by DS Butler
Vinnie clutched his stomach. He felt dizzy and sick, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t just the sight of Syed’s dead body on the floor in front of him making him feel so bad.
There was something wrong in here, something really wrong.
This had to be the Brewertons’ doing. Those brothers had always wanted Vinnie out of the way. This would be perfect for them. They’d have Vinnie banged up and a load of smartphones to make a profit on. Two birds, one stone.
He needed to leave now.
Vinnie staggered back to the front of the shop.
When he got there, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Craig Foster was sprawled on the floor all over the magazines. Vomit covered the shiny pages. What was going on?
“We need to get out,” Vinnie said. His voice came out croaky and weak.
He couldn’t explain any more, he didn’t feel he could string the words together.
To Vinnie’s right, Robbie Baxter was on the floor shaking violently. His eyes rolled back to reveal the whites. He was having some sort of fit.
Joanne was rattling the door handle, trying to get out. “It won’t open,” she screamed. “I can’t get it open.”
She dropped to her knees as she turned to Vinnie. “Help me... Heee mmaaa” The rest of her words were too slurred for Vinnie to understand.
Vinnie staggered towards the door. It felt as if he was wading through treacle. He reached out his own shaking hand to pull the door as hard as he could, but she was right. The door wouldn’t open.
They’d been locked in.
Beside him, Joanne leaned forward on her hands and knees and began to retch.
This was some kind of trap, and he’d walked right into it. How could he have been such a fool?
It was only then that Vinnie noticed the man standing on the pavement outside. He stared in at them. His vast bushy eyebrows met in the middle as he wiped his hands on the white apron tied around his waist.
Vinnie recognised him…
It was the owner of the cafe next door. Mad Mitch. The one who had given them the evil eye as they approached.
Vinnie rapped on the glass door, trying to get Mitch’s attention. “Help! We can’t get out.”
Mitch stared back at him. His face blank, completely unconcerned.
The pain in Vinnie’s head was getting worse. Mitch wasn’t going to help.
Vinnie slumped to his knees. His legs felt too heavy. They couldn’t support his weight anymore.
The palm of Vinnie’s hand squeaked against the glass as he slid down to the floor.
He heard a smash and it took all his energy to turn his head. His eyelids flickered as he saw that Craig had heaved himself up and thrown a stool at the huge, glass window fronting the newsagent’s.
Vinnie felt the rush of cool, fresh air. But it was too late. He couldn’t move.
The last thing Vinnie felt was a sharp pain in his ribs as one of his friends stepped on his back in their scramble to escape the shop.
4
ON THE OTHER SIDE of London, DS Jack Mackinnon stood staring up at a three-storey townhouse. Despite the fact it was early evening, the air was warm and still. Behind him, a car stereo blasted out a few bars of the song In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry. The clink of glasses, sound of laughter and the smell of a barbecue wafted over from the house across the street.
Guilt churned in Mackinnon’s stomach. He remembered the last time he had visited this house to talk to DI Bruce Evans. Now Bruce was gone, leaving behind a wife and two children.
In the months since Bruce’s funeral, Mackinnon had made it this far on three previous occasions, only to turn around and leave without knocking on the door.
This time he was going to see it through.
He walked up the stone steps, and held up a hand to rap on the door, but paused when he heard a noise coming from inside.
The sound was muffled, but Mackinnon was sure someone was crying. He immediately pictured Bruce’s wife, Fiona, sobbing. Jesus. What the hell was he doing here? Did he really think he could help?
Mackinnon stood on the steps, his hand still raised, ready to knock, hesitating. It might make him feel worse, it might be the last thing in the world he wanted to do now, but he couldn’t just leave.
He needed to make sure Bruce’s family were all right. He owed them that. If there was something he could do, anything, he would.
Before he could change his mind, he pressed the doorbell. The cheerful chimes ringing from inside seemed ridiculously unsuitable right now.
Fiona Evans opened the door, and Mackinnon saw straight away she hadn’t been the one crying. She carried a little girl on her hip.
