Her heart sank when she saw the first police car slow, then jerk its steering wheel to the right to park sideways across the road, lights still flashing.
She got out of her car and approached it, peering at the four uniformed men inside. ‘I asked for support,’ she said. ‘Not the entire force.’
‘Another two units will be along in a minute. McAdam says nobody’s to approach the house until they’re here. He in there?’
‘Another two? Jesus Christ. Why?’
‘Homeowner’s name is Stanley Eason,’ answered the officer, who stayed sitting behind the driving wheel; a man Sergeant Cupidi didn’t recognise. ‘He has history of threatening behaviour.’
And this, she thought, is where it will all start to go wrong. The hum returned.
‘He threaten you?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Well… yes.’
The man spoke into the radio again. ‘Suspect in Hilary Keen murder threatened officer. Confirmed.’
‘Know what? It wasn’t that bad. He’s just a gobby arse.’
‘Where is he?’
She looked up at the window. The man was still there, looking down. Somehow, in a few minutes, this had got out of hand. ‘First floor. Behind that curtain.’ She pointed. ‘He’s been watching me since I called in.’
A brassy-haired woman in a white Mercedes had arrived and was trying to nose her way round the parked car. The officer got out and shouted across the roof of his car, ‘Sorry, madam, road closed.’
‘She’s just trying to drive up the street,’ said Cupidi.
‘Orders are we secure the area till he’s out.’ He turned back to Cupidi and asked, ‘Do you know the layout of the house?’
‘I didn’t get as far as that.’
‘Before he was violent towards you?’
‘No. Just a bit lairy.’ There were more lights now, approaching from the other direction. ‘All I wanted was one copper to help me take him in for questioning.’
‘Murder suspect?’
‘Possible murder suspect.’
‘And violent.’
‘He didn’t actually touch me.’
‘Duly noted.’ Only doing his job.
The next car to arrive was driven by Ferriter. When she had used her the vehicle to block the road fifty metres north of the house, she jumped out and came trotting towards the rest of the police.
‘You’re late.’
‘Sorry, Sarge. Got held up at the station,’ she called. ‘DI McAdam’s on the blower now. Wants a word.’
‘Blower,’ thought Cupidi. For Christ’s sake. She looked up at the face in the window again, but the room was dark and the glass dirty; Eason had pulled back a few inches. It was impossible to see any expression on his face. Did he have an inkling about what was happening out there? The way things were inexorably leading? She turned, walked slowly north up the lane, got into the car and picked up the radio. ‘Cupidi here, sir.’
‘What’s the situation?’
She explained what had happened. ‘At best he’s stolen and destroyed evidence,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if that’s deliberate or otherwise.’
‘At worst it’s him we’ve been looking for?’
‘Him being the murderer would certainly be one explanation why he’s got rid of evidence, yes.’
‘What’s going on now?’
‘He’s gone back inside his house and he’s just sitting there, watching us now.’
‘Could he be drunk? On drugs?’
‘Don’t think so, sir. Do we know if he has any record of mental health issues?’
‘Not so far. What’s your assessment?’
‘My assessment? Police make him angry. You know the type. Middle-aged man. Now we’ve got a lot of coppers here I doubt he’s happy, to be honest. My opinion, I’m not altogether sure it’s wise, this many officers being on site. I’d advise standing them down, sir.’
DI McAdam said, ‘Nope. He’s got some history. Couple of years ago, we had a report of a man from round here threatening a local. We talked to Eason about it, but he flat out denied it. It was him, though. Now we have him as a suspect in a murder case threatening an officer.’
‘He’s not actually violent though.’
McAdam chewed this over for a second. ‘From my point of view, I have to assume the threat was real. I don’t like this either.’
There were four cars now. Cupidi could see the men inside putting on their vests.
‘Right,’ said the copper who’d been the first to arrive. ‘I’m going to knock on the door.’
