After the Fire (7 page)

‘So there was a bed in the uninhabited flat, and someone who opened the windows.’ Derwent headed to the bedroom window and looked down. ‘Are you thinking of Armstrong?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘His body was a bit to the left of this window.’ Derwent was leaning out at a perilous angle. I had to restrain myself from grabbing the back of his coat and hauling him back.

‘I’d say it bears further investigation.’ Harper’s voice was as calm and reasonable as ever.

We followed him out to stand in the corridor. ‘From here on the fire was largely contained by the firefighters.’ He pointed. ‘Flat 104, the firefighters rescued the elderly resident without too much trouble once they found the flat. The main issue was gaining access. She was barricaded inside and it took a while to persuade her to open the door.’

‘Lucky escape,’ Una Burt commented.

‘Very.’ Harper sighed. ‘Not the case upstairs, unfortunately. If you’d all like to follow me, I can show you flat 113. Whoever they were, they had no luck at all.’

SOBERLY, I WALKED
downstairs with Derwent.

‘I’m never going to live anywhere higher than the first floor,’ he said.

‘Me neither.’

‘What a fucking horrible way to die. Locked in.’ He shuddered. ‘Give me Armstrong’s death any day.’

It didn’t seem to me that Armstrong’s ending had been a whole lot better than the two people who had been located in flat 113, but I could understand why Derwent was so unsettled. Flat 113 had been a horror show, a nightmare made real. The smell had hit me first and I wasn’t the only one who struggled with the dark, awful stench of charred meat. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies – I’d even seen burned bodies before. These were different, though. The fire had seared through the flat with tremendous speed and heat. I’d never seen destruction like it. Even the front door was warped and buckled. Harper had shown us the lock, proving that the door had been locked at the time of the fire.

‘Locked from the inside or the outside?’ I’d asked.

‘We don’t know. We haven’t found a key yet.’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Una Burt said, her voice firm. ‘They might have been waiting for rescue. They might have been scared to leave. It’ll take time to search for the key in this mess, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t here.’

But it was hard to imagine why you would allow yourself to be trapped in an inferno if you had a choice in the matter. The corpses were distorted and black, charred to the bone, huddled in a cupboard where they had tried to hide. They looked like specimens from a museum, bog people dug out of the ground, withered, alien. You had to remind yourself these had been people, once. Recently.

Everyone else on the eleventh floor had escaped, though several had suffered injuries that ranged from very minor to serious. If the two people hadn’t been locked in, or if the fire had broken through in a different flat – even if the fire crews had known they were trapped there – the outcome might have been different.

‘We’ll be looking at the building regulations and whether they were correctly observed,’ Northbridge had promised.

‘I’m sure that’ll make all the difference to them.’ Derwent had walked out, as if he couldn’t bear to stay there for another moment, and after a nod from Burt I’d followed him. I’d caught up with him on the stairs, aware that he wouldn’t want to discuss the fact that he’d walked out. I sometimes wondered why I bothered being tactful around Derwent when he was so absolutely not tactful in his dealings with me.

‘So what do you think?’ I asked.

‘About what?’

‘Armstrong. Did he fall, did he jump or was he pushed?’

‘Pushed. Definitely.’ He was going faster as he got further away from the top of the flats, shedding the gloom that had come over him in the charnel house of flat 113.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘If anyone was going to be murdered, ever, it was him. He hated everyone who wasn’t white, English and wealthy, and that’s a lot of people. Especially here on this estate. Frankly, I was surprised he wasn’t lynched two months ago when he was wandering around talking shit about that young black kid who was shot.’

‘Shot by the police,’ I said as quietly as I could. I wasn’t prepared to shout about Levon Cole. It was a very raw and recent death, and the last time I’d seen Armstrong he’d been scoring political points as a result of the shooting. It wasn’t something I’d found endearing.

Behind us, I could hear the others starting to come down, their voices echoing in the stairwell. Otherwise the flats were silent. The residents had been evacuated to the local school for the night. There was something chilling about the empty corridors on each floor we passed, strewn with bags and belongings that people had dropped as they fled. Disaster had come to find them.

