Fire Damage: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

‘And he got burnt.’

Starkey’s fingers were tapping out a frantic tune on the tabletop. ‘Maybe he was too committed, did too much for the cause.’ He found her gaze across the table. ‘Just a puppet on a string.’

‘Do you have nightmares, Sergeant Starkey?’

‘Nightmares. My life’s turned into a nightmare.’

He leaned forward, stretching his hands across the table towards her, palms upwards, fingers cupped slightly as if he was holding them out to God. She resisted the urge to lean back, put distance between them. She could sense Callan next to her, muscles taut, tuned to make a move if Starkey did.

‘You know what really frightens me, Dr Flynn?’ Starkey’s voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Injustice.’

‘Are you the subject of an injustice?’

‘Why don’t you ask Captain Stiff-as-a-fucking-board Redcap here, Doctor? Because I sure as hell don’t know what he’s thinking.’

Anger rippled across Callan’s shoulders. ‘Stop playing games and tell me the truth. Why did Andy Jackson die?’

‘The truth will set you free, Captain Callan.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Callan slammed both hands flat on the tabletop, making the voice recorder rattle.

Starkey grinned. ‘Temper temper.’

Shoving his chair back, Callan strode to the door. ‘What the fuck is wrong with the lights.’ He slammed his hand on the switch a couple of times, flicking the lights on and off. On again. Off. The frail afternoon light seeping through the window coated their faces in sepia, the colour of old photographs.

Jessie remained where she was at the table. Her gaze sought out Starkey’s; she looked him straight in the eye. She thought that his gaze might flicker, wander. It didn’t. The eyes that met hers were intelligent, astute.

‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,’ she said quietly. ‘John 8:32.’

Starkey raised his hands, clapped them together, a slow, deliberate handclap.

‘Very good, Dr Flynn. I didn’t have you down as the religious type.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Though I’d like to see you in a nun’s habit.’

Jessie stared back, unflinching. ‘Convent education does wonders for religious knowledge. Sadly, we wore drab grey uniforms, calf-length, but you can dream, Starkey. So what is the truth?’

Callan was leaning against the wall by the door. ‘This evaluation is terminated, Sergeant Starkey.’

Jessie glanced over at him. What the hell was he playing at? Something seemed to have ignited in his eyes: they shone, icy white, from the slits in his face. Icy white, but unfocused.

‘I have a few more questions, Callan.’

The muscles along his jaw bulged.

She turned back to Starkey.

Callan was suddenly beside the table. Grabbing Starkey by the collar, he hauled him off the chair, slammed him back against the wall and jammed his forearm into Starkey’s throat.

‘You’re a fucking little shit, Starkey, and if you have done something wrong, I will find out and I will hang you for it.’

Jessie jumped to her feet. ‘Let him go, Captain Callan. Now.’

He let go of Starkey, stepping back, raising his hands in front of him in a defensive gesture. He looked almost as shocked as Starkey. Starkey backed away, straightening out his uniform.

‘I could fucking hang you for that, Captain.’

Callan was shaking his head, but it didn’t look as if he was shaking it in denial of what Starkey had said. The movement was jerky, uncoordinated, as if he was trying to dislodge something from his brain.

‘Are you OK, Captain Callan?’ Jessie asked.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, through gritted teeth.

A hand caught her arm. Turning, she found Starkey right behind her.

‘The answer to your question about the truth, Jessie, is – I don’t know.’ His voice was quiet, a caress in her ear. She could feel his breath, hot against her cheek. She yanked her arm away, suddenly aware that she and Starkey were alone in the room, that Callan had left. ‘I never found out. But if you could ask a dead man, say please – nicely, mind – he might tell you the answer.’

11

‘What the fuck was that all about?’ She was so angry that she didn’t try to keep her voice down.

She had found Callan in the room at the end of the corridor, a Special Investigation Branch team room it seemed from the white boards bearing crime scene photographs, the hubbub of conversation, the manic clicking of computer keys. He was sitting behind a desk in the far corner, elbows on the desktop, cradling his head in his hands.

Looking up, he met her gaze. He looked wrecked. Utterly wrung out. His eyes were bloodshot and she wasn’t sure if it was a product of the sickly grey light seeping through the blinds from the window above his desk, but his skin looked greyish pale, his face drawn.

