A Cast of Vultures

by Judith Flanders

  ‘There’s an unconscious man—’ I said again, leaning against the wall.

  ‘There’s no one here. We’ve been right the way through.’

  I just nodded. Yes, there is. ‘Boiler cupboard. Behind the kitchen door, on the left.’ If they’d checked all the rooms, it was the only place he could be, and unless they’d looked behind the door, they wouldn’t notice the cupboard.

  The fireman stared at me for a moment, then turned and walked down the hall, pulling his mask back on. I knew what he would find, because the last I had heard from Jake he was on Talbot’s Road, Sam had seen him knocked out on Talbot’s Road, and he wasn’t on Talbot’s Road now. It took no imagination to work out what had happened. One man took Jake’s keys and went to my house to set a fire, the other called in help and carried Jake to the flat, dumping him there while Sam and I were climbing over the garden fence. It would have been the empty house all over again: an unconscious man assumed to have died in a fire, this time with a dead woman too. Me.

  I was pulled away from the door by the fireman I’d slipped past. He’d morphed from humouring the Crazy Lady to full-blown fury with a member of the public who wasn’t doing what she was told, but it didn’t matter now. Someone had gone to look for Jake. I realised I was still holding the phone, and I lifted it to my ear to see if the CID person was still there, waving a ‘Shush!’ to the angry fireman, and, when that had no effect, snapping, ‘I’m on the phone!’ as if I were a housewife interrupted by a particularly persistent Jehovah’s Witness with a pile of Watchtowers to get shot of.

  I attempted to calm myself enough to decide what the police needed to know, but he didn’t wait, which was probably a good thing. ‘Where are you?’ he said.

  I gave my address, adding, ‘The fire department is already here. There’s a fire.’ I admit, the first sentence probably meant I didn’t need the second, but this was life, not editorial decisions. ‘I went to Talbot’s Road, to where Inspector Field was assaulted. He wasn’t there. I think he was carried back and left here, and then the house was set on fire.’ I didn’t really expect him to believe me. Without the back-story, it sounded ridiculous. ‘Look, his colleague Chris, whose last name I don’t remember, knows about this. It’s part of a case he’s working. I was assaulted a couple of days ago, and—’

  For the first time, the voice stopped sounding like a speak-your-weight machine. ‘Are you Sam?’

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. This person knew me? ‘Yes, I’m Sam.’

  ‘Hold on.’ His voice was sharp now, and then faded as he turned from the phone. I couldn’t hear the words, but the tone sounded like he was giving instructions. Then I stopped listening, because the front door of the house opened, and out came a fireman. And he was carrying Jake.

  Time went elastic after that. The previous hour, from talking to Jake, through Sam appearing in my bedroom, and running to Talbot’s Road and back, had felt like it had taken seconds. Now the seconds it took for the fireman to bring Jake down the stairs lasted for hours. The you-got-past-me-once angry fireman wouldn’t let me go to him, so I had to stand for all those hours, waiting.

  An ambulance nosed its way around the fire engines, and Jake was finally out of the house. I walked behind with my hand on his back. Everyone felt such a sense of triumph that I was no longer trying to force my way into a burning building that they didn’t try to stop me, and by the time we reached the ambulance, Jake was conscious and coughing.

  He was set down and, with a little help, he stood briefly before the ambulance’s rear doors opened, and they sat him gently on the step. I kept a hand on him, in case someone tried to snatch him away and return him to the burning flat. And when the paramedic slipped an oxygen mask over his face and tried to move me to one side, Jake’s hand shot out and clasped my wrist, pulling me down to sit on the step with him. I patted his arm. Don’t worry, the pat said, Crazy Lady isn’t going anywhere. Sam appeared at some point and stood on my other side. His posture radiated Not moving either, and nobody tried to argue.

  We sat there until Chris and Paula and what felt like a thousand more policemen arrived. The paramedics wanted Jake to go to hospital, but he shook them off, claiming he was fine. He’d been in a cupboard, and so had been fairly well protected from the smoke. His head wound worried me more. Once they’d cleaned away the blood, it was surprisingly small, but still, he’d been unconscious. That couldn’t be good, but when the paramedics didn’t argue with him, I decided I wouldn’t either.

