Allyn Allyn - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

It wasn’t a big bonfire, but it had gone up like a torch. Whoever had built it had set it in the corner of a fallow field, close to a gate but out of sight of the road. The evening’s light breeze had been enough to send a drift of sparks into the hedgerow and the resulting blaze had brought a fire crew to the scene. Job done, they’d checked the wet, smoking heap of debris and discovered the source of the smell overwhelming even the fuel that had been used as an accelerant.

As Tony prowled round the fringes of what was clearly the scene of a worse crime than arson, Carol consulted the lead fire officer. “It wouldn’t have taken long to get hold,” he said. “From the smell, I think he used a mixture of accelerants — petrol, acetone, whatever. The sort of stuff you’d have lying around your garage.”

Tony stared at the remains, frowning. He turned and called to the fire officer. “The body — did it start off in the middle like that?”

“You mean, was the bonfire built round it?”

Tony nodded. “Exactly.”

“No. You can see from the way the wood’s collapsed around it. It started off on top of the fire.”

“Like a guy.” It wasn’t a question; the fireman’s answer had clearly confirmed what Tony already thought. He looked at Carol. “You do need me.”

Tony smashed the ball back over the net, narrowly missing the return when his doorbell rang. He tossed the Wii control onto the sofa and went to the door. Carol walked in, not waiting for an invitation. “We’ve got the postmortem and some preliminary forensics. I thought you’d want to take a look.” She passed him a file.

“There’s an open bottle of wine in the fridge,” Tony said, already scanning the papers and feeling his way into an armchair. As he read, Carol disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two glasses. She placed one on the table by Tony’s chair and settled opposite him on the sofa, watching the muscles in his face tighten as he read.

It didn’t make for comfortable reading. A male between twenty-five and forty, the victim had been alive when he’d been put on the bonfire. Smoke inhalation had killed him, but he’d have suffered tremendous pain before the release of death. He’d been bound hand and foot with wire and his mouth had been sealed by some sort of adhesive tape. For a moment, Tony allowed himself to imagine how terrifying an ordeal it must have been and how much pleasure it had given the killer. But only for a moment. “No ID?” he said.

“We think he’s Jonathan Meadows. His girlfriend reported him missing the morning after. We’re waiting for confirmation from dental records.”

“And what do we know about Jonathan Meadows?”

“He’s twenty-six, he’s a garage mechanic. He lives with his girlfriend in a flat in Moorside—”

“Moorside? That’s a long way from where he died.”

Carol nodded. “Right across town. He left work at the usual time. He told his girlfriend and his mates at work that he was going to the gym. He usually went three or four times a week, but he never showed up that night.”

“So somewhere between — what, six and eight o’clock? — he met someone who overpowered him, bound and gagged him, stuck him on top of a bonfire, and set fire to him?”

“That’s about the size of it. Anything strike you?”

“That’s not easy, carrying out something like that.” Tony flicked through the few sheets of paper again. His mind raced through the possibilities, exploring the message of the crime, trying to make a narrative from the bare bones in front of him. “He’s a very low-risk victim,” he said. “When young men like him die violently, it’s not usually like this. A pub brawl, a fight over a woman, a turf war over drugs or prostitution, yes. But not this kind of premeditated thing. If he were just a random victim, if anyone would do, it’s more likely to be a homeless person, a drunk staggering home last thing, someone vulnerable. Not someone with a job, a partner, a life.”

“You think it’s personal?”

“Hard to say until we know a lot more about Jonathan Meadows.” He tapped the scene-of-crime report. “There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of forensics at the scene.”

“There’s a pull-in by the gate to the field. It’s tarmacked, so no convenient tire tracks. There’s a few footprints, but they’re pretty indistinct. The SOCOs think he was wearing some sort of covering over his shoes. Just like the ones we use to preserve the crime scene.” Carol pulled a face to emphasise the irony. “No convenient cigarette ends, Coke cans, or used condoms.”

Tony put down the file and drank some wine. “I don’t think he’s a beginner. It’s too well executed. I think he’s done this before. At least once.”

Carol shook her head. “I checked the database. Nothing like this anywhere in the U.K. in the last five years.”

That, he thought, was why she needed him. She thought in straight lines, which was a useful attribute in a cop, since, however much they might like to believe otherwise, that was how most criminals thought. But years of training and experience had honed his own corkscrew mind till he could see nothing but hidden agendas stretching backwards like the images in an infinity mirror. “That’s because you were looking for a burning,” he said.

Carol looked at him as if he’d lost it. “Well, duh,” she said. “That’s because the victim was burned.”

He jumped to his feet and began pacing. “Forget the fire. That’s irrelevant. Look for low-risk victims who were restrained with wire and gagged with adhesive tape. The fire is not what this is about. That’s just window dressing, Carol.”

Carol tapped the pile of paper on her desk with the end of her pen. Sometimes it was hard not to credit Tony with psychic powers. He’d said there would be at least one other victim, and it looked as if he’d been right. Trawling the databases with a different set of parameters had taken Carol’s IT specialist a few days. But she’d finally come up with a second case that fit the bill.

The body of Tina Chapman, a thirty-seven-year-old teacher from Leeds, had been found in the Leeds-Liverpool canal a few days before Jonathan Meadows’ murder. A routine dredging had snagged something unexpected, and further examination had produced a grisly finding. She’d been gagged with duct tape, bound hand and foot with wire, tethered to a wooden chair weighted with a cement block, and thrown in. She’d been alive when she went into the water. Cause of death: drowning.

A single parent, she’d been reported missing by her thirteen-year-old son. She’d left work at the usual time, according to colleagues. Her son thought she’d said she was going to the supermarket on her way home, but neither her credit card nor her store-loyalty card had been used.

Carol had spoken to the senior investigating officer in charge of the case. He’d admitted they were struggling. “We only found her car a couple of days ago in the car park of a hotel about half a mile from the supermarket her son said she used. It was parked down the end, in a dark corner out of range of their CCTV cameras. No bloody idea what she was doing down there. And no joy from forensics so far.”

“Anybody in the frame?”

His weary sigh reminded her of cases she’d struggled with over the years. “It’s not looking good, to be honest. There was a boyfriend, but they split up about six months ago. Nobody else involved, it just ran out of road. Quite amicable, apparently. The boyfriend still takes the lad to the rugby. Not a scrap of motive.”

“And that’s it?” Carol was beginning to share his frustration. “What about the boy’s real father?”

“Well, he wasn’t what you’d call any kind of father. He walked out on them when the lad was a matter of months old.”