‘Good lord yes. Cases have been recorded where men have lost their faces in accidents and not even realised for a few minutes what’s happened to them. These injuries could have certainly prompted the screams your witness heard.’
‘Would the injuries have killed him if the fire hadn’t?’
‘Impossible to say. There’s virtually nothing left of the lungs. We’ve tried freezing and slicing the couple of slivers we found, but there’s not enough to tell if smoke was inhaled or not. All I can say is, I don’t think he could have lasted long in an inferno that intense. The end of the screaming was probably the end of the man.’
‘So we’ve a male, wearing red baseball boots with blue laces, black woollen coat – possibly vagrant –’
‘In that get-up in Jubilee Street, I’d say undoubtedly vagrant,’ Anna interrupted Dan in the hope of speeding things up.
‘All the homeless I know who hadn’t found a bed in one of the hostels would have moved on from Jubilee Street by that time of night.’
‘You an expert on down-and-outs?’ Anna regretted snapping at Trevor the instant the words were out of her mouth.
‘Not as much of an expert as Peter.’ Trevor was as exhausted as Anna but had learnt to keep his temper around his superiors.
‘Age?’ Dan asked Patrick.
‘From what is left of the skull between twenty-five and forty-five.’
‘You can’t bring it any closer than that?’
‘We may know more when I parcel up the teeth and what’s left of his jaw and send it to the dental pathologist. The boots are size ten, but his feet were eight and a half, and whoever owned the boots before him had stretched them. The big toe had broken through the canvas and the stitching on the side had split under the strain.’
‘Hair colour? Eyes?’ Dan pressed.
‘The hair on the upper part of the foot is very dark, almost black.’
‘You have washed it?’ Bill asked.
‘Yes.’ Patrick glowered over his glasses. He’d never learnt to appreciate police humour, preferring his own peculiar brand. ‘As for the eyes, I didn’t find one.’
‘Can we have a picture of the boot?’ Dan asked.
Patrick shouted for his assistant who handed over a selection of digital photographs he’d printed out. ‘I’ll send over my report as soon as it’s processed.’
‘Appreciate all you’ve done.’
‘Any time, as long as it’s not in the next four or five hours. I’m for bed.’ Patrick snapped off his gloves and tossed them into a bin.
‘You all look like hell, and I’m feeling generous,’ Bill conceded as they left the mortuary.
‘The most pressing thing is to get a fix on the identity of the victim, so I’ll pass the photographs on to the day shift. You can all go home, get a couple of hours sleep and meet back in the station for a briefing, say –’ he glanced at his watch. ‘It’s ten now. Five suit everyone?’
‘Why not?’ Anna replied. ‘Let’s turn day into night.’
‘When you’ve worked on Serious Crimes as long as I have, you’ll be grateful for sleeping time whenever it comes,’ Dan opened his car door.
Trevor walked through his front door and called out Lyn’s name, although he knew there was little chance she’d be in. He went from room to room, looking for a note. There wasn’t one. All evidence of the party had been cleared away apart from the leftover sausages, cold meats and salad in the fridge.
He took a cold sausage and glared balefully at the salad. If the stuff was so good for you, why had so little of it been eaten?
Feeling guilty because he had left Lyn to tackle the mess on her own, he kicked off his shoes and climbed the stairs. If he’d lived alone he would have crashed out just as he was, clothes and all. Because he and Lyn shared the same bed, if not always at the same time, he showered first, although he was so tired he actually slept for a moment or two as he leant against the shower door. A minute later, damp and smelling of Lyn’s cold cream soap he fell into bed and plunged into a deep unconsciousness that left no room for anything. Not even thoughts of faceless burning men – or Lyn.
‘I’m coming!’ Anna Bradley pulled the belt of her towelling robe tight around her waist and thundered down the stairs of her one up, one down starter home. She wrenched open the door to see Peter on her doorstep, his new BMW parked on the kerb behind him, a smile on his face.
‘I thought you might need a chauffeur.’
She frowned, sleep still numbing her mind.
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with my car –’
‘It went in for a service yesterday morning. I picked you up from the garage, which is why Andrew gave you a lift to the party.’
‘Oh hell!’ Trevor’s birthday party felt as though it had taken place last year, rather than last night.
‘Super’s called a briefing,’ he reminded her.
‘It’s not due to start until five.’
‘It’s a quarter to.’
