Up in Flames (13 page)

             
Catt prodded. ‘So why did you choose those particular victims? Did you know the victim, Mrs Bansi?’

             
‘Course not. Why would I know her?’

             
‘I think what the sergeant is trying to understand is how you knew an Asian woman lived in the flat.’

             
‘Oh that. We saw her, didn’t we? Coupla days earlier. Gave us a load of lip. Saucy cow. So when we decided to do another one we settled on her. She got her comeuppance. Straight, she did.’

             
Casey began to experience some doubts that Gough was telling him the complete truth. Gough’s earlier bemusement when he saw the picture of Chandra didn’t indicate a pre-knowledge of the victim’s identity. Yet now he was claiming she had been selected because of pre-knowledge. It made no sense. ‘Mrs Bansi mentioned to her father that a couple of young men had harassed her a few days before her death. Are you saying that was you and Linklater?’

             
‘Yeah. All we did was tell her to go back where she came from. Bitch told us we should go back to school and learn some manners. Bleedin’ cheek. We taught her all right.’

             
‘So how did you set the fire?’

             
Gough frowned, but the effort was too great. ‘Can’t remember. You’re doin’ my bleedin’ head in with all these questions. Probably through the letterbox. That’s how we done the other ones. You know, the old Indian rope trick. Soak some string in petrol, pour more through the letterbox, drop the other end of the string through and whoosh, up it goes.’ He grinned.

             
Gough’s solicitor, who had repeatedly tried to restrain his client, butted in again and got another mouthful of abuse for his trouble. Gough sat back, looking very pleased with himself.

             
When he recalled the recent scenes at the mortuary, Casey had to fight the lingering desire to punch the grin from Wayne’s face. Instead, ignoring the frisson of doubt increased by Gough’s faulty recollections of Chandra’s flat, he told him, ‘You’re going down for a long stretch, Wayne. I doubt you’ll find your fellow prisoners quite as easy to intimidate as your victims.’

             
Wayne’s bravado didn’t falter. He was still on an adrenaline and alcohol-fuelled high. And although they continued to press him to supply details, his memory grew more hazy rather than less. Finally, he clammed up and refused to answer any more of their questions. Casey told the attending uniformed officer to take him away and bring up his fellow suspect.

             
Alone for the moment as the duty solicitor had followed his client out, and as they waited for Dean Linklater to be brought up from the cells, Catt said, ‘We’d better be sure he did all of them. Don’t want him wriggling out and retracting his confession. He seemed pretty hazy on details of the Chandra arson.’

             
Casey gave a grim nod. There were other aspects, too, to Gough’s confession that jarred. All the previous arsons amongst the Asian community had occurred at night, in the early hours. Typical after pub hours mindless violence. But the fire at Chandra Bansi‘s flat had happened at lunchtime in the middle of a bright summer’s day. There was the additional difference that the previous fires had been set via the letterboxes rather than by gaining entry. And although the fire centre of the latest arson was in the back living room, Gough had seemed unaware of that nor had he been able to furnish them with any details or descriptions of the flat as he’d been able to do with the earlier cases. Gough’s lack of knowledge bothered him.

             
‘We need to be absolutely watertight on this one,’ Casey commented. ‘If we get them to court and they get off on some technicality I’ll never forgive myself. I promised Chandra’s father I’d get the perpetrators. I mean to keep that promise.’ As he heard the sounds of the other prisoner and his escort approaching along the corridor, Casey lowered his voice and added, ‘We’ll have another go at Gough later. Maybe when he’s finished sobering up he’ll remember a few more facts about it. If he’s intent on incriminating himself, I want him to do a thorough job of it.’

             
In spite of his confident words, Casey couldn’t shake off the shiver of doubt. Drunk or not, Gough’s statement had been clear enough on the earlier arsons. Why should his memory of those be so much brighter than it was on the more recent one at Chandra’s flat? It didn’t make sense. He could only hope that Dean Linklater’s memory proved more reliable.

Gough’s accomplice was a similarly tough looking macho man and sported an equally impressive collection of rings, Yet they were both unemployed. And as he wondered how they could afford them, Casey decided it would be a good idea to check out local house burglaries.

             
Casey hoped again that Wayne Gough’s faulty memory wasn’t shared by his friend. If just one of the pair could recall significant details of the arson in Ainslee Terrace, he would be content that they had committed the fatal attack and could set about securing their conviction. And as he gazed into Dean Linklater’s suspiciously moist pale blue eyes and gained the impression that, in his case, the toughness was no more than surface deep, Casey’s faltering confidence began to return. Although, at first, Dean Linklater’s bravado was every bit as showy as Gough’s, Casey felt this suspect was the more likely of the two to yield to pressure and tell them the whole truth.

             
But in this, he was mistaken. Like Gough, Linklater ignored the caution and the same Asian solicitor and sat back, searching for and retrieving some of his slowly-trickling cockiness. ‘You should’ve seen those bastards when they watched their places go up in smoke,’ he bragged. ‘We hung about so we could watch. Screamin’ and cryin’ and throwin’ their arms about, they were. Right laugh.’

             
With difficulty, Casey kept his voice and expression neutral. ‘So you’d think it funny if everything you owned went up in smoke, would you?’ he asked softly. ‘All your clothes with their designer labels, your expensive trainers and your music collection.’

             
Dean’s expression narrowed. ‘What you talkin’ about? They’re Pakis. They’re not into stuff like that — wear sandals and saris or suits, don’t they? Gawd knows what they listen to — that wailing stuff probably. Better burnt.’

