The Burning Men Read online

  The Burning Men

  Will Shindler

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Will Shindler 2020

  The right of Will Shindler to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 9781529301731

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For my mum who said I would, and continues to make

  editorial comments on my life Karin Finn-style.

  And my dad – who’d have been chuffed.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Five Years Ago

  It roared as it burnt. A monster lighting up the night. They saw it long before they got there, the usual banter tailing off as the scale of the blaze became clear.

  ‘Are you sure that’s empty?’ someone almost whispered.

  ‘Should be,’ replied Martin Walker. ‘It’s just a building site, however big.’

  One Pacific Square was supposed to be a game changer, a multi-billion-pound regeneration project straddling the Battersea/Clapham borders. Well, the game was certainly changing. The foreign investors would have to wait a lot longer before they saw their money now. They’d be lucky if the unfinished structure of angled steel and glass was still standing by the time this was finished.

  Stuart Portbury dragged the Mercedes-Benz Atego fire engine to a halt and the four other men disembarked. The wall of heat hit them instantly, their ears taking a second to adjust to the thunder of the flames above. Gary Elder and Adesh Kaul began pulling out the hoses while Phil Maddox fetched the Halligan bar – part claw, part blade, part tapered pick. It would get them through doors, padlocks, windows and anything else in their way. Walker could hear other sirens homing in on the site, bees buzzing to a gigantic hive. There’d be about thirty before long, coming from across London. Anything up to a hundred and fifty firefighters would be dealing with this before the night was over. And probably the next day too.

  ‘Third floor, top left.’

  It was Kaul who was shouting. It took Walker a moment before he saw it, a figure – male, by the looks of it – frantically waving from a window. Walker strode to the cab of the fire engine.

  ‘Persons reported. Call it in, Stu.’ This would trigger the dispatch of an ambulance, a command unit and a station manager. It also just complicated the job. The priority would now be search and rescue before fighting the fire.

  Walker ran back to join Elder and Kaul at the pump. The man on the third floor was no longer visible, smoke billowing out of the window he’d been waving from. A second fire engine was pulling up behind them. Walker recognised Sarah Connelly, his counterpart from Lambeth Station, jumping out.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got one trapped on the third floor, Sarah.’

  ‘What are they doing in there? It’s a construction site, the place should be empty?’

  ‘I want to send a four-man breathing apparatus team in,’ said Walker. ‘Gary, Phil, Adesh and me.’

  ‘I’d be happier with a two-man team. Why so many?’

  ‘The size; that’s a lot of floor space to cover and there might be more people in there.’

  ‘Alright, Marty . . . it’ll be a stage two entry control. You’ll need a crew manager – which I guess will be me. I’m calling for extra pumps at this section as well. We’ll need them. You know the drill; you don’t go in until there’s an emergency crew in place.’

  Connelly headed back to her vehicle to fetch the electronic control board which tracked their oxygen levels. Walker could still remember the old days when you did the maths on the job.

  Walker, Elder, Kaul and Maddox began strapping on their air cylinders. Connelly was directing her crew to break open a padlocked door. Advertising hoardings proudly boasting Opening in 2016 – Book your appointment now! hung above it.

  ‘That door is our entry control point. Your target’s an individual on the third floor and a potential search and rescue for anyone else who might be up there,’ Connelly said for the record. She wrote their names on to the control board as Walker and his team went through the rest of their safety routine – checking their air supplies, pressure gauges and radios. A third fire engine screeched in, two more firefighters jumping out and immediately going through the same procedures. The man hadn’t reappeared in the third-floor window. He was either looking for an exit, or he’d been overcome by the smoke. Walker contained his frustration as he waited for the go-ahead. Finally, the other crew manager signalled she was ready to Connelly.

  ‘You’re clear, Marty.’

  All four men fitted face masks and pulled down their hoods. Connelly checked them over and waved them on. Sprinting forwards, Martin Walker momentarily pictured his wife Christine – as he always did when he ran into a burning building. Just in case.

  Chapter 2

  Six Months Ago

  Detective Inspector Alex Finn walked out of Alexanderplatz station, smiled at his dying wife and wrinkled his nose.

  ‘It’s a bit like Croydon, isn’t it?’

