Wrong Way Home: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

by Isabelle Grey

  ‘Unsolved murder cases are never closed,’ said Grace, ‘and there are new developments in forensic science all the time.’

  ‘Whatever Reece said to his brother makes no odds, though, does it? The fire could’ve been an accident.’

  ‘We’ll know more once we have the fire investigation officer’s report.’

  ‘If you’re not going to tell us anything, I might as well take Larry home,’ said Owen. ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘So long as the doctors are happy with him.’ Grace turned to Larry. ‘We’ll leave you to get dressed. And I’ll be in touch to arrange a time to take a formal statement. And don’t worry about our appointment tomorrow. Get some rest and we’ll reschedule it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Larry.

  ‘Come on,’ Owen said to his son, ‘let’s get you out of here.’

  Grace left them to it and walked with Carolyn towards the exit. ‘You’ve done everything you need to here?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, ma’am. I’ll go back to the office now and start a case file.’

  ‘OK, good. I’ll see you later. I’m going to head home first and put all my clothes in the wash and have a shower. I must reek of smoke.’

  They were about to part when Grace remembered the plastic cup in her bag. ‘Hang on.’ She fished out an evidence bag and, using the paper towel to hold the cup, dropped it inside before scribbling the necessary information on the bag. ‘Can you take that for me?’ she asked, handing it to the younger woman. ‘It’s the cup Larry Nixon was drinking from, the one he dropped.’

  Carolyn looked surprised. ‘Why do you want that?’

  ‘We might still need a DNA sample in the Heather Bowyer case,’ Grace explained. ‘Seemed like a useful opportunity to get a back-up in case he refuses to give one.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘What?’ asked Grace. It had been a long night and she was aggravated by the constable’s naivety. ‘We have two separate homicide investigations. Until we get the results on Reece Nixon’s DNA we rule nothing in and we rule nothing out.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am.’ Carolyn was contrite. ‘It’s only that I was with Larry Nixon for an hour or so before you got here. He was in a really bad way before the painkillers kicked in. He risked his life to try and save his brother.’

  Grace softened, reaching out to touch Carolyn’s shoulder. ‘I do understand. It’s hard to stand by and watch when these awful things happen. But being suspicious goes with the job.’

  ‘I know. Goodnight, ma’am.’

  Grace watched her walk away across the car park and, not for the first time, asked herself where the right balance lay between professional cynicism and compassion.

  11

  The kid claimed they’d met a couple of months back when he was doing an internship at the Courier, but Ivo Sweatman wasn’t so sure. For one thing, Ivo always did his best to avoid the youngsters who, simply because they’d watched State of Play or Spotlight, reckoned that by home-time on their first day they’d be telling Woodward and Bernstein how to do their jobs. Or would if they’d ever heard of Watergate.

  The kid said he wanted to interview Ivo for a podcast about a story he’d covered twenty-five years ago. According to Freddie Craig, podcasting was now a huge phenomenon, covering everything from politics to sci-fi and fantasy – in homage to the famous Orson Welles radio version of War of the Worlds, he said – to true crime to something he described as ‘ramble-chats’ between celebrities. Ivo sent up a silent prayer that he be saved from ever having to experience a ramble-chat for himself. Anyway, print was dead, apparently, and people now listened to podcasts instead. Ivo had in fact heard of one that the kid had mentioned, ‘Serial’, although he found his assertion that, world-wide, it had been downloaded two hundred and fifty million times pretty incredible. But at least now he knew what all those commuters were up to, sitting on the Tube with their earphones and vacant looks: amateur jury members soaking up the infinite detail of a murder.

  Still, to be fair, the kid was doing his best to make a name for himself. So far as Ivo was aware, none of the work experience kids at the Courier had ever been rewarded with so much as a short-term contract, let alone a permanent job – another reason why he kept out of their way. It was a cruel con-trick and he simply couldn’t bear the sight of their imploring young faces.

