Want You Dead (34 page)

‘It is!’ She sensed his interest. ‘I’m sure the family would be open to offers, Mr Millet,’ she said. ‘It’s been empty for a while now and a lot of people I’ve shown around have been put off by the condition. But with some vision, and a little investment, this could be turned into a very nice flat. You could make it jolly cosy.’

‘It’s interesting,’ he agreed. ‘It definitely could be cosy. It has potential!’

‘A lot of potential!’ she agreed. Then she frowned.

Was she frowning at his beard? He didn’t care. The television was the thing. Oh yes! And it was perfectly located in a corner. From his brief time in the fire brigade, before he had been sacked, he had learned quite what a danger old television sets presented. Especially those that caught fire which were located in a corner. The fire would shoot up two walls simultaneously, and rapidly spread from there. Especially with the old dry paper covering the walls. And no fire-proofing between the flats here, he could be sure of that.

And old television sets were a frequent cause of fires. There would be little to be suspicious of with the television being the source.

Yes. Beautiful.

‘You’re smiling!’ she said. ‘You like it?’

‘I do. I like it a lot!’

She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to move on – I have another appointment to go to. I’ll give you my card, if you would like to have a second viewing any time.’

He took it, and glanced down at her name. Sylvie Young.

‘Thank you, Sylvie. I just need a quick pee.’

‘Of course.’

He hurried back into the toilet, closed and locked the door, then turned his attention to the window. It had a rusted lever handle on it, but, as he had noticed earlier, no lock. He smiled. Simple.

To mask the sound, he pulled the chain flush. Then he yanked the window handle. It was so corroded that for a moment it seemed almost welded to the locking stud. Then, on the second try, it came free. He pushed the window frame, hard. It did not budge. He tried again, then a third time, and finally it opened. A spider scurried down a web outside and out of sight. He peeped out into the alleyway the agent had talked about. Nothing there. He pulled the window almost shut, leaving the lever free.

It was quite big enough for him to crawl through later, under the cover of darkness.

He sauntered back across the flat to the front door, where the agent was waiting a tad impatiently.

‘It has potential. Most definitely,’ he said.

‘It does. It needs someone with a little vision.’

‘I have vision,’ he replied. ‘I have so much vision!’

‘I can see that,’ she said.

‘This is definitely my kind of place.’

86

Monday, 4 November

Norman made her feel safe. She loved to wake curled up beside his plump body, and to smell the stale pipe smoke on his breath. That smell reminded her of her father, who had died over two decades ago, when she was in her early teens. She’d rarely ever seen her father without a pipe in his hand or his mouth. He was always cleaning it, filling it, tamping down the tobacco, lighting it, sending rich blue clouds of sweet-smelling smoke swirling across the room towards her. Just the way Norman did now.

After years of looking after her constantly ailing mother, it had never occurred to her that one day she might fall in love with someone and start a totally new life. But this was how she felt now, lying in Norman Potting’s arms, feeling his morning erection against her stomach.

‘I have to go, babe,’ she whispered.

He rolled over and looked at the radio alarm. ‘Briefing’s not until 8.30! We’ve two whole hours. And I’m feeling a bit randy, if you want to know! Go on, let’s have a Monday morning quickie!’

‘I have to leave early.’ She kissed his forehead. ‘Isn’t there some terrible joke you tell about that? About someone ordering in a restaurant?’

‘The bloke in the cafe who orders a quickie? The waitress says it’s actually pronounced “quiche”, sir.’

Bella giggled. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m not at the main briefing. I have to be at Brighton nick first thing, to brief the Outside Enquiry Team.’

She slipped out of bed.

‘Come back, I’m missing you!’

‘Missing you, too!’ she retorted, and blew him a kiss. God, she didn’t understand it. After years of working together and loathing this man. Listening to his terrible jokes and boasts of his conquests, one after another, she could not have imagined in a hundred years that she might fall in love with him.

But gradually her dislike of him had turned to pity. And then to very different sorts of feelings for him. Inside he was a good man who’d had a shit childhood. A bit like her own, after her father had died. And she’d realized, eventually, they were both looking for the same thing, albeit in different directions. They were looking for love. Even now she couldn’t work out how it had really happened. Didn’t people say sometimes you fell for opposites?

