Cath Staincliffe: Ruthless

The place was simply designed, a rectangular prayer hall with a rounded apse. Small anterooms off to either side of where the altar would have been. She could pick out several lumps of beams, charcoal now, among the ash and smashed roof tiles that covered the floor. The brick walls had withstood the ferocity of the fire though they were coated black with soot. Here and there were holes on the ground where the wooden floorboards had burned away.

‘Theresa Barton, crime scene manager,’ the plump woman introduced herself.

‘Trevor Hyatt, fire investigation,’ the man with her said. He was tall and bald with a red face and a nose that looked like it had been broken.

‘Body’s over here,’ Barton said, pointing. Gill followed her, taking care to tread only on the stepping plates. The figure, burned black, was partially concealed by a timber. Face and shoulders exposed, lying on its side, fist and forearm close to its neck. Pugilist pose – a side effect of the fire, the intense heat causing the muscles to contract. The wreckage covered the torso and abdomen but poking out below were the legs and feet, the feet curled like claws. No clothing remained.

‘No shoes?’ Gill said. ‘They’d burn?’

‘Yes,’ Hyatt said.

Here and there the scorched skin was split to reveal seams of meat. The lips had shrivelled back to expose long, discoloured teeth, an uneven skeletal grin. It was impossible for Gill to tell from the remains whether this was a man or a woman, to determine age or ethnicity. All questions for the pathologist.

‘Could it be accidental?’ she asked the fire officer.

He shook his head. ‘Almost certainly deliberate. It looks like an accelerant, petrol or something, was used and we can tell by the spread that the seat of the fire was here,’ he gestured to the body, ‘and around this area.’

So whoever had used the accelerant had been inside the building. It wasn’t a case of petrol poured through the doorway, which was three or four yards away.

‘Self-immolation?’ Gill wondered aloud. ‘They usually want an audience, don’t they? Act in public.’ And as for suicide, burning was an appalling way to die, our fear of fire as intense as the pain it delivered. She could not recall one sudden unexplained death she had been asked to investigate where the victim had set themselves on fire as a way to end it all.

‘The body was set alight?’ she said.

‘It’s a possibility.’ Hyatt was cautious. They were all cautious until they had the evidence, theories were no more than that. The job was about facts, science and hard data. The body on the floor might be a fatality due to some awful accident but for now the very presence of accelerant meant it was suspicious. And that meant Gill needed to inform the coroner and ask permission to carry out a forensic post-mortem.

She coughed, hot inside her protective suit. The face mask did nothing to hide the smell.

‘When were you called?’ she asked the fire investigation officer.

‘999 came in at eight o’clock last night,’ he said, ‘no reports of occupants. Place had been empty for several years. Last officially used as storage for a carpet wholesaler in 2009.’

‘We will document as much as we can here,’ Theresa Barton said, ‘but there’s little chance of recovering trace materials after an inferno like that.’

In the normal course of things they would hope to find evidence of any recent contact between the victim and other people. Fingerprints, DNA from hair or saliva, blood or sperm that might lead them to witnesses or, if foul play was suspected, to potential suspects. The fire compromised all that.

‘The remains are at risk of further disintegration when we move them,’ Barton said.

‘Just do your best,’ said Gill.

‘Seeing as it’s you,’ Barton said.

‘Let’s just suppose it was an accident,’ Gill said, ‘our victim decided they were going to make a fire, to keep warm.’

‘Not especially cold last night,’ said Barton.

‘Not outside,’ Gill agreed, ‘but in here it might be like a tomb. No heating for several years. Damp.’

‘OK, go on,’ the crime scene manager nodded.

‘So they build a fire, they’ve got some petrol, slosh it on and don’t realize they’ve splashed some on their sleeves or shoes. They light the fire and puff!’ She splayed her fingers wide. ‘Up in smoke.’

Hyatt was pulling a face, not convinced.

‘But it is possible?’ said Gill.

‘Possible,’ he said slowly.

‘We found a container?’ Gill asked.

‘Not yet, still a lot of debris to sort through. It may have been destroyed with the heat,’ he said. ‘Third case of arson in the area in the past six months.’

‘Really?’

‘The mosque at the far end of Shuttling Way in December,’ he said, ‘and the school, the one over the road, in February.’

Gill nodded. St Agnes’s, a little primary school, most of the kids on free school meals, a significant number on the at-risk register. Manorclough was dirt poor and beset by all the problems that came with poverty, including a high crime rate.

‘We’ll be comparing them,’ Hyatt said.

‘You think this might be the same person?’

‘Often is, and there are clear similarities with the first two incidents.’

‘So maybe this is them,’ Gill pointed to the body, ‘the fire-setter, and we’re looking at a case of arson that went horribly wrong. We need an ID, whatever cause of death is, doesn’t get us very far if we don’t know who this is. Right, I’ll let you get on.’

Gill made her first call, waited for the coroner to answer. ‘Mr Tompkins, it’s DCI Gill Murray. I’m at the site of an unexplained death at the Old Chapel, Manorclough. I have a body discovered in a suspicious fire, accelerants found. Identity unknown as yet. I’d like permission for a forensic post-mortem in order to determine cause of death.’

‘Go ahead, DCI Murray.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He liked to be called sir and it was no skin off Gill’s nose to be respectful. Best to keep on the right side of the coroner. It was his dead body now: the body officially belonged to the coroner, not the police, not the family, and the coroner would determine whether and when the body could be released for burial or cremation, when an inquest was required, and whether to interrogate the police on their actions.

Next she rang Garvey, the home office pathologist. ‘Got a victim, burned to a crisp but I still need a doctor’s certificate of death.’

‘Be there in five,’ he said.

‘Express service? I’m honoured.’

‘I’m heading into the General, you’re on my way,’ Garvey said.

‘That’s it,’ she joked, ‘destroy the moment.’

It was a matter of minutes for them to complete the documentation Gill required, once Garvey had pronounced the death. She liked working with him, he was meticulous, pleasant company, had a sharp intelligence that she appreciated and was easy on the eye too, more than easy. Sadly for Gill he was also gay and happily ensconced in a civil partnership.

‘Doesn’t seem much point taking body temp,’ he said. The measurement was routinely used to help estimate time of death of the victim, but given he or she had been consumed by fire the body had undergone catastrophic changes. ‘And could be destructive to try.’

Theresa Barton agreed with him. ‘Leave it. Suggest we bag the victim and recover all material beneath and around the body,’ she traced an oval in the air, ‘say two metres either side.’

‘Pray it doesn’t rain.’ Gill nodded to the open roof.

‘We’ll erect shelters in any case,’ said Hyatt. ‘From our end we’ll want to spend several days examining the scene.’ In the same way that the work of the crime scene manager and CSIs was to find the evidence to try to build the narrative as to how someone died, so the fire investigating officer would be doing the same to establish the story of how the fire started and developed.