Firetrap

by David Hodges

  Even then she did not move immediately and the Land Rover’s distinctive thudding note had actually faded into a buzz before she plucked up the courage to climb down the remains of the ladder – losing her footing on the broken rungs and falling heavily on to a stack of mushy straw bales piled up on one side at the bottom.

  The barn doors stood wide open, moonlight gushing through the opening. Pushing through into the night air, it suddenly dawned on her why the killer had finally decided to depart, leaving his business unfinished. Above the sparsely wooded fields on the other side of the main road, the night sky was lit by a myriad of flashing blue and red lights. As she headed towards the shattered gate at a trot, she heard the shriek of a siren and saw the unmistakable shape of a fire-engine racing past. The troops had arrived at last.

  chapter 3

  COLD – KATE HAD never felt so cold, despite the scorching to her face and hands from the explosion and the insulation provided by the thick woollen blanket in which she was wrapped. Perched on the edge of the police estate car’s rear hatch, she could feel the bitter chill creeping up her legs and into her insides from the crisp frosty ground like some anaesthetizing medical probe. Still sodden from her plunge in the rhyne, she needed a change of clothes like yesterday, but there was no way she was going to leave the scene until she had some answers to the horrific crime that had just been perpetrated.

  The gutted shell of the police Transit van still smouldered in the light of the halogen lamps trained on it from the nearby fire service tender, despite the force of the fire hoses, and she tried not to think about the blackened dismembered remains that were obviously still tangled up inside the twisted metal of the vehicle, awaiting the farce of a pathologist’s examination.

  Shivering in uncontrollable spasms, she drew the blanket more tightly about herself, her eyes straying from the Transit van, several yards away behind the blue and white police crime scene tape, to stare across the field on the other side of the drove and the target premises their little team had been watching.

  Lights bobbed about in the darkness around Terry Duval’s cottage and she visualized what would be happening as her enraged colleagues illegally smashed their way in, looking for him. She was so engrossed that she didn’t hear the crunch of footsteps in the stiff frosty grass and she jumped when the voice spoke right beside her.

  ‘Dried out then, young lady?’

  The speaker – a thirty-something, hatchet-faced woman with short black hair and a narrow, slightly crooked mouth – leaned against the side of the patrol car, studying her in the light streaming from inside, the flashing roof strobe of the vehicle illuminating the side of her face in rapid pulses of blue, reminding Kate of the witch in the Judy Garland film, Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz.

  Detective Chief Inspector Rozalind Callow (Roz to her team when she was in a good mood) always made Kate feel uncomfortable. Single, with a sexual preference for her own gender, she had already come on to her slender auburn-haired subordinate twice and Kate’s fierce rejection of her advances had created a festering hostility between the two women.

  ‘Not quite, ma’am,’ Kate replied, playing safe by addressing her formally. ‘Did you find anything at the house?’

  Callow shrugged. ‘A nice stash of what looks like homemade explosive, plus a collection of timers and detonators, but no sign of the man himself. His motor’s gone too, so he’s obviously off on his toes.’

  ‘If he was the one who actually did this.’

  The DCI straightened up and popped something (probably one of the extra strong mints she seemed addicted to) into her mouth. ‘Who else would have had a motive?’ she said. ‘After all, it’s pretty obvious from the stuff we found in his cottage that he is our fire-bomber, so he would have had both the reason and the opportunity to waste those who were snooping on his activities.’

  Kate shivered as the cold got to her again and the next moment Callow’s hand was on her shoulder, gently squeezing it. ‘You ought to get out of those wet things, you know,’ she advised. ‘My place is just down the road at Wedmore. I can easily run you there and I’m sure we can find something to fit you while your clothes dry out.’

  Kate shook her head a little too quickly. ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, cringing into her blanket. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  The DCI stiffened, her face hardening as she withdrew her hand. ‘So tell me again what happened here tonight,’ she said, a harsh edge to her voice now. ‘We didn’t have time to go into it properly when I first arrived, did we?’