  Instead, I agreed when they suggested that they clean and bandage my feet. I hadn’t noticed, but there must have been glass, or at least sharp grit, somewhere on Talbot’s Road. That was being done when Mr Rudiger came over to tell me his daughter had come to take him home with her; the Lewises, he added, were on their way to Kay’s parents. The police co-opted a room in one of my neighbours’ houses, and once the fire department had given the all-clear, we were taken there. Helena appeared at some point. I don’t know who had phoned her. Probably Mr Rudiger. To my surprise, Connie was with her. She moved to talk to Sam, and I didn’t ask questions. I felt like I was watching television: it was mildly interesting, but I was merely an observer.

  Finally Chris came over, with Paula pretending to smile at me beside him. ‘Jake gave me an outline on the phone earlier, but I’d like to hear it myself.’ I pulled myself together and repeated everything that I had pieced together about the Winslows, father and son. Like Jake, the gap between Harefield disappearing and Harefield turning up dead in the empty house worried him, but this time I got to explain.

  ‘Yes, Harefield vanished on a Wednesday, and wasn’t seen until he was found dead days later. And yes, I don’t know where he was in between, but I do know why, and it’s why I was attacked, too.’ This was the part I was sure of. ‘When he disappeared, his friend Viv was worried.’ I filled in quickly the details of who Viv was, how I knew her, and that she and Harefield lived in the same building. ‘Viv and I went up to Dennis’s flat on Saturday afternoon, before the fire. She wanted to make sure he hadn’t collapsed, or at least to see if we could work out if he’d planned to be away.’ I looked at Jake, and then back at Chris. ‘I looked under his bed, to see if there were suitcases. I told Jake that I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think I had seen a satchel with money. The satchel that was found after the fire.’

  Paula joined in. ‘You’re not sure?’ She gave me a look-at-me-I’m-smiling-at-you smile, but her tone was patronising.

  I ignored both tone and smile. ‘No, I’m not sure. That is, I am sure I didn’t see it, but I can’t be sure it wasn’t there – that I hadn’t missed it.’

  Her face said she found me lacking as a witness, and I would have agreed with her, except, ‘I can’t be sure, but my phone can.’ I was still clutching it in my hand, had been clutching it ever since Sam and I had slid out my bedroom window, and now I held it out to Chris. “When I was looking under the bed at Harefield’s flat, the bed where the police found the satchel, I was using a torch app on my phone. Then Harefield’s phone rang. I jumped, and hit my head, and dropped the phone. This evening I also dropped my phone. The person who handed it back to me must have touched the screen when he picked it up, because an app had been opened: you know how easy it is to do that accidentally. It made me think, and so when I got home, I looked through my photos and found one which, according to the tag, was taken on Saturday. It’s a picture of dust bunnies and socks, with some bedding in the background. No bag, no money, no nothing.”

  Chris and Jake, both of whom had been sitting slumped, now straightened. Chris took the phone out of my hand and said, ‘You can swear that you took this photo?’

  ‘No, I had no idea I had taken that photo. But I can swear that at the time the tag says the photo was taken, I was in Dennis Harefield’s flat, and I can swear that I was using my phone as a torch under his bed at that time, and that I was startled and dropped it.’

  He looked carefully at the photo, checked the ta
g and, after looking at his watch, jotted down something in his notebook.

  Jake pulled my attention back. ‘What I don’t understand is how anyone knows you’re involved, much less why anyone would know that you have this photo, especially since you didn’t even know you had it until tonight.’

  I ticked off the steps on my fingers. ‘One: on my way home this evening I saw a man coming out of Arthur’s flat. He was the man who had been sitting beside me at the Neighbourhood Association meeting when Viv told everyone within earshot that she and I had been in Harefield’s flat, and that I’d searched under his bed.

