Stooping to the floor she took a deep breath of relatively clean air before resuming her study of the window, running the torch beam along the top and down the sides. She’d broken the small panes in the lower sash, but the top was holding firm. Climbing on to the sill she gripped the centre bar ignoring the bite of broken glass into her fingers. Hoping and praying that the sash would take her weight, she levered herself up on it, swung back and kicked forward with all her might.
The skyline above the shining gabled roofs of the marina pubs, restaurants and apartments was tinged with a radiant glow, almost like that of a theatrical set. If it hadn’t been for the acrid tang of smoke in the air, Trevor might have believed dawn was breaking eight hours early. But before he and Daisy had driven to the end of the street they saw flames shooting through the roof of the old factory in a brilliant display of sparking pyrotechnics.
‘There won’t be many, if any, casualties in a disused factory,’ Daisy said as Trevor cursed the traffic that had ground to a standstill; clogged by sightseers who’d spilled out of the avenues that led into the dock quarter.
‘It’s a squat. And besides the homeless, two of my colleagues were in there when the station paged me.’
‘Clearing the place?’
‘Working undercover. We’re going to have to get out here.’ He halted his car behind a line of fire-engines, police cars and ambulances.
‘You can’t park here, sir.’
‘It’s all right. He’s one of us, lad.’
Trevor recognised Andrew and ran towards him without bothering to lock his car. ‘She’s with me, she’s a doctor,’ he shouted when Chris Brooke tried to block Daisy’s path to a clearing where a row of injured were being treated by paramedics. ‘Where’s Dan?’
‘With the super.’ Andrew pointed behind the old factory where a group of firemen and police were standing inside the “safety line”, watching the boarded windows blow out on the first floor. Nigel Valance crouched to the side of them, camera on shoulder as he panned the lens upwards to cover the burning building.
‘Bloody ghouls,’ Andrew cursed the journalists who were milling everywhere. ‘Valance was here before us, jamming his cameras and microphones into the faces of the casualties before the paramedics could even…’
The rest of Andrew’s sentence was drowned out by a blast of flame breaking through the roof.
Trevor hobbled forward as fast as he could.
‘Peter?’ he asked breathlessly when he was within hailing distance of Dan.
‘No sign of him or Anna.’ Dan was devouring a tube of peppermints, pushing them blindly into his mouth as he scrutinised the building.
‘South side’s ready to go,’ a fireman shouted moments before flames burst simultaneously from three first floor windows.
‘What a shot,’ Valance screamed in excitement as he caught the action on film.
‘This isn’t a bloody spectator sport,’ a fireman shouted at Valance.
‘Just doing my job,’ Valance protested.
‘Do we know how it started?’ Trevor croaked, inhaling a gust of black smoke as Andrew dragged the cameraman back.
‘Andrew radioed that someone answering the description of our man was going in. Ten minutes later we saw the first smoke, then people started screaming and jumping out of the windows…’
Dan’s voice tailed off as an axe blade hacked through one of the boarded ground floor windows.
A spear of shimmering flame pierced the shattered wood. The stocky, spaceman-like silhouettes of two firemen in protective clothing and breathing apparatus emerged from the inferno. Both carried dead weight bundles over their shoulders.
Tom Morris ran to help them.
‘That’s it, Mr Morris, you’ve done more than enough for a civilian,’ the leading fireman called out. ‘Back with the paramedics, or we won’t be able to guarantee your safety.’
‘We’ve got to tell them about Peter and Anna,’
Trevor insisted.
‘We have, lad,’ Bill’s accent invariably reverted to its north country roots under stress. ‘There are men in the building searching for him and Anna now.’
Trevor shrugged off his jacket. ‘I’m going in. I know where to look… ’
‘The second floor’s gone, Inspector.’ A senior fireman, weighed down by equipment, pushed back his breathing mask as he waddled towards them. ‘If your people are in there, we’ve no way of getting to them.’
