Dead Heat (12 page)

He looked at the house in front of him, a big, double-fronted, extensively extended and modernized former farmhouse. All the lights were on, the front door open. It was a house that oozed wealth. To the left side of it he could now make out a tennis court and beyond that a helicopter landing pad. He thought it would be safe to assume there would be a swimming pool out back somewhere.

All in all, very nice. The domicile of a rich and successful person, as Henry knew John Lloyd Wickson was. Henry, an avid reader of the county magazine
Lancashire Life
– mainly to gawp enviously at the property pages – had seen Wickson several times in the social pages. He was always attending charity events, race meetings and had been profiled on a couple of occasions by the magazine's money section. Henry thought he should re-read one of the profiles sometime. But he did remember enough to recall that Wickson's wealth was estimated somewhere in the region of about fifty million. Not bad for somebody who began his working life as a bricklayer, or so the story went.

As he got out of the car, he glanced at the other cars parked on the gravel. One was the Mercedes Tara Wickson had been driving, another was a huge Bentley, a lovely car which Henry estimated would cost over a hundred and twenty grand. He was surrounded by big bucks, that much was obvious.

He turned away from the Bentley, then stopped dead in his tracks. There were another three cars on the gravel. One was a Ford Focus with a blue light clamped to the roof. Henry thought it probably belonged to the senior Fire Officer on scene, another, he guessed, was a plain cop car, but it was the third one which he instantly recognized and made him think, Oh bollocks! It was Jane Roscoe's car.

The sight of it almost made him jump back into his car and tear-arse away immediately. But, valiantly, he braced himself and trudged onwards.

The stables, some 200 metres to the right of the house, were accessed by means of a narrow lane just wide enough to allow passage for one vehicle, with drainage channels and fields on either side. Henry stepped aside to let the ambulance drive away. It did not seem to be in much of a hurry, so he guessed there were no patients on board. Perhaps it had been called as a precautionary measure. He walked on into the stable yard, the ever brightening dawn allowing him to get his bearings and make sense of the geography of the area. It was with a surprised jolt that he realized that the banks of the River Wyre were perhaps only a hundred metres away to his left as he walked to the stables.

It was very apparent where the seat of the fire had been.

There was a huddle of people scrummed down near the bonnet of one of the police cars: cops, fire fighters and Tara Wickson. Tara was gesticulating wildly. One of the cops was trying to keep her calm, using soothing hand movements. Henry recognized one of the uniformed cops, and another of the plain-clothed variety.

He held back a second, made up his mind, and approached the conflab.

Tara Wickson saw him coming and the frustration and exasperation in her body language seemed to wither and die. Her shoulders drooped. She broke away from the group of officials and made toward him. She stopped in front of him, her face a brave mask, which immediately crumbled. She bowed her head and started to sob in big, raking breaths which rattled her small frame.

‘Get hold of me, Henry,' she pleaded. ‘Squeeze me.'

Making sure there was no possible sexual connotation to this act, he put his arms around her and did as she wanted, though for the life of him he did not know why he did it. Instinct? He patted her back and almost said, ‘There, there.'

The detective Henry had recognized came and stood behind Tara, a disgusted expression on her face. She grimaced at him over Tara.

‘Henry, what the hell are you doing here?' She surveyed him, head tilted back, eyes looking down her nose.

Henry managed a shrug. ‘Hello, Jane.' Tara stepped back and wiped her hands down her tear-stained face.

DI Jane Roscoe shook her head in disbelief.

This, Henry thought sardonically, was always going to be the problem: the distinct possibility of doing some unofficial digging on behalf of someone and bumping into the real cops who would get very shirty at any encroachment on to their patch. And in this case, to make matters worse, a real cop with whom he had recently been ‘involved' and who was also a witness in the internal discipline proceedings being brought against him.

