Kill It With Fire Read online

  Kill It With Fire

  Adam Maxwell

  The Lost Book Emporium

  Contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  next time…

  Acknowledgments

  one

  It was five minutes before Violet Winters set fire to the Palace.

  Apart from that, everything was exactly as you would expect it to be on a Friday night in Kilchester’s hottest bar and nightclub. The Tulip Street Gin Palace (or the Palace as it was known to those too cool to call it by its actual name) was absolutely rammed. Outside, velvet rope channelled people into orderly lines. Inside, the walls throbbed with the undulating beats of music so obscure that even the most cutting-edge of the clientele struggled to identify it.

  Before it became a bastion of all that middle-aged people thought was wrong with the world, the Palace was called Pzazz. Unfortunately for its owners, it had only attracted the sort of no-budget mid-week student drinkers that were unlikely to line anyone’s pockets. As a result, like so many buildings in Kilchester, the beautiful old Victorian facades were either torn away or covered up. The red brickwork was inelegantly hidden behind the glass and chrome shards of what still passed for modern architecture.

  Of course, modern drinkers with money to spend didn’t want four-shots-for-a-pound at midday on a Tuesday. They wanted one hundred and fifty different kinds of gin and fizzy drinks that came exclusively from reconditioned 1970’s Sodastreams. To get served, you first needed to decipher the booze bible and request the right brand of gin. Then you had to wait while the barman adjusted his top-knot, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, added flavouring to it, and then shoved it into a yellowing plastic receptacle to give it fizz.

  Given the enforced snail’s pace of the service, it was astounding that anyone in the place ever managed to get even the slightest bit tipsy, but at midnight on a Friday the place was bedlam.

  In amongst the posing pricks and pernicious princesses, a woman staggered forward as if the earth beneath her feet was the floor of a bouncy castle and the other patrons were trying to do backflips all around her. She pushed a lock of black bobbed hair behind her left ear, then stumbled, causing the errant lock to slip loose again and obscure her face. As she tottered off the dance floor, her heel appeared to give way and she twisted three hundred and sixty degrees before snapping her head downward to glare at her shoe. The hand she reached out to steady herself inadvertently landed on a speaker, the bass slithering up her arm and making a valiant attempt at dislodging her fillings. She recoiled and spun around.

  A walking homage to 80s cop movies rolled up the arms of his suit jacket a little further and slid over to the woman. His mouth opened and closed in an expectant fashion. Opened and closed, opened and closed. This close to the source of the aural assault, he could no more hear her than she could hear him, but he ploughed on regardless. She watched for a moment, then bared her teeth at him, hissing like a cat.

  In one obviously practised motion, he reached his right hand for her waist and his left hand to cradle the back of her head and pull her closer. It didn’t quite work out as intended. Instead of holding her like the wrestler-sex-pest hybrid he clearly was and screaming thunderous clichés into her ears, something unexpected occurred. As his hand touched the back of her neck she slid towards the floor. Perhaps fuelled by the drink, perhaps the unfamiliarity of such towering heels. Whatever the reason, she dropped floorwards.

  Somewhere between slipping through his clinch and smacking on the floor, something changed. Her legs, a moment ago jelly, suddenly solidified and she launched herself forward in a majestic attempt to prevent total collapse.

  Unluckily for Mr 80s this coincided with her brow being exactly at crotch height. He doubled over as her forehead slammed into his unmentionables, but her momentum carried her forward, pushing him into a full somersault from a standing position to flat on his back, screaming into the unrelenting musical onslaught.

  The woman looked left and right, perplexed at having apparently just witnessed someone vanish into thin air, then shrugged and careened away.

  Onwards she ploughed, lurching between new lovers and old fights, half-hearted conversations and the spinning madness of the night club lighting until, at last, she reached the door to the ladies toilet.

  Pushing at the handle, it gave way too quickly and she fell through, skittering forward and straight into a woman so perfectly-coiffed that her hair remained in a flawless beehive despite being thrust against the wall.

  The drunk woman took a step back, blinking in surprise or possibly apology. The beehive gave her a death stare and smoothed down her clothes before resuming her position in front of a bank of perfume bottles, averting her gaze until a third woman emerged from one of the cubicles and went to wash her hands.

  “Fragrance, Miss?” asked Beehive with the weariness of someone who despised her life.

  “No, thank…”

  It was too late. Beehive squirted as the cubicle woman turned, the perfume going straight into her open eyes.

  “What are you doing?” cubicle cried. She grabbed a tissue and, dabbing at her streaming eyes, made a sharp exit.

  “What are you looking at?” Beehive snapped at the drunk woman, who was still standing, swaying, a look of intense concentration knitting her brow. “It was an accident.”

  The drunk woman’s hand flew to her mouth, her cheeks bulging like those of a jazz-trumpeter. She fell forward and, as she did, a plume of vomit arced from her mouth, showering Beehive from the top of her coiffure, across her red silk dress and down to the tips of her fake Jimmy Choos.

