The Burning (13 page)

Chapter Five

M
AEVE

After I had finished with Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend, I made my way back to the incident room. I was looking forward to spending the rest of Saturday at my desk, considering the four blue lever-arch files on my desk fat with notes on the Burning Man murders – witness statements, forensics analysis, the pathologist’s reports on the autopsies, crime-scene photographs. The sad thing was I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, even if I hadn’t had a message on my phone from Ian to tell me that he was going to the cinema with some friends. I was, apparently, welcome to join them, but since it was an ultra-violent horror film, it was an easy decision for me. I got to see plenty of real horror at work; I couldn’t sit through a fake version of it in the name of entertainment. Besides, the friends he was with were not my favourites. Like Ian, they worked in the City; like Ian, they were comfortable with flashing their cash. But they brought out the braying idiot in my boyfriend and I couldn’t stand to be around him when he was like that.

Better to stay at work and spend my time going through the files once more, to see if there was anything that I and everyone else had missed. Somewhere in all those words and images, there had to be some answers.

When I got there, the room was emptying out, some officers heading off duty, others going out to do more house-to-house enquiries where the residents hadn’t been available before, or to man checkpoints in the Burning Man’s area of operations so they could speak to motorists driving through it. They had ANPR units set up – automatic number-plate recognition – to help with identifying cars that might be of interest, and if nothing else, they tended to pick up a fair few drivers who didn’t have insurance or full licences. We were spreading the net widely but that made it all the harder to pick out our particular fish from the catch.

Superintendent Godley was in his glass-fronted office, the door closed. He was on the phone. He leaned his forehead on one hand, shading his eyes, as if he needed to concentrate on a difficult conversation. He looked exhausted. As I watched, he hung up, then sat for a second without moving.

DI Judd interrupted him, knocking on the door and poking his head in without waiting. They had a brief conversation that ended with the two men turning to look at me. I ducked my head behind my computer screen, hoping that they hadn’t seen me staring at them. I was aware of Godley crossing the room in my direction, the inspector a couple of paces behind him.

‘Maeve, I was just talking to Tom about the Haworth investigation, letting him know how we’re going to take the investigation forward.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said, trying to work out why Judd looked so irritated. He ignored me and spoke to Godley in a low voice.

‘Just don’t put a note in your policy log, Charlie. It’ll be disclosable to the defence if we ever catch this guy. They’ll know we weren’t sure about putting this murder down to him and that won’t help us in court.’

Godley’s face was shuttered, remote. ‘I’ve made my decision and I’m going to stick to it. I’ll answer for it in the box if I have to.’

‘You don’t honestly think there are two of them out there, do you?’

Godley looked at me. ‘Tell him about the differences we’ve observed, Maeve. It’s a reasonable suggestion.’

Judd pulled a face and turned to me. ‘Was this your idea?’

‘No, but––’

Judd didn’t wait to hear what I had to say. ‘We’ll be making a big mistake if we’re anything less than definite about this case. If we lose this one in court because the jury don’t understand how you’ve decided to run it––’

‘It’ll be up to me to take responsibility,’ Godley finished for him. ‘And I will. It’s my name on the line, Tom, not yours.’

‘That’s not what worries me.’

‘I know you are worried about making a strong case, but need I point out that we have to catch him first? I get a bad feeling about the latest murder; I want it investigated as if it was a new crime, not part of the series, until we’re sure it fits in. End of conversation.’

Judd and I watched as Godley strode away, head down. I had never heard him speak to the inspector that way before. Neither, it seemed, had Judd. He turned back to me.

‘Follow whatever wild-goose chase the boss is on and then get back to work on this enquiry. But don’t bother me with the details. If you find anything that proves this murder is part of the series – or proves that it isn’t – let me know about it. Otherwise, I really don’t care to hear about it.’

‘Fine,’ I said, smarting a little from his tone. ‘I’ll just get on with it.’

‘You do that.’ He stared at me for a second. ‘Don’t think this is a sign that the boss likes you, Kerrigan. It’s the sort of job you’d give to someone you didn’t want fucking up elsewhere. He’s got you out of the way.’

