Death Watch (2 page)

‘It’s got its fire certificate, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh yes – for what that’s worth! It’s got the right number of exits and extinguishers. It’s also got about eighteen layers of paint on everything, inflammable furniture, ceiling tiles, insulation – you name it. We tell them, but they won’t listen. And while the Government won’t move to ban these materials, what can we do?’

Slider nodded deferentially. ‘Is it all right to have a look now?’

‘It’s safe enough,’ Carlton conceded, half unwilling to be charmed, even by Slider, whom he almost liked. He glanced at Atherton’s trousers and shoes and brightened. ‘You’re not dressed for it, lad. Those’ll be ruined.’

Atherton gave him a smile of piercing sweetness. ‘A policeman’s lot, I’m afraid,’ he said with dainty ruefulness.

Carlton shot him a suspicious look and led the way in.

‘Don’t you know better than to torment a man with a large chopper?’ Slider murmured as he and Atherton followed.

‘Whoops. Sorry.’

‘Have you ever done a fire before?’

‘Not a fire with a body,’ Atherton admitted.

‘You won’t enjoy it,’ Slider promised.

Slider had been with the old C Division at the time of the Spanish Club fire in Denmark Place, where thirty-seven people had died.

‘Which was the worst fire I’ve ever seen or ever want to
see. The bodies were lying in heaps. It took us weeks to identity them all. Anything else is a picnic by comparison.’

‘Baptism of fire?’ Atherton suggested.

Slider didn’t smile. He looked around him with distaste. The cabin had been virtually destroyed. The roof had fallen in, too, which made it harder to recognise any of the component parts. A lovely job for the boys from The Lab.

‘The body’s over here,’ said Carlton. ‘From the layout of the other cabins – they’re all identical – we know this was where the armchair was. You can see some fragments of it. Part of the frame, you see, here, and a castor, and this looks like a bit of webbing. He was probably sitting watching the telly – that’s over there. Having a last cigarette perhaps. Maybe dropped off, set light to the chair with the stub, and — voom.’

It must have been a pretty comprehensive voom, Atherton thought. He was no tyro when it came to bodies, but even he had to pause for a moment or two to get used to the sight of this one. There was a whole range of unpleasant smells, too. He was reminded of the story of The Legend of Roast Pork. It gave you a whole new perspective, he thought, on the barbecue.

The victim was male, naked, and badly charred, particularly in the lower half – the feet and lower legs were burned through to the bone. Atherton knew from his reading that the action of fire on the extensor muscles sometimes caused the body to contract into what was called the ‘pugilist position’, a grotesque parody of an old-fashioned prize-fighter’s pose, like Popeye squaring up to Bluto.

The legs of this body were drawn up into a crouch, but the arms did not seem to be so affected: they were twisted, one under the body and one out to the side, but not contracted. The upper front part of the body was less badly burned than the rest, which perhaps was what you’d expect if he was sitting up in the chair; and probably his mother might have recognised him, but Atherton wouldn’t have cared to have to ask her.

‘Has it been moved?’ Slider asked.

‘No. That’s the position we found it in, but of course we shifted a lot of stuff off it,’ Carlton said. ‘It was pretty well buried when the ceiling came down. By the time we got here, the place was an inferno. Fortunately the other cabins were empty, bar seven and nine at the other end, and the occupants of those were accounted for.’

Slider crouched down and stared at the body in silence, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands relaxed; still as a countryman, he might have been watching for badgers for anything he showed. Carlton regarded him for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, duty calls. If you need me, I’ll be outside.’

‘Yes, thanks Gordon,’ Slider said absently, without looking up. He was puzzled by the arms, firstly that they had not contracted like the legs, and secondly that the underside – soft side – of the forearms was more badly burned than the topside, which was the opposite to what he would have expected. In most normal postures the underside of the forearms rested against the body and was therefore partly protected.

And there was something else. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked Atherton at last.

It was a brownish mark around the front of the neck, just below the Adam’s apple. ‘You see the way the head falling forward has protected this part of the neck from the fire. Round the back the skin is too badly burned to see anything.’

‘A ligature mark?’ Atherton said. ‘Possibly, I suppose. Couldn’t be the mark of his collar, could it, Guv?’

