Everything seemed to slow. Constable Ferriter had entered the burning building and had probably saved her life. Had she gone back inside afterwards to try and save Eason’s too?
‘Ferriter!’ she shouted into the broken window.
Now, though she was racing back to the open front door, it seemed to take an age to reach it. When she did, all she saw was more coppers standing motionless around it, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing. She pushed her way through them to the door. Pulling her blouse back up over her mouth and nose, she stepped forward.
Hands grabbed her shoulders and arms. ‘You can’t go in there.’
‘There’s a copper still inside. Jill Ferriter. I’m pretty sure she went back in.’
Mouths open, everyone stared into the house, beyond the splintered door and up the stairs to where Ferriter would have headed.
‘Oh Christ.’
The flames had broken through the old roof. Around them black smut and burning embers were falling slowly from the sky.
The fire engine had been called, of course, but it would still be minutes away. Going back into the building to the upstairs floor could be suicide; she knew that. Cupidi shook herself free of the holding hands.
She looked around and saw the sense of shame on the officers’ faces.
‘I’ll go,’ a burly man shouted.
But before anyone moved again, she saw something dark moving at the top of the stairs.
‘Look.’
The young copper next to her burst through the line of officers into the burning building. Another two followed him in.
A few seconds later they emerged, crashing down the steps. The two uniformed police were supporting Ferriter by her elbows. Over another’s shoulders was Stanley Eason.
The policeman collapsed onto his knees, dropping Eason face up on the ground. The unconscious man’s head bounced on the grass as he fell.
Someone started clapping, but stopped quickly as soon as he saw Eason.
The front of his shirt had been burned completely away, exposing a mess of reddened flesh. His face, too, was unrecognisable, crinkled and distorted by the heat. Beneath the frizzy stubble that was all that was left of his hair, a single eye stared out, his eyelid peeled back by the flames.
Now a copper was kneeling by the man, head down to his burning chest. ‘Get water. He’s still alive.’
And then everyone was running around, pulling out first aid kits from the boots of their cars.
At the hospital, still grimy from the fire, she found Jill Ferriter in the reception area at A & E with a box of tissues in her lap. She fetched two cans of Coke from the shop and handed one to her.
‘Just minor burns on my hand,’ Ferriter said, holding it up, wrapped in gauze. ‘I’m fine. It’s just a little tender.’
‘You were fantastic,’ Cupidi said. ‘I think you saved my life.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Ferriter smiled back at her.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Like you said. You can sit around waiting for orders, or you can actually get off your arse and do something good.’
‘I should probably be more careful what I say.’
People moved around busily, ignoring them. A man in blue scrubs, running with a white polystyrene box, through swinging doors. A receptionist straining to understand what a mother was telling her about her child.
‘Besides, everyone else was standing around until you picked up that brick. I was just copying you,’ Ferriter said, coughing into a tissue. ‘Bosh. Amazing.’ She lowered the handkerchief and grinned.
‘But you shouldn’t have gone back in.’
She shrugged. ‘Had to, didn’t I? He would have died, otherwise. Our job is to get ’em to trial. That’s what you said.’
‘Very funny.’
‘He was a bugger to pick up. Wriggling like a bastard. Thought I’d given myself a hernia getting him to the top of the stairs, but then the others came. And? How is he?’
She sat on the chair next to his. ‘He’s in intensive care.’
‘Yeah, but has he said anything? Did you arrest him?’
‘He’s in a coma. He hasn’t said anything at all.’
Ferriter looked shocked. ‘But… he was conscious when I got him. He swore at me.’
Cupidi nodded. ‘Third-degree burns. The body goes into shock.’
On the TV behind him they were showing the news. A clip of a helicopter above the marshes.
‘He was pushing me off him and everything. That’s why I took so long. He can’t be that bad, can he?’
She looked at Ferriter and saw shock on her face. She was young; unused to death. ‘Sorry. You did great, Jill. But he’s deteriorated. He has kidney failure, apparently. They’re not sure if he’s going to make it.’
‘What? Die, you mean?’
‘Maybe,’ Cupidi said. The consultant had said the next twenty-four hours would be critical. ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you did everything you could. Fucking stupid, but great.’
‘Jesus.’ Ferriter looked at the bandage on her hand, then started coughing again, louder, unable to dislodge the phlegm in her throat. Cupidi patted her on the back, not sure whether it was doing any good at all. ‘Take a drink,’ she suggested.
When the fit subsided, Ferriter looked down at the handkerchief. Her spit was flecked with black. She crumpled the tissue.
‘That’s kind of normal,’ Cupidi told her.
‘I thought I’d saved his life.’
‘Who knows? Maybe you have. Only time’s going to tell. You did great. Is there anyone who I should be calling who can come and pick you up?’
She shook her head.
‘I can drop you somewhere if you like.’
‘No.’ Her small smile trembled slightly. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Cupidi stood. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go then.’
Ferriter nodded, and Cupidi was relieved to walk away because the constable was going to start crying soon, and she wouldn’t want her watching.
DI McAdam was on the other side of the hospital sliding doors, talking on his mobile.
There were worse coppers than McAdam. He was a good policeman, dedicated, efficient, intelligent; one of those men who thought of themselves as forward-looking. While other officers might complain about government cuts destroying the police force, McAdam saw it as his job to get on with it all without moaning. He was the kind of man who always came to birthday and leaving parties, bought rounds for others but drank only sparkling water himself.
When he saw her through the glass, he ended the call and beckoned to her.
‘You were right,’ he said. ‘I arsed it all up, didn’t I? Bloody hell. They’ll hang me for this.’
‘Like you said, it was process.’
As she pushed through the doors, he asked her, ‘What about Constable Ferriter in there? She going to be OK?’
