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  BODY HEAT

  Doctor Hughes hunts a deadly arsonist in this murder mystery

  CANDY DENMAN

  Published by

  THE BOOK FOLKS

  London, 2020

  © Candy Denman

  Polite note to the reader

  This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents is appropriate.

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  We hope you enjoy the book.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

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  Prologue

  He was driving carefully, making sure he didn’t attract attention, although he hardly saw another car once he had left the town. He had driven this route several times in preparation, knew all the bends and dips, the houses and driveways, every potential threat.

  What he hadn’t accounted for was the excitement and tension of doing it for real and the effect of all that extra adrenalin. He thought he was driving exactly as he had in the practice runs, but in fact, he was driving considerably faster. A little too fast for a corner that came up sooner than he expected. He braked hard, and panicked as the rear wheels drifted and hit the grass verge. He overcorrected and the car lurched onto the wrong side of the road, throwing his passenger from side to side as he struggled to straighten up and regain control of the car. He was lucky the road ahead was empty.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and rested his head against the steering wheel, waiting for his heart rate to come down to something near normal. He couldn’t afford to have an accident. Not now. He took a deep breath to calm himself and then turned to check that she was all right. He had taken care to strap her in with the seat belt when he put her in the car, even though she wouldn’t sit up straight to help him. Couldn’t. She looked fine; slumped in her seat, her head lolling to one side, seemingly asleep, but then she mumbled something incoherent. He felt it was critical in tone. Bitch.

  “Sorry,” he said as he looked at her with disgust.

  She gave a little smile that could have been a grimace, or wind, and mumbled again.

  He thought it might have been: “S’okay.”

  That was better, he thought, more respectful. She looked as if she might be sick. He hoped not. He hated the smell of vomit, and he didn’t want her to spoil the moment. If she only knew what he had planned for her. He smiled to himself, feeling instantly better as he thought about what lay ahead, excitement building in his gut again. He started to drive, but more carefully this time. Slow and steady.

  At last he pulled into a deserted parking area. It was ideal – remote and surrounded by trees. He had chosen well. He opened his window and the fresh air seemed to wake her up a little. She blinked, trying to work out where she was, and then noticed her skirt had ridden up slightly leaving her lacy panties on show. She giggled. The whore.

  “Just getting a rug out of the boot,” he explained as he got out of the car. “Don’t want you getting cold.” He smiled to himself at the irony, then quickly checked she hadn’t noticed. But she was too busy pulling her skirt down, trying to make herself look respectable again, to worry about what he was doing.

  He hurried to get everything out of the boot. The folding bike was awkward to handle. It caught on the lip of the boot and he had to wrench it clear. He stopped, listening in case she realised what was going on. He heard her try and open her door. He needn’t have worried. In her befuddled state, it took her a while to realise that she couldn’t. She didn’t seem to understand why it wouldn’t open and kept trying. He smiled. He had plenty of time. He carried the bike to the edge of the trees and returned for the rest of his equipment.

  She stopped banging the door when she saw him return to the driver’s window.

  “Can’t seem to get out,” she said, her voice slurred with drink and drugs, “don’t feel well.”

  She started to climb towards the driver’s side, but her tight skirt made movement difficult and it took her a moment to understand what she had seen in his hand. A petrol can. She looked up at him, puzzled, just as he started to splash the liquid inside the car, and over her.

  “What the fuck?” she shouted, trying to shield herself from the petrol with her hands, suddenly sober.

  But it was a futile attempt to stop the inevitable, and he didn’t bother to answer her, just emptied the can and threw it behind him, towards the trees where he had left the bike. He took out a book of matches, tearing one off, lighting it and then using this match to light the rest of them. He threw the flaming match book into the car quickly before it burnt his hand, grabbing the petrol can as he scurried back. Fast. He didn’t want to get caught out by being too close, but he didn’t want to move too far either, he wanted to see. He wanted to see her burn. He wanted to see her punished for her sins.

  It took a moment for her to realise what had happened. What was happening. The first flames danced, prettily, and she tried to pat them, put them out with her petrol-soaked hands. He almost laughed out loud as she waved her burning hands in the air, hoping the wind would douse the flames. Panicking now, she tried her door again and then started to climb across to the driver’s side, through the flames. She was shouting something, but he couldn’t hear her over the roar in his ears. Was it the roar of the fire taking hold or excitement? He thought she might have been shouting “help”, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Her hair was on fire now, her carefully styled and coloured hair was crackling and burning, leaving nothing but a blackened, blistered scalp, and she hadn’t even got across to the driver’s side yet. There was a sudden whoosh as the back windows blew out. Despite moving away from the car fast, he felt the rush of hot air on his face, not enough to burn or scald him, but a warning that he was too close. He would remember that in future, when he did this again. It was a shame, but he needed to keep his distance. He wouldn’t want to have to explain away any injuries later.

