Bright Spark Read online

  Slowey swept in, the up-tempo slapping of his flip-flops on the stone floor belying the serene glaze on his face. “That’ll be for me. If I may, Lady Hayley.” He smiled his sweetest smile, daring her to hurt his feelings.

  She turned and stalked away, tossing the phone in a lazy arc over her shoulder. In one fluid movement, Slowey caught the tumbling handset, clasped it to his rear and held a finger to his lips. Harkness let Hayley walk away with her name held fast between his clenched teeth.

  “Good morning, DC Slowey here. I’ll be DS Harkness’s spokesman tonight. How might we assist?”

  “Tell me again,” mumbled Harkness, face pressed against the passenger window of Slowey’s Fiesta. Hot mercury was bulging and shifting just behind his forehead and acid lined his throat. Near insensible as he was, he managed to notice Slowey’s harsh use of brake and clutch and the reek of wet dog, vomiting children and fast food wrappers.

  “Marne Close, off the Ermine estate. Woman and kiddies in a house fire. It’s ‘likely to prove’ so I guess that means it has ‘proved’. Obvious malicious ignition, accelerant through the letterbox. No other DS willing or able. The DI is monitoring, whatever he means by that. I did try, honest.”

  ‘Likely to prove’, Harkness thought. Nobody liked to finish that sentence. Perhaps we can all avoid it if we don’t say it, think it or look at it.

  “Super. Top banana.” Harkness’s head bounced into the door frame and he gulped back something not unlike methylated spirits as Slowey dropped one gear too many.

  “DC Slowey, you do not have to maintain eye contact with your passenger while driving. I’ll just assume you mean what you say. Now, how do I sober up fast?”

  “Well, Sarge, I’d love to offer you a miracle cure but I’m right out of powdered elk spleen. A cold shower and black coffee might perk you up, but they won’t sober you up so you’d be better off having a peek at a lingerie catalogue. Apparently, a healthy liver gets rid of one unit per hour, so I think about 48 hours of bed rest should sort you out.”

  “Thank you, Wikipedia. Just pull over by that bus shelter.”

  The Fiesta weaved and shuddered to a stop, rear tyre scuffing the pavement and front tyre well clear. Harkness groped for a handle. “I know I’m pissed, but isn’t this car crabbing like a bastard? I swear I’m looking one way and the car’s going another.”

  “Slight issue with the tracking. Or the brakes. And the steering’s very soggy. But don’t worry; I’ve learned which way to look. You’d never know it if you were just a little bit pissed.”

  “Excuse me for a second or three.” Harkness levered himself from the car and its fug of family life. Lights speckled behind his eyes and he hiccoughed. On both sides of Burton Road, orderly semi-detached homes slept in shadow, the glare of streetlights smothered by old trees in full leaf. Ahead of the car lay the city. Behind it, a bridge spanned the western bypass a hundred feet below, marking the limits of the city and the beginning of ancient villages, fields and hedgerows. Before him stood the bus shelter, pebble-dashed and clutched at by weeds that prospered in cracked concrete.

  He tasted dry sweat and stale piss on the air. In the fading glimmer of the Fiesta’s interior light, the shadows bulked into human form on the bench. It would have to wait.

  He staggered to the back of the shelter, pressed a forearm against the jagged stonework and jabbed a finger into his epiglottis. It tasted of chip fat and pine-scented air-freshener. His eyes bulged, something in his guts balled itself into a fist and his gorge heaved and flung a toxic slurry at the wall.

  Then it was finished with him and he was wiping snot and bile from his face, now waxy to the touch. For a moment, he was a walking corpse enjoying a small and blissful death. When cleaner blood reached his brain, he checked his just dry-cleaned suit for collateral damage and saw the writing on the wall. Under a weak orange glow, he learned that ‘Quinny sux cox’ and where he could find ‘yung gay virgins to be fukt hard.’

  Chewing gum to cleanse his palate, he found Slowey leaning on the Fiesta and sucking down a menthol cigarette.

  “Any water in there?”

  “I can do you the melted ice from a regular diet coke. With or without the sticky straw?”

  “When in Rome. Open that door as well.”

