Island in Flames: The Island Connection, #13

By Graham Hamer

The Isle of Man, normally a haven of tranquil living, is rocked by a series of unexplained house fires. When the bodies of an old couple are discovered in the burned-out shell of their home, the tension increases as it is learned that it wasn't the fire that killed them.

 

Meanwhile, when Dick pays Rachel £300 for an hour of her time, Rachel has no inkling that he will be her last paying client. She never planned leaving this life in a pool of blood, but that's the way her partner found her a couple of hours later.

 

The police are struggling to find sufficient resources to solve the house fires and Rachel's murder. It is the fortnight when the Isle of Man hosts the world famous TT road races. All police leave is cancelled as the island's population is augmented by 40,000 leather-clad bikers. It doesn't help that a new police superintendent, who seems to be totally out of her depth, is running the show. Cathryn Brady, universally known as Miss Piggy, seems to be more interested in public opinion than in solving crime, and her senior officers have had enough.

 

Yet amongst the murder and mayhem, the baffling figure of Unicorn looms large, orchestrating events from deep in the shadows. Will Unicorn be exposed before the whole island goes up in flames? There's only one way to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Hamer
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201733766

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A rushing noise penetrates her dreams. It grates against her consciousness and, try as she might, she can no longer ignore it. She sees her six-year-old self on a beach, sitting on the warm sand with her mother and brother. Her father is lying on a beach towel, making the best of the sun a little further away. Two seagulls strut in their funny drunken walk towards her bare feet, beady yellow eyes on what remains of her ice cream. One of them looks straight at her full of resentment and hostility. It cocks its head this way and that, as if weighing her up until her brother squeals at it to go away as he throws pebbles at it. Her mother tells him to stop as you shouldn’t hurt animals and birds. The summer sun is so bright that her mother forces her to wear pink plastic sunglasses and an outrageous amount of sunblock cream. Her brother is two years younger but doesn’t have to use as much sunblock because his skin is darker than hers. But he always gets a little burnt anyway. Her parents never seem to mind. It is seldom that summer on the Isle of Man brings days as hot as this, so they are happy to let the kids enjoy themselves as long as they come to no harm by it.

In her dream, time skips a beat. She knows what is coming next, though she isn’t sure now if she is dreaming or if it’s a waking dream that she can’t shake herself out if. She doesn’t want to relive this part but she knows there is nothing she can do to stop it from playing in her head. The rushing noise is louder and her father is trying tell her something. He’s shouting at her but she can’t tell what he’s saying. His mouth moves but she can’t make out the words. She turns towards him and tries to hear, tries to understand, but the waves are too loud. Her father stands on the pebbles higher up the beach, in his shorts and sandals. A lazy ribbon of blue-grey smoke trails from the cigarette in his hand. He holds it up in an expressive gesture as he yells to her, but she still can’t understand what he is saying. The surf grows louder and louder, hurting her ears, and she puts her hands up to them and screams as the waves whip her legs away and she disappears under the water.

Her world turns into a green-grey kaleidoscope, throwing her around without a care about her discomfort. She wants to breathe, but she can’t. Her chest hurts and burns inside. It’s like being inside a water-filled tumble-drier - over and over, round and round, up and down. She inhales a lung full of sea water and tries to cough but can’t. The water is too thick. Now, her eyes are getting heavy and her thoughts are slowing. This is the moment when she knows she is going to die. Even at the age of six, she understands about dying. But she doesn’t mind because she is beyond tired and she only wants to sleep. It is so easy just to let go. The last thing she is aware of is a large pair of hands gripping her by both arms. She has no memory of being lifted out of the water or of the man on the beach who pumps on her tiny chest and her back to get the water out of her. She has no recollection of the men in the ambulance who put a mask over her face and take her to hospital. She only remembers opening her eyes sometime later and seeing her mother sitting at her bedside and not seeming happy to see her. Days later, when she can speak, she will ask why her father doesn’t visit her, but it will be more than a week before she gets an answer. Her brother tells her she has killed him by going in the water when he told her not to. Her father saved her but he never learnt to swim, so he couldn’t save himself.

