Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

At either end of the longer side were the windows and a pass-through to the kitchen. The shorter side was bounded by walls, one exterior and one interior.

There were two sofas; a two-seater beneath a window, and a three-seater up against the exterior wall. In the corner between them sat a low, small table, and in the nearest corner to that, where the windows met the interior wall, was a plasma TV.

All of them burnt to the edge of recognition, as was Redwine’s body.

His skin was cracked and patched charred black and bright red, splashed with different colors where his clothes had melted on to him. He was hunched like a prizefighter, arms drawn up in front of him and legs bent at the knee.

This in itself proved nothing, they knew. The position was caused by muscles contracting in response to the heat of the fire, and could not indicate by itself whether the victim had been alive or dead when the fire was set.

But the color of the body could do so.

Reddening of the skin, and blistering, tend to take place on a victim who was still breathing rather than one who wasn’t.

Beradino crouched down by the body and took a small dictaphone from his pocket. He was gospel strict about making contemporaneous notes. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t rely on remembering everything when it came to writing things up a couple of hours later back at the station; it was also that making notes forced the investigator to slow down, think, take his time.

After all, the victim wasn’t going anywhere.

Beradino looked closely at what had once been Redwine’s face.

He didn’t think about what Redwine might have looked like in life, as that was no longer relevant. If he thought of anything, it was of over-barbecued meat. The less emotive and more commonplace he could make it seem, the better.

Twenty-five years on the homicide squad hadn’t hardened him to things, not really. It had merely made him better at coping with them.

There .

‘Around the nostrils,’ he said into the dictaphone. ‘Beneath the burn marks. Smoke stains, clearly visible.’

The pathologist would doubtless find blackened lungs when he came to do the autopsy, which would confirm it; but for now, Beradino had more than enough to be going on with.

Smoke stains meant inhalation. It was this which had almost certainly killed Redwine – breathing in smoke finishes people off before burning flesh does – but it didn’t alter the chronology of what had happened, or the central conclusion.

Michael Redwine had been alive when the fire had been set, and he’d been burned to death.

The doorman was dressed in a suit which, Patrese thought, almost certainly cost more than any of his own suits, and very possibly more than all of them put together.

He tried to ignore this slight on his sartorial standards, and instead read the name on the doorman’s lapel badge. Jared Foxworth.

Foxworth handed Patrese two lists.

The first showed which apartments were occupied and by whom, though some of the names were of companies rather than individuals. The Pennsylvanian was a popular locale for corporate lets, allowing companies based outside of Pittsburgh to put up employees or clients here instead of paying for hotels.

The second was a record of every visitor who’d gone up to the apartments today. The Pennsylvanian’s rule was simple; you asked at the reception desk, the doorman rang up to the apartment in question, and if you went up, you signed in with him first. If you stayed in reception and waited for a resident to come down before leaving the building, you didn’t need to sign in; but Redwine’s killer couldn’t have done that, as Redwine had been found in his apartment. Anyway, he’d had no visitors at all today, said Foxworth; none, full stop.

There were, he added, no other ways into the building unless you knew enough about The Pennsylvanian’s layout to sneak in through the underground parking lot or up the fire escape; but even then you’d have to rely on doors being open that shouldn’t have been, and risk being spotted by someone who might ask you what you were doing. Hazardous, to say the least, but not out of the question.

Whichever way Redwine’s killer had entered the building, he – of course it could be a ‘she’ too, Beradino said, but since the majority of murderers were male, they would for simplicity’s sake refer to the killer as a ‘he’, all the while maintaining an open mind – had not had to force the door of the apartment itself. The firefighters had broken down the door when they’d arrived on scene, and they were adamant both door and lock had been intact.

Which in turn suggested two possibilities.

Firstly, that the killer had a key with which he’d let himself in. This might have been a surprise to Redwine, or he might have been expecting it. Perhaps the killer had thought Redwine would be out, and the surprise at finding him in the apartment had been mutual.

Secondly, that Redwine had known the killer, and opened the door to him.

There were two sets of crowds out front. First, the building’s residents, who’d been evacuated and were massed under the canopy waiting to be questioned. Second, the rubberneckers who’d heard that there’d been not just a fire but a death too, which was for a dispiriting number of people more than reason enough to drop everything and stand behind police barriers for hours on end.

One of the uniforms was subtly filming the latter group. Murderers sometimes returned to the scene of their crime; arsonists often did. The detectives would study the footage later, looking for known troublemakers or simply those who looked shifty.

A film crew from KDKA, Pittsburgh’s local TV station, were also on site. The event was newsworthy because of The Pennsylvanian’s prestige as a place to live, and the fact that the victim had been a surgeon, but the body language of the reporter and cameraman betrayed their instinct that this was not a major story.

Man dies in fire. Tragic, but happens every day. The TV crew would go through the motions and hope for something bigger, more exciting, or quirkier next time.

Beradino and Patrese introduced themselves to the residents and asked if a Magda Nagorska was among them as, according to their records, she lived directly beneath Redwine’s apartment.

She was indeed there, and she looked as old as God, possibly older.

If the way they had to shout every question two or three times was anything to go by, Redwine could have been murdered in her apartment, perhaps right next to her, without her having heard a damn thing.

‘Did you see or hear anyone go into his apartment?’ Patrese asked.

‘He was a charming man,’ she shouted.

‘No commotion? An argument? Your apartment didn’t shake?’

‘It’s dreadful, that it happens somewhere like here. Dreadful .’

One of the uniforms bit on his hand to stop himself from laughing. It was like giggling in church; the more taboo it was, the more tempting it became.

Patrese didn’t think it would do much for the reputation of the Pittsburgh homicide department if he fell to his knees weeping with laughter in front of a potential witness.

They continued in mutual incomprehension for several minutes, before Beradino asked in exasperation: ‘Do you have a hearing aid?’

‘Lemonade?’

‘HEA-RING-AID?’

‘Oh yes, but I don’t wear it too often. I’m not deaf. Just a little hard of hearing in one ear, you know.’

‘How did the killer get in?’ Patrese asked, when he and Beradino were in the car.

‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? Well, one of them, anyway.’