There was a crackle of radios. Somewhere, far away, McAdam confirmed: ‘Go ahead.’
Cupidi returned to her car and pulled a stab vest out of the boot. It felt absurdly heavy, but then maybe she was tired. She was struggling with the zip as the copper made his way through the small wooden gate, to the front of the house.
‘Mr Eason,’ he called. ‘Can we have a word?’
No answer.
She didn’t recognise the policeman. ‘Hey! Officer,’ she shouted. ‘He doesn’t use that door.’
The man at the door looked round, annoyed, but didn’t pay any attention to what she’d said. With the side of his fist, he banged on the door.
Cupidi saw movement from behind the curtains on the first floor; he was there again, face close to the glass, looking down.
‘The wrong door,’ she said again. ‘Try round the back.’
She looked to her left. In the distance she could see yet another car had arrived to close the lane off completely down by the main road, a couple of hundred metres away. Blue lights, blinking over the green of the marshes. They were keeping the cordon large.
‘Mr Eason? Can you come to the door. It’ll be easier to speak, that way.’
Again, nothing. The policeman knocked, then tried the door handle. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t move.
Stupid.
‘Nothing bad is going to happen to you. We just want to talk.’
Seriously? Nothing bad is going to happen to you? She looked around and counted twelve officers now.
The flat countryside was oddly still. All traffic on the road in front of the house had stopped now. Overhead a light plane flew. A huge bumblebee buzzed up the lane, attracted by the shine on a copper’s uniform. It fizzed around the man as he tried to wave it away.
The policeman backed down the path, looking up to the window. ‘Mr Eason?’
But, looking up, she saw that Eason had retreated into the dark interior of the house. The sergeant turned, pointed towards a constable and then to the back of the house. They would need someone to cover the back door, in case Eason made a run for it.
Nothing else happened. But for the movement of birds and bugs, everything was still. For the moment, anyway.
Ferriter walked over to Cupidi. ‘OK?’
She nodded.
‘It’s him, then?’ she asked.
‘If I was a betting woman, which obviously I’m not, given my luck, I’d say the odds are high. He’s admitted to destroying material that belonged to her. He’s acting defensively… What’s happening now?’
‘Negotiator’s coming down from Canterbury.’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’
Cupidi approached the latest car to arrive. Three men were inside, all in vests, waiting.
‘All I was asking for was another copper, not the cavalry.’
‘Procedure, Sarge.’
‘We’re doing nothing till a negotiator gets here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘The longer we wait here, the longer he’s going to get dug in. Why don’t I go and try and talk to him again?’
The sergeant in charge thought about it for a couple of seconds.
‘You don’t think he’s a direct risk?’
‘He didn’t lay a finger on me. It was a show, I think. You know. Men are like that.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Let’s do this by the book. The negotiator’ll be here any minute.’
‘Half an hour, at least,’ reckoned Cupidi.
‘Patience is a virtue.’
‘And Grace is a little girl who should be taken into care,’ muttered one of the team sitting in the car behind him.
The silence of the morning disappeared; the noise of a helicopter. She looked around and saw it, approaching from behind the sun. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, looking up. ‘Talk about overkill.’
‘That’s not us. Press probably.’
‘Brilliant.’
The helicopter slowed, coming to a standstill a little way off, steady in the summer air. They would be filming the scene. It would make it on to the lunchtime news.
It would be a long wait. Cupidi walked back towards Ferriter who was looking at her phone, laughing at something.
‘What is it?’
‘Peter Moon. He’s just asking what’s going on.’
‘Do you do yoga with him too?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Bet he looks nice in Lycra.’
‘If you was a bloke, Sarge, that would be sexist.’
‘Seriously though, Jill. Word of advice. Dating fellow officers. Never a great idea.’
‘Personal experience?’ she said, all butter-wouldn’t-melt.
Cupidi looked at her for a second, then said, ‘Naturally.’
‘It’s not actually like that at all, anyway.’
