Playing with Fire (8 page)

They got to the lay-by, beside which the police mobile unit was parked, completely blocking the lane. It didn't matter
much, though, as the track was hardly ever used and it led only toward a narrow bridge over the canal about two miles west. Anyone wanting to get there was advised to take the next turning by a diversion sign posted at the junction of the lane and the B-road half a mile north.

Annie noticed more retaining frames, measures and markers on the lay-by itself.

“Impressive,” she said. “You have been busy.”

“We'll see,” said Stefan. “Trying to process a crime scene like this is like peeling the layers off the onion, and you don't know which layer is the important one.” He pointed to one of the imprints. “Here we've got parallel tire tracks,” he said. “And that should be enough to tell us who the manufacturer was. From these we can also get the track width and wheelbase measurements, which might even help us identify the make of the car. If there are a number of individual characteristics present in the tire impressions, which may be the case, then we should be able to match them to the specific tire, and vehicle, too.”

“If and when we find it,” said Annie.

“Naturally. We've also collected soil samples from the entire area. No rare wildflowers at this time of year, of course, but there are some unique mineral features, and they should also help us tie in the shoes and tire to the scene, should we find them.”

“And should they still be dirty.”

Stefan narrowed his eyes. “Trace evidence can be microscopic sometimes. You ought to know that. You'd be surprised how little we can work with.”

“I'm sorry,” said Annie. “I don't mean to be negative. It's just…I have a feeling we're not dealing with an amateur here.”

“And we're not amateurs, either. Besides, we don't know
what
we're dealing with here yet.”

“True enough,” Annie agreed. “I'm just suggesting that
he'll have done his best to cover his tracks, and the longer it takes us to find him…”

“The more tracks he'll manage to cover. Okay, I'll grant you that. But it'll take more than a car wash and a good polishing to get rid of every atom of soil he might have picked up here. Besides, don't forget, we've got the tire impression to go on. There's an oil stain, too, by the looks of it.” He pointed to another protected area on the lay-by. “We'll have that back for analysis by the end of the day. It's certainly beginning to look as if
someone
parked here recently, and if it wasn't you or the fire brigade…”

Annie knew that it was neither she nor Banks. They had been concerned to preserve as much of the scene as they could when they arrived, almost by instinct, so they had left their cars farther up the lane and made their way through the woods without benefit of using a marked path. All in all, then, things were looking promising. Even if the evidence that Stefan and his team painstakingly collected didn't lead them directly to the arsonist, it would come in useful in court when they did find him.

“Any chance it was a Jeep Cherokee?” Annie asked, remembering what Banks had told her Mark said he'd seen. “Or something similar?”

Stefan blinked. “Know something I don't?”

“Just that something resembling a Jeep Cherokee has been reported seen in the area. Not last night, but recently.”

Stefan looked down at the tire tracks. “Well,” he said, “it's something to go on. We can certainly compare wheelbase and track width. Anyway,” Stefan said, opening the door of the mobile unit with a flourish, “it's not exactly the Ritz, but the heater works. How about coming in for a cuppa?”

Annie smiled, her body leaning toward the source of heat the way a sunflower leans toward the sun. “You must be a mind reader,” she said, and followed him in.

 

By the time Banks and Frances Aspern got to Western Area Headquarters after Mrs. Aspern's positive identification of Christine at the mortuary of Eastvale General Infirmary, Annie had already left to talk to the SOCOs at the canal. Banks arranged for a uniformed constable to drive Mrs. Aspern back home, and he had just settled down to review the findings so far, with Gil Evans's Jimi Hendrix orchestrations playing quietly in the background, when Geoff Hamilton appeared at his office door. Banks invited him in and Hamilton sat down, glancing around.

“Cozy,” he said.

“It'll do,” said Banks. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, if you've got some. Black, plenty of sugar.”

“I'll ring down.” Banks ordered two black coffees. “Anything new?”

“I've just come from the lab,” Hamilton said. “We carried out gas chromatograph tests this afternoon.”

“And?”

