As dawn broke, he’d chanced his arm. The fire crew had done all it could do—it was the arson investigator’s scene now—and departed in short order. The site was roped off and a uniformed police officer was standing guard, but there were enough local gossips and journalists to distract him, so slipping round the back, he vaulted the fence and approached the back of the house.
It was a stupid, reckless thing to do, but somehow he knew he wouldn’t get caught. He’d filmed his approach. It looked like a trick from a cheap horror film and he smiled now as he watched it back. Having teased the fire-damaged back door open, he’d slipped inside.
He knew that Deborah Parks would be on-site first thing, so pocketing the camera, he’d set to work, searching for suitable souvenirs. He could hear the chatter at the front of the house. The earnest inquiries of local residents, the pushy questions from the hacks and the self-important PC ordering them to move back. Walking through the living room, he found only devastation, so darting across the hall, he investigated the box room cum study.
There had obviously been piles of stuff stored in here—he could see the charred remnants of cardboard boxes—which provided the spreading fire with plenty of fuel. Fortunately—depending on your point of view—the linoleum floor in the hall had delayed the fire reaching this room, and the firefighters had managed to extinguish the blaze before the whole room went up. The trinkets of a life half-lived now littered this small space, and among the burned manuals, books and shoe boxes, he’d found a framed photo. The glass was cracked and black with soot, the metal frame bent and awkward, but the photo inside had survived. Burned at the edges and buckled with the heat, but you could still make out mother and son smiling awkwardly at the camera. Slipping it intohis rucksack, he hurried out and across the hall. He’d paused briefly as he departed. There was something strangely moving about standing in the smoldering ruins of the house. Smoke and steam still rose from the floor—hence the need for his work boots—and the whole place reeked of fire. Breathing in the sharp odor one last time, he’d turned and headed for the back door.
The footage was coming to an end now, but his pleasure was not. So flipping the footage back to the start, he settled back in his easy chair, undid his fly and slipped his hand inside his trousers.
45
“Do you haveanyleads?”
Detective Superintendent Jonathan Gardam had not met Emilia Garanita before. But he had heard a lot about her. Helen Grace had given him chapter and verse, as had Hampshire Fire and Rescue’s chief officer, Adam Latham, who now sat beside him, fielding questions from the press. The major tabloids were represented at their briefing today, but Emilia Garanita was not going to let them bully her or hold her back. Watching her as she tried to lead the questioning, Gardam had the distinct impression that this represented an opportunity for the ambitious young journalist to shine on a bigger stage.
“Are you making any progress?” Garanita persisted. Gardam paused, taking a moment to drink in all the small details of this local curiosity—the facial scarring, the dyed hair, the fuck-you attitude—before replying:
“DI Grace and her team are pursuing a number of leads and we have pulled in every officer available to help with our inquiries. Thereis currently a greater police presence on the street than at any time in the last five years.”
Gardam let this register. He wanted every journalist to note this surge in manpower. Moreover, he wanted their arsonist to take heed of this when it was reported later today. When you’re struggling for concrete leads, prevention is often as good as detection. He wanted to make the arsonist think twice before carrying out further attacks.
“And we’re confident that progress in the investigationwillbe swift. Alongside this, we have been liaising with our colleagues in the Fire and Rescue Service who have now drafted in extra fire response vehicles as well as additional firefighters from neighboring forces.”
“We are now confident,” Adam Latham added, overlapping with his police colleague, “that we can deal with any emergency quickly and effectively, however complicated the situation may be.”
Another tacit warning to the arsonist. They had more police, more firefighters, more resources. Diversionary fires would be of little help to him now. Privately Gardam wondered how he would react to this challenge. Would he back down or respond in kind—upping his game as they upped theirs?
“I’ll ask the question again—do you have any suspects?”
Garanita was a dog with a bone, reveling in her self-appointed duty of holding the police to account. Gardam had heard that theSouthampton Evening Newshad been going gently on them for a while—thanks in part to a temporary truce between Garanita and Helen Grace—but that respite appeared to be over now, as Southampton’s preeminent crime reporter sniffed a juicy new story.
“There are several persons of interest whom we are trying to trace, but chief among them is a man seen running from the scene of the Bevois Mount house fire at around eleven twenty-five last night. You are being handed printed images of the CCTV still now and we would urge your readers, your viewers, to take a good look at it. Do they recognizethis man? If so, we would ask them to get in touch via the special incident hotline, which is manned twenty-four hours a day, so we can eliminate him from our inquiries. In the meantime, I would ask the public to remain calm and take sensible precautions, especially after dark.”
“So lock your doors and sit tight. Is that the best you can do?”
“It’s thesensiblething to do. I appreciate that these attacks have caused alarm, but the best thing the public can do is be vigilant, be sensible and let us go about our business.”
“In the police we trust?”
“Exactly, Emilia. As you know, DI Grace has an exemplary record in running investigations of this scale and complexity. And I have every confidence in her,” Gardam responded forcefully, pausing a little for effect before concluding:
“She’s delivered before and I’m sure she’ll do so again.”
46
Enveloped in a sterile suit, Helen climbed the ladder to the second floor. The fabric of the house was so unstable that a temporary scaffold and gantry had been erected to help the fire investigation officers navigate the gutted property safely. Cresting the ladder, Helen found Deborah Parks already hard at work in what had once been the master bedroom. It was a profoundly depressing site—the place looked like it had been bombed—and Helen’s feelings of anxiety were only amplified by the insistent thrumming noise of the plastic sheeting that now covered the shattered main window. The wind was strong today, rattling the temporary covering vigorously and ensuring that everyone working on-site was chilled to the bone. Last night temperatures in here would have topped six hundred degrees Celsius. Now it was touching freezing.
Swallowing down her anxiety, Helen navigated her way along the walkway of planks toward Deborah. The fire investigation officer roseas she approached, nodding soberly at her. Deborah was a scientist first and foremost, but she was also a mum to three boys and Helen knew from experience that she always felt the human cost of the tragedies she investigated. In many ways Helen’s and Deborah’s lives were pretty similar—both spent their working lives immersed in the worst things that human beings could imagine or endure.
“Your victim was found here, bang in the middle of the room. It’s very likely the smoke and the panic got to her and she just froze. You often see that in these situations. House fires are things that happen tootherpeople. When it happens to you, you lose your wits, your sense of direction, everything.”
“It must have been terrifying.”
“The smoke would have been so thick in here that she wouldn’t have known which way was up.”
It was a horrific way to die. Terror, confusion and horror all colliding at the same time. Was this what their killer intended?
“Any thoughts on why her body was so...” Helen paused, not quite finding the appropriate word.