  Karin Finn, wrapped in a metallic green gooseberry of a Puffa Jacket, turned and looked. She’d spent her teenage years here in Berlin. Even thirty yea
rs on, everything was broadly as she remembered. The trams jangling under the railway bridge, the steady stream of shoppers going in and out of the cuboid Kaufhof building, the tourists staring up at the Fernsehturm . . . even the unseasonal nip in the air. And she’d wanted it to be cold. You can keep your Paris in the spring – Berlin was always a particular kind of bitter.

  ‘I prefer to call it Stasi chic.’

  ‘Well, exactly. Have you ever been to the Whitgift Centre?’

  He looked at a street vendor by the entrance to the station, doing a decent trade in currywurst, and inhaled. ‘How much fun can you have with curry powder and ketchup, anyway?’ He glanced down, satisfied to see the side of her mouth curling into a smile. At six foot four he dwarfed her, which always gave him a sneaky advantage when it came to gauging her mood.

  It was Karin’s idea to come to Berlin. Her parents lived in Stralsund, a three-hour train ride away, but she’d been brought up in the capital and wanted to see it one last time. The tumour in her head, a magnanimous assassin, was granting them a brief window to ‘put her affairs in order’. She hated the expression, along with all the other clichés that came with terminal illness, and was already bored of being told what a ‘battler’ she was. As far as she could see it was an invasion, the enemy already here and the terms of surrender agreed. There’d been no battle, simply a journey and a destination.

  She’d broken the news to her husband over a meal. They’d had osso buco – his favourite – then she’d told him the facts as simply as she was able. There’d been a twitch of the jaw, but his long face remained impassive and his grey eyes inscrutable. Finally, he’d drained the last of his wine, leant forwards and kissed her. The questions came later; his reaction to her impending death more or less the same as it was to any other logistical problem which came his way. First, there was slow methodical probing, then a period of assimilation, succeeded by a laying out of the facts, each one studiously re-examined for any nuance he’d missed.

  There’d followed a trip to the hospital to talk to the consultant, which Karin found unexpectedly entertaining. Two quiet, cerebral men, each trying to out-calm one another, condensing language down to a series of exchanged statements. Finally, like one of those souvenir penny machines, out popped a perfectly pressed plan. A strategy to deal with her final months on planet Earth. It was, naturally, faultless. If anyone could draw up the perfect timetable for a terminal illness, it was her husband. It was a skill that could probably make you a bit of money if you were so inclined, she thought; planmydeath.com or something.

  She’d known from the beginning she wanted to die at home in London, but she also knew the decision would be out of her hands. Her parents both reacted differently to her diagnosis. Her mother was clear; she wanted her to come back home to Germany. It was her father’s response that took her by surprise. When she rang it was always Mum who answered. When she asked after him, he’d invariably be ‘dropping a book back at the library’ or ‘giving the dogs a trot around the block’. When he was dragged to the phone, there was just an awful bonhomie and some awkward words of encouragement followed by stultifying long silences. She’d been his princess, and would be again – afterwards – but clearly this long, suffocating corridor in between was more than he could bear. Understanding his reaction didn’t stop it hurting, and she also knew he’d bitterly regret it after she was gone. She wasn’t going to allow that.

  Tomorrow she’d take her father for a walk to Stralsund’s city forest and try and get through to him. Today, though, was about her and Alex. Her father wasn’t the only stubborn introvert she knew.

  ‘So where do you want to go?’ Finn said.

  ‘Nowhere in particular. Let’s just mooch.’ She took his arm.

  ‘Mooch?’

  ‘Did you want to see the sights? We could do one of those boat trips along the Spree?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘A decent bar with some decent food will do for now, then we can plan some structured mooching.’ She smiled.

  They found a quiet cafe under the railway arches close to Hackescher Markt and ordered a toasted sandwich each. They ate in silence, and not for the first time she thought her husband could easily be mistaken for an academic. His light brown hair was tightly shaved around the back and sides with a carefully managed fringe on top. He wore a pair of horn-rimmed designer glasses that bridged pronounced cheekbones. The Ted Baker shirt, dark Armani jeans and carefully moisturised skin merely completed the deception.

  She’d met enough police in her time to know he didn’t fit the archetype of a hardened murder detective, and often wondered how his workmates viewed him. He took figuring out, which meant getting to know him, and he wasn’t one to make the process easy. Karin knew well enough that what people couldn’t understand they often shot down, but if there was ever a problem he never mentioned it. His mood was always calm as he came through the front door, whatever traumas the working week was inflicting. Somewhere in the journey from his desk at Cedar House to their comfortable two-bedder in Balham, it was all ironed out.

