Incinerator (18 page)

“Could you keep your distance please—this building’s not safe.” The fire officer had turned from the door and noticed me. I slipped the wire into my pocket. “In fact you should be on the other side of the tape, sir.”

“I used to live here,” I said.

“I’m sorry about that, but you will have to retire to a safe distance.” He was short and stout with neatly clipped hair, and I guessed he spoke that way because instead of a personality he had a health and safety manual. What was he like at home? I wondered. Did he disinfect his lips after kissing his kids?

“Have you found out what caused it yet?”

“It’s far too early to reach any conclusions, sir. Now if you don’t mind—”

Maybe I could have been a fire safety officer, because I had already reached a preliminary conclusion using standard issue equipment—namely my nose. Even now, hours after the fire, I could smell the sharp chemical tang of petrol. The front doors that had opened onto the staircase were bulging and sagging on
their hinges, but they were still tightly shut. They seemed almost fused into the doorframe and the threshold. The fire safety officer had opened his arms to shoo me away like I was a stray dog trying to steal his sandwiches.

“I think someone was trying to kill me,” I said.

“Sorry, sir, we need to keep this area clear. I can’t discuss any of my findings at this stage.”

“That’s why they screwed the doors shut, so I wouldn’t be able to get out,” I said. That shut him up, and I knew my guess had been right. The same trick had been used by whoever had torched the old pub where Alan Leslie had taken shelter with his boyfriend. I could have ended up like one of them—scarred for life, or mixed with landfill.

“Sir,” insisted the fire officer. “If you don’t clear the area I’ll have to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” I said. I walked away with my hands in my pockets, fingering that bent beaded piece of wire. I remembered now where I’d seen it before, but I wasn’t about to tell that pompous jerk of a fire safety officer about it—not just yet.

This had nothing to do with Detective Sergeant Lovegrove.

As I crossed the road and headed east towards the Tube station I checked my phone. Fourteen per cent charge left. All my phone chargers were melted lumps of clag now, of course, at the bottom of a smouldering brick pit. And suddenly I realized everything else was in there too: my laptop, my paperwork, my family photos … and Nicky’s copied files. All of it had gone for ever, leaving me just the clothes I stood up in. Even the tired anorak I was wearing had been donated to me by the hospital—I hadn’t wanted to know where they’d got it from. And only now, looking back at the gaunt blackened shell of the place where I’d lived, did it occur to me to wonder where I would sleep that night.

But as my dad would have said, look on the bright side. I still had my mobile, and all the information on it. I picked a number from my contacts, and pressed “dial.”

“Zoe, hi,” I said. “Yeah, I know how early it is. How are you getting on with that phone?”

It had started raining by the time I got to Bisham’s house, and water was running down its front wall where the guttering had fallen away. I jogged up to the door and huddled in the shallow porch. That’s what it meant to be homeless, I saw now; if I got soaked or filthy, I’d have nowhere to dry off and no clean clothes to change into. But that mattered less to me at that moment than getting the truth out of that demented Bisham.

When she opened her front door her face registered plenty of annoyance but not a trace of fear or guilt. Then again, anyone nuts enough to murder by arson wouldn’t react like a normal human being. My own face must have registered plenty of anger, because she
stepped back to slam the door, only to have it bounce off my foot as I stepped inside the hall. Ever helpful, I took hold of the door and slammed it for her.

“Get out of my house,” she said.

“I think this belongs to you,” I said. I held up the bent golden wire with the scorched purple beads. Where my thumbnail had cut into them they gleamed blue, the same shade as the beads she’d been wearing last time I called. Bisham looked confused and tried to snatch the earring from me, but I pulled my hand away. “I found it near the front door of my home,” I said. “Or what’s left of my home. Next time you torch a place, don’t wear clip-on earrings.”

“What?” she said. “Piss off!” She actually managed to sound indignant.

“Is that what Nicky found out?” I said. “That you burned that pub down and killed that squatter, and made it look like your husband did it?”

“You’re talking bull!” she spat.

“Who did you send to scare Nicky into leaving,” I said, “when those obscene texts and the
sick tweets and the threatening emails didn’t work? Do you have someone on the company payroll for jobs like that?”

