did you spray in my eyes?’
He fell to his knees. His hands groped
blindly for contact. He touched rough material, a leg. He tried to grip but a boot kicked his hand away.
‘You bastard,’ a voice hissed in his ear, ‘you’re gonna die.’
Emerson knew the voice but became distracted by a familiar smell: petrol.
‘No! No!’
He heard a whoosh before a curtain of burning hot air swarmed over his face and the pain of a thousand wasps attacked exposed skin. He flapped at the flames with his hands but he couldn’t see clearly and the heat made his skin sizzle. He fell to the ground, trying to roll, but something blocked his way.
He heard a voice; the last he would ever hear. ‘Burn you bastard, burn.’
TWO
Detective Inspector Angus Henderson looked out to the back garden from his place at the kitchen table with envy. He hadn’t thought he’d miss eating his breakfast out there when the arrival of the colder weather made it too uncomfortable to sit outside at six forty-five in the morning, but he did.
A few minutes later, he heard Rachel moving around upstairs and got up as he wanted to be out of the house before she came down. He drained his tea, walked into the hall and picked up his briefcase, quickly looking through it to ensure the report he had been reading the previous night was there before closing it.
Rachel had been out on the town last night with some of her colleagues from The Argus, the town’s main local newspaper. They’d been celebrating the interview of a famous Hollywood actor by one of their fellow journalists, after the efforts of many of the nationals had failed.
While she was out enjoying herself, Henderson had been reading a forensic report. A pair of violent burglars were targeting the homes of housewives, arriving on their doorstep not long after they had dropped their kids off at school. They forced their way into the house, helped themselves to money, jewellery, phones, iPads, and didn’t refrain from using violence if they met any resistance.
He reached for his jacket.
‘Leaving early?’ Rachel asked as she padded downstairs.
‘Yep. I’ve a meeting first thing.’
‘I’m sorry about last night, but let’s face it, you were wrong.’
Henderson held up his hand. ‘Look, I don’t want to go over it all over again. You said your piece last night. I’ll see you tonight. Bye.’
Henderson walked to the car, parked some way down College Place, his anger simmering. ‘Never argue with a journalist, you’ll never win,’ an old desk sergeant in Glasgow once told him, after being doorstepped by a press cadre as he headed to his office in Pitt Street. He was right.
The day had started out grey with thick cloud cover, but with Brighton being so close to the sea, it could change to something different within the next hour. No matter, autumn had ended with warm temperatures and mild winds with none of the fierce storms of the previous year; with a bit of luck it would continue into winter.
He got into the car and drove towards Lewes, almost on autopilot. He had worked at Sussex House in Brighton for many years and wondered if one day his auto-driving would take him back there by mistake, now a forlorn sight of dirty windows and an empty car park. In common with all public bodies, the police had to bear their share of government cuts, and while he didn’t mind working there, their new offices at Malling House in Lewes were so much better.
He turned on the radio, now tuned to Southern FM as DS Walters had taken charge yesterday afternoon on their way back from interviewing a witness. He retuned to Radio 4. Henderson liked to listen to music in the mornings, but for the last few weeks the Today programme’s tenacious questioner had done some cracking interviews with the government ministers responsible for Brexit. Those bitter exchanges were a better way of blotting out last night’s argument with Rachel than any record by Coldplay or Kanye West.
Malling House in Lewes was a large complex of buildings, some old, some new, located behind a stunning Grade 1 listed Queen Anne House. The site housed the headquarters of Sussex Police, the force responsible for policing a population of over half a million people in East Sussex and eight hundred thousand in West Sussex. The region included a few large conurbations: Brighton, Hastings, Newhaven, Eastbourne, Crawley and Worthing, all with typical inner-city problems of drugs, prostitution and guns, while other parts of the area were rural: small market towns and isolated communities, a mix Detective Inspector Henderson liked.
He walked to his office on the second floor but before he could take off his jacket, the phone rang.
‘Henderson.’
‘Morning sir. Lewes Control. I’ve received a report of a body at the Cliffe Industrial Estate, Lewes. Can you attend?’
‘Will do. Any details?’
‘Very sketchy at the moment. All I know is the pathologist has been called.’
‘Ok, I’m on my way.’
Henderson walked into the Detectives’ Room, looking for Detective Sergeant Walters. He didn’t really expect to see her this side of eight of clock, so any sensible detective, half conscious and without a major hangover, would do. But no, there she sat, staring intently at a report.
