A Good Death

by Chris Collett

  ‘I haven’t changed my opinion that this room is where it all kicked off,’ Docherty continued. He pointed to black conical patterning on the wall, the apexes at floor level, which confirmed the supposition. ‘I understand the family used it as a kind of office-cum-store room, so it was piled up with stacks of documents, some of them loose, the rest in cardboard boxes. It would have formed a massive fuel-load, so once the fire took hold, the intensity would have been immense. The old man wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

  ‘This room is easily accessible, front and back, from the road,’ Mariner observed.

  ‘Which opens the way for a possible arson attack,’ said Docherty. ‘But until we’ve gone through this little lot,’ he indicated the debris, ‘I don’t want to rule anything out just yet. Come and take a look at this.’

  He led them through to the kitchen, which seemed to have become a temporary evidence collection point, where various artefacts were being bagged for further examination. ‘Underneath the crap in this corner we found this.’ He picked up a plastic forensic bag, inside which was what looked like a molten plastic spider, with spikes sprouting from it at all angles.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jesson.

  ‘It was,’ said Docherty, ‘a multi-socket extension. They seem to have been running a number of appliances off it, though we haven’t identified exactly what yet. Again, it could have easily set things off.’

  ‘So we’re back to accident again?’

  ‘Right now, your guess is as good as mine,’ said Docherty.

  Emerging from the house, Mariner found a couple of missed calls on his mobile. Leaving Vicky talking to Docherty, while she peeled off her forensic gear, he walked a little way down the street to return them. It was Nell at Manor Park. ‘Jamie’s got appointments for tests at the QE tomorrow, first thing,’ she said.

  Mariner suppressed a ripple of anxiety. That was quick, so someone was taking it seriously. ‘How will it work?’ he asked Nell.

  ‘They’ll have him in for most of the day, I think, while the tests are being done,’ said Nell. ‘One of us will go with him – hopefully me – but of course it would be great if you could come along too.’

  Tomorrow morning. It was sudden, and not at all the best time for Mariner to absent himself from the fire investigation, but did at least give him the rest of today to put things in place. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  DC Millie Khatoon was in pursuit of Sam Fleetwood and his car. As Mariner had suggested, she phoned down to uniform to ask about getting some help, but got short shrift from Pete Stone. ‘We don’t run a staffing agency down here,’ he said. ‘Tom Mariner’s already got one of my officers, I can’t spare any more.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Millie, replacing the phone.

  ‘It’s what he does best,’ said Brown, from behind her. ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘Haven’t you got enough on your plate?’ said Millie.

  ‘I’m pretty much up to speed.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure then. Can you ring round the local hospitals, see if they’ve admitted a Sam Fleetwood in the last few days?’ She gave Brown the description. ‘Let me know straight away if you get anything, will you? Wild goose chases are not really my thing.’

  Mariner had asked Gaby to drop in the keys for the marital home and her key to Sam’s flat first thing that morning at Granville Lane, and by nine thirty Millie had received a call to say they were there. So, after familiarising herself with Mariner’s background notes – in itself quite a task thanks to his appalling handwriting; he’d clearly missed his vocation as a doctor – she decided the best place to start was Fleetwood’s flat.

  Alone in the car, without Haroon, Millie felt horribly empty, and the sluggish traffic gave her more than enough time to think about what her baby son might be doing right now. Napping? Playing with his Amma? Picturing his chubby little face, a surge of panic threatened to surface. What if he did something new today, while she was away from him? He’d been edging towards crawling for a while now. Stop it! she told herself. If he did, then it would be lovely for his grandparents to have that experience, and it was a small price to pay for them taking on most of the childcare while she and Suli were at work.

