Burning Truth: An Edge-0f-The-Seat British Crime Thriller (DCI BOYD CRIME THRILLERS Book3) (DCI BOYD CRIME SERIES), Page 2

  Annoyingly he suspected it was the latter.

  3

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said DC Warren without breaking his gaze from the microwave’s window.

  ‘What’ve you got in there?’ replied Boyd, bending down to see what was so fascinating.

  ‘Chocolate Oats-So-Simple. I overfilled it, I think. Don’t want it all bubbling out.’

  Warren glanced across at him. ‘Blimey, you look rough, sir.’

  ‘I was up at stupid-o-clock this morning with a sick dog.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’m a cat person. They’re less work.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wish I was too,’ said Boyd, waiting in line to warm up his sausage roll. The leaking grease had rendered the paper bag almost transparent.

  ‘What’s wrong with the dog?’ Warren asked.

  ‘Dunno, he’s at the vet’s now – he’s probably eaten something.’

  The microwave pinged and Warren opened the door. He pulled out the steaming plastic pot of brown sludge. ‘All yours, sir. Hope he’s okay.’

  Boyd placed his paper bag in and pushed start. Just then DS Minter entered the kitchenette, carrying a freezer bag of boiled eggs and a protein shake, his dark hair slick from a shower.

  He wrinkled his nose at the smell coming from the microwave. ‘Oh, Christ. Is that another of your rancid snack pots in there, Warren?’

  ‘Boss’s breakfast,’ Warren replied, thumbing over his shoulder.

  ‘Ah, morning, Boss. Didn’t see you there.’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Late night?’

  ‘Early morning,’ replied Boyd. ‘My daughter woke me up because our dog was vomiting everywhere.’

  Minter pulled a face. ‘Nice. You take it off to the vet’s?’

  ‘At five in the morning, yes.’

  He winced. ‘Oh, crikey. That’s going to cost you a pretty penny.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Boyd. ‘That’s what I’m expecting.’

  ‘But you’ve got pet insurance, right?’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘He didn’t poop last night. They think it might be a blockage.’

  Warren pulled a face and let his spoon drop into his pot.

  ‘Goodness, surgery too?’ said Minter. He made a whistling noise, which sounded to Boyd very much like money escaping from a punctured balloon.

  DCI Flack poked his head into the small room. He had a jacket over one shoulder and his face had the puffy look of one that had endured a long night shift. ‘Oh, Boyd, there you are.’

  After six months of being stationed here, Flack was one of the few detectives Boyd had yet to properly interact with. They’d probably exchanged fewer than a hundred words since Boyd had relocated from the Met at the beginning of the year. He’d had to turf Flack and his team out of the Incident Room twice in the six months he’d been here, so it was no wonder Boyd felt like he was one angry exchange away from being headbutted by the man.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘The fire last night in St Leonards. The East Sussex FIO’s just finished his preliminary inspection and he’s on the phone to Sutherland. There are signs of an accelerant.’

  ‘What fire?’

  ‘London Road. Up Silverhill way. Couldn’t you smell it coming in this morning?’ asked Flack.

  Boyd had cycled in this morning since it was nice-ish. And actually, yes, he’d picked up the faintest – to be honest, rather pleasing – tang of wood smoke as he’d come up Bohemia Road towards the station.

  ‘The fire inspection officer suspects arson.’ Flack looked at his watch. ‘Since I’m off now and you’re on…’ He nodded. ‘It’s all yours, Boyd.’

  He flicked a taut and insincere smile at Boyd and the others, then tapped the kitchen counter with a finger. ‘Have fun.’

  4

  ‘Ah, DCI Flack managed to find you then?’ said DSI Sutherland.

  ‘Yes, to toss the fire over to me,’ replied Boyd.

  ‘As it well should be,’ said Sutherland. ‘He’s busy, you’re not. Come in. Take a seat.’

  The detective superintendent had been sticking to his ten thousand steps a day, and had recently announced that he’d begun a Couch to 5K regime as well as Sunday cycling. Sutherland gestured to his visitor’s chair but remained standing behind his desk.

  Boyd sat down, his coffee in one hand, his still-steaming paper bag of fat, salt and carbs in the other. Since Sutherland had begun his health kick in March, he’d become a food Nazi. Even worse than Emma, if that was possible.