‘Blast!’ She turned her back and walked up the stairs.
‘Want me to make you coffee?’
‘And food. Food, I must have food. I’m starving.’
He shut the door behind him. Rounding the partition that screened off the entrance from the rest of the house, he stood, disgusted at the mess that faced him. He hadn’t helped Lyn clear up after the party out of any finer feelings than an overriding passion for order and cleanliness in all things domestic. As his wife had found out to her cost, he loathed clutter, and was paranoid about dirt. The state of Anna Bradley’s living room appalled him.
It was too small to hold the torn and grubby two-seater settee and matching chair she’d bought in a junk shop with the intention of re-upholstering.
The scraps of carpet that could be seen, beneath the layers of newspapers, magazines and bulging plastic bags, appeared to be beige and in desperate need of a shampoo. Beer bottles, a half-empty bottle of whisky, three squashed diet coke cans, coats, towels and tea-towels were strewn over a folding table pushed into a corner next to two non-matching upright chairs. The brown and white Scandinavian-style curtains looked as though they hadn’t been washed in years and the windowsill, like the window, was covered by a layer of grime that extended over two dead potted plants, assorted mummified insects and a dirty glass.
He walked over the newspapers to the kitchen area, tucked in the back corner behind a breakfast bar. The rubber soles of his shoes stuck to the vinyl as he stepped off the litter strewn carpet. A blind was drawn over a window above the sink. He tried to raise it and it fell into the stainless steel basin which was filled to the brim with cold, scummy water, plates and bowls.
The mess was worse than the living room.
Plates, cups and glasses, their surfaces thick with congealing food and furry mould were piled on the galley counter. He gingerly opened the fridge. The light flicked on revealing a piece of hard yellow cheese delicately drawn with a map of blue mould and a bottle of greenish separated milk.
‘Coffee made?’ Anna was halfway down the stairs, pulling a sweater over her head.
‘I’ll buy you one to go in Macdonald’s.’ He shut the fridge.
‘Couldn’t find anything?’
‘I was afraid of catching something if I looked any longer.’
‘I suppose the place is a bit of a mess.’ Her tone was defiant, his reply honest.
‘I now know why you always want to go back to my place.’
‘I wanted to see how you lived before letting you in here, but your flat is sterile. It lacks character.’
‘At least it’s passed a health and safety inspection.’
‘So would my bedroom and bathroom.’
‘That an invitation?’ He studied her critically.
The place might be a mess, but she wasn’t. Her short, blonde hair was brushed away from her face, wet and gleaming from the shower. Her black slacks and grey pullover were clean, fresh and newly pressed, and she smelt of magnolias; but despite her assurance he couldn’t help wondering if chaos reigned upstairs as well as down.
‘I suppose it is.’
He was surprised by her answer. Their four dates, two of them videos and take-aways in his flat, had been surprisingly chaste, especially for him. He hadn’t been able to quantify why until that moment.
Anna had the same faults as his ex-wife, if anything magnified, and he’d been too mesmerised by her body to see them. But it was a magnificent body.
Worth enduring a little squalor for.
‘How about right now?’ he suggested.
‘Why not? I’m sure the super won’t mind us missing the briefing.’
‘Cars break down all the time.’
‘Even new BMWs.’
‘Tyres blow out on BMWs same as Fords.’
‘Seeing as how you disapprove of my housekeeping, sure you wouldn’t prefer the blow out to happen outside your place? That way you could enjoy a tussle on guaranteed clean sheets’
There was a peculiar glint in her green eyes. He cursed softly under his breath. Was she or wasn’t she leading him on?
‘Bill’s waiting.’ He cut his losses. For the first time in his life he’d didn’t quite know where he was with a woman.
‘Excuses, excuses. That’s what I always get when I make a man an honest proposition. Seems to me that in spite of all your promises you’re terrified of a female getting on top of you, Peter. In more ways than one. Well, we going to this meeting, or not?’ She pulled her keys out of her shoulder bag, walked down the stairs and out through the door leaving him feeling like an adolescent who’d just failed an initiation rite.
‘Sam Mayberry identified the shoes,’ Bill informed Trevor and Dan. ‘They belonged to a vagrant known as Tony. And any minute now we’re going to get a good look at him.’
‘There are photographs?’ Dan dipped a plastic stick into a polystyrene cup of coffee.