  It was only natural that she would have doubts about coming back. Millie was well aware of how lucky she was. She had choices. Suli had fully supported her return to work, but he’d also be delighted if she said it had been a mistake, and she wanted to stay at home to care for Haroon. Finances would be a bit tight, but they’d managed so far and Suli’s recent promotion had helped. Much of this insecurity, Millie knew, was the strangeness of being back here again. In some ways it felt as if she had never been away, but much had changed while she’d been off, and she missed having Tony Knox and Charlie around. She was apprehensive too about this first assignment. Would she still be up to it? Would she remember to cover all the bases? Most of all, she had to keep reminding herself that at this stage Sam Fleetwood was only a potential MisPer. All she needed to do was try to establish if he had got himself into any kind of trouble.

  Sam’s flat took up the attic space in a converted Victorian house in the less fashionable part of Edgbaston, close to its boundary with Ladywood, one of the most deprived localities in the country. Since the redevelopment of the city centre this was no longer a popular area for young professionals, so prices would be low. There was no off-road parking, so Fleetwood would have to compete with the dozens of other local residents for a kerbside spot. Before going into the building, Millie walked the length of the street in both directions, then took a series of left turns that took her in a circuit around the block, including a couple of plots of off-road parking. But there was no sign of the grey Astra, at least not with the plates Mariner had described. It wasn’t entirely conclusive; Fleetwood might have just parked further away, and if he wanted to hide his car it would be simple enough, but there was no way that Millie could carry out an exhaustive search on her own.

  Frustrated already, she used Gaby’s keys to let herself into the building and climbed up the three narrow flights of stairs to the flat. Unlocking the door, she tentatively called out before going in, but could tell right away that it was empty. It was small and compact; living room, bedroom, bathroom and tiny kitchen, all visible from the doorway. Although the furniture was dated, it was all very squeaky clean for a bachelor pad. Millie glanced around her at rooms that were scrupulously tidy. In the kitchen the bins had been emptied and the washing up done. ‘It’s not completely unheard of for a bloke to be tidy, is it?’ she remembered Mariner saying to her once. His tendency to orderliness was legendary. It didn’t on the other hand look as if Sam Fleetwood had gone anywhere unexpectedly or in a hurry. There were two possibilities: either Sam always left the flat like this when he went out, or this indicated preparation for not coming back. She’d be able to make a better assessment of that when she knew more about what his habits were.

  The bed was made, in that the duvet had been thrown back across it, and the cupboard doors and drawers were closed. There were clothes in the wardrobe, but not many, which may simply indicate that Sam Fleetwood wasn’t into fashion. She’d need to find that out from Gaby. More significantly, there was no PC or laptop and no phone, though to make sure she tried the mobile number Mariner had given her. It rang out, but went unanswered.

  There were few other personal belongings; the bathroom yielded an electric toothbrush and a couple of disposable razors, both of which would be cheap and easy enough to pick up elsewhere. But, if he had gone AWOL, there was nothing Millie could find here that gave any clue about where Sam Fleetwood might be. She sifted through a collection of personal papers and bills in a drawer. None of them was particularly recent, and they were interspersed with old postcards, a handful of birthday cards and two Valentine cards. Anonymous, of course, but while one was tasteful and romantic, the other was much more sentimental, and the style of handwriting in each was quite different. Millie took out the envelope tha
t had contained the keys, on which Gaby Boswell had written: FAO Detective Inspector Mariner. Hers was the romantic card, without a doubt, so who had sent the other one? Millie photographed them both, along with the inscriptions. She found no passport. Sam would need one of those for the honeymoon in Antigua, but perhaps it hadn’t come through yet. The passport office would be able to tell her that.

  What struck Millie as most interesting about Fleetwood’s flat, was the absence of anything to do with his fiancée. Perhaps it just meant that they always went to Gaby’s place. Millie had seen something in Mariner’s notes: no vet before mortgage. Of course; that might explain it. But then, closing what she thought was an empty drawer, she felt something shift. Opening it again, she ran a hand around the back, where she found two items. One was an unopened pack of three pairs of tights, in a neutral beige, size medium. The other was a zipped make-up pouch, which contained lipstick, mascara, a powder compact, a small perfume spritz and a pack of plasters. Taken altogether, it was the kind of emergency kit that a woman might keep somewhere that she spent the weekends. Since this wasn’t official, Millie wasn’t authorised to remove anything from the flat – Sam Fleetwood could walk in at this precise moment and rightly complain if anything was missing. So, she made a note of the details and placed the items back where she had found them.

