Road Closed

by Leigh Russell

  ‘But if the gas leak started around the time she went out -’ Geraldine began.

  The DCI finished her thought. ‘She could have left the gas on deliberately once she knew she’d be out of the house all night.’

  ‘But how could she have predicted an explosion? It takes a critical amount of gas in the air,’ someone pointed out.

  ‘She knew he smoked. It was a fair bet.’

  A number of officers broke into scattered discussions with their immediate neighbours about the feasibility of predicting a gas explosion.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ the DCI held up her hand for silence. ‘But the victim smoked so a gas leak would certainly be high risk. It all hinges on what time the gas leak started. We know what time Sophie Cliff arrived at work. Now we need to wait for the full Fire Investigation Team’s report.’

  ‘He might’ve gone down and heated something up after she’d gone out,’ someone suggested, ‘and left the gas on himself.’

  ‘Enough speculation. We’ll have to wait for Scene of Crime officers and the FIT to finish. In the meantime, the adjoining properties have been evacuated while the gas supply’s being checked just in case, though there’s no reason to suspect a leak was caused by anything other than the tap left on in the Cliffs’ house,’ the DCI concluded. ‘Now let’s get going and see what else we can find.’

  Back at her desk, Geraldine scanned the Fire Investigation Team’s initial findings which confirmed the fire had been caused by gas leaking from an open tap. They were still at the scene. It had taken time to control the blaze and the property had sustained substantial damage. After talking to neighbours, they had been able to pinpoint the time of the explosion: just before six in the morning. Thomas Cliff had been in the kitchen when the gas had ignited. He had been thrown to the floor, probably stunned, where he died of smoke inhalation. Sophie Cliff had been on her way home at the time.

  Geraldine sat in the privacy of her office and sighed. Having an office to herself wasn’t as satisfying as she had expected. She missed the bustle of the Incident Room. She grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair and went to check her schedule for the day. The list was ready. She was assigned to work with Detective Sergeant Ian Peterson.

  ‘Excellent,’ she muttered under her breath. Peterson was a reliable officer. She had appreciated his steady good sense on their last case together.

  Geraldine found him perched on a desk chatting to a young blonde detective constable. Sprightly and well turned out, his hair combed flat once more, Peterson looked out of place in the dingy Incident Room. His shirt was pressed and his shoes polished. He looked more like a TV sports presenter than a detective.

  ‘Let’s go, Sergeant.’

  He slipped smoothly to his feet. ‘Yes, gov.’ Geraldine wasn’t sure, but she thought he winked at the seated constable and felt irritated. The sergeant grinned at her and she thought, with a pang, how young he looked.

  ‘Gordon again,’ he said as they left the station.

  ‘Better the devil you know.’

  Peterson nodded. ‘Just what I was thinking, gov.’ He grinned as he emphasized the last word. Geraldine pursed her lips.

  She ran through the gist of the report with Peterson as he drove. From its origins in the Middle Ages, Harchester had evolved into a sprawling jumble of incompatible styles of architecture. Still, in some sense, a market town, the heart of the place was its brand new shopping mall. Radiating out from the main shopping centre were streets of dilapidated Victorian properties, multiple bells indicating that they had been divided into apartments. Most of the buildings looked as though they were in urgent need of renovation. An occasional purpose built block of flats from the sixties added to the pervading air of neglect. As they drove further away from the centre of town, the tall properties gave way to smaller houses opening straight on to the pavement. Still further out, the streets were lined with conventional suburban semi-detached brick houses. These sported front gardens, wrought iron or wooden gates, and low picket fences or evergreen hedges separating them from the street. Geraldine had heard about an old part of Harchester, with buildings that were said to be genuine Tudor, but there was no sign of it as they drove through the town.

  Finally they climbed Harchester Hill. Here the houses were larger, detached, and concealed from the road by tall bushes.

  ‘Let’s hope there’s not going to be another explosion,’ Peterson said as they negotiated the road block and approached the damaged house.

  ‘They’re still investigating. They’ve cleared the neighbouring houses to avoid any danger of contamination but it’s quite safe.’ Geraldine hoped she sounded confident.