  At this moment, Sutherland was staring at the greasy bag in Boyd’s fist.

  ‘Breakfast,’ said Boyd. ‘I haven’t actually had mine yet.’

  ‘Well, whatever horror’s in there, it’s staying put until we’re done.’

  ‘You can have a bit if you like, sir?’

  ‘Bugger off. Not interested. Plus, I don’t want your pastry flakes all over my floor.’

  Boyd removed the offending paper bag from view. ‘So Flack mentioned something about a fire last night in St Leonards?’

  ‘Just up the road,’ said Sutherland. ‘You could probably have seen the flames from the top floor of this building.’

  ‘I could smell it coming in.’

  Sutherland reached down for his mug of tea and cupped it in both hands.

  He’s really not going to sit down, is he? At least this way, Boyd mused, their heads were almost on the same level.

  ‘There were three fire engines trying to save the building, but –’ he took in a deep breath – ‘it’s just a shell now. Crying shame that, another piece of Hastings’ history gone.’

  ‘Like the old pier,’ said Boyd.

  Sutherland scowled. The pier had gone up in flames back in 2010, leaving a row of blackened stumps like rotten teeth. ‘The pier’s still there, Boyd,’ he replied defensively. ‘It didn’t go anywhere. It’s had a make-over, that’s all.’

  ‘One hell of a makeover,’ Boyd muttered.

  ‘Eagle House. You know who lives there?’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  ‘Sir Arthur Sutton.’

  The name rang a bell for Boyd. It took him a moment to place the name. ‘The ex-politician?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sutherland paused, then said, ‘Look, I’ve just had the East Sussex FIO on the phone.’

  ‘Flack said “traces of accelerant”?’

  Sutherland nodded. ‘Yes. The FIO’s convinced it was arson, so we’re looking at the house as a potential crime scene. His name’s Mark Wells; he’s still over there if you want to meet ’n’ greet.’

  ‘I’ll head over there now,’ said Boyd, lifting himself up out of the chair; he needn’t have bothered sitting down in the first place.

  ‘There’s something you should know, Boyd.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘They lost one of their own fighting the fire last night.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Sutherland nodded again. ‘The building collapsed. I don’t think they’ve managed to recover the body yet.’

  ‘Right, thanks for the heads-up.’

  ‘According to Wells, she was a very popular member of the station and much loved. So be mindful that emotions will be running high over there.’

  5

  Boyd found their forensics co-ordinator, Kevin Sully, and their crime scene manager, Leslie Poole, sitting at the same table in the canteen.

  ‘Ah, got you both. Good. There’s a job,’ he said by way of a greeting.

  ‘No “Good morning, lovely day, isn’t it?” Just straight in with the work talk,’ said Sully to Leslie.

  Boyd ignored him. ‘I’m heading over to the arson incident on London Road.’

  ‘Arson?’ repeated Leslie. She’d recently cut her silver hair into a practically spherical bob. Being stout and short, in her dark trouser suit with her – now – perfectly round head, Boyd thought she vaguely resembled DSI Sutherland. His evil twin sister, perhaps.

  ‘The FIO’s detected accelerant, so we’re looking at a crime scene. Sutherland
wants us over there to tape it up as soon as the fire engines have gone,’ said Boyd.

  ‘I hear it was Eagle House?’ said Sully.

  ‘Eagle House?’ Leslie looked horrified. ‘Oh, no!’

  Boyd nodded. ‘A local landmark, I’m led to believe. Or it was.’

  Leslie sighed and pushed her nearly finished breakfast plate away. ‘That’s awful. So sad. It was a lovely building.’

  ‘I’m heading over on foot,’ Boyd said. ‘Apparently it’s just up the road?’

  ‘It is,’ said Leslie.

  ‘No point driving?’

  ‘It really is only five minutes,’ she said. ‘And there’ll be nowhere to park if the driveway’s still clogged with fire engines. The house – well, its driveway anyway – opens straight onto London Road. It’s going to be busy now.’

  ‘Right. On foot it is, then,’ said Boyd. ‘See you two out front in five minutes?’

  Boyd asked DC Okeke along. She was starting to look like wilted rhubarb behind her desk and he reckoned she could do with some fresh air and daylight. She lit up a cigarette as soon as they stepped outside.

