firefighter walked over to them, cutting through the darkness of the night.
‘Looks pretty serious,’ Adrian said. The firefighter nodded.
The train station manager was approaching down from the platform with a quickened pace; he had probably been dragged in from home as well.
‘Officers,’ he said, nodding at them both.
‘Follow me,’ the firefighter said, beckoning them towards the ruined signal box. They got to the foot of the building; the wooden staircase was completely gone, as was the entire top floor.
‘Deliberate?’ Adrian asked, pulling out his notebook.
‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with kids and homeless people breaking into this one in the past,’ the station manager offered. ‘Until the investigation is complete we can’t say for sure, but it definitely looks that way. Even though this is old wood it’s a rainy night, and from the calls we got, it escalated to disproportionate levels for what we would expect from a building like this. There does seem to be some evidence of accelerant.’
‘Do you think it’s arson then?’ Adrian asked him.
‘I’m leaning that way. The point of origin seems to be a waste paper bin, but we’ll need to check that out further.’
‘Do you have any CCTV footage?’ Imogen turned to the station manager.
‘We do. My colleague is just retrieving it for you now. It’s a poorly lit area and with the terrible weather the visibility will be even crappier, not to mention the fact that it was actually night when whoever it was came out. It’s possible that when the arsonist was leaving some of the station lights or the lights on the bridge illuminated the area a little better though.’
‘Did they not tell you the main reason you’re here?’ the firefighter asked, looking between them curiously.
‘What do you mean?’ Adrian asked.
‘We found a body.’
Imogen and Adrian looked at each other.
‘You probably should have led with that,’ Imogen said crossly.
‘The fire started in the upstairs part of the building but the body was in the room with the mechanics on the ground floor. Probably male, possibly homeless, but that’s really a wild guess as the body is so badly damaged. It’s most likely he snuck in here for a kip or something. They come into the bottom of the building because there are no windows. It happens all the time. We’ll know more when the investigators have done a proper search and you get your pathologist down to the site to have a look before the body is moved.’
They made their way forwards, the firefighter handed them hard hats although it seemed unnecessary as there was nothing above them anymore, the ceiling and roof had been completely burnt through. Adrian started picking through the rubble of the structure. The floor was burned, the machinery charred black and as their eyes adjusted, they could make out a human-being-shaped pile of debris. The firefighter shone a light at the ground.
The station manager gagged and crumpled forwards at the sight of the body. Imogen looked at Adrian who gave a nod.
‘Show me the CCTV,’ Imogen said to the station manager before following him back out towards the platform, leaving Adrian to deal with the body.
Adrian bent down and looked at the ground. The body was contorted, almost in a foetal position, crisp and delicate, with obvious fracture points where the entire floor had caved in on top of it, smashing the skull to smithereens. What was previously the floor now lay around the body in charred splinters, the wood had been so dry it had almost entirely burnt away. He shone his torch upwards to see the smouldering hole where the fire had torn through the roof and exposed the inky sky overhead. Back on the ground he noticed debris, rat droppings, chunks of wet, singed wood. It was like staring at a black and white TV, everything in monochrome, various shades of grey. Dark wet ash, light dry ash, everything covered in some variant of grey dust. Even the red-brick walls were blackened with soot.
The crime scene technicians approached and Adrian took a couple of markers, the bright yellow practically glowing against the dirge of this tiny burnt-out structure. He focussed on the shape of the body, the hands shrivelled into claws. Adrian shuddered at the thought of the man, hiding in here from the cold when the fire broke out.
‘How long does it take for a body to get like that?’ Adrian asked the crime scene technician once he’d checked that Imogen had taken the station manager a safe distance away.
‘It really depends on how hot it got in here. It’s a small space and fairly well insulated despite the broken glass upstairs. There’s a lot of metal in here too, which would have added to the intensity of the heat. I spoke to one of the firefighters and he said it was at least forty-five minutes before they made it down here onto the tracks safely. It’s out of view, and although there aren’t many trains at this time of night, a lot of calls had to be made before they could access the building. It’s a tricky spot to get to as well. And who knows how long it was burning before anyone noticed, the CCTV footage should be able to tell you more.’
‘Will we be able to get DNA from the body?’ Adrian had taken out his notebook and was scribbling as the technician talked.
‘I can’t say at this stage, I’m sorry. It really depends on a variety of factors. We’ll know more when we get the remains back to the lab.’
‘Thank you.’ Adrian closed his notebook and walked back to find Imogen. He felt strange walking alongside the tracks, remembering his mother’s old obsession with the fact that this was probably how he would die. Growing up, their house had backed onto the lines at Exeter St Thomas station, and every time he left the house she would warn him not to play about on the tracks. The trains had been delayed tonight, so he knew he was safe. Still, this felt like an act of betrayal.
Adrian stepped into the railway office and saw Imogen sitting with the station manager, going through the CCTV footage of that night. He went over to them and sat down, wanting a closer look at the screen. They were rewinding back from the fire. Five figures came out of the signal box, two wearing hoodies. They looked like males, probably teenagers. The rain was coming down. Adrian could see a girl with a baseball cap on, but there was no clear shot of her face, and another girl who was wearing a short skirt and had a newspaper covering her head. There was a young man with her, holding her hand and helping her down the stairs. He was tall, with shoulder-length dark hair obscuring his face and clearly alternative clothing.
‘We’ll never get an ID from that picture.’
Imogen spun around on her chair to face him. ‘There’s not many places for the alternative crowd to go around here, Miley. I think I know where we can start looking.’
Imogen showed the girl on the door of the nightclub her police ID and was waved forward into the club. She felt a rush of adrenaline as they entered; this was her thing, this was who she used to be. It was hard to rebel against her flighty mother when Imogen was a teen. Irene Grey would waft around wearing bright, multi-layered skirts and cardigans, smoking pot and occasionally flashing the neighbours as an act of protest. When Imogen was small her mother had insisted on dressing
