No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2)

by Paul Gitsham

  Arriving home, he tried his best to put work out of his mind. They were going to a party thrown by one of Susan’s colleagues and when he arrived, Susan was just about to get changed. The last few days had been stressful and the couple had spent little quality time together, so it didn’t take much persuasion on Warren’s part for her to relent and invite him into the shower with her.

  Warren decided that the likelihood of any major breaking leads that night was pretty slim and so decided to splash out on a taxi to the party. He certainly wasn’t going to get drunk, but he doubted he’d be in a fit state to drive, especially in the icy conditions.

  Warren had expected a small intimate gathering with people crammed into a living room and kitchen, whilst somebody with a musical bent commandeered the stereo system. He was not expecting a humongous country pile sitting on its own acre of land. It was at least twice the size of Bernice and Dennis’ not insubstantial residence.

  “My God,” he breathed, “all this on a teacher’s salary?” He pecked Susan on the cheek. “I married better than I thought.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Chief Inspector. It was Clare that married well in this case. Her husband, Mark, founded a profitable pharmaceutical firm in Cambridge. He employed her as a researcher. When they got married, she decided bench-work wasn’t for her and retrained as a chemistry teacher.”

  “So why is she still teaching?”

  Susan shrugged. “As hard as it is to imagine some days, there are still those who teach for the love of it. She’s turned down several promotions. She just wants to teach chemistry and be a form tutor. She’s bloody good at it too, from what I’ve observed.”

  The wide, curved driveway was filled with the best part of a dozen cars, suggesting that not everybody was so bothered about driving home. Susan shrugged. “The house has at least four guest bedrooms and Clare loves hosting. I imagine at least a few people are staying over. Plus Ravvi doesn’t drink and Phil’s partner is a paramedic, so she may not be drinking.” She turned to him impishly. “So no need to get your notebook out, DCI.”

  Warren grinned sheepishly. Message understood.

  The party was even more impressive once they got inside. The house had a huge living room and dining room, both of which opened onto a kitchen big enough to serve a small hotel. French doors led into a large spacious conservatory and, as if that weren’t enough space for the hundred or so revellers, the conservatory opened into a marquee with a dance floor and DJ. Gas-powered heaters kept the marquee nice and toasty.

  Warren immediately recognised Clare from the school Christmas party and she greeted him like a long-lost friend, taking the proffered bottles of wine and adding them to the already groaning drinks table.

  “You have a lovely home and I must say I’m impressed with the marquee.”

  She flapped her hand dismissively. “Between you and me, I’ll be glad to see the back of it. Mark uses it for corporate entertaining. He was going to have it taken down last week, but I said ‘I’ve put up with it for the past month, I want to at least get something out of it!’ It’ll be gone by the time I go back to school and I can finally see the back garden again.”

  After accepting a glass of wine each, Susan took him around the party, reintroducing him to largely the same people he’d met two weeks before. By ten o’clock the party was in full swing, with the DJ playing an eclectic mix of tracks that kept the dance floor heaving.

  At a quarter to midnight, the revellers left the cosiness of the marquee and went into the impressive garden. The DJ was streaming BBC radio over the speakers and everyone raised a glass as they counted down to midnight. Then, as the unmistakeable chimes of Big Ben rang out fireworks exploded into the air. As he kissed his wife and then took hold of the nearest hands for the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ Warren reflected that perhaps the next year would be better.

  * * *

  Sitting in the back of the cab some time after three a.m., Warren decided it was a good job that he hadn’t been called out. Without intending to, he’d drunk a fair bit more than he’d planned. Susan, for her part, had fallen asleep the moment the taxi had pulled away from the house.

  Looking out of the window, he watched as a group of scantily dressed twenty-something girls wobbled and giggled their way down the road. His thoughts turned dark. New Year’s Eve was the biggest party night of the year. How many young women fitting Richard Cameron’s tastes were walking home alone right at this very minute? And where was Cameron? Was he cruising around in whatever vehicle he now drove looking for victims? At Warren’s suggestion the traffic police, busy looking for drink drivers, had all been given a copy of Cameron’s photograph and asked to keep an eye out for anybody suspicious. It was a long shot, but maybe the predator would be unable to resist the temptation of so many young women out and about.

