After the Fire (14 page)

‘My real name?’ she said, making it a question.

‘You were Melissa Moore before you got married in 2009, when you became Melissa Pell. And your son is Thomas, isn’t he? You changed his name when you ran away. You became Vivienne Hathaway and he became Sam.’

‘You must have found my handbag.’

I actually didn’t know if we had. I looked to see Pettifer shaking his head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We tracked you down through Harriet Edmonds.’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘She promised me I could trust her. I believed her.’

‘She took some persuading.’ I sat down in the chair beside the bed, conscious that I was standing over her. ‘We thought you’d want us to find someone to look after Thomas. In case you weren’t well enough.’

‘I’m getting out of here today,’ Melissa said, sitting up and starting to unpeel the tape holding the IV needle in place. ‘I’m going. And Thomas is coming with me.’

‘Mrs Pell, you’re not well enough.’ I put a hand out to stop her and she flinched away from me.

‘You don’t understand. I have to go. I can’t leave him.’

‘But your mother—’

‘She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand. She believes
him
, not me.’

‘Him?’ I could tell she didn’t mean Thomas.

‘My husband.’ Melissa looked as if she was about to be sick. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, which were lacking all colour. ‘Mark Pell. I have to keep Thomas away from him. He’s dangerous.’

‘Did he hurt Thomas?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Did he hurt you?’

She looked straight at me, daring me to doubt her. ‘Over and over again.’

‘Why doesn’t your mother believe you?’

‘Because he’s so fucking good at persuading people he’s a good man and I’m insane,’ she spat. ‘He’s been halfway to getting me sectioned before now and no one ever believes you if you’re mad, do they? Mental people can’t possibly be telling the truth about their handsome, rich husband, and how he manipulates everything they say.’

‘Did you report him to the police?’

‘I tried. They thought I was doing it to myself – pretending he hit me, or pushed me downstairs, or burned me, or pulled out my hair. I mean, that’s what he told everyone. The police, everyone. No one believed me, because how could it be true? Mr Perfect doesn’t hit his wife. Even if she really, really deserves it for being a lying bitch. I accused him of all of these things, you see, and no one could believe it, so I had to be lying. And I had to be evil, too, to try to take his son away.’ Two tears streaked down her cheeks. ‘All of our friends. Our neighbours. Our families. He persuaded them all that I’d stolen Thomas. They’re all sorry for him – can you imagine that?’

‘You must have felt very much alone.’

‘He made it so I couldn’t even trust my own mother.’ She corrected herself. ‘I
can’t
trust her. That’s why I have to get out of here.’

‘I spoke to her.’ Pettifer sounded guilty. ‘We wanted to get in touch with her because of Thomas. So she could help with him, I mean.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said she’d come. She said she wished she’d supported you. She cried.’

Melissa covered her face with her hands so we couldn’t see her weep. I glanced back at Pettifer. He mouthed, ‘Ask about the fire.’

I pulled a face which was supposed to imply,
I had thought of that, thanks
. He shrugged.

Melissa’s voice was muffled when she spoke. ‘When is she coming?’

‘Soon, I think.’ I leaned forward. ‘Mrs Pell, I need to ask you about what happened yesterday.’

‘The fire.’

‘Exactly.’

She sniffed, gathering herself together. ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’

‘Did you see anything suspicious? Or hear anything?’

‘Not really.’

‘What do you mean by not really?’

She managed a half-smile. ‘That’s the trouble with being scared all the time. Everything is suspicious. Every sound is terrifying.’

I did actually know what she meant, but I didn’t think I’d try to join in.
Let me tell you about my stalker …
‘Was there anything in particular that seemed different yesterday?’

She thought for a moment, really considering the question. ‘It was just the usual sorts of things. Footsteps. Voices. People coming and going all the time. I’d never lived anywhere so noisy. You know, when there’s someone above you and someone below you and someone on either side, you feel like a battery hen.’

‘Especially if you’re used to a detached house,’ Mal suggested. His tone was gentle but it inspired pure aggression in Melissa Pell.

‘You don’t know anything about what I’m used to.’

‘No, I’m just saying—’

‘Think back,’ I said, interrupting. ‘What sounds did you hear that made you scared before the fire?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Voices from the flat beside us. I thought I was hearing things. There wasn’t anyone living there, as far as I knew. But I could hear voices.’