‘Shocked more than hurt, I think,’ she said. ‘She took it badly when I told her that Eason might not make it. She thought she’d saved his life.’
‘Let’s hope for everyone’s sake she has.’
‘It would make life a lot easier, you mean?’ She took a gulp from her can, her throat still dry. There would have to be an investigation into what had gone wrong with the operation at Eason’s house; a fatality would make that much more serious.
‘Frankly, yes. If we can get him to stand trial and he’s guilty, then everything I did looks shiny.’ He looked at his neat black shoes. ‘But if he dies…’ He raised his hand to his head in the shape of an imaginary gun.
‘Can’t be that bad, can it?’
‘They’ll be asking why I surrounded the building against the advice of one of my own officers.’
‘You said it yourself. You had no choice.’
He nodded. ‘How is she?’
‘Surprising. Tougher than she looks.’
‘Right,’ said McAdam. ‘I should go and thank her personally.’
He looked through the glass at the constable. She was still dabbing her face with tissues.
‘I’d give her a minute, sir. She’s a bit weepy. I don’t think she wants to be seen like that.’
‘Ah. Yes.’ He looked back at Cupidi. ‘And the house?’
‘A mess. The fire’s out, but it’s still too hot to get anywhere near it. You could see the smoke in Rye, apparently.’
They were replaying footage on the news now, too, the helicopter circling round the building as the flames licked through the tiles.
‘As soon as it’s safe, put the team in to see if we find anything that links Eason to the murder. Do you think the chances are we’ll find something, Alex?’
‘Honestly, I don’t know, sir.’
‘Attempting to burn down your own house is not the behaviour one would expect from an innocent man.’
An elderly man in pyjamas emerged from the front door of the hospital in a wheelchair, pushed by a porter.
‘Some men find it a little hard to back down.’
The patient in the wheelchair lit a cigarette. ‘And some women, obviously,’ said McAdam.
‘As soon as it’s safe to go in there I’ll see what I can find, sir. The evidence that links him to Hilary Keen’s murder has to exist.’
‘Thanks, Alex. Better get to it then. We’ve two murders on the go in this neighbourhood now.’
It took a second for Cupidi to realise what he said. ‘Two?’
‘Weren’t you told?’
‘The man in the slurry pit?’
‘I’ve just heard that the preliminary investigation of the body shows significant bruising that wouldn’t be consistent with just falling into the tank.’
‘He was assaulted?’
‘I don’t have the precise details, but it looks very much like it.’
‘God. And thrown into the pit?’
‘And left to die, yes. That’s not the worst of it. The press have got hold of the fact that he’s probably an illegal immigrant.’
‘Being forced into a hole full of shit is not the worst of it?’
The smoker in the wheelchair stared at them. McAdam took Cupidi by the elbow and led her away. ‘There’s a story going out on Meridian News tonight.’
‘Two stories on the same day. Press office must love us.’
‘We appear to be very much in the media’s eye. And that was the Chief Constable on the phone.’
‘I don’t suppose he was happy.’
‘Not at all.’ Her senior officer, normally so positive, so full of energy, looked weary now. ‘You may have noticed there’s a certain amount of interest in illegal migrants in this area,’ he said drily. ‘From your report, he appears to have been a Muslim migrant. More petrol on more flames. You understand the sensitivity. There are all sorts of people around here who love to stir that pot. So, hopefully we can wrap up the Keen death as soon as we can. If there’s forensic evidence in what’s left of Eason’s house, let’s find it and job done. Write it up. We already have the killer. We need the paperwork. Then we concentrate what resources we have on the case where the murderer is still on the loose. Can you do that?’
Cupidi ran her hand through her hair. It felt greasy from the smoke. ‘Right. Course, sir.’ Though she wondered how much there was to write – or to find. They didn’t know how Hilary Keen had died, so how would they know what to look for?
‘There’s another possible crime scene in the Keen case. We know that she had lived in a caravan behind his house. Maybe she was killed there.’
McAdam looked encouraged. ‘Good,’ he said.
Eason had said he had towed the caravan to Sittingbourne. He might have been lying, obviously. Cupidi looked at her watch. It was three in the afternoon. If she went there now, she’d be late back home. Zoë would be on her own again. But if she was right, she had to find it before it was destroyed.
‘Oh, by the way, Alex. Were your ears burning yesterday? I met one of your Metropolitan Police colleagues.’
‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘Who would that be?’
‘What was his name?’ he frowned as he tried to remember.
She raised her Coke can so he wouldn’t be able to see her face.
‘Superintendent David Colquhoun… That was it.’
‘Oh.’ She gulped hard, coughed on the fizzy drink. ‘David Colquhoun is a superintendent now?’
‘Recently promoted I believe, Detective Superintendent, running Whitechapel CID. Did you work closely with him?’
She looked down at her sooty linen trousers. ‘No. Not really at all.’
‘Oh. He seemed to know you well. He spoke very highly of you, in fact. He said you were a talented officer.’
‘Talented?’
‘Yes. He said you were very passionate about your work. And I would agree with him there. It’s a good quality in a copper. He said I was lucky to have you. Which I am.’
She looked up and examined his face for any sense that his words might mean more than he was saying.
‘Was that all he said?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Should there have been more?’
‘No.’ There was an awkward silence.
Excused, she locked herself in a disabled bathroom to wash herself as much as she could. Stripped down to her bra and pants, she stood in front of a sink and padded herself clean with green paper handtowels. Then she dabbed at the black smudges on her blouse. She looked in the mirror at herself, standing half naked in a small hospital toilet, urine stains on the floor, and sighed.
Jammy David Colquhoun. Five years younger than her and he makes bloody Superintendent while she’s still a sergeant.