  ‘Two: on Saturday evening I showed Victor photos I had on my phone of Viv’s flat, and he emailed them to himself, to Viv and to Arthur. He doesn’t strike me as the world’s most technologically able person, and if he emailed my entire photo cache, it wouldn’t surprise me. The under-the-bed photo follows the last of Viv’s pictures, and so anyone flicking through them would see it. Assume for the moment that the man I saw coming out of Arthur’s flat, the man who knew from the Neighbourhood Watch meeting that I’d searched Harefield’s bedroom, is Arthur’s son. Arthur had very possibly just received a group of photos he had said he was interested in looking at. If he was flicking through them on a phone, then he would almost certainly see the photo of the underneath of Harefield’s bed.

  ‘Three: the person who set up Harefield’s death to look like the death of a drug dealer, by placing drugs in the shed where he died and dumping a bag of cash in his flat, had a vested interest in making sure that I couldn’t tell anyone that there had been nothing under the bed, and that no one ever found the photo of that nothingness on my phone.

  ‘Which takes us to four: the day after the dust-bunny photo was emailed, I was assaulted, and my phone was smashed.’ I lifted my hands, palms up.

  Chris didn’t seem to need a five. ‘You think Frederick Winslow was shown the photograph by his father.’

  It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. ‘Not in a Wow-look-at-the-sock-’n’-dust-bunny-photo-some-loony-tune-sent-me way. Arthur said his son visited regularly; Frederick Winslow told me his father was interested in local goings-on. So son visits father, says “What’s up, Dad?”, father tells son he’s been interviewed about local history, tells his son about the academic interviewing him, about Viv and me, and shows him the photographs of a flat from the good old days. The final image, as they’re flicking through, is of the bed. The son knows from the Neighbourhood Association meeting who Viv is, and that I searched under Harefield’s bed. Now he knows I have a photo of that, too.’

  I gestured to the phone still in Chris’s hand. ‘He didn’t know that I didn’t know I had this photo. If I wasn’t able to talk, and my phone had been smashed, no one was going to check a Cloud backup to see if, by chance, I happened to have any incriminating photos of a non-drug dealer’s under-the-bed dust bunnies.’

  Jake had been silent, but now joined in. ‘Then the pub fire afterwards was to reinforce the idea that the empty house was just one fire in a series. Winslow didn’t even have to be involved with the earlier ones – they could easily have been the work of vandals.’

  I’d forgotten about that fire. ‘And Winslow would know about the fires, because they were discussed at the Neighbourhood Association meetings, and he went to those regularly.’

  Paula put in again, ‘You keep saying Winslow, but you don’t know even that the man coming out of Arthur Winslow’s flat was his son.’

  This was true. ‘I don’t. All I can say is he was the man who overheard the discussion about my searching under Harefield’s bed.’

  She looked sour, as though that proved, or didn’t prove, something, but didn’t comment further.

  Chris called to one of the uniforms to find us some photos of Frederick Winslow for me to ID, before turning to Sam. ‘Tell me your side.’

  Sam didn’t like being around the police, and when we had moved inside, he’d become even more uncomfortable, fidgeting every time a uniformed officer walked past. But uncomfortable or not, he had stayed within touching distance since my mad run to Talbot’s Road. Now he looked at Connie. She lifted her chin. I’m watching out for you, she silently reassured him.

  He turned back to Chris. ‘You know we were arrested.’

  ‘For arson.’

  ‘We had no alibis. We weren’t where we said we were. We—’ He checked with Connie again, and she repeated her chin lift. ‘We’ve been working on the black.’ He shrugged, as though it should have been obvious to everyone.

  On the black? I didn’t ask, but he looked at me to explain. ‘I couldn’t get work, except with a road crew who paid me under the table. Even if I’d told the police where I’d been, the company would have denied it, because they don’t pay tax for us. And after that they would have sacked me.’ He turned back to Chris and gestured towards Talbot’s Road. ‘I was working up the road tonight. I saw Sam and her friend go past just before midnight. Sam’s friend called out to someone who came out of one of the houses. He didn’t answer, got into a parked car, but he didn’t drive away, just sat there. I forgot about him. An hour or so after that, we’d finished for the night and I was packing up when I saw Sam’s bloke.’

  Paula interrupted. ‘You know him?’