  Beehive screamed and retched. She ran to the sink, turning on the tap and splashing frantically at her face and bare arms.

  The drunk woman, apparently oblivious, staggered down the row of toilets, her shoulder knocking every stall door open until she reached the last cubicle and fell inside.

  Beehive stared at herself in the mirror, picking chunks of something from her fringe. Nothing was worth this. Nothing.

  They were scum. Drunken scum. If she had her way…

  The club’s fire alarm interrupted Beehive’s train of thought as it screamed like an angry banshee.

  “I quit,” she said to no-one before walking out of the Palace toilets, never to return.

  As the door swung shut behind her, the noise of the alarm choked into silence before returning at a much lower volume, sounding more like a drowning digital duck. The place was falling apart at the seams.

  two

  “But I’ve never actually been charged with anything.”

  “More through blind luck than talent.” Detective Sergeant Zachary Roach resisted the urge to slam his fist on the table between them.

  Lucas Vaughan ran his fingers through his mousy-brown hair and flashed the good detective a grin. “I’m one lucky bastard.”

  “And yet here you sit,” replied Roach.

  “And yet here I sit,” said Lucas. “Can I have a coffee? It’s late.”

  The detective stared at Lucas. It was late, but who knew when he would get another opportunity to put Vaughan through the ringer? Lucas had been small fry, committing crimes so uninteresting that no-one really gave a shit about him. The word on the street, however, was that he’d moved up in the world. Perhaps even attached himself to a crew. The detective knew he had nothing he could charge Lucas with, but he c
ouldn’t let the slippery fucker back on the streets without shaking his tree a little. Or a lot.

  “Come on, Lucas,” said Roach, laying his hands palm-up on the table and giving his suspect a friendly smile. “I know what you’ve been up to. You might as well just admit it.”

  “Why, detective.” Lucas fluttered his eyelashes at Roach and pretended to fan himself with his hand. “I’m flattered you’re so interested in little old me.” He dropped the theatrics and added seriously. “I asked to see you because I want to tell you about…”

  “We’ll get to that,” Roach interrupted. “In good time. But for now you were about to tell me about what went down last month.”

  “I was?”

  “You were.”

  Lucas shifted in his chair, leaning forward conspiratorially. He took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said, allowing his shoulder to droop a little. “I suppose you’d have found out eventually. Was it Jono? Did he tip you off? Bet he did. Becka wouldn’t have…” Lucas caught himself and paused.

  Roach didn’t write anything down. He didn’t need to. Just had one of those brains. He remembered stuff. Jono. Becka. Potential members of the crew. If Lucas said nothing else, Roach had something solid to investigate. A starting point. Known associates.

  He nodded to Lucas, who looked away.

  “Well, I want immunity or whatever the fuck you call it. If I tell you stuff you don’t lock me up. Deal?” He looked flustered. This was good.

  “We’ll see what you tell me and then I’ll consider it,” was all Roach would say.

  “You know how the Prime Minister is going to be doing that conference thing with the Belgian diplomats at that place on the outskirts of Kilchester?” Lucas clasped his hands together and stared at his ever-whitening knuckles.

  The Prime Minister? Roach could hardly believe this. The balls on this bloke.

  “We… I…” Lucas trailed off.

  “Sounds like you can still pull yourself out of the shit, mate,” said Roach. “Go on.”

  Lucas waited a little while and then continued. “Well, we got the plans for where they’re staying. And his daughter’s room…”

  His daughter? Roach had known Lucas was ambitious but kidnapping the bloody Prime Minister’s daughter was an insane gamble.

  “We heard one of her teeth was loose. The front one I think… and so we were going to bust into her room when she was asleep,” Lucas flashed his blue eyes at Roach, “and steal her tooth from under the pillow. Then we’d leave her a coin in its place.”

  Roach stood up and gave his chair a kick.

  “We hadn’t decided whether to leave a one pound coin or a two pound coin,” Lucas grinned. “I need to ask my sister what the going rate is. She’s got kids.”

  Lucas held his hands out, wrists together, shit-eating grin spread across his face.

  Roach ran a weary hand over his eyes and scratched at his stubble.

  “The tooth fairy?” Roach wasn’t going to smile. He wouldn’t give Lucas the satisfaction. “That’s what you went with?”

  “Hey, this is a high pressure situation,” said Lucas, lounging back in his chair. “I’m not used to talking to the police, Officer.”

  “Detective.”

  “Office detective.”

  Roach stared blankly at Lucas.

  “Someone was talking about coffee before, weren’t they?” asked Lucas.

  “That was you,” said Roach.

  Lucas tapped the edge of the table with his index finger. “You’re going to want to hear what I’ve got to say…”

  Roach said nothing, just left the interview room.

  Lucas’ smile dropped from his face. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He wasn’t there to retrospectively turn himself in for crimes, real or imagined. He was there to do a job and this Roach character was beginning to irritate him. He heard movement outside the door and pasted a half-smile on his face, adjusted his posture to appear more relaxed, and waited. For a moment no-one came, and then the detective shuffled in backwards, pushing the door open with his foot to avoid spilling the two hot drinks he carried.