  As he backed away from the car, dragging the bike and picking up the discarded petrol can, he watched as her attempts to escape waned. He unfolded the bike and put the can in a plastic bag and stowed it safely in the back pannier. Her hands, already like claws, were still moving in a futile attempt to put the flames out, a scream frozen on her open mouth, her skin charring before her vaporizing eyeballs. And then she stopped. There was a pause as the fire really took hold, followed by an explosion as the petrol tank blew. Not as dramatic as in the films, but satisfying all the same. Was she dead before the explosion? He would never know, but he hoped not. He took one last look to make sure he had left nothing behind before pedalling away, burning leaves floating down around him. He smiled at a job well done.

  Chapter 1

  It was early on a Sunday morning and Callie was wishing it would rain. What she wanted was a deep, clea
nsing downpour, to wash away the terrible, overpowering smell of burnt flesh, despite knowing that it would also destroy any evidence. The awful odour emanating from the car in front of her was making her heave, even with the liberal dose of vapour rub she had applied just inside and under her nose and she knew the smell would remain with her for hours if not days, as particulates would be lodged in her fine nasal hairs.

  Dr Callie Hughes, part-time GP, part-time forensic physician for the Hastings police, had been called out to pronounce death and confirm that it was unlikely to be due to natural causes. That was going to be the easy part: whatever the cause – suicide, accident or murder – this death would need a full forensic work-up. She looked around; the car park was little more than a clearing in the woods at the end of a muddy track. The trees, which were showing signs of new spring growth with pale green leaves just appearing, had been scorched by the flames and hot gases, but had not fully caught alight and the fire had burnt itself out without needing help from the fire brigade. No need for hoses meant that the ground wasn’t a quagmire, but it also meant that nothing was keeping down the smell, either. Already dressed in the obligatory gloves and paper suit, Callie slipped on a mask to further protect her from the foul odour and moved to take a closer look at what was left of the body in the burnt shell of the car.

  The remains were badly disfigured, the blackened skin cracked in places to reveal waxy, white, avascular flesh below, the intense heat having coagulated the blood and cauterised the blood vessels. Nothing much seemed to remain of any clothing, although they might find something in the debris or under the body, and there looked to be some lumps of melted plastic on the floor that might have been a handbag or shoes. Something that might possibly be the remains of a stiletto, but equally might not. Hopefully, there would be enough left to help identify the victim, but for now, Callie wasn’t even sure if it was a woman or a man in stilettos.

  Callie had read somewhere that those who had survived being engulfed by flames said that it was surprisingly pain free and even induced an ecstasy-like state, but she didn’t believe it for one moment. It seemed more likely that the brain blocked out the memory and was helped in this by all the painkillers given to burns victims after the event. As she looked at the open-mouthed grimace of the corpse in the car, even knowing that the expression was called a rictus and was caused by the contraction of muscles and tendons in the intense heat, the body seemed to be shrieking in fear and pain, and she found it hard to imagine this person died in ecstasy. Very hard indeed. She closed her eyes and shuddered. What a horrible way to die.

  After her moment of weakness, Callie opened her eyes and got back to work. The size of the body was hard to estimate because the arms and legs had been pulled up as the tendons contracted in the flames, pulling the body into the position sometimes described as foetal, or as a boxer’s crouch, hands in front of the face, or rather, where the face had been, balled into pugilistic fists and with knees drawn up to the body, except that, in this case, one leg seemed to be straighter, stretched out behind the body, but she couldn’t quite see why.

  A shout broke her concentration.

  “No, not that one, it’s too close, use that tree over there.”

  Callie turned to see Colin Brewer, the short, muscular crime scene manager, doing what he did best: organising. He was supervising the uniformed officers who were taping off the area, and clearly hadn’t approved of their choice of trees to use as anchors. He looked at his watch impatiently, willing the rest of his team to arrive soon so that they could start collecting evidence and then, with a small sigh, he carried on doing what he could. He designated one officer to guard the way in and keep the sign-in sheet, telling the others to keep back and not trample on any evidence. They scuttled back to the designated perimeter, happy to keep their distance. The smell of charred meat was hanging in the air, and the grotesque remains in the car was the stuff of nightmares. Working a ‘death by burning’ case was never easy to forget.

  Callie looked around the small parking area. It had been a well-known haunt for lovers and doggers alike until a recent raid by the police had scared them off, and anyway, she didn’t think they usually torched the car afterwards, but what did she know? She shook her head and she resumed her examination of what was left of the car.