‘Right.’ Cupidi unzipped her stab vest and threw it over to her. ‘I need to pee,’ she said. ‘Look after that, will you? We’re going to be here a while.’
A blackbird chuckled as she ambled slowly up the narrow lane towards a garden centre on the far side of the Military Canal. As she crossed the bridge she paused for a minute to peer into the dull brown water, then walked a little further, turning right into a car park, where a man was struggling to put a large shrub into the boot of a Volvo.
‘Is the road still closed that way?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Don’t know,’ she lied, leaving the man clutching the heavy plant.
After she’d found the toilets she picked up a handful of energy bars and a bottle of juice.
The till was staffed by an elderly man in an olive jacket, who should have been retired at his age. ‘Do you know the man who lives in Speringbrook House?’ she asked him.
‘That where the police are?’
Cupidi nodded.
‘What are they bothering him for? Didn’t pay his telly licence, or is it some other capital crime? I was just done for going thirty-eight miles an hour on the road up at Winchelsea. A hundred bloody pounds for going eight miles an hour over the limit. You’d have thought those pointy-headed buggers had something better to do, excuse my language.’
‘It would have been over forty if you received a ticket,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I know everything.’
‘I’ve never had an accident in my life,’ he said. ‘Not once.’
‘What’s he like?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Eason?’
‘Stan?’ he said, passing the scanner over her snacks. ‘Keeps himself to himself since his wife died. Always gives me the time of day, mind. Like most round here. Just gets on with it. Not exactly talkative, but that’s what we’re like. Four pounds ninety-five. What’s going on up there?’
‘You ever meet the woman who lived on the caravan behind his house?’
‘Woman? Didn’t know there was one. Stan’s a dark horse.’ The man turned frosty. ‘Why you asking all this? Are you a journalist?’
‘No.’ She picked up the carrier bag and smiled. ‘One of the pointy-headed buggers.’
She ambled back towards the house, enjoying the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, at least. Above, in the blue sky, the press helicopter was still circling the farm.
She paused at the Military Canal, leaning over the edge of the bridge again as she unwrapped an energy bar. Chewing on it, she thought she saw something large and dark moving in the water below. She shivered, broke off a crumb and dropped it into the water. The fish below paid no attention.
When she looked up, she saw Ferriter ambling towards her. ‘Anything happening?’
‘Negotiator just arrived. Being briefed.’
‘What’s this, then?’ She pointed at the canal.
‘They dug it in 1805 to stop Napoleon invading,’ Ferriter answered.
‘It worked then.’
Ferriter looked at her, unsmiling. ‘Fifteen hundred men, it took,’ she said. ‘You can walk all the way to Sussex along here. If you want to.’
‘And if you dumped a body here, could it end up at… what’s it called?’
‘Salt Lane? I don’t know.’
Cupidi nodded. ‘I need to speak to those drainage people. Can you sort it out?’
‘The Drainage Board,’ she said. ‘You think she was murdered here?’
She stared down into the water, waiting for one of the fish to take her crumb, but none did. ‘I don’t know. But I think we may have just found the murderer, don’t you? Now we have to get him to admit it.’
‘Makes you wish he’d have a go,’ said Ferriter. ‘Couple of minutes of battering by the lads out there might loosen his tongue.’
Cupidi looked at her, eyebrows raised.
‘Sorry. Bit incorrect,’ added Ferriter with a small laugh.
‘Our job is to get them to trial in one piece.’
‘It was just banter.’
Ignoring her, Cupidi looked round. ‘You ever worry that everything here is at sea level? All that’s holding the water back are a few walls.’
‘Never thought about it, really. I mean, it’s been like this all my life, round here.’
‘Walls are only so high, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Very cheery, Sarge.’
Cupidi straightened. ‘Let’s get back,’ she said.
Back at the house, a young man in a blue suit was craning his neck up at the bedroom window. ‘Stanley. My name is Kevin.’
There was no response from inside.