  Regardless, Warren knew that for the next few nights he would be sleeping with one ear open, waiting for a call to tell him that another young woman hadn’t made it home.

  New Year

  Chapter 58

  Much to Warren’s surprise and relief, the first two days of the new year passed by relatively peacefully. No new reports came in of either missing young women or dead bodies. Unfortunately, the briefing notes emailed to him were similarly uneventful with no significant new leads. Traffic continued to plod away at the CCTV analysis but there was nothing to report as yet.

  Warren and Susan had made the effort to go to church on New Year’s Day, before driving out to a local carvery for a Sunday lunch. After a brisk, bracing walk followed by steaming hot chocolate in a quaint country pub, the couple headed back home.

  Before settling down for the evening Warren phoned the hospital to check on the progress of Melanie Clearwater. The nurse answering recognised his voice and informed him that she was stable, but the ward would be closed to visitors for at least another twenty-four hours.

  The following day was a bank holiday, since the New Year had fallen over the weekend. Warren and Susan spent the day in the traditional manner: queuing to get into B&Q in Cambridge, then painting the spare bedroom. By early evening, Susan had settled down to plan for the coming week and so Warren phoned the hospital again.

  This time, the ward nurse put him through to Melanie’s consultant.

  “Ah, Chief Inspector. Melanie has made considerable progress. Her temperature is down and she is quite lucid. In fact she is quite stressed about not being able to speak to you. Strictly speaking, the ward is under quarantine for the next twelve to twenty-four hours, but I am somewhat concerned that Melanie is making herself ill through worry.”

  “I see,” said Warren, wondering where this was going.

  “With that in mind, I have gained permission for you to enter the ward as long as you are prepared to follow our strict infection protocols.”

  “Of course.” Warren felt a rush of excitement. At last, some progress. Calling to Susan to let her know where he was going, he phoned Tony Sutton. The DI was enthusiastic.

  “At last, progress on something. I feel as though I’m banging my head on a bloody brick wall here.”

  Warren was sympathetic, but declined an offer to meet at the hospital. He had a feeling that the doctors and nurses were going out on a limb to smuggle him into the ward and he didn’t want to abuse that.

  Arriving at the hospital, he was escorted to a staff locker room where he was issued with a set of surgical scrubs fresh out of a sealed packet and a hairnet. After stripping to his underwear and donning the sterile garb he was shown how to clean his hands and forearms as if he were about to go into surgery.

  Finally he was ready. Warren had made certain to take a digital tape-recorder with him to get a full and complete record of what she said and as he reached her bed he turned it on, placing it on the bedside table. This time her speech was less halting than the previous visit; her colour was still pale but a faint hint of pink highlighted her cheeks.

  As before, she was confident that she had recognised her attacker
, although she couldn’t now give any details beyond that he was white and probably in his thirties. She couldn’t recall his hair colour or any distinguishing marks. He had approached her on Truman Street two days before the attack, offering her five hundred pounds if she would accompany him to a birthday party.

  She admitted that she wouldn’t normally take such a risk, but she couldn’t afford to turn down five hundred pounds. Another girl had made a note of the man’s licence plate, but Melanie couldn’t remember who.

  Moving on, Warren asked if there was anything unusual about the job.

  “It was a bit weird, but I’ve done worse. The man drove me to a bed and breakfast over on Gravel Rise. You can hire rooms by the hour and the owner has a problem remembering faces.” It was probably useless, he knew; nevertheless, Warren made a note of the address and decided to send a couple of officers around to question the owner.

  “When we got there, there was an older man waiting. The bloke who paid me said that the old man hadn’t had any for a while and that he had to cum. He was really insistent about that. A bit odd, I thought, taking such an interest. I did wonder if he would stay and watch, but he didn’t. He left the room. He also insisted that I use a condom.”