Hamilton took two sheets of paper and a videotape from his briefcase and laid them out on Banks's desk. The sheets of paper looked like graphs, with peaks and valleys. “As you know,” he said, looking at Banks, “I took debris samples from a number of places, especially on boat one, Tom's boat, the main seat of the fire. I don't know how much you know about it,” he went on, “but gas chromatography is a relatively simple and quick process. In this case, we put the debris in large cans, heated them and used a syringe to draw off the headspace, the gases given off, and we then injected that into the chromatograph. This”—he pointed to the left graph—“is the chromatogram we got from the point of origin.” He then pointed to the graph beside it, which, to Banks, looked almost identical. Both showed a series of
low to medium peaks with one enormous spike in the middle. “And this is the chromatographic representation of turpentine.”

“So we were right,” Banks said, studying the chromatograms. “What about the other boat?”

“Apart from the streamers I noted on my initial examination,” Hamilton said, “there are no other signs of accelerant. Anyway, that's the physical evidence so far. Turpentine is your primary accelerant. Its ignition temperature is 488 degrees Fahrenheit, which is quite low. As we found no evidence of timing or incendiary devices, I'd say someone used a match.”

“Deliberate, then?”

Hamilton looked around, as if worried that the room was bugged, then he let slip a rare smile. “Just between you and me and these four walls,” he said, “not a shred of doubt.”

The coffee arrived and both remained silent until the PC who delivered it had left the office. Hamilton took a sip and lifted up the videotape. “Want to watch a movie?” he asked.

Videotaped evidence and interviews were so common these days that Banks had a small TV/Video combination in his office. Hamilton slipped the tape in and they both got a driver's-seat view as the fire engine raced to the scene.

Most engines, or “appliances,” as the firefighters called them, were fitted with a “silent witness,” a video recorder that taped the journey to the source of the call. It could come in useful if you happened to be really quick off the mark and spotted a getaway vehicle, or arrived at the scene and got a picture of the arsonist hanging about enjoying his handiwork. This time, there was nothing. The fire engine passed a couple of cars going the other way, and it would probably be possible to isolate the images and enhance the number plates. But Banks didn't hold out much hope they would lead anywhere. The fire was well under way by the time Hurst called it in, and the arsonist would be well away, too. It was an exhilarating journey, though, and Hamilton ejected the tape
when the appliance came to a halt at the bend in the lane.

“There's one thing that bothers me,” Banks said. “The boy, Mark, described the artist's hair as brown but what little of it we saw on the boat was more like red.”

“Fire does that,” said Hamilton.

“Changes hair color?”

“Yes. Sometimes. Gray turns blond, and brown turns red.”

“Interesting,” said Banks. “What about Tina? Could she have survived?”

“If she'd been awake and aware, yes, but the state she was in…not a chance.”

“The way it looks, then,” said Banks, “is that the artist on boat one was the primary victim, yet some small effort had been made to see that the fire spread to boat two, where Mark and Tina lived. But why Mark and Tina?”

“I'm afraid that's your job to find out, not mine.”

“Just tossing ideas around. Elimination of a witness?”

“Witness to what?”

“If the arsonist was someone who'd visited the victim before, then he might have been seen, or worried he'd been seen.”

“But the young man survived.”

“Yes, and Mark
did
see two people visit Tom on different occasions. Maybe one of them was the killer, and he had no idea that Mark was out at the time. He probably thought he was getting them both, but he was in a hurry to get away. Which means…”

“What?”

“Never mind,” said Banks. “As you said, it's my job to find that out. At the moment I feel as if we've got nothing but assumptions.”

Hamilton tapped the graphs and stood up. “Not true,” he said. “You've got confirmation of accelerant usage in a multi-seated fire.”

Hamilton was right, Banks realized. Until a few minutes
ago, all he'd had to go on were appearances and gut instincts, but now he had solid scientific evidence that the fire had been deliberately set.

He looked at his watch and sighed. “Dr. Glendenning's conducting the postmortem on the male victim soon,” he said. “Want to come?”