  Millie descended the stairs just as an Asian man emerged from the flat on the floor below. She showed him her warrant card. ‘Do you know a man called Sam Fleetwood?’ she asked. ‘He lives in the flat above yours.’

  ‘Oh, is that his name?’ The man turned the deadlock on his own door. ‘I know him to say hello, but that’s about it. I’ve only been here about a month.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ Millie asked.

  ‘I’m not sure; a week, ten days ago maybe?’

  ‘Do you remember seeing him at all last weekend, on Saturday or Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but actually—’ The man pocketed his keys and checked his phone. ‘I’m pretty sure I heard someone moving around up there on Sunday morning, early.’

  ‘How early?’ asked Millie.

  ‘Maybe about eight o’clock? I was cursing him because I’m pretty sure he woke me up and it’s the only day I get to lie in. Sounded like something heavy was being shifted around. But I could have been wrong about that. Noise carries in this building.’ He studied her. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Millie smiled reassuringly. ‘I was just hoping to speak to him,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep.’

  A smaller key on the fob Gaby had given her opened a mail box in the hall. Millie followed the man down the stairs, stopping off to open it up. All it contained was a number of junk flyers for pizza delivery and gardening services. If Sam Fleetwood had decided to disappear, he’d left everything in good order.

  NINE

  The work address that Gaby Boswell had given Mariner was an office block at Five Ways, and it made sense for Millie to go there next, as it was so near. Mariner had noted down that Sam worked as what looked to Millie like a wanker margarine infector; presumably not a real job. Whatever it was, it was a function of the Environment Agency, whose offices took up several floors of the rust-brown building. As his sister had said, his work colleagues had been surprised when Sam didn’t turn up to work on Monday or Tuesday – it was unlike him – but they weren’t unduly worried, assuming that he was ill, and it had slipped his mind, or he was too rough to phone it in.

  ‘Not unheard of,’ said his boss, Mike Figgis. ‘Must happen in your line of work too, sometimes.’ A man in late middle age, Figgis was tall and gangling, with a thin, rodent-like face that carried a slight sheen of perspiration. Stress-related, perhaps, as all the time they talked Figgis’ eyes were scanning the room, keeping watch on what was happening. Twice he had to break off their conversation to respond to queries. The offices were almost exclusively open plan, so the conversation was conducted at one untidy end of an expanse containing about thirty work stations and the same number of staff, male and female, though no one seemed remotely interested in Millie. Picture windows overlooked the Hagley Road, their brownish tint giving it the tinge of an old sepia photograph.

  Sam Fleetwood, it transpired, was a waste management inspector. ‘What does his job involve?’ asked Millie.

  ‘What it says on the tin,’ said Figgis. ‘Conducting inspections of environmental waste facilities and monitoring them to make sure they’re adhering to regulations. It wouldn’t be on your radar,’ he added. ‘But there’s such a thing as “waste crime”. In 1997 a landfill tax was introduced that has to be paid at the point of disposal of any large quantities of waste. It meant that straight away some firms saw a way of making money by setting themselves up as brokers, if you like, taking and disposing of other people’s rubbish, mostly from the construction or demolition industries, but for a price. They set up what we call “waste transfer stations”. A lot of them are legitimate, but for the greedy ones, the way of increasing profits even further is to avoid paying the landfill tax, by simply accumulating the waste, covering it up with sand or gravel to hide it, or getting rid of it by illegal means.’

  ‘How do they do that?’ asked Millie.

