Up in Flames

by Evans, Geraldine

  ‘Perhaps whoever did this was all three.’ Casey paused for a few seconds to absorb the horror. ‘While we’ve got a minute, tell me. I gather you managed to obtain the details of the victims’ family?’

  Catt nodded. ‘The father’s name is Mr Rathi Khan. His wife’s Savitri Khan. They live about half-a-mile from here, in Great Langley.’

  ‘Anything known about the family?’

  ‘No. But Angela Neerey was right about the father owning a chain of shops. The clothes shop on the High Street is one of his. I rang the main office and Mr Khan is working in the High Street shop this afternoon.’

  Casey nodded. ‘Let’s get over there. If Mrs Neerey is right and the flat is one of his properties, it’s possible the arson was directed against him rather than the daughter. He must be a successful businessman, from what Angela Neerey said. Maybe someone had a grudge against him. No one becomes successful without stepping on a few toes.’

  ‘Unless he torched it himself.’

  Thomas Catt had a habit of jumping to cynical conclusions; unfortunate given the possible racist implications of the case. But as long as ThomCatt kept such remarks between the two of them, Casey was prepared to consider them. At this early stage he would be foolish not to consider every possibility. ‘Insurance job, you mean? A businessman who’s not as successful as he would like the world to think?’

  Catt nodded, brought out the comb which he seemed to carry everywhere and smoothed the slickly-styled hair that the fireman’s helmet had ruffled. It was how he had earned his nickname. ThomCatt was as particular as the most vain Persian about personal grooming. ‘Maybe, after the other arson cases, he thought it would be timely to jump on the bandwagon.’

  ‘With his daughter and baby granddaughter inside? Too cynical even for you, TomCatt. And put that comb away, for the love of God.’ The puritan in Casey was uncomfortable with his sergeant’s obsessive grooming habits. ‘This is a murder scene, not a barber’s shop.’

  An orphan, who had been abandoned as a toddler and brought up in a succession of children’s homes, Thomas Catt might well feel the need to adopt a well-cared for image, but he usually had a short way with family sentiment. He lived alone in a streamlined bachelor flat through which an endless succession of girlfriends came and went. Catt had never shown signs of getting serious about any one of the; to Casey a sure sign of his sergeant’s fear of commitment. Scarcely surprising given his background.

  Now Catt shrugged, put his comb away and commented, ‘Maybe he expected them to be out. Maybe he hired a couple of thugs who didn’t trouble to check before they torched the place.’

  ‘Either way, it’s early days yet. Later, it might be necessary to discreetly check out his financial situation, find out if he was in debt and desperate for funds. But let’s wait and see. Maybe we’ll learn something from his reaction when we break the news. I’ll want to speak to the mother as well.’

  Remembering Angela Neerey‘s comment about the mother possibly not speaking English, he told Catt to get hold of Shazia Singh, the one Asian WPC the station possessed. ‘We might need her when we speak to the mother. Maybe for the father as well. Even if he speaks English well, if it’s his second language shock might make him temporarily forget it. We’ll pick up Constable Singh from the station. Just hope she speaks the same language as the family or we’ll have to wait while another translator is found.’

  Casey was anxious to extend every consideration right from the start; something he was always careful to do with every bereaved family. But Superintendent Brown-Smith would certainly insist that this case demanded extra sensitive handling, particularly after the Stephen Lawrence investigation and the damning report that came after.

  ‘While you’re organising that, I’ll see if Dr Merriman and forensics can yet tell us anything more.’

  They walked in companionable silence to the end of the alleyway so as not to get under the SOCO’s feet more than necessary. They had reached the gate of number 5a, and Casey said. ‘Wait for me here when you’ve arranged for Shazia Singh. I doubt I’ll be long.’

  While Catt got on to the station to arrange about the Asian WPC, Casey banged his hard hat back on his sternly-barbered dark head and adjusted his mask before he re-entered the crime scene.

  The SOCO team were still hard at work, Dr Merriman still working on the adult corpse. After a quiet word with the forensic investigators, he got Casey’s help to turn the body over.