  Two hundred and fifty million downloads in a few years. Ivo did a quick tally of the Courier’s circulation figures and worked out that, even by the time he retired, his by-line would not have been seen by anywhere near that many readers. Maybe young Freddie’s foray into podcasting was actually a pretty smart move. And Ivo did remember the story Freddie wanted to talk to him about. Not that it had generated much heat at the time. The victim wasn’t local, and she wasn’t the Virgin Mary, just another poor girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there’d been a big fire nearby the same night, that had – literally – lent it a lurid glow.

  Ivo didn’t tell Freddie, but it wasn’t the crime that had stuck in his mind so much as his own youthful self. The Heather Bowyer case had been his first story after finally landing the job he wanted in Fleet Street as the Courier’s junior crime reporter. He could still remember setting off for Southend with a new notebook, a company phone card, the copy-taker’s number and, fool that he was, a song in his heart.

  He was already drinking, of course, but in those days he had no idea it was ever going to be a problem. That it already was. He was strong and fit and never had a hangover. And everybody drank – you stood out if you didn’t, especially among senior police officers.

  The man in charge had been Detective Inspector Jason Jupp – JJ to his mates. There were no communication directorates and media websites in those days. If you wanted the inside track on a case, you found out the name of the local CID pub, got yourself down there and bought a round of drinks. If you were given a scoop, you’d send the detective a case of scotch afterwards – a gesture that nowadays would land you both in court on corruption charges.

  Ivo hadn’t thought about JJ in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to. He’d heard on the grapevine a few years back that he’d died. Hardly surprising. Twenty-five years ago, JJ had been a jovial red-faced bruiser of a man, already coming up for retirement. He’d liked to see his name in the papers, especially if accompanied by a snap of him collaring some villain, and had been amenable to Ivo’s eager approaches. If JJ had been disconcerted at Heather Bowyer’s killer eluding his clutches, he hadn’t let it show. He’d simply deduced that the perp must’ve been a day-tripper who’d legged it off home afterwards and wasn’t coming back to drop further clues any time soon. When rumours surfaced that other women in Southend had been raped and the crimes might be linked, JJ had dismissed them as fairy tales. He was old-school, and likely to assume that a woman complaining of rape was just mucking about, especially if she’d been out drinking and was wearing a short skirt. Ivo reckoned there were still one or two coppers like JJ around, although nowadays they’d learnt to keep their opinions to themselves.

  Nonetheless, JJ had shown kindness to the junior reporter from the Courier, and, off the record, told him a lot more than he should have done about an investigation that had inconveniently hit a brick wall. Their late-night drinking sessions (had they been ramble-chats?) had enabled Ivo to write a story that was full of local colour and had impressed his desk editor back in London enough that, when a juicy kidnap and torture came up in the Midlands the following month, Ivo had been sent off to cover it.

  So why shouldn’t Ivo, turn and turn about, lend this work-experience kid a helping hand? Freddie had told him he’d done an MA in journalism, plus two or three internships, and yet was still chasing a paid gig, as he called it. Meanwhile, he said, he was stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Unable to afford to rent his own place, his parents had suggested that he live for a while with his widowed grandmother, who’d had a recent hip replacement. That way he could keep an eye on her and economise. Freddie was obviously serious about his cho
sen career. Ivo doubted he would have been able to find much on the internet about a twenty-five-year-old murder that had never attracted much attention in the first place, so he must have done some good old-fashioned legwork at the newsroom in the British Library or elsewhere to learn that Ivo had reported on the case. And he had then tracked Ivo down by phone which, these days, was no mean feat. The kid had earned his spurs.

  Freddie’s angle was that, as the case remained unsolved, he, bless him, would take a crack at it himself. He said he’d been to Heather’s grave and to the original crime scene, and now he’d like to record an interview with Ivo. Before he rang off he also promised to email links to the earlier podcasts so Ivo could listen to them.