‘Is it Stanley or Stan?’
Nothing.
‘Trained negotiator,’ said Ferriter.
‘Obviously,’ said Cupidi.
Cupidi handed Ferriter an energy bar, unwrapped a second for herself and stood chewing as the negotiator tried to elicit some kind of response from the man inside.
‘It’s all about minimising risk to us,’ Ferriter said. ‘Except the longer he’s in there and we’re out here, the greater the risk to him.’
Cupidi nodded, reached into the car and pulled out her stab vest.
‘Studied it a bit,’ said Ferriter. ‘You know, hostage negotiation.’ She hadn’t opened the bar. Instead she was reading its list of ingredients.
‘I’m here. Just talk to me, whenever you want,’ Kevin was saying.
‘First step,’ explained Ferriter, ‘open communication. Second step, build empathy.’
‘Is that right?’ said Cupidi.
‘Like dating, really. Best thing is to make yourself clear right at the start.’
‘Only that was when he was threatening me and calling me a cunt.’
‘Not a good date, really, then,’ said Ferriter. She held out the bar, returning it to Cupidi. ‘Trans fats,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t eat them.’
Cupidi rolled her eyes, but took it back. ‘What if us just being here makes it harder for him to back down?’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Ferriter. ‘There is that.’
‘Always is hard for that type of man. And it’s always the men, isn’t it? When was the last time you had a siege with a woman?’
‘There you go again. Bit sexist, isn’t that, Sarge?’
‘Bit true though, isn’t it?’
‘Bitter divorce, was it?’
Cupidi laughed. ‘Actually, no.’
‘I could come in and chat. Or stay out here, if you prefer,’ Kevin was saying. ‘You tell us what you want to do.’
Towards the north, a group of schoolkids on bikes had arrived and were peering over the police tape, chatting to a constable. The helicopter had disappeared. The air around them was still.
She was unzipping her vest again, feeling too hot in the sun, when she heard a regular creaking noise above her, almost like a heartbeat, and looked up. Two swans were flying low above the field opposite the house; magnificent in the summer light. She wished Zoë was here; she would have some ridiculous fact about swan behaviour to tell her. As they approached they banked towards the right, heading straight over the house.
That’s when she noticed a snake of pale smoke coming out of the red-brick chimney.
‘Oi. He’s burning something,’ she called out.
Heads turned to look.
‘Evidence?’ suggested Ferriter.
‘Well, in this weather I don’t think he’s doing it to keep warm,’ said Cupidi. ‘God. How bloody frustrating. We can’t get in there, and meanwhile he can do what he likes in there.’
The sergeant who’d arrived with the team to surround the building had finally got out of his car and was standing next to her.
‘See that?’ she said. ‘That could be the difference between us being able to make a case against him and not.’
‘What would he be destroying?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you think?’
‘We should go in,’ said Cupidi.
‘I’ll run it past McAdam.’
‘Or you could actually make the decision yourself.’
‘Fire!’ shouted Kevin the negotiator, who was closer, but who had noticed the smoke for the first time.
Cupidi took a couple of steps towards the building and saw that the pale curtains were suddenly silhouetted by a flare of light behind them. In a horizontal column, smoke, darker now, was pouring upwards from the chimney.
‘Fuck,’ said the policeman. ‘He’s not just burning something. He’s gone and set fire to the whole fucking place.’
Cupidi was running now. A copper pushed Kevin aside and was slamming himself at the front door, uselessly. By the look of it, it was firmly bolted. ‘Get the Enforcer,’ he was shouting; the door-ram.
‘We haven’t got one on board. You?’
‘Jesus.’
As they stood around, Cupidi sprinted round to the back, where another copper was waiting.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘He’s set the place alight.’
She looked around. Ferriter had followed her to the back door. Cupidi tried the handle. It was locked, of course.
‘What you doing?’ asked the constable who had been stationed there.