  Weak light found the huddled shape in the bus shelter again. Harkness prodded the form then stood back, hands in pockets. Slowey’s mobile phone was playing a rumba, the closest thing to a street party this neighbourhood had ever known.

  “Morning, Mickey.”

  The shape turned, spectacles blank with reflected light, thick black hair crammed under a woolly hat, sleeping bag zipped up to the nose.

  “DC Slowey, I don’t know if you’ve met Mickey.”

  “Fugg arf,” mumbled the shape into its carapace of hair and damp nylon.

  “How rude.” Harkness looked over his shoulder to see Slowey nodding emphatically with the mobile clasped to his ear. With his free arm, he flicked away the suit sleeve to brandish his child-size digital watch at Harkness.

  “Oh, well. ‘Til next time.”

  “Gehway arn fagg yoozeff,” mumbled the shape again, spectacles turning to the wall and reflected lights flicking off.

  “Who was that, then?” asked Slowey, moving off in third gear with a commotion of juddering and whining as Harkness secured his seat belt on the first attempt with a pleasing appearance of soberness.

  “That was Mickey Patten. Mickey the Bridge. Military fantasist and full-time troll. You must have seen him.”

  “Must I?”

  “Stands on the bridge all day, lives underneath it, or used to. Nobody’s seen the Billy Goats Gruff for a while.”

  “Oh, him. Why’s he on a bench then? What’s his story?”

  “It’ll keep.” Harkness absent-mindedly rubbed his forehead in slow, delicate circles, willing his brain to start working, hoping all the synapses would start to fire. “What was the phone call?”

  “Night-turn sergeant at the crime scene politely enquiring where the fuck we were. I told him the wanton use of foul epithets betokened a casual and unwarranted degree of aggression, suggestive of lazy thought processes and high blood pressure. He said I knew where I could stick my fucking degree and I said I did indeed and we’d be there in a jiffy.”

  “Good enough.” Harkness flicked down the sunscreen, causing it to drop into his lap to Slowey’s complete indifference. Shrugging and twisting the rear view mirror his way, he checked his teeth for unsightly debris, scowled at the remains of his eyebrows, rubbed grit from his eyes, ran a hand over the salt and pepper stubble lining his chin and tightened the knot of his tie. “Who was it?”

  “Morose. Mr Happy himself.”

  “Great. How do I look?”

  “Well, you look like a 6’5”, flame-grilled orang-utan in a bad suit, so that’s nearly normal.”

  “Doesn’t look too bad from here,” said Slowey as his car slewed into the cul-de-sac he’d nearly overshot. Finding further progress barred by parked cars and emergency vehicles, he goaded the car onto the pavement at the junction of Marne Close with Somme Avenue.

  Harkness studied the street. Thirty homes, all semi-detached, number one next to him, number thirty across the road. Probably built between the wars with well tended squares of grass at the front, garages wide enough for a car at the side and generous gardens at the rear, should the householders ever need to dig for victory. Some had well-tended flowerbeds behind freshly painted gates and manicured hedges, their residents old enough to care about appearances. Others had replaced turf with concrete and gravel, the better to accommodate cars, caravans, mopeds, rusting children’s bicycles and incontinent dogs. Any remaining latticework or shards of colour in doors or windows were conceits of the double-glazing industry, but original mock-Tudor beams and whitewash abounded.

  A jamboree of colour was in full swing behind the police tape. Blue lights spun and flickered atop livid red fire engines and bone white police cars and ambulances. Beyond
them a telescopic floodlight bleached every window and paving stone yellow. The air was grainy with smoke and a generator throbbed. The shy and discreet twitched their curtains while others slouched in doorways in boxer shorts and dressing gowns, smoking, drinking tea or taking snaps and movie clips with mobile phones.

  “That’ll be it then.” Slowey opened the boot and pointed to a house near the end of the cul-de-sac, its façade now imprinted with a grasping claw of soot and crowned with a halo of steam. He shrugged himself into his webbing, peering at it to ensure the cuffs, CS, baton and radio were present and correct, then slipped his jacket back on.

  “Expecting trouble, Slow?” said Harkness, brandishing pen and notebook.

