The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘Headache?’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘I’ll see if Nursey can give me an aspirin or two.’ Rob patted me on the arm. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Don’t get me started on what you can do.’

  ‘Oh, I know what you’d like me to do.’

  ‘Never in a million years, Langton.’

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of, Kerrigan. You wouldn’t be the first to fall for me. It’s probably best if you don’t fight it.’

  ‘Fight what? The urge to throw up?’

  We retraced our steps along the corridor, bickering all the way. It was a relief, somehow. It took my mind off what I was about to say to Superintendent Godley. The chorus of bad language at the back of my mind had cranked up a notch, adding a little variety at least. Shit bugger piss damn fuck …

  We rounded a corner, and in spite of myself I was laughing at something Rob had said, looking at him rather than where we were going, so it was only when his face slipped to neutral, uncertainly, then snapped into straight lines that I stopped grinning and turned my head. Godley and Judd were waiting for us, jackets on, grim expressions on their faces and I felt my own face mirror theirs. I was ready to let them know the worst.

  ‘It’s not him.’

  I stared at Judd, wrong-footed. ‘That’s what I was going to say. How did you—’

  ‘There’s another body. Another young woman. He’s done it again.’ Godley sounded drained. ‘Vic Blackstaff couldn’t have done it. Best guess is that it happened in the last three hours. While Blackstaff was here, being operated on.’

  I nodded. ‘From Kelly Staples’ statement, there was nothing to suggest that he was the killer, even if it does sound as if he was up to something he shouldn’t have been. Unluckily for Victor, she got spooked and lashed out. She just got it wrong.’

  ‘She wasn’t the only one,’ Godley said tersely.

  DI Judd took over. ‘She’ll need to be charged. We’re not going to waste time dealing with it. I’ll call the borough CID office and get the on-call DC to take over. You’ll have to fill me in, Kerrigan.’

  I should have been grateful that he hadn’t stuck me with letting borough CID know about their new case, but I managed to control my gratitude. It meant I had to talk to him, for one thing. I smiled brightly. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Then get going,’ Godley said. ‘I’ll see you at the new crime scene.’

  And just like that, we were done with Kelly Staples; her fate was for someone else to decide. I couldn’t help but think she was one more victim of the Burning Man, one more bit of fallout from his crimes.

  We needed to catch him, and soon. But the fact that we were on our way to see another body proved that we weren’t even close.

  LOUISE

  ‘Hi. This is Rebecca. You’ve got through to my voicemail, not to me, but leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Don’t just hang up! Speak! After the beep! That would be … now!’

  The voice filled my office, warm and lively, conjuring its owner so vividly for me that I could close my eyes and smell the faintest breath of her perfume over the sterile air-conditioning that kept my workplace at a steady 20 degrees, regardless of the weather in the streets. Outside, it was a cold and damp Friday morning in late November, dark and grey. Inside, my home-from-home was cosily lined with colourful files and folders and gently lit, as recommended by the ergonomic advisers whom my employers, Preyhard Gunther, had consulted when fitting out the London office. There are people who advise on the best conditions for keeping chickens to ensure maximum laying; at PG, if the associates were the chickens, billable hours were eggs and I was a champion layer who qualified for that unwanted status symbol, a foldaway bed under my desk. In a drawer, pyjamas and toiletries. On the back of the door, an entire outfit for a working day, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Down the hall there were lavish bathrooms with power showers, and catering could be summoned up by lifting the phone any hour of the day or night. All designed to keep us happy, keep us working and, most importantly, keep us in the office.

  And I had been good. I barely had a life. All weekend, every weekend. Evenings. Early mornings. In the last couple of years, I had made few arrangements to meet friends and broken those commitments I had allowed myself to risk. I had given away tickets to the theatre and concerts (all gifts to me from grateful clients, but still, it rankled occasionally when a thank-you email gushed about how it had been the performance of the decade).