But maybe, she thought, as she stood in the shower, almost regretfully washing his smell off her, it was something else you fell for. She’d been fifteen years in the police. Fifteen years of seeing the shit side of human life. Slowly, gradually, however irritating Norman Potting was, she’d come to see him as a decent man, a good man in a rotten world.

Then he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

He was scared as hell about that. And, she realized, she was scared as hell of losing him. Sure there was an age gap, but at heart he was just a big kid. He made her feel safe. But beneath all his bluff exterior, there was something deeply tender and vulnerable about him that made her want to throw her arms around him and protect him.

Last night, after he had fallen asleep in her arms, she had prayed, as she did often. She’d prayed to God to make his cancer better. To ensure he didn’t lose what he was terrified of losing, his
winkyaction.

She did not want him to lose that either. She’d not had many lovers in her life, and Norman was the best by a million miles. He knew how to turn her on in ways she had never known. And he took genuine pleasure in that. He cared. He really did. So many colleagues dismissed him as an old sweat, a dinosaur, way past his sell-by date. But they were wrong.

He was in his prime. And she was determined not to let anyone, ever again, dismiss him. That was something she liked about Roy Grace. Unlike so many others, he actually
got
Norman. He realized just how good he was. Maybe, in time, she could change him, she thought. Stop him from making a fool of himself, like the way he had done on Saturday at the wedding. It was insecurity, that was all. If she could make him feel secure then, she was confident, she could soften and change him.

She stepped out of the shower, a towel around her body and another, like a turban, around her head. He had gone back to sleep. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you so much.’

He farted.

87

Monday, 4 November

Building fires had a repellent, noxious smell that was utterly distinctive, Bella thought. She could smell one now, at a quarter to eight in the morning, as she drove her Mini west into Brighton along the clifftop from Norman’s home in Peacehaven. It was getting stronger.

The acrid stench of burning paint, plastics, wood, rubber, paper. A smell that was tinged with sadness and tragedy. Any home that burned meant the loss of so much to the occupants. Their photographs, memories, possessions. Gone for ever. As had just happened to Red Westwood’s family.

As she negotiated the roundabout above the marina, and headed through the early morning daylight along the road she loved so much, Kemp Town’s Marine Parade, with its elegant Regency terraced houses, she saw slivers of strobing blue light. Then, as she neared, over to her right she saw the thick black smoke belching from a ground-floor window, and from the first-floor window above.

She swung across the road and pulled up behind a marked Ford Mondeo, then climbed out of her car, glad of her donkey jacket in the chilly air, and held up her warrant card to the two young male officers. One was tall and thin, the other short, stocky and bespectacled. She didn’t recognize either of them. Several bewildered-looking people, residents of the building who had evacuated, she presumed, were gathered on the pavement. Most of them looked as if they had just thrown on any clothes they could find. A young shaven-headed man sporting a goatee beard held a laptop under his arm. A teenage boy was filming the whole scene on his phone.

Suddenly, a panicky-looking woman clad in a dressing gown and slippers, her hair a mess, came running out of the building holding an infant boy in her arms and looking around, in desperation, at the knot of people. She thrust him at another woman, crying, ‘Please take him, take Rhys. My daughter’s still inside, with the dog. Someone please help me.’

She turned to run back in. The small officer stepped in her path. ‘The fire brigade will be here any moment. They’ll have equipment and they’ll go straight in,’ the officer said.

‘Do you know where in the building she is?’ Bella asked her urgently. In the distance she could hear the faint but distinct wail of multiple sirens. Then, as she looked up, she suddenly saw a dog, frantically barking and leaping against the window on the third floor. A beautiful golden retriever.

‘She’s in there with the dog! Megan! My daughter’s in there. Megan. Megan’s in there, she wouldn’t leave without him. Rocky. He wouldn’t move. The whole place was filled with smoke. I kept calling him and he wouldn’t come.’ The woman looked up. ‘I have to go back, I have to get Megan!’ She tried to sidestep the policeman but he blocked her path again.

‘No,’ the bespectacled police officer said. ‘You can’t go back in. I can’t allow you. My colleague will go.’

