Firetrap

by David Hodges

  Deep down he knew he was already too late, but that didn’t stop his right foot from trying to push the accelerator pedal all the way through the floor to the road surface and the milk tanker negotiating the big roundabout on the outskirts of Bridgwater had to slam on its brakes to avoid him as he emerged from the dual carriageway in a blur. But Lewis was unrepentant. Careless driving or speeding tickets he could deal with, but the corpse of Kate Hamblin he could not.

  Seconds later he pulled up with a slither of tyres in front of the grim tower block where Kate had her flat and leaped from the car like a madman, skidding on the icy pavement as he headed for the main door and almost bowling over a young couple in the process of leaving the building.

  Beat music thudded out from somewhere above his head and the smell of curry greeted him as he bounded up the stairs. Everything seemed so refreshingly normal and he began to wonder whether he was about to make a prize ass of himself. But that thought was immediately discarded the moment he reached the door of Kate’s flat. It was half open.

  ‘Kate?’ he called, his voice cracked and unnatural as he carefully pushed the door right back. ‘It’s Hayden. Are you OK?’

  There was no reply and he saw that the flat was in darkness save for a pool of light cast by a standard lamp in the far corner, which illuminated a solitary armchair. His hand fumbled for the main light switch just inside the door, but flicking the switch produced no response. Damn it!

  Then, as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he saw for the first time what looked like someone sitting in the armchair under the standard lamp and his heart missed a beat when he caught the gleam of auburn hair.

  ‘Kate!’ he shouted, only to realize when he stumbled across the room that she was not sitting in the chair at all, but lolling forward, her head resting on her chest and her shoulder-length hair hanging down over her face.

  Kneeling beside her, he saw that her wrists were tied to the chair arms with some kind of nylon cord that cut right into the flesh and she did not appear to be breathing. Gripped by panic, he rummaged in his pocket for his clasp knife and quickly severed her bonds before trying to push her back in the chair. But the moment he took his hands away from her, she fell forward on to his shoulder, limp and unresponsive. Her hair in his face smelled strangely earthy and her body emanated a coldness that terrified him. He grasped her wrist and felt for a pulse, but could detect nothing.

  ‘Come on, Kate,’ he pleaded and, supporting her with the palm of one hand against her shoulder, used the other to feel for a pulse in her neck. But there was not the faintest tremor and even as the horrible truth hit him with sledgehammer force, a familiar voice in the gloom behind the chair confirmed his worst fears.

  ‘You’re too late. She’s dead.’

  DCI Roz Callow had had a long tiring day and now, with the murder of Ray Jury, it looked like getting a lot longer. Her situation was not helped by the press either. Descending on the crime scene like a pack of jackals within minutes of her arrival, they had been clamouring for information ever since – kept at bay solely by the perimeter fence and a pair of wire gates, which had required wedging shut with a police Transit van after the crew of the initial response car had found them standing wide open.

  Ray Jury still lay where he had been found, within a few yards of his caravan, shielded from the media’s flash cameras by a couple of police accident signs and a few bollards pending the arrival of the pathologist and forensic team. The doctor the uniformed officers had called out to certify death had already given the cause as a broken neck and since there was nothing Jury could have fallen from, it didn’t need the expertise of Sherlock Holmes to deduce that his death must have been due to foul play – and that in itself worried Callow.

  As an experienced detective, she knew that it was not that easy to break a person’s neck without using a weapon of some sort and the doctor had already pointed out that there were no signs of any external injuries consistent with a blow. This suggested that the former proprietor of the breaker’s yard had been killed by someone with the skill to do the job with his bare hands. An ex-army man perhaps? Special Services maybe? But why? Jury was known to the police for ringing cars and he was suspected of doing a nice little trade in forged documents too, but he was nevertheless small fry – not someone who would have attracted a contract from one of the big-time villains.