  “You never know. Once a boy scout.”

  “Always an old woman. Bring the big torch. We might actually need that and you can always hit someone with it if the mood takes you.”

  “Nice of you to join us, detectives.”

  A figure slipped under the police tape and approached them, peak cap covering his eyes and fluorescent tabard streaked with grime. He swept his cap off, wiped a film of sweat and smuts from his forehead, spat something grey into the gutter and settled his hands on his utility belt. Beneath his stab vest, the sweat-sodden hems of his shirt were bulging over cuffs, baton and belly fat.

  “Always a pleasure, Sergeant Morse. Look at the state of your new fluorescent.”

  “Didn’t it rain where you were? Cats and dogs for about five minutes here, then back to this bastard heat. Just made all this filth stickier. Anyway, get promoted, did you?”

  “Hard to imagine, I know.”

  “Right, you’ll be taking over then. We’ve done the usual.”

  Harkness sighed and stared at the scuffed and dull toes of Morse’s boots.

  “Indulge me, Sarge.” Harkness flicked open his notebook, noted the date and time and held his pen poised.

  “Well,” began Morse, wiping the back of his hand across his nose and examining the results, “we were the last to arrive. Next door, number 14, puts in the call to Fire, says people are trapped. They turn out, put the door in, can’t get upstairs. Then they put a ladder up and find three people, drag them out. Paramedics can’t revive them here so they get carted off to County and they’re dead on arrival. Fire says front door was point of ignition so we haven’t let anyone move.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You’re not writing much.”

  The effort of focussing on the trajectory of his pen and the words left jittering and looping in its wake made Harkness’s guts twitch. “Listen first, write later, that’s why we’ve each got two ears and one pen. Please continue.”

  “Scene log being done by PC Jones. Due off an hour ago but we all like a bit of OT.”

  “And?”

  “And, and, and.” Morse shook his head briskly and produced a scrap of paper from under his tabard. “Voter’s roll shows Dale and Suzanne Murphy at this address. A woman and two kiddies have been found. Nobody else in there.”

  “Excellent. You sent anyone to County with the bodies?”

  “PC Carruthers and his tame PCSO. But we’re pulled out tonight and I’d like someone back on the town pronto.”

  “Thanks for all your help, Sarge,” said Harkness, smiling sweetly. “We’ll do our best to expedite matters.”

  “Just one more thing, DS Harkness. You smell like a wino’s crotch. I never had you down as old school, but I suppose rank has its privileges. No offence, just thought you might like to know.”

  “So, Rob. I mean Sarge,” began Slowey, lifting the police tape for Harkness who was striding forward, massaging the bridge of his nose with eyes tight shut, “How do you want to play this?”

  He cranked open his eyes and breathed in deeply, immediately regretting it. “Right then. You can go and do all the legwork you’re so good at. You know, check the scene log, get the house to house underway, update comms, get SOCO turned out, that sort of thing. I’ll go and stare at the ash and press the flesh. Noblesse oblige, and all that. Oh, and I might see a man about a dog.”

  “Come again?” Slowey’s ballpoint had already filled a page and his tongue was clenched between his teeth.

  “Never mind. Just keep writing it all down. Oh, and something I forgot to do last time. Have you got your magic ink with you?”

  “Always, Sarge.”

  “Good man. If you get a minute, take elimination prints from anyone who might have had a reason to visit that house.”

  “Okey doke,” said Slowey, smiling sweetly as he scribbled. “Perhaps if you stick a broom up my arse, I could tidy up as well.”

  Harkness planted his feet on concrete sticky with wet ash and shut out the noisy gyrations surrounding him. His eyes traced the trailing fire hoses to the garden gate and over the gravel driveway, which crackled as water thick with poison drained into it, leaving behind a scum of carbon and foam.

  The front door sagged, ajar. Below the letterbox, charred ripples in the plastic showed where something had dripped and burned. The frame was ruptured and warped, partly by heat, partly by the fire brigade’s attentions. Inside, a thick and bitter blackness sucked in and crushed the light. Most of the windows, ground floor and first, were stained with soot on the inside and pristine outside. A large window on the first floor had been smashed, and a long ladder was still propped against it.

