The Burning

by Jane Casey

  ‘How did that go?’

  I turned to glare at Rob, who had caught up with me. ‘Just fine, thanks.’

  ‘Funny, because you look like you’re absolutely fuming.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He scanned my face. ‘You’re flushed. Your hair is all over the place. And when you get angry, you get this cute little white line across the bridge of your nose.’

  He reached out, as if to trace it, and I jerked my head back, out of range. ‘No touching, Langton, or I’ll do to you what I wanted to do to that pair.’

  ‘And what’s that exactly? You never know, I might enjoy it.’

  ‘Something that would be guaranteed to get me a reg nine if they made a complaint.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need another one of those. I’ve never known anyone attract so many bullshit complaints.’

  ‘Tell me about it. It’s nothing to do with the way I behave.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare suggest that it was.’ Rob looked over my shoulder and stopped smiling. ‘Here’s trouble.’

  Trouble, in the stocky shape of DC Belcott. Peter Belcott, AKA Peter Belcock, his first name never ever shortened to Pete. Trouble because he had an absolute gift for getting up people’s noses and a congenital inability to say the right thing. I turned to greet him without enthusiasm and was struck anew by how resolutely unattractive he was – small and square, with pouting lips.

  ‘I hear you two have been having a busy morning. Got everything sorted now, have you? Suspect in custody?’ He had a whiny voice that was even less appealing when it was edged with scorn.

  ‘Fuck off, Peter,’ Rob said cheerfully.

  ‘I know you wish I would. But the boss rang me personally.’ He rose up on his toes for a second and thrust his chest out, looking like a fat little pigeon mid-moult. ‘Asked me to come along and lend him my expertise. Apparently he doesn’t have quite as much faith in the two of you as you might think.’

  I didn’t believe him – not for a second. The man was a relentless self-promoter; if I took everything he said at face value, I would have been expecting him to be named as the new commissioner any day now.

  ‘The boss said you would fill me in on this one. What do you know?’

  I ran through it briefly. There wasn’t much in the way of facts to tell him, but I had plenty of speculation to share. In spite of myself, I got absorbed in what I was saying. ‘You have to wonder, don’t you, why he changed his MO. I mean, nothing seems to have been taken. Her hands aren’t tied. This place isn’t a park, not like the other ones.’ I looked around and shivered; it was a particularly bleak bit of ground, surrounded by high-walled industrial units and not overlooked. All the CCTV cameras I could see pointed inwards, at their own premises. We wouldn’t get much from them.

  Belcott shrugged. ‘His usual thing wasn’t working for him any more. So what? They do escalate, serial killers.’

  ‘This isn’t an escalation,’ I objected. ‘This is less violent, if anything.’

  ‘He’s not a machine,’ Rob pointed out. ‘Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Even for killers who seem to have remarkably good luck.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about luck.’ Superintendent Godley had joined us, looking uncharacteristically irritable. ‘He has the luck of the devil. We don’t even know who the latest victim is.’

  ‘And it’s strange he’s changed his MO. We might have expected him to get more violent, not less.’

  My words, spoken by Peter Belcott. I could have killed him where he stood. As it was, I was slightly surprised that he didn’t burst into flames from the heat of my glare.

  ‘Yes. That interests me too.’ The superintendent looked at me vaguely. ‘Can you hang on here until the body is moved?’ Before I could so much as nod, he’d turned away. ‘Rob, I want you to find Tom Judd and give him the full picture. I sent him home to get changed and have some food – give him a call and see if he’s ready to come back to work. If he is, you can pick him up. Peter, I’m heading back to the incident room. Come with me and we can discuss the differences on the way.’

  There was an extra spring in Belcott’s stride as he walked off in step with the superintendent. I jumped as Rob’s arm landed on my shoulders.

  ‘You never learn, do you? Never share your bright ideas with Belcock. Not unless you’re trying to get him a promotion.’

  I ducked out from under his arm. ‘What is it about “no touching” that you don’t understand?’

  ‘Don’t take it out on me,’ he protested, laughing.