  All very perplexing, but with her boss tucked up at headquarters on a briefing with the assistant chief constable in charge of territorial policing and the current double murder investigation floundering due to the failure of her team to flush out the main suspect, she reckoned she had quite enough on her plate without falling for another complicated murder inquiry. Her sour mood was plainly reflected in her expression when the SOCO team arrived and set up their powerful spotlights, but her transformation turned out to be just a few steps away and it was unwittingly brought about by Detective Inspector Roscoe, who approached her from the caravan.

  ‘Thought you should hear this, ma’am,’ he said, nodding towards a greasy-looking man in an anorak who was trailing behind him.

  Callow studied the man with undisguised contempt. ‘So who is he?’ she snapped, as if he wasn’t there.

  ‘Lenny Stallard, one of Ray Jury’s men,’ Roscoe replied, then nodded to the man again. ‘Tell the boss what you told me.’

  Stallard shrugged. ‘Ain’t much to tell. Left the yard when Ray closed the place at five. Ray stayed be’ind an’ I locked him in. Never saw him again.’

  Callow frowned. ‘Why did he stay behind?’

  Stallard grinned, seemingly unaffected by Jury’s death. ‘Fievein’. We’d ’ad a lot of stuff nicked lately an’ Ray said ’e was goin’ to nail ’em.’

  ‘And the rest,’ Roscoe encouraged. ‘Tell her the rest.’

  ‘Oh yeah, we ’ad a visitor just afore Ray closed up – some bird an’ a bloke. They come to look at the MX5 job over there.’ He waved an arm towards the concrete hard-standing.

  Callow turned quickly to look in the direction he was indicating. ‘That’s Kate Hamblin’s car, isn’t it?’ she snapped at Roscoe.

  ‘Yeah,’ Stallard cut in before Roscoe could reply, ‘I fink that’s what the bird’s name was. Anyways, I saw the bloke bend down and pull somefink off from underneaf. Then the pair of ’em looked at it afore drivin’ away. Told Ray they’d ’alf-inched somefink, but ’e said it was the bird’s motor, so she could take whatever she liked.’

  Callow’s eyes were gleaming now. ‘What did the man with her look like?’

  ‘Dunno. Didn’t pay too much attention like. Tall, lot of ’air.’ He chuckled. ‘Looked a bit like that London mayor geezer – Boris Johnson. But I clocked the car – nice red Mk2 Jag it was. Not many of them about today – ’cept the one that used to be driven by that copper, Inspector Morse, on the telly.’

  Callow wore a triumphant smile as she turned away from him and popped an extra strong peppermint into her mouth. ‘Now that is interesting,’ she murmured, ‘very interesting indeed.’

  Kate Hamblin looked like a ghost on the fringes of the light from the standard lamp, her eyes hollow black depressions in a cold white mask that quivered spasmodically. She was right on the edge of reason and Lewis lunged round the armchair to catch her as she suddenly collapsed into his arms.

  He carried her across the room and through a door into what turned out to be a bedroom and flicked on the light – one that worked this time – before laying her gently on the bed. She lay there, eyes wide open, lips trembling, trying to speak, but somehow unable to form the words.

  ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ Lewis gasped, sitting on the bed beside her. ‘For a moment I thought—’

  ‘Took out the other light bulbs,’ Kate blurted suddenly. ‘Waited for me to come home.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Lewis asked gently, shuddering as he remembered the battered face, bloodied nose, and the tell-tale scars on the dead girl’s thin white wrists. ‘She looks so much like you.’

  Kat
e’s eyes focused on his face with a peculiar intensity, then abruptly drifted away, staring at the ceiling. ‘My twin, Linda,’ she whispered. ‘Must have come here looking for help and in the dark he thought she was me. Looks like he roughed her up before—’

  Lewis patted her hand and stood up. ‘I have to get some help,’ he said. ‘You stay here, OK?’