He shrugged. ‘It was about the fact that I don’t have time for cunts any more.’

‘Unfortunately dealing with cunts is always going to be part of your job. If you can’t handle it, perhaps you should do something else.’

‘Like what? Become a banker or a lawyer? I’ve probably left it a bit late, and I’m not sure the personality fit would be seamless.’

‘He could have you on a charge.’

‘He won’t.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘He’s not the type. He may be a murdering bastard, but I don’t think he’s a petty one.’

Jessie slumped down in the chair across the desk from Callan. ‘And he may actually be innocent.’

Silence. She let it stretch. Dropping his head to his hands again, Callan ground his fingers into his eyes sockets, grated them through his hair.

‘You’re right, I was out of order.’ His tone was sheepish. ‘And I do not have any preconceptions about Starkey’s guilt or innocence. He wound me up. After I … after what I went through in Afghanistan, I find that much harder to handle than I used to. Where is he?’

‘He’s left. Our conversation finished a short while after you disappeared. He said he’d see himself out. He’s not under arrest, after all.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you should be straight with me.’

He ignored the inference. ‘About Starkey?’

‘About you.’

‘I just was straight with you.’

‘I think there’s more. I think there’s something you’re not telling me.’ Her gaze found the scar from the bullet wound on his temple.

‘And I think my life is no longer any of your business.’

‘You asked me here.’

‘To help with a case.’

She watched him in silence for a moment, caught between two conflicting desires – the first to tell him to go fuck himself for walking out and leaving her with Starkey, and the second, to press him for the truth. But he was right. It wasn’t her business. He was no longer her patient.

Crossing her arms across her chest, she sat back. ‘You said that the impression Starkey gives doesn’t reconcile with the glowing reports from his commanding officers, and I agree. But then he is Intelligence Corps.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not mainline Army, is it? What they do, what they’re after, the methods they use.’

‘Is he sane?’

Jessie dropped her gaze to the floor, drawing a picture of Starkey to mind. The look in his eyes: intelligence definitely, but was there complete sentience? You know what really frightens me.… injustice. His fingers frantically tapping on the tabletop. Fucking amateurs and that’s how we get burnt.

‘He’s clever, but is he aware of what he’s doing? Yes, I believe he is.’

‘So he was playing with us?’

‘I don’t think it’s that simple.’ She sat forward. ‘If he’s deliberately playing a game, then he’s doing it for a reason. It’s not for fun. No one was having fun in that room, even him, whatever it looked like.’

‘So what’s his upside?’

‘He’s hiding something. Probably a whole range of somethings.’

‘The fact that he killed Jackson?’

‘I think it’s more complex than that. Why would he want Jackson dead? Because he didn’t like him? Everyone works with people they don’t like. And he has been in the Army long enough to have learnt self-control in the face of extreme provocation.’ She looked up. ‘Is there any history between them?’

‘Nothing formal. No disciplinary. Their commanding officer said that they got on fine. He also said that they were both based at TAAC-South, but weren’t working together at the time of Jackson’s death.’

‘What else did the commanding officer say?’

Callan put the tips of his index finger and thumb together to form a circle, aping the gesture that Starkey had made.

Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Need to know.’

‘Right.’

‘Jesus. They’re certainly into protecting their own.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think you’re going to get anything else out of Starkey. He clearly believes that he has too much to lose.’

‘So to move forward I need to find factual evidence.’

‘Yes. And if you find factual evidence, even if it’s not enough to charge Starkey, you can use it to put the thumbscrews on him. Force him to talk.’

‘What was that bit about “the truth will set you free”?’ The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘I didn’t know that you went to a convent school.’

‘There’s a lot that you don’t know about me, Callan.’

Their eyes locked across his desk. Jessie felt colour rise in her cheeks. Glancing at her watch, an excuse to look away, she slid her chair back.

‘If there’s nothing more you need, I’m off. I said I’d have tea with Ahmose at six. I have some smoothing over to do after your insults regarding his gardening prowess.’

Callan looked at his watch, too. ‘It’s only five. How about a—’ He broke off, seemed to be weighing up saying something, then changed his mind. ‘I’ll call you if I need anything else.’

Leaning over the desk she shook his hand, the gesture feeling strangely over formal, but too late now to retract.

