Текст книги "Liar Liar"

Автор книги: M. J. Arlidge

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

87

Charlie lay in bed and listened to the sirens. Another night, another set of fires. It was unbelievable but it was true. She had tried to avoid anything work-related given the horrific day she’d endured, but Southampton’s news was now national news, so even though she’d flicked her DAB radio to a classical station in an effort to relax, the news bulletins still brought real life crashing back into her world. In the end, she’d turned the radio off, pulling the duvet up around her chin, hoping against hope that she could block out the madness and get some sleep.

But old habits died hard. And even as she lay there tossing and turning, there was a part of Charlie that wanted to text Sanderson or McAndrew to find out what was going on. In normal circumstances she would have done so already, probably while driving to the station to pitch in, regardless of whether it was her shift or not. As a police officer you just want to know the details – to find out if you can help, if there is anything that can be done. Even now, with Steve counselling her not to dwell on recent events, with Charlie herself trying to wrench her mind towards more mundane, domestic matters, there was a part of her that craved the detail. What was happening out there?

When you’re wallowing in ignorance, your mind conjures up the very worst kind of images. Who’s to say that their arsonist hadn’t exceeded himself tonight, visiting his most serious night of chaos on Southampton? Charlie shook her head to ward off such morbid thoughts, but suddenly all sorts of nightmarish images presented themselves. Charlie knew she was disturbing Steve and didn’t want to have to explain why, so she fled their room, heading past Jessica’s bedroom and downstairs to the kitchen.

She poured herself a cool glass of water from the jug in the fridge and, having downed half the glass, held it to her forehead. She was surprised to find that she was sweating and for a moment the cold glass soothed her. Draining the glass, she refilled it and drained it again. She seemed to be locked into some kind of panic now. She felt dizzy and, steadying herself with a hand on the kitchen island, lowered herself to the floor. It was cool down here, the quarry tiles radiating a wintery chill from the frozen ground below, but Charlie liked the sensation, so slowly spread herself out, feeling the coolness seep into her chest, her stomach, her thighs. If Steve found her like this he’d probably ship her straight off to the funny farm, but Charlie didn’t care. She just wanted to be calm, cool and quiet for a moment.

Lying in the darkened kitchen, Charlie felt invisible and momentarily safe from the world. Perhaps this could be her sanctuary for the night, a place where she could process the terrible tragedy of little Alice’s death without disturbing Steve or Jessica. But to do so she’d have to ignore the sirens that wailed outside, ebbing and flowing, but never truly going away. It was as if every emergency vehicle in Southampton was out there right now, chasing shadows. And each time they neared her house, they seemed to accuse Charlie directly, shaming her for her absence. And tonight she felt every bit of that shame. They were right to lambast her – she deserved no mercy from them.

She’d always thought of herself as a dedicated and diligent officer, but tonight she felt nothing of the sort. Tonight she knew in her heart that she was nothing but a coward and a fraud.

88

The house fire in Lower Shirley had attracted so much interest that the roads surrounding the blaze were clogged with emergency workers, journalists and onlookers – so much so that Helen had had to abandon her bike in an alleyway and carry on on foot. She had no worries about doing so: this was an expensive neighbourhood and her bike would still be there in the morning, but it slowed her progress considerably. She was curt with idlers and aggressive in her tactics as she bullied her way to the police cordon.

Swinging underneath it, she made her way towards Adam Latham. He was the last person she wanted to see right now, but she had no choice. She needed to know what they were dealing with here. As soon as Latham turned to her, she could tell it was bad news. He usually had a rosy, corpulent complexion, he was one of those desk jockeys who had happily let himself go since retiring from front-line action, but tonight his face was ashen. He looked sick with worry and more than a little scared.

‘I was wondering if you’d show your face,’ he said, failing to disguise his contempt for her. ‘But I’m glad you’re here. Now you can see what your baseless allegations mean to officers on the ground. The shit that they have to put up with because of you.’

He turned towards the fire, offering Helen his back. Helen’s eyes flitted across the scene, taking in the kids idly abusing the fire crew, the journalists taking photos, no doubt wondering if any of the men in uniform was responsible for tonight’s blaze, before they came to rest on Latham once more.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked, drawing level with Latham, refusing to be dismissed.