The child buried her head in her mother’s neck, but after a moment, curiosity got the better of her, and she turned her head to get a look at the visitor. Her tear-streaked cheeks confirmed it was her cries Mackinnon had heard.
Confusion flickered over Fiona Evans’ face as she stared up at Mackinnon. She bit her lower lip and narrowed her eyes as if she recognised him from somewhere but couldn’t quite place him.
Mackinnon put her out of her misery. “It’s Jack Mackinnon,” he said. “I worked with your husband.”
Fiona pushed her hair back from her face and smiled. “Of course, I remember you. You were working on the same case as Bruce just before ...”
She stepped back into the hallway opening the door wide. “Please, come in,” she said. “Sorry, I’m not quite with it at the moment. We’ve just lost Luke’s carer. He decided to take a year out in America.” She shook her head. “I’m having a horrendous time trying to find a replacement.”
Mackinnon followed her down the hallway towards the kitchen. It was a lovely house, open-plan, spacious and got plenty of natural light. Mackinnon remembered wondering how Bruce could afford a house like this on a Detective Inspector’s salary.
“Would you like a cup of tea? I was just about to make one,” Fiona said. She lowered the little girl to the floor. “Why don’t you play with your dolls, sweetheart.”
The little girl stared up at Mackinnon through wet eyelashes, then picked up a plastic doll with an oversized head and began to wrap the dolls blonde hair around her fingers. Mackinnon smiled at her but received a stony look in return.
Mackinnon tried not to let it show, but he was shocked by the state of the kitchen. There were dirty plates and cups scattered on every kitchen counter and piles of unopened mail on the kitchen table. The contrast to the appearance of the kitchen the last time he’d been here couldn’t have been greater. But that was to be expected. Fiona was having to bring up two kids, one of them severely disabled, without Bruce.
“Tea would be great,” Mackinnon said. “I thought I’d pop by and see how you’re doing. I meant to come earlier but…”
“That’s very kind of you,” Fiona said as she searched the cupboard for some clean cups. She quickly gave up on that and began to wash up. “We’ve been getting along okay. Obviously it’s been hard, but we’ve been coping. Until Luke’s carer left, I was managing to keep things under control.”
Mackinnon wished he had an answer. He wished he knew the right words to say. Some people were great at it, offering the perfect words of condolence. Mackinnon wanted to help, but how? He wished he hadn’t come empty-handed. Maybe he could have bought a bottle of wine and some sweets for the little girl.
“If there’s anything I can do…”
Fiona turned to face him with the kettle in her hand. She smiled. “I appreciate that. Everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing. They seem to think I will collapse if they even mention Bruce’s name.”
“Does it help to talk about him?”
“Sometimes.” Fiona switched on the kettle. “And sometimes the only way I can get through the day is by not talking about him and not thinking about him.” She sighed. “I think it’s harder on the children, though.”
Mackinnon’s eyes flickered towards the ceiling.
“I know what you’re thinking. Luke can’t expre
ss himself, but I know he misses his father.”
“My daddy was a policeman,” the little girl said. She sat on the floor staring down at her doll. She pulled off a plastic arm, then reattached it.
“I know he was,” Mackinnon said. “I worked with your daddy. I’m a policeman, too.”
The little girl stared at him then got to her feet and held out the plastic doll. “This is Rosie.”
Mackinnon took the doll and turned it over in his hands. “She’s very pretty,” he said.
Satisfied, the little girl took the doll back and pulled out a chair to sit down at the table. She was so small her chin was level with the tabletop.
Fiona removed a few toys from the other chairs and motioned for Mackinnon to sit down. She set the mugs of tea on the table and sat down beside him.
“Are you planning to stay in the area?” Mackinnon asked.
She nodded. “My parents bought us this house when Bruce and I got married, so that’s one less thing to worry about.”