  As Ivo put the phone down, a host of unwelcome impressions concerning his younger self threatened to occupy his thoughts. Leading the charge, however, was something that he knew was more recent and that kept snagging at his memory. He was pretty sure it wasn’t directly related to Freddie’s cold case, but he didn’t want it tugging away at him for the rest of the day. Maybe it was something from the morning news feed. He ran through what had come in until he got it. There was a house fire last night, in Colchester, in which a couple died, despite the attempts of the man’s brother to rescue them. Ivo was probably just connecting that fire and failed rescue with Freddie mentioning the Marineland fire in Southend – or maybe it was because Colchester made him think of Grace Fisher, his all-time favourite detective – yet still the irritating feeling wouldn’t go away. And besides, he’d rather keep picking at that than indulge in any nostalgie de la boue to do with JJ.

  It was only later, when Ivo was queuing to buy a sandwich at lunchtime, that it came to him: Larry Nixon! The man who had tragically failed to save his brother and sister-in-law in Colchester last night was also the name of the hero who had rescued two teenagers from the fire in Southend twenty-five years ago. It was one of those poignant coincidences that would make a great little follow-up story to last night’s incident. Might also be something to tell Freddie Craig so he could podcast about it – if ‘podcast’ was now a verb. And perhaps even provide an excuse to wangle a little outing to Colchester. He’d just have to see.

  12

  Entering the mortuary cutting room, Grace found herself grateful to Dr Samit Tripathi, the local Home Office forensic pathologist, for his professional attitude towards the dead. She had just left Michael Nixon and his younger sister, Anne, after persuading them with some difficulty that a visual identification of their parents would be impossible. They were not much older than Grace had been when she had lost her father to heart disease, and they seemed close and supportive of each other. Numb with shock, they had listened closely to her account of the tragedy. Although she shared with them only that the fire had been deliberately set, they remained united in disbelief that their father could have committed suicide or that anyone else could have intentionally harmed either of their parents.

  Now, looking at the two curled and charred bodies lying on the stainless-steel autopsy tables, the blackened hands clenched, the knees and elbows bent as if ready to spring into a fight, Grace was glad they had spared themselves such a sight.

  Samit began by explaining what seemed obvious, that the bodies were too damaged for any external evidence to have survived that might point towards who had set the fire. ‘That evidence,’ he said, ‘if there is any, will be in the house.’

  ‘The fire investigation officer confirms it was definitely arson,’ she told him, consulting the notes of what Paul Arningham had told her on her return visit to the burnt-out house earlier that day. ‘There was no sign of forced entry. There are burn patterns upstairs, outside the bedroom, consistent with accelerant having been poured, and they found traces of petrol beneath the wooden floor beside the stairs in the downstairs hall, outside the room where Reece was found. The melted remains of a petrol container were found in the hall, along with its discarded cap. The container matches another full canister in one of the outbuildings, and one of Reece Nixon’s employees has confirmed that two canisters were always kept full of petrol for the work vehicles, so that jobs weren’t delayed if someone forgot to fill up.’

  Samit nodded and then indicated one of the indistinguishable bodies. ‘Mr Nixon here was found downstairs, which suggests that, if either of them set the fire, he was responsible.’

  ‘That’s what his brother thinks, too. He tried to rescue them, but was too late.’

  ‘If it was neither of them who set the fire, then I’m curious to know why they weren’t roused by a smoke alarm going off.’

  ‘There was only one in the house and it had no battery,’ she said. ‘They’d bought a new one but not yet put it in.’

  ‘A bit odd to buy a new battery if you’re planning to torch the place.’

  ‘Maybe it was bought before there was any reason to consider arson.’ Grace pivoted involuntarily to look at the second blackened corpse. ‘Their two adult kids say they had a good marriage, described both of them as hard-working, quiet and kind. Then I appear out of the blue making enquiries into a rape and murder that took place before either of their kids was born. Yesterday morning Reece Nixon gave us a DNA sample, and by midnight he was dead.’

  ‘They’re both dead,’ Samit observed.

  ‘I know. And I get that Reece might not have been able to face up to crimes he committed twenty-five years ago, but why kill his wife?’

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t bear for her to learn the truth about him.’