‘What’s happening is that four of my best officers are in that inferno attempting to save a boy who may – or may not – be in there. Trying to pull innocent people from a blaze that you and your lot are solely responsible for. Have you got even a single genuine lead? Anything that might bring this guy to book?’

‘This isn’t helping, Adam.’

‘Fuck you. If the truth hurts, then don’t ask the question.’

‘Where are your team, Adam?’

She said it as gently as she could – she didn’t want to provoke him further – and finally Latham seemed to soften a little. A dinosaur he may be, but he did care about his team and would be devastated if anything happened to them.

‘Last we heard they were on the second floor. But that was over five minutes ago and we’ve lost radio contact with them. I can’t risk sending any more of them in until we put this thing out. We’re doing everything we can …’

Helen was suddenly struck by how conversational and intimate his tone was. It was as if he wanted to talk to her – to talk to someone – to alleviate the tension that gripped him.

‘You have to trust in their training. These guys know what they’re doing and if anyone can make it out of there, they can. You have them well drilled – there are no better officers in the country.’

Adam nodded, but said nothing, his eyes still fixed on the blazing house. Helen wasn’t sure if she believed it either – they were good, no question, but the five-storey house was consumed with fire. Could anyone survive an inferno like that?

The pair of them stood there, scanning the scene, as Latham’s deputy repeatedly tried to restore radio contact. The tension was almost too much to bear, then suddenly there was movement from the front of the house. The front door barrelled open, collapsing off its hinges, and the first two men in the team hurried out. Suddenly the whole scene came to life, as paramedics, colleagues and more hurried over to them. The escaping firefighters were already signalling for an ambulance and now Helen saw why. The third and fourth men in the team had now followed their colleagues out of the house, carrying someone in their arms.

The house belonged to Jacqueline and Michael Harris and they shared it with their son, Ethan, and a nanny. The parents were out tonight but the other two were thought to be home. Helen could see the boy was now in the firefighters’ arms and though there was much concern for him – paramedics now rushing him towards the awaiting ambulance – at least he could be accounted for. Of the nanny, Agnieska Jarosik, there was no sign.

Helen stepped aside as the boy was wheeled past. He looked in a terrible state, covered in dirt and blood and in the grip of some kind of fit. As he sped by, Helen was suddenly struck by the diabolical nature of this latest crime. Their arsonist presumably knew who lived here, knew that a vulnerable boy like Ethan would struggle to escape such a savage fire. And yet this thought hadn’t stilled his hand, hadn’t occasioned any second thoughts. It almost beggared belief, but it was true. If she hadn’t known it before, Helen knew it then – this killer’s cruelty knew no bounds.

89

Her heels made a harsh, repetitive clicking sound as she ran towards the hospital entrance. Michael was paying the cabbie, but she hadn’t waited for him. Her head was spinning, her mind full of awful possibilities, and now she just wanted to know.

Without thinking, she ran straight into the A&E department. The automatic doors opened obligingly for her and as she hurried inside, that familiar hospital smell hit her. Disinfectant warmed up by the overactive heating system and sprinkled with a little urine. She hated that smell and she hated hospitals. God knows she’d spent enough time in them and more than enough time in A&E over the last few years. Because of his condition, Ethan was clumsy and accident-prone so Jacqueline had spent too many hours slumped on these grim plastic seats, surrounded by the drunk and the disorderly.

She generally forced Michael to accompany her on these visits – scared of the shambling drunks and paranoid care-in-the-community types that littered the emergency department – and she was glad when she found him by her side now. Her nerves were spiking wildly, as they had been since she’d pulled out her phone to call a cab, only to find she’d missed numerous calls. She’d only made it through the first two messages, before she’d grabbed Michael and sprinted from the restaurant, leaving the bill unpaid. Their first instinct had been to head home, but, on hearing that Ethan had been taken to South Hants Hospital, they diverted there instead. There was still no word as to the fate of Agnieszka – that was something Jacqueline didn’t even want to think about.

Gripping her husband’s hand, Jacqueline marched up to the first nurse she could see and collared him.

‘Our son was brought in this evening. Ethan Harris.’

For a moment, the nurse looked blank.

‘You’ll need to go to reception. All admissions –’

‘There was a fire. At our house in Lower Shirley. My son was there – they just brought him in.’

Immediately, she saw the nurse’s expression change and it made her feel sick. Suddenly he knew exactly what she was talking about and looked worried and concerned.