  Clearwater sniffed. “I always do if I don’t know them. It’s safer, innit?”

  Warren wasn’t quite sure how simply knowing a client would protect her from any diseases that he might have, but said nothing.

  “So what happened then?”

  “Well, we sat down and discussed the state of the economy — what do you think bloody happened?”

  Warren shrugged an apology. It had been a silly question on the surface of it, but he had to be certain.

  “Were there any…problems?”

  “No. The old guy was a bit out of practice and it took him a while but he managed it in the end.”

  “So you don’t think he could have been angry?”

  Clearwater shrugged. “He seemed pretty satisfied.”

  “What about the younger man, the one who set it up?”

  “He came back in again and asked if he had cum. Bloody obsessed he was, even looked in the waste-paper basket to check I wasn’t lying. Guess he’d have wanted a refund if I hadn’t performed as expected. I think the old guy was a bit embarrassed. Then he told me to get my clothes on again and said he’d call me a cab to take me back to Truman Street.”

  “So he didn’t drive you back?”

  She shook her head. “They never do. Guys will do anything when they’re all horny, then as soon as they’ve shot their load they get all repulsed and don’t want to know any more.”

  Warren looked down at the brief sketch of events and decided to see if he could fill in any details.

  “So, starting from the top, let’s see what else you can remember. Can you be more specific about the date and the time of this first meeting?”

  She shook her head, clearly frustrated, and Warren was quick to reassure her.

  “Don’t worry. You said that there was another girl around. We’ll interview her.” He almost winced at the white lie. Despite their best efforts they hadn’t been able to track down anyone who had seen Melanie getting into the client’s car.

  “Do you remember anything more about the men’s appearance?”

  Again, she shook her head. “The younger man was about thirty and white. The older guy was fifty or sixty with grey hair. That’s all I can remember.”

  “Clean-shaven or bearded?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you hear either of them use a name?”

  Her brow furrowed under the bandages as she tried to remember. “No…not that I remember. It was weird, though. I did get the feeling that they might know each other. I mean, really know each other.”

  “Why was that?”

  Again she shrugged. “I can’t remember. It was just how I felt at the time.”

  Warren could see that she was starting to tire again. Besides which, he could see that she wasn’t going to be the most reliable of witnesses. Any halfway decent defence lawyer would tear holes in her leaky testimony.

  “Moving on to the night you were attacked — tell us what happened.”

  Again, the young woman’s testimony was sketchy and full of holes.

  “I was standing on the kerb a few metres down from the alley. I had my back to the pavement and was looking at the road, waiting for clients. I didn’t hear him approach. I think he came through the alley? Anyhow, he called my name and I turned around and saw him. I recognised him immediately.

  “He asked how I was and if I wanted to earn some more money. I’m not sure how it happened but we suddenly seemed to be standing in the alley where no one could see us. He had his wallet out and I remembered how much he’d paid me before…” At this, her voice began to shake. “I can’t remember any more. Everything goes kind of hazy.”

  Warren let her compose herself.

  “You’ve done well,” he reassured her. “There are several promising lines of inquiry here and I’ll make sure the team gets everything that you’ve told me. In the meantime, if you can remember anything else you can get me on this number.”

  As he put his coat on he noticed the huge bunch of plastic flowers. They were the only ones on the bedside table and he felt a wave of sorrow pass over him. It said something when the only person who actually cared that you were in here was your pimp. Warren fought off the sadness. He’d seen the way that Yvonne Fairweather had looked at the young woman. No, make that two people who cared that you were in here. On impulse, Warren picked up her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, rules be damned. She squeezed back, smiling slightly. Make that three, he decided.

