The Burning Man

by Paul Finch

  Heck recalled the stuffiness and stench in that locked upper room. Even the window had been firmly closed. It really had felt as if the girl had sealed herself in hermetically, as if she’d truly been scared. But there was something about Sonja Turner that Heck no longer trusted. She’d lied to him before, only telling him as much as she was happy for him to know.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something, Sonja – whatever kind of normal life you think you can have, we’re the only chance it’ll happen. Do you understand? But even we have limitations if we don’t have all the facts.’

  ‘Duh! What do you think I’m trying to hide from you?’

  ‘Don’t respond to my question with a question of your own,’ he said; that was another classic evasion tactic.

  ‘Do you think I’m dumb or something?’ she snapped. ‘Do you think I want to die as young as this … like so many of my mates have? And you don’t need to give me that big bad copper stuff either. You lot are nothing compared to some blokes I could name. And there was no bleeding sign of you when Jess copped it, was there?’

  ‘Whoa, what did you say?’ Heck was briefly stumped. ‘Jess?’

  Instantly, she became guarded, perhaps wondering why that interested him. ‘She’s no one. Just another girl who didn’t make it.’

  ‘Jess who?’

  ‘I said she’s no one –’

  ‘Don’t give me that bullshit!’

  ‘Heck, easy,’ Hayes warned him.

  ‘Everyone’s someone, Sonja,’ he said. ‘Jess who?’

  ‘Jess Green,’ the girl replied. ‘It’s not important. She’s got nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You knew Jess Green?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was her friend, yeah. Sort of.’

  ‘What the hell does “sort of” mean?’

  ‘She was just a girl I met on the streets …’

  ‘Rubbish, Sonja! Bloody rubbish! Hers was the first name that popped into your head. She must’ve been more to you than that.’

  ‘All right.’ She shrugged. ‘We got quite close, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with –’

  ‘I’ll decide what it’s got to do with it. What happened to her?’

  ‘She OD’d. You’ve probably got a record of it somewhere.’

  ‘And that’s all it was – an overdose?’

  ‘You say, “That’s all it was” like it wasn’t fucking horrible.’

  ‘There are degrees of fucking horrible, Sonja … at least she wasn’t burned alive, eh?’

  The girl grimaced, a combination of misery and horror.

  ‘Just out of interest, was it suicide?’ Heck asked. ‘Had Jess endured just about all she could?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ came the mumbled response. ‘There’s only ever one way out of that life.’ She glanced up. ‘But Jess had nothing to do with any of this. It was two years ago.’

  ‘Did you and Jess work together? I mean when you were out on the street.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Down at Sadie’s Dungeon, by any chance?’

  ‘We were kids. We needed money to score.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked you.’

  ‘Yes, all right! We both got recruited to work there about the same time –’

  ‘Down at the Dungeon?’

  ‘Not at first … first it was parties and such, you know?’

  Heck did know. So-called ‘hooker parties’ were a time-honoured way to bring new girls into the profession.

  ‘After that it was other places,’ she said.

  ‘What about the Dungeon?’ Heck persisted. ‘Did you both work down at the Dungeon?’

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes Barrie and Les organised other gigs for us.’

  ‘So Barrie Briggs and Les Harris were basically your pimps?’

  She hesitated to reply – yet another demonstration of these wretched creatures’ slavish instinct to protect those who used and abused them.

  ‘They’re both dead, Sonja,’ Heck reminded her. ‘So they’re not going to object to you talking. I’m guessing the answer’s “yes”, and I’m guessing they were Jess Green’s pimps too?’

  ‘It was only semi-official.’

  ‘Uh-huh. So, equally semi-officially, you were both working for Vic Ship, weren’t you?’

  ‘We never saw him,’ she said. ‘He was just a name we heard mentioned.’

  ‘Well, of course he was. Ship’s got eighteen layers of fall-guys before the shit hits his fan.’