With a bit of soft prodding and cooing words, Henry managed to steer Tara Wickson back to the house, where in the kitchen he made a pot of tea for her and left her in the capable hands of a policewoman who looked pretty bloody annoyed to be doing such womanly work. ‘Does it have to be a woman looking after her?' she whispered hoarsely. ‘This is so sexist.' She folded her arms underneath her ample bosom.

‘It's called caring for victims,' Henry told her in reaction to the expression on her face.

The policewoman almost sneered at him.

‘Someone's got to do it,' he added. Political correctness interfering with the practicalities of policing often irked him intensely. To Tara, he said, ‘I'll be back to have a chat once I've had a word with the detective inspector, OK?' The proximity of the policewoman made him aver from adding the word ‘love' at the end of his sentence. She would probably have thought it sexist and patronizing.

Jane Roscoe was still in discussion with the Fire Service when Henry got back to the scene. She was deep into it and Henry did not interrupt.

He took the opportunity to have a closer look at the seat of the fire – in a row of loose boxes now completely flattened, charred and blackened. There were a couple of fire fighters still damping down and ensuring the fire would not reignite, spraying copious amounts of brown water on the debris from hoses they had run all the way down to the River Wyre. They were pretty much destroying any chance of recovering any useful evidence. Henry did not comment. Not his problem.

It was a mess. Out of a block of six stables, three had been completely destroyed, one partially burned down, the two remaining seeming relatively untouched. A building adjacent to the block had also been razed to the ground. Henry stood back and let his eyes wander around the devastation. He sniffed the air. In the smoke there was the unmistakable reek which Henry recognized straight away. One of those smells that, once inhaled, is never forgotten: the smell of burned flesh.

In this case, he assumed, horse flesh.

He gagged a little at the combination of the smell and the thought. The memory of the severed ear came back vividly to him.

Jane Roscoe was nodding at the Chief Fire Officer in such a way as to indicate their conversation was concluding. She shook his hand, broke away and walked to Henry. He watched her and, under his scrutiny, she dropped her gaze and looked away until she reached him. She stood a couple of feet away from him, raised her face and stared challengingly at him.

‘Hello, Henry.'

‘Jane.' He nearly bowed.

‘Nasty business,' she observed.

He was not completely certain what she meant. There could easily have been a double meaning in her words because of their past history.

‘This, you mean?' He jerked his head towards the remnants of the stables.

‘What else would I be referring to?' she said flatly. ‘Of course I mean the bloody fire.'

‘Fair dos,' he said, backing off. ‘What happened?'

‘The stables have burned down.'

Mmm, he thought weakly. This was plainly not going to be easy. It was blindingly obvious Jane was still very prickly about the way things had ended between them and she wasn't going to give him an easy ride.

‘I'll have that. But why have they burned down?'

‘Because they've been set on fire?'

‘Stop it, Jane.'

‘OK,' she said. ‘What's it got to do with you anyway?'

‘Mrs Wickson has asked me to do a bit of poking around for her.'

Jane snorted. ‘Poking around for her? Or poking around in her?'

‘Stop it,' he warned her again.

‘OK, OK, OK, I've stopped. Honest.'

‘Apparently some of the horses have been mutilated in the past and the police haven't been very, let's say, result-orientated. She asked if I'd do a bit of snooping for her, see if I could turn anything up . . . then this happens even before I come and do an initial inquiry.'

‘You being a detective on suspension with no powers and no backup and plenty of time on your hands?' Jane interrupted.

‘Something like that,' Henry said. His voice was beginning to betray his growing annoyance, which seemed to please Jane by the look on her face. He guessed she might just enjoy some sadistic pleasure in winding him up.

‘Is that such a good idea?' she wanted to know.

‘Probably not, but I'm doing it as a favour for her and I'm not getting paid for it in any way, shape or form,' he said pointedly, ‘and because the local plods haven't really done anything much to help in the past, is there anything to suggest things are going to be different just because there's been a fire here? I can't see I'll be treading on anybody's toes, because it's more than likely there won't be any cops walking around here, doing their jobs, will there?' He sounded like Mr Moaner from Whinge Crescent, Cops 'r' Crapsville – and he quite liked his little tirade from the other side of the fence.

