When I arrived I found him serving a customer. I was certain he was the man from the footage and stopped to smell the flowers until we were alone. I explained that he may have been a witness to a criminal act on Oxford Road, two days previously, and that I’d noticed his cycle helmet had a camera. He was thrilled to help me, reeling off a series of offences and violations he’d caught on film.
‘It’s really just one thing in particular,’ I said. ‘I can give you the time and date?’ When I did he remembered the incident immediately, as he’d stayed late that night doing the books. He was able to plug the GoPro into his work computer and we scrolled through to the corresponding time-stamp. He’d turned his head, and therefore the camera, towards the dustbin just before the blaze started.
‘Guy was being really weird,’ he said.
I watched the video with rising disbelief.
‘Light changed,’ he went on. ‘Sorry I didn’t get a good look at him. Is it any help? Detective?’
‘Play it again,’ I said.
He clicked back and we watched for a second time.
The man approached the dustbin carrying a plastic bag. He kept his head down so that no one passing would see his face. He removed a large object from the bag, which seemed to be wet cloth wrapped around something else, and dropped it into the bin. He struck a match and began to turn away. As he did so, his face looked directly at the cyclist for a split second.
I knew the man.
‘If I give you an email address, would you be able to send me that file?’
‘Course,’ he smiled. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost …’
I put my card on the counter, walked out of the shop and turned left, down Oxford Road, towards the burned-out dustbin. It was just a few hundred feet away from the florist’s but I had to see it, and I wondered if it would still be there when I arrived. If the council would have removed it already as they had the previous two. I was frustrated at the pace of the people in front of me, beaten into listlessness by the heat, and found myself walking around them, then jogging, then running. I ran the times through my head. The man had set the fire a little after eleven. The other two had also occurred in the late evening, either shortly before or after midnight. When I arrived, I was relieved to see that the dustbin hadn’t been destroyed or removed, but remained exactly where it had been. A melted cylinder of plastic which had folded in on itself.
I called SOCO and asked to speak to the Chief Scene of Crime Officer.
‘Yes,’ she said. It sounded like she was doing three things at once.
‘The dustbin fires along Oxford Road …’
‘If you’re about to ask me what I think you’re about to ask me, then no, we didn’t. Neither you nor Detective Inspector Sutcliffe marked the crime scenes for collection, and nothing about them stuck out to me, either.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘But we need to trace the two dustbins that have been removed and we need SOCO on scene for the third.’
‘Didn’t this happen days ago? What could be of interest there now?’
‘Don’t know yet,’ I said, hanging up. I dialled Sutty with shaking fingers and got him on the third try.
‘Yeurgh.’
‘I know who set the dustbin fires.’
‘Wow,’ he said, leaking boredom. ‘Maybe we’ll meet the prime minister.’
‘It was the smiling man.’
That got his attention.
5
While I waited, I spoke to the fire brigade shift manager from four nights ago. The third dustbin fire had been put out comparatively quickly because the call went in immediately after it was lit. I had a flash that, for some reason, the smiling man had called the authorities himself, that we’d have a record of his phone number, maybe even his voice, but the shift manager clarified.
‘Some kids over the road were meeting up for their mate’s midnight vigil, that lad who got knocked down. They called it in.’
‘Of course …’
‘I hope you crucify the prick who lit it. We had a house fire on the other side of town. Had to split the team.’
I saw Sutty striding towards me. ‘Don’t worry, he got what was coming to him.’
I ended the call.
‘Well, here we are,’ he said, examining the dustbin, trying to prise it open.
‘I’ve got SOCO on the way.’
‘Pretty quick work.’ He gave up on the bin and eyed me suspiciously. ‘How d’ya know it’s him?’
‘He’s on camera.’
‘Not on the CCTV I’ve seen …’
‘I traced a passing cyclist who had a camera on his helmet.’
‘A useful cyclist? This case is getting fucking weird.’ He eyed me. ‘What do you think’s in there?’
‘Whatever he dropped looked like fabric, wrapped around something else.’
‘Means those last two bins were probably the same thing …’
‘I’ve got SOCO tracing them now. Chances are they’re in a landfill somewhere but they might still be on the back of a van. Both of them burned for longer than this one, though.’
‘Hm,’ he said, and we lapsed into an uneasy silence. SOCO arrived quickly. The team had still been working at the site of the canal body-dump. They didn’t thank us for diverting them from a murder scene to an act of vandalism, but Sutty’s look of reproach effectively got them to work. I watched as they cut apart the melted, plastic shell of the dustbin, lifting it away from the steel mesh canister on the inside. It smelt like stale ash.
‘Take a look at this,’ said the Scene of Crime Officer, with awe in her voice. Sutty and I approached the can and looked down. It was filled with burned, shrivelled and soaking rubbish.
‘Good one,’ said Sutty.
‘This is what you called us away from Albion Street for?’
‘Not to hear the sound of your voice, darling. Bag it up.’
The SOCO stared at Sutty for a second, decided it wasn’t worth the fight and shrugged. She and her partner began removing items, burnt cans, blistered crisp packets and shrivelled fast food wrappers, placing them in evidence bags. Sutty and I walked a little further away from them.
‘It was him,’ I said. Sutty watched me closely. ‘It was.’
‘Just funny …’
‘What is?’
‘Parrs throws you off Smiley Face and on to the bins, and you manage to link them in the space of a few hours.’
‘I’ve been following up on this for days, and if they’re linked, they’re linked. What can I say?’
‘I just hope you’ve got the tape to prove it. Stromer’s tight with SOCO. When she hears you’ve got them taking out the trash, it’ll be in Parrs’ ear faster than a finger in the fucking dyke.’ We were standing beyond hearing distance of the other officers and after the day I’d had, being removed from the case, being told to resign, having nameless threats made against me, I thought I didn’t have much to lose.
I lowered my voice and looked him in the eye. ‘Do you know something, Peter?’
He stood up to full height. ‘What?’
‘It’s a shame that bleach you bathe in only ever touches your skin. Do us all a favour and neck a bottle of the stuff next time.’ I started to walk away but he grabbed my arm. I could feel his fingers digging into the bone. When I looked at him he was smiling, his eyes aglow, and I knew I’d given him what he wanted.
‘There it is,’ he hissed. ‘Just keep on thinking your sack’s inseparable from your body, gorgeous. Know why we’re still in a job? Cus one day they’ll need someone to take a fall. Which of us d’ya think it’ll be?’ He laughed. ‘We both know who Stromer’d choose, don’t we?’
‘I don’t care what her opinion of me is. Now get your fucking hand off my arm.’ He didn’t move it. ‘I’ve got less to lose from a fistfight in public than you have, Sutty.’ He must have seen that I meant it, because he smiled again, let go of my arm and backed off.
‘Detectives,’ said the SOCO. We both turned. She was holding an evidence bag containing two fat, singed wads of cash. We exchanged a look and walked back to the dustbin. With the trash removed, the fabric object that our man had dropped inside was visible. It had simply been a blanket, mostly burned away now, wrapped around wads of cash.
‘One man’s rubbish,’ said Sutty.
No one laughed.
6