Cath Staincliffe - Ruthless

He glanced at her then away, the tension in him gone, and an air of defeat in its place.

She left him sitting there. She could not judge whether anything she’d said had sunk in. Had no idea whether he’d heard the wake-up call or whether he had further to fall before he acknowledged his addiction and took action towards recovery.

Gill was dreaming, more of a nightmare than a dream. Dave had moved back in with her, bringing the whore of Pendlebury and her spawn, and Gill was having to sleep on the sofa while they took the master bedroom. The smoke alarm was beeping but Gill couldn’t find it. She ran upstairs and down again, Dave shouting at her to turn the bloody thing off but she couldn’t see it. They’d all die in their beds. She came awake to find her phone ringing, the middle of the night. She picked it up. Trevor Hyatt, the fire investigation officer.

‘Trevor?’

‘Sorry to be so early but I knew you’d want to hear.’

‘What?’

‘The warehouse fire, Shuttling Way…’

‘Yes?’ She was expecting, if anything, him to say it was definitely the same accelerant or even that someone had seen the twins, but wouldn’t that wait till morning?

‘We found two bodies.’

Oh my God . Her heart rate doubled. She was wide awake now, mind spinning, trying to grasp all the ramifications.

‘I’m on my way.’

She snapped on the light.

Two bodies. Two more bodies. What the fuck was going on?

The warehouse was a huge structure, five storeys high and extending for over a hundred yards alongside the canal. In its heyday it would’ve housed bales of cotton for transport by the waterway to the ports at Manchester and Liverpool. Lorries would’ve done the job latterly.

Surveying the scene in the first light of dawn reminded Gill of photographs from the Second World War, bombings in Coventry and Dresden, everything shattered, black.

Hyatt led her along a dedicated pathway to the building. He explained that it had last been occupied by a foam and furniture wholesaler who used part of the ground floor. Remnants of foam and pieces of furniture were left when the business moved out. These had fed the fire, making the blaze fierce enough to consume the floors above. The whole thing had collapsed in. She fancied she could smell the plastic chemical smell of the foam in the stink of burning that filled the space.

The bodies had, in effect, been excavated from the layer of ash and cinders. A few feet apart, opposite each other, they were crouched, curled, half reclining. Macabre in their positioning. Skulls bent forward, the skin stretched like scorched parchment tight over the skeleton. Here and there a glint of bone. Adults, Gill thought from the length of the leg bones, but beyond that it was impossible to tell anything.

‘Sitting in chairs, we think. See the springs.’ Hyatt pointed out the spiral of metal beside one of the bodies. As the seats burned, they’d collapsed back and the victims with them.

Shot? she wondered.

‘I’d like the CSIs to take the bodies and all the debris around them,’ she glanced at him, ‘like we did at the chapel.’

He nodded.

‘You’re sure it’s arson?’ she said.

‘Looks like it. The seat of the fire is here.’ He pointed between the two figures where the floor itself had been eaten away. ‘Looks like an accelerant was used and the foam on the chairs would also act to speed up the fire.’

‘Petrol?’ Gill asked.

‘I don’t think so. I want to do some more investigation here but this looks like a smaller initial ignition area, whereas with the Old Chapel we had petrol splashed around and when that goes up it’s the vapour that ignites. This is more localized. And we’ve got melted glass.’

She looked as he indicated a shiny blob in the ash. ‘Could be innocuous, a drinking glass. But it could be a bottle.’

‘Molotov cocktail,’ she said.

‘That sort of thing. We’ll get an analysis done, we can do a headspace gas chromatograph, might be able to find out what it is.’

Gill knew the rudiments of the test, a way to identify and quantify volatile compounds. ‘If it’s not petrol then what is it?’

‘Could be paint thinner, acetone or a kerosene-based accelerant,’ he said.

‘Kerosene?’ Gill asked.

‘You’re looking at paraffin for heaters or lamps or lighter fuel, the sort of thing people use to light a barbecue.’

Neil Perry had made a comment about a barbecue when Rachel asked him to account for the petrol on his clothes. ‘We only found petrol on the Perrys’ clothing. No kerosene.’

‘True. Of course a device can be thrown from some distance so you don’t get that splashback effect you have when emptying a petrol can.’

‘Light the blue touch paper and stand well back,’ Gill said. ‘Have you been doing any house-to-house yet?’

‘We have, I’ll get everything sent through to you. You’ll merge the inquiries?’

‘If it’s murder,’ she said.

‘You think it is?’

‘Don’t you?’

He tipped his head in agreement.

‘Let’s see what pathologist finds.’ She opened her phone, ready to rouse all and sundry from their beds to get the investigation moving.

The post-mortems gave Gill a sense of déjà vu. The smell of charred flesh in the room, the blackened forms on the tables. The procedures were carried out on each body in turn. Gradually, methodically, Garvey built up a profile of the victims.

Victim number one was a woman, height five foot nine, evidence of historic injuries to the right arm and leg. Teeth showed poor dental care. African ethnicity. Age estimated between eighteen and twenty-five. Victim number two, male, height five foot ten, evidence of malnourishment with poor bone density. The same ethnicity and estimated age.

X-rays showed that both victims had been shot.

The woman had two bullets in her chest cavity.

The man had one in his chest and one in his head.

It was murder.

Nobody was grumbling about being pulled into work so early, certainly not Rachel. This was what she lived for. The court had granted them a further thirty-six hours to question the Perry brothers for the Kavanagh murder and Rachel reckoned that they nearly had enough to discuss going to charge with the CPS. Sometimes the Crown Prosecution Service were too cautious, bleating about insufficient evidence and letting people walk – that was the pits. When after all the work, all the hours they put in, gathering evidence, interviewing, carefully putting it together, the scumbags waltzed off, scot-free, a smirk on their face and a hard-on, no doubt: fucked the system.

Now this had blown up. Two more bodies, same neck of the woods, same MO. It was possible the twins would be looking at charges on three counts of murder, not just one. The boss had barely got her coat off and she was bringing them up to speed. They had drafted in extra officers to cope with the challenge of working three murder investigations.

‘Fire investigation officers had already been speaking to the community when this was believed to be simply a case of arson,’ the boss said. ‘Summaries of those interviews, along with any significant intelligence, will be available within the hour. I understand that the Perry brothers are persons of interest but as yet we have not had any information putting them at the warehouse on Friday. What we have been hearing is that the premises were being used for drug-dealing in the last few months.’

No surprise there, Rachel thought. An abandoned building was a magnet for junkies and other lowlifes. Off the radar, no water or electric but walls and a roof, somewhere to shelter. Attractive to dealers too, off the streets and out of sight, away from prying eyes. Though these days some of them were bold as brass, hanging about on street corners, and taking orders with kids on bikes to run the drugs. Students of The Wire .