‘I’m not sure that there will be much more I can help you with.’

He smiled, held her hand for a fraction of a second longer. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

Jessie withdrew her hand. ‘Goodbye, Captain Callan.’

It was dark outside, a strong wind gusting clouds over a sliver of moon. Provost Barracks’ car park was deserted. Lights on inside the building cast yellow rectangles on to the tarmac next to it, but beyond was only blackness. Jessie wished she’d parked closer to the main door, if only so that she wouldn’t trip over or sink into a freezing puddle in her blind trog to her car.

Tugging her collar up around her neck, she dipped her head and crossed the tarmac at a jog. Pausing, she scanned the rows of cars ahead, found her Mini a couple further on from where she was standing, half the size of the other cars in the row, the only one that wasn’t black, white or silver. Its sunshine yellow paintwork made her smile.

She was about to walk towards it when something caught her eye. Movement? Was there something moving by the car a couple down from hers? She stared hard through the darkness, continuing to walk, but slowly, relaxing as she walked. No, she’d been wrong. The car park was silent and deserted. She was alone.

Reaching her Mini, she fished in her handbag for her car keys. Her fingers fumbled over object after object, none of them the keys. She should have got them out of her handbag inside the building where there was light.

A sudden noise behind her. Pressing herself against the driver’s door, she twisted around. As before, dark rows of cars. No lights, nothing moving. The only noise, her own breathing, the sound harsh and leathery in the chill evening air. In the distance, she could see the gate and guardhouse. Lights on, but all the guards inside – who could blame them? She couldn’t find her keys – they weren’t in the compartment where she usually put them. Her fingers, numb with cold, filtered through the contents again – lipstick, wallet, hairbrush, a collection of coins for parking clanking around at the bottom of her bag – wishing, not for the first time, that she had a sensible handbag with a compartment for everything, rather than this holdall leather rucksack that her mum had bought her for Christmas two years ago, that she only used out of a sense of duty. Her heart rate was raised and she was angry with herself for it.

She breathed out slowly; her fingers had closed around the cold, heavy bunch of keys.

‘Doctor Flynn.’

‘Jesus!’ She spun around.

He was right behind her. How the hell had he got so close without her realizing? He smiled, his gaze tracking down her body, lingering on her breasts. Not that he was getting much of a look, she figured, small as they were at the best of times, now camouflaged under a shirt, jumper and coat.

‘Is there anything that you want, Sergeant Starkey?’

‘Lots of things, but perhaps we shouldn’t go there now.’

‘If that’s a “no”, I’m leaving. I’ve got someone to see.’

Clicking the lock, she tugged open the driver’s door. He leant his forearm on its top.

‘It will be interesting to see if you can break me. I’ve been Intelligence Corps for twelve years. If there’s a psychological game in town, I know how to play it.’

‘I’m not trying to break you.’ She was about to add, I’m trying to help you, but realized that would go down like a lead balloon with someone like Starkey. ‘What do you want?’

He tilted towards her. ‘I think that the devil offered Jackson a deal and I think he took it,’ he hissed.

‘We’re off the record here, Starkey. No tape recorder. No witnesses. I looked into your eyes in that room and I know that you’re entirely sane. Why don’t you drop the act.’

Starkey’s tongue moved around inside his mouth. ‘You’re a tough lady, Dr Flynn.’

Jessie didn’t reply. She didn’t trust her voice not to betray her lack of confidence. She looked past him to the guardhouse: the guards still inside, playing poker or swapping dirty jokes.

‘Jackson and some other Int. Corps were working with an Afghan government official who runs the water board – don’t know his name,’ Starkey began. ‘Americans gave them a shitload of money to dam the Helmand river so they could manage their water supply, irrigate the land. Farmers not fighters. Make them richer and they’d have the independence to make their own decisions as to whom they supported. And then of course, they’d support the puppet government of Hamid Karzai, not those Taliban scumbags.’ He laughed softly to himself. ‘Problem with all this shit is that money never gets used for what it’s supposed to.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged, grinned. ‘That’s the end of the fairy story, young lady.’

‘The truth will set you free, Starkey. Isn’t that what you said?’

His gaze swung away from hers; she noticed a muscle above his eye twitch.