“What the hell,” said Hamilton. “It's Friday evening. The weekend starts here.”

“D
o you know that it takes about an hour or an hour and a half at between sixteen and eighteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit to cremate a human body?” Dr. Glendenning asked, apropos of nothing in particular. “And that the ordinary house—or, in this case, boat—fire rarely exceeds twelve hundred? That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have so much material left to work with.”

The postmortem lab in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary was hardly hi-tech, but Dr. Glendenning's experience more than made up for that. To Banks, the blackened shape laid out on the stainless-steel table looked more like one of those Iron Age bodies preserved in peat bogs than someone who had been a living, breathing human being less than twenty-four hours ago. Already, the remnants of clothing had been removed to be tested for traces of accelerant, blood samples had been sent for analysis, and the body had been X-rayed for any signs of gunshot wounds and internal injuries. None had been found, only a belt buckle, three pounds sixty-five in loose change, and a signet ring without initials engraved on it.

“Thought you wouldn't know that,” Glendenning went on, casting an eye over his audience: Banks, Geoff Hamilton and Annie Cabbot, fresh from the scene. “And I hope you appre
ciate my working on a Friday evening,” he went on as he examined the body's exterior with the help of his new assistant, Wendy Gauge, all kitted out in blue scrubs and a hairnet. Glendenning looked at his watch. “This could take a long time, and you also probably don't know that I have an important dinner engagement.”

“We realize you're a very important man,” said Banks, “and we're eternally grateful to you, aren't we, Annie?” He nudged Annie gently.

“We are, indeed,” said Annie.

Glendenning scowled. “Enough of your lip, laddie. Do we know who he is?”

Banks shook his head. “All we know was in the report I sent you. His name's probably Tom, and he was an artist.”

“It would help if I knew something about his medical history,” Dr. Glendenning complained.

“Afraid we can't help you,” said Banks.

“I mean, if he was a drug addict or a drunk or on some sort of dodgy medication…Why do you always make my job so much more bloody difficult than it needs to be, Banks? Can you tell me that?”

“Search me.”

“One day I probably will,” Glendenning said. “Inside and out.” He scowled, lit a cigarette, though it was strictly forbidden, and went back to work. Banks envied him the cigarette. He had always smoked at postmortems. It helped to mask the smell of the bodies. And they always smelled. Even this one would smell when Dr. Glendenning opened him up. He'd be like one of those fancy, expensive steaks: charred on the outside and pink in the middle, and if he'd got enough carbon monoxide in his system, his blood would look like cherryade.

“Anyway,” Glendenning went on, “if he was an artist, he was probably a boozer. Usually are in my experience.”

Annie said nothing, though her father, Ray, was an artist, and a boozer. She stood beside Banks, eyes fixed on the doc
tor, already looking a little pale. Banks knew she didn't like postmortems—nobody really did except, arguably, the pathologist—but the more she attended, the sooner she'd get used to them.

“He's got burns over about seventy-five percent of the body's surface area. The most severe burning, the greatest combination of third-and fourth-degree burning, occurs in the upper body area.”

“That would be the area closest to the point of origin,” said Geoff Hamilton, cool and glum-looking as ever.

Dr. Glendenning nodded. “Makes sense. Mostly what we've got is full-thickness burning on the front upper body. You can see where the surface looks black and charred. That's caused by boiling subcutaneous fat. The human body keeps on burning long after the fire's been put out. Sort of like a candle, burning in its own fat.”

Banks noticed Annie make an expression of distaste.

“Farther down,” Glendenning continued, “on the legs and feet, for example, you can see the skin is pink and mottled in places, covered with blisters. That indicates brief exposure and lower temperature.”

When Dr. Glendenning got to the external examination of the victim's head, Banks noticed what looked like skull fractures. “Found something, Doc?” he asked.

“Look, I've told you before not to call me Doc. It's lacking in respect.”

“But have you found evidence of blows to the head?”

Glendenning bent over and probed the wounds, examining them carefully. “I don't think so,” he said.

