Firetrap

by David Hodges

  Firetrap

  David Hodges

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth, for all her love, patience and support over so many wonderful years

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  author’s note

  before the fact

  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

  after the fact

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  author’s note

  Although the action of the story takes place in the Avon & Somerset Constabulary area, the story itself and all the characters in it are entirely fictitious. At the time of writing, there is no police station in Highbridge. This has been drawn entirely from the author’s imagination to ensure no connection is made between any existing police station or personnel in the force and the content of the novel. Similarly, despite reference to some actual streets and villages, any specific premises mentioned, such as the café and funeral directors in Highbridge and the cottage in Burtle, are all figments of the imagination and any connection between them and existing properties is entirely coincidental.

  David Hodges

  before the fact

  MOONLIGHT – SOFT, MAGICAL – blazing a pure white trail along the drove, spotlighting the purplish smudge of Glastonbury Tor as it rose like a phallic symbol from shadowed fields, and touching the lattice-work of rhynes with silver. Nothing moved. The world was dead, enfolded in the wings of a primeval night; silent, unknowing.

  Twister had reversed his old green van through an open gateway into a field and tucked it behind a hedge; close enough to the farmhouse for him to reach it quickly should anything go wrong, yet far enough away to avoid attracting any unwelcome interest. Not that there was likely to be anyone wandering around the Somerset Levels at this time of the night to be interested – unless the dead could walk, of course.

  He had watched Joe Mercier being put six feet under that very afternoon and he happened to know that the old farmer’s widow had gone to stay with her son in Taunton for a while, which meant that the farm would be unoccupied, visited only once a day by the local herdsman. That was what was so brilliant about the unsavoury profession he had taken over from his late father; you got to know things – like when a house was vacant and could be screwed without fear of discovery. And the added bonus was that no one would ever suspect the local undertaker of being the culprit? It was perfect cover.

  Despite his confidence, however, he approached the dilapidated farmhouse cautiously. In two years of serial burglary he had never put a foot wrong and he was not about to start now.

  A marsh bird rose with panic-stricken squawks from almost under his feet as he stepped on to the heavy steel plate that had been placed over the rhyne at the entrance to the farm and his heart jumped. But otherwise the night remained perfectly still and, encouraged, he moved on, heading through the open gateway and following the concrete driveway towards the house.

  He had actually made the hard-standing separating the house from a cluster of outbuildings and was almost past an open-fronted woodshed when he heard the sharp clinking sound and glimpsed the stab of a flashlight through a gap in the double doors of a large barn opposite.

  Ducking into the woodshed, he crouched behind a stack of recently cut logs and froze, eyes narrowed, heart pounding. Who the hell was in the barn, and what were they doing there at this hour? It was hardly likely to be the Merciers or the wandering herdsman at just after one in the morning. So who? Then he saw the vehicle. It was a Land Rover Defender – one of the workhorses regularly used by farmers all over the Levels – and it was parked on a ragged gravel area between the barn and an adjacent cowshed. It was the only vehicle in the farmyard, but it was nothing like old man Mercier’s own run-about and it certainly couldn’t be confused with the herdsman’s distinctive yellow Toyota 4 x 4.

  So someone else had decided to pay the farm a visit, had they? Someone who must also have known that it would be unoccupied after the funeral and had chosen to sneak into the place at an hour when most decent folk were tucked up in bed. Twister scowled. It seemed he had a competitor then, but if that was the case, he needed to know who that competitor was.

  Leaving the woodshed, he took a chance and darted through the blaze of moonlight to the front of the Land Rover. He put his hand in front of the radiator. Still very warm, so matey hadn’t been here long then. Peering at the index plate, he made a mental note of the registration number, just in case.

  More clinking from inside the barn and the strong smell of petrol. He crept up to the double doors and peered through the gap. A shadowy figure – a man without doubt, going by his heavy build – was crouching beside a tractor in the light of a powerful flash lamp set on an overturned crate. Around him bits of other machinery intruded into the circle of light – including a large sit-on mower and a digger of some sort – while bales of what looked like hay or straw were dimly visible, stacked in a solid wall behind him. It was difficult to see what the man was up to, but he appeared to be doing something to the tractor’s engine.

  Could be it was all perfectly legit, of course – a mechanic working late – but somehow that seemed just a little bit too implausible. More likely that this one had come to nick parts off the tractor or lift anything else that was lying around and that posed a problem in itself. Whatever he was up to, Twister knew he would have to bide his time until the job was done; breaking into the house was much too risky with matey-boy up to his tricks just a few yards away.

  Reluctantly he slipped into a narrow passageway between the barn and a ruined cowshed to wait – and he didn’t have to wait long. Just minutes later one of the barn doors opened with a shuddering scraping sound and the mystery man emerged in the full flood of moonlight. Risking a quick glance round the corner, Twister only caught the briefest glimpse of the man’s face before jerking back out of sight – but it was enough. He recognized him immediately. How could he forget a past client who had opted for such an elaborate and costly funeral for his mother? Then there was the quick rap of footsteps on the concrete, followed by the crack of door hinges. The Land Rover’s engine started up seconds before the driver’s door was slammed shut and even as Twister poked his head round the corner of the barn, there was a squeal of tyres as the vehicle pulled away under power.

