Salt Lane Page 8

  ‘It would have been over forty if you received a ticket,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know everything.’

  ‘I’ve never had an accident in my life,’ he said. ‘Not once.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Eason?’

  ‘Stan?’ he said, passing the scanner over her snacks. ‘Keeps himself to himself since his wife died. Always gives me the time of day, mind. Like most round here. Just gets on with it. Not exactly talkative, but that’s what we’re like. Four pounds ninety-five. What’s going on up there?’

  ‘You ever meet the woman who lived on the caravan behind his house?’

  ‘Woman? Didn’t know there was one. Stan’s a dark horse.’ The man turned frosty. ‘Why you asking all this? Are you a journalist?’

  ‘No.’ She picked up the carrier bag and smiled. ‘One of the pointy-headed buggers.’

  She ambled back towards the house, enjoying the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, at least. Above, in the blue sky, the press helicopter was still circling the farm.

  She paused at the Military Canal, leaning over the edge of the bridge again as she unwrapped an energy bar. Chewing on it, she thought she saw something large and dark moving in the water below. She shivered, broke off a crumb and dropped it into the water. The fish below paid no attention.

  When she looked up, she saw Ferriter ambling towards her. ‘Anything happening?’

  ‘Negotiator just arrived. Being briefed.’

  ‘What’s this, then?’ She pointed at the canal.

  ‘They dug it in 1805 to stop Napoleon invading,’ Ferriter answered.

  ‘It worked then.’

  Ferriter looked at her, unsmiling. ‘Fifteen hundred men, it took,’ she said. ‘You can walk all the way to Sussex along here. If you want to.’

  ‘And if you dumped a body here, could it end up at… what’s it called?’

  ‘Salt Lane? I don’t know.’

  Cupidi nodded. ‘I need to speak to those drainage people. Can you sort it out?’

  ‘The Drainage Board,’ she said. ‘You think she was murdered here?’

  She stared down into the water, waiting for one of the fish to take her crumb, but none did. ‘I don’t know. But I think we may have just found the murderer, don’t you? Now we have to get him to admit it.’

  ‘Makes you wish he’d have a go,’ said Ferriter. ‘Couple of minutes of battering by the lads out there might loosen his tongue.’

  Cupidi looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Sorry. Bit incorrect,’ added Ferriter with a small laugh.

  ‘Our job is to get them to trial in one piece.’

  ‘It was just banter.’

  Ignoring her, Cupidi looked round. ‘You ever worry that everything here is at sea level? All that’s holding the water back are a few walls.’

  ‘Never thought about it, really. I mean, it’s been like this all my life, round here.’

  ‘Walls are only so high, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Very cheery, Sarge.’

  Cupidi straightened. ‘Let’s get back,’ she said.

  Back at the house, a young man in a blue suit was craning his neck up at the bedroom window. ‘Stanley. My name is Kevin.’

  There was no response from inside.

  ‘Is it Stanley or Stan?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Trained negotiator,’ said Ferriter.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Cupidi.

  Cupidi handed Ferriter an energy bar, unwrapped a second for herself and stood chewing as the negotiator tried to elicit some kind of response from the man inside.

  ‘It’s all about minimising risk to us,’ Ferriter said. ‘Except the longer he’s in there and we’re out here, the greater the risk to him.’

  Cupidi nodded, reached into the car and pulled out her stab vest.

  ‘Studied it a bit,’ said Ferriter. ‘You know, hostage negotiation.’ She hadn’t opened the bar. Instead she was reading its list of ingredients.

  ‘I’m here. Just talk to me, whenever you want,’ Kevin was saying.

  ‘First step,’ explained Ferriter, ‘open communication. Second step, build empathy.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Like dating, really. Best thing is to make yourself clear right at the start.’

  ‘Only that was when he was threatening me and calling me a cunt.’

  ‘Not a good date, really, then,’ said Ferriter. She held out the bar, returning it to Cupidi. ‘Trans fats,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t eat them.’

  Cupidi rolled her eyes, but took it back. ‘What if us just being here makes it harder for him to back down?’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Ferriter. ‘There is that.’

  ‘Always is hard for that type of man. And it’s always the men, isn’t it? When was the last time you had a siege with a woman?’

  ‘There you go again. Bit sexist, isn’t that, Sarge?’

  ‘Bit true though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bitter divorce, was it?’

  Cupidi laughed. ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘I could come in and chat. Or stay out here, if you prefer,’ Kevin was saying. ‘You tell us what you want to do.’

  Towards the north, a group of schoolkids on bikes had arrived and were peering over the police tape, chatting to a constable. The helicopter had disappeared. The air around them was still.

  She was unzipping her vest again, feeling too hot in the sun, when she heard a regular creaking noise above her, almost like a heartbeat, and looked up. Two swans were flying low above the field opposite the house; magnificent in the summer light. She wished Zoë was here; she would have some ridiculous fact about swan behaviour to tell her. As they approached they banked towards the right, heading straight over the house.

  That’s when she noticed a snake of pale smoke coming out of the red-brick chimney.

  ‘Oi. He’s burning something,’ she called out.