“But that's what they look like to me,” Annie said.

“To you, lassie, maybe. But to
me,
they look like fractures caused by the heat.”

“The heat causes fractures?” Annie said.

Dr. Glendenning sighed. Banks could imagine the sort of teacher he'd be and how he'd terrify the poor medical students.

“Of course it does,” he said. “Heat contracts the skin and causes splits that may easily be interpreted as cuts inflicted during life. It can also cause fractures in the long bones of the arms and legs, or make them so bloody brittle that they're fractured while the body is being moved. Remember, we're sixty-six percent water, and fire is a great dehydrator.”

“But what about the skull?” Annie asked.

Glendenning looked at her, a glint in his eye. “The fractures are caused by pressure. The brain and the blood start to boil, and the steam needs an outlet, so it blows a hole in the skull. Pop. Just like a bottle of champagne.”

Annie shuddered. Even Banks felt a little queasy. Dr. Glendenning went back to work, a mischievous grin on his face.

“Anyway,” he went on, “skull fractures caused by fire often radiate along suture lines, the weakest point in the skull's surface, and that's the case here. Also, the skull splinters haven't been driven
into
the brain matter, which would most likely be the case if blunt-instrument trauma were present. They've been forced outward.”

“So you're saying he
wasn't
hit over the head?”

“I'm saying nothing of the kind,” Glendenning said. “I'm only saying it seems unlikely. That's typical of you, Banks, jumping to conclusions when you've got only part of the evidence, going off half-cocked. What about a bit of scientific method, laddie? Haven't you been reading your Sherlock Holmes lately?”

“I know that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Or something like that.”

“Well, in this case,” said Glendenning, “almost anything's still possible. Your report mentioned that the body was covered by debris, and I've seen the crime scene photos and sketches. The damage might have been caused by a section of the ceiling falling on the deceased after his death.”

“I suppose it could have happened that way,” said Banks.

“Definitely possible,” said Geoff Hamilton.

“I'm glad you both agree,” Glendenning said.

“On the other hand, though,” Banks argued, “wouldn't you expect to find skull splinters in the brain if that were the case?”

Glendenning graced him with a rare smile. “You're learning, laddie. Anyway, we don't even know whether the injury was post-or antemortem yet. That's my point.”

“Do you think you could find out?”

Glendenning rolled his eyes. “Do I think I could find out?” he mimicked, then went back to the body. “Well, why don't we start by looking for signs of smoke inhalation?” He held out his hand theatrically. “Scalpel.”

Wendy Gauge suppressed a smile as she handed him the required instrument, and the pathologist bent over the corpse. The nose had burned away, along with enough skin and flesh to allow the chin and jawbone to show through in places. Glendenning worked away at exposing the tracheal area and bronchial passage, parts of which Banks could see were black with soot or charring, then he bent over the body again. “There's definitely some thermal injury to the mouth, nose and upper airways,” he said, “but that's not unusual, and it doesn't tell us much.” He poked around some more. “There's soot present, but not a great deal. In fact, in this case, there's little enough to conclude that he was still breathing, but shallowly.”

“Was he unconscious?” Banks asked.

“Very likely.”

“So that blow to the head might have been administered prior to the starting of the fire? It might have
caused
the unconsciousness?”

“Hold your horses.” Dr. Glendenning bent over the body again. “I've already told you; that blow was more likely caused by the fire or falling debris than by human force. Deposition of soot on the tongue, in the nares, the oropharynx
and the nasopharynx, all of which we have here, cannot be held to imply life during the fire.”

“So he could have been already dead?”

Glendenning gave Banks a nasty look and went on. “Traces of soot below the larynx would indicate that the victim was alive at the start of the fire.”

“And is there any?” Banks asked.

“A little. Right now, we need to dig deeper.” Glendenning gave the go-ahead and Wendy Gauge wielded her own scalpel and made the customary Y-shaped incision. The blackened skin, which had been dried by the fire and then wetted by the firefighters' hoses, peeled back like burned paper. And there it was, the sickly smell of death. Cooked or raw, it amounted to the same thing. “Hmm,” said Glendenning. “You can see how deep the burning goes in some places. It's never uniform, for a number of reasons, including the fact that your skin's thicker in some places than in others.”