Cornered now, Bisham came back at me, snapping in my face like a rabid dog. “I said, piss off! I never sent her any texts or twitters or whatever the hell it is you’re talking about—”

“I had a friend check, an IT expert,” I said. “The IP address of the sender resolves to this house—”

“The IP what?” For the first time she seemed rattled.

“The address of your Internet connection,” I said. “It leads right back to you, just like this earring does.”

“How did you get hold of that?” Bisham came back. “That was a present from my—”

Abruptly she clamped her mouth shut, and stared at me. I could see calculation cross her face, as if she was working out whether to placate me or get rid of me or try to bribe me somehow. That was when I knew I had her wrong. In the kitchen a glint of blue light from the wireless camera caught my eye, and from outside I heard the faint bong of a footstep on
a metal staircase. I turned and bolted back out the front door.

Bisham’s son had scurried unseen down an ancient fire escape at the back of the house, but he wasn’t headed for the front gate—he was running for a corner of the muddy overgrown garden. I guessed there was a hole in the fence among the bushes, a way out his mother didn’t know about, but he never made it that far, because the podgy little bastard couldn’t run to save his life. He had barely reached the hedge when I brought him down hard, flat on his face into the rotting leaves and chipped bark. He yelped and screamed incoherently as I dragged him upright and hopped him, with his arm halfway up his back, towards his mother’s house.

Joan Bisham stood white-faced and shaking with shock in her disgusting kitchen, while Gabe Bisham sat at the table sulking. He seemed insulted that he’d been caught by someone he considered a moron, but then he probably considered everyone he knew a moron, compared to him. Underneath his bratty screw-you defiance was a smugness,
like no one would ever believe he was guilty. Maybe he was right—if he hadn’t tried to run I’d never have guessed that this pasty, obese slob was a killer.

It was clear his mother had no idea how her son liked to spend his spare time, but I did—I’d read the threats and insults he’d sent to Nicky, and to his mother. The sewers of the Internet were full of paranoid hate-spewing wankers, and Gabriel Bisham was one of them.

“Where’s my blue earrings, Gabe?” His mother wanted to sound calm but her voice was stretched tight as a drum skin ready to split. “The clip-on pair you bought me for my last birthday. Gold with blue beads.”

“Uhuhuh,” said Gabe, shrugging. I recognized the teenage term for “I dunno.” I’d used it myself on my dad when I didn’t want to talk, and now I knew why it had always infuriated him.

“I’ve been all through my jewellery twice: they’re not there. I was wearing them the other day.” She was appealing to her son for any explanation less awful than the truth.

“He’s hidden the other one,” I said. “It would have turned up when the police came
to search this place.” I took the twisted golden wire from my pocket and tossed it onto the table. “This one still has your DNA on it, and that would have been all they needed to charge you with arson and murder.”

Gabe looked at me with a sneer. “Why would the police even search this house?” He was trying to snarl but it came out like a whine.

“Because you’d tip them off,” I said. “With an anonymous message. You’re good at those, but not that good. What do they call guys like you, copying hackers’ tricks off the Internet? Oh yeah—script kiddies.”

“Fuck off,” snarled Gabe. Now we were getting closer to the real him.

“Gabe!” his mother cut in. Christ, I thought, she’s worried about his language? She really hasn’t thought this through.

“It wasn’t your husband who sent those texts,” I said. “It was your little boy, Gabriel.”

“But why? Gabe?”

“Because he gets off on it,” I said. “He’s been manipulating both of you for years. He got your husband sent to prison, and you would have been next, and he would have been free.” Social Services wouldn’t have had a hope of
controlling him, I knew. They would have had no idea what sort of creep he was—any more than his mother did, even now.

“I’m sorry, Gabriel. I’m sorry if I wasn’t there for you. I’ll get you help, I promise.”

The way she talked it was as if I’d caught him shoplifting chocolate. He doesn’t need help, I thought. He needs sedation and a home where he can’t sneak out at night and burn people alive while he watches, fondling himself.

“Mrs. Bisham, it was Gabriel who burned down that pub. Where that squatter died. He tried the same stunt again last night, and I only just made it out alive.”

“It can’t have been Gabe—he’s only fifteen, for God’s sake—”

When I was fourteen and coming up for trial I’d been assessed by psychologists, and now I remembered all the questions they had asked.