Armstrong and his girlfriend. ‘What else?’

‘A few random screams and shouts from upstairs – they were always noisy – and doors banging. But none of that was unusual. It was a noisy place.’ She laughed. ‘I was probably the only person who was glad when the lift was broken. It terrified me when it was working. The doors shake. They rattle when they slide back and I always think – thought – it was someone trying to break in to my flat.’

‘That someone being …’ Pettifer prompted. She gave him a clear, cold stare.

‘My husband, obviously. It wasn’t a great place to live but I never felt unsafe in Murchison House. People were kind. They were nice to Thomas.’ She smiled a little. ‘Maybe I was naïve but I thought they wouldn’t bother trying to break into our flat. It was so obvious we had nothing much to steal. My clothes—’ she broke off to look around the room. ‘I don’t know what happened to them. But they were cheap. My bag was from Primark. Thomas’s clothes were nothing special either, and he didn’t have a scooter or a bike. We had an old TV that was basically worthless and a tiny amount of cash and I never wore any jewellery or anything – I mean, I left it all behind. I left everything behind. I didn’t want him to be able to say I’d stolen anything.’

‘Did you call 999 when you realised there was a fire in the block?’ I asked.

‘Yes. They told me it was up to me if I waited or if I tried to leave.’ She frowned. ‘That wasn’t fair, I thought. If I made the wrong decision it was on me, wasn’t it? If we stayed and the fire got to us before the firefighters, we were screwed.’

‘It’s because of what happened in Camberwell in 2006,’ I explained, having had a lecture from Northbridge on it the previous evening. ‘There was a fatal fire in a block of flats. The coroner found that some of the victims could have escaped if they’d been encouraged to go. The people in the control room aren’t always in the best position to decide what’s safest.’

‘Well,
I
didn’t know.’ She coughed again. ‘I didn’t want to have to leave. I just didn’t feel we had a choice.’

‘Having seen your flat, I think you made the right decision,’ I said.

‘Is it gone?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘We couldn’t go back there anyway.’ Her voice was flat. ‘And I had everything important in my bag.’

‘Your bag – what did it look like?’ Pettifer asked.

‘It’s a green shoulder bag. It’s not leather but it’s supposed to look like it. It has a navy blue tassel on the zip and a navy strap. Primark, as I said before.’

‘We haven’t found it,’ Mal said.

She looked confused. ‘I had it over my shoulder.’

‘There was no ID on you or near you when they found you,’ I said. ‘That’s why it took us a while to work out who Thomas belonged to. You were on the eighth floor and you were unconscious.’

‘How did I get there?’ She looked from me to Pettifer, then Mal. ‘I was going straight downstairs. Thomas was in front of me. I let him go first so I could watch him walk down. I didn’t want him behind me in case we got separated.’

‘Was there anyone in the stairwell?’

‘Not on our floor,’ she said instantly. ‘There were people coming down from the eleventh floor – I heard them coming through the door, coughing. And other people were ahead of us. But we were on our own.’

‘Do you remember someone attacking you?’

‘No.’

‘Someone grabbing you?’

‘No.’ She frowned. ‘I remember someone running down from behind us, very fast. I told Thomas to hold on to the handrail in case he got knocked over.’

‘Do you remember anyone speaking to you, or passing you on the stairs?’

‘No.’

‘What about a man in a black zip-up jacket and a red baseball cap?’ I asked, and saw her eyes flicker as it triggered something.

‘I don’t— why are you asking about that?’

‘Does it ring any bells?’

‘Not from yesterday.’ Her face was as white as the hospital pillows. ‘My husband wears a red cap. It’s his favourite.’

I felt the familiar rush, the moment a shape began to emerge from the darkness that surrounded the case. A pattern. A connection. A witness and a suspect.

A killer with a face and a name.

Maybe.

‘Melissa, does your husband have a black zipped jacket?’

‘Probably.’ She rolled her head on the pillow. ‘I don’t know. He has lots of jackets.’

I leaned forward a little more. ‘Melissa, this is important. I need you to think about this and answer me honestly. Do you think – if he found you – he’d do something as reckless as set a fire to make you leave your flat?’

She nodded.

‘Did he ever do anything like that?’