  Although the victim’s back showed signs of burns, they were mostly only first or second degree. There were patches of skin that were barely touched by the fire. Dr Merriman bent over and examined them, pointing out the cherry-red colour of the skin to Casey. It was the colour skin—- and blood — took on after carbon monoxide poisoning and told them the adult, at least, had still been alive when the fire started.

  Casey stood back. A muscle in his cheek tapped out a staccato rhythm as he studied the charred cot and its pathetic contents. ‘The baby, too, I suppose,’ he muttered, more to himself than Merriman.

  ‘All in good time. You should know by now that I prefer to concentrate on one corpse at a time. The infant will receive my attention in due course. And as I do not go in for guesswork...’

  Barely aware he had spoken, Casey glanced at him in surprise. But he should have known better than to utter such a question within Merriman’s hearing and he made no further comment.

  The pathologist and the rest of the team were obviously going to be here some time yet, so Casey told the pathologist he was leaving the scene. ‘Going to break the news to the family.’

  The pathologist didn’t bother to raise his head, but unbent enough to comment, ‘An unpleasant task. Fortunately for me, the dead have done with heavy emotions.’ He added an admonition, ‘Don’t forget to ask who the victim’s dentist was. We’ll need forensic orthodontics for this one.’

  Casey, well-used to Merriman’s unnecessary instructions, said nothing and went out. Before picking up Catt, he had a word with the house-to-house team. But they had, as yet, discovered nothing more. The neighbours claimed to have heard no screams or cries.

  Casey took this information with a pinch of salt. Given the circumstances of the two deaths it seemed unlikely the young woman and her baby hadn’t screamed. Unless the damage to the adult’s head had been caused by a blunt instrument, rather than the fire. But the post-mortem would provide the answer to that question. Anyway, as Chief Freeman had observed, it was a run-down neighbourhood. Screams, even in the middle of the day, were possibly too common an occurrence for anyone to pay them any heed.

  Still, disappointed at the lack of hard information, he walked back to pick up Catt and break the news to the victims’ family.

  After they had extricated their car from the logjam of vehicles still clogging the narrow road, Casey and Catt drove to the High Street.

  Parking was always a problem in the centre of town. King’s Langley was an ancient market town in the eastern half of England, equidistant from Norwich and Peterborough. Medieval in original, it was full of crooked streets and crooked houses with half-timbering and jutting upper storeys that looked prettily quaint but blocked out the light.

  To the modern motorist the town was as exasperating as it was pretty as its streets were even narrower than the Victorian Ainslee Terrace on the town’s outskirts, where Chandra Bansi’s flat was situated.

  Catt dropped Casey and WPC Shazia Singh outside Rathi Khan’s clothes shop. And as the shop was housed in one of the quainter buildings in a road barely wide enough to allow a single vehicle passage, Catt had to drive off to find somewhere to park

  Outside, the shop rails held the usual assortment of western clothes; dresses, skirts, blouses, shirts and trousers, mostly coloured modern drab. But inside, the shop was alive with enough colour and scent to intoxicate the senses. Brightly coloured silks and cottons cascaded from grey oak beams. They made a startling, vivid contrast to the plain simplicity of whitewashed plaster and half-timbering and made the st
ore look a particularly alluring Aladdin’s Cave of jewel-bright treasures.

  As Shazia Singh spoke quietly to the female assistant who disappeared into the back recesses of the shop after darting one curious glance at Casey, he gazed around him. And as he took in the familiar, brilliant colours of India and smelled the sandalwood perfuming the air, he was immediately transported back to his childhood.

  Inevitably, thoughts of India brought his parents to mind. He had been very young, of course, when they had brought him on the hippie trail to India, like many others before and since, following in the path The Beatles had trod before them. He had been dragged all over the country on their wanderings. Even now, he could still recall the smells of exotic spices as well as the other, less exotic and equally pungent aromas brought by inadequate or non-existent drainage coupled with stifling heat. He had caught malaria. It still troubled him occasionally. He had come to hate the place.

  Of course, his parents had loved it, so they had all stayed for months. His mother had even adopted the wearing of saris and salwar kameez, in her element in the colourful crowded bazaars. She had gone a long way to becoming more Indian than the Indians. A peculiar role reversal when it was Asians in England who were often depicted as trying to out-English the English.

