The Burning (11 page)

Kelly Hart had used her account even less than her youngest daughter. She had left it open to the world, with the loosest security settings, but had made only three substantial posts: each one a
photograph of herself in a different setting. In the first she was in cut-off jeans, paddling in the surf on a Cornwall beach; in the second she was dressed up for a party in a short black frock.
The third was very different: a soulful portrait of Kelly standing next to a pond in autumnal woodland, dated the previous October. Whereas the first two pictures had been smiling and optimistic,
this one had left Jenny with an impression of a woman who, whether she was aware of it or not, was suffering from a sense of melancholic longing; resigned to, but not fulfilled by, the life she was
leading.

A solitary pick-up painted in dark green Forestry Commission livery was parked outside the small, timber-clad office building. Beyond it was a fenced-in area of hardstanding in which several
items of heavy plant – two tractors and a tree harvester that did the work of fifteen men – were slowly disappearing under a thick covering of snow. The sweep of Jenny’s
headlights across the office windows as she entered the yard brought a face to the glass. The man inside squinted out into the gloom, not expecting visitors. He came to the door as Jenny mounted
the short flight of steps leading up to it. He was around fifty, with heavy-set shoulders, and weathered, bovine features.

He greeted her suspiciously. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Jenny Cooper. I’m the coroner. I left a message on your machine.’

‘Oh, that was you, was it?’ He looked her up and down once more, with the slow, patient gaze he might have used to size up an awkward piece of standing timber. ‘Bob Bream. Come
in.’

Jenny followed him into an office heated by a large potbellied stove. Of the three desks, only one showed signs of activity. Bream stepped behind it.

‘Everyone else on holiday?’ Jenny asked by way of smalltalk, as she took a seat.

‘Best place for them, this weather,’ Bream said, easing his huge body into a swivel chair.

Jenny noticed his hands: palms the size of tea plates, with thick, calloused fingers. ‘I’m right in thinking you’re the local manager?’

‘
Forestry Officer
, not that it makes any odds. A couple of full-time staff and a few machines. Not exactly an empire.’

‘Does that include Ed Morgan?’

‘No. Ed was part-time. He’d fell the odd bit of tricky stuff the machines couldn’t get to, and keep the deer down – and the odd boar. He’d no head for desk
work.’

‘Had you known him long?’

Bream nodded. ‘About thirty-five years. He was a cousin, well, half-cousin, strictly speaking. Known him from a babe in arms.’

‘You sound as if you were close?’

‘Close enough. My mother’s side never much cared for the Morgans – no one remembers why – but Ed was all right. Yes, he was a good lad.’ He shook his head.
‘What do you think happened, then? None of us can work it out – he was the sort of bloke you’d trust with your life.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘All sorts – gunshots, this and that. You know how people talk.’

Jenny took out her phone and for the second time that day called up Ed Morgan’s parting message. She handed it across to Bream who read it with a puzzled expression, then read it again
with a growing look of disbelief.

‘No,’ he scoffed. ‘Pardon my French, Mrs Cooper – that’s bollocks. Total bollocks.’ He pushed the phone back across the desk. ‘One of the sanest men I
knew.’ Bream sat back in his chair, which creaked under his weight, and shook his head firmly. ‘That’s just someone’s sick joke, that is. Ed didn’t write
that.’

‘It seems he posted it before the fire broke out.’

‘He might have posted something, but that’s not to say someone else didn’t get in and edit it after. My kids get up to that stuff all the time.’ Registering Jenny’s
evident look of surprise, Bream said, ‘You hadn’t thought of that?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jenny lied. ‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’ She made a mental note to have Alison investigate; better still, DI Ryan. ‘But who do you think
might do that?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Did Ed have any enemies?’

‘The odd poacher, maybe. Even then, he’d not refuse a drink with most of them.’

‘What about Darren Brooks?’

‘Brooksy’s over all that. Been settled back with Sandra for years.’

Jenny thought of Brooks’s words to her from his hospital bed – about Kelly being a woman not of this earth – but decided that, for the moment, she would keep them to
herself.

‘Do you know if Ed and Kelly were happy?’ Jenny asked.