  Heads turned to look.

  ‘Evidence?’ suggested Ferriter.

  ‘Well, in this weather I don’t think he’s doing it to keep warm,’ said Cupidi. ‘God. How bloody frustrating. We can’t get in there, and meanwhile he can do what he likes in there.’

  The sergeant who’d arrived with the team to surround the building had finally got out of his car and was standing next to her.

  ‘See that?’ she said. ‘That could be the difference between us being able to make a case against him and not.’

  ‘What would he be destroying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We should go in,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘I’ll run it past McAdam.’

  ‘Or you could actually make the decision yourself.’

  ‘Fire!’ shouted Kevin the negotiator, who was closer, but who had noticed the smoke for the first time.

  Cupidi took a couple of steps towards the building and saw that the pale curtains were suddenly silhouetted by a flare of light behind them. In a horizontal column, smoke, darker now, was pouring upwards from the chimney.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the policeman. ‘He’s not just burning something. He’s gone and set fire to the whole fucking place.’

  Cupidi was running now. A copper pushed Kevin aside and was slamming himself at the front door, uselessly. By the look of it, it was firmly bolted. ‘Get the Enforcer,’ he was shouting; the door-ram.

  ‘We haven’t got one on board. You?’

  ‘Jesus.’

  As they stood around, Cupidi sprinted round to the back, where another copper was waiting.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘He’s set the place alight.’

  She looked around. Ferriter had followed her to the back door. Cupidi tried the handle. It was locked, of course.

  ‘What you doing?’ asked the constable who had been stationed there.

  The frame was PVC with toughened
glass so they’d never get through it, but the kitchen window was next to it. Cupidi looked around and saw the pile of bricks left where the caravan had been. Picking one up, she chucked it straight into the glass; it broke with little noise.

  ‘But…’ said Ferriter.

  She threw a second to make the opening bigger, then took off her stab vest, laid it over the spiked shards of the kitchen window and pushed the remaining pieces inwards. At the gaping hole, she could feel the air flowing in to feed the flames above.

  ‘Petrol!’ she shouted as she tipped, head forward, into a kitchen sink below. The tang of it was all around her.

  Pulling herself inside, she twisted her body, bringing her legs round so she could drop onto the floor.

  She heard screaming now; from somewhere above her came the sound of a man in pure pain.

  She paused for a second, orientating herself. The kitchen was a muddle of pans, plates and empty tins. Moving again, she stumbled through, into a hallway beyond, hitting her ankles on boxes and piles of newspaper. The house was a mess. He was a hoarder.

  The screaming from above had risen to become an animal roar of pain and fear.

  She yanked at the stiff bolt on the front door to let the other coppers in, but it wouldn’t give. In the dim light, she realised that it wasn’t just locked. Eason had fastened the entrance shut with wood and screws. She would never get it open. Smoke was drifting down from the ceiling, darkening the hallway.

  Outside she heard shouting, men kicking at the door.

  Coughing now, blinking, she turned to look up the stairs. Air was rushing higher, sucked by the heat.She could hear the flames now, crackling, consuming the house. A redness flickered on the landing above her.

  She would have to go up, she thought. The screaming seemed to be quieter all of a sudden. Or was it that the fire itself was louder? Where was everyone else? She looked round, praying that someone would be following her, but smoke was curling through the laths where the plaster had cracked and fallen.

  Pulling her blouse over her face, she started up the stairs. Another lump of ceiling, bigger this time, crashed down on her and she lost her footing on the loose scraps.

  Now she was tumbling backwards toward the front door, one arm flailing for a banister, the other raised to protect her head.

  She hit the floor hard and lay dazed for a second, her heart suddenly hammering. Must get up. She knew she had to get out, but she had lost any sense of direction in the fall. As dust and smoke obscured the air around her, she tried to work out which position she had fallen in. Disorientated, she stood slowly, hands out to feel around her. Taking a step forward, she immediately fell again, tripping on something she couldn’t see.

  Now, as the noise of the fire rose to a roar, panic set in. She had very little time to get out of this building.

  And then someone was lifting her, hands under her armpits.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she shouted.

  She looked up and made out the face of Constable Ferriter as she dragged her backwards out towards the kitchen, just as the front door finally came crashing down.

  She sat on the grass, blinking soot from her eyes as she watched flames start to find a way through the tiles of the roof.

  A uniformed WPC stood next to her with a cup of water. ‘You were lucky,’ she said.

  ‘That’s me.’ She was grateful for the water, though. Her mouth was filled with the rancid taste of burnt plastics and wood. She took a mouthful and swilled it round, then spat it out on the ground beside her. Small flecks of blackness lay on the bright green grass. She noticed her ankles. Blood streaked from her right foot down into her shoe, but the cut was not deep.

  ‘You might want to adjust your clothes,’ said the WPC.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your bra’s showing.’

  Cupidi looked down. Her blouse was still pulled up from where she’d tried to cover her face with it. At least the bra was a newish one.

  Tugging her shirt down, she looked around. ‘Where’s Constable Ferriter? I should thank her. I think she may have saved my life.’