‘You think if I tell you what happened – everything – I’ll be free,’ he continued, suddenly nervous. He tapped a finger to his temple. ‘Free of a mental burden, at least. But I won’t.’

‘Explain. I don’t understand.’

Shoving his hands inside his pockets, he shrugged, refusing to meet her eye. ‘There’s nothing more to tell. I don’t know shit.’ He almost spat out that last word. ‘I didn’t find out shit.’

Jessie stared back at him. She was freezing cold and tired. She’d had enough of the word games. ‘I think we’re done here, Starkey.’

Tossing her rucksack into the car, she slid into the driver’s seat, reached to pull the door closed. It wouldn’t budge; he was holding it open with his foot.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

He didn’t move. Swinging her leg out, she kicked his foot away, slammed the door shut. She was tempted to lock it, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he’d rattled her. As she started the engine and pulled away, she glanced in the rear-view mirror, and their gazes locked in reflection. He lifted his hand in a slow, regal wave, smiled a faint, knowing smile.

12

The light was on in Ahmose’s cottage, and she could see him inside, sitting in his stiff wing-backed chair – the one he favoured because he didn’t have to lower himself too far to get into it – by a roaring log fire, reading the paper.

Ahmose had obviously spent the day gardening because some of the plants in her tiny front garden, across the low flint wall dividing the properties, were wrapped in what looked like white woollen coats, protecting them from the winter freeze.

He pulled open the door, a wide smile spreading across his face.

‘Perfect timing. I put the kettle on when I heard your engine. It should be boiled.’

She gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the hallway, immediately felt herself relax as the warmth of the little cottage enveloped her, the woody charcoal smell of the open fire filled her nostrils.

While Ahmose busied himself filling the china teapot, getting the cups and saucers from the cupboard, arranging them all on the floral tray that had been Alice’s favourite, Jessie found a plate and fanned out the biscuits his sister had sent him from Cairo in a neat semicircle. She spent a moment adjusting them, so that an exact portion of each biscuit showed from under the next.

Their weekly tea was a ritual that they had developed over the five years they’d been neighbours. Jessie’s heart had sunk the first time Ahmose had appeared on her doorstep the day after she moved in – clutching a miniature indoor rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering – imagining a nosy old man who’d never give her any peace. The reality, she quickly found, was the opposite. She sought him out more often than he sought her, had learnt to value his calm, sensible views, his clear-headed take on her problems, his stories and his humour. Their weekly tea was now a sacred part of her calendar: civilized, to be savoured, a deeply companionable, uncompetitive couple of hours. Ahmose felt more like family now than her blood relatives, certainly far more than the father she had only seen five times in the past ten years.

Curling on the sofa, Jessie wrapped both hands around the piping cup. With the open fire the cottage was warm, but she felt chilled to the bone from standing too long in the car park playing verbal games with Starkey. She reached for a biscuit.

‘You must let me pay for the plant warmers, Ahmose.’

‘Most certainly not. A nice garden makes both our cottages look beautiful, adds value.’

She smiled. ‘You sound like a Home Counties estate agent.’

‘And it gives an old man something to do, some exercise,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and before I forget, your mother dropped by a couple of hours ago.’

‘My mother?’ Jessie was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had popped around. Years ago, it was – three at least.

She rolled her eyes. ‘She seems to think that I don’t actually have a job. That I’ll be here in the middle of the afternoon.’

‘It’s a mother’s job to believe that their child is forever too young to be gainfully employed and to worry about them constantly. I offered for her to wait in your house – I thought that you wouldn’t mind – but she said that she needed to get home for six.’

Jessie nodded, took a sip of tea. ‘Did she want anything specific?’

‘I don’t think so. I think that she just wanted to see you. She said that it has been a long time.’

Jessie bit her lip. It had been a long time, eight months – her mother’s birthday. The weather had been unseasonally hot and she’d been wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She remembered her mother asking if she couldn’t have dressed up a bit for lunch – even though they were only going to a pub on Wimbledon Common. Chafing against each other even now, fifteen years later. None of the life-changing events they had lived through talked about in detail. Nothing resolved.

‘You should go and see her, Jessie, whatever has gone under the bridge.’ And when she didn’t reply, he continued: ‘The mother–daughter relationship is …’ A pause as he searched for the right world. ‘Irreplaceable. Difficult, challenging, of course, but irreplaceable.’

