Vicky Newham - Out of the Ashes

‘ Help ,’ Marta shouted. ‘Paramedics. Over here.’

Indra lay on the pavement, her slender frame writhing in agony, her face a deathly white.

Marta was kneeling at her sister’s side, leaning over, her hand on Indra’s forehead. ‘Hurry. She’s pregnant.’

Maya, 5.30 p.m.

Minutes later, Indra was in an ambulance. The vehicle rattled out of Brick Lane, siren shrieking into the evening air, blue lights slicing through the darkness.

‘I hope she’s OK.’ I was standing with Dan and Simon.

‘ And the baby,’ Dan added as I marched over to Chapel. I had to fill him in on what Indra had said about gas cylinders in the shop.

His demeanour tightened. ‘Did she say where?’

‘No. Just “we had gas cylinders”. That was it.’

‘Shit. That means we could have an explosion. Oh Christ. The whole street could go up.’ He grabbed hold of his radio and sprang into action. ‘Right. Emergency procedures.’ Chapel pointed away from the soup shop. ‘Both of you,’ he said to Dan and me, ‘start moving people back. We need to extend the cordon a further five shops. Tell everyone who isn’t family to go home as soon as they’ve spoken to the police.’ He began shouting clipped instructions into his radio to the lift operator. ‘Gas alert. Get Andy down from the platform and over to us as quick as you can. Repeat. Get Andy down.’ He switched channels on his radio. ‘All crew. All crew. Gas alert. All crew away from the building. Repeat. Gas alert. All crew to me at the front of the barber’s shop. Prepare for emergency evacuation procedures. Over.’

Within seconds, fire officers reported in to their crew leader and Simon filled them in.

‘We don’t know the details or whether the cylinders have already gone up. We need to evacuate everyone three shops each side. Tell them to go to family, friends or a hotel until we give the all-clear.’ Simon fixed his gaze on each of his officers in turn and issued instructions.

The team burst into action and the fire officers each marched towards the premises they’d been allocated.

‘Gas emergency. Clear the area, please,’ Simon shouted at the emergency services staff who were still hanging around to the left of the soup shop. He checked progress with the lift and made sure the cordon had been widened adequately.

People streamed out of shops, onto the street, wide-eyed and terrified, and were herded to beyond the new cordon. The lift lowered Andy onto the pavement. The operator jumped out of his cab to meet him and steered him towards the cordon as quickly as he could. Here, we were waiting.

Andy began removing his breathing apparatus and climbed out of his protective clothing and head gear. ‘It’s definitely a man and a woman in there,’ he said. ‘They’re curled round each other on what looks like a bed.’

‘Did you manage to get any photographs?’

He nodded. ‘Let me grab a swig of water.’ He was laying his kit out as he removed it. Mask, oxygen cylinders, thermal suit, thermal imaging camera. Dust and debris flew everywhere. For a moment it made me think of the way people lay out bodies after disasters.

‘Poor Indra,’ I said to Dan. Thank goodness she had her sister with her. Losing her husband and business were awful enough.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Things are going to get even worse for her when she finds out about the other body.’

‘You know what the media are like. As soon as they get hold of the story, they’ll splash her personal life all over the TV. It’ll be on the internet and in all the papers. It’s going to be awful for her. And when we broadcast a public appeal for information on the woman, it’s going to increase speculation further.’ While Andy removed his gear, I was turning over in my mind who the best person would be to tell us – in Indra’s absence – whether the man in the photographs was Simas Gudelis. A reliable ID would depend on how burned the body was. Hopefully, we could identify the victims from the images the medical officer had taken and wouldn’t have to rely on dental records or DNA analysis. A thought occurred to me. ‘Dan, can you see if there’s an image of Simas online? A mug shot that we can use as a temporary reference point?’

He swiped his phone into life. ‘Here we go. The soup shop has a website.’ Dan was clicking through the website pages. ‘Simas Gudelis and Indra Ulbiene. Lithuanian. Both from Vilnius originally. They’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for three years, and before that they lived in Cambridgeshire for two years.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Agricultural labourers on various farm camps.’

He showed me an image of the two of them, outside their shop. They stood at their blue front door. The man was shaking a bottle of champagne and the woman was cutting a piece of yellow tape. She was recognisable as the one we had just met, although her build and muscle tone were heftier then and her hair was darker. Simas was taller than Indra. A brown line clung to his jawline and top lip, and he had thick eyebrows. At least we had something to go on.

Andy was rubbing his unmasked face as though wanting to shake off the things he’d seen. ‘Extremely unpleasant in there.’

‘I bet. Could we look through the photographs on your camera? We need to ID the bodies.’

‘Sure.’ He fetched it from the ground and passed it over.

With Dan looking on, I flicked through the camera’s memory card. The images showed two bodies, lying on a surface with their arms round each other. The pose – the man curled round the woman like a spoon – was a peaceful one but their melted, greasy appearance and the fire-charred room was a vision of agony.

‘Jeez.’ Unless they’d grabbed hold of each other out of terror, it suggested they’d been curled up in bed together when the fumes and flames got to them.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Andy said, ‘the two people in that room would have become unconscious extremely quickly and died within minutes. The accelerant was focussed on the hall and staircase. The fire will have ripped through the centre of the building.’

In the image, the man’s face was shiny and burned back to tissues and fat, but his cheeks and the area around his mouth was much darker, which could be from having a beard and moustache.

Dan lined his phone up with the camera so that one of the internet images was next to the shot. ‘Looks like him, doesn’t it?’

‘There are definitely similarities but it’s hard to be sure from these images.’ It was frustrating. Facial profiling might help but it wasn’t a reliable method on its own. ‘We need to find out from Indra if she has anything of Simas’ which might have his DNA on.’

‘And whether he had any identifying marks,’ said Dan. ‘The sister might be able to help too.’

I glanced at the images again. ‘We can’t be certain it’s Simas, but it seems probable. Let’s hope someone has reported the woman missing.’

‘I’ll get Alexej to check the MisPer Register.’ Dan began to dial on his mobile.

I faced Andy again. ‘Can we take a copy of a few of these photographs as an interim?’

‘Sure.’

It took Dan a couple of moments to copy a few of the images into secure cloud storage and we made our way off the crime scene.

Just as we reached the car, a tall, mousey-haired man strode towards us. ‘Hey. Police. Wait a moment.’ It was a clipped, East London accent. His black, military-style trench-coat flapped with each stride and his eyes were darting around the scene.

The voice was familiar.

Maya, 6 p.m.

‘Someone said my mother’s been taken to hospital.’ The man was peering through the window of the newsagent’s and looking over at the wreckage of the soup shop.