14. The Van

DI Rosen returns to Dowding House and DS Vega follows a potential lead to its sad conclusion.

14

Bishop wasn’t about to let her drive back to Dowding House but he had relented after she’d eaten a sandwich in front of him in the cafeteria and washed it down with a sweet cup of tea. ‘I skipped breakfast,’ she told him. ‘That’s all. My blood sugar’s low.’

It was a half-truth. She had made herself porridge that morning with good intentions but she hadn’t been able to keep it down. Bishop didn’t look like he believed her but he didn’t have enough room in his head for any new worries and so he didn’t push the matter.

The rain held off until Rosen was back in Tunbridge Wells where it came down like a slew of nails. She sat in her car a little longer, waiting for the last track on her CD to play out, before making a dash for the stairs with her jacket pulled over her head. DC Khan was stood in the recess by the rear doors trying to light his cigarette.  

‘What’s up with Carmichael?’ he asked. Rosen shook her head, stepping inside and shrugging off her sodden coat.

‘I don’t know. Why do you ask?’

‘He’s been in a c**t mood all day,’ Khan said with his cigarette still pinched between his lips as he continued to click his lighter. ‘Just wondered if you’d had a go at him or something.’

‘You’re never going to get that lit, Zaid, just come inside,’ Rosen snapped. She was desperate for a smoke herself. It was four o’clock now, she should be at her appointment and she was restless with anxiety. ‘Where’s Carmichael?’

‘Out chasing up a potential witness.’

‘And Vega?’

‘In the MIS,’ Khan said, conceding defeat and chucking his damp cigarette, sweeping his palm over his closely-shaved scalp and chasing the rain off it as he stepped back inside. ‘Oh, you know that number Deano called, from outside the sports centre?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s the SIM card. The one that Carmichael found at the Stowe house? That’s who Deano was calling. We managed to pull a partial print from it and we’re pretty certain it’s the older brother’s.’

‘Great work. Have we managed to get anything else off the card?’

‘A couple of numbers, most of them dead now. We’re trying to recover some more. If we could find what phone the card came from there might be more information saved in the internal memory: people always forget about the internal memory.’

‘Good stuff,’ Rosen said distractedly as she jogged up the stairs to the MIS.

Vega was sat at his desk and Rosen watched him unobserved for a moment. His heavy brow was lowered in thought, deepening the shadows under his eyes. His dusky skin was pale and blotchy with poor diet and lack of sleep, and his chin was tucked into his chest which exaggerated his recent weight gain. Even the two days’ growth of stubble couldn’t conceal that second chin.

Still, he did something to her. He had some effect on her that was beyond reason. He was an attractive man, despite his recent deterioration, but it wasn’t even that.

He reminded her of that damn lime tree, from whose boughs she had swung with such giddy enjoyment despite the height, despite her mother’s cautions. She had seen the world from a different angle among its leaves. She had grieved for it like a lost friend, and now she was grieving Vega.

 Rosen cleared her throat and crossed the room, tapping him on his shoulder. He glanced up and in his clear grey eyes, violet from the right angle, she saw a flicker of resentment.

‘Is that the CCTV of Deano?’

‘Yeah. Just checking it again,’ Vega said. In the grainy footage from the sports centre Deano paced, agitated, his phone pressed to his ear. He occasionally disappeared behind the trunk of an enormous silver fir and soon he was on his bike and cycling out of view.

‘He was supposed to be meeting friends but none of them showed. Most of the parents weren’t happy for them to socialise with the Stowes after Sam’s fraud was exposed.’

‘Some friends.’

‘Oh they’ve all got nice things to say about him now,’ Vega said drily. ‘They’ve all managed to spew out sentimental, poorly spelt tributes to him on his f*****g Facebook page.’ He massaged his temples, tired and fed up. ‘Sorry. Did you want something?’

‘I need to hear your side of this Carmichael debacle.’