  ‘Nah, but I seen him about with her. Knew who he was. He was looking at the houses at the other end of the street, where the fire was. I was the last of our crew to leave, and I heard a thump. I looked back, and saw him lying on the pavement and someone going through his pockets.’ Sam looked his age for the first time. ‘He was a big geezer, so I waited behind the compressor.’ He was apologising for not confronting a man who had just assaulted a police officer. ‘He made a call, and then another bloke arrived a few minutes later.’ He looked uncertain. ‘He could have been the bloke in the car, I wasn’t looking that way anymore.’

  Paula was intimidating. ‘Are you saying the man who joined him was the man Sam and her friend had waved to?’

  He nodded, but it was now even less committed. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

  Her sniff said what she thought of that.

  After a minute, Connie nodded at Sam, and he continued. ‘They went through Ja— the inspector’s pockets.’ I squeezed his hand. He’d saved both Jake’s and my life. He could call Jake by his first name. ‘The second bloke, the one who arrived after, headed off towards Sam’s house, and I followed.’

  Paula interrupted, still aggressive. ‘How did he know who the inspector was, or where he lived, where she’ – charmingly, she gestured to me instead of using my name – ‘where she lived?’

  I knew the answer to the last part, so I interrupted. ‘He was at the pub fire, and carried my upstairs neighbours’ child home. Jake and I passed him in the hallway as he was leaving.’

  When Paula asked the question, Jake had begun to empty his pockets. ‘There’s nothing missing except my keys, and—’ he turned his notebook over in his hand. ‘My notebook was in my hand when I was knocked out. It’s here in my pocket now, but the page where I’d written down the numbers of the houses in Talbot’s Road has been torn out.’

  Sam continued with his story. ‘When the bloke got to Sam’s house he left the door open, so I went in too, to make sure Sam was OK. She wasn’t, so we left. That’s all.’ He said it as though thugs in the night, fires and rescuing sleeping editors were part of the daily grind.

  I joined in. ‘The fire had to be spur of the moment, after Winslow realised I knew Arthur, and now I’d seen him coming out of Arthur’s house, as well as having the photo that proved Harefield was set up. Jake was looking at the houses he owned in Talbot’s Road. It was a good bet I knew about the planning application. If Jake and I had—’ I cleared my throat and started again. ‘If Jake and I had died in the fire, it would have been just one more fire in the series. There would have been no reason to connect it to Winslow.’

  One of the men by the door moved towards us, and Chris stood. ‘A moment.’

  While he was
talking to them, I looked at Paula. ‘What happens now with the boys who were arrested?’ I asked. ‘Does their arrest get voided, or expunged, or whatever it’s called? So they don’t have it on their record?’

  Jake’s hand tightened in mine. We hadn’t been together for that long, so we hadn’t developed that communication system some couples have, where they speak without saying anything. But if we’d been together for ten minutes, I would still have understood that death grip. It said, Shut up.

  Too late. Paula was beyond frosty. ‘Procedure will be followed.’ Which I believe is police-speak for Bugger off. The tone added: I’m only being this polite because you’re sitting beside my ex. Don’t push your luck.

  I don’t like being told what to do, even silently, but before I could push my luck, Chris was back with a handful of photos. ‘Do you recognise any of these men?’

  I took them, and Sam looked over my shoulder. All of them dark, handsome men in their thirties. We pointed to the same image at the same moment. ‘Him,’ we chorused, as if we were gold medallists in the Olympic synchronised photo-identifying team relay.

  Chris double-checked for the record: ‘That’s the man from the Neighbourhood Association meeting?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s also the man I saw coming out of Arthur Winslow’s flat on Talbot’s Road tonight.’

  ‘Sam?’

  Sam was sure too. ‘I don’t know if he’s the man who came out of the flat and sat in the parked car, but he’s the man I followed to Sam’s flat tonight.’

  Chris was silent, moving back to the group at the door, but I was damned if I was going to be left hanging. ‘Is it Frederick Winslow?’

  Paula looked more sour than ever, but Chris wasn’t worried. ‘It is.’ He gave instructions to the uniforms, and then came back, looking at Sam. ‘Can you describe the other man? Would you be able to recognise him again?’

  Sam’s description of the ‘big geezer’ who had knocked Jake out sounded like the man at Kew, but then again lots of people were big, bald geezers.