Time skips again in her waking dream and what is coming now is even worse. She is in the bedroom she shares with her brother. It’s her ninth birthday and her brother is seven. She can see the man’s silhouette by the light coming under the door. She pulls the duvet over her head to try and cut out the noise and make the man go away. Her brother always cries and moans when their mother goes to work because that’s when they are visited by their new father who they both hate. Most times he comes to visit her. She is his favourite, though she wishes that she wasn’t. But sometimes, he goes to her brother’s bed and makes him cry instead. She wishes he was dead instead of her real father.

The dream fades as somewhere a car door slams and she bolts upright on the bed. The light of a bright sun comes through the open window, just like that fateful day at the beach all those years ago. She can hear the kids messing around outside, shouting to each other in friendly banter. Just like they had on the sand before her father never came back. Her t-shirt clings to her chest and back with sweat, but the cool breeze coming through the window calms her. As usual when she has these dreams, she can’t shake off the memories of life after her father died. She’d dozed off on top of the bed reading ‘Schizo-Affective Disorders in Homosexual Psychopathy’ by Lambert Petty. It was a scholarly tome, but didn’t clarify or interpret the horror that had been her stepfather. It didn’t even begin to explain the beatings and the cruelty. Nor did it give any clues to the hatred and gloating. She just wanted to understand, but there was no understanding to be given.

The last time her odious step-father had spoken to her had been in the main shopping street. He strode towards her with a spiteful look on his face, stopped inches short of her and snarled, I’ve fucked you, you little bitch, and I’ve fucked your brother too. What do you think of that then? Does that make you proud? The fact that she had been twenty-four years old when he had confronted her made no difference. All the old fear and loathing caused her to shrink back, still experiencing the harrowing emotions she had felt as a child when he had forced himself on her and on her brother. She could still feel the bruises where he had thumped, smacked, and pinched her. And she could still feel him inside her as he pumped up and down on top of her, dripping his hot sweat onto her face until grunting to his climax. No amount of psychobabble could ever explain all that. She had seen her step-father once after that in Marks and Spencer and had hidden behind a rack of clothes to avoid him. Every memory she ever had of him was bad. He was a vicious pervert who cared only about himself and his own gratification.

According to the book she had been reading, her stepfather displayed many of the symptoms of the psychopath. The personality disorder characterised by persistent antisocial behaviour, impaired empathy and remorse, and uninhibited egotistical traits. But he was beyond even that definition because he typified, too, the archetypal sadist, deriving pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain and humiliation on others. Unfortunately, the ‘others’ had been her and her brother. And if ever either of them threatened to tell their mother or a teacher, he had used the very real threat of death to shut them up. Tell one person and I’ll drown you in your own blood, had been one of his oft-used responses. I will break every bone in your body before I carve you apart like a chicken, had been another. The worst one was When your mother finds out, she will blame you and hate you and never speak to you again. And, at the age of nine, she and her brother believed him. To some extent, she still did.

Her stepfather was incapable of normal happiness. He wanted to impose his own misery on everybody else. Had had a ready-made family and everybody in the community thought he was the perfect family man. But at home, when their mother worked evenings as a waitress at the restaurant up the road, he was Vlad The Impaler, Rasputin, Jack the Ripper, and Attila the Hun, all rolled in one despicable character. Torturing and raping his step-children was never a form of discipline - just a form of perverted pleasure - the pleasure of inflicting control using pain and fear as the tools of his trade. She and her young brother had often gone to school sporting the bruises that he’d given them. He’d always been careful to hit them where it wouldn’t show - the kidneys and the abdomen being his locations of choice.

She sits for a moment on the edge of the bed. Sweat stands out on her forehead, like morning dew on the grass. Outside, butterflies and honeybees bob around from flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen. Birds sing up in the trees, and small animals scurry around as they search for their lunch. Everything is normal except for her thoughts, which are far outside what is considered right.

After a few moments taking in deep breaths through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, she begins to breathe normally again. She shakes off her introspection and soul-searching, stands, and takes a shower. It can never wash away the filth that he imposed on her, but it stops her hands from shaking. Until the next time she dreams the same thing.