Mackinnon picked up his mug and took a sip of the steaming hot tea, scalding his mouth. He’d believed that Bruce had been paying for this huge house with bribes. Clearly he’d been wrong. Perhaps Bruce hadn’t been quite as corrupt as he’d seemed.
“Is there anything I can do?” Mackinnon asked. “I’d like to help, but honestly, I have no idea how.”
“That’s really kind of you, Jack. I know Bruce would have appreciated it. He thought highly of you.”
Mackinnon swallowed more tea, ignoring the sting of the hot liquid as it hit his tongue. He’d only known Bruce for a little while and most of that time he’d suspected that Bruce was bent. The fact that Mackinnon had guessed correctly didn’t make him feel any better now. Bruce had been on the payroll of a notorious drug dealer, and the night before he committed suicide, he asked Mackinnon to keep it secret.
Mackinnon refused, and now at night when he couldn’t sleep, he lay there wondering whether Bruce would still be alive if he had handled things differently.
“I only worked with Bruce for a short time,” Mackinnon said. “But I felt like I got to know him well.” That wasn’t a lie. Mackinnon knew things about Bruce that no one else did, not even his wife.
Fiona glanced at her wristwatch.
“Sorry,” Mackinnon said and reached for his jacket. “I know you must have a million and one things to do. I don’t want to get in the way.”
“No, don’t go. I need to go and check on Luke, but I’ll only be a few minutes. Perhaps you could keep an eye on Anna for me?”
Mackinnon looked down at the little girl, still playing happily with her dolls at the table.
“My daddy’s growing sweetcorn.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Big ones in the garden. Do you want to see?”
Mackinnon looked at Fiona. “Is that okay?”
Fiona grinned. “Sure.”
“Can we water them, Mum?” Anna asked.
After Fiona nodded and left the kitchen to attend to Luke, Anna slid down from the chair and held her hand out to Mackinnon. “Come on.”
Mackinnon did what he was told. He felt Anna curl her tiny hand in his and let her lead him through the kitchen door into the garden. The garden was about twenty-foot square and mostly laid to grass, but a small patch at the end of the garden had been made into a vegetable garden.
The garden looked well-tended, despite dry patches on the lawn. As Anna called him closer to the vegetable garden, Mackinnon saw that the runner beans and sweetcorn plants were crying out for water. At least, this was something he could do. Something useful.
“Here they are,” Anna said. “They’re getting big.”
The plants were attached to bamboo canes. There were six in total and each one came as high as his hip.
Mackinnon peeled back the light green sheath covering one of the immature cobs. The corn was very pale yellow, and the plant itself looked dry. The green leaves felt almost like tissue paper beneath his fingers.
“These plants look like they could do with some water, what do you think, Anna?”
Anna nodded. “Daddy used to water them every night.”
At the other end of the garden, Mackinnon unravelled the green garden hose, turned on the brass tap and filled the old watering can. Anna insisted she fill up her own little blue watering can so she could help. Together, they gave the sweetcorn and runner beans a thorough drenching.
Anna took off her shoes and socks and squelched the mud between her toes, giggling. This was obviously something she used to do with Bruce. The thought felt like a heavy pressure on his chest.
Mackinnon carried the watering can back towards the house and pretended to look horrified at the mud covering Anna’s toes. “Look at the state of your feet! You better get cleaned up before your mum sees you.”
Anna squirmed and giggled as she held out her feet, one at a time, to be rinsed clean by the water from the garden hose.
“That’s better,” Mackinnon said as Anna struggled to pull socks onto her wet feet.
The sound of an excited Olympics’ broadcaster, building up to a crescendo, spilled out through the downstairs windows of the house next door. Fiona’s neighbour had opened every window at the back of their house in an attempt to catch a cool breeze on this warm night.
Anna smiled, showing off the dimples in her plump cheeks as she slipped on her shoes, so Mackinnon wasn’t expecting what she said next, “It’s a shame my Daddy’s gone to heaven, isn’t it?”
