Picture You Dead

96

Wednesday, 6 November

Glenn Branson drove on blue lights towards Piper’s house, while Roy Grace concentrated on his phone. He had deputized Norman Potting to take the delayed morning briefing, and updated the ACC by email, apologizing for having to cancel their meeting, but trusted she would understand his reasons.

In any event, he would be seeing her Friday. He and Cleo, together with Norman Potting and his late fiancée’s mother, Joyce Moy, were going to Buckingham Palace. Bella Moy had been posthumously awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal after saving the life of a young girl in a blaze and then tragically losing her own. Roy was also receiving the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for saving the life of a young boy in a water-filled tunnel at Shoreham Fort.

Twenty minutes later, hurtling past dense woods to their right, the satnav indicated it was two miles to their destination. Then, with less than half a mile to go, they saw a police car angled across the imposing front gates. It reversed to allow them through.

As they drove up the long avenue of trees the air rapidly began to smell foul. The stench of burnt paint, wet, charred wood and other burnt materials. Flecks of ash fluttered in the blustery wind like flights of grey butterflies. Then, rounding a curve, an horrific sight came into view.

The magnificent house he and Glenn had visited, only yesterday, looked in a sorry state. Part of the central portion of the roof had collapsed, leaving it open to the elements, with curls of smoke rising from it, and there were dark scorch marks down part of the facade’s upper floors with a row of windows gone.

Several fire engines, one with a turntable ladder, were parked haphazardly in front of the mansion, as well as a Fire Investigation Unit truck, and an assortment of cars and vans, two of which belonged to Crime Scene Investigators, surrounded by pools of water and pieces of blackened debris. Grace also noted a dark green coroner’s van, indicating there had been at least one fatality.

Fire hoses lay all over the ground, running into the house, and there was a small army of Fire and Rescue officers in full protective gear, some wearing breathing apparatus.

As they pulled up, a man Grace recognized, also in protective Fire and Rescue uniform, approached. Tony Kent, the Chief Fire Officer for West Sussex. He had the good looks of a movie actor, with short, dark hair, alert blue eyes and, at this moment, a very grim expression. In his free time he played bass guitar with a local band, and Grace remembered years ago attending a gig in a pub with his then wife, Sandy, and Kent’s wife, Jan.

‘Good to see you again, Tony.’

‘You too, sir.’

Grace knew that until a fire was completely under control, the Fire and Rescue officers had primacy over the scene.

‘What can you tell us?’

‘Well, from what we’ve been able to establish so far, the fire broke out in a room on the first floor, which has been gutted. But the house’s elaborate sprinkler system kicked in, fortunately, preventing the blaze from spreading much further. So far we’ve found one body. There’s a housekeeper who lived in a cottage on the estate who said the owner lived on his own in the big house.’

‘Stuart Piper?’

‘Yes, she said that was his name. He’s missing.’

As Kent was speaking, Grace saw a man wearing breathing apparatus emerge from the front door.

Kent turned and saw him, too. ‘Terrence – Terry – Stephens, the Fire Investigator, may be able to tell you more – he’s just been inside.’ He turned and waved at the man, who removed his headgear and walked towards them.

Grace and Branson climbed out of the car and Kent introduced them.

Pulling off his thick gloves, the Fire Investigator shook their hands, looking solemn. ‘The only good news is we’ve not found any other bodies,’ he said. ‘So far at least.’

‘What can you tell us about the body?’ Grace asked.

‘Well, it’s early days. But it already looks suspicious to me.’

‘In what way?’ Grace pressed.

‘Well, it looks like the location of the body is pretty much in the seat of the fire, although we can’t be sure of that until we’ve done a lot more investigating. But there’s something very odd about it.’

‘Odd?’ Grace asked. ‘Suspicious?’

‘Possibly,’ Stephens said.

‘Can we go in and have a look?’

‘Not at the moment, the building isn’t safe.’