What he said was uncomfortably close to what I had thought myself, but I managed not to react. If my face was hot as he walked away, picking up his coat as he went, it wasn’t surprising – the incident room was always boiling, the radiators on twenty-four hours a day. It was unpleasant even for me, and I could generally stand any amount of heat. The air was stagnant and we relied on a few ancient, highly prized fans to push it around. This late in the day, one or two were unattended. I went on the hunt, picking my way around the desks with care, because the hazards underfoot included loose sheets of paper, empty water bottles and discarded sandwich wrappers. In spite of the grand title, the incident room was an absolutely bland office space. It might as well have been a call centre, and not a very good one at that; the place was a tip. Stained mugs stood at practically every workstation. Someone had ripped open a packet of digestive biscuits beside the photocopier. I could tell this because at least two seemed to have disintegrated on contact with the air. Passing foot traffic had worked the fine beige crumbs into the fibres of the nylon carpet tiles and even though I wasn’t the tidiest person in the world I yearned for a vacuum cleaner. If there had been one standing beside the mess, already plugged in and waiting to go, I wouldn’t have touched it in front of any of the other officers, though. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t wash up or make tea; I never tidied. Show the slightest hint of weakness and I’d be looking after all domestic duties for the entire squad in a heartbeat.

I returned to my desk triumphant, carrying a nine-inch non-rotating number that wheezed asthmatically and didn’t seem to do much more than ruffle the pages on my desk. They flapped like wounded birds. Cooling of the atmosphere was not particularly noticeable, but I didn’t care; I had stolen it from Peter Belcott’s desk and I would have cherished it for that reason alone. A cold Diet Coke from the vending machine took care of my caffeine craving and also made a handy paperweight. I knotted my hair up at the nape of my neck, stuck a pencil through it to hold the makeshift bun in place, jammed my hands against my ears to block out any distractions, then got down to some serious reading.

I hadn’t been concentrating for long when the fan clicked off. I looked up, outraged.

‘Turn that back on.’

Rob was standing beside my desk, his finger over the off-switch, shaking his head. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Isn’t it time you went home?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I’d rather look through the files again.’

‘You know how to live, don’t you?’ He picked up a booklet of photographs from the third crime scene and flipped through it idly, and I couldn’t help but look as well at what was left of Charity Beddoes, twenty-three, the tall, beautiful post-graduate student at LSE, who owed her height and blue eyes to her English father and her hair and skin colour to her Nigerian mother. There was a narrative to the procession of images. The path that led into the copse where her body had burned. Charred bark and branches. A close-up of what might have been the edge of a footprint. Blackened skin. A twisted torso patched with the remains of her clothing. One leg, weirdly, that wasn’t damaged by the fire, brown and perfect from the middle of the thigh down to the foot, a long graze on the calf where she’d been dragged along the ground. It had happened, I knew without referring to the pathologist’s report, around the time of her death, though he couldn’t say for certain whether she’d been alive to feel it. But she must have felt something. Fourteen separate injuries to her skull and face – fourteen blows with an instrument similar to a claw hammer, according to the pathologist. Defence injuries to her hands and forearms where she’d tried to shield herself, though her hands were bound in front of her so she couldn’t fight back. Broken teeth. Broken bones. Nothing for her family to recognise, if they had wanted to see the body, and I hoped like hell they hadn’t. It would be no way to remember someone you loved.

Rob cursed softly and threw the booklet onto the desk in front of me.

‘Let’s get out of here, Goody-two-shoes. You need a rest and something to eat. You look like shit.’

‘I only keep you around for the morale boost, you realise.’

‘I live to serve.’ He grabbed the back of my chair and spun it around so I was facing the door. ‘Come on. Up. Let’s go for a drink and a curry.’

I stayed where I was. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I promised myself I’d read through the notes on the cases while I had the time to do it.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘All right. I give in. I’ll let you do your reading. But I’m not letting you stay here. It’s too depressing. I’m taking these files away and you’re going home. I’ll come over with them later on and we can go through them together.’

‘Don’t boss me. I’ll go home when I’m ready and – Rob!’

He’d scooped up the four folders and was heading for the door. ‘You’d better text me your address. Do you prefer Indian or Thai food?’

