The Burning Tree

Voyeurism

Inspector Frank Vine stood with his back to the burned out van, surveying the crowd. He shook his head in disgust. There must be close on a hundred people milling around. Craning their necks to get a glimpse of something tasty. Nearly midnight and all the pubs were empty, nothing short of bloody remarkable. He turned to face his immaculately dressed Sergeant. “This is an utter disgrace, Edwards. You know? An utter disgrace. Can you see those?” He pointed at the outstretched arms holding mobile phones.

Ten kilowatt halogens had been set on twenty foot tripods, an inadequate makeshift barrier had been erected with blue and white plastic tape, and a handful of officers were trying to hold back the hordes of curious, alcohol fuelled spectators.

“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?”

“I think I do, sir.”

“That’s twenty first century technology for you. I’ll bet those appalling images will have been uploaded onto a hundred different web-sites before we’ve even managed to identify those poor bastards in the van. At least someone thought to ring the emergency services first.”

He snapped his head left and right, hoping to see someone, something, he could make an example of. His shoulder length, grey hair flew from one side to the other of his crumpled, beige jacket. His steel-blue, piercing eyes suddenly locked onto a man with an elaborate-looking video camera; external microphone, the lot.

“I’m not having that.”

Frank strode across the car park. Behind him firemen were putting out the last of the small fires, making sure the petrol tank was safe. Officers holding back the crowd turned around nervously, instinctively knowing that something bad was happening behind them. Some of the crowd, upon seeing Frank’s expression, started to fall back. But not the man with the video camera. He kept his arms steady and the machine focused on the gutted remains of the van. Only when Frank’s arm reached across the barrier and grabbed the shoulder strap of his camera did he realise anything was wrong. Frank twisted it in his fist and pulled hard.

“I want a word with you!” Frank spat, pulling the man towards him, breaking the tape and putting two other officers temporarily off balance. “Apart from being unbelievably sick,” he carried on, “what you’re displaying is grossly bad mannered. Edwards!” he shouted, pushing the bewildered looking man across the tar-mac, “take this piece of human garbage away and charge him.”

“What with, sir?”

“Anything that will keep him in a cell overnight. Get him out of my sight and take his camera off him.”

Edwards marched the man around the side of the building towards the bus stop where he’d parked his big, white Peugeot less than half an hour before.

Frank went back over to the rear of the Bedford van rubbing his fingers into the stubble on his chin. He looked in at the four crisp, blackened corpses. The halogens had been moved nearer and a tarpaulin was being erected to shield the scene from onlookers.

What was it that made stuff like this attractive to people nowadays? He’d been around, seen people. The first fifteen years of his working life had been spent as a maintenance telephone engineer with the GPO. He’d worked in some of the roughest places in the city but people had always seemed decent. And the last twenty years, in the force, sure, there’d been the sickos, just like whoever had done this tonight, but the rest of the public used to be outraged by such acts, not attracted. People were just so much more ghoulish nowadays. Getting too bloody old, he concluded. Still, something was going wrong. The things in the back of that van were not attractions, they were an offence against all things that were good, and the smell…

“Should be okay to have a poke around soon, sir,” said a firefighter over to his right.

“What…?” Frank turned and saw it was the fire chief speaking to him.

“Should be safe to get closer now. Tank’s empty, all the fires’re out, nothing else around that might be combustible. No nasty surprises. Careful around any heavy lumps of metal though, the chassis, engine block, stuff like that. Stays hot for a long time.”

“Yeah, sure, thanks,” Frank said, still distracted. He wouldn’t be needing Dan Williams, the pathologist, to tell him that they were four kids; two boys, two girls, but he would need Dan and all the skills he’d acquired over his own thirty or so years picking over the remains of dead bodies to identify them. From where he stood, six, seven feet away, he could see that even their teeth had been burned in the sockets. He doubted that the crematorium could do a better job. Four kids, all their life in front of them, destroyed, stopped, dead. Maybe he was getting old? Too soft for the job?