  ‘But like this!’

  ‘The bodies are well preserved internally,’ he said, ‘so I should be able to determine whether either or both of them was alive when the fire started. With any luck Mrs Nixon died painlessly from smoke inhalation without ever waking up.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Grace said. ‘What about other evidence of how they might have died?’

  Samit looked at her over his glasses. ‘Smashed skulls and broken bones will show up on X-ray, but if either of them had been smothered or strangled or possibly even stabbed, then no, there’s not going to be much I can tell you. However, I should be able to find enough blood for toxicological analysis to discover if either of them had been drugged.’

  ‘Larry Nixon said Reece had sounded drunk on the phone,’ she said, ‘and the fire investigators found the remains of glass beside his body that is probably a bottle.’

  ‘A high alcohol level might be enough to account for why he appears to have been so rapidly overcome by smoke or toxic fumes. And older people die from lower levels of carbon monoxide poisoning than the young and healthy, especially if there’s any coronary artery disease present. But even if he had set the fire himself, fully intending to commit suicide, you’d still think it would be human nature, once it took hold, to try and escape.’

  Grace shook her head in sorrow. ‘He must have been absolutely desperate if he saw this as the only way out.’

  ‘It’s pretty extreme,’ said Samit. ‘When will you know whether or not he is your cold case murderer?’

  ‘I’ve fast-tracked his DNA sample, so another few days, I hope,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile this certainly looks like an admission of guilt.’

  ‘If it is a murder-suicide,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll get started, then hopefully I can give you a cause of death.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Grace turned to go up to the viewing gallery when Samit called her back.

  ‘Before I forget,’ he said, ‘you mentioned that the brother tried to rescue them.’

  ‘That was his account, yes.’

  ‘Did he sustain any burns?’

  ‘Yes. His face, hands and arms.’

  ‘Then you should get them examined for elimination purposes.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘What would I be looking for?’

  ‘I can do the examination, if you like,’ said Samit. ‘If someone was sloshing petrol about and then set it alight they might have characteristic “flash” burns and almost certainly residue of accelerant on their skin and c
lothes.’

  ‘I’ll organise it, and get his clothes examined.’ Grace was annoyed with herself: she should have thought of this before now.

  Samit nodded, his thoughts elsewhere. ‘Arson’s a strange crime,’ he said. ‘It always fascinates me.’

  Grace was surprised. Samit, so level-headed and even-tempered, seldom ventured an opinion beyond what was suggested by the physical evidence.

  ‘I imagine it must be psychologically very satisfying in some all-consuming way,’ he continued, indicating the two bodies on their pristine metal beds. ‘So theatrical, such a powerful communication of rage or pain.’

  Samit’s comment hit precisely on what had been bothering her about this whole scenario: fire was indeed an extreme method by which to commit suicide, and seemed out of character for the down-to-earth couple she’d met so briefly. By reducing his life to a pile of ashes, had Reece Nixon finally been able to release the pressure of carrying his secret for twenty-five years? And perhaps even express the intensity of his remorse?

  13

  Later, as Grace drove back to police HQ, she mulled over the preliminary findings from Dr Tripathi’s post-mortem. Reece Nixon had soot in his lungs and airways, which suggested he had died from smoke inhalation – Samit had sent blood and tissue samples to get accurate carbon monoxide levels – but Kirsty Nixon’s airways were clear, confirming that she was already dead before the fire reached her.

  Which meant that Reece Nixon must have killed his wife before he set their home alight.

  Samit had not been able to find any signs of physical injury, but couldn’t rule out the possibility that Kirsty had been smothered or strangled. Toxicology tests would reveal if she had been drugged.

  Grace could imagine a scenario in which Kirsty had gone up to bed while Reece remained downstairs, drinking heavily and working out what the full ramifications of his DNA test were going to be. Needing to confess to someone, he’d called his brother. Maybe the reality of saying the words out loud had been too much, and he’d gone out to the yard, fetched a can of petrol and drunkenly torched the place.