  He went outside on to the landing to make his mobile call to headquarters control room, requesting backup and an ambulance. His voice was shaking as he provided the necessary information and he had only just slipped his mobile back into his pocket and returned to the flat, when he heard a sound and saw Kate standing in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘No, old girl,’ he said, stepping quickly towards her and guiding her back into the bedroom, ‘you have to lie down. You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  To his surprise, she shook her head. ‘No tears, Hayden,’ she whispered and bit her lip in pain, one hand darting to her still badly bruised chest as she began to sway unsteadily in front of him. ‘No tears. Waste of time.’ She stared at him, again with that same intense expression. ‘No love between us,’ she said. ‘Unusual for a twin, isn’t it? Tried to help her to quit, but she was too far gone.’ She hesitated. ‘At peace now.’

  He was conscious of the fact that he was gaping at her. This wasn’t the sort of reaction he would have expected from someone who had just found her sister brutally murdered, but it was apparent that the shock was still there and she was dangerously close to collapsing again. Getting a grip on his own emotions, he more or less forced her down into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Somewhere outside he could hear the distant scream of sirens.

  ‘Do you think it would have been quick for Linda?’ she asked.

  He nodded automatically, feeling tears of his own coming. ‘Yes, old girl. It would have been quick,’ he said, without knowing whether it would have been quick or not.

  ‘We’ve got to find him, Hayden,’ she said, sudden unexpected venom in her tone. ‘The murdering bastard mustn’t get away with this.’

  He patted her hand again, his face grim. ‘We’ll find him, never fear, old girl,’ he said. ‘But first we’ve got to prepare ourselves for some awkward questions from the team, you do realize that, don’t you?’

  She gave a faint humourless smile. ‘And the Wicked Witch of the North,’ she added.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ he replied, ‘especially the Wicked Witch.’

  Then the time for conversation was over. Heavy footsteps racing up the stairs as a powerful flashing blue light stained the walls of the bedroom from below. Help had finally arrived and he should have felt relieved. So why then did the prospect fill him with such foreboding?

  chapter 16

  TWISTER JUST COULDN’T believe it; he had cocked up again. What was it about this job? It was almost as if it were jinxed.

  Pulling into the wayside pub on the edge of the Levels, he ordered a pint and a whisky chaser before slumping into a corner by the open fire. The bar was virtually empty and, after one curious glance in his direction, the girl who had served him rejoined the long-haired youth at the other end of the counter to continue chatting him up.

  Twister took a long pull on his pint, then in a sudden spasm of anger picked up his glass of whisky and drained it in a gulp.

  Part of the problem was that he had only ever seen Kate Hamblin at a distance. The kid who had waltzed into her flat had looked just like her in the poor light – had actually appeared to be the living spit of her when he’d dumped her in the chair under the standard lamp. As it had turned out, she was her bloody twin, so it had been easy to make that initial mistake. But he’d soon realized he’d got the wrong person when he’d seen the needle tracks and the ruptured veins, and he had cursed himself for an idiot. He should have sussed it earlier; the earthy unwashed smell of someone used to sleeping rough was like no other – and her hair – ugh! Filthy.

  He took another gulp of his beer and rolled it around his mouth for a moment. He had probably done her a favour by snuffing out her lights, but she would never know anyway; he’d snapped her neck just like Ray Jury, after they’d had a ‘little chat’ about things. Had to. Couldn’t afford to risk being picked out by her on some future ID parade.

  So where did he go from here? He was tempted to keep on driving. The job now had as bad a smell to it as the junkie he’d just stiffed. Another mistake and he could end up in stir. Trouble was, there was too much money at stake to simply bail out and he was in too deep. Topping a few A-rabs in the desert was one thing when you were under the colours, but the cold-blooded murder of a couple of British coppers was in a totally different league. Old Bill would never let this one go, so he would need every penny of the pay-off he was expecting to fix up a new identity for himself and then to get out of the country.

  At least he’d covered his tracks well enough. He was pretty certain no one had seen him break into the flat or leave it afterwards and he had been careful to avoid making Old Bill a gift of his prints or DNA – even washing up his whisky glass, despite the fact that he had been wearing gloves. That meant he was in the clear for another crack at Miss Lucky Knickers. This time though it couldn’t be just another hit; the dynamics had changed. He needed that little chat with her first to find out what had happened to his tracking device and who the guy in the Jag was. And now that she was still alive, it was suddenly very important to find out why she had met Terry Duval under Burnham pier and what he had told her. No loose ends, he was definite about that. But getting the thing done with the sort of bad luck he had been having lately wouldn’t be easy.