  Tuesday 3rd January

  Chapter 59

  Thirty-eight years old. Twenty-four hours ago he had been thirty-seven. Warren stared at himself in the mirror. The face staring back was the same as the one that had looked back yesterday; yet it felt older. So much older. Why? The dark brown hair still had no traces of grey, the features still sharply defined. Perhaps it was his best mate’s card — younger by two months, he made some sort of joke every year along the lines of ‘no matter how old I get, you’ll always be older’. Or perhaps it was Susan teasing him that he could now no longer claim to be in his mid-thirties, he’d have to start describing himself as late thirties.

  Ageing didn’t used to bother him. He could never understand why so many of his friends became morose as they passed into their thirties. It wasn’t as if life were slipping him by, with nothing to show for it: happily married with his own house, a good education, plenty of friends and the rank of Detective Chief Inspector — not a bad place to be for a man of his age. What, then? Why was this year so different? He wasn’t even forty and was in robust health. All the statistics suggested he wasn’t even halfway to the grave yet.

  Maybe that was it. In the past few weeks, he’d gazed upon the bodies of four young women, struck down in the prime of life, and buried a woman his heart had thought would live for ever. So much death. No wonder he was in such a downbeat mood.

  Downstairs the doorbell rang. Reflexively, he glanced at his watch. Twenty past eight. The hour’s lie-in had been a small birthday present to himself. Susan had only just left for school; the teachers were having a training day so she’d enjoyed the lie-in with him, giving him his present and a little taster of the treat he could expect when he got home from work tonight.

  Swapping his towel for a dressing gown, he hurried downstairs, the doorbell ringing for the second time. Opening the door, he apologised to the delivery man standing in the cold, the icy blast of air turning his freshly showered skin to goose-bumps. The Parcelforce worker grunted and handed over the electronic clipboard for him to sign, before passing across the large package.

  Taking it into the kitchen, he flicked the kettle on then studied the parcel. It was large and soft, clearly some sort of clothing. The neatly handwritten label on the front was addressed to him, with ‘Angleterre’ below the pos
tcode. The top right of the package was covered in several euros’ worth of French postage stamps, plus a delivery label from an international parcel firm. The postmark was blurry, but with a bit of squinting he made out ‘Les Orres, Hautes-Alpes’. Warren smiled at his detective work. Jeff had mentioned that he and Felicity would be spending the New Year skiing in the Alps with another family.

  Using a pair of scissors from the junk drawer, Warren carefully opened the package to reveal a thick black padded ski jacket and a birthday card.

  ‘Something to keep you warm the next time you get called out. Happy Birthday. Lots of love from Felicity, Jeff, Jimmy, Sammy and Annie. xx’

  Warren was stunned at the generosity of the gift and its thoughtfulness. He knew nothing about skiing or the clothes one wore, but it was clearly expensive. Hell, the postage alone must have been a small fortune. He knew the couple could afford it, but still…

  The kettle clicked off and Warren poured himself his first coffee of the day. The brew was too hot for his taste, so he jogged back upstairs and got dressed whilst he waited for it to cool. A quick wrestle with a comb — he knew it was time for a haircut when his hair started misbehaving after his morning shower — and a squirt of the new aftershave Susan had bought him and he was back downstairs, the coffee now just the right temperature. Forcing himself to eat a banana, he gulped his coffee down, slipped on his new jacket and, after a quick once-over in the mirror to admire it, he left for the office, grabbing the box of cakes he’d bought for break-time.

  The CID office was in full swing when he entered, only the Christmas decorations a reminder that the world was just returning from a major party season. Various colleagues wished him a happy birthday as he entered his office. Placing the cakes on top of his filing cabinet — he knew from prior observation that if he put them anywhere near the coffee urn, the early-bird gannets would polish them off before the rest of the office got a look-in — he logged onto his computer.

  The holiday season had reduced the volume of email somewhat, with much of the make-work and gossip absent. Nevertheless, he spent the better part of an hour filing and deleting rubbish — it seemed that not even Christmas and New Year were reason enough for the force’s health and safety committee to rest. He moved the latest guidelines on the need for ‘electrical safety testing of personal electronic devices brought into the workplace’ to the folder marked ‘crap to read when bored’.