  She shrugged again. ‘Some people can’t be touched.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what he’d like you to think, love. But someone out there with a flamethrower has a different take on it, don’t they?’

  There was a brief silence, during which Sonja hung her head with what Heck suspected was exaggerated weariness. She tried to lean against Sally Gorton for support. The burly detective sergeant was clearly tempted to put an arm around her thin shoulders, but resisted.

  ‘We’re done here,’ Heck said. ‘She can go.’

  Gorton and the other two plain clothes officers steered her towards the waiting Qashqai.

  ‘Sonja!’ Heck called after her.

  She glanced back.

  ‘You’re going to be in Witness Protection for quite a while … longer than you might have anticipated. If anything else occurs to you, you know, which might be vaguely important, which might actually save your life, make sure you give us a call, eh?’

  When the protection detail had gone, Hayes came up and stood at Heck’s side.

  ‘She’s still holding something back,’ she said. ‘You realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘In the meantime, who’s Jess Green?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. Local lass – street-girl. She did die from an OD. All that’s true. But I had no idea she was part of Briggs and Harris’s stable, such as it was.’

  ‘Is that relevant to this case? I mean, if she died two years ago?’

  ‘Again, I don’t really know, ma’am … I suppose it depends how long the wound it caused has festered for, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Heck, if you’ve got something in mind, you’d better share it with me.’

  ‘As soon as I get something that isn’t nonsensical, ma’am, you’ll be the first person I call.’

  She stared at him for a long time, before turning and walking in through the personnel door. Heck went the other way, climbed into his Megane and closed the door behind him.

  Basically, it had to be impossible.

  It was – how had he put it? ‘Nonsensical.’

  But the circumstantial evidence was slowly stacking up.

  Jess Green had whored for Vic Ship associates Barrie Briggs and Les Harris. He wondered if she might have got her regular fix from Danny Hollister – not that it especially mattered; Hollister was still one of Ship’s main suppliers in Bradburn, so it was all one and the same. Heck wondered how Kayla might have discovered all this … and he concluded that it wouldn’t have been difficult. She’d personally taken her sister to outreach programmes, to rehab sessions, support groups and so forth, which would all have been full of drug-dependent prostitutes just like Jess. If Jess herself hadn’t talked, others would have.

  Kayla …

  Who he’d seen for himself was badly damaged by her sister’s death.

  Who his uncle had warned him about, saying that she’d retreated from reality.

  She had a motive to attack Ship’s operation. There was no question about that. She had a better motive than Lee Shaughnessy did.

  But still, it had to be nonsensical.

  Heck tried to put obstacles in the way of his thesis.

  The Incinerator was strong, robust. He launched his attacks wearing heavy, flame-retardant armour. That could only be a man, not a woman. That said, Kayla had been a superb athlete as a youngster, and from what he’d seen she was still in good shape now; only the other day he’d caught her energetically sweeping months of leaves off the churchyard ste
ps and all it had raised on her was a light sweat.

  OK, well … he’d confronted the Incinerator face to face, and there’d been nothing there of the lovely, voluptuous girl that was Kayla. But then that bulky fireproof suit had completely de-sexed whoever he was facing; no way could he have said for certain that it was a man.

  All right, in terms of pure logistics, what about the flamethrower? How could someone like Kayla, who was completely unconnected to the criminal world, have conceivably got her hands on a weapon like that? And then he remembered that her dad had trained her as a mechanic – and that she’d inherited a well-equipped workshop from him. It wouldn’t be easy for some lay-person to construct a flamethrower, but it wouldn’t be impossible either.

  On top of all this, something else now struck him, and his blood ran cold.

  It was a line that Kayla herself had given him, a throwaway comment that she’d made only a few minutes after he’d first been reintroduced to her in the pub.

  ‘I’m a dab hand with a panel-beater, me … and an absolute killer with a blowtorch.’

  Chapter 33

  It rained again that night, intensely, starting at about one in the morning and continuing well past first light. Heavy, bullet-sized drops machine-gunned down in a relentless cascade, drowning the whole town, leaving many of its lower roads and backstreets completely under water.