  Kate took a deep trembling breath. ‘Not much else I can tell you. As I said, I got caught short and went for a pee. This Land Rover turned up and stopped alongside the Transit. The driver seemed to reach out towards the Transit, then drove off at speed.’ She hesitated, biting her lip. ‘Seconds later, “boom” and I ended up in the rhyne.’

  ‘And you still can’t describe the man?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘All I saw at the time was an arm reaching out of the window towards the Transit—’

  ‘When he planted the IED on the side of the Transit?’

  ‘If that’s what it was, yes. In the dark, it was impossible to see anything inside the vehicle.’

  ‘But you must have got an idea of what he looked like when he came after you on foot. He would have been in the open and in brilliant moonlight.’

  Kate sighed her exasperation. ‘Look, all I saw was a tall male figure in a long hooded coat. I didn’t see his face. How could I? He was too far away.’

  ‘And still no ideas on the number of the vehicle? We already know Duval uses a Land Rover Defender and it would help if we could confirm it was his motor.’

  ‘As I told you earlier, I can only say that it was a grey-coloured, hard-topped Land Rover Defender with one of those snorkels fitted to the front offside wing. It’s rear number plate was unlit and the rear nearside light cover was obviously broken as it was showing a white light on that side.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s the lot.’

  ‘But surely you got another look at the motor when it pursued you across the field?’

  ‘Only briefly – and then I was too busy running to see much at all.’

  ‘Doesn’t give us a lot to go on, does it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘And where was it you had this pee?’

  Kate pointed down the drove. ‘In that copse – you can see it from here.’

  ‘So how did you end up in the rhyne?’

  ‘I was blown off my feet by the blast.’

  ‘But you just said you were in the copse.’

  Kate could feel anger surging up inside her. Callow seemed to be trying to trip her up, like a suspect under interrogation. ‘I had left the copse by then and was running towards the Land Rover.’

  ‘What made you do that?’

  ‘I thought something was wrong and wanted to check it out.’

  ‘Only then? But I thought you told me you heard the Land Rover approaching? Why not check the motor out before it got to the Transit?’

  Kate controlled herself with an effort. ‘Because I thought it would compromise the operation – and,’ she added more forcefully as Callow started to interrupt again, ‘Andy Seldon told me over my radio to keep my head down.’

  The DCI nodded and abruptly changed tack. ‘Strange you didn’t think of radioing for assistance though. We were actually alerted by an emergency call from a passing motorist who saw the fire.’

  ‘I couldn’t call anyone. My radio was totalled when I went into the rhyne.’

  Callow looked unconvinced and, with a sharp hiss of irritation, Kate fumbled for the radio and slapped it into her outstretched hand.

  The DCI smiled. ‘Maybe you didn’t have it switched on?’ she gloated, and pressed the transmit button to prove her point. Even from where she was sitting, Kate could hear the answering voice of the police control room. ‘Nothing for you,’ Callow responded, and handed the radio back to Kate.

  ‘Scared, wer
e you?’ she said.

  For a moment Kate didn’t answer, hardly able to credit that her radio was now actually working and conscious of how this must look to Callow.

  ‘Well, were you?’

  Kate glared at her. ‘Of course I was bloody scared – the vehicle blew up in front of me, didn’t it? And then I was chased by a sodding psycho. Who wouldn’t have been scared?’

  ‘If that’s what really did happen.’

  Kate stumbled to her feet. ‘If it happened?’ she grated. ‘What the hell are you implying? Anyone would think I was the villain here.’

  Callow met her gaze without flinching. ‘Simply trying to get my head around things, that’s all,’ she replied smoothly. ‘After all, we don’t want the rest of the department to think you ran out on your colleagues, do we?’

  Kate gaped at her. ‘Ran out on them?’ she gasped. ‘Ran out on them? That’s an awful thing to say.’

  Callow shrugged and turned away from the police vehicle. ‘Just being practical,’ she said, without committing herself one way or the other. ‘Now, I think it’s time you went home to get some rest. Nothing more you can do here.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ Kate said stubbornly.