“When Gabriel was young, were there any unexplained fires at your home?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What about the cat?” I said. “The one that got doused in lighter fuel?”

Bisham’s hand flew to cover her mouth, but her son merely giggled.

“He’s accused me of murdering someone, and you’re upset about that stupid cat? Priceless.”

She looked at him in disbelief, as if she’d given birth to a baby that was inside out but still alive somehow. Then she steadied herself, and tidied her clothes, and stood up straight. I realized the veneer of the hard-nosed businesswoman was all that was holding her together. She was pretending to herself that this had been a particularly challenging human resources problem, but now the issues had been identified we could address them and move on.

“Thanks, Finn,” she said. “Would you let me deal with this?”

“How?” I said. I didn’t say,
Your son’s a psychopath. They set fires, torture animals, and from there they graduate to murder. You can’t fix this by grounding him
.

“I’m going to call the police,” she said. “And we’ll face them together.” She actually put her hand on her son’s shoulder to reassure him.
Gabe had stopped smirking, I noticed, and wore the expression of a kid lost at an amusement park.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you, or anyone.” It was the least convincing performance I’d ever seen, but it seemed to satisfy his mother.

“Where did Nicky Hale go?” I asked him.

He smiled at me and sighed, as if he had genuinely liked her. “Who gives a toss?” he said. And I thought about Nicky, and the torrent of crap he had sent her way. Gabe Bisham had tormented her as if she had been a small animal, but at a safe distance—if he had tried anything face to face, Nicky would have crippled him. It wasn’t Gabriel who had hurt her physically, or any friend of his. I doubted he even had any real-life friends … although he’d probably make a few in prison.

The phone in my pocket shivered and started to ring. I’d thought it had died hours ago. I answered it, my gaze locked on the brat.

“Finn Maguire,” I said.

“Hello, Mr. Maguire.” It was a woman’s voice, soft yet brisk. “We’ve been given your name as next of kin.”

“Sorry—who did?”

“There was a road traffic accident this morning, involving a Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn?”

I was miles from home—not that I had a home any more—so I caught a passing bus, but it moved more like a hearse. At every stop some parent got a baby buggy jammed in the door, or some pensioner had to root for a bus pass at the bottom of their tartan shopping bag, and before long I was wishing I’d tried running all the way. Eventually the hospital loomed ahead, the same grey hodgepodge of concrete boxes I’d been so glad to leave that morning after Susie said goodbye. As yet another teenage mum wrestled her buggy and brats and her shopping towards the doors I dashed in front of her and hit the pavement running.

I didn’t stop to try reading the signs in the hospital grounds, but headed straight back to casualty. It wasn’t empty now: it was late morning on a Saturday, and the waiting room was packed with crippled weekend footballers and amateur DIYers who’d drilled holes through their hands. Eventually I learned that
Winnie and Delroy were upstairs in the HDU, whatever that was, and I ran for the lift.

Like the bus the lift seemed to stop at every opportunity to slowly empty and refill with overworked staff and confused punters. I tried not to curse under my breath every time someone pushed the “door open” button to let extra passengers aboard. The doctor who’d called me on my mobile had been vague, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but my sense of dread grew deeper as the lift stuttered slowly upwards.

HDU was on the seventh. I checked the sign facing the elevator as I stepped out, and paused to work my way through the wording. High, Dependency, Unit. Male wards to the left, female to the right. I looked around for a nurse or a workstation.

Delroy was sitting by Winnie’s bed, his crutch lying on the floor by his chair where he had let it fall. He held Winnie’s right hand in both of his, and his head was bowed, and his lips were moving. If he was praying, it was bad, because he’d sworn Winnie would never catch him praying. But for now his wife was
unconscious and perfectly still, lying on her back with her hands loosely by her sides and a clear mask over her nose and mouth. Breathing gear hissed and clicked by her bedside, and machines with digital numbers glowing green pumped plasma and colourless liquid into shunts in her left arm. When I looked at her my throat tightened, because her face was horribly discoloured and swollen where it wasn’t concealed by bandages or the oxygen mask. Delroy’s left wrist was in a cast, I saw, when I reached out and touched his massive right arm.