by James Damm
James Damm
The Superhero’s Murder
Copyright © 2021 by James Damm
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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To Mum and Dad
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
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Prologue
In Cherwell School’s Year Eleven English class, twenty-nine sets of eyes scanned the clock on the far wall. Mr. Baker, the youngest and therefore most enthusiastic English teacher in the department, did his best to maintain the energy levels in the room. Before his class, he danced as if performing on a stage. Prancing and jumping before his audience of jaded fifteen-year-olds, Emma Hale admired his commitment to a lost cause.
With a textbook re-purposed as a fan, Emma dragged the pages back and forth, attempting to create any kind of airflow. The top floor classroom they occupied had a miserable reputation: pupils knew D floor as the sauna, while the less polite referred to it as hell on earth. For generations, students trudged up the single staircase to a classroom, never able to maintain a temperature to please anyone. In winter, students trembled in the icy air, while in summer they sweltered.
The classroom was four floors up and the windows only slid open so far, planned in such a way that a rogue, rebellious student would struggle to squeeze out. A single fan battled against the humidity, but only wafted scorching air from one place to another. With skin soaked with sweat underneath shirts, ties, and blazers, the students had learnt little in the previous forty minutes.
“Sir, can we go outside?” Grant Rogers pleaded from the side. “I think I’m going to die.”
Mr. Baker laughed as his hands fell to his hips. With the mess of curls on his head damp, sweat patches visible all over his shirt, and panting slightly, he could sympathise with the students. All day the school time-tabled him for lessons in the sauna. The lack of rotation was a present for being the newest teacher in the building. Nothing would delight him more than taking the class outside to bathe in the sun, but experience taught Emma that such thoughts would never become a reality. The new teachers always stuck to the lesson plan; they were too green and keen to impress.
“At the start of the lesson I said anybody who needs a trip downstairs to fill their water bottle is more than welcome,” Mr. Baker stated. “I know it’s hot in here, but for you it’s only for one lesson. Imagine being me in here all day.”
Muttering between students acknowledged that the rawest deal of them all belonged to Mr. Baker. But as a teacher, he didn’t count. The school paid him to be there.
Grant groaned and banged his head against the desk, his tie loose around his neck and with a blank sheet of paper and no pen before him. The lesson had taken its toll on the student. Mr. Baker admired that Grant turned up at all. “Can I please go fill my water then, sir?”
“Yes, you can Grant,” Mr. Baker assured. “But I know it’s a five-minute round trip to the bottom floor cooler. Don’t be any longer.”
Grant slid up from his seat and slunk out of the room. An invisible, unspoken knowledge among the class existed that the trip would be a ten-minute one. Long enough to take the piss and impress his fellow students, not long enough to get him into actual trouble. Emma considered that Grant would learn as much outside the classroom, anyway. A fan of football, wrestling and video games, his school-work got in the way of his real passions.
The lesson continued, and Mr. Baker looked for a volunteer to read the next section of the book. The book in question, The Lord of the Flies, was hated by the class. They all found Piggy to be an annoying character, and came up with many jokes about his death. During a previous lesson, Mr. Baker had held his head in his hands, mock-crying at the consensus of the class that Piggy deserved everything he got.
A classroom full of eyes avoiding making eye contact with the teacher, Henry Bell ended up being the first to buckle. After he held up a nervous arm to volunteer, so began the painstaking narration from one of the least adept readers in the class. Five minutes of mispronounced and stuttered sentences almost made Emma wish she had volunteered. Almost.
Out of nowhere the fire alarm sounded, and a universal cheer erupted up from the class. Mr. Baker slammed his book down on the desk, his expression one of relief and appreciation for whoever had put them out of their misery. Henry Bell beamed and discarded his own book to the floor. The situation would mean ten minutes on the tennis court, by which point the lesson, or torture, would be all but over.
“Everybody leave your stuff and head single-file out of the classroom,” Mr. Baker called over the excited chatter of his pupils.
Near the back, Emma gestured relief to a nearby friend and meandered towards the exit. One hand on the wood, Mr. Baker propped the door open as one by one the students filtered into the corridor.
“Smoke,” a voice recognisable as Angela’s screamed, causing the queue to freeze in its tracks.
Reputation established Angela as responsible and serious, not a pupil to fool around. Mr. Baker darted out the room. In seconds pupils with frightened faces, and in a state of panic, headed back inside.
“Back inside the classroom,” Mr. Baker barked with an urgency in his voice that sent the last of the pupils scampering.
He slammed the door and grabbed his jacket from his chair. Frantic hands placed the jacket underneath the gap in the frame. Light smoke, a kind more similar with burning toast, filtered in visibly through the gaps in the frame. Mr. Baker emptied the contents of his water bottle onto the jacket.
