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  BURN

  A NOVEL BY

  Paul Slatter

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. References to real people alive or dead, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are for the intended purpose only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  TNCS - Publishing Edition

  Copyright – 2017 by Paul Slatter – 1103027 B.C. Ltd.

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The publisher is not responsible for any websites, or contents of any websites, that are not owned by the publisher.

  First Trade Edition: January 2017

  1103027 B.C. Ltd.

  Also by Paul Slatter

  Rock Solid

  Trust Me

  For

  Joy

  Manus in manu

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Book One:

  Burn

  Chapter One

  Padam Bahadur hoisted the blond-haired man's body onto the small boat, covered it in fuel, lit two small fuses, placed his foot on its side, and kicked it hard into the creek’s calm water.

  Stepping back, he stood in silence, watching the small boat drift slowly through the reflections of the distant city lights streaming across the black water.

  The air was warm and still as he walked along the seawall toward the girl’s apartment, thinking now about the boat that rested somewhere out there on the creek. He reached her apartment block, stopped a moment and stared at the windows that rose up from the water’s edge. Then he hit the button for number four-five-four and waited. Seconds later, she answered, her voice soft and sweet.

  He smelled her perfume as she opened the door and watched her long brown hair dance across her back as he followed her along the corridor toward the main room. She was young and sexy and wore a simple black dress and heels as if she’d been about to go out.

  Turning to him, she smiled and asked in a Baltic accent Padam couldn’t place, “Would you like a drink?”

  Shaking his head in answer, he sat down and looked around. She had a nice home—expensive, all white and glass with a million-dollar view that spread out across the water.

  She looked at him and asked, “So how has your evening been?”

  “Good, thank you,” he said deliberately.

  It had been very good so far. The blond man had not been a problem. In fact, he’d been much easier than Padam had expected.

  “So what would you like to do?” the girl smiled and asked, her voice silky, even smoother in real life.

  For a moment, Padam just stared and said nothing, then he said, “I want to look at you. Stand by the window and look out for a moment.”

  The girl turned and walked slowly to the window, her right hand trailing by her side, gently stroking the furniture as she passed. She looked at him, smiled, then faced the window. Looking out over the lights outside and slowly arching her back, she asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

  Gently swaying her behind, she slipped her dress off, one shoulder at a time, until it slid down and pooled on the floor. He stared at her, not saying a word. Her breasts were large and firm, her ass like a peach. Turning her head, she looked at him.

  Padam continued to stare for a moment, thinking. Slowly, he drew in a deep breath. As his eyes began to close in resignation to something that had to be done, he said, “I’m going to fuck you.”

  Considering this, the girl smiled, and her voice, almost a whisper, answered, “Lucky me.” She turned back toward the window. In the distance, the boat was now afire, burning brightly in the darkness and casting a shimmering golden glow across the cold, shadowy water. Without looking back, she said, “There’s a boat on fire out on the water.”

  Padam stared at her for a moment as she stood there naked before him. He watched the burning boat on the creek below without a care. The girl no longer swayed but stood still, her naked back long and shapely, her perfect ass framed by delicate little knickers, her beautiful legs long and toned. Then he told her what he’d done.

  “It is a funeral pyre.”

  Confused, the girl looked back at him, not quite understanding.

  As Padam walked toward her, he said it again. “It’s a funeral pyre—your blond boyfriend’s burning out there in that boat.”

  The girl looked away from the water and back toward Padam to hear the last words he’d bother to say to her that evening.

  “I told you I was going to fuck you.”

  Chapter Two

  Daltrey stood at the edge of the bank, looking down at the burned boat as the sun began to break in the morning sky. There was an ambulance crew there. They’d done their work. The fire crew had done their work as well. Six cops stood around who’d so far done nothing except for the one who was wet. She knew if she told the other five to get off their asses and pan out, they could at least find where the boat had come from in a matter of an hour, but what was the point…they all hated her.

  Daltrey looked around, aware she was being stared at. The rush of blood from her stomach hit her chest, and unable to hold it in, she called over to two cops sitting sidesaddle on their bikes. “Whoever did this fucked off a long time ago,” she said, “so if you’re waiting for him to come back, he isn’t.”

  The cops looked at her strangely, this chick with a badge who should still be in school. One answered back, “What?”

  “The guy in the boat’s dead—he’s not leaving.”

  In their eyes, they were here securing the crime scene—she’d been around long enough to know that.

  “Now that the sun’s up, why don’t you walk along the shoreline and see if you can figure out where the boat came from,” she said.