‘Sam mentioned that a team from the local television station were poking around Jubilee Street last month. They filmed a documentary on the council’s plans for the redevelopment of the area.
They interviewed Sam, Tom Morris and Captain Arkwright, and most of the vagrants who weren’t camera shy, including our Tony.’
‘You’ve the film they took?’ Dan made a wry face as he sipped the bitter brew.
‘Producer said the film wasn’t finished. I told him we weren’t critics, just needed to see whatever footage he took of Tony. Andrew’s picking him, the film and Sam up.’
‘What about Tom Morris and Captain Arkwright?’ Trevor asked.
‘They knew of this Tony. But Sam knew him better, which is why Sam is coming and they’re not.
Good evening,’ Bill greeted Peter and Anna. ‘Nice of you to join us.’
‘Peter?’ Trevor raised an eyebrow.
‘Our victim was a junkie, hence the Drug Squad presence,’ Dan explained.
‘And every time Serious Crimes digs itself into a hole it can’t get out of, it requisitions my help.’
Peter smiled as he sat next to Anna.
‘That’s all there is. Fix, then oblivion. Drink or fix, sleep. Always looking for the next fix or drink. And living in hope that we’ll get it.’ The voice was educated, flat, diluted by futility. The speaker was tall, painfully thin and filthy. The pupils of his eyes were dilated. He glanced uneasily from side to side nervously searching – for the next drink? The next fix?
‘What happens when you haven’t the money to buy a drink or a fix, Tony?’ The voice was female, professional.
‘You go out and look. You have to walk around. Look –’
The camera panned down the filthy clothes that hung loosely on the emaciated body. A long, black overcoat, threadbare, torn and stained. A crumpled, horizontally-striped shirt that must have cost someone money before it had been pushed into a charity sack. Jeans, scabrous and broken. Feet in oversized red baseball boots with blue laces. The camera climbed again, focusing on a pair of skeletal, fidgety hands; the fingers encrusted with brown scum, the nails split and blackened. Someone out of camera sight handed over a cigarette. Clean hands passing swiftly over grimy ones, careful not to touch.
The lens followed the cigarette being carried to the man’s mouth. Cracked, dry lips opened to display the yellowed chipped edges of neglected teeth. The face contorted, and the eyes closed as smoke was drawn deeply into lungs. The exhalation was slow, every moment of nicotine-stained sensation being savoured to the full.
‘A man who makes the most of every little pleasure.’ Nigel Valance, a freelance producer who worked occasionally for the local TV company, sat back in his chair.
‘A man who made the most of every little pleasure,’ Peter contradicted.
‘Quiet!’ Bill paused the remote until silence reigned in the room.
‘And tonight, Tony?’ The same female voice.
‘Tonight?’ No matter what angle the camera took, Tony’s eyes refused to meet the scrutinising gaze of the lens.
‘You went to the DSS this morning, for your payment,’ she said. ‘Do you have enough left for a bed in the shelter tonight?’
‘Bastards wouldn’t give me nothing. Said I had to wait.’ He gripped the glowing end of the cigarette tensely between the tips of his thumb and forefinger and swayed on his feet.
Trevor had spent enough working time in Jubilee Street to profile the man and a hundred like him. If it had been Tony’s day to go to the DSS the money would have been off-loaded on to the first off-licence prepared to serve him. That’s if he was on drink. The pupil dilation said otherwise, and there were enough cheap varieties of dope on offer down in the dock area to buy all the hostel “guests” a few hours of oblivion.
Judging by the state of him on film, he wouldn’t have even been awake if someone hadn’t shaken him for the benefit of the rolling camera. Whoever had planned the documentary had needed a dosser to give an Oscar-winning performance of a man at the end of his rope and they’d settled on Tony because someone knew addicts. Catch a man sleeping after a trip and you’ve compliance. Wake him and he’ll jump through hoops if he thinks it will finance his next fix. What had they offered? Money or dope? It wouldn’t have taken much of either. Pity they hadn’t filmed him when whatever he was on was wearing off. Another couple of hours and it would have been a different story. Watch the raving lunatic who’d kill his grandmother for a ticket to temporary oblivion.
Trevor looked along the table. Bill, Dan, Anna, Andrew, Sam Mayberry and the documentary maker, Nigel Valance, were watching the screen intently. But Peter caught his eye. The quick glance they exchanged was enough. Peter’s thoughts were running along similar lines to his own. But Peter’s patience was shorter.