  For a moment Twister watched it lumber away down the driveway, its rear lights only coming on as it turned on to the drove and headed for the main road.

  ‘Well, now, Mr Terry Duval, you were in a bit of a hurry, weren’t you, my old son,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I wonder why.’

  Slipping through the still open door of the barn, he produced a masked torch from his pocket and directed the beam round the interior. As he had suspected, the place was jam-packed with machinery of one sort or another and the stench of petrol was overpowering. Holding a handkerchief up against his nose, he focused the beam on the tractor and was surprised to see that it appeared intact. Then he noticed something else: the floor beneath his shoes seemed to be soakin
g wet. As the beam of his torch jerked sideways in a sudden reflexive movement, he spotted the petrol cans tied together under the tractor and the small oblong box attached to one of them that winked at him knowingly from the shadows with its tiny pulsing eye.

  And it was then that he turned and ran.

  chapter 1

  MIDNIGHT. THE INSIDE of the unmarked police Transit van was like a fridge. ‘No lights, no noise,’ the detective chief inspector had said, which meant no engine, so no heater. Parked on the marshland drove, bordered by rows of skeletal trees on one side and a reed-fringed rhyne on the other, there was little to shield the vehicle from the bitter winter’s night, except the overhanging branches. The bodywork of the long wheelbase Ford already bore lacings of hard frost and the frozen surface of the rhyne itself reflected the moonlight like crazed glass.

  ‘Place is dead as a bleedin’ dodo,’ Detective Constable Alf Cross growled, straightening up from the spy-hole and lowering the night-vision monocular he had been using to study the cottage in the middle of the field. He swivelled round in the chair anchored to the steel floor of the vehicle. ‘What a waste of bloody time.’

  Detective Sergeant Andy Seldon turned away from the DVR’s small screen, only too well aware of the fact that the infra-red camera, cleverly disguised as a rooftop ventilator, had been recording nothing but images of marauding foxes for the past two hours. ‘Early days yet, Alf,’ he commented. ‘Give our man a chance.’

  Cross rubbed his hands briskly up and down both arms, more as a gesture of frustration than a genuine attempt to restore the circulation. ‘Operation Firetrap,’ he snorted. ‘What flippin’ dickhead gave this job a name like that?’

  Seldon treated him to a faint smile. ‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ he retorted, smoothing his blond, shoulder-length hair back from his face with both hands. ‘Seeing as we are targeting an arsonist, I thought it was quite apt – guv’nor thought so too.’

  Cross snorted again and picked at the half-day’s stubble on his chin. ‘If that’s what a university degree does for you, Andy, I’m glad I joined the army instead,’ he retorted, shivering now despite the heavy coat and woollen hat he was wearing. ‘An’ talking of the “mob”, I’d rather put up with a stinkin’ tank in the Gulf than this ice-box any day of the week – I mean, what sort of crap snoop wagon is this anyway? Zero temperatures, yet no ruddy heating.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Alf,’ his colleague admonished. ‘HQ workshops are still in the process of fitting this one out and they’ve had a problem with the ancillary heating system. We were damned lucky to be able to get hold of it at all this weekend.’

  He swung back to his screen and zoomed in on the upstairs window of the target premises. As Cross had observed, not a single light showed. ‘Getting old, that’s your trouble,’ the young DS murmured. ‘You should pack it in and retire to the seaside.’

  Cross grunted, ignoring the jibe. ‘I bet an NCS team wouldn’t have had to put up with an ancient wreck like this,’ he went on. ‘They would have had a brand new, state of the art motor.’

  Seldon sighed his exasperation. ‘Terry Duval is just a local villain, Alf,’ he said, ‘not a target criminal involved in organized crime. The National Crime Squad wouldn’t be interested in him in the first place, so get real, will you?’

  There was a chuckle from a corner of the metal box and a young woman, dressed in a hooded fleece and tight blue jeans, leaned across in her own swivel chair to thrust a mug of coffee under Cross’s nose. ‘Get that down you, Alf,’ she said. ‘It’s got some Irish milk in it.’

  The big man accepted the mug with a curt nod. ‘Thanks, Kate, you’re a star.’ He took a gulp, but even the warming effects of the whisky had little effect on his sour mood. ‘I bet Duval’s laughin’ his jockstrap off,’ he said, resuming his tirade. ‘How many torchin’s has he done? Six? Seven? An’ we ain’t never come close. I bet he even knows we’re out here, freezin’ our bollocks off, while he snugs it in his pit – I mean, you don’t really think a beaten up van, with the words “Water Monitoring Agency” on the side, is goin’ to fool a cunnin’ bastard like that, do you? He’ll have smelled us a mile off.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Seldon acknowledged, panning the camera for the umpteenth time, ‘if he has managed to spot us tucked away here in the first place – which I doubt. But what alternative do we have? He’s our best bet for this spate of farm fires – the MO is classic Duval – and I reckon a couple of days’ surveillance will give us our best chance of catching him at it.’