‘He never said any different. And it wasn’t as if he was the silent type. I’ve known some of those in this job, guys you wouldn’t be surprised to find hanging from a rope
out in the woods somewhere, but that wasn’t Ed. He was a contented sort.’

‘I’ve been told he didn’t much like Kelly having to work as hard as she did.’

‘You’ve not come across people making up stories before?’

‘Sorry – I’m just repeating what I’d been told.’

‘Well, if I were you, Mrs Cooper, I would treat whatever folk tell you round here with a shovel-load of salt. As far as half of them are concerned, we’ve been harbouring a
child-murderer for ten years. No matter that it’s never happened again, once people get the rumour disease they can’t seem to shake it.’ He fixed her with a steady look.
‘Ed’s been working out of this place ten years. I think I knew him better than most.’

‘Perhaps I ought to make myself clear, Mr Bream. I’m not here to make accusations. I’m just searching for anything that might shed some light. Let’s just imagine Ed did
write that message—’ Bream interrupted her with a dismissive grunt. Jenny persisted: ‘Is there anyone you can think of whom he might have imagined – correctly or incorrectly
– Kelly had become involved with?’

‘Now you’re asking me to make up stories?’

‘No—’

‘Listen,’ Bream interrupted, placing his outsize palms on the desk, ‘I don’t know how I can put it any more plainly. Ed was a gentleman. Loved his kid, and Kelly’s.
He never had a bad word for anyone, not even Harry Grant when he sacked him off his estate. He even let Kelly go back and work for him – so what does that tell you about the man?’

‘What happened with Grant, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Ed used to run his shoot for him, had a cottage with the job. When Susie Ashton went missing, Ed was one of those the police were talking to. Grant accused him of stealing diesel oil,
just to give him an excuse to sack him. Dirty trick, but that’s lawyers for you.’

‘Not Grant as in Grant & Whitman?’

‘So I believe.’

‘But Kelly still works for that family?’

‘When you live out here, you take whatever you can get.’

This detail came as a curious surprise. Jenny had had dealings with Grant and Whitman twice in her tenure as coroner and didn’t care to repeat the experience. They were a small but highly
successful firm of Bristol solicitors, who in the space of only a few years had earned a national reputation for protecting wealthy and famous individuals who found themselves attracting the
unwanted attention of the media. Corrupt bankers, politicians caught cheating on their wives, and disgraced celebrities beat a path to their door. If you could afford them, they knew how to close a
story down faster than any in the business. Jenny remembered Hugo Whitman as a man who hid a vicious streak behind well-practised charm. Harry Grant was more enigmatic and let his partner do the
talking, preferring to conduct his business as privately as possible.

‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Bream,’ Jenny said, ‘why don’t I leave you one of my cards, and if you think of anything else, you can drop me an email.’

‘Such as?’

Jenny made a stab in the dark. ‘Did Ed ever mention that someone graffitied his house?’

‘That? That was all down to Layla. She and Nicky Brooks got mixed up with a group of lads down in Bristol. They took to coming up here at weekends with their cars and motorbikes.
Blackstone people didn’t like that.’

‘Ed knew who painted it?’

‘He might have had his suspicions, but he knew better than to mention any names.’

‘You’re suggesting that it was someone local?’

‘Come on, Mrs Cooper. I have to live here, same as everyone else. And we all know what a man does in drink mightn’t be what he’d do next morning.’

‘Maybe so,’ Jenny said, deciding not to pick a fight here, but to leave the hard questions to the courtroom. ‘You know how to reach me. Thank you for your time.’ As she
rose from her chair, she said, ‘Nicky Brooks – am I right in assuming she’s Darren Brooks’s daughter?’

Bream nodded. ‘She was a good girl, too, till she fell in with Layla. Funny how you can’t cheat your blood.’ Responding to Jenny’s questioning look, Bream continued on
his theme: ‘Layla’s father was a villain, wasn’t he? And she was showing all the signs of taking after him. I wouldn’t be surprised if she started the fire.’

Jenny suppressed the urge to tell Bream that Layla had been shot through the back while she fled upstairs, but decided she would leave that until the courtroom, too. The witness shocked with
unexpected facts invariably spilled more truth than the one who was prepared. She was looking forward to shocking Bob Bream. She had the feeling it might do him good.