‘Of course. You’ll need the burns unit. Let me take you there now.’

He walked briskly and they matched his pace, though Jacqueline felt nauseous and short of breath. Both she and Michael must have had the best part of a bottle of wine each and the alcohol was now making its presence felt. All pleasure had evaporated long ago: now she felt dehydrated and washed out. What on earth were they doing, drinking, laughing, joking, when their bloody house was on fire?

She looked at her husband, but his gaze was fixed resolutely forward. She had heard about the recent fires of course, but to her shame had thought they were other people’s problems – people with less money and more issues perhaps. It was embarrassing to admit that, but it was true. Even now, she hoped and prayed that their fire had nothing to do with these arson attacks. Faulty wiring perhaps, a hob left on. It wouldn’t be excusable, especially if it turned out to be Agnieszka’s fault, but she didn’t want to be part of that other thing. She and Michael didn’t have any enemies, there was no one out there who would want to harm them. He was a psychiatrist and she was a bloody architect, for God’s sake.

And yet something inside her knew. Knew that they were getting sucked into something bigger than them. And that this was just the start of their misery.

90

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

Helen’s tone was abrasive and aggressive. She would never usually talk to one of her officers in that way, but she forgave herself tonight. Too much had happened tonight for her to pussyfoot around important issues.

‘One hundred per cent,’ DC Lucas replied evenly, choosing to ignore Helen’s rudeness. ‘He hasn’t moved a muscle.’

Helen stepped forward and looked through the grimy windows of the internet café. She had hung back out of sight, not wanting to compromise Lucas’s surveillance operation, but now she had to see for herself if he was really in there. Her heart sunk when she saw that he was. According to Lucas, Richard Ford hadn’t once got up from his monitor, tapping away on the keyboard as though his life depended upon it.

‘What time did you both arrive here?’ Helen continued.

‘Around eight p.m.?’

‘And he was never out of your sight? You didn’t go to the loo, for a cigarette …’

‘Come on, boss.’ Lucas’s tone was less forgiving this time – she clearly didn’t enjoy having her professional competency called into question.

‘So what’s he been doing?’

‘See for yourself,’ Lucas replied. ‘ Just … that. I wanted to get round the back of him to see what he was typing, what he was looking at, but I couldn’t without massively flagging my interest in him, so …’

Helen nodded at Lucas and considered her next move. Richard Ford was such a good suspect – he fitted the general profile in almost every way. And yet he hadn’t moved a muscle tonight. A thought suddenly grabbed her and Helen now found herself striding past her colleague and into the café. Lucas was unsure whether to stay outside or follow, but in the end chose the latter. She wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but she knew she didn’t want to miss it.

Helen was making straight for Ford. Such was the speed of her approach that he barely looked up until she was upon him.

‘What the hell do you want?’

His right hand moved quickly towards the keyboard but Helen grabbed it, twisting it sharply, pulling Ford away from the terminal. He yelped in pain and stumbled backwards off his chair, Helen’s sudden momentum catching him completely by surprise.

‘What are you doing, you mad bitch?’ Ford said, picking himself up off the floor.

It was a rash move, especially in front of the handful of witnesses who were still haunting the internet café at his late hour, but Helen knew she had no choice. She had to see what he’d been doing.

To her surprise, the website for Sussex Fire and Rescue Service was up on his screen.

‘What’s this?’

‘What do you think it is? I’ve got to work, haven’t I?’

Ignoring him, Helen pulled up his recent search history. Kent Fire and Rescue, Devon and Cornwall Fire and Rescue, job vacancies, training opportunities, nothing incriminating at all. Then she noticed a minimized Word document at the bottom of the screen and pulled it up. Immediately, Richard Ford lunged forward, trying to wrestle the mouse from her grasp.

‘Can’t you give me a moment’s peace?’ he pleaded. ‘Can’t you leave me a shred of dignity?’

It was his resignation letter.

‘You don’t let up, do you?’ Ford continued, incandescent with rage and embarrassment now. ‘My life is in bloody tatters and even now you won’t just … let me be. I’m finished in this town and you want me tarred and feathered. You won’t be happy until you’ve set the lynch mob on me, will you?’