A smoke-filled silence descended between them, broken when Jane said, ‘I miss you, Henry.'

‘And I miss you, too, Jane, but we need to move on.' It sounded hard and the words did not come easily out of his mouth.

‘You bastard.'

‘Maybe . . . but can we get on with this? If you're going to help me, fine. If not I'll just dig around for info by myself. Actually, we might be of benefit to each other. I'll let you know what I find out, if you do the same for me.'

‘I'll see,' she relented.

‘I take it you're the night cover DI?'

‘For my sins – and they are plenty.' She gave Henry a long, appraising look, swallowed and nodded, as if accepting the icy situation between them. It was obviously over and out.

‘Is this an accident?' Henry asked about the fire. He sniffed up, smelling the petrol fumes.

‘The Fire Brigade don't think so. They reckon accelerant has been used. The seat of the fire was in this building which used to store the tack. It burned down a treat and caught the adjoining stables. Have a look at this.' Jane moved to the first of the stables, now a dirty, ashy-grey, muddy mess. She pointed to the floor. Henry followed the line of her finger and, initially, could not make out what she was pointing at.

Then he made sense of what he was seeing.

There was a dark, black shape amongst the debris on the floor. The shape of a horse which had been burned to a frazzle.

Henry stepped back, shocked, but said nothing. He turned away and caught a gulp of fresh air amongst the rising smoke. His head slowly revolved back. He eyed Jane, who stood there impassively.

‘There's another dead horse in the next stable,' she said, matter of fact.

Henry checked himself to get a grip. He had seen numerous dead bodies during the course of his career, but they had been human beings – exclusively – with the exception of a few dog accidents he'd reported during his time as a probationer PC in uniform, over twenty-five years earlier. He had seen bodies dismembered, blown to bits, drowned, shot, knifed, you name it, he'd dealt with it. But the sight and stench of a roasted horse was actually making him queasy. What was it about horses? he thought. He did not even like the beasts.

‘I'll take your word for it.'

‘They got the other horses out in time, released them into a field.'

‘Anyone, any person hurt?'

‘No.'

‘Arson, then?'

‘Very perceptive.'

‘I'm sharp like that. Used to be a detective.'

‘The best,' Jane said under her breath.

Henry did not quite catch it. ‘Eh?'

‘Nothing,' she said quickly, covering her tracks. ‘Anyway,' she coughed, ‘the burned-down buildings and the horse steaks are not everything. Come here.'

She took him across the stable yard, treading carefully over the hosepipes.

It was truly morning now. The sun was squinting in the sky. Things could be seen very clearly now with the fresh, raw light of that time of day. Henry surveyed the devastation the fire had wrought. His upper lips curled in distaste. He was beginning to feel that anger which had often driven him in the past. The anger born of the belief that no one should be allowed to get away with such crimes. It was an emotion that had often spurred him on when he had been a ‘real' detective. Now that his status had changed, it did not mean that the anger and drive was any less within him.

Jane Roscoe was a few feet ahead of him. She was dressed in a very practical trouser suit that did little for her. Henry experienced a sudden pang of something in the pit of his tummy he could not quite explain. All he knew was that it was linked to the affair he and Jane had been conducting.

She went to a stable door, stopped and faced Henry. ‘I could see you were affected by the dead horse.' He did not deny it. ‘There's a mutilated horse in here,' she declared.

‘Someone seems to have a downer on the Wicksons,' he said.

She nodded. ‘It's not nice. You don't have to see it if you don't want.'

‘Let's do it,' he said bravely.

Seconds later he wished he hadn't been so bold.

A truck from the local knacker's yard was reversing into the stables when Henry and Jane reappeared from the loose box. They watched as the two thick-set men in blood-stained overalls ran chunky chains around the corpse of the horse in the burned-out stable next to the tack room.

‘How much of an interest will the police be taking in the plight of the Wickson's now?' he asked.

She yawned. ‘Some, I suppose.'