As if to confirm his words, they were all startled by a loud crashing sound somewhere inside the house, followed by a plume of smoke or dust – it was impossible to tell which – rising through the gaping hole in the roof.

‘I might be able to get you inside in a couple of hours,’ Stephens said. ‘I guess you’ll be wanting your Crime Scene Manager and CSIs to go in?’

‘When it’s safe,’ Grace said.

Terry Stephens tapped a camera on a mounting on his chest. ‘I can show you the footage, if that would be helpful?’

A few minutes later, seated on a bench in the Fire Investigation Unit truck, Grace and Branson watched a video replay on a large monitor. And privately, Grace was glad to be watching it here, rather than in situ in the burned room, with all the smells that would accompany it – especially the smell of the body. Like many police officers who’d attended crime scenes or postmortems involving burnt victims, he could no longer stomach barbecued pork.

What was on the video in front of them was the charred shape of a human being, on its stomach, one arm reaching out towards something. As the camera panned round, the two detectives could see that the person had been trying to reach a door but hadn’t made it. The door was hanging at an angle on its hinges.

The camera then did a 360-degree pan of the windowless room. It had clearly been hung with paintings, from the hooks and few skeletal charred frames still remaining on the walls, others lying on the floor. Some charred springs indicated sofas, now destroyed. What looked like a fallen candelabra lay on the remains of one.

The camera returned to the body, closing in, then moving slowly, steadily, along it.

‘Most likely Stuart Piper,’ Grace said. ‘His body shape, but it’s too burnt to tell.’

‘I remember his watch,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘He had a fancy vintage Patek Philippe, can you wind back a few frames?’

Stephens reversed the playback and zoomed in on the blackened timepiece.

Branson studied it with a frown. ‘That could be his watch but it’s too badly damaged to be sure.’

‘Did the housekeeper say if anyone else might have been in the house last night, Terry?’ Grace asked.

‘She said he hadn’t told her he was expecting visitors, although apparently he had the occasional nocturnal young gentlemen visitors, as she politely put it.’

‘So, tell me your reasons for thinking this is suspicious?’

‘The door,’ Stephens responded. ‘It’s made of steel, which doesn’t make sense in a house of this period – all the doors would ordinarily have been made of a hardwood, probably oak. But even more significantly, it appears to have been locked – we had to force entry to the room. It looks to me as if the body was trying to get out. Reaching for the door?’ He looked at the two detectives.

They both nodded. ‘Died trying?’ Branson said and shuddered. ‘What a horrible death. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be burned to death.’

‘If it’s any consolation, most victims die from smoke inhalation before the flames get to them.’

Branson looked at Grace with a faint smile. ‘What was it Norman was saying the other day about smoking not being bad for your health?’

‘I’m just glad it’s us here and not Norman,’ Grace said quietly, thinking of Bella.

‘Yes,’ Branson replied, his smile gone.

‘My officers have had a look round for the key to that door, but haven’t found it so far.’

Grace frowned. ‘So you are telling me the door was definitely locked.’

‘It was definitely locked, we thought initially from the inside – we had to sledgehammer it open. We need to take a longer look, but our initial findings – and I stress this is early doors, pardon the expression – is that the victim was locked in this room. I’ve spoken to the housekeeper, Mrs Coombes, and a couple of other members of the domestic staff who turned up this morning. The housekeeper says that Stuart Piper liked to leave his dalmatians down in the kitchen in their baskets – where they were this morning – before spending the rest of his evening sitting in this room, with the fire and candles lit, smoking a cigar and drinking cognac. She said it’s called the Hidden Salon, for some historic reason.’

‘Are you implying the victim locked himself in this room or that someone locked him in?’ Branson asked.

‘I’m not implying anything at this stage,’ Stephens replied, a little defensively.

Grace stared again at the image of the charred corpse, with an outstretched hand. As if indeed reaching, desperately, for the door.