  ‘Who?’ said the WPC.

  Cupidi stood, looked around, suddenly worried. There was no sign of her.

  ‘Ferriter!’ she shouted above the clamour of the fire. She was running now, towards the burning building, past the startled policemen.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  A row of coppers had gathered behind the house, watching flames burst out of the windows, curling round the edge of the roof. Blinking from the smoke, she scanned their faces, but none of them was Ferriter’s.

  ELEVEN

  Everything seemed to slow. Constable Ferriter had entered the burning building and had probably saved her life. Had she gone back inside afterwards to try and save Eason’s too?

  ‘Ferriter!’ she shouted into the broken window.

  Now, though she was racing back to the open front door, it seemed to take an age to reach it. When she did, all she saw was more coppers standing motionless around it, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing. She pushed her way through them to the door. Pulling her blouse back up over her mouth and nose, she stepped forward.

  Hands grabbed her shoulders and arms. ‘You can’t go in there.’

  ‘There’s a copper still inside. Jill Ferriter. I’m pretty sure she went back in.’

  Mouths open, everyone stared into the house, beyond the splintered door and up the stairs to where Ferriter would have headed.

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  The flames had broken through the old roof. Around them black smut and burning embers were falling slowly from the sky.

  The fire engine had been called, of course, but it would still be minutes away. Going back into the building to the upstairs floor could be suicide; she knew that. Cupidi shook herself free of the holding hands.

  She looked around and saw the sense of shame on the officers’ faces.

  ‘I’ll go,’ a burly man shouted.

  But before anyone moved again, she saw something dark moving at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Look.’

  The young copper next to her burst through the line of officers into the burning building. Another two followed him in.

  A few seconds later they emerged, crashing down the steps. The two uniformed police were supporting Ferriter by her elbows. Over another’s shoulders was Stanley Eason.

  The policeman collapsed onto his knees, dropping Eason face up on the ground. The unconscious man’s head bounced on the grass as he fell.

  Someone started clapping, but stopped quickly as soon as he saw Eason.

  The front of his shirt had been burned completely away, exposing a mess of reddened flesh. His face, too, was unrecognisable, crinkled and distorted by the heat. Beneath the frizzy stubble that was all that was left of his hair, a single eye stared out, his eyelid peeled back by the flames.

  Now a copper was kneeling by the man, head down to his burning chest. ‘Get water. He’s still alive.’

  And then everyone was running around, pulling out first aid kits from the boots of their cars.

  At the hospital, still grimy from the fire, she found Jill Ferriter in the reception area at A & E with a box of tissues in her lap. She fetched two cans of Coke from the shop and handed one to her.

  ‘Just minor burns on my hand,’ Ferriter said, holding it up, wrapped in gauze. ‘I’m fine. It’s just a little tender.’

  ‘You were fantastic,’ Cupidi said. ‘I think you saved my life.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Ferriter smiled back at her.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Like you said. You can sit around waiting for orders, or you can actually get off your arse and do something good.’

  ‘I should probably be more careful what I say.’

  People moved around busily, ignoring them. A man in blue scrubs, running with a white polystyrene box, through swinging doors. A receptionist straining to understand what a mother was telling her about h
er child.

  ‘Besides, everyone else was standing around until you picked up that brick. I was just copying you,’ Ferriter said, coughing into a tissue. ‘Bosh. Amazing.’ She lowered the handkerchief and grinned.

  ‘But you shouldn’t have gone back in.’

  She shrugged. ‘Had to, didn’t I? He would have died, otherwise. Our job is to get ’em to trial. That’s what you said.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘He was a bugger to pick up. Wriggling like a bastard. Thought I’d given myself a hernia getting him to the top of the stairs, but then the others came. And? How is he?’

  She sat on the chair next to his. ‘He’s in intensive care.’

  ‘Yeah, but has he said anything? Did you arrest him?’

  ‘He’s in a coma. He hasn’t said anything at all.’

  Ferriter looked shocked. ‘But… he was conscious when I got him. He swore at me.’

  Cupidi nodded. ‘Third-degree burns. The body goes into shock.’

  On the TV behind him they were showing the news. A clip of a helicopter above the marshes.

  ‘He was pushing me off him and everything. That’s why I took so long. He can’t be that bad, can he?’

  She looked at Ferriter and saw shock on her face. She was young; unused to death. ‘Sorry. You did great, Jill. But he’s deteriorated. He has kidney failure, apparently. They’re not sure if he’s going to make it.’

  ‘What? Die, you mean?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cupidi said. The consultant had said the next twenty-four hours would be critical. ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you did everything you could. Fucking stupid, but great.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Ferriter looked at the bandage on her hand, then started coughing again, louder, unable to dislodge the phlegm in her throat. Cupidi patted her on the back, not sure whether it was doing any good at all. ‘Take a drink,’ she suggested.

  When the fit subsided, Ferriter looked down at the handkerchief. Her spit was flecked with black. She crumpled the tissue.

  ‘That’s kind of normal,’ Cupidi told her.

  ‘I thought I’d saved his life.’