  ‘So why not just pull him in and save all this hassle?’

  Seldon turned again, treating his colleague to a penetrating stare. ‘Pull him in for what exactly?’

  ‘Well, he’s a queer boy, ain’t he? An’ he’s got plenty of form. What more do we need? Just pull him in an’ get it out of him.’

  ‘Right,’ Seldon said, nodding slowly. ‘So being gay is a crime now, is it?’

  ‘No, but this one’s a bleedin’ pervert, we all know that. Torchin’ places gives him a hard-on – an’ he’s only just come out the nut-house after doin’ six years for the same sort of thing.’

  ‘We can’t pull people in just because they’re perverts or have form,’ Kate interjected with a short laugh. ‘What about wrongful arrest – not to mention good old human rights?’

  Cross scowled. ‘Human rights?’ he threw back. ‘In my book, scum like him don’t have no rights – human or otherwise.’

  Seldon gave another sigh. ‘Eastbourne,’ he said gravely. ‘That’s the place for you, mate. Nice little bungalow near the sea-front, I think.’

  Kate stood up, sensing that the good-natured bantering that usually went on between her two colleagues was about to rack up a notch. ‘I need to pee,’ she said.

  Seldon closed his eyes for a second. ‘Fine,’ he acknowledged patiently. ‘Then maybe you’d better go and do it. But do keep out of sight, won’t you?’

  For the first time Cross chuckled. ‘Do you want me to come and hold your knickers, Kate?’ he queried as he carefully unlocked the side door of the vehicle for her. ‘You wouldn’t want icicles on your bits, now would you?’

  Seldon rested his forehead against steepled fingers in a gesture of resignation. ‘I can’t believe you just said that, Alf,’ he breathed. ‘Eastbourne it is for you, my man – and as quickly as possible.’

  It seemed degrees warmer outside the van than inside, but the ground was rock hard and the short grass, tinged blue in the moonlight, crackled underfoot as Kate picked her way among the ice choked ruts towards a copse bordering the rhyne to one side of the drove a few yards away. It would have been a lot easier to have relieved herself closer to the police vehicle, but she was only too aware of its half-dozen spy-holes and the excellent zoom capability of the infra-red camera, despite the negative effects of the wash of moonlight, and she had no intention of providing Alf Cross with impromptu entertainment.

  An owl hooted dismally as she entered the copse and shortly afterwards something scuttled away from her in the gloom. Though slightly unnerved, she stopped only when she could no longer see the police van and therefore could no longer be seen by the pair inside. Crouched in the crisp undergrowth, she felt strangely vulnerable and not a little silly, giggling nervously to herself as she loosened her jeans and did what she had come to do, one hand gripping the lichen encrusted trunk of an alder tree for balance. But her mirth was short-lived, for the next instant the police radio in its harness suddenly spat at her through her plastic earpiece. ‘Stay down, Kate,’ Seldon’s voice warned. ‘We seem to have company.’

  But she could hear it for herself now – the thudding note of a slow-running engine – and through a gap in the trees in front of her she caught sight of a chunky shadow bumping along the drove skirting the copse, heading in the direction of the surveillance van. The vehicle was not displaying any lights, but in the brief glimpse she was afforded by the moonlight, it looked like a grey Land Rover Defender with a hard-top and
a snorkel fitted to the offside in front of the driver’s door.

  She frowned. What the hell was anyone doing using the drove at this time of the night – especially without lights? A poacher maybe, or some nocturnal twitcher? Hardly likely, and it was certainly the wrong time of year for one of the secretive eel fishermen who liked to harvest the tiny elvers at night with their strangely shaped nets. So who then? Terry Duval on his way home? He did have a Land Rover Defender, after all, didn’t he? Could be and that would be a real bummer, for it would mean that if he had intended doing a job, he would already have done it while they sat there on their arses waiting for him.

  Not that any of that mattered, of course. Whoever the mystery marauder was, she could not afford to challenge him anyway – especially if it was Duval – for that would risk blowing the whole police operation before it had got started. And the DCI was not known for her forgiving nature.

  Hauling up her jeans, she headed back the way she had come, keeping her head low and stumbling through the trees bent almost double; branches and trailing creepers scraping her face and exposed tree roots snatching at her boots.

  By the time she reached the edge of the copse, however, the Land Rover was already alongside the Transit van, but instead of continuing on past it, as she would have expected, it came to an abrupt stop, leaving just a small gap between the two vehicles. Mystified, she watched from a crouched position in the undergrowth as an arm appeared through the driver’s window and seemed to touch the side of the Transit before being quickly withdrawn.

  ‘What the hell are you up to?’ she breathed, for some reason feeling strangely uneasy, yet still unsure as to whether or not she should break cover to challenge the driver. But the answer was not immediately apparent and even as she finally decided on direct action and started back up the track, the Land Rover’s wheels slid on the frosty ground and it accelerated away with a sudden and surprising turn of speed, as if the driver had seen her in his rear-view mirror.