“Needs to be around you,” said Banks.

Glendenning pointedly ignored him. “There's some exaggerated redness of the blood,” he said, “which indicates the presence of carbon monoxide. We'll know the exact amounts when that incompetent pillock Billings brings the results back from the lab.”

Banks remembered the day he found his old chief constable, Jimmy Riddle, dead in his garage from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suicide. His face had been cherry-red. “How much carbon monoxide does it take to cause death?” he asked.

“Anything over forty percent is likely to cause impaired judgment, unconsciousness and death, but it depends on the person's state of health. The generally accepted fatal level is fifty percent. All right, Wendy, you can go on now.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Wendy Gauge pulled up the chest flap and took a bone cutter to the rib cage, which she cracked open to expose the inner organs.

At that moment, the door opened and Billings appeared from the lab. The scene of carnage being played out on the stainless-steel postmortem table didn't faze him, but he was clearly terrified of Dr. Glendenning and developed a stutter whenever he had to deal with him. “H-here it is, Doctor,” he said. “The c-carbon monoxide results.”

Glendenning glared at him and studied the report. “Do you want the short answer or the long one?” he said to Banks, after dismissing Billings with an abrupt jerk of his head.

“The short one will do for now.”

“He has a CO level of twenty-eight percent,” Glendenning said. “That's enough to cause dizziness, a nasty headache, nausea and fatigue.”

“But not death?”

“Not unless he had some serious respiratory or heart disease. Which we'd know about if we had his medical history. In general terms, though, no, it's not enough to cause death. And given the levels of soot and particulate matter in the airways, I'd say he was alive, but most likely unconscious, when the fire started, in which case the cause is probably asphyxia caused by smoke inhalation. And don't forget, there are plenty of other nasty gases released during fires, including ammonia and cyanide. A full analysis will take more time.”

“What about tox screening?”

“Don't try to tell me my job, laddie,” Dr. Glendenning growled. “It's being done.”

“And dental records?”

“We can certainly get impressions,” said Glendenning, “but you can hardly check his chart against every bloody dentist in the country.”

“There's a chance he may have been local,” said Banks, “so we'll start with the Eastvale area.”

“Aye, well, that's
your
job.” Glendenning glanced at the clock and turned back to the body. “There's still a lot to be done here,” he said, “and I'm afraid I can't promise you I'll
get to the second victim tonight. I might even miss my dinner engagement as it is.”

Wendy Gauge removed the inner organs en bloc and placed them on the dissecting table.

“Well,” said Banks, looking at Hamilton and Annie, “whether our victim was hit on the head, whether his brains blew out through his skull, or whether he had a bad heart and died of low-level carbon monoxide inhalation, we know from the evidence so far that
someone
set the fire, so we're looking at murder. The best thing we can do now is try to find out just who the hell he was.” Banks glanced again at the loathsome hulk on the table, the charred and leathery skin, the exposed intestines and dribbles of reddish-pink blood. “And,” he added, “let's hope we're not dealing with a serial arsonist. I wouldn't want to be attending any more of these postmortems if I could help it.”

 

“Isn't this intimate?” said Maria Phillips, settling into her chair at a dimpled copper-topped table in a quiet corner of the Queen's Arms. “Go on, then, I'll be a devil and have a Campari and soda, please.”

Banks hadn't asked her if she wanted a drink yet, but that didn't seem to bother Maria as she set her faux fur coat on the chair next to her, patted her bottle-blond curls, then reached into her handbag for her compact and lipstick, with which she busied herself while Banks went to the bar. He had given her a ring at the community center that afternoon and discovered she was working late, which suited him fine. He was glad to be in a friendly pub after the ordeal of the postmortem and wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by ordinary, living people and to flush the taste of death by fire out of his system with a stiff drink or two.