“Come off it, Inspector . . . ,” Shapiro interjected.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable question,” Helen asserted, refusing to be knocked off course.
Ford thought for a moment, then nodded.
“For the benefit of the tape, Mr. Ford is nodding. Let me ask you about your uniform. You’re not supposed to take it home, are you? But you do.”
“Yes.”
“But technically it is breaking the rules?”
“Suppose.”
“Then again, there’s a lot of stuff in your house that you’re not supposed to have, isn’t there?”
Ford briefly met Helen’s gaze, then resumed staring at his feet.
“How many tours of the fires did you do that night?”
“Just the one.”
“You absolutely sure about that?”
“Course.”
“The fires at both Bertrand’s Antiques Emporium and the Simmses’ residence started wellbeforemidnight. I would estimate it’s only a fifteen-minute journey back to your house from Millbrook, allowing you plenty of time to change into your uniform and head back to the site of the first fire.”
“No.”
“It would have got going nicely by then, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you do, because you caught it on camera.”
“No law against that,” Ford shot back.
“But it’s not your job, is it? That’s the work of fire investigators. Your job is tofightthe fire. Yet we found footage in your house of all three fires that night. According to the time code on the tapes, this footage was recorded around two thirty a.m., wellafteryou and the other volunteers had left the scene of the fire in Millbrook. The others went home to clean up presumably, but you went back.”
Ford said nothing.
“So that makes at least two tours of the sites. And I’d like to suggest that actually you made three tours—if you include the one where you set the fires.”
“No way.”
“Do you smoke, Richard?”
“Sometimes.”
“Which brand?”
“Don’t answer that,” Shapiro said quickly.
“We’ll come back to that,” Helen continued.
“I’d like to talk to you a little bit more about that footage, if I may?” DS Sanderson piped up. It had been preagreed that she would wade in at the appropriate point, to keep the opposition on their toes. “Can you confirm that the recordings—of all six recent fires—were made by you personally?”
Ford shrugged.