CHAPTER ONE

Unicorn brushed aside a cobweb and peered through the small, dirty window from the attic of the unoccupied old house. From here there was a clear view down into the bay windows of the house across the road. There was movement inside. It was just a hint of a shadow passing across the unlit living-room, but it was enough to know that the action had begun. Shortly after midnight, a tall man in a hoodie with a covered face exited the building by the front door. Moments later, the first of the flames were visible inside the living space. Unicorn’s pulse picked up pace, willing the fire to take hold before someone saw it and dialled 999. This was the first step in a plan - the opening salvo of deception and distortion. It was too late to turn back now. There would be another fire the following night, and others after that, but they would all lead to one programmed finale.

Fire was such a cleansing element. Very little could survive over 1,000 degrees centigrade and that meant that there was little risk of leaving behind evidence that the Isle of Man Constabulary could use to identify the culprit or culprits. Unicorn knew that, for the police, this would prove to be a near impossible challenge, but that’s the way they had thought it through. That’s the way it had to be if it was to succeed. The police would maybe have their suspicions, and they would make their enquiries, but they would have to wait. Everything would become clear in due course. Or almost everything.

The fire in the house took hold in no time. The man with the hoodie and the balaclava had left by the front door, leaving it open just a little. He’d not intended to, but it had the effect of feeding oxygen to the inferno. Shortly after, the blaze licked round the edges of the door and the porch burst into six-foot-high flames. Inside, the fire raced around like a caged animal trying to find other means to escape. It dashed through the rooms, growing as it found new material to feed from. A window burst with an explosion of glass, and black smoke billowed out in angry clouds, darker than the night.

Arson investigators created videos of fires that they had set for training purposes. When run at a slower speed, you could watch the flames zip around the house, up the walls and over furniture. And then, for no apparent reason, they would skip something like a lamp or a table. They would shoot over or around it. Investigators generally didn’t pay much attention to the phenomenon and guessed that it might have something to do with the flow of oxygen in the room and the flammability of the substances around the item. But it was unsettling to see it on video. During its lifetime, a fire seemed to have a mind of its own. It lived and it purified but at the end of its life, when it had destroyed everything that stood in its way, it was self-extinguishing.

Unicorn glanced at the time. It took eighteen minutes before somebody reported the blaze and the first of the fire engines arrived. By that time, the fire had taken hold and flames had already broken through the roof, sending blazing white embers high into the night sky. Burning petrol soon takes its toll on flammable building materials and soft furnishings. A second tender from the Isle of Man Fire and Rescue Service turned up three minutes later, sirens cutting through the night. But by the time they had located the hydrants and attached their hoses, nothing could stop the inferno. It was clear after just a few minutes that the fire service had made the decision to sacrifice the burning house and was doing whatever was necessary to prevent the fire from spreading to adjacent buildings. While the first two fire tenders hosed down the tall trees and the houses on either side, a third tender worked on the flames that were leaping and dancing from the house. Only when they were satisfied that they had created a safe barrier did the first two re-focus their attention back on the burning building.

Along the street, a crowd of gawking spectators had gathered, some still in their pyjamas, dressing gowns, and comfy slippers. They were soon marshalled away from the danger zone by uniformed police officers who had arrived shortly after the fire service. The neighbourhood was quiet and upper-middle class, the type of place where something like this would be talked about and dissected for years to come. A hack from the local rag was making a nuisance of himself trying to push past the police for a better photographic opportunity. Unicorn smiled. If the hack came up here, he would get an unsurpassed ringside seat. But then nobody could suspect that they had opened the lock on the back door of the unoccupied house as easily as cracking an egg, and that they would lock it tight again later when Unicorn left. There would never be any evidence of Unicorn’s temporary occupation of the attic space.

