‘Please,’ he said, edging forward, taking the man’s hand.
Shaw stood, letting him get closer. Kennedy put an arm round Holme’s shoulders and got his face closer.
‘I’m going to die,’ said Holme, the limbs beginning to shake to a slow beat. ‘I told you…’
‘No,’ said Kennedy, trying to keep his voice light. ‘No you’re not. God’s not ready yet, Aidan. Believe me. Trust in him.’
Shaw turned to Valentine. ‘Watch the front,’ he said. ‘Get him into an ambulance. Both of them. Keep in touch…’ He waved his mobile, then turned to look at the burning house. There was no way through the front door, still a rectangle of flame, the jamb and lintel burning like firelighters, but Shaw found an alley at the side of the house leading to the back yard, down a tunnel with an arched brick roof.
When he got through he could see the fire had a firm hold of the whole ground floor. The kitchen door was a single pane of glass, and beyond it the flames had already blackened a fridge and a microwave, and the thin chipboard worktops were curling in the heat. Cupboard doors were burning, revealing empty shelves. Smoke hung, trapped, a foot below the ceiling, as thick and grey as phlegm. A pair of French doors from the yard into the
Shaw listened again, the sound of the fire like a giant gas ring burning, and then — at the edge of hearing — a fire engine’s siren.
There wasn’t time to wait. He put his foot through the French doors and ducked as the flames roared out, then stepped back, waiting for the blaze to take a second breath. The room was empty, with just the carpet to burn. A mural depicting a nude woman in savage orange and blue paint strokes covered the biggest wall.
Shaw ran through into the hallway, crouching, holding his breath behind his hand. In the front room there was a three-piece suite, a rug, and a TV set. Bubbles formed, then burst, in the plastic top of a coffee table. Disparate objects: a fitness cycle, a discarded game console on the bare boards of the floor, the metal foil packets from a takeaway curry in the fireplace. Shaw knelt, took in a breath from down near the floorboards, and felt the air burn his lungs.
The stairs, bare wood, ran up between two plaster-board walls. Smoke rose up, the stairwell acting as a chimney. He closed his eyes and took the steps three at a time. At the top he stopped, holding his breath, and for the first time he thought he’d made a mistake. It was supposed to be a calculated risk. But it felt like a posthumous medal. The fumes were blurring his vision and a sharp pain was pulsing in his head. He saw a vivid snapshot: Lena, standing in blue water, a still sea lapping at her thighs. Ten seconds; he’d give himself ten seconds.
He checked the back bedroom — empty — then the
Shaw grabbed him by the shoulders but he tried to pull away, hands still over his face, his body twisting. ‘I can’t go out there,’ he said, his voice oddly clear. Shaw knew then it wasn’t the fire that terrified him. ‘He’s there.’
‘You’ll die if you stay here,’ said Shaw. He could hear the staircase burning, blocking their escape, and the smoke coming through the floorboards was black now, toxic. ‘Who are you afraid of?’ he asked, while he tried to think what to do, tried to calculate how long was left before he had to leave him to die.
The man tried to say something but retched instead, choking with his head turned down to the floor. Shaw thought he’d heard three words:
‘The Organ Grinder.’
The man’s heavy boots pedalled on the bare floor as he tried to scoot back from the window.
‘I heard the footsteps,’ he said. ‘They all hear the footsteps.’
‘We’re going out the back way,’ said Shaw, deciding that this was some kind of twisted anxiety that he would have to address. ‘He won’t see you there.’ He grabbed
It was too late. The staircase was all flame. He thought then that Lena would never forgive him. He tried to blot out an image of his daughter, asleep, the duvet held to her chin by a fist.
He didn’t understand what happened next. He heard a noise, a sizzling, like a giant frying pan. The air filled with smoke and steam. Then a jet of water hit him and threw him into the back bedroom. When he got to his knees there was an inch of water on the carpet, and he could hear it boiling, tumbling down the blackened, smoking stairs. He picked the man’s body up a second time and stumbled to the staircase. Each wooden tread cracked as he moved their double weight quickly onwards, downwards, to safety.