  The Chief Officer of the Fire Investigation Team was expecting them. A constable led them along a dark hallway into the burnt out shell of a kitchen. The place stank.

  ‘One of the gas taps was turned on,’ the fire officer explained. His eyes sparkled at them from a sooty face, like a Hollywood version of a Victorian chimney sweep. He indicated a mangled twist of metal, and pointed at fire damaged plaster on the ceiling. ‘At the rate the gas was escaping, it must have been leaking for several hours to reach a flammable mixture in the atmosphere. The explosion occurred here.’ He touched a crusty central hob surrounded by a blackened worktop. ‘We’re still looking at it. From the direction of damage to the plasterwork and flooring, it looks as though the victim entered the room there, went to turn on the light…’ He nodded at a burnt out electric switch by the door.

  ‘You mean it wasn’t a cigarette that caused the explosion?’

  The fire officer frowned. ‘Looks like he switched the light on and sparked it, but it could have been a cigarette. We haven’t found evidence he was smoking when it started, but that’s hardly surprising.’ He glanced around the burnt out kitchen and shrugged.

  ‘Would switching a light on be enough to cause an explosion?’

  ‘Given the right fuel oxygen mix in the air, yes. That’s all it takes. It happens.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Peterson muttered under his breath, gazing round. ‘Just from switching on the light.’

  The fireman nodded. ‘You’d hardly credit it, would you?’

  ‘Makes you think twice about turning the lights on.’ Geraldine frowned at the sergeant’s flippant tone.

  The fireman smiled. ‘There’s really nothing to worry about, as long as you don’t have a gas leak.’ He turned back to his exploration of the ruined kitchen, picking his way carefully through the debris.

  ‘If the kitchen’s like that, I dread to think what the victim must look like,’ Peterson said as they left.

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Geraldine replied briskly, doing her best to conceal her own dismay.

  11

  Mortuary

  That afternoon, Geraldine and Peterson met at the mortuary.

  ‘George Talbot,’ the pathologist introduced himself.

  ‘DI Steel and this is DS Peterson.’

  They were about to follow Dr Talbot through the swing doors when Kathryn Gordon arrived.

  ‘Not much mess,’ the doctor announced cheerfully. ‘No spilt blood and guts with this one. Other than from my intervention,’ he added. Above his mask, Geraldine thought his blue eyes were smiling. No one smiled back.

  Apart from the long, neatly sewn up incision across his chest, and the horribly white flesh, Thomas Cliff could have been asleep.

  ‘His face was black with soot but he’s cleaned up nicely. The widow’s coming in soon to identify him,’ the doctor explained. ‘You can see he’s hardly burnt at all. Just the palms of the hands, here, and again on the knees and shins. He managed to crawl out of the kitchen into the next room but that’s as far as he got.’ He indicated the charred palms of the dead man’s hands and the burn marks on his legs. ‘He pulled a rug over his head, but didn’t manage to keep his hands inside it. He was holding on to it.’

  ‘The rug didn’t save him,’ the DCI said.

  ‘It probably protected him from the flames on the
back of his head and across his shoulders, but it was the smoke that got him. If the fire service had got to him sooner, it’s possible he might have survived, but he was trapped for too long before they found him.’

  ‘If the door from the next room into wherever – was it the hall? – had been open, could he have got out?’ Peterson wanted to know.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ the doctor replied. ‘The dining room might’ve reached flashover if it was ventilated by an open door.’

  ‘Wouldn’t an open door have lowered the temperature?’ the sergeant asked. The doctor shrugged. ‘And why the hell didn’t anyone hear the explosion?’ Peterson went on. He sounded angry.

  ‘They did,’ the DCI answered, ‘a neighbour called up almost immediately, which is probably why the victim escaped being burnt. But it was still too late. They didn’t get to him in time.’

  ‘What about the windows?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘The smoke must have overcome him too quickly. The presence of cyanide in his blood was already nearing potentially lethal levels –’

  ‘Cyanide?’ Geraldine interrupted. ‘Are you saying he was poisoned?’