  Draining his pint, he nodded towards the girl behind the bar and headed back out to the car-park and his Land Rover. Finding Kate Hamblin again would be his first real challenge. Her flat would now be a crime scene and it was very unlikely that she would be able – or want – to return there in the immediate future. But she’d have to go somewhere and his best bet was the guy who had collected her from the hospital and run her out to Jury’s place – after all, there couldn’t be that many local Samaritans around with a red Mk 2 Jaguar.

  Kate was in a hole and even in her shocked ethereal state, she knew it. By rejecting the advice of the paramedics attending the murder scene that she should return to hospital with them in the ambulance for a check-up, she had played right into DCI Callow’s hands. As a result, she had been left with no option but to submit to what promised to be a dismembering interrogation back at the station.

  Callow had questioned Lewis first, but had got nowhere; his carefully worded replies convincing her that he knew nothing of what Kate was up to and, as she put it crudely to DI Roscoe afterwards, was simply ‘sticking with the little tart in the hope of getting into her knickers’.

  Callow had saved Kate until last, leaving her to sweat in another office while she finished a second cup of coffee and reviewed the facts the detective sergeant at the flat had given her. When she finally collected her and sat her in the chair on the other side of the interview- room desk, there was a gleam of malicious anticipation in the dark eyes as she popped a mint into her mouth with the relish of a cobra devouring a mouse.

  ‘So young lady, here we are again – you and I, eh?’

  Kate said nothing, but stared unseeing at the far wall.

  ‘You found the dead woman, I understand?’

  Kate nodded and returned her intense gaze with a strange indifference, the debilitating shock she had suffered reasserting itself and numbing her senses – as well as her susceptibility to intimidation.

  Callow seemed irritated by her disconnected manner. ‘And what time was that?’ she snapped.

  There was a long pause before Kate surfaced from her comfortable dreamlike state, her brows knitted together in a frown, as if she had trouble extracting the information from her short-term memory. ‘About - about an hour and a half ago,’ she said distantly. ‘Came home and she was in the chair – dead.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Do?’r />
  Callow hissed her frustration. ‘Did you cut the bloody cords around her wrists, damn it?’

  The DCI’s sharp aggressive response seemed to have the effect of shaking Kate out of her semi-reverie and her focus suddenly snapped back into place.

  ‘No,’ she blurted, as if she had been given a mental shove. ‘Hayden did. He called by and found the door open. Thought Linda was me.’

  ‘He tells me she was your twin. Is that correct?’

  Kate nodded again.

  ‘A junkie, eh? I saw the tramlines.’

  There was a flicker of resentment in Kate’s eyes. ‘She was a heroin addict, yes.’

  ‘So what was your junkie sister doing in your flat?’

  Kate flinched, her mouth tightening as anger now began to sharpen her senses. ‘Probably looking for me for help.’

  ‘She had a key then?’

  Kate took a deep breath. ‘She turned up the other night out of the blue; probably took it when she raided my handbag for cash while I was out of the room.’

  ‘According to my information, she was supposed to be on compulsory rehab.’

  Kate shrugged. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t report her visit, even though she was an absconder in breach of the conditions of her suspended sentence.’

  Kate stared at her wearily. ‘You have been busy, haven’t you?’

  Callow’s eyes became mere slits. ‘Don’t get clever with me, miss; you’re already in deep shit.’

  Kate stared at her with contempt. ‘So shoot me, why don’t you?’

  Callow stiffened in her seat, fazed slightly by Kate’s uncharacteristic behaviour, and when she continued, her approach was more measured. ‘The ambulance crew reckon she died from a broken neck. The pathologist will obviously confirm or otherwise later, but for now, any idea why someone would want to do that?’

  Kate shuddered, conscious of her hands trembling as she remembered walking in on Linda’s corpse, but for some reason found herself fresh out of tears. ‘How could I?’ she breathed.