“It was those three extra cans of petrol that made it worse.” The fire chief was still at his side. “Normally, a tank goes up, big flash, then everything settles down to a slow burn. This was like an inferno. They didn’t stand a chance.”

“They had every chance, if we didn’t have bastards like whoever did this walking the streets.”

“Well, I suppose, once the forensic people have done their bit you’ll have more to go on.”

“I don’t need some over qualified SOCO team to explain a twisted petrol pipe and a charred rag,” said Frank, pointing to the ground about six feet away from the van where the evidence lay. “Ah, Edwards!” he said, turning around, “what can you tell me about our friend with the camera?”

“Just a bit of a creep, sir. I took his details. He had plenty of convincing ID. He’d been taping a band across the road at The Court Jester. Told him what he was, cautioned him and let him go home.”

“Good man, don’t want any of those nasty wrongful arrest problems following us around. What about the camera?”

“Told him it was evidence. Gave him a receipt. Camera’s in the boot of my car. I said we’ll contact him to arrange its return.”

“Excellent. And thanks. I was seriously thinking of smashing the thing to pieces.”

Edwards smoothed his permanently tidy, blonde hair and straightened his constantly neat, grey suit. “The crowds are almost dispersed, sir. A few more men arrived while I was giving young Spielberg a dressing down. The whole of the car park will be taped off, not just the area around the van.” Edwards nodded his head in the direction of the bodies, screwed his face up in distaste. “Any ideas yet, sir?”

“Well, other than the fact that it was an opportunistic murder; one male perpetrator – short; he waited around to watch the result of his actions but panicked at the last moment and headed uphill, through those gardens, away from the shopping area – no, nothing.”

“How can you…?”

“Elementary, my dear Edwards. I deduced it. Nothing spooky. Come with me.”

Frank led his Sergeant around the now secured tarpaulin screen and across the car park. There were very few people left watching, and those that were, from a distance. Frank walked over to the big, red diesel storage tank in the corner. “See here,” he said, shining his torch on the raised, brick platform. “Oily prints from trainers. All the same pattern. Common enough, I suppose, but it rained this afternoon and these are clear, not smudged. And there are a lot of them. Look, right back there. Some time was spent here, and in several different positions. The same prints are on the low wall at the side of the van. Whoever did this, hid here, checked the van out, then, after he’d torched the vehicle, came back to watch. Too many prints for it to have been a quick operation. Whoever made these marks shuffled about a lot. Over there,” he said, pointing around the other side of the tank, “is a torn cloth. Obviously used for wiping spillages when the tank’s filled. I’ll bet it matches with the remnants of cloth in the blasted petrol pipe, therefore, he didn’t bring it with him – opportunity. Over here,” he walked a few feet towards a shallow, grassed slope that led up to the adjacent gardens, “more prints. Nothing we can do with them though; too messed up in the muddy bank. But someone went up here in a hurry, in a panic, recently, and forced their way through the hedge.” Frank made his own way up the bank, away from the footprints he’d just shown Edwards and shone his torch at the hawthorn. “See,” he said, “twigs snapped, branches bent back. This is the way he got out, I’m sure. No-one would risk walking back down towards the pubs and the lights of the main road after doing a thing like this, they’d want darkness, obscurity. He headed uphill, almost certainly. When the Scene of Crime Officer and his or her team get here, I’ll get them to bag any fibres they find in the hedge. Okay?” he said, jumping back down to the tar-mac. “Not that difficult is it?”

Edwards looked from the van to the diesel tank, to the hedge and back to the van. “Alright,” he said, “let me get this straight. He hid behind the tank, on his own, got out this way, obviously it’s murder, but what about him being short and male?”

“The tank isn’t big enough to hide a large person. Someone your size, over six foot, would have to hide somewhere else.”

“Male?”

