“Carbonized?”
Helen smiled a brief thanks. It was hard to put into words what Denise’s body had looked like.
“Oxygen basically,” Deborah Parks continued. “There are massive scorch marks around the border of the bedroom door. The fire was started downstairs, rising upward, consuming whatever it could. It met an obstacle at the door, which is solid and fire-resistant to a basic level. The heat built up—”
“And then Denise opened the door as she tried to escape?” Helen asked.
“Probably. The frustrated fire would have gobbled up the fresh oxygen in the bedroom—these marks here show how the fire literally exploded into the new space.”
Deborah pointed to a number of long, livid scorch marks across the ceiling. “Denise may or may not have regained consciousness after that initial explosion. Either way, if she was motionless in the middle of the room, the fire would have consumed her, setting light to her nightclothes, her hair... If she was still conscious at this point, her body would have gone into a massive state of shock. Cardiac arrest, smoke inhalation, there are many things that might have spared her the worst.”
“Please God.”
Deborah was already making her way across the gantry and down the ladder to the ground floor. Helen was glad of a moment’s respite from this narrative of destruction. She was used to being at crime scenes, to seeing unspeakable things, but this was different from anything she’d experienced before. Denise Roberts’s attacker was not human and there was no opportunity to escape, defend herself or fight back, as there would have been in a common murder scenario. Hers was an enemy that could not be beaten. Helen, who feared nobody, shivered slightly at the thought of what Denise had faced last night.
Descending the ladder, Helen found Deborah Parks crouching down by the bottom of the stairs. Helen joined her.
“Your arsonist’s MO is pretty similar,” Deborah outlined. “You can smell the paraffin for yourself and I found a charred packet of Marlboro Gold here. There’s no under-stairs cupboard, so the arsonist went directly for the stairs themselves, soaking the bottom three steps in paraffin before presumably lighting the delay device and leaving.”
Helen nodded, then said:
“What are these things here?”
She was pointing at a handful of numbered forensics markers laid out by Deborah around the foot of the stairs.
“Sodium flares,” Deborah replied.
“Matches?” Helen queried.
“Exactly. I’d expect to find them on the bottom step, where the delay timer was positioned, but there seem to have been a number of other matches scattered around the base of the stairs and on the floor.”
“Was that to amplify the spread of the initial fire?”
“Unlikely. There would be no point putting matches on carpet already soaked in paraffin—our arsonist would know that.”
“So he or she was just clumsy?”
“Or in a hurry. We think of these guys as being ice-cool, but they are human beings. The victim was asleep upstairs, but could have woken up at any moment. The arsonist would have wanted to be in and out of the house as quickly as possible, and when you rush...”
Helen nodded. It was a disturbingly human moment in the midst of a horrible premeditated crime.
“Other than that it’s pretty much a carbon copy of Tuesday night’s fires. There’s more work to do, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain it’s the same perpetrator.”
“Any idea how they gained access?”
“Looks likely it was via the back door. The front door had the chain on and as yet I’ve found no broken windows or other obvious means of access. The back door was unlocked when we arrived. You’d have to ask family members if the back door was left unlocked as a rule—”
“Or whether someone unlocked it on their way out.”
If the fire had been started by whoever shared Denise’s bed last night, then it would make sense that he would exit via the more hidden back door to effect his escape. But they were still no nearer finding her mystery lover, so it was all supposition. Perhaps she was just careless of domestic security? Or perhaps just this one time she forgot?
“Anything else that leaps out at you?” Helen said as she made her way to the back door.
“Nothing tangible yet in terms of our perpetrator. The safety boys putting up the scaffolding disturbed the site anyway, so it would be hardto prove in court that any evidence hadn’t been contaminated or brought in by them.”
Helen swore—that was all they needed.
“My feelings exactly,” Deborah returned before moving off to continue her work. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”