A fireman stood in the still-burning room below; full breathing gear, an oxygen tank on his back. The floor was a mirror of water, the sound of steam a hissing roar. Between them they carried the choking man out into the yard and laid him face down on the parched grass. He struggled when one of the paramedics tried to turn him over, covering the sides of his head with his hands.
Shaw got down so that he could speak into his ear.
‘We’re in the yard. Pete. Can you hear me? It’s just us — the fire brigade, ambulance. You’re OK.’
Pete’s breath rattled, and when he coughed he arched his back, drawing up his knees under his chest.
7
An hour later Shaw stood at a bedroom window over the Bentinck Launderette looking down into Erebus Street, where hose water welled up out of blocked drains, creating pools to reflect the last flames of the fire at number 6, just out of sight, further up the street, towards the church and the abattoir. A single fire-brigade tender remained, and Shaw could just see two firefighters playing water into the burnt-out building. He knew that all that was left was a gap now, where the house had once stood, a rotten, blackened tooth, although the roof-line was left — slung like a hammock between chimney stacks. The power cut, confined to Erebus Street and the adjacent dock buildings, was ongoing, so most of the residents had been moved to the Kingdom Hall, a Jehovah’s Witness meeting place a quarter of a mile into town.
Behind him on the single bed lay Neil Judd, Bryan Judd’s younger brother. He’d demanded to speak to Shaw, insisting he had information crucial to the murder inquiry. Shaw had decided the remaining members of the Judd family should stay on Erebus Street that night — the emergency services had portable lighting, and he didn’t want them mixing with the rest of the residents until he’d had statements taken. Shaw’s wounds — some burns to his left hand, right leg, and a nail-gash on the right
The burnt-out house, as Liam Kennedy had told them, was owned by the church on the corner and run as a hostel. Both Aidan Holme and the man Shaw had rescued from the flames were at the Queen Victoria. Holme — accompanied by Kennedy — had been taken to intensive care, where he was fighting to overcome the shock of third-degree burns to his arms and neck. His friend was in better shape, but smoke inhalation would keep him in a hospital bed for forty-eight hours, maybe more. Andy Judd had been arrested at the scene. He’d spend the night in the cells at St James’s after a thorough medical examination. The fire brigade’s forensic unit had removed evidence from the house indicating that at least two home-made Molotov cocktails had been lobbed through the broken downstairs window, although the only thing Shaw had seen Andy Judd throw had been a half-brick. A team was taking statements at the Kingdom Hall — but Shaw knew the chances that any of them would incriminate Andy Judd for the arson attack were slight.
Ally Judd had been visited by the parish priest — Father Martin — then given a sedative and was asleep in her house, next door to the launderette, an officer from family liaison at the bedside. It was nearly midnight and Shaw had wanted to go home, grab some sleep, so that he’d be alert and prepared for the murder inquiry’s first full day. Overnight Paul Twine, a keen, graduate-entry DC, would man the inquiry phone lines at the incident room Valentine had set up on Level One at the hospital, and keep a watching brief on the injured. Shaw had been
So sleep would have to wait.
Shaw turned from the window and watched Neil Judd swig water from a bottle, sitting propped up on pillows on his bed. The bedsit was directly above the launderette, the kitchen shared with his father, a widower, who had a bedroom next to his son’s. Neil’s room was cluttered with teenage paraphernalia — neatly stacked magazines, CDs, DVDs. And the technology to go with it: an iPod and matching sound system, DVD player, a pair of cool dark Wharfedale speakers, a laptop.
All of which was in sharp contrast to the bare utility of the little shared kitchen, the rusted paraffin heaters in each of the rooms, the bare floorboards. The flat smelt of cheap talc, aftershave, and laundered clothes. Andy’s
