Chapter 10
There wasn’t much left of the Balmain House Hotel – not from the front, anyway.
Just a flat-faced, mid-terrace, two-storey rectangle of smoke-blackened granite blocks, with a dormer layer on the top for those swanky penthouse-suite views of a baby-scanning centre, a newsagent’s, and a dog-grooming place called ‘Pup, Pup, then the buildings opposite with their grim featureless grey facades.
One of them had a drooping ‘FOR SALE’ sign in the tiny, gravelled front garden – good luck selling now, with a murder scene right across the street.
Next up were more bland grey buildings as the road headed off to Kaimhill and the exotic delights of Garthdee, beyond.
Then back up the granite terrace on this side, past a bus stop, and back to the incinerated shell of the Balmain House Hotel again.
And PC Kent was still fiddling.
The boy-racer’s theme tune ‘bmmm-tsh, bmmm-tsh, bmmm-tsh’ rattled out of a hatchback’s windows as it drove by, followed by a florist’s van.
A couple walked past on the other side of the street, arm in arm, fancy-dressed as pirates, swinging a carrier bag from the local off-licence.
Then a woman with a pushchair stopped to attach some sort of homemade banner to the hotel railings – her laminated A4 sheets putting up a fight, while her toddler beamed at the brightly coloured display.
There was a young man lurking behind the bus shelter, clutching a heart-shaped mylar balloon and some petrol-station flowers. Watching as the mother fixed her banner into place. Awaiting his turn to perform at the Look At Me Mourning Theatre.
OK, this was getting silly now.
Logan stepped away from the hotel. ‘If you can’t find it, maybe—’
‘Here we go.’ PC Kent held her phone out.
Something was playing, but it was barely visible in the glaring sunshine.
He leaned in, cupping his hand around the screen to cast a bit of shadow. Cutting the glare. Then took the thing from her hand, turning his back on the sun. Finally, a fizzy mess of fuzzy-pixelled darkness appeared, with a couple of white trainers in the middle.
Then the footage wheeched upright, giving a wobbly view along Broomhill Road towards a smear of bright yellow and orange.
An ‘Oh my God!’ shrieked out of the phone’s speaker, the words tinny and brittle as the video lurched into a jiggling run sprinting towards the burning hotel.
Then a figure overtook whoever was doing the filming – a girl, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, in cargo shorts and a leather jacket. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!’
Another girl’s voice, slurring the words. ‘Call the cops! Call the . . . fire cops!’
The wobbly footage came to a halt on the opposite side of the road to the Balmain House Hotel, watching it burn.
PC Kent nodded at the vacant front door.
‘Whoever set it on fire, they stuffed one of those fleecy blanket things through the letter box, followed by about ten litres of unleaded. Blanket stops the petrol leaking away – acts like a big spongy candle. You drop a lit box of matches in after it, and: instant inferno.’
‘Didn’t screw the door or windows shut, did he?’
That got him a look of horror. ‘What? Why would anyone . . . I mean, even think of that?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
A whooshing crash burst free of the phone as the hotel’s upper windows exploded and flames shot out, curling and twisting as they grew.
It was bright enough to blow-out the camera’s light levels, leaving the whole screen an angry shade of white that took a good five or six seconds to fade any detail back up again.
Logan whistled.
‘Oh aye.’ PC Kent leaned back against one of the burnt-out cars. ‘Lucky the place was half empty, cos the header tank flooded the front four bedrooms.’ Pointing at the empty windows. ‘No way anyone would’ve got out of there alive.’
As the image came back, a blurred figure staggered into the middle of the road, phone to her ear.
Another girl, barely in her teens, and more than a little wasted.
‘Yeah, there’s a fire. Like a huge fire .
. . Yeah . . . Uh-huh . . . It’s this hotel thing on Broomhill Road.
Hurry, I can . . .’ She turned to the camera, eyes wide.
‘Can you hear that? Jesus, someone’s screaming! ’
The camera swung up, ran along the line of buildings, clearly looking for whoever it is.
‘Someone’s screaming! You gotta get here now!’
The footage went from portrait to landscape, shrinking right down till Logan turned PC Kent’s phone sideways to catch up. But there was no sign of whoever was screaming, just gouts of black smoke billowing out, lit from below like a signpost to hell.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!’
‘And that’s that. They keep filming till the Fire Brigade get here. Then there’s a break. Then there’s more footage of them putting it out.’
Logan straightened up, handing the phone back. ‘And they didn’t go straight to the tabloids and sell the video?’