  ‘I’ll get you a car,’ Callow said even more firmly. ‘See you at the nick around ten for a full debrief.’

  The streets of Highbridge were understandably deserted when the grey Land Rover Defender turned off the Bridgwater road into a narrow side-street at around 1.30 a.m. Swinging through a gateway in a cul-de-sac shortly afterwards, it pulled up in a private walled car-park at the rear of Wadman & Son Funeral Directors, and came to an abrupt stop, its headlights blazing back at it from a pair of heavy steel doors. The driver was coughing on a cigarette as he jumped out of the vehicle to open up. Then, snapping on powerful strip-lights, he eased the Land Rover into a long triple-width garage already occupied by a sleek black Daimler hearse and a black Daimler limousine on one side and an old green van on the other.

  Cutting the Land Rover’s lights and engine simultaneously, he sat there for a few moments, thinking.

  The hit had not gone as well as it should have done, that was for sure, and he knew that the woman witness who had escaped him could turn out to be something of a problem later on unless she was found and dealt with PDQ. But he had no idea who she was, where she had come from or what she was doing on the drove at such an hour, so the conclusion of that bit of extra business would have to wait, whether he liked it or not. And anyway, it was time to report in.

  Leaving the vehicle, he made his way by flashlight to the end of the garage and through an internal door giving access to the main premises. Beyond lay a small workshop, equipped with a workbench, racks of carpentry tools and a shelf laden with an assortment of tins and bottles. The place could have been any carpenter’s workshop, but for the fact that the workbench was occupied by a light oak coffin, which was obviously nearing completion. The room smelled strongly of a combination of varnish and turpentine.

  Passing through another door, he entered a long hallway with doors opening off on both sides. The chapel of rest, mortuary and administration offices were, like the workshop, all accommodated on the ground floor and the reception office, its big shop-style windows engraved with the name ‘Wadman & Son Funeral Directors’, fronted the street at the far end of the hallway. But his funeral business could not have been further from his mind at that moment and he headed for the narrow staircase, giving access to his flat upstairs.

  Stepping over a chain, bearing a plastic sign ‘Private No Entry’, which was suspended between the wall and the banister post, he ascended the staircase with little enthusiasm. Opening the door at the top, he was greeted by the smell of yesterday’s fries and crinkled his nose in disgust. Home, sweet home – like hell. He switched on the light and, propping himself on his threadbare settee, lifted the phone and dialled a number. He was answered almost immediately.

  ‘Twister,’ he announced, using his agreed nickname. ‘Job’s done.’

  ‘Any problems?’ the voice at the other end queried.

  ‘None,’ he lied, after a second’s hesitation, unwilling to reveal that he had messed up with the woman who had got away.

  ‘Brilliant. No one saw you then?’

  ‘Only those in the Transit and they’re all toast now.’

  ‘You’ve done well, but we’d better keep our heads down until things quieten down. The police will be out for blood after this.’

  He glanced round the shabby room. ‘Why would I want to be anywhere else?’ he commented with heavy sarcasm, smiling grimly as the phone went dead.

  chapter 4

  THE POLICE PATROL car dropped Kate off outside her Bridgwater flat as it was getting light and her stony-faced ‘chauffeur’ didn’t wait to see her inside, but drove off the moment she slammed the door shut, without a single glance in her direction. The journey home had not been pleasant. She had sensed the hostility in the car the moment she had climbed inside; neither the uniformed constable behind the wheel or his front seat colleague acknowledging her presence or making any attempt at conversation throughout the whole twenty-minute drive. To be fair, that had actually suited her in her semi-traumatized state, but the atmosphere in the vehicle had shocked and unsettled her nevertheless and she was relieved when the police car’s tail-lights finally disappeared round the corner in a cloud of diesel.

