Page 49
“Beau, please, call me Liz.”
“Sure thing, Miz… Liz.”
Her smile turns sheepish as she studies us. “I have to admit, the story you guys told me was an intriguing one, and I couldn’t stop myself from doing some preliminary legwork on it. I just wish I had uncovered more information.”
Callum reaches down and squeezes her shoulder, giving it a pat. “This is already plenty, Liz.”
I’m putting good energy out into the universe extra hard today in the hopes that we’ll find something helpful in the fire investigation files. For the sake of everyone, including our friends haunting the spin studio, I hope we can discover some answers, or at least clues that might lead us toward some.
Liz takes the lead, and we follow her into the archives where she has a conversation with one of the archivists, flashing her identification and completing some necessary paperwork. After that, we’re soon led to a special room with three cardboard file boxes set out on a table for us.
“Why don’t we each take a box?” Callum suggests.
“Where do we even start?” I ask.
“A task like this can be daunting to even seasoned Met officers. There’s bound to be a lot of unorganized papers that we’re going to have to weed through and try to make sense of. Why don’t you start with the lightest box since there’s probably less in there.”
We each take our respective boxes and get to work.
I soon learn just how tedious the paperwork generated by law enforcement investigations actually is. Callum had mentioned on the way here that an overwhelming percentage of time on the job was spent completing paperwork, and now I’m starting to believe he wasn’t exaggerating. It’s definitely not as fast-paced as Olivia Benson makes it look.
A short while later, Liz uncovers some old photographs of the warehouse after the fire was put out. Being a brick Victorian structure, it didn’t all come tumbling down, but the interior of the ground floor was gutted. The physical photographs lack the greater clarity of digitized ones today, but they clearly display the level of devastation the fire caused. Nothing obvious about the cause of the fire stands out when I scrutinize them more fully.
Callum returns to his box and after a while pulls out a dossier of witness statements taken by police. We start going through them and finally begin to learn some new and critical information.
“This statement is from Ken Armstrong, a bouncer who clocked out shortly after the club closed,” Callum murmurs. “He says that when he left, there were still some people inside the building who liked to stay behind after hours to unwind in”—he looks up at me—“the private basement.”
My eyes widen. “I had a feeling that basement wasn’t just written off,” I whisper.
Liz looks confused so Callum quickly brings her up to speed on what we discovered in the original blueprints for the building and the renovation plans.
“So the main floor was for commercial use,” Liz says slowly, “but they used the basement on the side for… other reasons?”
Callum cups his chin in thought. “We have reason to believe that, erm, at least one of the patrons trapped in the fire was gay.”
Liz’s eyes widen and she holds up a hand, wincing. “Do not tell me how you found that out.”
Callum and I stay quiet, and I mime zipping my lips.
She starts pacing back and forth in the room for a few minutes while Callum and I keep reading the witness statements.
Finally, Liz rounds on us, her gaze sharp. “So was this basement possibly some kind of underground gay hookup room?” she muses aloud.
“It’s certainly possible,” Callum replies. “Given the stigma still surrounding the LGBTQ+ community at the time, a lot of businesses that catered to that clientele were more covert about it.”
“Disco nightclub during business hours, private safe space for queer folks once the closed sign was turned on? Sounds like the club owner was either really progressive for the time, or he was happy to make money off anyone and everyone,” I offer.
Callum strokes his chin again. “We need to learn more about him. Keep an eye out for anyone listed as the owner of the building in the paperwork.”
“So, what are we thinking?” Liz asks. “Did the victims of the fire get trapped in the basement somehow?”
“Sure seems like a possibility,” I admit.
Callum returns to skimming through the witness statements. “Hmmm. Several of the witnesses confirmed the bouncer’s statement that people often stayed after closing and used the basement, but it looks like this was more of a casual situation, not any kind of official after-hours business.”
“They might not have known for sure, especially if the owner had a secret arrangement going on,” I suggest.
“It’s also possible that those who knew kept purposefully vague about things. There may have been illegal activity going on, or the rumors of such activities, and they were concerned they could get in trouble if they spoke up,” Liz adds.