  She took a sip of her tea, then took the pin out of a grenade and lobbed it.

  ‘So, here’s my thing: I’m worried about you.’

  He feigned a look of irritation.

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I can be, I’m dying; the usual rules don’t apply.’

  ‘The usual rules?’

  ‘When I say I’m worried about you, you don’t get to change the subject, use humour to deflect unwanted questions, or fiddle around with your phone.’

  Finn sighed, and the warm smile on his face gave way to something else. The stress of the last few weeks was just about visible for a fleeting moment.

  ‘I’ll cope. I don’t really have a choice, do I?’

  ‘I know you’ll cope, you’ll be brilliant – that’s the point.’

  His expression didn’t change, but that didn’t mean anything. With Alex, fireworks could be going off in there and you’d never know.

  ‘It’s day one I’m thinking about.’

  He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘The first morning afterwards. The day you put your suit back on, and go back to work. Every time I think of that . . .’ She broke off, the emotion catching her. He instinctively took her hand across the table.

  ‘You’ll bottle it up, and for God knows how long, and I don’t want you doing that. Let yourself emote, you silly sod.’ He looked down into his weissbier but didn’t reply. ‘I don’t want you to be alone.’ It wasn’t the idea that Alex couldn’t live without her that bothered Karin, it was the idea that he could live only too cheerfully on his own.

  ‘A bit early to be thinking about that, isn’t it?’

  ‘When would you like to talk about it, Christmas?’

  He looked upset. ‘Not funny.’

  ‘Alex, I haven’t got long, and there’s some things I can’t put in a will. I need you to listen.’ She held his gaze a moment, and finally he nodded.

  ‘Alright, I promise at some point I’ll download Tinder and go on some appalling dates with a few divorced mothers of four.’

  ‘What did I say about the rules?’ He held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘I’m serious. I want you to meet someone, and I want you to have children one day.’

  ‘Jesus, Karin; you haven’t gone yet.’

  His reaction to the suggestion of children was interesting. She’d been a duty solicitor when they’d first met and it was frequently a bumpy professional relationship. She would be called down to Cedar House at all hours of the day and night, and as their jobs demanded, they’d routinely slipped into adversarial positions. Just as she’d formed the opinion he was so far up his own arse he’d probably need a torch to navigate his way out, he’d surprised her by asking her out on a date. Even then, she was amazed they’d made it to a second and a third one. He seemed arrogant to the point of unpleasantness until she understood he really possessed no concept of how he came across. What took longer was working
out what was going on underneath. She’d taken the time and discovered a warm, principled man, at odds with the brusque exterior.

  As things progressed, marriage and children went from being part of the plan, to being part of a plan, until finally there didn’t really seem to be a plan. They’d settled into a routine they were both comfortable with, and the deep bond between them was enough. It was only in the last year she’d sensed something else bubbling beneath the surface. The odd dropped comment, his irritation at friends who did have children – just enough for Karin to sense something was stirring. It had led her to re-evaluate her own feelings on the subject. At the time, she’d been surprised at how annoying the idea of getting pregnant made her feel. She’d wondered if it would ever change, what it would take to inject some urgency into her maternal instinct. Now, there was genuine regret at time which couldn’t be clawed back.

  ‘Do you regret we never had any?’ she asked him.

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘If we’d really wanted them, we’d have done it. We are where we are.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, and his eyes automatically flicked away. ‘I want you to have them though. Some day. With someone. But have them. Go out there when you’re ready, find someone, and impregnate the fuck out of them.’

  He smiled at the words, but what she said next made him laugh out loud. And months later, just hours after she’d been cremated, as he sat alone in a quiet bedroom in south London, it made him laugh out loud again.

  Chapter 3

  Today

  Adesh Kaul looked up at the custom-made wedding mandap and smiled contentedly. They’d looked hard to find a hotel in south London with a high enough ceiling for the structure. It was his brother Ajay who’d found this place in Morden and it couldn’t have been more perfect. He’d married Stephanie under the mandap just a couple of hours before, and the party was in full swing. The room was now a swirl of rainbow colour as the guests danced and mingled. Ajay was holding court trying to impress one of the waitresses, while simultaneously packing an oversized slice of wedding cake into his mouth. Their mother was sat at a nearby table with four equally stern-looking women of a certain age. They were all watching his little brother with horror, and Kaul couldn’t help chuckling at their appalled expressions.