‘I have to go in.’ Trevor pushed forward. All he could think of was Peter and Anna trapped in the blazing conflagration. If it hadn’t been for him they would be safe in the station. It shouldn’t have been them, it should have been him. He could have avoided the kids who knew him, gone up to that cloakroom…
‘Other side of the building, sir.’ Chris Brooke raced up to them, his eyes gleaming with excitement and the reflected light of the flames. Dan and Bill led the way around the side. More sheltered than the back, the wind wasn’t as fierce, and neither was the fire, but every second and third floor window was ablaze. A fire engine was parked close to the blazing facade. Its ladder, a man perched in the wire cage basket on the top, was moving slowly, infinitely slowly, and upwards. Trevor followed the line it was taking. Then he saw her. A slight figure poised on the sill of a corner window on the third floor, framed in the jagged edges of a shattered board, wreathed by the smoke pouring out of the room behind her.
‘Anna,’ Dan breathed.
‘But not Peter,’ Trevor said uneasily.
‘Can’t your people move any quicker?’ the super barked at the fireman who’d come with them.
‘We’re doing all we can.’ A troubled expression creased his face as he stared at the fireman in the basket.
The ladder swayed precariously as it rose to meet the great surges of heat escaping from the building. The fireman stood, poised, ready. He reached out to Anna, but she shook her head and clung to the shattered sides of the window frame.
‘For Christ’s sake, now what?’ Bill cursed.
‘She’s frozen, traumatised,’ the fireman muttered.
The fireman on the ladder leaned closer to Anna. Pushing his breathing apparatus over his nose and mouth he unfastened the door of the cage and stepped on to the sill. Anna turned.
‘She can’t be going back inside!’ Trevor exclaimed in disbelief. ‘She has no protection, no oxygen…’
‘It has to be Peter,’ Bill snarled, furious at having to stand by and watch impotently as the fireman followed Anna.
‘If Peter is in there I’d have thought he would have been getting ready to jump by now,’ Dan said.
‘Probably getting used to the temperature in preparation for hell.’ Bill’s knuckles were as white as Dan’s and Trevor’s.
‘He’s hurt!’ Trevor shouted as the fireman emerged with Peter slung over his shoulder. The man looked at the basket on top of the ladder, judged the distance between it and the narrow sill and jumped.
The fireman laid Peter’s inert figure in the basket, and looked up at the window as Anna staggered out. Even from that distance they could see her coughing violently in an attempt to rid her lungs of the noxious fumes. The fireman motioned her forwards, but she turned back.
‘Now what the hell is the stupid woman doing?’
Trevor shouted as he stared upwards trying to determine whether Peter was dead or alive.
Anna re-emerged with a suitcase under her arm.
‘Luggage?’ Dan said as the fireman pulled her forward. She fell into the basket. The firemen wasted no time in fastening the side and giving the signal to retract the ladder.
Bill stepped back and fell over Valance who, with his camera running, had crept up behind them yet again. ‘Get this bastard out of my sight,’ he bellowed to Chris Brooke. ‘Get an ambulance up here on the double and whatever medical help you can. I want those two in hospital as soon as they hit the ground. And you,’ he glared at Dan and Trevor.
‘Go with them. See if you can find out what happened here before he,’ he jerked his head towards Valance, ‘puts in his report. The last thing we need is upstairs finding out about this from the television news.’
‘A few weeks and he’ll be back to his usual, charming self,’ Daisy stood outside the emergency room and pulled down the paper mask that covered her mouth. As she was on the staff of the General, the A and E department had welcomed her assistance. They had been stretched to breaking point by the influx of burned and injured brought in from the old factory. And not all were squatters.
Two firemen were on the critical list, and one was dead. The body count stood at four, but both Dan and Trevor knew it would rise once the building was cool enough to be searched. And, given the speed with which the fire had spread, and the difficulty of getting out of the building – steeply. Which said something about the number of youngsters living rough in the town. Practically all of the civilian casualties brought in had been under twenty-five years of age.
‘What’s the extent of the damage?’ Trevor leaned against the wall. His legs were still aching after his acrobatics earlier.
‘He was shot but the bullet only grazed his shoulder, he’s lost blood, he’s suffering from smoke inhalation and he’s concussed and has a lump on his crown. Either he was hit or fell. No doubt the headache he’ll enjoy for the next couple of days will make him more irritable – but that’s your problem.
Depending on how he goes overnight, he’ll most likely be discharged tomorrow.’
Dan wanted to know how the extremely attractive female doctor knew so much about Peter, and why she and Trevor were so friendly, but he set his curiosity aside. There were more important questions to ask.
‘And Anna?’
‘She’s in the room next door having her hands sewn back together. She’ll be out in a moment.’