I suddenly, quite desperately, wanted to get out of Murchison House and as far away from the Maudling Estate as I could go. I picked up speed, passing Derwent before he realised that was my intention. He couldn’t catch up with me on the last flight, though he tried, and I was the one who made it to the main door first. I shoved it open and stepped outside. As I passed through the door I slowed right down, walking calmly and with composure. There were still people hanging around, even at that late hour. There would be television cameras too. Police officers didn’t run unless there was a good reason to.

‘You should have said you wanted a race.’

I turned my head to answer Derwent and saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, between two cars. I put out my hand to grab his sleeve. ‘What’s that?’

‘Where?’

I pointed. He looked, ducking sideways, then crouched down. I heard him swearing under his breath and then he motioned to me to go the long way round, behind the cars. He took the shorter, direct route, and I saw him drop to his knees, then onto the palms of his hands, lowering himself so he was almost flat on the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ Una Burt’s voice was loud and shrill behind us as she came out of the building. Obviously she hadn’t been expecting to find Derwent lying on the ground, but it wasn’t the right moment to explain why. I ignored her as I skirted the cars and I was sure Derwent was doing the same. It was hard to tell when his head and shoulders had disappeared under the Ford Focus that was on the left. I knelt down, ignoring the sharp bits of gravel that dug into my knees, and leaned to peer under the car. I could see Derwent, his head turned sideways. He was holding out his hand to the small figure that was curled up in a ball by the wheel. Derwent was showing him his warrant card, complete with a shiny metal crest.

‘Come on, mate. Out you come. I’m a police officer. I promise you can trust me.’

‘No.’ A small voice but very definite.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Thomas.’ His whole body jerked. ‘I mean, Sam.’

Derwent looked across at me: had I noticed? I nodded.

‘Easy mistake to make,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay under there all night, Sam. Come on out and we’ll find your mum. She’s probably wondering where you are.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Yeah. I have.’ Derwent glanced at me and I nodded again. I’d have said the same thing. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Waiting. She told me to wait for her until she came.’ He unfolded enough to show us a dirty, tear-stained face. ‘But she didn’t come.’

‘Come on,’ Derwent said again. ‘We’ll find her.’

‘Can you do that?’ he asked, his voice very tiny.

‘Of course. We’re the police. We can do anything.’

‘Are the firemen still here?’

‘Yeah, but we’re better than the firemen,’ Derwent said. ‘We catch baddies.’

‘I don’t like baddies,’ the boy said, starting to shuffle towards Derwent. ‘They’re scary.’

‘The police are scarier. The baddies are scared of us.’

‘And prison.’ He eased forward another couple of inches.

‘That too. They don’t like prison.’

‘Why don’t you put them all in prison?’

‘That’s what I keep saying, Sam. Lock them all up. Then we’d have some peace.’

He crawled over the last bit as Derwent wriggled back to make room for him. I stood up and came round the side of the car in time to see the boy stand up. He was small, his shoulder blades sticking out through the thin material of his t-shirt. His ears stuck out too, and his neck seemed impossibly slender for the weight of his head. His jeans were damp where he had wet himself. How long had he been hiding there, terrified? Hours, anyway.

Derwent sat back on his heels, looking at him. ‘What’s your name, Sam? Do you know the second bit?’

‘Sam Hathaway.’ In a rush he added, ‘Not Thomas. I don’t know why I said that.’

‘Don’t worry, mate.’ For a second I thought Derwent was going to hug the boy, but he was reaching out to brace himself on the cars as he straightened up. I heard the groan he was trying to suppress and filed it away to tease him some time he was in a good mood.
Getting old …

‘If you lock all the baddies up,’ the boy said quietly, ‘then Mummy won’t be scared any more.’

Derwent looked down at him for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he smiled. ‘I’m working on it, Sam. I promise you, I’m working on it.’

‘
HOW IS IT
possible for no one to know who he is or where he came from?’ Derwent snapped. I took a step back.

‘Don’t shout at me. I’m as frustrated as you are. I’ve been going through paperwork in the management office. There’s no one named Hathaway listed as a resident here. I cross-checked with the PNC and the electoral roll. Not a thing.’