  ‘You know I used to smoke?’ said Boyd.

  She nodded. ‘You said.’

  ‘I worked out I spent about thirty thousand pounds on fags in my lifetime. Crazy, eh?’

  ‘Working it out or spending it?’ she asked.

  ‘Fair point,’ he replied.

  ‘I should quit,’ she offered, ‘but I’m worried I’d replace smoking with eating.’ She nodded at his modest pot belly.

  ‘One battle at a time, Okeke, one battle at a time.’

  He could smell the smoke in the air from the fire as they headed up Bohemia Road. ‘I’ve been told the place was a local landmark.’

  She nodded. ‘Everyone calls it Eagle House because of the two eagles. I don’t think it’s actually called that.’

  ‘What two eagles?’ Boyd asked.

  Ahead, Poole and Sully were deep in conversation about something that involved a lot of air-drawing with their fingers. They stopped at a pedestrian crossing and Sully hit the button.

  ‘They’re old stone eagles. Either side of the driveway,’ Okeke explained. ‘They’re right on London Road. They loom out of the bushes like scary gargoyles. You can’t miss them.’

  The walking man flashed green and they followed Sully and Poole across the busy road. To his right, further up the hill, Boyd could see faint twisting skeins of smoke rising into the blue sky and the rear butt of a fire vehicle poking out from greenery, partially blocking one lane of the northbound road.

  ‘Sutherland told me Arthur Sutton lives up there,’ said Boyd.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sir Arthur Sutton?’

  She frowned as if the name was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t quite attach a face or a reputation to it. Boyd had had a bit more time to recall what little he knew about the man. ‘He’s that pompous sod who writes those crappy airport thrillers. Used to be in the government for a few months, I think,’ said Boyd.

  ‘Oh.’ Okeke nodded. ‘The one with the bushy eyebrows?’

  Sutton had silver-grey hair that was always cropped army-short, but thick, dark eyebrows that curled up at the end, giving him a distinctive Alistair Darling/Norman Lamont contrast.

  Arthur Sutton’s name had become woven into the scruffy patchwork quilt of British culture. Like Eddie the Eagle or Nicholas Parsons, he was somebody everyone thought they knew but didn’t really.

  Sutton’s bushy brows and coarse buzz-cut hair were as much a part of his public image as his caustic wit and political incorrectness. He’d been an Oxford scholar, a government advisor, an MP, and briefly a cabinet member, before he’d been tossed into the political wilderness to become an author of shiny paperbacks, with large, embossed foil fonts and vaguely Shakespearean titles. With, of course, an obligatory guest spot from time to time on Have I Got News For You and a rumoured upcoming appearance on Strictly Come Dancing.

  They arrived at the driveway. A fire engine was overhanging the road and flanked by the eagles that Okeke had told him about. They were matching weather-worn stone monstrosities standing astride sandstone columns; each of them a yard tall and leering out from untamed bushes that rendered the narrow pavement outside the low wall unusable to pedestrians. The stone birds marked the entrance to a sloping gravel driveway that ran almost parallel to London Road like a slip-road. Boyd imagined it had to be a bloody nightmare coming out of there at rush hour.

  Poole turned round beside the rear of the fire engine and gestured for Boyd to lead the way in. ‘Eagle House,’ she announced like a tour guide.

  The fire engine virtually filled the driveway. They had to squeeze past it, ducking beneath low-hanging branches and wrestling with the many brambles and nettles that were spiking out, testing their boundaries.

  The drive angled up steeply, which put the old house on a tree-shrouded prominence from which, Boyd imagined, Sir Arthur Sutton gazed down over his kippers every morning upon the hoi polloi of Hastings.

  They passed two more fire engines, every equipment hatch wide open and their contents spilled out onto the ground. A procession of weary, soot-faced firefighters were getting ready to pack all their stuff away.

  The smell of wood smoke, a charming ambient bouquet from a distance, was now unpleasantly overwhelming. Boyd could feel the back of his throat tickle with the acidity of it. It wasn’t just the smell of charcoaled wood but all the other odours that came with a house fire – the stench of burned rubber and melted plastic, the unsettling sting of unidentifiable toxic chemicals and the nasty suspicion that in a building this old there’d be particles of asbestos hovering in the air.