  I stared at the big phone on my desk, wanting to ring Rebecca’s mobile again, just to hear her voice. I settled on calling her work number, letting it ring on speakerphone as I carried on crafting an exquisitely dull but effective email destined for my opposite number on the other side.

  ‘This is Rebecca Haworth. I’m not at my desk at the moment, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If your call is urgent, please press zero for the Ventnor Chase switchboard and ask for my assistant, Jess Barker.’

  Less lively, more polished, equally warm, very assured. My lovely friend Rebecca. My oldest friend. My least reliable friend, currently. But then, who was I to criticise her for that? I had missed emails from her over the past few months, losing them in the welter of work that pulsed into my inbox every minute of every hour of every day. If I didn’t tackle the emails that day, they were gone for ever, pushed into obscurity and archived by the firm’s inexorable system. Every hour was accountable; I didn’t have time for personal email, I told myself. There was nothing to feel guilty about.

  Except that now, when I wanted to talk to her – to her, not a machine – there was no reply.

  The phone had beeped while I was thinking about Rebecca, and I found myself leaving a quick, half-mumbled message that she should call me, that I was thinking of her, that we needed to see one another soon, to catch up. I reached out and pushed a button to end the call, feeling my face burn as I thought back over what I had said, and how. Stupid, to be what anyone would see as a high-powered lawyer while lacking the confidence to talk on the phone. Ridiculous, to feel my heart jump every time it rang, to have to wipe my palms on my skirt surreptitiously before reaching out to answer it. I didn’t like it, though. I didn’t like how unguarded you could be on the phone. I didn’t like how you could find yourself saying what you really thought. I had trapped people that way before, reading more than they knew into what they had given away to me on the phone. I had made suggestions that had won cases for the firm. I knew better than most that we were engaged in a high-wire act that most days, everyone managed to perform. Now and then, someone fell.

  A brassy head came around the door.

  ‘Knock, knock. Want a cup of tea? You’ve got that meeting in five minutes. Have something first. Put a bit of colour in your face.’

  ‘I’m OK, Martine. But thanks,’ I said, looking up for a second before returning to the screen in front of me.

  Martine, my secretary. Thirty years of experience, eight shades of red in her hair, an unlimited source of gossip, good humour and unsolicited advice. It wasn’t her fault that I tensed up when she came into the room, or that I, alone among my colleagues, found her intimidating. She had seen lawyers come and lawyers go, and I was too young to be able to feel comfortable about asking her to do things for me. I thought she didn’t like me and she certainly didn’t rate me as a lawyer. It made me work harder, and buy her elaborate presents at Christmas or for her birthday. I did my own filing and photocopying; I bent over backwards to avoid giving her work to do. So Martine was bored. She devoted herself instead to being the company’s unofficial social secretary, and my unwanted fairy godmother.

  ‘You feeling all right?’ She had come all the way into the room. ‘Only you look white as anything. Got a headache, have you? Want a painkiller? I’ve got some Nurofen.’

  I tried to ward off the pills with a quick shake of my head and a smile, but she was determined.

  ‘I’ve got aspirin
cos you’re supposed to take that every day in case of strokes, at least that’s what they say now but they’ll probably say something else next week. Let’s see. I think there’s some paracetamol in the first-aid kit. But you’ve got to watch that. Someone told me it only takes five tablets to kill you. Imagine!’ Her face, impeccably made-up, was alive with delight at the very idea.

  ‘I don’t need anything, really.’

  ‘Someone else might have something. I can ask. One of the other girls might have Solpadeine. Do you take that, love? Or can you not have codeine?’

  Somehow, Martine had got the idea that I was some sort of religious zealot. It was probably because I never drank at anything work-related, be it a lunch with colleagues or a night out with clients. The Christmas party was no exception. I only went because it would have looked bad to avoid it, and tried to fade into the background as much as possible, sipping a sparkling water until it was a reasonable time to go home. Martine found that incomprehensible and came up with a reason for it that made sense to her. I had never tried to explain it, after all. It seemed easier just to let her make up her own mind. But it involved me in futile, ludicrous conversations now and then.