Those simple words caught him unawares, and as his mobile phone began to ring and the screen flashed with the name DI Tyler, Mackinnon swallowed the lump in his throat then nodded. “Yes, Anna, it is.”
5
WHEN MACKINNON ARRIVED AT the newsagent’s on East Street, the place was already crawling with emergency services. Two specialist fire trucks blocked the crossroads where East Street met St Michael’s way, and four police cars were parked up near the old post office.
The street was still closed to motorists, but residents and business owners were being herded under the police tape, back to their properties. Mackinnon waved to one of the uniformed PCs, who took his name, then lifted the blue and white tape, allowing Mackinnon to approach the scene.
A few steps later, the smell hit him. It was a foul odour, like bad drains mixed with rotten eggs, a heavy sulphurous smell.
The newsagent’s was in the centre of a small parade of shops, flanked by a cafe on one side and a hairdressing salon on the other. Further along the street two uniformed officers stood outside a mobile phone shop, peering in the window. They could have been looking for evidence or checking out the latest Blackberry.
On the opposite side of the road, low rise residential buildings signalled the start of the Towers Estate.
As Mackinnon approached the newsagent’s he could see the huge window at the front of the shop had been smashed. Through the splintered glass, he spotted the familiar figure of DI Tyler. DC Charlotte Brown stood next to Tyler, her forehead creased in concentration. They were talking to the crime scene manager, David Oakley, and a SOCO Mackinnon didn’t recognise.
Mackinnon stopped at the door. “Is it all right to come in?”
DI Tyler nodded. “Watch out for the broken glass.”
“What have we got?” Mackinnon asked.
“One victim,” DI Tyler said. “Syed Hammad, forty-two, suspected suicide, and a couple of kids have been taken to hospital after inhaling the gas. David here was just telling us what he thinks happened. Carry on, David. We’re all ears.”
As Mackinnon stepped inside, the crime scene manager pointed to the floor where three plastic buckets were lined up under the broken window at the front of the shop.
“At first glance, it looks like we have three buckets and a whole load of broken glass. But if you look closely you can see this broken glass isn’t from the window. Take a look.”
Mackinnon leaned forward with Tyler and Charlotte to study the glass, but it all looked pretty much the
same to him.
From the puzzled look on Tyler’s face, Mackinnon knew he wasn’t alone.
“This glass is thinner, and in smaller pieces,” the crime scene manager insisted. “Now look at the set-up here.” He pointed to the top of the window frame.
It looked like a metallic curtain rail ran the length of the window, but instead of curtain hooks, small metal clamps were attached to the rail above each of the buckets. Each clamp gripped fragments of broken glass.
“Fascinating. Are you getting to the bit where this has something to do with the poisonous gas that killed a man and made us evacuate over a hundred people?”
The crime scene manager seemed oblivious to Tyler’s sarcasm. “Yes. This is the ingenious bit. Each of these clamps held a glass vial, containing a liquid chemical. When the shop door opened, it triggered the glass to smash and the contents to fall into the buckets below.”
Mackinnon stepped forward to look into the buckets. They were empty.
The crime-scene manager frowned at the interruption. “Well, there’s nothing in them now, of course. The place has been decontaminated. But there would have been a chemical in the bucket and a different chemical in the glass vials. Both substances on their own aren’t dangerous, you could find them under the sink in quite a few households in the UK, but when they are mixed, they are deadly.”
“They produce hydrogen sulphide,” Tyler said.
“That’s right,” David screwed up his nose. “Nasty stuff.”
“So opening the door caused the chemicals to mix and release the gas?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes. Opening the door caused the metal rod to shoot across and break the glass vials.”
“Hydrogen sulphide is the suicide gas,” Tyler said and turned to Mackinnon. “We’ve been briefed about these. Only a few cases in this country, though.”
Mackinnon nodded. Death by hydrogen sulphide became a hugely popular method of suicide in Japan a couple of years ago and to a lesser extent the USA, and it was feared that the UK might follow their lead.
“What about the kids?” Mackinnon asked.
