Kate Medina - Fire Damage - A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

Where was the other half of that body? Had it been dumped in another part of the harbour and taken in a different direction by the tide? Or was it being stored in the killer’s freezer, a sick kind of trophy? Trophy-taking was a common feature when the victim and murderer were strangers: the killer wanting to keep the victim, the moment of death, clear in his or her memory, the trophy a physical tool to aid that process.

The cut was clean – chopped , Burrows had said. An axe? A butcher’s cleaver? For sure, a killer who meant business.

Shrugging his jacket sleeves down over his frozen hands, Marilyn sighed. A killer who meant business was all he needed right now.

He looked so different in his Military Police uniform – olive-green trousers, shirt and tie, a knife crease running down the front of each leg, the shirt buttoned up and starched resolutely, the red beret of the Military Police that gave them the nickname Redcaps, pulled low over his eyes – that Jessie almost walked straight past him.

‘Dr Flynn.’

She stopped, did a double take. ‘Oh, God, you scrub up … different.’

Callan smiled, but there was tension in the smile and it was gone almost before she’d registered it.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely.’

They walked side by side up the grey vinyl-tiled stairs to the second floor, their twin footfall emphasizing the silence that had settled after their initial greeting, and the tension that crackled from him. Removing his beret, he held the door at the top of the stairs open for her, and then pulled up, turning to face her in the corridor. At the far end, she could see a room crowded with desks, hear the ambient hum of conversation drifting down the corridor towards them, the tap of fingers on computer keys, the ring of a telephone, a sudden burst of laughter.

‘You’ve read the file?’ He was all business now.

‘Yes.’

‘Give me a rundown.’

She met his gaze. ‘You are joking?’

‘I want to be sure that you’ve got the background.’

‘I’ve got the background and I’m not ten, so I’m not doing any damn test. You’re going to have to trust me.’

His tie wasn’t straight.

He sighed. ‘Fine. So the bit the file doesn’t include. Starkey was raised on a council estate in West London. Before his sixteenth birthday he had racked up a couple of minor criminal convictions, for stealing cars and selling cannabis. He was put under the control of social services, given the option of remaining with his family and seeing a psychologist rather than going to a young offenders’ institution.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Jessie interrupted. ‘Gideon Duursema?’

‘Your boss has a lot to answer for.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

His tie was driving her mad; the electric suit was hissing against her skin.

‘Callan, your tie’s, uh, your tie is crooked.’

‘What?’ His voice was incredulous.

‘The knot of your tie is crooked.’

He reached up and straightened it distractedly. ‘OK?’

Jessie grimaced; he’d made it worse.

‘As I was saying, reports from his commanding officer in Afghanistan, in fact every commanding officer he’s had since he joined up, have been exemplary. He seems to be highly regarded by everyone he’s worked with. The Army seemed to have straightened him out, though the man I met yesterday didn’t fit so well with what I’ve read.’

Jessie shuffled closer. ‘Here, let me straighten it.’

She reached up. She could sense him humming with impatience, but he stood unmoving, gaze fixed on some point down the corridor behind her, while she fiddled with the knot. Knew suddenly that he had realized – realized it wasn’t merely perfectionism that drove her to straighten his tie.

‘Did you listen to anything I said?’ he asked curtly, when she had dropped her hand.

‘Yes, all of it. Has he had any injuries? Was he involved in heavy action in Afghanistan?’

‘No. But—’ he broke off.

‘But it’s not easy out there for anybody.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not.’

A laden pause; Jessie broke it.

‘What was your sense of him?’

‘My sense?’ He shrugged. ‘Negative.’

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘It’s not about like . It’s about …’ Another shrug.

‘A bad feeling?’

He frowned. ‘Feelings shouldn’t come into it, right? Not in my job.’

‘We’re all human.’

‘We are that.’ He dipped his gaze, breaking eye contact. ‘Shall we go and see Starkey now?’

Sergeant Colin Starkey was standing by the window, watching something in the car park below, lights from one of the Military Police cruisers washing his face alternately blue, then red. The room was spartan, utilitarian: plain white walls, scuffed in places from the scrapes of tables and chairs, the odd black vertical streak of shoe rubber where occupants had rested their soles against the wall. Two overhead strip lights lit a single rectangular wooden table and three chairs, two on the near side, one on the far side nearest to the window and Starkey. One of the strip lights flickered on, off, on again, as if it was tapping out its own Morse code.

If Jessie had any expectations of what Colin Starkey would look like, they had not coalesced into specifics. Only a vague stereotype, which had rarely been matched by any of the sergeants or staff sergeants she had met since she’d joined the Army. Crew cut, tattoos, barrel chest, a voice that sounded as if the owner was broadcasting through a loud hailer.

Starkey turned from the window, his gaze locking with Jessie’s. He flashed a sharp-toothed grin.

‘Things are looking up for me.’

Ignoring his comment, Jessie sat down on one of the chairs on the near side of the table, laid her hands calmly on the tabletop. She was used to being baited in that way, had made the mistake of rising to the lure a few times early on in her Army career and had felt stripped naked because of it. She wasn’t planning on making that mistake with Starkey.

Looking past her to Callan, Starkey gave a sloppy salute, which Callan returned smartly.

Starkey was only a few years older than she was, early thirties, Jessie guessed, so he was doing well to have earned the three chevrons already. He was tall, almost as tall as Callan, and well built, with dark hair that curled over his collar, longer than regulation, dark brown eyes and a square jaw shadowed with dark stubble. A faint bruise shaded the skin under his right eye. He was hard looking, but very handsome. For some reason, she hadn’t expected him to be.

‘So you must be Jessie Flynn,’ Starkey said, with another grin.

‘Doctor to you, Sergeant Starkey.’

‘Come and sit down please,’ Callan cut in, indicating the chair opposite, waiting until Starkey had joined them at the table before he sat down next to Jessie. Pulling a digital recorder from his pocket, he laid it on the table and flicked the switch. It purred softly in the silence.

‘As we discussed yesterday, this meeting is a psychological evaluation. Sergeant Starkey, you have said that you do not want a Ministry of Defence lawyer appointed on your behalf. Is that correct?’

Starkey nodded. Callan indicated the tape recorder. ‘Say it out loud please, Sergeant.’

‘I agree that I do not want a lawyer appointed on my behalf,’ he replied in an American drawl, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry .

Jessie noticed a muscle twitch in Callan’s jaw, but when he spoke his voice was measured, controlled.

‘Whatever you say between these walls may be used against you in any court martial that may follow.’

‘Why the hell would I say no to spending half an hour talking to a beautiful girl.’ A gleam had come into his feral eyes. ‘Even if it gets me banged up.’