Fire Damage: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

9

Jeanette Bass-Cooper looked hard at the detective inspector. She prided herself on being open-minded, but even she had limits. He looked as if he had been dragged out of some Soho rock club at 4 a.m., beer still in hand, and teleported down here to the seaside, kicking and screaming, blinking those disconcerting mismatched eyes against the daylight, smoky and feeble as it was.

His partner, on the other hand, the detective sergeant – Workman, Jeanette thought she’d said – was his antithesis. Shapeless black wash-and-wear trousers skimming solid ankles, chunky lace-ups that wouldn’t be out of place on a 1930s nanny, mousy hair cut into a low-maintenance bob. But she seemed sensible at least. Reliable.

Detective Inspector Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons – Marilyn after Manson, he would hasten to add if questioned on the nickname his colleagues had bestowed on him the first day he joined the force, a nickname that had dogged him ever since – looked at the short, boxy woman in front of him in her black dress and high-heeled patent boots and felt the beginnings of a headache. The words ‘mutton’ and ‘lamb’ flashed into his mind. But at least she seemed intelligent, could string a sentence together that contained no swear words, a rare skill in the world he occupied.

A wind had picked up, whipping the water of the harbour into a frothy, gunmetal soup, cutting straight through his leather jacket. Hauling up his collar, he hunkered down, wishing that he’d brought a scarf, put on a windproof fleece, anything more sensible than his battered biker.

‘DS Workman. Take Ms Bass-Cooper to the Command Vehicle to get her out of the cold. Switch the engine on to get the blowers going. I don’t want our one witness freezing to death before we’ve drained her of information. Take a written statement while you’re there.’

As DS Workman led Jeanette Bass-Cooper back up the garden towards the gaggle of police vehicles haphazardly parked on the gravel drive, Marilyn turned and strode across the crispy, frostbitten grass towards the narrow strip of pebbles that Bass-Cooper had termed a beach. Not one he fancied sunbathing on.

Looking out across the water to Itchenor, he felt a shot of déjà vu. He had worked on another murder last spring, around the bay in Bosham, a small village of expensive detached houses like the one behind him. Murder in this part of West Sussex was so rare that it had made the national newspapers. A house-sitter, stabbed to death in her bedroom in the middle of the night; her sister, brother-in-law and elderly father in adjacent bedrooms who had heard nothing. It had him stumped for close to a fortnight, until he had found out that the sixty-year-old owner of the house, who had been on holiday with his wife at the time, had a penchant for swinging. Over the telephone from Florida he had explained to Marilyn that he had ‘absolutely no idea’ how photographs of himself, posing naked on a sandy beach, came to be posted on a swingers’ website under the moniker, ‘The Director of Fun’. It turned out that the murderer was a fellow swinger, a fifty-five-year-old woman who thought she was dispatching the director’s wife.

This case, Marilyn feared, would be tougher to crack.

The forensics teams, dressed in their identical navy-blue waterproof onesies, looked, on fleeting glance, like a group of harbour day-trippers – only the masks covering their mouths and noses dispelling that image. They had got here quickly and erected a forensic tent over the body – what remained of it at least. Marilyn didn’t fancy the tent’s chances if this wind picked up. The occasional white flash of the forensics’ camera crew lit it up from the inside, giving him some uncomfortable memories of last night. A nightclub in Portsmouth. He was too old to stay out until 3 a.m., should get sensible, get himself a girlfriend knocking forty, rather than Cindy, virtually half his age and beautiful, but sharp as a blunt instrument.

‘So what have we got?’

Tony Burrows, the lead Crime Scene Investigator pulled his hood back, slid a latex-gloved hand over his bald spot, fingertips grazing the dark hair that ringed his scalp. He reminded Marilyn of a Benedictine monk, the impression emphasized by his short legs and softly rounded stomach. ‘Male.’

Marilyn waited. When no more information was forthcoming, ‘Yup. And …?’

‘That’s about it, at the moment. The body is not what could be termed fresh kill, and we only have half of it.’

Marilyn winced. Despite his chosen profession, he didn’t have a strong stomach, had failed, even after nearly twenty years in Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, to fully acclimatize to the visceral assault on the senses that dead bodies rendered.

‘Where is the other half?’

‘Anybody’s guess. But the cut is clean, if messy. Chops—’ Burrows made a vertical hacking motion with his hand – ‘rather than tears or rips. An axe, perhaps? A butcher’s chopper, maybe. The body is very badly decomposed, most of the skin and a good part of the flesh missing, as you can see, so identifying the cause may be difficult.’

Marilyn’s eyes hung closed for a moment. ‘Do you think he was dumped here?’

‘Could have been. There’d be no traces left if someone had carried the body down the garden and tossed it on to the beach. Not given how long this Doe has been dead for. Unless he was stored somewhere else and then dumped recently.’ He paused, massaged the dome of his head, eyes raised to the grey sky in thought. ‘But that’s unlikely. Our victim has been exposed to the elements for some time, I think, by the looks of him. Dr Ghoshal will be able to tell you more once he gets him on the slab.’

Marilyn nodded. Cupping his hands in front of his face, he blew into them, stomped his feet to get the circulation going. The house had been vacant for four months, Ms Bass-Cooper had said. His mind turning inwards in thought, he moved away from Tony Burrows and his team, buzzing like flies around the corpse, followed the curve of shingle to the rotten wooden fence that signalled the extent of the garden. Leaning against a wooden upright, he gazed out across the water. Yachts and motor cruisers bobbed at anchor, straining against their moorings in the swell. Though he’d lived in Chichester for almost all of his working life, the best part of twenty years, he wasn’t a sailor – struggled to envision anything less appealing than squatting in a damp little boat being pushed around by the wind. But having lived and worked near the sea for so long, he knew something about tides.