  It was still raining when Heck woke up that morning, though not with the same ferocity as during the night, but creating a joyless scene outdoors all the same.

  ‘So much for sweet little April showers,’ he said, grabbing a black coffee before dressing. He donned his scruffs, substituted walking boots for his trainers and pulled on his jacket. But less than a mile from his sister’s he gave up on rush-hour, which was as chaotic and slow-moving as ever, a scenario not assisted by the closure of several routes due to flooding.

  Instead, he parked by a greasy spoon on the edge of a lorry park, wandered inside and ordered himself a Full English.

  As he wolfed it down, he speed-dialled Eric Fisher.

  ‘Heck … it’s not seven yet.’

  ‘I know, get up. I need you to make some further enquiries about Shelley Harper.’

  ‘I gave Wandering Wolf everything I had last Friday.’

  ‘I know. But I need you to probe a bit deeper.’

  ‘There is no deeper, mate. She’s got no police record.’

  ‘Use your noggin, Eric.’ Heck pushed his empty plate away. ‘We – as in the whole police service of England and Wales – must have some access to former Vic Ship associates. Either blokes who’ve turned or cons who are still inside and may need a favour. Here’s a starting-point – you remember Cameron Boyd?’

  Fisher mused, fuddled with sleep. ‘Erm … currently doing fifteen for aggravated burglary?’

  ‘Correct. I was the arresting officer, you may recall. Boyd was a Longsight crim. Not officially connected to Ship, but he could have an inside track on their activities.’

  ‘And why would Boyd talk?’

  ‘Now and then I’ve used him as a snitch … against his will.’

  ‘Got something good on him, have you?’

  ‘Couple of years old now. Its shelf-life’s just about up, but tell him if he can give us anything useful on Shelley Harper, even if it’s only gossip, he’s free and clear.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Advise him that it’s not a big deal. We already know that, for a brief time at least, Shelley was Vic Ship’s girlfriend – probably one of many. I just want to know if she was ever anything more to him than that.’

  ‘I’m guessing this is Priority One?’

  ‘No, but I need to know soon.’

  ‘OK, leave it with me. And fuck off, by the way … I was enjoying that dream.’

  The line went dead.

  Heck gazed through the bleary café window. Beyond it, the traffic was a sludge of glaring headlights, the dark, moth-like forms of pedestrians flitting back and forth.

  He still had doubts that Kayla Green could be a genuine suspect, but increasingly these flamethrower murders were hanging by a single thread – Shelley Harper.

  The more he pondered it, the more probable it seemed that Kayla had learned from her drug-addled sister that Vic Ship’s crew were the source of all their woe. It was equally likely that Jess had named Barrie Briggs and Les Harris as Ship’s men in Bradburn, along with Danny Hollister. But Heck did not see how Kayla could ever have learned about Ship’s fleeting dalliance with Shelley Harper. A gold-plated scrote like Ship probably waded through a sea of prostrate girls, all pretty no doubt, all with more ambition than sense. Shelley Harper would have been one of many, and anyway, this had happened years ago and seventeen miles away in Manchester. No, Jess Green could not have known about Harper. This was now the fly in Heck’s ointment, the issue he had to resolve before he could make this suspicion a thing.

  His phone began buzzing on the table-top. The call was from Gemma.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he said.

  ‘Are you having trouble getting in?’ she enquired.

  He saw that it was now nearly eight o’clock.

  ‘It’s problematic, yeah, but actually I’m following a new lead.’

  ‘What new lead?’

  ‘A prozzy died in Bradburn about two years ago, from a drugs overdose. Her name was Jess Green. I’m researching the background a little.’

  ‘You think it’s relevant?’

  ‘Well … only if you’re prepared to consider that the Incinerator might have nothing to do with Lee Shaughnessy.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I am prepared to consider it, Heck,’ she said. ‘But only if you bring me something persuasive.’