  The cops looked at her, then along the seawall that ran for miles. In almost all their eyes, she could see the words go fuck yourself manifesting, but then one of them, whom she figured she hadn’t seen in at least a year, took a deep breath, piped up, pointed back into town, and said, “I’ve got something I need to chase up.”

  So that’s why you’ve been hanging around here for an hour doing fuck all, Daltrey thought as she stared at him, knowing she could make him do what she said, or an
y of them for that matter if she wanted to. But what was the point? Dead wood was dead wood. And besides, there could be a message chalked on the path reading, ‘Small boat with dead guy left from here,’ and they’d still miss it. So instead, she just said, “Yeah, I understand. It’s hard to walk when you’ve got gout.”

  Fuck them, she thought. Most had hit on her in one way or another when she first joined the force. They thought she was cute and dumb and wanted to help her on her way, would hate to see her fail. They would say, “Oh, you’re so cute” or “You have lovely hair, skin, and lips.” And now? They hated her mouth and the cruel words it spat out, words that flowed so freely from between those lovely lips they’d told her she had, those lovely lips they’d tried to kiss and stick their dicks into. Now it snapped back harsh and emasculating words, words that came without fear and hit home, words that cut them down like an unseen Gurkha warrior soldier wielding a razor-sharp sword.

  Daltrey walked to the boat and looked at the charred remains of the body for the second time. The young kid who had used his initiative and swam out and pulled it in stood there, now dressed, with his hair wet. Daltrey looked at him. He was strong and fit with light in his eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Williams.”

  “Where was he when you found him?”

  Williams pointed out into the creek, the tide now turning. In the distance, she could see another boat close by, its stern pulling out to sea from the anchor.

  She turned back to Williams and asked, “Where was the tide when you got here?”

  Williams didn’t have a clue. He stared at the water, and answered, “It was dark.”

  Daltrey looked back to the body, now charred beyond recognition. She pulled out a pencil, and lifted a charred cream-colored man’s shoe from the ashes.

  She drove along through the city that was just waking with the shoe in a plastic bag next to her on the passenger seat. As she pulled up to the traffic lights, she looked at it again, lifting it and examining its white pattern and leather soles closely. One shoe was a long shot, but what she already knew from the shoe itself—and from what forensics would tell her by the end of the day—it belonged to a male, late twenties or early thirties, and six foot plus.

  The shoe store opened at eight, and by nine, she knew she had a size eleven Mauri “slow mover” in light blue—not cream—retailing at around a thousand bucks a pair and sold in only three shops on Vancouver’s lower mainland. By midday, she had the names of six men who had bought a pair of size elevens in the last year and had spoken to five of them, the last being a Swedish gentleman by the name of Mazzi Hegan.

  It was just coming up to twelve thirty, a little over six hours since she’d pulled the shoe from the charred rowboat, and Daltrey was getting hungry. She pulled up outside Mazzi Hegan’s apartment complex and walked up to the door. It was a nice place, plush, with marble columns and a fancy lobby. The building manager looked at her ID and reluctantly let her into Hegan’s apartment on the twentieth floor.

  Daltrey moved through the big and airy apartment. A large dark blue sofa ran along the wall. Above it were stylish pictures on an off-white wall—pictures that meant something to someone. Watching her closely, the apartment complex manager spoke up.

  “Doesn’t look like he’s here.”

  Fuck me state the obvious, you dopey bitch, Daltrey thought as she turned around and looked at the woman who was getting on but still trying to hold it together.

  She carried on, ignoring her. She walked into Mazzi Hegan’s bedroom, opening the sliding closet without permission then asking after, “Do you mind if I look?”

  The apartment manager took a deep breath. This pushy cop with an attitude was getting on her nerves now. How would she feel if someone had been snooping around her place without permission, and what if Mazzi was to come back right now and catch them? She knew how prissy he could be, with his fancy blond hair, so she said, “Maybe we shouldn’t be here. I can call you if I see him later.”

  Daltrey pulled the charred shoe from her bag and said, “Well, if he’s wearing the other one of these, you’ll be seeing a ghost.”

  ******

  Bright sun lit up the center of Main Street as Daltrey headed south toward the center of town. A wardrobe full of silk suits and alligator skin shoes gave her the impression that Hegan could very well be the man who had burned to death on the boat. It was now 3:30, and she still hadn’t eaten. She pulled her car up alongside a deli and got out. After ordering an orange juice with a salad bagel, she sat down at a table by the window and watched the world pass her by. Across the road, a young kid in his twenties sat with his knees up and a ‘need money for food’ sign written on a piece of cardboard resting against his shins. Daltrey stared at him for a moment, then looked up at a sign positioned right above his head that read ‘Help Wanted.’