  ‘I can’t believe I have to stay here.’ I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my coat, shivering. Dawn had come but the sky was still steel-grey with heavy clouds that promised rain. ‘I’m going to catch my death.’

  ‘Try and keep warm,’ Rob said, walking backwards. ‘Light a fire or something.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  I watched him saunter off, wishing I was going with him, or Godley, or anywhere, in fact. But I had been told to wait, and wait I would, until the poor anonymous victim had been removed or I froze to death – whichever came first.

  I was in a seriously bad mood by the time I got back to the incident room and the comparative comfort of my desk. No one had been eager for me to get back; no one had noticed I wasn’t there. I had been forgotten during my futile vigil at the crime scene where the temperature had hovered around zero as the day wore on. My feet were completely numb, my face raw, and my stomach was in tight knots. I hadn’t even had any breakfast yet and it was already getting on for two.

  I’d stood and watched as a SOCO ran up, pink with excitement, to tell Kev Cox that he’d found a petrol can thrown into a front garden two streets away from the industrial area. I’d waited as the black mortuary van reversed into position, ready to retrieve the body from the dump site. I’d glared at the media as represented by a pair of helicopters that hovered overhead, almost invisible against the grey sky as they circled, and the camera crews that had hired cherry pickers to get a mobile vantage point. The rest of the press had been kept well back behind the cordon and it was the only thing that made my situation bearable. The one conclusion I had come to as I stood there was that we weren’t going to be able to make much sense of how our victim had died until we found out how she lived. As with all the Burning Man’s murders, we had arrived at the end of the story. We needed to fill in the rest of it to understand what had happened – who she was, where she had been, where she met her killer, how he subdued her, and where and when he killed her. Too many unknowns and the only fact that I was certain about was that another woman was dead.

  I leaned back in my chair and called out to one of the older detectives on the squad, who was reading an early edition of the Evening Standard, with coverage of the Burning Man’s latest exploits on pages 1, 3, 4, 5, 19 and across the centre pages. LONDON KILLER STRIKES AGAIN. And on page 3, POLICE BAFFLED. Baffled was right.

  ‘Sam, any news on the DNA for the latest victim?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ he replied without looking up.

  ‘You couldn’t ring up and check, could you?’

  That got me a stare over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Impatient, are we?’

  ‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘But if we find out who she is, we can go and see where she lived. Get the background.’

  ‘Sounds exciting.’

  ‘Yeah, isn’t it?’ I said cheerfully, affecting to take what he’d said at face value. Nothing excited Sam Prosser, but he had the magic touch with the lab; they couldn’t resist him. They found it all too easy to be unhelpful when I rang them myself. I had a lot to learn.

  ‘Hello, darling, who’s that? Anneka? It’s Sam, Sam Prosser here, from Operation Mandrake.’ Sam’s voice was always gravelly, but he’d taken it down another notch so he sounded like an East London version of Barry White. It was beyond parody. ‘Not bad, thanks. Busy day today, though. Yeah, for you and all? Thought so.’ He chuckled. I could almost hear Anneka purring on the other end of the pho
ne.

  ‘Why I’m ringing up, darling, is to know if you got any news on the DNA of the latest victim – the one from Stadhampton Grove. Just come in, has it? You couldn’t be a love and let me know who she is, could you?’

  He was scribbling something on the edge of his paper, along the margin. I leaned over, trying to read what he was writing.

  ‘Yeah … yeah … and what did that come back to on PNC? Oh, really? That sort of girl, was she? Not a surprise exactly, no.’ Sam looked at me and mouthed, ‘Drugs.’ I nodded.

  ‘Anneka, my sweet, I owe you a drink … yeah, another one. One of these days, you and me, a big night out, I promise.’ More chuckling. ‘All right. Thanks again, sweetheart.’

  The phone went down and Sam turned to me, scratching his head absent-mindedly. ‘It’s my mission in life never to meet her. Nothing could live up to the image I have in my mind. I don’t want to disappoint myself.’

  ‘Afraid she’s not a blonde and busty Swedish beauty?’