“We need to stay low,” Mr. Baker urged as his tone softened and he led the way into a crouch. “With me, stay low to the ground.”
A classroom of pupils followed the teacher’s lead to the letter. Once happy every pupil was crouched low enough, Mr. Baker moved toward the window. He snatched a discarded hoody from the floor and waved it out the window to draw attention.
The rest of the eyes in the room fell on the closed door. A single jacket lay at its base. Grey smoke still entered through the sides of the old wooden frame.
“I could see fire on the staircase,” Angela wept in earshot, her eyes red. “The flames were already so big.”
The alarm sounded and in sixty seconds Archie Boyd and the rest of the crew at Cherwell Fire Station scrambled into engines. Down the poles, firefighting tunics, boots and helmets thrown on, they packed the cab without a pause for breath. Archie’s freshly brewed tea would remain untouched.
Lights and sirens blaring, the first engine, followed
by the second, swerved and manoeuvred through the late morning traffic. Multiple calls to the control centre pointed to a major incident at the local high school with no drill planned. A fire on the upper floors and children trapped. The cascaded information horrified the cab to silence.
The call had only reached the station five minutes earlier, but the sky above already showed signs of escalation. The driver’s face was a picture of determination in control of the wheel as he navigated the traffic, weaving past any blockage. Nervous with anticipation, Archie rubbed his hands in an unconscious twitch. As they approached, they took in the sight of the blaze. How had it grown so fast?
“The children in there need us,” Eric Chapman, the crew manager called out to the silent cab. “The threat of loss of life is high and nobody else is coming but us.”
Children. The word pumped fear and adrenaline in equal measure through Archie’s veins. As the engine pulled into the tennis court, the weight of the situation fell upon him.
Teachers shepherded pupils back with one eye on the building, black smoke billowing and flames licking out from the third-floor windows. On the floor above, an arm, hoodie in hand, waved from a window. The colourful green and blue panels that wrapped the building burned, the cladding exacerbating the blaze. Less than seven minutes from the initial calls, the fire had already half-circled the building.
Screeching, screaming and crying echoed across the tennis court. The crew manager passed instructions to get the pupils away from the scene and down the hill. They had a job to do and an audience would neither help the rescue nor themselves. This was a once-in-a-lifetime incident. Every firefighter trained for one, but no training could prepare them for the reality. In his stomach, all Archie knew was that the job of his career would be today.
Eric Chapman established command of the situation. With a fast-moving fire already out of control, the conditions would push his team and their equipment to the limit. The cladding on the exterior of the building pushed the flames higher, the fire leaping and dancing up the exterior walls. There could be no immediate rescue through external routes. The crew manager instructed Archie and two others to fit breathing apparatus. One staircase to the top floor had to be the principal route of rescue.
Cylinders of air strapped to his back like a rucksack, Archie pulled the mask to fit over his face and secured the straps around his head. A gauge on his shoulder strap would inform Archie of how much air, around thirty minutes’ worth, remained in the tank. Registers collected by the teaching staff highlighted twenty-eight unaccounted for pupils, all trapped on the top floor.
While Archie and two others put on their equipment, Eric Chapman signalled for others to bring out the ladders. A standard engine contained four, the longest at thirteen and a half meters, which would be able to reach the top-floor window and create another escape route. They would tackle the fire now raging on the outside before carrying down those trapped.
The final firefighters scattered for the hose jet, which required two to operate and would hopefully tackle the blaze enough to ease the conditions inside.
The task understood, and breathing apparatus attached, Archie and the crew jogged inside. “This isn’t London,” Eric reminded Archie and the crew. “We have two engines in operation. They will dispatch more, but this is the best we have for now.”
Twenty-eight pupils and their teacher were trapped inside. As Archie and his fellow firefighters thundered towards the entrance, a single elemental thought settled in his head and that of every firefighter. Every single firefighter within that building would lose their own life to save those trapped. Every single one.
On the ground floor, smoke filled the corridor. With little time to adjust, Archie took in a quick view of lockers, deserted benches and displays of the pupils’ work lining the walls. The staircase before them climbed all the way to the top floor. And the trapped children.
With each step the smoke became darker, the heat intensifying. After the first floor, visibility became poor, and Archie became reliant on touch to guide his way. With a hand placed on the left-hand wall, the firefighters moved in single file and used the brickwork to navigate. By the time they approached the second floor, screaming filled the darkness. Archie’s heart pounded in his chest as he moved blind through the devastation.
Radio reports coming through highlighted the third floor as ground zero, the source of the fire a bin on the staircase. A pupil in a tearful state admitted to the act of arson; his innocent enough aim was to set off a fire alarm and get his class out of their English lesson on the top floor. When he returned from refilling his water bottle, the fire raged out of control. The pupil smashed the alarm. Stupidity knew no boundaries.