  ‘That’s what I’m looking for this morning.’

  ‘All right. But I need you to be done by lunchtime.’

  ‘That’s unlikely.’

  ‘I think you misheard me, Heck. I need you to be done by lunchtime.’

  ‘Ma’am –’

  ‘Let me explain, which as you may know, I rarely bother to do. We’ve finished with Sonja Turner. The e-fit’s done and Katie Hayes and I are holding a press conference at noon, where we’re going to publicise it.’

  ‘OK.’ Heck scraped his unshaved jaw with his fingernails. ‘Does it look like anyone who might exist on this planet?’

  ‘It’s as bland as bland can be, but you know how these things work.’

  He did, of course. E-fits, like the photo-fits that preceded them, rarely resembled the suspect they were supposed to portray. But they were not for the consumption of the general public as much as for people who might actually know the suspect. Perhaps, if they already had concerns about this person, the e-fit might present a face that was similar enough in some vague way to prompt a telephone call to the police.

  ‘It could be male or female for all I can tell,’ Gemma added.

  ‘Male … or female?’ Heck said.

  ‘Like I say, it’s bland. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that we get something.’

  He didn’t respond. His thoughts were racing.

  ‘Heck?’

  ‘Yeah. I understand, ma’am. Sorry.’

  ‘Follow your lead. But listen, I don’t want you spending all day chasing shadows.’

  ‘Course, ma’am. No problem.’

  He cut the call, and stared again through the window.

  Male … or female?

  Gemma had just been talking. She wasn’t actually proposing that the Incinerator was a woman. And however you cut it, Kayla was still a long shot. The longest of long shots.

  More interesting now was the revelation that they were going live with the e-fit. Suddenly, sniffing around Jess and Kayla Green felt as if it could wait. Heck had one other line of enquiry that urgently needed attention, and maybe this was an opportunity to give it exactly that.

  *

  Heck knew that Lee Shaughnessy’s centre of operations could be found on the Lawkholme because Scott Cowley had
implied that it was. It wouldn’t have surprised Heck anyway, as the Lawkholme – one of the most economically depressed corners of Bradburn – was everything that modern sink estates aspired to. Located on the windswept outskirts of town, it was an unremitting tale of deteriorated housing blocks, rubbish-filled back alleyways and desolate streets lined with rickety old cars and strewn with litter. At least the rain had now stopped, but as Heck drove up there his mind boggled that anyone had ever thought places like this could provide a decent home for ordinary people. Substandard housing from the outset, an absence of basic amenities, poor transport links – only one or two buses had ever included it on their routes, and none did now – and, more important than anything, a significant and deliberate distance placed between itself and the town centre had ensured that in due course it would become a dustbin for the borough’s problem families … which had hardly helped to improve things up there.

  Cowley had referred to Shaughnessy’s crew as the ‘Britannia Boys’. That wasn’t an official moniker, otherwise Heck would have encountered it in the intelligence files. Most likely it referred to the Empress Britannia pub, and implied that this was Shaughnessy’s main hangout.

  It wasn’t difficult to find the place. The Lawkholme, like so many residential areas in the UK, had once boasted a boozer on every corner, but most of them had now vanished. The Empress was the only one left here. It wasn’t much to look at: a single-storey structure with minimal decoration. It stood on the edge of waste-ground, and resembled a prefabricated bunker rather than a hostelry, one side red brick, one side pebble-dashed. It had a single-level roof, canted slightly to one side and covered in bitumen. Its windows were frosted, while daubings of graffiti were visible here and there on the exterior.

  Heck made his first drive-past, along Lawkholme Avenue, the estate’s main drag, just after ten o’clock that morning. He could have gone earlier, but he doubted there’d have been any activity around the pub at that hour. And he was correct. Even at ten, though there were several rubbishy cars and vans on its car park, most had the air of having been there all night; some, from their corroded state, had been present for considerably longer.

  There was certainly no sign of Lee Shaughnessy’s distinctive white Mazda CX-5.