  ‘I can have codeine. I mean, I don’t need it, but if I did, I could.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ll have that, will you? I see.’ She looked arch, as if codeine was first cousin to cocaine, as if I’d managed to find myself a loophole and could spend many a happy hour hopped up on over-the-counter medication.

  I was gathering up my papers for the meeting. ‘I’ll just be off, then. I’ve got everything I need, thanks.’ Then, thinking fast, ‘If my friend rings – Rebecca, you might remember her – can you get a number from her so I can call her back?’

  Her eyes had gone straight to the picture of the two of us that was stuck to the wall above my desk, a picture from years ago, when I had been thinner, paler, even more quiet than I was now, and Rebecca had been at the height of her young beauty, flushed like a rose, yelling in triumph at the end of her exams. It wasn’t a good picture of me – I was looking at Rebecca, not the camera, and the expression on my face was wary – but she was so very much herself in it, so very much alive, that I had always kept it as a reminder of how she’d been when I first knew her. As she grew older, she hadn’t become any less beautiful, but her face had changed, refined a little, and her eyes, the last time I’d seen her, had been sad – so, so sad.

  ‘Can’t get hold of her?’

  Martine’s voice was sympathetic, and I found myself telling her that no, I hadn’t been able to reach her, and what did she think I should do?

  ‘Go round,’ she said instantly. ‘Knock on her door. You know where she lives, don’t you? Too much time emailing people these days, ringing them, texting them – not enough face-to-face time.’

  It was one of Martine’s favourite hobbyhorses, the isolation of modern life, and I slipped away to my meeting with a feeling of relief, but also with a renewed sense of determination. Martine, for once, had had a good idea. I did know where Rebecca lived, and what was more, I had a key. I would go after my meeting, I decided, and sat down at the table with a light heart for the first time in weeks.

  The good mood lasted me all the way from the office to her flat’s front door. I had rung her landline on my walk from the station, so I had known she wasn’t likely to be there, but when my key turned in the lock, dead air came out to meet me and I couldn’t suppress a shiver. The flat was empty, I knew without looking. The question was whether she had left any clue as to where she’d gone, and if she had, whether I could find it. I had spent a lot of time tidying up after Rebecca, one way or another. Covering up. I knew things about her that no one else did – that no one else should. And she knew a fair bit about me.

  Shaking myself out of my trance I closed the door behind me, took off my coat, and started to search.

  Chapter Two

  MAEVE

  It wouldn’t have been such a nightmare to get out of the hospital if the press hadn’t already picked up on the fact that we had a suspect in intensive care. They were on us like a pack of dogs as soon as the boss showed his face outside the back door of the building. A babble of shouted questions exploded from the far side of the road, where the media had been corralled behind metal barriers.

  ‘Superintendent Godley! Over here, sir.’

  ‘Have you got him?’

  ‘Is it true you have a suspect in custody?’

  I slipped past the massed press, my presence unremarked, heading for my car. I’d be on the news, probably, but only my mother and her friends would spot me. I went out of my way to avoid seeing myself onscreen, as a rule. Untidy light-brown hair, a set expression, hunched shoulders: none of these things fit in with my image of myself, but undeniably they were what appeared on the TV every time I stalked across a cameraman’s field of vision. My mother’s voice was ringing in my ears: Ah, Maeve, if only you’d remembered to stand up straight. I bent my head, looked at the ground and kept going, hearing the slap of Rob’s shoes on the tarmac as he strode out to keep up with me. Not for the first time, I was glad to be out of the limelight, glad that Godley was the star of the show, even though he hated it. For such a high-profile senior officer, he wasn’t the sort to court attention. His statements were businesslike, his press conferences orderly, and if he had nothing to say, he said nothing. But everything he said and did was news, especially at the moment. The level of interest in the Burning Man was nothing short of hysteria. Godley spent a great deal of time on the phone to newspaper editors and TV bosses, begging them for a bit of sensitivity and responsibility in the way they reported on the case. We needed space to work in, but if they had the opportunity, they dived straight in. All in the public interest, apparently – and if they meant that the public was interested, they weren’t wrong. But I couldn’t see how conjecture about our lack of success helped anyone.