‘Morning Carol.’
‘Morning sir,’ she said, looking up before placing the report on her desk.
‘What’s wrong? Insomnia? Or is the druggy upstairs in your building keeping you up all night with his Bhangra music?’
‘What? No, it’s not him. After my last hospital stay, a switch just flipped. After six or seven hours sleep, I’m wide awake and can’t lie in bed. I have to get up. Gone are the days of lying there until the very last minute and a pile of broken alarm clocks in the corner.’
‘I think it’s called growing up. Your body no longer treats you as a teenager.’
‘My body can’t remember what a teenager feels like, it happened so long ago.’
‘Grab your coat. We’ve got a fatality at a warehouse in Lewes.’
**
In the car on their way to the scene, Henderson’s choice of listening was soon discarded and Southern FM reinstated, but he couldn’t be bothered to argue. Radio discussions and interviews were a delight that needed to be consumed alone, without Walters blethering about what she’d done last night or complaining about the boring radio programme if he left it on.
‘So, what were you up to last night?’
‘Rachel went out–’
‘Poor you.’
‘Yeah, poor me. I had some peace and quiet for a change so I read the forensics report of our violent burglars’ encounter with the woman in Patcham.’
‘Did you discover anything new? I hope you spotted something to help finger those nasty bastards.’
‘No, I didn’t but I’m confident we will. They might think they’re clever wearing gloves and hats and say little while they’re in the house, but if they ever cut themselves or spit on the floor, we’ll get them.’
‘They’ll get cocky, they always do.’
‘It’s strange that none of our narks know anything about them.’
‘Or say they don’t which means they’re a nasty bunch and not to be messed with, or an out of town mob nobody’s heard anything about.’
‘Which is why getting a fingerprint or a DNA sample is so important.’
‘They must be doing some amount of research. How else would they know it’s a woman alone and there isn’t some big bruiser husband sitting upstairs because he’s just lost his job or he’s on the night shift?’
‘I wish I knew.’
Henderson guided the pool car into the Cliffe Industrial Estate and easily spotted the warehouse in question, as pathologist Grafton Rawlings’s car, a beautifully restored Austin Healey 3000, was parked outside. If the only police vehicle in attendance had been the dirty white Ford Transit van belonging to the Scenes of Crime Team, now sitting alongside the Healey, he wouldn’t have a clue, as he could see any number of those dotted around the industrial estate.
From the boot of the car he removed and pulled over his suit protective clothing and shoes. Walters did the same. He pushed open the door
of the warehouse and wished he hadn’t, as his nostrils were filled with a putrid smell – a hideous mix of burnt ash and barbecued flesh. The corpse lay just inside the door. He could see the back of the pathologist leaning over and prodding what remained with his metal pointer while the SOCO photographer walked around the body taking pictures, the flash giving the little scene a ghostly Gothic quality.
Henderson reluctantly shut the door and bent down beside Rawlings, all the while holding a handkerchief to his nose.
‘Good morning Grafton.’
‘Morning Angus. Not a good start to a Tuesday morning, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re right there. He or she is still recognisable as a body. It’s not the distorted, charred mess we often see in a house or car fire.’
‘This is because there’s so little combustible material around the victim, it didn’t reach the high temperatures associated with house, car or factory fires. If it had happened over there,’ he said nodding towards the far side of the warehouse where Henderson could see all manner of paper, wood and plastic, ‘it would have left us something quite different.’
‘And not much remaining of this warehouse either, I would bet. What are we looking at: suicide, or a tragic accident?’
‘I can’t say for sure until I can get the body back to the mortuary, but it’s an odd place to commit suicide, don’t you think? An accident was my first thought. Perhaps the victim tripped while holding an open canister of petrol or paraffin as they smoked a cigarette, for instance, but I don’t see any evidence of a canister or a cigarette.’
Henderson had to agree it was an odd spot to choose as they were in an open area near the door, kept clear to allow deliveries and visitors, in what looked like a not very well-stocked warehouse.
‘Any sign of other accelerants?’
‘Not immediately apparent. Again, I will be looking for them when I get him back to the lab, because as we know, bodies do not spontaneously combust. What I can tell you is he’s male, and at first glance I can’t see any contusions or indentations, but as you can appreciate with everything blackened by fire it’s hard to see anything at all.’