‘So where did he spring from?’ He turned and peered through the back window of his car. The boy lay across it, fast asleep under Derwent’s coat, his head on Derwent’s suit jacket. I assumed Derwent was cold, standing there in his shirtsleeves, but he didn’t show it and I didn’t dare ask.

‘Illegal sub-let?’ I suggested.

‘Which would mean no paperwork for us to follow.’

‘No.’

‘So we have to assume his mother didn’t make it out. And she’s either one of the injured—’

‘Or one of the dead,’ I finished. ‘They’re still searching the flats for bodies.’

‘Either way, until we find someone who can identify her for us, he’s on his own.’

‘Social services,’ I started, and Derwent rounded on me with a look that was pure rage.

‘Don’t even say it.’

‘They’re on their way.’

‘For fuck’s sake.’ Derwent turned away, clasping his hands at the back of his skull, the picture of frustration.

‘There isn’t anyone else. You can’t keep him.’

‘I know that. He’s not a puppy.’

But that was exactly what the child had reminded me of, following Derwent around as if he and he alone could be trusted to look after him and find his mother. Derwent hadn’t made a fuss of the boy. He hadn’t tried to get his attention or gain his trust. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or irritated that he’d acquired a shadow, but certainly he hadn’t tried to get rid of him. When Una Burt had arranged for a female uniformed officer to look after the boy, he’d backed away to hide behind Derwent, who shrugged.

‘He can stay with me.’

‘You have other responsibilities,’ Una Burt said tightly.

‘I’m aware of that.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Let’s not make it too hard on the poor kid, all right?’

And Una Burt had muttered something under her breath about priorities before walking off. I wasn’t totally sure how he’d managed to put her in the position of being the bad guy, but he’d done it.

Derwent had searched the crowd until he found a woman who happened to be a registered childminder and lived in one of the other towers. He’d exerted his charm to convince her to take the boy to her warm, untidy flat and give him a change of clothes, replacing the damp trousers and dirty, torn t-shirt he was wearing. Unprompted, she offered Sam a snack. His eyes had been closing as he ate it, but he had said please and thank you nicely.

‘Polite, ain’t he?’ the childminder said.

‘Well brought up,’ Derwent said, his face sombre. A nice child, loved and nurtured by a mother who wasn’t there to look after him.

‘He could stay here,’ I said quietly in Derwent’s ear.

‘No, he couldn’t.’

‘She’s a registered childminder. He’s safe enough with her.’

‘He’s safe with me.’

‘Are you just doing this to annoy DCI Burt?’

He turned to look at me, hurt. ‘Would I do something like that?’

‘Absolutely.’

The corners of his mouth turned up very slightly, but he shook his head. ‘I don’t know when you turned into such a cynic, young lady.’

‘Working with you would make anyone cynical.’

‘Oh, blame me.’

My phone buzzed in my hand, so I answered it rather than Derwent, even though it was Una Burt on the other end.

Derwent watched my face as I spoke to her. When I hung up, he asked, ‘What does the wicked witch want?’

‘Us, down in the car park. She wants an update.’

‘An update,’ Derwent repeated. ‘On what? Whether the kid ate up all his crusts? You can go. I’m staying here.’

‘She’s not going to like that.’

‘I don’t care,’ Derwent said, and gave me a very sweet smile that told me there was no point in arguing with him.

So it was that I’d been talking to Burt just outside the cordon around Murchison House when she sucked in a breath and expelled it in a long angry hiss.

I looked to see what she had noticed. Derwent was carrying the boy across the car park. His head was lolling on Derwent’s shoulder, as if he was more than half asleep. Derwent sent a brief glower in our direction and carried on walking.

‘That’s not his job.’

‘The boy trusts him,’ I said. ‘Derwent doesn’t want to abandon him. And finding out who he is seems like it might be important.’

‘Then you’d better get on with it.’

And I’d tried. I really had. But standing beside Derwent’s car as the sky lightened on a new day, we’d made no progress.

‘We could try the local schools,’ Derwent said.

‘He’s too young. He could be in nursery but it’s optional at that age.’