  Nowadays, in an England grown coarse, with their politeness and courtesy, Asian immigrants were more English than the English, many of whom had forgotten or never learned the good manners of previous generations.

  Briefly, he wondered how his parents were. The smallholding on which they lived had no telephone. And although Casey had bought them a succession of mobiles they always either lost them or never bothered to switch them on. Certainly, they rarely rang him. But although that no longer either surprised or upset him, they were still a perpetual worry. He hadn’t seen them for some time and the thought made him uneasy. He resolved to somehow find time to drive out to their smallholding buried deep in the Fens to see how they were getting on.

  With a sigh, he thrust these personal anxieties to the back of his mind and forced himself back to the here and now. It struck him that Rathi Khan seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to come the short distance from the back of the store. While they continued to wait, Casey did some more studying of his surroundings.

  The age and style of the building didn’t readily lend itself to clothes retail. It was cramped, with unexpected steps which raised the floor level for no apparent reason that Casey could see. Unless the medieval mind that had designed the row thought it a good wheeze to twist ankles and rick backs.

  Mr Khan had made an attempt to meet the old building halfway. Instead of the expected modern shop counter, there was an ancient sideboard. A modern till sat incongruously on its aged grey patinated surface. Dotted around the shop were old wooden settles, by their colour, of a similar vintage to the sideboard. With high backs and ornate carvings, their seats were piled high with more glowing bales of silk and cotton and richly embroidered brocades. He thought how much his mother would enjoy this place, rummaging for bargains. Perhaps she could still even manage to speak a bit of Hindi; she had picked up a fair smattering during their time in India.

  Catt returned from parking the car a second or two before the assistant finally emerged from the rear of the shop followed by a smartly-dressed Asian man. Chandra’s father.

  Rathi Khan, the presumed victim’s father, was a man in his mid to late forties. Tall, and light-skinned for an Asian, his features were aquiline, finely sculpted and he carried himself with an air of unconscious dignity. He paled noticeably after Casey had introduced himself, Shazia Singh and Sergeant Catt.

  He confirmed he was the owner of 5a Ainsley Terrace. He seemed hesitant and nervous. Casey, tainted, in spite of himself, by ThomCatt’s cynical suspicions about a possible insurance fraud, wondered why that should be when he had yet to disclose the reason for their visit. But, he told himself, it was probably just the immigrant’s natural anxiety when having dealings with the police. Besides, it was only to be expected that he should be concerned that something had happened to his daughter and grandchild.

  Even so, it was odd in a businessman who had done well enough to own a string of shops. And since ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair had brought in the full panoply of the Human Rights Act, Casey thought it unlikely that a presumably educated immigrant like Rathi Khan shouldn’t be fully aware of his rights. Surely he should be demanding answers rather than meekly waiting for them to be supplied?

  Casey encouraged Mr Khan to sit down on one of the settles before breaking the grim news. He watched him closely, but all he saw was the natural reactions to shock; disbelief, denial, then a dawning realisation of the horror of what he was being told. The man looked sick to his soul.

  So much for Catt’s cynical suspicions. Casey would reserve judgement till they had something firmer than will-o-the-wisp theories on which to base their conclusions.

  Once the initial shock was over, Mr Khan became very quiet. Although he was aware that people’s behaviour after bad news could go from dumb at one extreme to voluble at the other, Casey wondered whether there might not be something else behind the silence. But time and the continuing investigation would hopefully reveal that something if it existed at all. For now, as Casey reminded himself, all they knew for certain was that the man had lost his daughter and granddaughter in a particularly horrific way and was bereaved.

  Gently, Casey asked Mr Khan for the name of his daughter’s dentist. This simple request dragged Mr Khan from his silent reverie and he was able to supply the information without more than a second’s hesitation.

  ‘We’ll need photographs of your daughter and the baby.’ Casey paused before adding, ‘And we’ll need to break the news to your wife, of course.’

  This seemed to release something pent-up in Mr Khan‘s soul, for he launched into an incomprehensible stream of some sing-song Asian language. Again the memories stirred in Casey’s mind. But he had no time for them now. He glanced at WPC Singh and she nodded to indicate that she could understand. It was a relief to discover she spoke the same language as the family.