  Whilst the driver’s door was fully open, the passenger door was about an inch ajar. The body was leaning towards the driver’s side, lying half across the skeletal remains of the passenger seat and with one foot in the driver’s well. The leg that hadn’t contracted into the crouch position was still in the passenger side of the car. She changed her position to see better and saw that the foot had caught under the frame of the passenger seat, and had been partially protected by its position. Callie walked round to the passenger side where she could see that the car was parked up against a row of wooden posts that delineated the car park boundary and that it was impossible to open the passenger door enough for an adult person to escape. This seemed to explain why the victim had been trying to get across to the driver’s side.

  Callie crouched down, and gently pulled the door open the two or three inches that it could before hitting the post, and looked into the car. The foot trapped under the passenger seat appeared to be small, with the remains of a high-heeled strappy sandal attached, indicating to Callie that the victim had probably been female. It looked as if fumes and flames had overcome her before she had managed to climb over the gear stick, let alone get out. The poor woman must have been terrified. Callie could only imagine her last moments as she realised she was trapped, on fire, in terrible pain, but still led by the instinct to survive to try and escape. To try to live. Callie paused, and then pushed the door back to its original position, in order to look more closely at the charred wooden post. It was difficult to see if the victim had pushed the door hard enough to mark either the door or the post, such was the damage from the flames.

  “Mmmhmm, I love the smell of crispy bacon in the morning.”

  Callie stood up quickly. There was only one person she knew who would say something quite so gross and insensitive.

  “What’re we doing here, Col?” the voice continued, “one of the stupid twockers hurt himself?”

  A man in his fifties, with thinning hair and a thickening waistline, was walking from the road towards the car park entrance, swearing under his breath as he struggled to put on his purple nitrile gloves. Detective Sergeant Bob Jeffries. His body shape was not enhanced by the white coveralls he was already wearing over his clothes. Callie knew that the police referred to joyriders as twockers because they were usually charged with the offence of ‘Taking Without Consent’ or ‘TWoC’, but she hated the derisory way it was used, particularly by DS Jeffries.

  “Bit more than hurt himself,” her cool voice admonished him. “Perhaps you’d like to show a little respect?”

  “What’s up, Doc?” Jeffries grinned as he signed the log and pulled on his mask.

  Callie was distracted as a second man approached from the road, where DS Jeffries went, Detective Inspector Steve Miller was likely to follow. Or vice versa. Younger and taller than the man who had been speaking so ill of the dead, he was a dark, good-looking and solidly built man in his late thirties, with the slightly bent nose of a rugby player.

  “Dr Hughes,” Miller said with a nod to Callie, as he also signed the log before entering the scene. “I take it you’ve pronounced?” he continued as he pulled up his facemask, settling it comfortably over his nose, and walked towards the wreckage that had once been a car. And a woman.

  “Yes, Detective Inspector, I have pronounced life extinct,” she told him. “Although you probably didn’t need a doctor to tell you that.”

  He barely broke stride as he responded.

  “No, I think we can all see that this man is dead.” He was standing on the opposite side of the car to her now, peering in through the driver’s door.

  “As a dodo,” Jeffries added as he came around the car to the passenger side.<
br />
  “Woman. This woman,” Callie corrected them, “if I am not mistaken.” She had hoped to see a reaction from Miller, but was disappointed. “And it’s clearly not from natural causes.” She was finding it hard to hide her irritation at Miller’s cool and offhand manner.

  “Quite.” Miller looked at her expectantly. “Anything else, Doctor?”

  “The passenger door can’t open because it’s blocked by a post, and the victim seems to have been trying to climb across from the passenger seat to get out, which would suggest it wasn’t suicide.”

  “Unless it was a last-minute change of heart. She could have parked deliberately against the post to stop that exact eventuality, couldn’t she?” He looked directly at her for the first time since he had arrived. His hazel eyes had a hint of amber and Callie struggled to concentrate as they locked on hers.

  “Of course, but−” Callie stopped because Miller had already turned away and was talking to Colin.

  “We’ll need to alert the pathologist to organise the PM and get the fire investigators out, too.”

  “Fire investigator’s on his way, Guv. The fire crew alerted them.”

  “Fire crew?”

  “They left as soon we got here, Guv.” Colin explained.

  “The fire was already out and they were needed elsewhere.” The voice came from behind them and they all turned to see who was speaking.

  “Chris Butterworth.”

  The newcomer held out his gloved hand as he introduced himself, and Miller shook it.

  “Fire Investigation Unit,” he said. “I can give you all the fire crew details so that you can interview them later, but there was a bit of a rush on. Warehouse fire over in Bexhill.”

  “No problem.” Miller nodded his acceptance of the situation. “As you say, we can take statements later.”

  Butterworth stopped and looked around at the scorched trees before continuing towards the burnt-out shell of the car. Both policemen followed behind him. Miller seemed surprised that Callie was still there.