  Today, I doubted Godley had much he wanted to share with the press. Particularly today, when all the news was bad. An hour earlier, he would have been planning his speech at the press conference where we were to reveal the good news.

  Don’t worry, everyone. It’s all over. You can get back to enjoying the run-up to the festive season. Don’t mind us; we’re off for a pint.

  All of that was on hold, indefinitely. I couldn’t help feeling cold at the thought of where we were going and what we were going to find there. Another body. Another woman, brutalised and burned beyond recognition. And who he was – why he even did it in the first place – was as much a mystery now as it had been four bodies ago.

  ‘You OK?’ Rob had caught up with me at the pay station, where I was feeding an extraordinary number of coins into the machine. Surely I hadn’t been there for that long. I excavated the last few coins from the bottom of my bag, disentangling them from an old shredded tissue and pushing them bad-temperedly into the slot. The machine burped. I stabbed the button for a receipt and managed a smile.

  ‘Of course. All part of the job, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s me you’re talking to, Kerrigan. You don’t have to pretend.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Bit of a shitter, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re telling me. I thought we were done with this.’

  We both spoke lightly, but I knew he was feeling the way I was. Somehow, it made it worse that we’d had a break from the sick tension that was now pooling in my stomach and clenching my jaw, the tension that had been turning my days into marathons, stealing my sleep, keeping me at work. I’d done my best – we’d all been doing our best – to make sure this didn’t happen again. And we’d failed.

  ‘Jesus. Good parking.’

  The car was skewed across two spaces. ‘I was in a rush, OK?’ I unlocked the doors. ‘Get in, and less of the chat, or you’ll be walking to – where is it?’

  ‘Stadhampton Grove. It’s somewhere behind the Oval cricket ground. Part of an industrial estate.’

  ‘Do you know how to get there from here?’

  �
��Consider me your sat nav for the journey.’

  ‘Twat nav, more like,’ I muttered, shooting a grin at him before pulling out of my space. Well, spaces.

  The traffic had built up in the time I’d been in the hospital, and the trip from Kingston to the Oval was torture. Rob got on the phone as soon as we were on the road, calling Kev Cox, who was at the scene already. He was head of the forensic team and had managed the last four crime scenes; if you wanted one person to keep everything under control, Kev was your man. I’d never seen him anything less than relaxed. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to upset him.

  ‘Who found it? Just walking past, was he? Did uniform get his details? Oh, he’s still there? Good one.’

  I caught Rob’s eye and tapped my watch. He got what I meant straightaway.

  ‘What time was that, then?’

  He had his notepad on his knee, balancing on a big London A–Z that was, I noticed, on entirely the wrong page. Some help he was. He scrawled ‘3.17’ on the pad in big numbers, tilting it to show me. That settled it. Not that there had really been any doubt in my mind about Victor Blackstaff’s innocence.

  ‘No sign of anyone there, I suppose? Nothing left behind? Yeah, he’s just not making any mistakes. How long is it since the last one?’

  I could have told him that. Six days. And before that, twenty days. And before that, three weeks. Just over three weeks between the first and the second ones. He was speeding up, and that was bad news. The less time we had between killings, the more likely it was that more women would die.

  On the other hand, he had to be killing more frequently for a reason. Maybe he was feeling agitated. Unsettled. Maybe he was losing control and he’d start making mistakes.

  But he hadn’t made any so far.

  Rob was asking Kev about who else was at the scene but I tuned out, concentrating on the traffic. When he finally hung up, he turned to me. ‘How much of that did you get?’