‘A debacle now, is it?’ Vega chuckled. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Dar. I just don’t like the lad. He’s got a bad attitude.’

‘How so?’

‘Where do I start? He’s got no drive. He’s got no eye for detail. He can’t work autonomously, he can’t take the initiative. You have to chase him up on everything and during an enquiry like this we just don’t have the time. We need to be able to trust the team to do the job, and I just don’t trust him. Simple as.’

‘He found that SIM card. That was something. Even the SOCOs missed it.’

Vega sucked his teeth and shut off his monitor. ‘Yeah.’

‘Unless you want to tell me otherwise?’

Vega reached for his coat and Rosen took a step back.

‘If you don’t give me anything to work with I can’t defend you, Rich…’

‘Good job I’m not asking you to then, isn’t it?’ he headed for the door and she sat in his still warm seat.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To chase up a potential lead. Is that all right with you, boss?’

Rosen sighed and span in his chair as he headed out of the MIS and shouldered past Khan who still looked like a drowned rat.

‘What is it with everyone today?’ Khan grumbled as he sat at his desk. ‘It’s like someone’s died.’

 

Vega would have missed the overgrown turn-off had it not been for the officer stood by the roadside. The police constable waved him over and directed him up the rutted length of dirt track. He parked behind the marked car on a boggy belt of grass and sat tight, waiting for the other man to catch him up before clambering out. At least the rain had abated, and the LED snowflake had disappeared from his car’s display.
     ‘DS Vega?’ 
     ‘Guilty as charged. You must be PC Walker.’
     ‘Yes, sir.’ The young man was slim and perhaps not yet thirty but he looked prematurely stern. He gestured that Vega should go ahead up the narrow stretch of road, bordered by trees the season had left bare. Vega stepped in a deep puddle disguised by leaves and cursed as he felt frigid water beginning to seep through his shoe and soak his sock. 
     ‘So can you talk me through it, Walker?’ 
     ‘I was first on scene, arriving just after 21:00 hours Wednesday night, shortly before the fire crew. The call came in from the care home you’ve just passed on the corner. They sent an orderly to investigate and it was him who called it in,’ Walker said, quickening his step to match the detective’s long, loping strides. ‘What makes you think this is linked to your murder enquiry?’
     ‘If I’m honest, this is a straw and I’m clutching at it. It might have naff all to do with my murder enquiry but it bears looking.’ Vega stopped at the line of blue and white police tape fluttering across a stubby wooden bridge which led into a field. There on the grass, looking like the scorched shell of some enormous insect, were the remains of a transit van. ‘Any information on the vehicle?’ 
     ‘It was reported as stolen from a builder’s yard in Ramsgate, Tuesday last. We did a search of the premises, reported it to Traffic, and gave the owner a crime number.’
     ‘No sighting of it until Wednesday night, when the orderly spotted it?’ 
     ‘No, sir. We managed to get the VIN number and identified it through that.’
    Vega nodded and circled the van. The original colour, whatever that had been, had peeled off and been incinerated. On the metal beneath were seared whorls of heat; the temperatures it had reached must have been intense. The tyres had melted and slipped from the rims and around the vehicle was a dark circle of cinders and baked earth.

As Vega peered closer the smell of accelerant seemed to get inside the very mucus of his nose and, although the last of the smoke had long since disappeared into the empty sky, he felt his eyes begin to smart. 
    He went around the back of the van where the doors were still locked shut but the glass of the rear windows had blown out. He held out his hand to the sergeant.
     ‘You got a torch?’ 
     ‘Of course.’ The constable handed it over and Vega cast its thin beam into the pitch interior. He caught sight of something and felt a tug of unexpected emotion. He both hoped and dreaded that the blighted object, more shadow than solid, was what he thought it might be. 
     ‘I’m going to need to get these doors open.’ He tugged on the frame, testing its give, and the van rocked on its rims. ‘Lend a hand?’ 
     The constable didn’t look keen. ‘Shouldn’t we wait on forensics if you think it might be connected?’
     ‘That’s the thing, Walker. It might be connected, it might not. That’s what I want to ascertain. So give me a hand here.’ Vega put more strength into his efforts and, deciding he could always lay blame on the higher rank, Walker took hold of the other door.

