Читать книгу Out of the Ashes - Vicky Newham - Страница 15

Maya, 4.30 p.m.

While we waited for the engineer to arrive, I walked a couple of buildings away to make some calls. Dan was trying to get hold of Indra, so I rang the Royal London Hospital to inquire about Rosa Feldman. The news wasn’t good. With her asthma, and years of living with Józef’s cigarette smoke, the fumes she’d inhaled in the street had ripped through the lining of her lungs, the ward sister told me, and Rosa was still having difficulty breathing.

‘She’s on steroids and has been hallucinating,’ the nurse said. ‘She’s convinced she’s in the Warsaw Ghetto at the end of the war.’

We would have to hope she pulled through.

‘One thing,’ the nurse said. ‘She keeps mentioning masks. Black masks. Does that mean anything to you?’

*

Half an hour later, with so much soot in the sky, the light was fading fast. Floodlights shone over the crime scene and made it look as though it was the film set for a horror or disaster movie. The fire service engineer, Terry Dixon, had arrived. He confirmed within minutes that the building was not structurally safe to enter from the ground. To get Simas’s body out, we would ideally need to go through the windows, using support structures, but that would mean a further delay while we waited for those to arrive. Another option was for an enclosed cage – with a fire officer inside it – to be lowered through the hole in the collapsed roof from above.

‘We did something similar at that warehouse fire in Shoreditch a few months back.’ Terry was showing Simon the images on his phone. ‘D’you remember?’

‘OK,’ Simon said, his voice heavy with resignation and apprehension. ‘Let’s do it.’

Fifteen minutes later, and after careful manoeuvring by the lift operator, the fire officer was finally able to see into the room at the top of the house where he’d seen a body. I held my breath as he was lowered from above, where the roof had been. They had to move the lift at a painfully slow pace so that the cage and crane arm did not disturb the building structure. There was nothing above him to fall, but the walls were difficult to assess. Other than the instructions of Simon Chapel, the site was quiet. Until—

‘Hey,’ a voice shouted. ‘Why is he looking at that side of the building?’

We all turned and saw Indra, rake thin and ashen.

‘Our bedroom is on the left,’ she shouted. ‘Not that side.’ She bolted over to Chapel. ‘He’s got the wrong room. Simas isn’t in that room. Our bedroom is this one.’ She was pointing, jabbing the air urgently, her arms stick-like in the parka.

I followed her over to Chapel and relayed what the officer had seen when he looked through their bedroom window.

‘The floor collapsed? Where is he then?’ She glanced from me to Dan, and I could tell that the realisation was dawning that something wasn’t right. ‘Why would he be in the spare room?’

I was racking my brain for things to say. I wasn’t sure why Indra was bothered which room her husband was in. ‘Perhaps Simas went next door to sleep? Maybe he went in there to fetch something and got trapped by the fire?’ I could see Indra wasn’t convinced.

‘He never sleeps in there.’ She began gabbling in Lithuanian to her sister.

‘Hold it.’ Chapel put his hand up to signal that the medical officer was relaying some news to him via a headset.

‘He’s coming out. He says he can see—’ Chapel broke off abruptly. His face fell. ‘Inspector, can you . . . ?’ He took hold of my elbow and steered me away from Indra to the side of the building. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid.’ His voice was hushed. ‘Andy says there are two bodies in there.’

‘Two?’ I was absorbing the implications. ‘Can he see whether they are male or female?’

He was nodding. ‘One’s definitely male. The other one looks like it’s female.’ His eyes communicated possible interpretations of what they’d found.

Shit. Poor Indra. ‘Is he sure?’

‘We’re trying to check, but he’s pretty certain. The time on Andy’s breathing apparatus runs out in a few minutes so he’s got to come out, but we’re going to lower Bill in next. If we’re lucky, he can grab a few samples, but everything depends on the temperature.’

‘Do whatever you can, please. We have to find out who’s responsible for this. Rosa Feldman nearly died. Now we’ve now got two confirmed deaths and—’

‘What’s going on?’ Indra was striding towards us, yelling. ‘What’s he found? Is my husband in there?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t confirm anything until we’ve made a formal ID.’

‘But someone is definitely dead?’ Her green eyes were pools of tears. ‘It’s Simas, isn’t it? I knew it as soon as I got the call.’ Her hand was clasped over her mouth as she stifled sobs. ‘Was it the gas?’ Suddenly, Indra winced with pain and clamped her hand to her belly. ‘We had cylinders . . . in the . . . ’ She grabbed hold of her sister’s arm, let out an agonised scream and fell to the ground like a dropped towel.

‘Help,’ Marta shouted. ‘Paramedics. Over here.’

Indra lay on the pavement, her slender frame writhing in agony, her face a deathly white.

Marta was kneeling at her sister’s side, leaning over, her hand on Indra’s forehead. ‘Hurry. She’s pregnant.’