  ‘And the fire was started to cover it up,’ Peterson added.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant,’ the doctor answered. ‘You’ll have to ask the fire investigation officers for the specific source but cyanide can derive from any number of burning substances, wool, cotton, paper, plastics and other polymers, for example, any number of which might’ve been present in the kitchen, and cyanide poisoning, even before it reached such a dangerous level, would have incapacitated him. It prevents the body from carrying oxygen. He managed to crawl as far as the adjoining room before he lost consciousness. The cyanide might’ve prevented him from even attempting to escape. At the very least it would’ve contributed to his difficulties, and prolonged his exposure to fatal concentrations of carbon monoxide which killed him.’ He sighed. ‘In any event, he didn’t make it. The combination of cyanide and carbon monoxide did for him.’

  ‘So he died from smoke inhalation?’

  ‘Yes. That’s basically it.’ The doctor tapped the neat incision across Thomas Cliff’s chest as he listed the symptoms it concealed. ‘He died from respiratory failure although there’s significant pulmonary injury evident, which is hardly surprising. There’s swelling of the airways, and soot evident in the nostrils and throat. The respiratory tract is full of black mucus, also present in the trachea and lungs. Oxygen levels are low in the blood, and cyanide and carbon monoxide present, as I mentioned, in lethal levels. He died of asphyxiation from the smoke. There’s no question about that.’

  Geraldine gazed down at the corpse. Thomas Cliff looked so peaceful. It was strange to think of all the internal damage concealed beneath the neat bloodless scar. The sergeant and the DCI left straight away. Geraldine waited for the widow who was expected shortly. She watched as the body was wrapped in sheets, only the face showing white above a sheet tucked up to the chin.

  Sophie Cliff arrived ten minutes early, wearing a grey coat, her hair concealed beneath a navy scarf. She was very thin.

  She peered nervously at Geraldine through thick lensed spectacles, her magnified eyes bloodshot from weeping. ‘Are you the doctor?’ Geraldine held up her identity card and introduced herself. ‘A police inspector? Where is he? Can I see him?’

  ‘This way, Mrs Cliff.’ Geraldine gave the widow a sympathetic smile before leading the way, her heels tapping out a subdued rhythm on the floor. At her side, Sophie Cliff padded noiselessly.

  Thomas Cliff had been laid out in readiness. Geraldine glanced at Mrs Cliff and looked away. There was something shocking about the dead man’s composure beside his wife’s anguish. Geraldine wondered if Thomas Cliff had been as serene in life; certainly not in his final moments, the skin from his hands and shins clawed away by unbearable heat.

  The widow didn’t move. Tears glistened on her pale cheeks as she stood crying silently.

  ‘Mrs Cliff, is this your husband? You can indicate your answer with a nod.’ Sophie Cliff didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. Geraldine lowered her voice. ‘Would you like to be left alone with him for a minute?’

  Sophie Cliff looked up. Geraldine was startled by the sudden harshness in her eyes. ‘A minute?’ Geraldine felt embarrassed by her clumsy offer of a moment alone with the dead man when Sophie Cliff had lost her whole future with him. There was a rustle of movement as the widow walked out of the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cliff,’ Geraldine said, catching up with her in the corridor. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened.’

  Sophie Cliff spoke in a furious whisper. ‘I want to know who did this to my husband.’

  ‘I’m not sure we can say anyone’s to blame –’

  ‘I want to know who’s responsible. Tell me when you find him.’

  Geraldine frowned. ‘We’re doing what we can,’ she repeated helplessly. Sophie Cliff turned and strode away down the corridor, her feet falling silently on the scrubbed floor.

  Geraldine sighed and made her way back to the police station to type up her report but she found it hard to settle. She kept thinking about the widow’s eyes glaring wildly in her pale face, like the eyes of a trapped animal. That was what grief looked like, Geraldine thought with a guilty pang; she hadn’t even cried at her own mother’s funeral.