  He allowed himself to imagine it. Tendrils of smoke teasing the nose; an irritation becoming terror in seconds. The hiss and roar of a hungry animal consuming the house and anything that stood in its path. Heat bulging from the walls, crushing the air, drowning the senses. Children surrendering to an ecstasy of fear, howling, weeping and imploring. Mother mastering the keening in her own soul and mustering her brood with a catch in her throat and razor blades of panic in her veins. All of them pushed back from the stairs by the vanguard of smoke with lances of flame advancing beneath it.

  He knew this must have happened. They couldn’t have slept through it and drifted into comfortable oblivion as the oxygen was pilfered from their lungs. It wasn’t impossible, but maternal instinct and primal fear together would surely have been alerted by the first jubilant gasp of the fire taking hold. So why didn’t they call someone? Why didn’t they get out? And where was the man of the house, assuming he was still on the scene?

  “Now then, Rob, how you keeping?” A fire-fighter had joined Harkness, visor raised above his white helmet, lavish moustache beaded with sweat and grime. He rifled his memory for the man’s name: McKay.

  “I can’t complain. What do you think of this, then?”

  “Call out at 0035 hours, fire under control by 0055 hours. Malicious ignition, no doubt. Accelerant through the letterbox, seat of fire in the hallway just below the front door. Occupants found under the bed in the master bedroom upstairs. Probably asphyxiated.”

  A hose began slithering away, causing Harkness to take a step back. A fire fighter was reeling it back into a tender while another dropped a roll-up and ground it under his boot.

  “Meant to ask, before I forget, how did that court case go? Firth, wasn’t it, and the Byron Street flats? Must be eighteen months ago now.”

  “Two years. Gutted a whole block but couldn’t prove intent. He got sentenced on a lesser charge. He’s out and about again.”

  “Bugger.”

  “Never mind, he’ll come again. Mr McKay, I’ll trouble you for two things if I may. First, is Gretel on her way?”

  “I thought you might ask, so she’s being driven down from Hull. Lucky to have her in the area really. Barbeque accident?” McKay was pointing at Harkness’s eyebrows.

  “You should be a detective.”

  “Very common at this time of year. I’ve got some leaflets.”

  “And you know where you can stick them. Now then, won’t you give me the tour?” McKay drew in a breath and chewed at his moustache. “I know: health and safety, risk assessments, etcetera, etcetera. But I really need to get in there and you could always say I’d hav
e just charged in alone but for your guiding hand.”

  “As it’s you. What shoe size are you?”

  “I’ll just take the biggest you’ve got.”

  “Keep up the good work, PC Jones.”

  PC Jones, a Rottweiler by looks and nature, had allowed Slowey to approach despite the fact that he’d left his warrant card in his other suit. Jones had made it plain that this was only because he knew and liked Slowey, but had still felt obliged to lecture him on the solemn and sacred responsibilities of the scene guard. He’d listed the name, address and description of everyone who’d crossed his path, most of them firemen and paramedics. He’d overheard Slowey’s phone call and carefully noted the time he’d been notified that SOCO had been notified.

  Slowey locked the keypad on his house-brick of a mobile phone, dropped it in his jacket pocket, yanked at his shirt collar for the tenth time that minute, cocked his chin and advanced on the parked ambulances.

  “You a policeman?” shouted a figure, leaping from a stretcher and dropping a red blanket to the ground.

  “I am that,” replied Slowey, idly wondering who else would be wearing a suit at this ungodly hour.

  “You wanna be looking for him, not pissing about here.” The man breathed ethanol and pear drops from his pores and spoke as if he were trying to get served in a club. Bleached, spiky hair crowned a face scrubbed red raw by a house fire or a long afternoon in a beer garden. The three lions on his football shirt were stretched by a bulging belly from the passant into the couchant. Faint strap marks suggested he’d just discarded an oxygen mask. The paramedics seemed busy enough with their other charges, an elderly couple and what appeared to be a grey haired youth, and happy to have the sot off their hands.

  “You are?” began Slowey, flicking open his book and holding his pen poised.