‘Rob, come on. Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You’re right. It’s got to be pizza. Everyone loves pizza.’ The last sentence was delivered over his shoulder as he disappeared through the swing doors out of the incident room, leaving me sitting on my chair, opening and closing my mouth futilely. I had been outmanoeuvred. Hijacked. And I knew Rob well enough to know that if I wanted to see my files again, I’d need to go along with what he’d suggested. To be honest, I didn’t mind too much. It didn’t sound like a bad idea.

Not then, anyway.

The phone was ringing when I opened the front door but I couldn’t make myself run for it. I trudged up the stairs carrying my jacket and my shoes, which I had taken off as soon as I got inside. My bones were aching; I felt a hundred years old. As I reached the top of the stairs, the answering machine kicked in and I listened for a second to my mother’s voice, trying to gauge whether her hollow tone meant that there was something genuinely wrong or if it was her usual guilt trip.

‘Maeve. I was hoping to speak to you, actually. I wanted to have a word. But you’re not there.’ Long pause. ‘Maybe you’d call me when you get the chance.’ Another pause. ‘It’s nothing important. We just haven’t spoken for a while and your father was worried.’

I snorted. Dad would not have been worried in the least.

‘I was speaking with––’
Bee-eep
.

I threw my jacket and shoes down on the sofa in the living room, then lifted the shoes off it again and pawed guiltily at the dust marks they had left on the purple suede. Who had a purple suede sofa, anyway? It was about eight feet long and vilely uncomfortable, but had been extremely expensive, Ian had told me, round about the time I put a mug of tea down on one arm and left a ring on it. I would have preferred something comfortable and saggy, something you could lie on while watching TV and eating chocolate. Something you could actually use.

The phone rang again.

‘Maeve? It’s your mother. Your machine cut me off.’ Aggrieved to the power of ten.
Maybe if you didn’t leave ten-minute messages, you’d get to the end of what you wanted to say before the machine ran out of patience
. ‘I was saying, I was speaking with your auntie Maureen. Denise is pregnant, due in May. Of course, she said she was delighted about it – what else could she say? No word of whether Denise and Cormac will be getting married. I thought you should know, though. Ah, it’s a blessing really. Maureen will love being a grandmother. She was asking for you, but I told her there was no sign of anything like that on the horizon. With your job I don’t know how you’d fit in a baby anyway. As I told Maureen, I never seem to be able to get hold of––’ The machine beeped again, and blessed silence fell. I rolled my eyes and wandered back out of the living room as the phone started to ring again. There was no way I was going to answer it. Much better to leave her to ramble on.

I would call her, I promised myself, tomorrow, though I hoped she wasn’t going to have another go at me about being a policewoman. I’d been in the job for five years and she still wasn’t used to the idea, not least because I had a slew of cousins back in Ireland who had very little time for the British authorities. I didn’t think any of them were actually in the IRA but they were committed nationalists, the kind of people who knew all the words to ‘A Nation Once Again’ and could list the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation in order off the tops of their heads. Mum had kept my choice of career quiet for as long as she could, hoping I’d change my mind, and she still tended to avoid talking about it within the extended family. I had schooled myself not to mind, but it still got to me occasionally. There’s nothing like making your parents proud.

In the kitchen I went straight to the kettle and made myself a mug of tea, downing half of it before I noticed the note stuck to the fridge door, in Ian’s tight, hard-to-decipher writing.
Your mother rang
.
Call her
. The second sentence was underlined. Poor Ian. She didn’t like him much – didn’t like the fact that we were living together, or that he wasn’t a Catholic. It made it worse that he wasn’t committed to any religion, in fact – she could have come to terms with a Prod. But the godless and my mother would never see eye-to-eye. I wondered briefly what they had found to say to one another. One of Mum’s major gripes was that Ian never said anything to her when he answered the phone; he would practically throw it at me when he heard her voice on the other end. The soft Donegal accent that she hadn’t lost in thirty years of living in England sometimes disguised the spikiness, but you always had to watch out for it. She could skewer you with a well-turned phrase. I shuddered. No, I definitely wasn’t strong enough for her tonight.