  Fucking idiot, she thought and mouthed it to him slowly as the kid looked back at her through the window, trying to make out her words. Looking back down at her bagel, she thought back to the charred body in the boat. She’d seen worse and crazier things, but wouldn’t most people think to jump into the water if they were on fire? She looked back outside to the street kid with his cap out, begging for handouts, the lazy prick. He didn’t look sick or mentally ill, and from what she could see, he had good shoes on his feet, though perhaps not the stylish and slick blue Mauri slow movers that her new friend Mazzi Hegan had worn to go boating.

  Taking a bite of the bagel, she stared at the kid, who was still holding his cap out and looking up at the passersby like a little puppy. Eventually catching site of Daltrey again, the kid stared back, his eyes almost tearful. Seemingly starving, homeless, desperate, and in need of love, he held out his cap to her for help. Daltrey looked back, and holding the kid’s stare for a moment, she finished chewing and then mouthed back silently, her lips so slow and precise that even Stevie Wonder could get the gist, Get – a – fucking – job!

  The kid stared at her, still not getting what she was saying.

  Fuck me, Daltrey thought. She tried again, this time pointing toward the sign above his head. Go…Get…A…Fucking…Job!

  Getting it, the kid looked behind him, then back to Daltrey as a stranger passing by dropped some cash into his hat.

  It was around four thirty when Daltrey got back into her cubicle in the second-floor office of the Vancouver Police Department on Hastings and Main Street. Sitting at the desk, she turned on her computer and punched in Mazzi Hegan on the keyboard. Top off the line was a website for Slave Media Advertising Agency. She hit the link and opened up a glossy site.

  Reach the Top with Slave

  The Media Marketing Specialists

  “Wow, don’t you guys look fabulous,” Daltrey muttered quietly as she scrolled down through the photos of commercial ads shot beautifully and fronted by models with huge attitude. At the bottom was a shot of two men standing in front of a red Ferrari, and underneath was the statement:

  Impossible is Nothing

  Slave—Creative Directors, Sebastian String & Mazzi Hegan

  Daltrey leaned in and looked closer at the two hotshots who claimed to have so much talent. The guy on the left was older with a sweet, soft face. On the right was a tall, good-looking blond man in his thirties wearing a blue suit and brown crocodile skin shoes not unlike the burned one sitting on her desk.

  She stared at the photo for a moment, thinking, as a smiling Mazzi Hegan stared back at her. She asked out loud to no one but herself, “What did you do last night, Mr. Slick, to get yourself barbecued on a rowboat?”

  She printed the photo and then entered the police database. Seconds later, Mazzi Hegan’s photo appeared alongside his date of birth, address, and social insurance number. She scrolled down further. He appeared to be a good citizen with only two speeding convictions and one ticket for parking badly. That was it. Fuck all, she thought. She hit another button, refined the search, and again nothing.

  Picking up the phone, she di
aled the number for the Slave website and asked to speak to Mr. Hegan. As she expected, he wasn’t in. “When will he be in, please?” The receptionist was unsure. “Of course you are, my love,” Daltrey said as she hung up and stared at the picture of Mazzi Hegan beaming back at her from the computer screen.

  It was him. She knew it. The penthouse apartment just off Cambie, close to the creek, expensive furniture, a Ferrari in the garage. Daltrey stared back at the photo, and something inside her told her the shoe was Hegan’s, and rarely was she wrong.

  Chapter Three

  Playing with the electronic infrared door key he’d just made in the basement where he lived in his mum’s house, Dan Treedle stood waiting in front of the sandwich shop at the corner of Georgia and Richards. He quickly stuffed the last few inches of a foot-long salmon salad sandwich with extra gherkins into his mouth as he watched Daltrey pull up and open the door for him to jump in.

  She was almost unrecognizable now, he thought, with her hair pulled back tight to the back of her head in a ponytail for work. Nothing like she’d looked when he’d met her at a party three months back. She’d been dancing in the living room with this woman who looked like a guy, drunk, her hair down and flowing as she flipped it around like a cheerleader at a hockey game. She’d been flipping it then, and again when she’d agreed to meet him a few days later, when he’d pounded oysters until he threw up.

  Sitting down, he leaned across the center console, moving in for a kiss.

  Daltrey said, “You been eating fish?”

  “Just a sandwich.”

  Good, Daltrey thought as she put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic. She now had an out if he asked her to go for lunch.

  Dan continued, “If you’re hungry, though, I know a great café.”