Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

She pulled off the interstate, parked the Camry, and went back into the burger bar.

Esmerelda wasn’t on duty today. At the counter was a guy with acne and eyeglasses who could barely have been out of his teens. His nametag proclaimed him not only to be ‘Kevin’, but also the manager.

‘Help you?’ he said, in exactly the same tone Esmerelda had used the day before. Must have been something they taught at burger college.

Jesslyn couldn’t remember feeling as demeaned as she did now. Only her faith that God would provide, and that He moved in mysterious ways, forced the index finger of her right hand up and in the direction of the EMPLOYEES WANTED sign.

‘I’d like a job, please,’ she said.

‘You don’t recognize me?’ I ask.

Michael Redwine shakes his head. He can’t speak, as I’ve put duct tape across his mouth; and he can’t take the tape off or lash out at me, as I’ve cuffed his hands behind his back. The cuffs are those thin plastic ones, good for one use only.

One use only is all I need.

Besides, the plastic won’t last long, not with what I’ve got in store for him; but by the time he’ll be able to break them off, he’ll be long past doing anything at all.

His mouth moves furiously around the gag, spilling saliva down his jaw. It takes me a moment to work out what he’s saying.

‘You’re praying?’ I ask.

He looks at me with wide eyes and nods.

‘That’s funny,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think people like you believed in a higher power.’

His brows contract in puzzlement.

I look round his apartment again.

Nothing much wrong with it, truth be told. He lives in The Pennsylvanian, about the most luxurious apartment block in all of downtown. It’s built on the site of the old Union rail station, and the arched canopy which covers the main entrance is often cited as the most captivating architectural arrangement in all of Pittsburgh.

The Pennsylvanian has thirteen stories, the apartments getting ever grander the higher you go. Redwine’s apartment is on the tenth floor, where the building’s loft homes are located: all elegant arched windows, crown moldings, wood paneling and intricately detailed, fifteen-foot ceilings. The windows give on to warehouse roofs and overpasses swooping towards the Strip. Far below me, streetlights glow low sodium.

This, all this luxury, is what you get when you’re one of the premier brain surgeons in all Pennsylvania, possibly in the entire United States.

And all this luxury means nothing when you’ve done what Michael Redwine did, and you’re going to be punished like I’m about to punish him.

I open my bag and bring out a red plastic container. It can take a gallon, and pretty much everyone in the world recognizes its shape and what it’s designed to hold.

Redwine is screaming mutely behind the duct tape even before I open the lid and let him smell the gasoline.

‘Remember what you did?’ I ask, beginning to pour the gasoline over his head.

He jerks his body across the floor and tries to stand; anything to get away from the pulsing glugs that mat his hair to his forehead and run into his eyes.

He kicks at me, but I skip easily out of reach, still pouring.

The gasoline is drenching his shirt now, rivuleting down his trousers.

‘Remember what you said to me?’ I ask.

He throws himself against the wall; to knock himself out and spare himself the agony of what he knows is coming, perhaps, or as a last desperate call for help.

Neither works. He’s still conscious, and no one’s coming.

‘And remember what I said to you?’

When the plastic can’s empty, I put it back in my bag.

I take out the juggling torch and the lighter. Then I put the bag by the door, the easier to grab it fast on my way out if I have to make a sharp exit.

I light the torch’s wick and look at Redwine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more terrified in my entire life.

‘Isaiah chapter fifty-nine, verse seventeen,’ I say. ‘“For I put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon my head; and I put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and am clad with zeal as a cloak.”’

The torch flares in my hand like the fount of justice. I take a step towards him.

He backs away until he reaches the far corner and can go no further.

He curls himself into a ball and turns his face away from me.

I lower the torch to his shoulder.

From the point of view of a homicide detective, fire scenes are among the most difficult of all to work. What fire doesn’t destroy, it damages; and what it damages, the firefighters tend to destroy in their efforts to extinguish the blaze. None of this bodes well for the preservation of evidence. Only bomb sites boast more destruction and disorder.

The fire department had been on the scene within four minutes of first being called, when one of Redwine’s neighbors had smelt burning, looked out of the window, and seen large black clouds billowing from Redwine’s apartment. The firemen had evacuated the entire apartment block and set to putting the fire out.

It had taken them two and a half hours, but they’d managed it, and had kept it contained to the apartment of origin, more or less. There were scorch marks in the apartment above and those to either side, but nothing worse than that, and no serious structural damage, except to Redwine’s apartment itself.

The senior fire officer on site having declared the building safe, Patrese and Beradino pulled on crime-scene overalls, shoe covers and latex gloves, in that order, and entered Redwine’s apartment.

They’d been called in the moment the firefighters had discovered both the body – presumed to be Redwine’s, though obviously not proved as such yet – and the demarcation line on the carpet next to him.

A demarcation line, in fire terms, marks the boundary between where a surface – in this case, the carpet – has burnt and where it hasn’t. More often than not, it indicates the use of a liquid accelerant, which in turn means the fire was started deliberately.

And since very few people choose to start a fire and then hang around inside a burning apartment – suicide by self-immolation is extremely rare – it seemed likely that someone other than Redwine, someone long since gone, had been responsible for both the fire and Redwine’s death.

This left two possibilities. Either the arsonist had killed Redwine and then set the fire to cover his tracks; or it had been the fire itself that had killed Redwine.

The crime-scene photographer was already there. Patrese and Beradino watched as he fired off round after round of shots, changing lenses and films with practiced ease.

In close for the serious detail, magnifying things a few millimeters across up to the size of a normal print; mid-range images which concentrated on specific objects; and wide-angle images capturing as much of the room as possible.

He was using both black-and-white and color films. Color is usually better, but gruesome photos are best shown to squeamish juries in monochrome.

Beradino glanced across at Patrese, who read in the furrow of the older man’s brow exactly what it meant; concern, that all this would scald Patrese’s memories. It was barely three weeks since his parents had perished in a freeway fireball.

‘I’m OK,’ Patrese said.

They looked round what was left of the room. It was rectangular, though not by much; fourteen feet by seventeen, at a guess.