LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 2

      DS Adrian Miles held his hand out to his partner DS Imogen Grey to help her over the railway sleeper, his other hand lighting up the wet ground with the torch app on his mobile phone. Imogen tutted and stepped over the sleeper without assistance, trudging off ahead. They walked along the side of the tracks until they got to the burnt-out signal box which was illuminated by the lights on the fire truck. There was no more smoke now; it was a dripping carcass of a building.

      ‘You look nice, Grey,’ Adrian said as his torch beam hit Imogen’s face. He instinctively stepped out of her reach as he complimented her. She had her hair up and lipstick on; tonight must have been a special occasion. He by contrast had been lying on his sofa watching old episodes of Star Trek when they got the call.

      ‘I was out to dinner.’

      ‘Wow, that sounds so grown-up.’

      ‘Shut up, Miley.’

      The fact was, it was good to see Imogen like this. Her mother had not long woken from a coma and, within a few weeks, had left to go on a ‘restful’ holiday, leaving Imogen with only guilt that she hadn’t protected her, that the attack on her towards the end of their last police case was somehow Imogen’s fault. She was often distracted by it at work, but Adrian knew better than to mention it, he had to trust that she would know she could confide in him if she needed to.

      ‘Is Dean all right? Behaving himself?’ Adrian asked, checking there were no uniformed officers listening in. Despite all of Adrian’s predictions to the contrary, Imogen and Dean were still together. Even with Dean’s sketchy history, something he’d apparently assured Imogen was in the past, they had managed to make it work. It wasn’t illegal to date an ex-con but it certainly wasn’t looked on favourably. At some point, they would have to declare it, which would mean even more scrutiny from the higher-ups, something Adrian could do without.

      ‘He’s good.’ She looked down and smiled. ‘It’s his birthday, so we went out for a curry.’

      ‘Wise not to subject him to too much of your cooking if you want to keep him around.’

      ‘It’s not my fault that mushroom risotto got burned,’ she protested.

      ‘I was impressed, I didn’t know you could burn anything in a microwave, let alone soggy rice.’

      A firefighter walked over to them, cutting through the darkness of the night.

      ‘Looks pretty serious,’ Adrian said. The firefighter nodded.

      The train station manager was approaching down from the platform with a quickened pace; he had probably been dragged in from home as well.

      ‘Officers,’ he said, nodding at them both.

      ‘Follow me,’ the firefighter said, beckoning them towards the ruined signal box. They got to the foot of the building; the wooden staircase was completely gone, as was the entire top floor.

      ‘Deliberate?’ Adrian asked, pulling out his notebook.

      ‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with kids and homeless people breaking into this one in the past,’ the station manager offered. ‘Until the investigation is complete we can’t say for sure, but it definitely looks that way. Even though this is old wood it’s a rainy night, and from the calls we got, it escalated to disproportionate levels for what we would expect from a building like this. There does seem to be some evidence of accelerant.’

      ‘Do you think it’s arson then?’ Adrian asked him.

      ‘I’m leaning that way. The point of origin seems to be a waste paper bin, but we’ll need to check that out further.’

      ‘Do you have any CCTV footage?’ Imogen turned to the station manager.

      ‘We do. My colleague is just retrieving it for you now. It’s a poorly lit area and with the terrible weather the visibility will be even crappier, not to mention the fact that it was actually night when whoever it was came out. It’s possible that when the arsonist was leaving some of the station lights or the lights on the bridge illuminated the area a little better though.’

      ‘Did they not tell you the main reason you’re here?’ the firefighter asked, looking between them curiously.

      ‘What do you mean?’ Adrian asked.

      ‘We found a body.’

      Imogen and Adrian looked at each other.

      ‘You probably should have led with that,’ Imogen said crossly.

      ‘The fire started in the upstairs part of the building but the body was in the room with the mechanics on the ground floor. Probably male, possibly homeless, but that’s really a wild guess as the body is so badly damaged. It’s most likely he snuck in here for a kip or something. They come into the bottom of the building because there are no windows. It happens all the time. We’ll know more when the investigators have done a proper search and you get your pathologist down to the site to have a look before the body is moved.’

      They made their way forwards, the firefighter handed them hard hats although it seemed unnecessary as there was nothing above them anymore, the ceiling and roof had been completely burnt through. Adrian started picking through the rubble of the structure. The floor was burned, the machinery charred black and as their eyes adjusted, they could make out a human-being-shaped pile of debris. The firefighter shone a light at the ground.

      The station manager gagged and crumpled forwards at the sight of the body. Imogen looked at Adrian who gave a nod.

      ‘Show me the CCTV,’ Imogen said to the station manager before following him back out towards the platform, leaving Adrian to deal with the body.

      Adrian bent down and looked at the ground. The body was contorted, almost in a foetal position, crisp and delicate, with obvious fracture points where the entire floor had caved in on top of it, smashing the skull to smithereens. What was previously the floor now lay around the body in charred splinters, the wood had been so dry it had almost entirely burnt away. He shone his torch upwards to see the smouldering hole where the fire had torn through the roof and exposed the inky sky overhead. Back on the ground he noticed debris, rat droppings, chunks of wet, singed wood. It was like staring at a black and white TV, everything in monochrome, various shades of grey. Dark wet ash, light dry ash, everything covered in some variant of grey dust. Even the red-brick walls were blackened with soot.

      The crime scene technicians approached and Adrian took a couple of markers, the bright yellow practically glowing against the dirge of this tiny burnt-out structure. He focussed on the shape of the body, the hands shrivelled into claws. Adrian shuddered at the thought of the man, hiding in here from the cold when the fire broke out.

      ‘How long does it take for a body to get like that?’ Adrian asked the crime scene technician once he’d checked that Imogen had taken the station manager a safe distance away.

      ‘It really depends on how hot it got in here. It’s a small space and fairly well insulated despite the broken glass upstairs. There’s a lot of metal in here too, which would have added to the intensity of the heat. I spoke to one of the firefighters and he said it was at least forty-five minutes before they made it down here onto the tracks safely. It’s out of view, and although there aren’t many trains at this time of night, a lot of calls had to be made before they could access the building. It’s a tricky spot to get to as well. And who knows how long it was burning before anyone noticed, the CCTV footage should be able to tell you more.’

      ‘Will we be able to get DNA from the body?’ Adrian had taken out his notebook and was scribbling as the technician talked.

      ‘I

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