‘I don’t think so. See the texture of it, with these diagonal ridges? Rope, more likely. We may find some of it amongst the debris they moved off him. Pity the ceiling’s come down. There must have been some sort of pipe up there, or an air duct or something.’

‘You think he hanged himself?’ Atherton frowned.

‘I don’t think he was watching telly.’

‘Suicide, then? But what about the fire – an accident? The condemned man enjoyed – no, that doesn’t work, does it? I can’t see anyone putting a rope round his neck
with a fag still on. Perhaps he’d put it down half smoked, and then kicked the ashtray over in his convulsions. But would anyone hang themselves
before
finishing their cigarette?’ He had never been a smoker, and therefore couldn’t judge the niceties of the ritual.

The fire worries me,’ Slider admitted. ‘But look, d’you see here?’

He took a biro out of his pocket and pointed at the side of the head. Atherton stooped. There was a shred of something adhering to the charred and brittle hair. Several shreds of something.

‘It looks like melted plastic’

‘Yes. A melted plastic bag, wouldn’t you say?’

Atherton straightened. ‘Belt and braces, you mean. Well, they do, don’t they, suicides, like to make sure?’

‘Hmm.’ Slider got up carefully and straightened himself, and stood looking down at the body with an unseeing frown. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said at last.

‘I don’t think you’re meant to,’ Atherton said gently.

‘Is the photo team on the way?’

‘Yes, and Doc Cameron, and forensic. I don’t expect they’ll be here for at least an hour, though, given the traffic’

Slider smiled suddenly.

‘Then we might as well go and have some breakfast. I could do serious structural damage to a sausage sandwich.’

Atherton turned his eyes resolutely from the body. ‘Fine by me. D’you want to talk to Hunt first?’

That at least made Slider shudder.

‘Not on an empty stomach,’ he said.

Hunt, despite having been up all night and at the scene since six forty-five, still looked perfectly neat and tidy, as if his clothes had been painted on; and since he had lately grown a beard, he didn’t even appear unshaven. He had always been a great one for going by the book, a spit-and-polish man, and as nearly stupid as it was possible to be and still get into the Department; but since passing his exam, he
had added keenness to his other vices.

As Atherton put it in technical language to WDC Swilley, ‘He was always a paper-tearing prat, but now he’s a total pain in the arse.’

‘Bound to get on, then,’ said Swilley, nodding wisely. ‘Next thing you know, he’ll be rolling up the leg of his John Collier and doing funny handshakes.’

Hunt was in the motel manager’s office, which they had requisitioned, when Slider and Atherton got back from breakfast.

‘I interviewed the night clerk, sir,’ he told Slider smartly. ‘Deceased arrived last night at eleven fifty-five, and signed the register in the name of John Smith. I think that was probably a false name, though.’

With anyone else, it would have been either a joke, or cheek. Slider had the depressing certainty that Hunt meant it. ‘Alone?’

‘Yes, sir. He paid cash, and the address he gave was a company one – Taylor Wood row at Hanger Lane – but I’ve called their personnel department, and they don’t have a John Smith working there.’

‘What about his car?’

‘I thought of that,’ Hunt said proudly. ‘Apparently he didn’t put down a car registration number, and the clerk didn’t ask. There’s no car outside the cabin, but he could have parked out on the street somewhere. There are plenty of parked cars around. Or of course he might have arrived on foot, or from the tube station, or by taxi. Just because it’s called a motor lodge, doesn’t mean you’ve got to come in a car.’

‘Really? I would never have thought of that,’ said Slider. Hunt didn’t blush. ‘So we have no idea who he is?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nobody recognised him? What about the people staying in seven and nine?’

‘The clerk says he’d never seen him before. The other guests were woken by the hotel staff telling them to get out because of the fire. They both say they didn’t see deceased at any point, but I haven’t taken detailed statements from
them yet.’

‘All right, you can get someone started on that now. Who else is here?’

‘PC D’Arblay – he was first on the scene. It’s his beat. And Jablowski’s just arrived, and Mackay’s on his way.’

‘All right, you and Jablowski can make a start, and Mackay can help when he gets here. Get on with it, then.’

It was the mark of the man that he almost saluted. ‘Yes sir,’ he said, departing. D’Arblay passed him in the doorway.

‘Photographer’s here, sir,’ he said.

