Soul Murder. Daniel Blake

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       10:04 p.m.

      From the point of view of a homicide detective, fire scenes are among the most difficult of all to work. What fire doesn’t destroy, it damages; and what it damages, the firefighters tend to destroy in their efforts to extinguish the blaze. None of this bodes well for the preservation of evidence. Only bomb sites boast more destruction and disorder.

      The fire department had been on the scene within four minutes of first being called, when one of Redwine’s neighbors had smelt burning, looked out of the window, and seen large black clouds billowing from Redwine’s apartment. The firemen had evacuated the entire apartment block and set to putting the fire out.

      It had taken them two and a half hours, but they’d managed it, and had kept it contained to the apartment of origin, more or less. There were scorch marks in the apartment above and those to either side, but nothing worse than that, and no serious structural damage, except to Redwine’s apartment itself.

      The senior fire officer on site having declared the building safe, Patrese and Beradino pulled on crime-scene overalls, shoe covers and latex gloves, in that order, and entered Redwine’s apartment.

      They’d been called in the moment the firefighters had discovered both the body – presumed to be Redwine’s, though obviously not proved as such yet – and the demarcation line on the carpet next to him.

      A demarcation line, in fire terms, marks the boundary between where a surface – in this case, the carpet – has burnt and where it hasn’t. More often than not, it indicates the use of a liquid accelerant, which in turn means the fire was started deliberately.

      And since very few people choose to start a fire and then hang around inside a burning apartment – suicide by self-immolation is extremely rare – it seemed likely that someone other than Redwine, someone long since gone, had been responsible for both the fire and Redwine’s death.

      This left two possibilities. Either the arsonist had killed Redwine and then set the fire to cover his tracks; or it had been the fire itself that had killed Redwine.

      The crime-scene photographer was already there. Patrese and Beradino watched as he fired off round after round of shots, changing lenses and films with practiced ease.

      In close for the serious detail, magnifying things a few millimeters across up to the size of a normal print; mid-range images which concentrated on specific objects; and wide-angle images capturing as much of the room as possible.

      He was using both black-and-white and color films. Color is usually better, but gruesome photos are best shown to squeamish juries in monochrome.

      Beradino glanced across at Patrese, who read in the furrow of the older man’s brow exactly what it meant; concern, that all this would scald Patrese’s memories. It was barely three weeks since his parents had perished in a freeway fireball.

      ‘I’m OK,’ Patrese said.

      They looked round what was left of the room. It was rectangular, though not by much; fourteen feet by seventeen, at a guess.

      At either end of the longer side were the windows and a pass-through to the kitchen. The shorter side was bounded by walls, one exterior and one interior.

      There were two sofas; a two-seater beneath a window, and a three-seater up against the exterior wall. In the corner between them sat a low, small table, and in the nearest corner to that, where the windows met the interior wall, was a plasma TV.

      All of them burnt to the edge of recognition, as was Redwine’s body.

      His skin was cracked and patched charred black and bright red, splashed with different colors where his clothes had melted on to him. He was hunched like a prizefighter, arms drawn up in front of him and legs bent at the knee.

      This in itself proved nothing, they knew. The position was caused by muscles contracting in response to the heat of the fire, and could not indicate by itself whether the victim had been alive or dead when the fire was set.

      But the color of the body could do so.

      Reddening of the skin, and blistering, tend to take place on a victim who was still breathing rather than one who wasn’t.

      Beradino crouched down by the body and took a small dictaphone from his pocket. He was gospel strict about making contemporaneous notes. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t rely on remembering everything when it came to writing things up a couple of hours later back at the station; it was also that making notes forced the investigator to slow down, think, take his time.

      After all, the victim wasn’t going anywhere.

      Beradino looked closely at what had once been Redwine’s face.

      He didn’t think about what Redwine might have looked like in life, as that was no longer relevant. If he thought of anything, it was of over-barbecued meat. The less emotive and more commonplace he could make it seem, the better.

      Twenty-five years on the homicide squad hadn’t hardened him to things, not really. It had merely made him better at coping with them.

      There.

      ‘Around the nostrils,’ he said into the dictaphone. ‘Beneath the burn marks. Smoke stains, clearly visible.’

      The pathologist would doubtless find blackened lungs when he came to do the autopsy, which would confirm it; but for now, Beradino had more than enough to be going on with.

      Smoke stains meant inhalation. It was this which had almost certainly killed Redwine – breathing in smoke finishes people off before burning flesh does – but it didn’t alter the chronology of what had happened, or the central conclusion.

      Michael Redwine had been alive when the fire had been set, and he’d been burned to death.