  ‘It’s more that I’m afraid she might actually be a stunner. You never know, she might not fancy the idea of going out with a fat, balding old fart to get bladdered in the nearest pub.’

  ‘What did you find out?’ I nodded at the newspaper.

  ‘Almost forgot … We’ve got a name and address. She was done for drugs six months ago – passenger in a car that was stopped by traffic cops in the West End, apparently. She had half a gram of cocaine on her, personal use only. They fined her and her DNA was put on the database, lucky for us.’ He squinted, trying to read his writing. ‘Rebecca Haworth.’

  ‘Hayworth? As in Rita?’ I was writing it down.

  ‘H-a-w-o-r-t-h. The address is a flat by Tower Bridge – one of those new-build ones about the size of a rabbit hutch.’ He got to his feet and hauled his trousers up to their usual half-mast position under his substantial belly. ‘It might not be current. Want to go and see?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, jumping up and grabbing my bag, all fatigue forgotten. ‘I’ll drive.’

  ‘You’ll drive and you’ll buy me a pint when we’re done.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Fair’s fair. I was perfectly happy just sitting here, not rushing around the place. You’ve got to look after your uncle Sammy. Running me ragged, I don’t know. I’m not a young lad. I have to pace myself.’

  Knowing that he was perfectly capable of keeping that up until we got to Tower Bridge, I sighed and followed him out of the incident room. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be another dead end.

  The address Sam had was, as he’d said, a block of flats in the new yuppie ghetto to the south of Tower Bridge. Developers had taken over the area in the nineties and transformed it from a scraggly collection of old warehouses and derelict buildings into a highly desirable address for well-heeled types who wanted to walk to work across the river in the City. The streets were narrow, the apartment buildings six or more storeys high, and I felt like a rat in a maze as we nosed through the lanes, searching for Rebecca Haworth’s building. I pulled in on one side of the street to let a stream of high-performance cars go by in the other direction, tapping my fingers against the steering wheel impatiently.

  ‘Wouldn’t you think they’d still be at work?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, them. Not on a Friday, my dear. Poets Day, innit? Shame it doesn’t apply to the police.’

  Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. I smiled ruefully, thinking of my abandoned plans for the evening and the awkward phone call I’d had with Ian, who had refused to see why I couldn’t skip out on the investigation when my early-morning phone call had turned out to be a false alarm. The fact that a new body had turned up didn’t seem to bother him. Camilla had bought quail specially and if she couldn’t find someone to make up the numbers, it would go to waste. I, who did not care for quail, couldn’t bring myself to be too bothered. I would make it up to Camilla another time. The party would go just as well without me – in fact, maybe better. The low-paid public-sector employee was an interesting novelty, but novelties wear off, and I was acutely conscious I couldn’t join in with tales of handbag shopping in Harvey Nicks or mini-breaks in five-star spa hotels in Dubai. I made them feel self-conscious and they made me feel impoverished. Not a recipe for social harmony.

  ‘That’s it,’ Sam said, pointing to the left. ‘The Blue Building. Pull in there.’

  There was a loading bay conveniently located in front of the apartment building and I swerved into it, not particularly concerned about straightening up. Sam put the ‘Police on Duty’ notice on the dashboard and shook his head.

  ‘Did you actually pass your Grade five test? Or did they let you get through under the quota system?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said crisply, slamming the door and locking it. ‘Next time, you can walk if you don’t like the way I drive.’

  Sam clutched his chest and staggered a couple of paces. ‘Walk? Me? You must be joking.’

  ‘You could do with a bit of exercise.’

  ‘I get plenty. Watch this.’ He sprinted up the three steps that led to the main doors into the Blue Building, which seemed to owe its name to the tiles around the entrance and in the hall. I followed Sam at a more sedate pace, looking around me, checking out the expensive furnishings, the plush carpet and the security guard who looked up from behind his desk. None of that came cheap. Which fitted with the expensive dress, the shoes, the cocaine. Rebecca Haworth had been doing nicely for herself, by all appearances, when her life was brought to an end.