  Despite the coldness of the air and the need to get out of her still sodden clothes, she made no immediate move towards the door of the dismal tower block where she had lived for the past two years. Instead, she stood there for a few moments, shivering fitfully and staring at the curling exhaust plume the police car had left behind as it floated like a wraith in the pool of light cast by a street lamp, her mind in even greater turmoil than before.

  What the hell was going on? She had done nothing to warrant the silent treatment she had received – unless the fact that she had survived the Transit blast was seen as reprehensible under the circumstances and her colleagues felt she should have perished in the explosion as well. Could that be what lay behind the DCI’s interrogation and the open hostility of the crew of the police car – resentment that she had survived while Andy Seldon and Alf Cross hadn’t?

  OK, so it could be that she was imagining things – over-reacting due to a combination of trauma and fatigue – and it was possible that the bobbies in the car had not actually been giving her the cold shoulder at all, but just couldn’t think of anything to say after all that had happened. Tragedy affected some people like that, making them clam up, reluctant to discuss the circumstances with those involved; she had seen it many times in the job. Yeah, but not this time; this time it was different. That car had radiated hostility and there hadn’t been as much as a single ‘good morning’ or a ‘glad to see you’re all right’ from either of the pair, just a heavy smouldering silence.

  As if to reinforce her feelings, the DCI’s words hammered away in her brain once more: ‘We don’t want the rest of the department to think you ran out on your colleagues, do we?’

  Ran out on them? Why on earth would anyone think that? Could it be that Callow had resorted to spite because Kate had rebuffed her sexual advances – spreading poison about her among her colleagues in an attempt to get even? It did not seem possible that an experienced detective chief inspector would do such a thing, but something was certainly wrong and, on top of the acute emotional distress she was already suffering, Kate suddenly felt more alone and vulnerable than she had felt in her life before.

  She was so wrapped up in her own misery, in fact, that she failed to notice the shadow lurking in the stairwell – a shadow that remained motionless as she climbed the stone staircase to the first floor and only emerged from hiding when she had slammed the door of her flat shut behind her. Then, as she wearily slipped out of her wet, badly singed clothes and started to run a bath, the shadow moved out of hiding and slowly, almost hesitantly mounted the staircase towards her floor.

  Kate did n
ot hear the bell at first. Her head was already under the shower hose attached to the mixer tap as she tried to wash the evil-smelling gunge from the rhyne out of her hair before climbing into the bath. The sight of herself in the full-length mirror had come as quite a shock – the scorching to her face from the explosion, the ugly bruises now materializing in the form of dirty mauve smudges down one side and along one thigh, the cuts to her hands and both forearms where she had scrambled up the bank out of the water and the ruination of her shoulder-length auburn hair, which had once gleamed like burnished copper when caught in the light and now resembled the matted head of a cleaning mop.

  Visitors she certainly did not need and when she finally did hear the bell – which the caller now blatantly chose to lean on – her fury surfaced in a lava-like rush. Pulling on a silk dressing-gown, she wrapped a white towel round her head and marched to the door with murder in mind. Her jaw dropped, however, when she saw who was standing on the doorstep.

  The young woman in the long, black hooded coat seemed to shrink before her gaze, sniffing and wiping her dripping nose with the back of one hand. ‘Hi, Sis,’ she said, looking down at her feet.

  ‘Linda?’ she breathed, gaping at the pale emaciated face and blistered lips.

  ‘None other,’ her visitor said, affecting a twitchy smile. ‘Can I come in?’

  Closing her eyes briefly in resignation, Kate stepped back and watched her shuffle inside. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she queried, closing the door behind her. ‘You should be in rehab.’

  The haunted eyes looked away from her and the woman wiped her nose on her sleeve this time, her body noticeably shaking under the long coat. ‘I – I’m in trouble, Kate,’ she muttered. ‘Need some dosh.’

  Kate pushed past her into the living room and closed the blinds. ‘Oh Linda, look at you,’ she whispered as the girl slipped off the hood to reveal a mass of auburn hair that was even dirtier and more tangled than her own. ‘You look like a corpse.’