‘Right, I’m coming,’ said Slider. He turned to Atherton. ‘When you’ve a minute, you might ask the night clerk whether our man asked for number one, or was given it.’

‘Righto, Guv.’ It was a small point, but it might be telling. A man bent on self-destruction might well seek the privacy of the furthest cabin from the main building.

‘I hope we find his wallet in there somewhere,’ Slider said as he turned away. ‘Otherwise we may end up having to do a PNC on every parked car in the Bush.’

Joanna came into his office at a quarter to two.

‘Just got back?’ Slider asked astutely, seeing she was carrying her violin case. His powers of detection were razor sharp today. ‘How was your rehearsal?’

‘Awful. More than ever I ask myself if it can be a coincidence that conductors and blind men both use white sticks.’ She leaned across the desk and kissed him. ‘How has your day been? I gather you’ve been having some excitement.’

‘How do you gather that?’

‘I’ve just been talking to Flatulent Fergus downstairs. You lucky mugs! A fire and a corpus already, and it’s still only lunchtime!’

‘You’ve missed out the best bit,’ said Slider bitterly. ‘We had a flying visiting from Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Head.’

‘Yes, O’Flaherty told me. Known to his friends as God.
Deus ex machina
was what Fergus said.’

‘I suppose he came in a car.’

‘And what did he want?’

‘What do brass always want? To make trouble, of course. And with Dickson not here, that dropped him straight onto my neck.’

‘Was it a routine roust, or something to do with the fire?’

‘Oh, the fire. He wanted to make sure I understood he’d like it to be a suicide.’

Joanna wrinkled her brow. ‘Why would he want that?’

‘Because suicide isn’t a crime, and we’re getting near the end of the budget period, and murder enquiries are very expensive.’

She stared. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Top brass have to worry about things like that. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted higher promotion.’

‘But – he’s not asking you to fabricate the evidence?’

‘No, of course not. He doesn’t really know what he’s asking. He’s like a kid saying “I wish I had a train set,” on the off-chance that there really is a Father Christmas. Perhaps if he says he’d like it to be suicide, it might just turn out to be that way.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she said shrewdly.

‘Oh—’ He began automatically to shrug it off, and then paused, realising that it didn’t matter what he said to Joanna about a senior officer. Head was tall, well-built, handsome in a thick sort of way, with curly hair and blue eyes and the sort of firm-featured looks that simply cry out for the stern glamour of uniform. He was younger than Slider, by far less experienced, several ranks above him, and thought he knew best. But it wasn’t even any or all of that. There was just something about the way he didn’t listen, the way he made it known that he knew he didn’t
have
to listen, that got up Slider’s nose.

‘I don’t like being loomed over,’ was all he said, however.

Joanna looked at the puckered brow under the soft, untidy hair, and said, ‘You don’t think it is suicide?’

The brow cleared and he smiled at her ruefully. ‘I don’t think anything yet.’

‘Open mind and closed mouth?’

‘Until Freddie does the post, and I get the forensic report, I’ve got nothing to think with.’

She knew him better than that. ‘Just a vague feeling of unease, then?’

‘I don’t like fires,’ he admitted. ‘We haven’t even ID’d the poor bastard yet.’

‘How will you go about that?’

‘Oh, we’ve got various lines to try. We’ve started the house-to-house, and Atherton’s downstairs with the night porter from the motel, putting together a photofit. We’ll match that up against Missing Persons for a start, and if that doesn’t yield anything we can circulate it in various ways. As a last resort we can go on the telly. But ten to one someone’ll report him missing, if they haven’t already. Most people have a slot they fit into, and it’s noticed when they go astray. And we can check on all the parked cars in the immediate vicinity, to see if there’s one unaccounted for.’

‘It looks as though you’ll be pretty busy, then?’ she asked carefully. Slider felt the habitual stillness of caution creep into his bones.

‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to come to your concert tonight,’ he said, watching her mouth. With a woman it was from the line of the lips that you could best judge how close you were to critical mass. ‘There’ll be too much to do.’

‘What time d’you think you’ll finish?’

He shrugged. ‘It could be any time. Two, three in the morning. Maybe not at all.’ She was taking it very well. He offered her the consolation prize. ‘I’ve already told Irene I won’t be back at all tonight, so if I do find I can knock off for an hour or two, can I come and wake you up?’