The frame was PVC with toughened glass so they’d never get through it, but the kitchen window was next to it. Cupidi looked around and saw the pile of bricks left where the caravan had been. Picking one up, she chucked it straight into the glass; it broke with little noise.
‘But…’ said Ferriter.
She threw a second to make the opening bigger, then took off her stab vest, laid it over the spiked shards of the kitchen window and pushed the remaining pieces inwards. At the gaping hole, she could feel the air flowing in to feed the flames above.
‘Petrol!’ she shouted as she tipped, head forward, into a kitchen sink below. The tang of it was all around her.
Pulling herself inside, she twisted her body, bringing her legs round so she could drop onto the floor.
She heard screaming now; from somewhere above her came the sound of a man in pure pain.
She paused for a second, orientating herself. The kitchen was a muddle of pans, plates and empty tins. Moving again, she stumbled through, into a hallway beyond, hitting her ankles on boxes and piles of newspaper. The house was a mess. He was a hoarder.
The screaming from above had risen to become an animal roar of pain and fear.
She yanked at the stiff bolt on the front door to let the other coppers in, but it wouldn’t give. In the dim light, she realised that it wasn’t just locked. Eason had fastened the entrance shut with wood and screws. She would never get it open. Smoke was drifting down from the ceiling, darkening the hallway.
Outside she heard shouting, men kicking at the door.
Coughing now, blinking, she turned to look up the stairs. Air was rushing higher, sucked by the heat.She could hear the flames now, crackling, consuming the house. A redness flickered on the landing above her.
She would have to go up, she thought. The screaming seemed to be quieter all of a sudden. Or was it that the fire itself was louder? Where was everyone else? She looked round, praying that someone would be following her, but smoke was curling through the laths where the plaster had cracked and fallen.
Pulling her blouse over her face, she started up the stairs. Another lump of ceiling, bigger this time, crashed down on her and she lost her footing on the loose scraps.
Now she was tumbling backwards toward the front door, one arm flailing for a banister, the other raised to protect her head.
She hit the floor hard and lay dazed for a second, her heart suddenly hammering. Must get up. She knew she had to get out, but she had lost any sense of direction in the fall. As dust and smoke obscured the air around her, she tried to work out which position she had fallen in. Disorientated, she stood slowly, hands out to feel around her. Taking a step forward, she immediately fell again, tripping on something she couldn’t see.
Now, as the noise of the fire rose to a roar, panic set in. She had very little time to get out of this building.
And then someone was lifting her, hands under her armpits.
‘I’m OK,’ she shouted.
She looked up and made out the face of Constable Ferriter as she dragged her backwards out towards the kitchen, just as the front door finally came crashing down.
She sat on the grass, blinking soot from her eyes as she watched flames start to find a way through the tiles of the roof.
A uniformed WPC stood next to her with a cup of water. ‘You were lucky,’ she said.
‘That’s me.’ She was grateful for the water, though. Her mouth was filled with the rancid taste of burnt plastics and wood. She took a mouthful and swilled it round, then spat it out on the ground beside her. Small flecks of blackness lay on the bright green grass. She noticed her ankles. Blood streaked from her right foot down into her shoe, but the cut was not deep.
‘You might want to adjust your clothes,’ said the WPC.
‘What?’
‘Your bra’s showing.’
Cupidi looked down. Her blouse was still pulled up from where she’d tried to cover her face with it. At least the bra was a newish one.
Tugging her shirt down, she looked around. ‘Where’s Constable Ferriter? I should thank her. I think she may have saved my life.’
‘Who?’ said the WPC.
Cupidi stood, looked around, suddenly worried. There was no sign of her.
‘Ferriter!’ she shouted above the clamour of the fire. She was running now, towards the burning building, past the startled policemen.
‘Oh shit.’
A row of coppers had gathered behind the house, watching flames burst out of the windows, curling round the edge of the roof. Blinking from the smoke, she scanned their faces, but none of them was Ferriter’s.