  Rathi Khan‘s torrent of speech had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Now his expression again became closed. When Casey asked if he would like Sergeant Catt to drive his car back to his house, he looked momentarily blank, asked, ‘What?’ before understanding dawned. He nodded and began to dig in his trouser pockets for the keys. Once found, he absently separated his car keys from the house keys and handed them over to Catt. But before he did so, Casey had time to notice another set of keys on the ring, poignantly marked ‘Flat — front door’ and ‘Flat — back door.’ Doubtless, they were spares to Chandra’s flat.

  ‘My car’s in the yard behind the shop. The yellow Yale is the key to the gate.’

  It took a while to get Mr Khan sufficiently together to get him out to Casey’s car. Even though the day was warm, he insisted on going back for his jacket and putting it on. He said not a word during the short journey to his family home at Great Langley.

  The house was impressive. Located in an expensive area where the neighbours would be doctors, lawyers and other successful businessmen. As he pulled up and parked away from the garage so as to leave room for Catt to put Mr Khan‘s car away, Casey gained a quick impression of the house. It gave the lie to Catt’s suspicions. There could be no shortage of money here, surely?. A large family house, it was detached, imposing Edwardian in style, though obviously built fairly recently. With all of the attractions of that era, but none of the expense of maintenance that an old building brought. It was a practical compromise. The house stood in its own grounds, and a circular gravel drive enclosed a bricked bed of mixed, low-growing, easy-maintenance evergreens.

  They got out of the car and Casey guided Mr Khan’s now shaky steps to the front door. Casey heard the sound of a child’s laughter inside the house as Rathi Khan fumbled with his keys. Casey took them and opened the door, ushering the man ahead of him into the hallway. As they entere
d, Casey heard a car’s tyres scrunch on the gravel behind him. It was Thomas Catt at the wheel of Mr Khan’s Rover.

  Having seen the house and learned of the chain of shops, Casey was surprised that Rathi Khan drove a four-year-old Rover. He would have expected something more recent and top-of-the-range.

  It was the first indication that Catt, with his natural cynicism about human nature, might be right and that Mr Khan might not be as comfortably placed as the large house suggested. Maybe there were money troubles here. TomCatt’s cynicism was contagious, Casey realised as he found himself thinking again of Catt’s earlier suggestion that he look into Mr Khan‘s finances.

  A child, a little boy of two or three ran towards them as Casey walked into the hall. The boy threw himself at Mr Khan‘s legs with excited squeals. A grandson, Casey guessed. And from his bright, eager chatter and smiles, the way he hugged Mr Khan‘s legs and tried to clamber into his arms it was apparent that he was a much-loved child.

  Obedient to the toddler’s demands, Mr Khan picked him up, burying his face in the child’s chubby neck as he did so. The little boy continued to chatter away in Hindi, but when he got no response he grabbed Mr Khan‘s ears, pushed his head away from him and began what sounded like an imperious scolding. Mr Khan still said nothing, but merely deposited the child on the floor, and called loudly down the empty hallway.

  Casey broke the awkward silence. Hunkering down on his haunches till he was at the little boy’s level, he said, ‘Hello. I’m Will. What’s your name?’

  Shyly the little boy put his thumb in his mouth and stared.

  Behind him, Shazia Singh broke into a musical flow of Hindi. The little boy mumbled something in reply that Casey couldn’t catch.

  ‘He’s called Kedar, sir.’

  Casey nodded. ‘Where’s your Grandmother, Kedar? We need to speak to her. I’m afraid your Granddad’s had some bad news.’

  The little boy turned and pointed down the hall. A plump middle-aged woman appeared at the far end. Dressed in a pale sari, she must have heard the commotion for she stood transfixed and stared at them all, one hand tightly clutched the material of her sari, the other covered her mouth as if to stop herself crying out. Above the clutching hand, her eyes were wide and anxious; the red bindi dot on her forehead stood out starkly against the unnaturally waxen skin. Her anxious pallor was natural enough, Casey supposed, in an Asian woman, on finding her home invaded by strange white men and a uniformed Asian policewoman. As he recalled, the bindi dot was supposed to signify female energy and was meant to protect a woman and her husband. This dot had failed in both departments.