‘He likes fires.’ She licked her lips. ‘He burned my things in the garden. Clothes he didn’t like. Pictures. Letters.’

Better and better.

‘Hold on a second,’ Pettifer said. ‘He knew you had Thomas with you, didn’t he? Thomas is his kid. Is he really going to put him in harm’s way – risk his life in the fire, or even just leave him on his own in a car park for hours – to get back at you?’

I could have killed him. The hurt on Melissa’s face was obvious.

‘I thought you were different.’

‘We’re not saying we don’t believe you. We just have to test every theory,’ I said, talking quickly. ‘It’s what we do. It’s how we get to the truth, and that’s what we want in this case. We’ll talk to your husband, Mrs Pell. We’ll find out if he had an alibi for last night and we’ll turn his life upside down if he looks like being a suspect. But we have to ask these questions first.’

She was tired, and injured, and she’d been under strain for a long time, but Melissa Pell had an inner strength that hadn’t yet deserted her. ‘I understand,’ she said, her voice low. ‘All I can tell you is what I know. You asked if he was capable of putting his son in danger.’

‘That’s right.’

She looked up and there was nothing but certainty in her eyes. ‘Mark Pell is capable of anything.’

A knock on the door made us all jump. Mal muttered as he hurried to open it, obviously intending to send the intruder away. Instead, he fell back as Derwent strode into the room, followed by an older woman who bore a striking resemblance to Melissa Pell. It didn’t take a huge leap of imagination to think she might be her mother. Derwent was carrying Thomas, whose arms were wrapped around his neck, his head buried in Derwent’s shoulder again. This time he was hiding rather than asleep. I stood up, moving out of the way as they approached the bed.

‘Here she is,’ Derwent said. ‘Look.’

Thomas risked a peek as his mother said his name. She’d sat up in bed, and the expression on her face made me catch my breath. The boy twisted once he saw her, wriggling to get down, a grubby rabbit clutched in one hand. Derwent dropped him on the end of the bed.

‘Mummy.’ He scrambled up the bed into her arms, fitting his head in under her chin as she held on to him tightly.

I turned away, clearing my throat, to see Mal rubbing his eyes surreptitiously. Melissa’s mother was in floods of tears, not for the first time that day if the redness of her eyes was anything to go by. Pettifer was beaming paternally. I glanced in Derwent’s direction, wondering if the emotion of it all was getting to him too. He stood at the end of the bed, his expression remote, his arms folded, as cold and stern as if he was carved from stone.

Some things never changed.

GEOFF ARMSTRONG HADN’T
been looking all that great the last time I’d seen him. It was safe to say he looked a lot worse after his post-mortem. The incisions the pathologist had made in his body were the least of it. Now that he’d been stripped and washed, the damage he’d sustained was impossible to miss. The blood had hidden the worst of it, ironically. Now he was naked, flat on his back, his skin pale where it wasn’t livid or lacerated or torn away completely.

Dr Early was just stepping back from his body when Derwent and I walked into the morgue. She pulled her mask down, revealing a disapproving look on her narrow face.

‘You missed the show.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Derwent said, as if he hadn’t been dawdling the whole way there. Neither of us was exactly squeamish – not any more – but Armstrong’s post-mortem was unlikely to be a spectator sport, we’d agreed. Besides, it was all so straightforward, compared to the other deaths in Murchison House. He’d been with a woman who was definitely, emphatically not his wife, and his constituents would have been outraged at the idea of their MP in a mixed-race extra-marital affair. Public humiliation, resignation, the end of a promising career as a political pundit, accusations of hypocrisy … he’d deserved it all, and more. But I could see why he’d been desperate to avoid it, why he’d gambled on escaping unnoticed, or why he’d given his life rather than face his future. I hadn’t had much time for him, but arguably he hadn’t deserved to die in a fire. I’d do a decent job of finding out what had happened, close the case, and never think about Armstrong again.

‘Maybe you could just give us the highlights,’ Derwent suggested to Dr Early. ‘That should be enough to get DCI Burt off my case.’

‘I could make you wait for my report.’

Derwent winced. ‘You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?’

‘Watch me. I have other work to do. Armstrong was first but he’s had his moment in the sun.’ She turned away, and inwardly I cheered. Derwent had made a habit of unsettling her from the first time they met. It was nice to see her being more confident now that she was on her own territory.