Via the radio, the crew manager instructed the breathing apparatus team to continue upwards. Outside, the building was engulfed in flames. Inside the staircase remained the only immediate route of escape.
Reaching the third floor, Archie felt the general heat hitting in those areas. Not like a burn, but a wave of heat that made his face tingle. The breathing apparatus mask limited his vision, the black roaring smoke not helping either, but the heat of the fire was unmistakable as his body sweltered.
Pushing on to the top floor, they smashed the sole door open and entered a classroom black from the smoke.
“Stay low, STAY LOW!” Archie yelled as he scooped up one pupil from the floor and then another. As teenagers, they were light enough to carry, but were weighed down heavier in the conditions. “Stay where you are, help is on its way.”
Making a swift exit from the room, Archie headed back down the staircase. At this point other firefighters had hauled a hose up the stairs and attacked the source of the original fire. The small relief the water generated meant before Archie knew it, he was back onto the ground floor. He handed the two soot-covered bodies to paramedics now on scene. In the chaos, Archie could not determine whether the girls had been alive or dead.
A scan of his shoulder gauge showed more than half a tank left, and once more Archie hauled himself up the darkened staircase. Radio chatter warned that the outside of the building had become an impenetrable wall of fire, the cladding now a cloak of heat.
Archie hauled a larger male, he presumed the teacher, out of the room and toward the stairs. He regretted that he could only take one person on his second trip. The physical effect of the heat had taken its toll and his body was fatigued underneath the suit.
Down and down the stairs Archie dashed, and as he did so his suit whistled, indicating his oxygen was running out. It would be the last trip until he could get hold of a new kit.
Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, paramedics dived forward to grab the limp body. Important to release the heat after an incident like this, Archie opened his tunics and took off the flash hood. Police took the initial trio of firefighters out of the building under the police shields. Debris from the exterior crashed down, and they made their way to the safe area.
Archie broke down his breathing apparatus set and serviced it in the safe area. After use, he needed to change the oxygen cylinders and make sure that the fire hadn’t damaged the sets. Unsure whether it was the adrenalin coursing through his system, or the physical exertion of going up and down the stairs, Archie felt exhausted. More crews and engines had arrived and as he re-hydrated, they dashed past and up the stairs. Soot-covered bodies of school children were either carried or dragged out. He could not gauge how many they had got to. Preparing himself for going back into the building, a glance up at the ball of flame and black smoke turned his stomach.
The classroom got darker and darker. In minutes the fire forced Mr. Baker to abandon signalling from the window as flames moved up on the outside. He retreated down to the floor as grave concern filled his face. With a glance upwards, Emma could not make out the ceiling as the smoke in the room had become so dense and black. That smoke entered from the outside, not inside, and the decision to stay put and await the firefighters constantly stirred in her brain.
E
mma herself tried to yell out, but smoke blew into her face and she couldn’t help but inhale it. The black smoke burnt her eyes and throat, the saving grace being that it wasn’t so hot that it hurt her skin. The fire itself licked the external windows, the fire inside yet to be visible.
As the minutes ticked by, firefighters burst into the room, visible only from the knee down. Towards the back of the classroom Emma witnessed as they scooped students up and hauled them out of the room. Almost as soon as they appeared, they disappeared again and the heat in the classroom kept rising. Eyes trained on the door, Emma felt powerless and kept herself on the ground.
Stay put had been the explicit instruction, but her eyes burnt and, as the smoke filled her lungs, panic took its toll. On the second trip they came for Mr. Baker, bodies emptying from the room as the solitude twisted her thoughts. They would not reach her in time. Emma’s lungs felt suffused with smoke, her limbs limp with fatigue. She had to get out.
Frantic, she spotted the gap in the window from earlier and crawled towards it, not being able to contemplate another minute in the furnace that tortured Emma’s body and scratched her lungs. The fall would kill her, but the terror of the burning to death outweighed everything. Head out first, then shoulders, Emma’s mind could not comprehend the pain as the fire bit and tore at her skin. She had to get out. She had to get free. Adrenaline in charge, she pushed out as hard as she could.
“No, no, no, no, NO!” Archie yelled as he watched the body drop out of the window. A jumper. The body tumbled down through the air and in horror the firefighter expected to hear the thump as he clenched his eyes shut. Yet when he pried them open, nobody lay visible on the ground. No thud echoed in his ears.
Archie’s eyes darted between the window where he had just witnessed the figure jump and the ground where he expected to see an impact. Was he going mad? A quick glance to his left and right and the expressions on his colleagues’ faces showed they had seen the same thing. Yet their eyes focused on something.