Jessie shrugged. ‘It was always more mother–son for my mother.’

Ahmose took a biscuit from the plate, chewed in silence. Jessie watched him warily over the lip of her cup.

‘Alice and I never had the chance to have children,’ he murmured, dropping the half-finished biscuit into his saucer. ‘It was before all that IVF was widely available.’ He waved his hand towards the window, as if encompassing all the modern inventions of the last thirty years. ‘It broke Alice’s heart. She never got over it. I saw it in her eyes most when she smiled, when she was happy …’ A pause. ‘There was always something missing, as if sadness was sitting right behind her eyes, taking some of the light from them, even when she was smiling.’ Reaching across, Ahmose laid a hand on Jessie’s arm. ‘Losing a child must be worse than never having had one at all, because you know what a fantastic human being they would have made, how incredibly unique and wonderful they would have been. That is what your mother lives with every day.’

Jessie felt tears prick her eyes. ‘It’s not so great losing a brother.’

She had spent fifteen years dodging memories. How much longer could she maintain it?

‘Go and see her,’ Ahmose said gently. ‘Please. If only because I have asked you to.’

13

The morning of Jamie’s funeral, she had risen at 4.30 a.m. – pitch-black outside, even though it was nearly mid-summer – and tiptoed downstairs. She had expected to be alone with her thoughts of Jamie, the burden of her guilt, but her mother was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table in her towelling robe, clutching a cup of coffee that had grown a milky film it had sat so long, untouched.

She was holding Jamie’s school jumper, pressing it to her face, drinking in his smell. Jessie was surprised how small it was. The images she retained of Jamie, despite his illness, were larger than life, a personality that occupied a vast, fizzing space. Looking at her mum clutching his jumper, fingers stroking the balled wall, she realized how young he was, how little. Seven years, gone in a heartbeat. A life snuffed out before it had properly begun.

‘I thought you were asleep,’ Jessie murmured. She couldn’t meet her mother’s gaze.

‘How could I?’ The words barely audible.

Distractedly, her mother took a sip of coffee, her face wrinkling in surprise at its coldness. How long had she sat here, cradling the cup?

‘I’ll make you another,’ Jessie said.

She padded over to the kettle. While she was waiting for it to boil, she pulled back the kitchen curtain expecting, for some reason, to see dawn breaking; startled when all she saw was her own pallid reflection. Though she had been in the kitchen for barely two minutes, each second had elongated until it was nanometre thin, filling an hour of memories, of self-recrimination. The ticking of the kitchen clock sounded like a hammer on steel, the dim overhead lights, half the bulbs missing, interrogation-chamber bright. She was hypersensitive to every movement, her mother’s every tic.

Filling two cups, Jessie moved back to the table.

‘I’ve been trying to remember Jamie before the illness.’ Her mother’s voice wavered. ‘But all I can remember is him without colour, pale and sickly. He used to have the most beautiful complexion, the most vibrant look about him.’ She plucked at her own sallow, papery skin. ‘You both did … do. Perfect Irish roses. Your father’s look.’

Leaning over, she cupped Jessie’s chin in her fingers, their first physical contact since Jamie’s death. ‘You’re so like your father. Beautiful, like him. He was … is beautiful … on the outside, at least.’

‘Will he … will he be there?’

‘What?’

‘Dad? Will Dad be at …’ Jessie’s tongue felt like a wad of cotton wool in her mouth. ‘At the funeral?’

A vague shrug. ‘How would I know?’ Her mother’s hand moved to stroke her cheek. Her touch like a chill breeze. ‘Yesterday, in the supermarket, I imagined holding Jamie when he was just an hour old. I was in bed, in hospital, my knees bent, and he was lying in the dent between my thighs. I closed my eyes, standing in the middle of the aisle, and I could feel him. Actually feel the warmth of him. The shape of his skull under my fingers, that duck’s fluff of baby hair. He clutched my hand with his tiny fingers. I remember studying his nails in wonderment. They were so perfect, every nail a perfect crescent. It always amazes me that something so small, a baby’s hand, can work at all.’ Her words ran out, her face closed down. A single tear squeezed from her eye and ran down her cheek.