“What?” Farrell set the coffee down among the files on the table, careless of the sloshing, and coming to stand beside her, looked at the file. “You’re not serious? As in James Braidwood?”
James Braidwood had been the celebrated superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, and he had been killed in the great Tooley Street fire of 1861, crushed under a falling wall. “Yeah. Although it’s just ‘Jimmy’ on the application, not ‘James.’ No wonder this guy has such a thing about Victorian fires.”
“And you’re sure it’s him?”
She looked again at the photos, comparing them both with her memory of the man glimpsed so briefly at the scene of the fire, and a rush of nausea made her swallow hard. “Yes. And look,” she added, flipping through the file. “He aced both the written and physical exams. It says he was rejected due to psychological assessment. There’s a note attached by the interviewer.”
She read it aloud. “Mr. Braidwood demonstrates a profound lack of the cooperative skills needed in today’s firefighting environment. He also displays a marked bias against females and persons of color, and in my opinion, suffers from delusions concerning an imagined connection with the legendary James Braidwood, and is a likely candidate for antisocial behavior.”
Farrell whistled. “Good God. The bastard’s a psychopath.”
Rose’s queasiness gave way to an icy calm. “We knew that,” she said with cold conviction, thinking of Bryan Simms’s burned and broken body.
Bill Farrell took the file from her and flipped back to the opening page. “At the time of application, he was employed by a private security firm-”
“The uniform.” Rose saw again the flash of dark blue sleeve.
“And it gives his home address as Blackfriars Road. If we’re right, he’s certainly set his fires close to home.”
“And he’s escalating in leaps and bounds. What I don’t understand is why he killed Laura Novak. Could she have somehow learned what he was doing?”
“There’s no obvious connection between them.” Farrell looked again at the CCTV photo, his brow creased in concentration. “From the video, it looks as if he happened to see the door that Chloe Yarwood had left open. But he works for a security firm, so he might have known, or guessed, that the premises across the street had a surveillance camera-”
“So he checks out the side entrance, just in case, and finds it unlocked, too,” said Rose. “What if – We know that Laura Novak had a connection with the women’s shelter, which overlooks that door. Maybe she was at the shelter for some reason, saw Braidwood go in, and confronted him.”
“If she saw him, why didn’t she just call the police?” argued Farrell. “And that doesn’t account for the conversation Chloe Yarwood overheard, unless Laura knew him. His uniform alone wouldn’t have been enough to prompt her comment.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we can go any further without more evidence. We’ll have to-”
“I think we’re running out of time, sir.” Rose faced him, tense with the sense of foreboding that had plagued her since the first fire. “He took a huge risk yesterday. I think he’s been working up to something, something big, and now he’s out of control.”
“What could-” Farrell stared at her, enlightenment and dismay dawning in his face. “You think he means to recreate Tooley Street, where Braidwood died a hero. Not just with similar fires, but the real thing. Hay’s Galleria?”
“What would be more fitting?” Hay’s Wharf, known as “the Larder of London,” had, like Cotton’s Wharf, been one of the great Victorian riverside warehouses. It lay between Tooley Street and the Thames, and been beautifully restored as Hay’s Galleria, a Bankside complex filled with restaurants, shops, and crafts stalls. A fire there would be disastrous, and if started in daylight, as the last fire had been, could cost civilian lives.
“Dear God. If you’re right, Rose, we can’t wait. We’ll have to bring him in now, and hope we can find substantiation. But we can’t talk to him without police present.” Farrell pulled out his mobile phone. “I’m calling Kincaid.”
Kincaid had accompanied Maura Bell back to Borough station, leaving the uniformed officers to search Beverly Brown’s meager belongings and contact social services regarding care of the children. But while Bell and Cullen tried to find an address for one Gary Brown, husband of the late Beverly, thought by Kath Warren to live somewhere in Walworth, he stood at the window overlooking Borough High Street and thought.
He knew he’d come across the name on the shelter’s file somewhere else in the course of the case; it was simply a matter of dredging through all the accumulated information until he found the right bit.
When it came to him, he turned and said to Cullen, “Hey, Doug. Gemma copied out a list of names you found at Laura Novak’s. Did you keep the original?”
“Sorry, guv. I left it for forensics, in case it had prints. Was it important?”
“I don’t know yet.” He remembered Gemma showing him the copy she’d made in her notebook. Would she have it with her now? He’d rung her to ask when Maura called out that she’d found an address for Gary Brown and that Brown had a previous conviction for assault. Covering the phone’s mouthpiece, Kincaid said, “Gemma, hang on a second. Somebody find me a pen and some paper.” When Cullen complied, he copied the list Gemma read to him. Clover Howes was one of the six names.
Ringing off, he said to Cullen and Maura, “I’m going back to the shelter. There’s something we’ve missed here. I’d be willing to wager that these other women on the list were shelter clients, but what was Laura Novak’s interest in them?”
“You think Kath Warren can tell us?” asked Cullen.
“It’s worth a try. Maura, if you want to follow up on Brown-”
“I’ll be damned if you’ll send me haring after a domestic if you’ve got a real lead.” She gave him a ferocious glare. “That’s bollocks. I’m going with you.”
Kincaid grinned. “Right, then. Brown can wait. Doug?”
“Count me in.”
They found Kath Warren alone in the office, tidying up in preparation for the end of the day. Lines of exhaustion aged her usually pert face, and she looked up at them anxiously. “If this is about the children,” she said, “we’re still waiting for social services. I’ll stay until they come. We haven’t been able to locate any other family to contact-”
“No, Kath, sit down a minute, please,” Kincaid said, motioning her back to her desk. “We just have a few more questions we need to ask you.” She sat slowly, and Kincaid took the chair that had previously been occupied by the stack of files while Cullen and Maura stood unobtrusively at the back of the room.
He unfolded the list from his pocket and handed it to Kath. “Are these women all clients of the shelter?”
“What-” Kath glanced at the sheet, and he thought she paled beneath her makeup. “Where did you get this?”
“From Laura Novak’s desk. Why would Laura have made a list of these names?”
Kath looked dismayed. “I’d no idea Laura knew. This wasn’t something we were eager to advertise to the board of directors.”
“What did Laura know, Kath? What’s special about these women?”
The paper trembled in Kath’s hand. “I told you the other day. Sometimes, when we place women in new situations, in spite of all our precautions, their abusers find them. These women – all of these women were tracked down by their husbands or boyfriends. One of them, Clover Howes, is dead. Her husband assaulted her with a poker.”
“That’s why you were moving her file,” Kincaid said slowly. “Six women? In what time period, Kath?”
“A year.” She put the sheet of paper down on her desk and smoothed it flat. “Six in the last year.”
“That’s pushing the law of averages, I’d say. And you didn’t tell your board about this?”
“We… we wanted to try to resolve it. We suspected that one of the regular clients, like Beverly, might have been selling information to the other women’s partners. Or even one of our own staff – I told you we’d had suspicions about Shawna, who works the night desk. We know she’s taken bribes from the residents to overlook minor infractions.”