Линда Ла Плант - Buried

When the fire brigade arrived, they split into two teams — one to tackle the fire inside, and a second to the stables to prevent the flames from jumping to the woodland beyond. It was easier to gain control of the stables because, once the wooden frames had gone, there was nothing left to fuel the fire. The interior of the cottage, however, kept re-igniting as the fire found new fuel on the upper floor and from the wooden roof beams. It didn’t take much to give the flames a new lease of life.

By nightfall, the grounds resembled a muddy swamp and the rose beds had been completely destroyed by hours of heavy fire boots. What was left of the furniture had been thrown into the front garden, to avoid further re-ignition inside the property, so the once beautiful rose garden looked like a fly-tipping site.

‘Stop!’ the sub-officer shouted as he emerged through the hole that used to be the front door. ‘Nobody goes back inside!’

He reached for his phone and dialled Sally Bown. It was late and the phone rang for quite some time before it was finally answered.

‘Sal, this one’s for you. We’ve got a body.’

Fire Investigation Officer Sally Bown arrived at the scene at eleven o’clock. From the neck down, she was kitted out in her well-worn fire officer’s uniform, but from the neck up, she was immaculate. Her long brown hair was in a loose, low braided bun, held in place by an antique hairpin of white beads and silver leaves, and her light make-up enhanced her natural beauty. The whole crew fancied her on an average day, so her arrival was definitely making their arduous night better. She didn’t mind. They respected her position, so them watching her arse every now and then didn’t bother her in the slightest.

‘It’s way better than men not watching my arse,’ was her response to any woman who objected to the glib sexism that came from the male firefighters. And Sally looked at them, too, so she thought it only fair.

At Sally’s side was a child of a SOCO with puffy eyes and bed hair. He carried a case almost as big as himself, and he stuck to her like glue. He wasn’t quite used to shift work yet, but if he’d been called by Sally Bown, then he was good at his job. He’d learn the rest.

In the lounge of Rose Cottage, the pile of heavy wooden furniture was now destroyed. The brass hinges and handles from the chest of drawers lay on the floor just in front of the hearth and, on the obliterated sofa, part-melted into the springs, lay a dead body, charred and blackened beyond recognition.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Sally as she got out her camera and filmed the scene, starting at the front door and moving methodically towards the centre of the lounge and the dead body. Her young SOCO waited outside until instructed to do otherwise.

‘Sally, stop!’ Sub shouted. She stopped dead. Sub was a man of very few words and everyone who worked with him knew that he only spoke when he had something important to say. ‘Retrace your steps, Sal. Now. Please.’

Sally started walking backwards, toe to heel, following exactly the same path as she’d taken to come in.

There was a deafening crack from directly above Sally’s head. A hand grabbed her belt and she flew backwards with the force of a recoiling bungee rope, to be caught by Sub’s waiting arms. Once he had a firm hold on her, he fell backwards onto the floor, taking Sally with him. In the next split second an iron bed frame dropped through the air and landed right where she had been standing. A cloud of ash and debris flew upwards and took an age to come back down. When visibility returned, Sub was still on the floor, Sally held between his legs, his arms gripping her tightly round the waist. The two legs of the bed that were closest to them had smashed deep holes through the lounge floorboards, and the other two were straddling the remains of the sofa and the charred body, which was still, miraculously, in one piece.

Sub momentarily tightened his grip around Sally’s waist, before letting go. That tiny squeeze reassured her that she was safe. As she gripped Sub’s raised knees to lever herself to her feet, and he eased her forwards with his hands politely in the small of her back, she couldn’t help thinking what a massive shame it was that he looked so like her dad.

When he arrived on the scene, Detective Inspector Martin Prescott was frustrated to be held back from entering Rose Cottage until the risk assessment had been done. He couldn’t imagine three more infuriating words in the English language than ‘risk fucking assessment’.

Prescott had been senior officer to Sally Bown’s older sister for more than twenty years, and the families were close. This was not unusual for rural Aylesbury, or for the local emergency services. Sally knew he’d be impatient so, while the fragile ceiling and crumbling walls were made safe, she kept him occupied by showing him the video footage of the interior.

‘At first we thought he could be a vagrant,’ Sally told Prescott.

‘He?’

Prescott smiled as he corrected Sally’s assumption. It was clear from the video that there was no way of knowing the gender of the charred remains at this point. Prescott made Sally smile without even trying. She thought his thick Yorkshire accent made him sound happy, even when they were disagreeing with each other.

‘Sorry,’ Sally corrected herself. ‘We initially thought that the body could be that of a vagrant unlucky enough to have set fire to themselves after lighting candles to keep warm. There’s no electricity in the cottage, and we found several tea lights scattered around the lounge — on the mantelpiece and in the hearth — but when I looked more closely at the debris on the floor directly next to the sofa, it looked like the furniture had been piled up around him. I mean, around the body.’

‘So, the body was there first?’

‘That’s for you to decide, Martin.’

‘Accelerant?’

‘Undetermined as yet.’

Prescott was disappointed when the video footage ended.

‘That all you got?’

Sally started to play a second video, which began by showing the iron bed frame sitting squarely astride the sofa. Prescott closed his eyes and sighed heavily at the sight of his crime scene buried under a double bed. The quiet breath he exhaled formed the words ‘Fuck me!’

Prescott took a moment to gather his thoughts. When he was thinking, his eyes flicked from side to side as though he were seeing the various scenarios flashing past inside his head. He appeared to be a very laid-back man, but there was an intensity bubbling away underneath the surface. Mildly dyslexic, soon after joining the force he had made the decision never to write anything down in public. Instead, he’d decided he would remember everything, and in a brain that full, it could sometimes take a little longer to process what he was seeing. Although he hid his intellect under Northern glibness, Prescott was a clever man, and it was always worth waiting for him.

‘Right, well, you know the rules, Sal. It’s a suspicious death, so I have to assume murder till the evidence tells me otherwise.’ He walked away from Sally before she could reply and headed for the cottage to see if he could at least peek in through where the window had once been. ‘And if it’s murder, then I’m wasting valuable time standing out here doing naff all!’

Sally raced ahead and stood in his way, forcing him to stop.

‘This may be your crime scene, DI Prescott, but you are not going in until I say it’s safe for you to do so.’

Prescott looked down at Sally. She was at least four inches shorter than him, but she was a feisty woman and she wasn’t going to back down.

‘And anyway,’ Sally added, ‘I hadn’t finished.’

She fast-forwarded the second video, stopping it at seven minutes and thirty-two seconds. On the wall above the hearth the word PERVERT could be seen scrawled in red paint. It was mostly covered in a thick layer of black soot, but the letters could still just be made out.