In a moment they opened them with a shriek of hinges and flurries of ash. Vega shone the torch back inside before stepping cautiously in. He moved closer to what he thought he had seen towards the back, reduced by the fire to a brittle husk that didn’t look robust enough to withstand the weight of a stare.

It was what he had suspected it to be. A bike. Possibly a BMX.
     ‘Is it what you’d wanted?’ Walker called from outside. Vega made the sign of the cross and considered his answer. 
     ‘I wouldn’t say “wanted” exactly.’ He crouched down, feeling the burnt-out floor beginning to collapse beneath him, and inspected a square lump of melted metal that he thought might be a portable petrol generator, although maybe it was his imagination lending shape to it like a Rorschach inkblot. He edged carefully back out of the van and joined Walker. ‘Best call forensics in. That’s as much as we can do here.’
     ‘So is it linked?’ Walker asked. ‘To your murder?’ 
     ‘I don’t know. But if I had to put money on it?’ Vega looked back at the bike. ‘Yeah, I’d say it is.’

Forensic Services were slow to respond, and nearly two hours later Vega was still waiting for them in the frozen field. He longed to cloister himself away in the warm interior of his car, but Walker was stood so stoically, so seemingly unaffected by the blasts of biting wind that it would have felt too much like defeat. Instead he pulled on his driving gloves and adjusted his stance. He caught Walker looking at his hands. 
     ‘What?’
     ‘Nothing, sir.’ There was a twitch of a smile around Walker’s lips. ‘Nice gloves.’
     Self-consciously, Vega tucked his hands back inside his jacket pockets.  Finally he heard the distant splash of vehicles ploughing up the track and plodded towards the gate to wave them in. As the forensics lot climbed out of their van, Vega seized the first of them by the shoulder. ‘Right. You’re the experts, so I’ll leave you to do your thing. Walker here will liaise with the Major Incident Team. Anything you need, you put to him and he’ll get in touch with me.’
     ‘Yes, sir.’

Casting one last look over the van and trying not to imagine the horrors it might have been witness to, Vega turned and trudged back across the field to his car.

Once inside he checked his phone. DCI Adrian Lytton, who was leading the investigation into the human remains found in the Hammersmith flyover, had called him six times and left two voice mails which Vega deleted without listening to. There was one more message on his answer phone, this time from Cherry.

‘Padre..?’ she said, voice wavering with uncertainty. ‘I think you should come home, when you can. There’s someone here and he says he needs to talk with you.’ In the background he heard a lower, masculine voice say something inaudible. ‘As soon as you can,’ Cherry said. ‘He says it’s urgent.’

 

Author's Note

All constructive criticism gratefully received.

(Sorry for the delay on this chapter, and many thanks again to anyone still reading! You make writing a less lonely venture, for which I am eternally appreciative.)

Reviews

[NoelHC]

I like the dialogue in this chapter, and how you build another layer on Rosen and Vega's past. Good to see Cherry make an appearance again, but of course, leave me hanging waiting for the next installment.

The only thing I noticed that I would consider changing was:
the temperatures it had reached must have been immense. (intense?)

[SLD Bailey]

Hmm. Yeah, think I agree with you there. Thanks as ever Noel :)

[W.k.kortas]

If writing isn't a lonely venture, what is?

Again, your feel for dialogue shines through here--I could visualize PC Walker quite clearly. I thought the paragraph where Rosen is describing Vega was just the least bit stilted--I'd work it on making it a bit more informal and conversational. The pacing is excellent, the eye for detail first-rate. Excellent stuff.

[SLD Bailey]

I agree with you about that paragraph and appreciate your honesty - the romantic aspects don't come naturally to me! Thanks for your kind words :)