  12

  Widow

  ‘You’ve all read the Fire Investigation Team’s initial findings on the damage at 17 Harchester Close. The gas leak wasn’t caused by defective equipment.’ The DCI flipped through the report. ‘The kitchen was almost new, but not new enough to have teething problems. The appliances were installed by an accredited experienced gas fitter ten months ago. DC Hargreaves spoke to him and the fitter was adamant he followed correct procedures and the paperwork was in order to show everything had been properly fitted and tested. There was no evidence of any fault. The gas tap had been functioning fine since the kitchen was installed. There’s no reason for it to suddenly malfunction and the FIT have found nothing to suggest it did. They’re positive we’re looking at human error. Which opens up the possibility that we’re dealing with a crime scene, if the gas was left on deliberately, a possibility the FIT raised from the start. Polly.’ She nodded at the detective constable who had been talking to Ian Peterson that morning.

  ‘The victim took out a life insurance policy ten months ago,’ the constable said. ‘His life was insured for a million pounds.’

  ‘There’s nothing remarkable in that,’ the DCI took over again, ‘considering the victim got married two years ago, and they bought their house three months later. The property is currently valued at nearly a million pounds, and they’re making substantial mortgage repayments. It’s quite in order for him to have insured the house against his death. It was insured against his life only, not hers. That’s not unusual except that she was earning more than her husband which makes it slightly odd that they took out insurance on his life and not hers.’

  ‘Perhaps they were thinking of starting a family and she planned to give up work?’ someone suggested.

  ‘Yes, they might’ve been thinking of starting a family. The widow’s not that young. Late thirties.’ Geraldine felt herself blush and looked down. The room suddenly felt hot and stuffy.

  ‘So now the house is paid off.’ Peterson said. ‘She could sell up and walk away with millions.’

  ‘A million,’ Geraldine corrected him.

  ‘Let’s not get sidetracked into speculation,’ the DCI snapped.

  ‘It’s motive, not speculation,’ the sergeant mumbled audibly.

  Gordon ignored him. She turned and tapped at a photograph on the Board before looking round the room again. ‘The victim’s wife.’ She didn’t say anything else but a question hung in the air. Geraldine studied the picture of the woman she had met in the mortuary the previous day. Sophie Cliff’s straight mousey coloured hair grew in a long fringe over her forehead. Her eyes looked unnatura
lly large behind her glasses.

  ‘Now let’s get going,’ the DCI said briskly and the team stirred. There was a general air of activity and purpose. Geraldine checked the schedule and found she was working with DS Peterson again. She found him talking to DC Polly Hargreaves.

  ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t find herself having to give chase in that skirt,’ Geraldine muttered as they walked away.

  ‘More likely find herself being chased.’ Peterson laughed. Geraldine forced a smile. She hoped the sergeant wasn’t going to allow himself to be distracted from the case. They were both excited to discover they had been assigned to interview Sophie Cliff and her neighbours, and pleased to be working side by side again.

  They drew into the kerb alongside a screen of tall laurel bushes. On one side of the Cliffs’ house cast iron numerals displayed the house number on a white fence post at the end of the hedge, beyond which a wide driveway led to a double garage. The house itself was concealed from the road.

  ‘Nice,’ Peterson murmured as he followed Geraldine through the gate and caught sight of a large double fronted house. Matching waist high fir trees grew in terracotta pots on either side of the front door which opened as soon as the bell chimed. A plump middle-aged woman stood framed in the doorway, arms crossed, face slightly belligerent. ‘Whatever you want, the answer’s no.’ Geraldine held out her identity card and the woman’s expression softened.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, glancing up the path behind them. ‘We’ve had reporters knocking since early morning.’

  For all her willingness to help, the neighbour was unable to tell them anything new. ‘We didn’t see much of them,’ she admitted apologetically. ‘They only moved in about a year ago. We invited them in for drinks at Christmas but they never came. She was very polite. Said they were busy. They seem – seemed a nice young couple but they kept themselves to themselves. She works of course, so it’s not as if she’s around much during the day. She’s a doctor, I think. She goes out at all times. We hear her car coming and going at night.’