“Things have to get moved between docks and God knows where. Boats come and go from different places all up and down this bleeding river. It never stops. They call that New York the city that never sleeps. I tell you what never sleeps, the River Thames. Always something going on along it, be it man or mouse. Always moving. So, we move with it. He had to take a shipment from here to the goods yard up Camden. Needed to get it onto the train so off he went. I’ll look out the shipping documents for you. Will have his signature on there.”
“What about the people at the other end? Would they be able to vouch for him?” Joseph asked as he scribbled down Derek’s story.
“How the hell am I supposed to know what they’d know? Do I look like I can read these bleeding tea leaves? Now, is there anything else?”
“No, thank you, Mr Nadderley. Enjoy your tea,” Ray’s tone hadn’t changed throughout the whole conversation.
“Fat bloody chance,” Derek muttered as they left.
*
Ray and Joseph were contemplating their next move when WPC Small came over the radio once more.
“A Mr Sean Campbell called for you both. Said he had some interesting results from his fire investigation. Wanted you to head over as soon as possible,” she reported.
The urgency in Sean’s request meant they quickly reversed their route to head into the centre of London, across to Lambeth, where the London Fire Brigade had its headquarters. On the way in they had to pass the building site that would eventually become the home to the Met Police’s very own forensic division on Lambeth Road, a short walk from the Fire Brigade HQ. Joseph found the idea of forensics exciting. It promised so much. No more looking for witnesses or relying on confessions. Just incontrovertible proof when the evidence allowed. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much easier it would make his job.
Already the shell of the new building had gone up. A huge and modern concrete edifice. All corners and sharp edges. Joseph found it joyless but imposing. If anyone wanted to create an idea of a powerful modern police force, this building, with its huge concrete-encased vent rising from the floor in front of it, was it. It looked more a fortification than an office.
By contrast, the London Fire Brigade HQ was decidedly understated. It could easily have been mistaken for a riverside hotel were it not for the bright red double doors that lined the bottom of the nine-storey building.
They parked up and walked into the building, finding themselves in an art deco reception hall. Tall windows covered with intricate latticework illuminated a tiled floor, set out in a repeating pattern resembling teeth of a comb. A smiling secretary took their names and then they waited to be called through.
Campbell came down himself, eagerly shaking both by the hand as he saw them, excited by whatever he’d discovered. “Gentlemen, glad you could make it,” he said, leading them towards his office. “We’ve found out a little bit more than perhaps we expected.”
“Such as?” Ray asked, as Joseph took out his notebook.
“Well, for starters, we confirmed that an accelerant was used to start the fire.”
“An accelerant? Like petrol?”
“The gas chromatography results say exactly like petrol, yes. Not a lot, just enough to get the fires going. Wouldn’t need a large container like a fuel can. I presume our man was in something of a rush. Does that fit your theory?” He raised an eyebrow as he looked at them.
“It was high on the list of possibilities,” Ray admitted. Joseph’s mind veered back towards Harry Jones, as he knew Ray’s must have too. “And you’re certain this gas chroma-thingy-ma-jig said it was petrol?”
“Yes. Petrol is made up of lots of different hydrocarbon components. We place shavings of wood from the area we think the fire started into a tube. The sample is vaporised and passed through a glass column using nitrogen to move it along, then it mixes with a solid that’s soaked into a high-boiling-point liquid. Finally, it ends up in the detector where we can use a flame to ionise the sample and see what molecules are present in the substance and work out what it is. Therefore, I can say with the highest confidence that it’s petroleum that was used.”
“Great work, Mr Campbell,” Ray said.
“Oh, I’m not done. We thought we’d find that out. I’m sure what I’m about to show you will be even more useful, if unexpected.”
They had reached his office now and he opened the door to usher them in. He wandered over to his desk, pulling out a folder, thumbing through it before finding a photograph and passing it to Ray and Joseph. “Please, take a seat,” he offered as he did so.
Ray looked at the photograph first, before passing it to Joseph. It showed the scene of the fire at some point during the clean-up. Amongst the debris, parts of the floor of the warehouse had been cleared. There, next to the burnt-out shell of what looked to have once been a crate of some kind, they saw a faint but large stain.
“What is it?” Ray asked.
“It’s blood.”
“You’re sure?” Ray sounded surprised now.
“Absolutely. Blood’s a hardy thing, especially if it’s not completely exposed to the hottest part of the fire. Thankfully, whoever lit the fire didn’t know that. They set it off in the corners of the building and near the entrance. My guess is that they wanted to ensure they got the whole thing, which would seem logical to most. However, the stain had been covered up by a crate. Now, I’m not a hundred per cent sure why that happened.”
“The original crime happened days before the fire. The crate could easily have been a quick cover-up by someone hoping they’d have more time to do a thorough job later,” Joseph offered. “Given the size and nature of the docks, we hadn’t yet turned over every stone.”
Sean rubbed his chin. “That makes a hell of a lot of sense. So combined with being a distance from the point of ignition, as well as hidden from both the fire and the efforts of those fighting it, our stain here led a little bit of a charmed life. Whoever hid it, ended up preserving it for you.”
“I’ll be sure to give them my thanks,” Ray said. “It’s definitely blood, though? You’ve confirmed that?”
“Had the boys do a tetramethyl benzidine presumptive test. Came back positive for blood. Turns blue when we find it, you know. Now, with it being a warehouse, we also did a phenolphthalein test, or Kastle Myer test. Works on the same principle, looking for the presence of what we call peroxidase-like activity, which you find in haemoglobin in the blood. They both came back positive. There’s a couple of things that will of course produce false positives. The only one that should tip the scales on both, however, is saliva, and that won’t have remained residual in the same way the blood does during the fire.”
“We’ve got our murder scene.” Ray stood, shaking Sean’s hand, a smile on his face for the first time in a while. “Thank you. Great job.”
“I’ll be sure to share that with the lads. Hope you catch the blighter now.”
*
Ray didn’t start the car back up when they got back in it. Instead, he wanted to talk.
“So, this means our guy almost certainly works at the dockyard. I can’t see any other way that he has access to Gerald and the warehouse otherwise. A visitor on the site would surely have stood out like a sore thumb.”
“We still can’t discount that someone pulled all the strings,” Joseph cautioned. “I don’t know if any of this means Tommy Jay is off the hook.”
“No, but he didn’t do the deed. Chances of pinning it all the way back to him, whether he called the shots on this or not, are getting slimmer by the moment.”
“Maybe Banks did us a favour then?”
“Huh, that’d be a first. Blinking nuisance that he is,” Ray grumbled as he turned on the engine to the car. “Thing is, though, if we want to be certain then we need to speak to Mr Jones. If anyone knows, he knows.”