“Girls don’t blow up vans with kids in them for fun, Edwards. Didn’t you listen in any of your statistics lectures?” Frank turned and headed back towards the Bedford van where Dan Williams was peering in at the bodies.

Edwards followed, wondering how the colleges thought they could teach stuff like that. The force was losing men like his boss and replacing them with overzealous, overambitious, yes men. He had a bloody good degree himself, but, well… he’d learned more in the short time he’d worked with Frank Vine than he had from all the others in the force put together.

“Dan!” Frank said, slapping the cigar chomping pathologist on the back. “How’re you keeping?”

“Oh, you know, keeping fit, following a strict diet.” He patted his huge belly, barely contained by a grease-stained white shirt, as he blew blue smoke into the night. He nodded towards the inside of the van. “Nasty. Just kids by the look.”

“I’m trying not to,” said Frank.

“Wish I had that option.” He leaned farther in, being careful not to touch anything before the SOCO team arrived.

All four bodies had become huddled together in the centre of the van in one, charred, black mass. Without hair or clothing it was difficult to separate one body from another. Arms and legs stuck out at bizarre angles giving the illusion of a huge, crispy, black spider. The odd pile of pure white foam that had not blown away in the breeze increased the contrast, emphasising the deep charcoal colour of the seared flesh, the smell of which hung in the air like overcooked pork on a paraffin fuelled barbecue.

“It must have been damned hot in there,” Dan said. “Look at the bodies. They look almost fused together.”

Edwards turned away, not quite stifling an unexpected dry heave.

“It can mess with your appetite if you’re not careful,” said the pathologist, peering even closer.

“It’s a small wonder you can eat anything, Dan,” said Frank.

Dan turned his back on the horrific sight and smiled at Frank and the Sergeant. “I have quite a serious eating disorder, you know? Amnesiacal Bulimia. I binge about three times a day but forget to throw up. Ha ha!”

Just then a tall, blonde woman and three men carrying small cases marched into the car park. Janet Logan, the Scene of Crime Officer and her team. “Right then, Dan. That’s me done around here. I don’t always see eye to eye with these guys so I’ll get out of the way. I’ve enough to be going on with anyway. Get them to take a good look at that diesel tank and the hedge back there if you can. Look forward to your preliminary report. Tomorrow morning?”

“In your dreams, Inspector. Though I doubt I’ll find anything startling. I think it’s safe to say they burned to death.”

“I never take anything for granted, Dan. See you later. Come on, Edwards,” Frank said, striding past men and women in white boiler suits, “take me home. I fancy a couple of beers before I get my head down. Day off tomorrow. You got any decent CD’s in your car?”

Edwards thought for a second. “Songs from the Shows”, and, I might have some more modern stuff, Siobhan used the car today. Maybe Daniel Bedingfield.”

“Jesus, Edwards! You’re a lost cause, do you know?” Frank glanced at his watch. “Peelies still on, we’ll listen to him. Remind me, when you drop me off, I’ll lend you a White Stripes album. Do yourself a favour and give it a listen.” Frank smoothed his hair, dragging a few wisps back that had stuck to the stubble on his face, and waited by the passenger door of Edwards’ white Peugeot.Inspector Frank Vine stood with his back to the burned out van, surveying the crowd. He shook his head in disgust. There must be close on a hundred people milling around. Craning their necks to get a glimpse of something tasty. Nearly midnight and all the pubs were empty, nothing short of bloody remarkable. He turned to face his immaculately dressed Sergeant. “This is an utter disgrace, Edwards. You know? An utter disgrace. Can you see those?” He pointed at the outstretched arms holding tiny, plastic mobile phones.

“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?”

“I think I do, sir.”

“That’s twenty first century technology for you. I’ll bet those sad little grainy images will have been uploaded onto a hundred different web-sites before we’ve even managed to identify those poor bastards in the van. At least someone thought to ring the emergency services first.”