A large SUV screamed to a halt nearby and a short, dark-haired, dark-skinned woman stepped out. Unicorn recognised her as Detective Inspector Penny Chakyar. She was Manx born but of Indian heritage. Unicorn had heard that the twenty-nine-year-old Ms Chakyar spoke six languages, had a Master’s degree and an MBA, was proficient with a jazz trumpet and classical piano, and played off a six handicap in golf. She was one sharp cookie, destined for high rank. But Unicorn didn’t fear her because even her sharp intellect would struggle to understand the carnage that was destined to come. Nothing would be what it seemed to be. Puzzles were made to be solved, but some puzzles were never solved.

Inspector Chakyar talked for a moment to the chief fire officer then stepped away and spoke to the journalist with the camera. Moments later, the hack was taking photos of anything and everything. Unicorn knew the drill. Whenever there was a suspicion of arson, police photographers would surreptitiously photograph or film the people in the crowd, knowing that arsonists often stayed behind to enjoy the results of their actions. With no police photographer immediately available, it looked like DI Chakyar had done a deal with the journalist to allow him closer access to the scene of the fire in exchange for photos of the rubber necks. It wasn’t uncommon for the two sides to scratch each other’s backs like that. Anonymity was essential for the success of the project, so Unicorn wouldn’t leave the attic until the fire had been tamed and the journalist with the camera had left the scene.

That moment came two hours later when almost all of the spectators had gone home. But not before Unicorn phoned the arsonist to congratulate him. Well done, Baz. Nice clean job. I have another one for you now.

After the call, one fire tender remained, damping down and making sure that the flames didn’t reignite. The firemen would still be there in the morning. DI Chakyar had left the scene after a long chat with the journalist, and all that remained now were the blue flashing lights of the remaining fire tender. Unicorn had noticed how emergency services were always loathe to switch off their flashing lights. Maybe they felt that it gave them the recognition they deserved. But firefighters were good people, putting themselves in harm’s way to save life and property. Right now, they would be easing back until first light when they would start looking for clues as to the cause of the fire. They would soon discover that it was started intentionally using accelerants. It was easy to spot the seat of the fire if you knew what to look for. You started where there was the least damage - usually just smoke and heat damage - and then you followed that back to the source. For the moment, the remaining firefighters were walking around, their faces covered with dark soot. A group on the front lawn passed around some bottled water. Some of them looked tired, sullen, and irritable. Others were less downcast - maybe thinking of the call-out bonus money they would earn.

Tonight, Baz, the fire lighter had done his job well. He wasn’t the most intelligent specimen in the human race, but how bright did you need to be to drop a burning match into a puddle of petrol? With a bit of luck, before torching the place, he’d found the £250 that had been placed there earlier in the day. It had to be well enough hidden to make it look like the owners hadn’t just left it lying around, without it being so well concealed that he wouldn’t find it. Arson meant that the house owners would have to wait a little longer for their insurance company to pay out, but that was unlikely to bother them too much in their villa in the south of France.

Time to go and get some sleep before the new day arrived. A quick phone call ensured that a taxi would be waiting at the end of the road. Alfie, the taxi driver, was reliable and would keep his mouth shut. That’s the way Unicorn liked it.

CHAPTER TWO

Maggie Harrison used the pseudonym Rachel when she was working. It sounded more professional and more sensual. She lived with her girlfriend, Emily, who was wild and knew how to code in JavaScript. Emily was a bit of a recluse who rarely went out, except to go to work just up the road from their home. She specialised in computer virus protection, and she could hack into almost any system and find just about anything. The woman could uncover the Ayatollah’s dirty secrets if she chose to. Emily also drove their Lexus the way she engaged in conversations - drifting from lane to lane without signalling a change of direction. Emily was eccentric but had a large capacity for love. Maggie liked that. Maggie liked sex, but she liked love too.

Maggie was several years older than her partner Emily, and recognised that she was getting a bit past her prime. Her fingers were ringed, her nails painted, but the veins and tendons told people she had mileage on the clock. And some regular Botox applications too if you looked closely at her face. Not that Maggie worried too much about it. Some of Jimmy Joyce’s punters wanted youngsters; others were men who enjoyed the favours of an experienced older woman. Jimmy always gave the ‘older’ jobs to Maggie because, at 50, she was the oldest escort on his books.

Way back, before meeting Emily, Maggie had lived in Liverpool, leaving school at