  He placed the cups on the table, one in front of each of them and then sat, in silence, and glared.

  Lucas stared as Roach tore off the end of a sachet of sugar, poured it into his own cup and stirred with a plastic implement that was neither stick nor spoon.

  The waiting continued. And then, for a bit of variety, it continued some more. Lucas cracked first. He peeled the plastic lid from the cardboard mug and peered cautiously inside.

  “I wanted a white,” he said. What he saw when he looked up sent him into a spiral of panic.

  Roach sat wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open a little, his hand frozen mid-stir. After what seemed to Lucas like an eternity, Roach gave a single, long, blink.

  “You wanted white?” Roach let go of the stirrer and it fell into his cup. Lucas was ninety per cent sure he was going to dive across the table and beat him to death but instead, for now, Roach gestured to his own face. “You wanted white?” he asked again.

  “Shit, no. That’s not what I meant,” Lucas babbled, the words tripping over themselves in an effort to tumble from his lips in an explosion of excuses. “I’m not racist. I meant the coffee. White coffee. I didn’t mean… It’s just, it looked bad and I was trying to—”

  Roach smirked. “I knew what you meant.”

  “Oh, you bastard,” replied Lucas without thinking. “I thought I was proper fucked there.”

  “Well you just racially abused an officer of the law and then questioned his parentage by calling him a ‘bastard’, so I’d say you’ve certainly made some questionable choices since coming in here.”

  Lucas’ brow knotted together and a look of actual pain suffused his face. He stared at Roach, waiting for his cue. The detective didn’t give him one.

  “Black’s fine,” Lucas muttered.

  “Thought it might be,” Roach concluded. He’d made Lucas squirm enough on that tack. He relaxed slightly and started a new one. “It all tastes like urine anyway. Could be tea, coffee or hot chocolate in there, and you’d never know the difference.”

  Lucas gave a half-laugh. “And yet you brought some for yourself.”

  Roach shrugged. “Had to convince you I wasn’t trying to poison you.”

  Lucas nodded and took a tentative sip of the beverage. It tasted like an otter had pissed in a tea urn and someone had left it to go stale over a prolonged period.

  “Is that a… fishy note I detect?” he asked with a grimace.

  “Could be,” Roach’s face cracked into a smile. “There’s an investigation underway to determine whether all the milk in this building is just ‘rescued’ from crime scenes.”

  “Building a rapport usually work for you?” Lucas dropped his smile and stared Roach down.

  “More often than you’d like to think,” Roach replied.

  The two men eyeballed one another until Lucas broke the tension with that grin again. He picked up the coffee and gave it a sip. “I’ve had worse,” he said. “Now, do you want to dance some more or do you want to talk?”

  Roach gave one slow blink. Lucas nodded in reply.

  “I was playing poker,” said Lucas.

  “You like to gamble?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Where were you playing?”

  “In Britain’s forgotten capital. Kilchester. Here. Doesn’t matter. Point is people play, people talk.”

  “What people? What were their names?”

  “Not important,” Lucas shrugged.

  “Is to me. Adds credibility to your story. Or deflates it. Like a balloon.”

  “Some serious people. People I didn’t want to win too heavily from.”

  “But you did win?”

  Lucas nodded and reached into his pocket. Roach tensed for a moment. This being an interview Lucas wasn’t under arrest. Which meant that he hadn’t been searched which also meant he could have anything in his pocket an
d that included a weapon.

  Lucas placed a twenty pound note on the table.

  “What’s that?” asked Roach.

  “One of many,” replied Lucas, sliding it across the table. “Take it.”

  Roach glared at him, unsure if Lucas was idiotic enough to try to bribe him or merely stupid enough to think he could be bought for twenty quid. He stared at the note for a moment, realising that there were several low ranking officers he knew who certainly could be bought for such a paltry amount.

  “How about this one?” Lucas slid another note across to Roach, lining it up against the first before tapping it meaningfully.

  Roach looked at the second note. His eyes darted back to the first, realising immediately that the serial numbers were the same.

  “They’re fake.”

  “Totally,” replied Lucas. “You wouldn’t know, would you? I mean, if you didn’t know you wouldn’t know.” Lucas frowned. “You know what I mean.”

  “So you came here to speak to a detective about a couple of forged notes?” Roach sighed. “At this time of night?”

  “I’m a concerned citizen.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’m hurt by that sentiment.”

  “I doubt that too.”

  Lucas shrugged.

  “You strike me as a man who notices things,” said Roach.

  Lucas raised his eyebrows and half-nodded.

  “But you want me to believe you won a bunch of counterfeit notes and didn’t realise. Also you want me to believe that instead of going up against whoever gave you the cash you suddenly had an epiphany and came to me. Specifically me. Asked for by name, no-one else.”

  “What can I say? I don’t like confrontation,” Lucas replied. “And, having seen the error of my ways, and as an inveterate gambler, I thought it best to speak to someone with a reputation.”