  Sam had made it as far as the security guard’s desk and was now leaning over it, talking to him earnestly. By the time I got there he’d found out that Miss Haworth did indeed live there though Aaron hadn’t seen her that day. He’d been on duty since noon, he explained.

  ‘Then you wouldn’t have seen her, my friend. She was already dead.’

  ‘Sam!’ I glared at him reproachfully. It was no way to break the news. Aaron looked shocked and began stammering about what a lovely lady Miss Haworth had been, and always so friendly, and how she always asked about his family and his trips home to Ghana.

  Finally he wound down. ‘What happened to her, please?’

  Instead of answering directly, Sam tapped the Evening Standard in front of Aaron. It was folded to the Sudoku puzzle, which was almost complete. ‘Notice the front page, did you?’

  ‘Not that – not the woman who was found early this morning? Oh my God.’ He leaned back in his chair, his mouth open, taking little short breaths. I was worried for a second that he was going to faint, and cut in quickly.

  ‘Aaron, can we go up to Miss Haworth’s apartment? Could you let us have a key?’

  He did better than that. He gave me the passkey that opened every door in the building, and directions to the apartment, which was on the third floor.

  ‘I would come with you, but I can’t leave my desk,’ he said dolefully, clearly tempted to abandon the rulebook just for once so he could follow us.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said quickly. ‘We’ll find it.’ Sam had already called the lift and I scooted across the lobby to join him in it before the security guard could change his mind. The doors slid closed and I found myself looking at my own reflection in the mirrored walls. There was no escaping it; my wrinkled clothes and wayward hair were reflected in every direction I turned. Sam, who was doing his customary impersonation of a sack of potatoes in the short-sleeved polyester shirt and brown anorak that was his all-weather outfit, didn’t seem to care. I settled for staring at my feet, the only place I could guarantee to avoid meeting my own gaze. There was no way I could ever consider living in the Blue Building, even if I could afford it. I couldn’t stand to see myself in such pitiless detail at least twice a day. If I was going to look like a mess, I’d look like a mess, but I’d rather not know about it.

  On the third floor, we found Rebecca Haworth’s apartment at the end of a corridor, the door as blandly uninformative as the rest of the ones we’d passed on the way. I hesitated, unsure whether to knock, but the security guard had told
us she lived alone, and I did know for certain that she wasn’t at home. I slid the key into the lock and turned it, and the door swung open on to a tiny hall. Sam reached out and grabbed my arm, motioning to me to stop as I made to step inside. He jerked his head, as if to say, listen …

  What I heard first was a washing machine churning. Then, underneath that, humming. A woman’s voice, light and pleasant, humming a tune that I faintly recognised. Heels clicked on a wooden floor and before Sam or I could say anything, the door on the other side of the hallway opened. Framed in it was a woman in a business suit that had cost a hell of a lot more than mine. She was holding a duster in one hand, and her mouth had fallen open. The humming, I noticed, had stopped. It didn’t take a genius to work out that the two things might be connected.

  ‘Who are you?’

  We’d spoken at the same time and used the same words. Her voice was higher than mine though her tone was equally sharp.

  ‘Police,’ Sam said smoothly. ‘Detectives.’ He held out his warrant card for her to inspect, and she was the one person in a thousand who actually took it and looked at it. Then she turned to me and waited, her hand out, for mine.

  ‘And you are?’ I asked pointedly, passing it to her.

  She took her time with my warrant card, reading the information before she answered, and that was unusual too. ‘Louise North. I’m a solicitor at Preyhard Gunther. I’ve got my driver’s licence in my handbag if you want ID.’

  ‘We’ll take your word for it for now,’ Sam said. ‘We were looking for – that is – this is Rebecca Haworth’s apartment, isn’t it?’ He sounded dubious and I could tell he had reached the same conclusion as me: Aaron had given us the wrong number and we’d got the wrong door. But Louise nodded.

  ‘Yes, it is. She’s not here at the moment, though. Can I … take a message for her?’

  ‘How do you know Rebecca? Are you her flatmate?’

  She turned to look at me when I spoke and I noticed that her eyes were pale blue, and very sharp. ‘I’m her best friend. I just came around to see if she was OK.’