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.

10

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.’

‘So talk me through what happened.’ Callan had a hand on the file, but didn’t open it. He had clearly memorized the contents. ‘On the afternoon of Wednesday, 28th October – six days ago.’

‘I believe I did that yesterday, Captain Callan.’ Still the American drawl.

‘Go through it again.’

Starkey shrugged, glanced at Jessie. An instinct for self-preservation, establishing ground rules at the outset, made her hold his gaze across the tabletop; hold it until he looked away.

‘I suggested we go for a run and he agreed.’ His eyes rolled around the room, drifting up the walls, across the ceiling.

‘Who is “he”?’

‘He. Him. Are you trying to trick me, Captain Callan?’

Callan sighed, glanced at the tape recorder again. ‘Jackson. You are referring to Sergeant Andy Jackson.’

‘Right, Jackson. We’d both had a busy day, needed to run off the cobwebs.’

‘In 35 degree heat, in full combat kit.’

‘More heat, more sweat, releases more toxins. You should know that, Captain. You look like a bit of a fitness freak.’

‘What were you doing in Afghanistan?’ Jessie cut in.

‘I’m with the Intelligence Corps.’

‘Working on what, specifically?’

Starkey sighed. He tilted his head back and his gaze, under hooded eyelids, drifted to Callan. ‘You must have talked to my superiors, Captain Callan.’

‘I have.’

‘And what did they say?’

Callan didn’t answer.

Starkey laughed softly to himself. ‘Not much, I’m guessing.’ He raised his right hand, putting the tips of his index finger and thumb together to form a circle. ‘Need to be in the know. In the circle.’

‘Training ANSF? Drugs? Terrorism? Warlords and tribal loyalties?’ Callan said.

Starkey smirked. ‘You’re not in the circle, Captain.’

His eyes skipped off around the room again, came to rest on the window. It had started to rain. Lights from the courtyard reflected in globules of water on the glass, thousands of tiny bulbs. The strip light above continued to flicker, coating their faces white-grey-white and grey again, when the frail afternoon light was left to cope on its own for a fraction of a second. Callan glanced up at it, his brow furrowing in irritation. He looked back to Starkey.

‘Answer the question, Starkey.’

Starkey’s eyes snapped back from the window to rest on Jessie’s.

‘Do you know what frightens people, Dr Flynn?’

‘I’d say that real fear is different for everyone. We all have our secret demons. Isn’t real fear about tapping into that person’s individual demons?’ Jessie said. ‘Pressing their buttons.’

Starkey grinned. He seemed to like her answer.

‘So what was Andy Jackson’s demon?’ she asked.

‘You’re asking the wrong questions, Doctor.’

‘Am I?’

‘He was too stupid to have demons. He was a follower, plain and simple.’

‘Is that how you got him into the desert? Because he liked to follow?’

‘This isn’t about me,’ Starkey replied.

She could feel Callan shifting uncomfortably beside her, sense his impatience at this play of words.

‘So what is it about? Drugs? Terrorism? Warlords and tribal loyalties? Where do your loyalties lie, Starkey?’

Starkey crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Do you know what Afghanistan’s nickname is, Dr Flynn? The Graveyard of Empires.’ He smirked. ‘Have you ever been there? To the Graveyard?’

‘Twice,’ she said. ‘Both with PsyOps.’

He raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘You needn’t be. It’s my job.’

‘So you know what a complete shit show it is out there then, ever since we demobbed to keep the politicians’ ratings up, keep Joe Public happy. But we’re still there, aren’t we – some of us suckers?’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘PsyOps? We’re fucking amateurs compared to them. We think we’re playing them, but we’re the ones being played.’

He started singing, softly, under his breath, ‘I’m a puppet just a puppet on a string.’

Jessie could sense that Callan was getting frustrated. His hands were clenched into fists on the tabletop, his legs jiggering underneath it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the tense set of his jaw. It would be easier for him if Starkey refused to talk at all. At least he could then assemble evidence from other avenues, without having the water muddied like this. But it wasn’t so strange to Jessie. She had seen it a number of times – both before joining the Army and after. Patients who loved the wordplay, saw it as a game. Didn’t want to be tied down, or couldn’t be. Their heads a jumble of disassociated ideas, memories drifting loose, thoughts they couldn’t straighten into anything intelligible. Which was Starkey?

Callan stood suddenly, strode over to the light switch. Flicked it off, waited a couple of beats, flicked it on again. The strip light above them continued to flicker.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he snapped, returning to the table.

‘Is that what you and Jackson were working on?’ Jessie asked. ‘PsyOps?’

Starkey smirked. ‘I thought you were PsyOps.’

‘But you were working on something with Jackson?’

‘There’s a lot of intelligence to be gathered in Afghanistan. Some things I worked on with Jackson, other things not.’ A muscle in his jaw twitched. In anguish? With stress? ‘Fucking amateurs, and that’s how we get burnt,’ he muttered.

‘Burnt.’ Her mind flitted to Major Nicholas Scott, his skin like melted treacle. Scott was attacked in Afghanistan. A long shot, she realized. ‘Did you work with Major Scott?’

‘We only overlapped for a few days,’ Starkey said.

She felt Callan shift beside her, tilt forward in the chair.