  ‘Oh, you’d be amazed the number of unexplained fires that just happen to “start up” around sites,’ said Figgis. ‘There are other violations too that can compromise on health and safety. They store potentially harmful stuff like asbestos incorrectly. The list goes on. Historically the whole industry has been run by people on the fringes, who don’t necessarily recognise the boundaries of the law. Cowboys.’

  A sudden image flashed into Millie’s head, of Clint Eastwood, on horseback riding across the fields of north Worcestershire. ‘Sam’s fiancée hinted that he’d been a bit stressed out by work just lately,’ she said, from Mariner’s notes. ‘Any thoughts on why that might be?’

  ‘We’re an inspectorate,’ said Figgis. ‘We’re quite new, and not universally welcomed by the people whose businesses we regulate. We’ve been brought in to impose structure on a service sector that has always been a complete law unto itself. As you can imagine, we’re not popular. Sam knows the rules inside out and he’s thorough. Good for us, but he can sometimes be perceived as being a bit pedantic, which doesn’t endear him to people.’

  Here was a man who relished his job, thought Millie. ‘I can’t imagine they’re too delighted with that,’ she agreed. ‘What’s Sam like?’

  ‘Solid as a rock,’ said Figgis without hesitation. ‘One of the most conscientious workers I’ve known.’

  ‘And apart from the unexpected time off, has there been anything different about him in the last week or so?’ Millie asked.

  Figgis shook his head. ‘Not that I noticed. He’s quiet, doesn’t mix much, but he turns up and does his job, and that’s what counts. He’s like the proverbial paperclip.’

  Millie looked blank.

  ‘Only time we notice him is when he’s not here.’ It sounded like a well-worn line.

  ‘When was the last time you spoke to Sam?’ she asked.

  ‘Friday, I think it was. He’s getting married soon and trying to get his new house sorted out. We talked a bit about that.’

  ‘Anything bothering him?’

  ‘Not that he told me,’ said Figgis.

  They started towards the door. ‘I understand Sam’s job involves him travelling widely?’ said Millie.

  ‘I wouldn’t say widely,’ replied Figgis. ‘He’s based here in the West Midlands, so most of it is local. He might occasionally have to go out as far as Shropshire or Staffordshire.’

  ‘So how often is he required to be away at the weekend?’

  Figgis frowned. ‘There’s no need for anyone in this department to work away for the weekend. Apart from anything else, the government wouldn’t fund the expense accounts. So why are you lot involved?’ he asked. ‘Something going on with him that we don’t know about?’

  ‘We might not need to be involved,’ said Millie. ‘
Sam hasn’t been seen for a couple of days, so his family are concerned about where he might be. It’s probably nothing. Most times people turn up again. If Sam does make it in to work, would you get him to give me a call straight away?’ She gave Figgis her card.

  Millie travelled down in the lift with one of the young women who had approached Figgis with a query; Zara, he had called her. ‘Do you know Sam Fleetwood?’ Millie asked.

  Zara shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a big department.’

  ‘And what’s Mike Figgis like as a boss?’ She was really just making polite conversation.

  ‘Hm,’ said the girl. ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him.’ She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something else.

  ‘And …?’ Millie said encouragingly.

  But Zara shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Really. Nothing at all.’ The lift came to a halt, and with a brief smile she stepped out into the foyer.

  On her way back to the car Millie tried Sam’s number again, but once more, no one picked up.

  Salwa Shah and the children had been released from hospital and the family were staying at her sister-in-law’s house in Sparkhill. When Mariner and Jesson located the address Salwa had given them, the house turned out to be uncannily similar to the one that had been destroyed by the fire, but lacking the garage conversion. The front door was open and a group of people had gathered on the pavement: mourners waiting their turn to say prayers with the family, as a mark of respect, something which would last for three days. It took Mariner and Jesson several minutes to work their way politely through and ascertain who was the owner of the house, and then to establish the whereabouts of Salwa Shah and convey that they needed to speak to her. Eventually, having made their presence known, they were shown into an empty front sitting room that was cool and dim, and asked to wait.