‘No, I’ll go,’ Bella said.

‘I HAVE TO!’ There was utter panic in the woman’s voice.

The retriever was getting increasingly frantic. Bella stared at its face, at the poor, helpless creature, and felt a stab in her heart for it. Where the hell was the little girl?

The woman pushed the shorter policeman so hard he almost fell. ‘I’m going in! I’ll just dash up and grab Megan!’ she said, and strode determinedly towards the front door in her slippered feet.

The taller officer ran over and grabbed her arm. ‘I’m sorry, madam, I can’t allow you to go back inside.’

‘Do you know where in the building she is?’ Bella asked her again, even more urgently, as she headed towards the front door herself.

‘It’s my child!’ The woman shook her head in bewilderment. ‘My child! She’s going to die. I can’t – I can’t leave her. Don’t you understand? Let me go!’

‘We can’t allow you to go in, madam, for your safety,’ the officer said. ‘The fire brigade will be here in a minute. They’ll go in with their breathing apparatus and get her. Meantime my colleague’s going in now.’

‘It’ll be too late!’ She raised her voice then shouted hysterically, ‘SOMEONE HELP ME! PLEASE, SOMEONE HELP ME GET MY CHILD!’ Then she broke free of the officer’s grip, and ran towards the door. One slipper came off and she ignored it. He ran after her and seized her arm firmly again. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot allow you to go back in.’

‘YOU HAVE TO!’ she screamed.

Bella called out, ‘What flat number?’

‘Five,’ the woman replied. ‘Third floor. Please hurry! Please, please, please hurry!’

Bella looked up at the window, where she could see the dog was physically hurling itself at the glass. She’d been here less than a minute but it seemed already much longer. ‘Megan’s her name, yes?’

‘Yes. And Rocky!’

Bella pushed open the front door. The smell of smoke was faint in here and the stairs looked clear. This wasn’t going to be a problem, she thought. She ran up the first flight, calling the girl’s name, and immediately entered a thin mist of vile-smelling smoke on the first-floor landing, swirling like tendrils around her. The stairs ahead were in darkness. Above her she could hear the frantic screams of the girl. ‘MUMMY! MUMMY! MUMMY!’

Bella threw herself up to the second floor. The smoke was thicker here and she could feel heat coming through the wall to her right. She coughed, her throat stinging, pulled off her coat and held the collar over her face, breathing through it as she ran on up to the next floor, which was in darkness.

The door marked
Number 5
was open, with ghostly whorls of grey smoke, like seahorses, pouring out. ‘Megan! MEGAN!’ she shouted.

She heard the little girl crying and screaming nearby and the sound of barking. She took a deep breath and entered, feeling instantly disoriented, the smoke stinging her eyes, and shouted out, ‘Hello! Megan! Where are you! Call your name so I know where you are!’

She heard the girl shouting her name.

Bella called back, ‘Where are you?’ Then she gagged. She coughed and felt like she was inhaling oil-soaked cotton; her eyes were watering so much she was virtually blinded. She needed to get out of here, she knew, but she couldn’t leave the girl. ‘Megan!’ she called out again, then coughed, painfully. She stumbled over something in the narrow hallway, a toy of some kind, then crunched on some pieces of what felt like Lego. Coughing. Coughing. She could hear barking now.

‘Megan!’

Coughing again, she fumbled for a light switch, keeping her coat collar firmly over her mouth and nose. The carpet beneath her feet felt warm, as if there was underfloor heating turned up too high. She found a light switch but nothing happened. The smoke momentarily cleared and she could see a closed door in front of her, and she could hear barking on the other side of it.

But she was aware of backdraft danger. Or, she wondered, was it flashover danger? She felt confused about whether or not to open the door. Suddenly, behind her, flames were filling the doorway. Melted, scalding plastic was dripping down onto her. Light fittings and cables were falling around her like scorching tentacles. Bella screamed in pain as one struck her cheek. Get low, she remembered from a previous fire she had attended, talking to the firefighters present afterwards. It wasn’t the fire that killed most people, it was inhaling the toxic fumes. She crouched lower and lower. Saw little flashes above her, like angels dancing. Then she saw the edge of a sofa burning, the flames getting increasingly intense.