His Southampton accent pinged through loud and clear as his voice rose, which made Helen feel all the more ashamed. Ford was clearly a strange, unpleasant man, with a peculiar fascination with fire and yet … he was also a successful, well-trained firefighter who’d been helping keep his home town safe since the day he was old enough to join the Service. And Helen had effectively exiled him from Southampton. In some ways she’d had no choice, she’d had to pursue every lead with the utmost vigour, but it was still a bad outcome for everyone concerned.

‘I thought …’

‘We all know what you thought,’ he spat back, his face puce with anger and shame. ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Helen suddenly became aware of the other people in the café – their faces turned towards her, drinking in the drama.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated and headed for the exit.

It was an ignominious retreat, with Lucas scurrying to keep up with her, but there was no point making the situation worse by arguing further. The damage had been done. Helen had never felt so foolish or misguided, ruining an innocent man’s life while letting the real perpetrator continue his reign of terror unchecked. Where, Helen wondered, would this end? And what would it take to stop their perpetrator killing again?

91

Emilia had been up all night and she was dog-tired. This story was a good one, but did this guy really have to strike every night? Getting testimony from witnesses and emergency service personnel at one major fire was hard enough, but to have to do so from three fires, in the small hours, three nights running? This guy just didn’t let up.

Emilia drained her last drop of coffee. It was 7 a.m. and the office was starting to fill up. Her colleagues all stopped to chat, aware that Emilia had been at her desk since 4 a.m. working up her copy for the next day’s edition. Emilia was a child of the Twitter generation – her live feed keeping colleagues, fans and friends bang up to speed with what she was doing at any given moment. It was a brilliant way to disseminate breaking news, but also a fabulous vehicle for self-promotion. As she’d sat in the lonely office through the night, she’d made sure to keep the Twittersphere in the loop about developments, so the world could marvel at her investigative zeal and her bosses (and more besides) could see how committed she was. Privately, she hoped that someone in London might take notice and drop her a line.

But that was the future. Her priority now was creating a detailed four-page spread about the Southampton arsonist’s ‘Reign of Terror’. The police hadn’t confirmed it yet, but it was strongly rumoured that a young woman had died in tonight’s fires, bringing the killer’s total to four victims in three nights. That was pretty good going by anyone’s standards and confirmed his status as a prolific serial killer. If he kept going at this pace, he might exceed them all.

Reading between the lines, the police still had no clue who their arsonist was. Everyone – police, public, even Emilia herself – had expected this guy to slow down, but he hadn’t and it now prompted an interesting question. If they couldn’t catch him, then how could they stop him? Her editor had leapt on the idea of a city-wide curfew and Emilia had been happy to run with it. She didn’t necessarily believe it would happen, but it raised some concerns about human rights while simultaneously highlighting the police’s lack of progress. Secretly, Emilia hoped the city authorities would go for it – it would be incredibly dramatic and would ensure that the world’s attention would be on Southampton for a short period of time. Not since the Boston manhunt had anything so draconian been floated.

She had almost finished typing when her mobile rang. She always put her number and Twitter handle by her byline, so was constantly receiving phone calls from snitches, crooks and chancers on the make. The caller ID flagged the number as ‘withheld’, suggesting the caller was either important or very shady, so scooping up her phone Emilia hurried to the ladies’ loo – it was the only spot in this place where you could get a modicum of privacy.

‘Emilia Garanita.’

‘Emilia, it’s Adam Latham. I’m the Chief Fire Offi—’

‘I know who you are, Adam. What can I do for you?’

‘I hear you’ve been talking to a number of my officers tonight. About the latest fires –’

‘Everything I did was strictly legal and above board and I don’t appreciate being call—’

‘I haven’t called to bollock you, Emilia. I’ve called to help you.’

There was a pause, as Emilia took this in. Behind her, the ancient cisterns murmured quietly to themselves.

‘Go on.’

‘I want to talk to you off the record about Helen Grace. I can trust you to be objective in your attitude to her, can’t I?’

‘We only print the facts here, Adam.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it. I obviously don’t want to be named or quoted, but I want to give you the inside track on Grace’s handling of this case. It’s my firm belief that her bungled approach has endangered the public and cost lives. And I’d like to give you the details.’

Emilia sat down on the nearest loo seat and pulled the door to. So Latham wanted to do a hatchet job on Helen. She was happy to listen – finally she would have the inside track on the investigation and potentially a scapegoat too.

Emilia smiled to herself. This juicy story had just got a lot juicier.