Jenny had one more call to make before turning home. She travelled four miles north-east along deserted, snow-covered lanes towards the estuary port of Sharpness. Amid a flat
expanse of fields sloping down to the river, the lights of Fairmeadows Farm were visible from more than half a mile away. She started to smell it soon afterwards: the sharp ammonia of animal dung
mixed with a foul, yeasty odour. Its source became clear as she turned off the lane onto a straight, wide stretch of driveway, leading to the illuminated yard in front of the complex of barns and
industrial sheds: a solid column of thick, steamy smoke rose from a steel chimney into the windless night.

Jenny pulled up next up next to an empty stock lorry. The car’s thermometer said the outside temperature was minus three. A shapeless, androgynous figure came down a flight of external
steps from an office on the first floor of the adjacent building. As the figure approached, Jenny saw that it was a sturdily built young woman hidden beneath a thick fleece jacket and woollen
hat.

‘You must be Mrs Cooper. Annie Preece, Assistant Manager.’

‘That’s right. I was hoping to speak to Mr Johns, the managing director.’

I’m afraid he isn’t here. Sorry.’ She didn’t sound in the least apologetic.

‘I thought my officer had spoken to him?’

Annie Preece gave a defensive smile. ‘The police wanted a word. You know – they’re still looking for the boy. Mr Johns had to go up to Gloucester. He should be back
tomorrow.’

Jenny felt herself start to shiver. She hadn’t eaten in hours and the biting cold seemed to reach inside her clothes and grip her bones. ‘I was hoping to have a look
around.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She appeared nervous. ‘I just work in the office mostly – accounts and that.’

Jenny was determined not to have to make a return trip. ‘I’m conducting an investigation. I need to see where Ed Morgan worked. I’m sure it won’t take long.’

Offered no choice, the young woman reluctantly turned and led Jenny across the gritted concrete towards the largest of the buildings. En route they passed a long, low shed about thirty yards in
length. Heavy-duty stock railings created several narrowing channels through which arriving animals would be funnelled until they arrived inside in single file.

‘That must be the abattoir,’ Jenny said.

Annie Preece nodded. ‘Ed Morgan wasn’t a qualified slaughterman, so he didn’t work in there. He was mostly over this side, feeding the machines.’

She opened a large sliding door and took Jenny into a cavernous building of warehouse proportions that smelt overpoweringly of boiling offal and ground bones. Jenny surveyed the array of steel
hoppers, conveyors and cylindrical tanks, which gave the impression of operating as a single, seamless entity. The machinery emitted a low, steady, clinical throb. There were no staff in evidence
apart from a solitary male figure dressed in nylon overalls and white calf-length boots, who was patrolling an overhead gantry running alongside the conveyor. Occasionally he would stop and prod at
the conveyor’s contents with a bloody plastic paddle. He glanced disinterestedly down at them and continued with his work.

‘What do you want to see exactly?’ Annie Preece asked, failing to disguise her impatience.

‘You said Mr Morgan fed the machines. I’d like to see them.’

‘You might wish you hadn’t.’

‘I think I can cope.’

With a shrug of indifference, Annie Preece headed under the gantry and between two huge steel containers that stood over ten feet high and emitted waves of intense heat. ‘The main boilers.
Softens everything up before it goes into the centrifuges.’

They emerged into a large open space that was brightly lit from above. To their left were two steel hoppers feeding the grinding machines that commenced the rendering process. To their right was
an expanse of concrete separated from the outside yard by a twelve-foot-high doorway, through which a JCB appeared. It was fitted with a 500-gallon bucket loaded with meat waste. The driver edged
up to the hopper closest to them and tipped the contents of the bucket inside. An electric motor started up with a rising, high-pitched whine like an aircraft engine readying for take-off. When it
reached a steady note, Jenny heard a mechanical clunk as a trap opened and flesh and offal began to drop into the spinning blades. Seconds later, garish pink gobs the consistency of toothpaste
dropped onto the conveyor beneath and continued on to the next stage of the journey.

‘That’s all Ed did,’ Annie Preece said, ‘brought the waste over in the bucket and tipped it into the grinders. Aside from that, if a machine broke down, he’d give a
hand trying to fix it.’

Jenny watched as the JCB backed out of the door, blood dripping from its bucket.