  Boyd squeezed past the final fire service vehicle and had his first unobstructed view of the remains of Eagle House.

  The building had been tall; in fact, technically speaking, it still was – if the blackened stone cadaver could be counted as a building. Three storeys high, it was topped with a folly of a Gothic tower on one side and the steep ribcage of a tall attic on the other. The stone walls were pretty much all that remained of it. He could see through empty eye-socket windows shards of daylight that shouldn’t be there. It looked as if the entire middle of the building – rooms, furniture, roof beams, everything – had collapsed in on itself, producing a mound of smouldering debris that reached to the first-floor windows. A thick pall of smoke and steam still rose from it, even though the firemen were packing up to leave.

  Boyd spotted a man with a tightly clenched mouth, wearing white hard hat that was pushed back, revealing silver hair. He was carrying a clipboard and making notes as Boyd approached.

  ‘Are you Mark Wells? The FIO?’

  The man looked up at him. ‘Yes. And you are?’ He spotted Sully standing behind and seemed to recognise him. ‘Ahh, took your time this morning.’

  ‘Didn’t want to get in your way,’ replied Boyd. He offered his hand. ‘DCI Boyd.’

  Wells shook it. ‘You’re the new DFL, aren’t you?’

  DFL – Down From London. He’d got used to hearing that acronym over the last six months. ‘Not so new now. I’ve been here since the start of the year.’

  ‘I saw you on the local news a few months back…’

  ‘Yeah,’ Boyd said. ‘It seems everyone has. I had to be bleeped. Apparently it was hilarious.’

  ‘It was.’ Wells smiled faintly. He nodded at Sully. ‘You keeping well, Kev?’

  Sully nodded. ‘Not too bad, thanks for asking.’

  Boyd introduced Okeke. ‘This is DC Samantha Okeke, and…’ He stepped aside to introduce Leslie Poole. ‘Our CSM, Lesl–’

  ‘I know Leslie,’ butted in Wells. ‘We’ve worked together enough times.’

  They exchanged a quick smile. Introductions done, there was a momentary conversation vacuum and Boyd suddenly remembered Sutherland’s mind-how-you-go warning.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that you lost one of your firefighters last night,’ he said.

  �
�Yes. Ali Tucker. She was…’ Wells took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘She was a lovely girl. Everybody loved her.’

  ‘I’m really very sorry,’ Boyd said again.

  Wells accepted this with the slightest tip of his head. ‘We recovered her body about an hour ago.’ He clamped his lips together hard. ‘She nearly made it out.’

  Leslie placed her hand on his arm. ‘My God. I’m so sorry, Mark.’

  It looked as though Wells wanted to say more, but his mouth closed, then clenched. He patted Leslie’s hand.

  ‘My DSI says you’re calling this arson?’ Boyd said, keen to bring things back to a less emotional footing.

  Wells looked relieved to have something else to focus on. ‘We’ve had strong hydrocarbon readings on the electronic sniffers already,’ he said. He inhaled loudly through his nose. ‘But you can smell it yourself anyway.’

  Boyd copied him, detecting a faint but distinctive tang of benzene – that petrol station smell.

  ‘Yeah, I’m getting it.’

  ‘So, it’s arson, absolutely. And because we lost Ali… manslaughter. Right?’

  Boyd nodded. ‘What about the owner? Arthur Sutton?’

  ‘We rescued a woman who’d been badly burned,’ Wells said. ‘She’s at Conquest Hospital now. I’m told she’s stable but unconscious…’

  ‘Ali was investigating what she thought were sounds of screaming when… well, then it all came crashing down around her.’ Wells took another deep breath.

  ‘Did she find anyone? Could it have been Sutton?’

  ‘She didn’t have a chance to say. She just said she thought she heard someone screaming for help.’ The FIO shook his head. ‘It could have been wind devils.’

  ‘Wind devils?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘When the fire starts drawing in oxygen to feed, it creates a strong draught. That can create sounds that can be mistaken for cries for help. They can be particularly high-pitched, like a child’s voice,’ Mark explained.

  Boyd nodded and looked down at his pad. ‘I’m told Arthur Sutton lives alone? Mostly.’