             
‘The older generation of Asians any more than the older generation of English might not be into modern western fashion and music,’ Casey conceded. ‘But the younger ones are into the same things as you, Dean.’ Casey wondered why he was bothering to try to instil a feeling of shame, of remorse; if he and Gough had deliberately set the fires he was likely to be incapable of either emotion. But he persevered. ‘And your victims were British born Indians, not Pakistanis.’ Not that it made any difference to Linklater and his charmless friend. ‘You’ve got more in common that you think. The young man whose flat you torched last week is in a band.’

             
‘Yeah, right. A wailing band, right?’ Dean sneered.

             
‘The band’s pretty catholic in its taste, I understand. Rock, hip-hop, garage. You should see their stage gear. All slashed leather and chains.’ Casey had been told this by one of his younger colleagues. At the age of thirty-five, he had not only long since given up attending such concerts, he had never started. ‘Luckily, their stage stuff and instruments had been left overnight in their van so it didn’t go up with the young man’s flat. At least he can still earn a living.’

             
Dean stared at him, the macho pose suddenly forgotten. ‘What you sayin’? That he plays in a real band. He actually makes a living from gigs?’ Clearly, some, at least, of Dean’s beliefs about the alien nature of the Asian community were being stood on their head. From where Casey was sitting, it looked an uncomfortable experience.

             
‘One of my younger colleagues went to see them play at the local college last month. He raved about them. Said they’re going places.’

             
Dean’s mouth hung open. Gobsmacked, Casey concluded. And well he might be. Dean’s mother — the would-be Mr Macho still lived at home — had told uniformed that Dean had musical aspirations himself, though he was apparently finding mastery of the guitar more demanding than fire-setting.

             
Once Dean had digested the fact that one of his Asian victims was so far from being alien as to share his musical ambitions, he became subdued. He slumped back in his chair and some of his machismo melted away. Here was something he could relate to, his demeanour said.

             
He became even more subdued as they brought the questioning around to the latest, fatal arson and sat hunched and miserable under their questions.

             
‘I suppose Wayne confessed to that one, too?’ he finally asked.

             
‘Yes,’ Casey told him. ‘His solicitor, Mr Asif here, couldn’t get him to shut up. Wayne couldn’t get the words out quickly enough. He also implicated you.’

             
Linklater merely nodded as though he had been expecting this. And as it gradually dawned on him what a bleak future awaited him, a look of desperation entered his eyes. He gazed from Casey to Catt, to his solicitor and back again, his gaze flickering from face to face as though searching for a way out. Several times his lips opened as if he was going to speak, maybe even deny his part in the killings, but each time his eyes shadowed and he closed his mouth tightly.

             
Finally, he seemed to accept his fate, and, his voice sounding like that of an automaton, said dully, ‘Yeah, we did it. Me and Wayne. Can I go back to my cell now? I feel sick.’

             
‘There’s a bucket in the corner,’ Casey told him bluntly. ‘I suggest you make use of that if you need to throw up.’ He had brought it in anticipating that one of their sobering suspects might need to vomit. The interview room was basic, its ambiance unlikely to be improved by the stench of vomit, but, he didn’t see why the cleaners’ task should be made even more unpleasant by the likes of Dean Linklater. ‘We’ll need some details.’

             
Dean looked blankly at him. ‘Details? What do you mean? I don’t know no details. We done it, that’s all I know. Wayne’s the details man.’

             
And although they worked hard to get concrete evidence from him on the Bansi arson, Linklater’s memory proved poorer than Gough’s. Interspersed with groans as he periodically vomited the contents of his stomach into the plastic bucket, he claimed to be unable to remember anything and in answer to their questions, moaned, ‘ask Wayne. He’ll know.’

             
He couldn’t even remember where he’d bought — or more probably stolen — the petrol Gough claimed they had used to set the fire. Casey had earlier ordered his teams to check out the local filling stations and their security videos, but their two suspects hadn’t featured on any of them. Of course, they could have got the petrol further afield, but why would they go to the trouble when neither denied their guilt?

             
Like Wayne Gough, Linklater soon tired of their persistent probing. Unable or unwilling to tell them anything more, it was at least in his favour that he lacked his friend’s eager desire to boast of their achievements. Instead, he sat sullen and miserable, hunched over the now foul-smelling bucket. Eventually, when Casey produced the photograph of Chandra and Leela, he took refuge in silence. And although he apparently retained sufficient sense of shame to flush as he gazed at the picture, he also had the sense to finally take notice of his solicitor and he volunteered nothing further.

             
Now that his adopted swagger — which Casey suspected was put on in imitation of his pal — had melted away, the real Dean was clearly seen. His eyes were restless as though seeking an escape route. His buttocks, too, seemed unable to find ease. Though whether this desire to escape was in anticipation of what he could expect in prison, or from the retribution his friend would mete out if he attempted to save his own skin and backtrack on his admission of guilt, wasn’t clear.

             
Weak, painfully immature and easily-led, Casey could believe that ‘Little Sir Echo’ had followed sheep-like behind Gough’s evil lead, too much under his brash friend’s influence to develop a mind or a life of his own. And although every bit as guilty as his friend, Linklater had still retained sufficient decency to have a sense of shame as his ugly flush had revealed. Without the older Gough’s
Svengali
-like influence, Linklater might have had a chance to grow into a decent human being. Of course, if the case went to court and they were found guilty they would both go down. But that was a long way in the future. And far from certain, even after the two confessions.

             
That neither of them could supply convincing details of the Bansi arson worried him. His only hope was that a night’s sleep would encourage the return of memory.

             
Casey suggested to Dean that it was long past time he started thinking for himself. He was old enough to take responsibility for his actions. Old enough, too, to decide for himself what those actions should be.