‘Will you be keeping her in?’ Trevor asked.
‘No, but only because the wards are packed to capacity. We’ve had to send all non-urgent cases home. The administrator’s postponing routine operations for the next few days. We’ve admitted sixty-five patients in the last hour. Even for a hospital this size that’s some going.’
‘Can we see Peter?’ Trevor asked.
‘For a few minutes. He’s dozy from the anaesthetic and concussion. Don’t press him too hard. A porter will be along soon to take him up to the ward. I must go. There are more patients waiting.’
‘Thanks, Daisy.’
‘Any time. I enjoyed the meal but not the dessert. I prefer a less eventful life.
Trevor watched her walk away.
‘Nice lady,’ Dan said meaningfully.
‘Very.’ Trevor went into the cubicle. Peter was stretched out on a trolley, a blanket covering his legs, his face as white as the bandages wound around his arm and shoulder.
‘Seems I ended up here once before working for the Serious Crimes Squad, Inspector.’ The voice was husky, raw from smoke, but as cocky as ever.
‘Serious Crimes a bit strong for you perhaps, Peter?’ Dan smiled.
‘What happened?’ Trevor hovered at the foot of the trolley.
‘I didn’t expect him to have a gun.’
‘Sloppy work,’ Dan reprimanded. ‘You’d been issued with one, you should have used it.’
‘I thought I was tackling a down-and-out, not Al Capone. Did you get him?’
‘No,’ Dan admitted.
‘And you accuse me of sloppy work. Bloody hell, that means we have to keep looking.’
‘Did you see him?’ Trevor asked.
‘Yes and he’s our Tony all right. No doubt about it.’
‘Then our dead man isn’t dead,’ Dan sat on the nearest chair.
‘Which leaves us a problem with the corpse.’
‘The doctor,’ Peter gave Trevor a telling look,
‘told me I’ll be out of here tomorrow. I can be back in work the day after.’
‘If we’re desperate for manpower, we’ll find you a cushy number behind a desk answering the phone,’ Dan promised.
‘Thank you very much,’ Peter said caustically.
‘I’ll be round tomorrow to pick you up and take you home.’ Trevor hesitated in the doorway after Dan left.
‘Daisy told me you’d just finished dinner when you were called. How long has she been back?’
‘Not long. I only met her for the first time yesterday. She’s working on the face transplant programme.’
‘Never thought I’d see the day when you had two females on the go, Casanova.’
‘It was work, pure and simple.’
‘Where the female of the species is concerned nothing is ever pure or simple. Save the lies for the expense account clerks, and Lyn,’ Peter coughed.
‘Look…’
Peter held up his hand, ‘I don’t want to hear.
It’s your life. I only wish I had your problems. It must be a hard choice to make. Youth and naïvety or sophistication and maturity. I wouldn’t know which to go for.’
‘If you’ve any sense, the blonde who saved your life.’
‘Daisy told me apart from her hands she’s fine.
You seen her?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Did she carry me out?’
‘Out of a third floor window?’
‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘A fireman did the humping, but if she hadn’t battered the boards off one of those windows you’d both be barbecue.’
‘Tell her I want to see her,’
‘I will,’ Trevor suppressed a smile as he left the cubicle. It couldn’t be. Not hard-bitten Peter falling for a woman. It simply couldn’t be.
‘So that’s why you went back. You little darling.’
Trevor pulled back the curtains in the cubicle in time to see Dan lift Anna bodily out of a wheelchair and plant a kiss on her forehead.
‘There’s a sick man in emergency asking for you.’ Trevor was taken aback by the thickness of the bandages covering Anna’s hands and forearms.
‘They told me his injuries aren’t serious.’
‘Apart from a bang on the head and a flesh wound to his shoulder, he’s in one piece, thanks to you.’
‘Look what Anna got out.’ Dan held up the suitcase.
‘It belongs to our man?’
Anna nodded. ‘Peter and I watched him take a blanket out of it.’
‘Run it to the laboratory, Trevor.’
‘Aren’t you going to open it first?’
‘The lab boys can do that after they’ve checked for fingerprints. This man operates like a seasoned villain. With luck his prints will be on file somewhere.’
‘The outside has been handled by half the fire service and most of the staff in this place, so tell them it isn’t worth bothering with,’ Anna said.