“Of course.”
“You’re welcome to be present and if it gets too much for him at any point, we’ll call a halt. But he could be a vital witness to last night’s events, so...”
“That’s fine,” Michael Harris chipped in. “We understand. Can I ask about Agnieszka Jarosik? I’d like to be able to tell Ethan what her condition is.”
Jacqueline Harris watched DS Sanderson closely. She saw a cloud pass across her face and knew immediately what the officer was about to say.
“I’m very sorry, but she died of her injuries last night. The fire was too fierce in the basement for the emergency services to get to her.”
Jacqueline turned to Michael. He looked as sick as she felt, but he reached out his hand to take hers.
“Will you need us to identify her? She’s from Poland and doesn’t have any family over here,” Michael said, trying to sound as businesslike as possible.
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. We have other ways in which we can identify her without putting you through that.”
Jacqueline shut her eyes. That could only mean one thing—that Agnieszka had been so badly burned that a visual identification was impossible. An image of her charred corpse now shot into Jacqueline’s mind, turning her stomach. None of this felt real, but it was happening nevertheless. As Jacqueline stood there, dutifully answering the officer’s polite questions, she had the feeling that the axis of their world was shifting. Their home had been destroyed, their son injured, their nanny murdered.Theyhad now become the news story—the collateral damage of someone else’s insanity.
93
Smoke rose gently from the ashes. Only the shell of the building now remained—everything inside it had been consumed by the fire. Twenty-four hours ago this had been an expensive terraced house in one of the most desirable parts of the city. Now it was a smoldering wreck and, worse still, a murder scene.
The body of a young woman had only recently been removed from the scorched basement flat. The fabric of the building was still impressively hot and Helen had to wear protective boots as she carefully traversed the site with Deborah Parks. The latter had been on-site for a couple of hours already, braving the unpleasant atmosphere and risk of falling debris, in order to try to gain an understanding of what had happened last night.
“Our arsonist is developing his or her MO,” Deborah said, after the formalities had been concluded.
“In what way?” Helen asked, alarmed by Deborah’s concerned expression.
“The seat of the fire was here,” Deborah answered, gesturing toward an area in the middle of the small basement living room. A partially melted TV stood nearby, surrounded by the remnants of charred furniture. “The smell has cleared now that we’ve ventilated the site, but when we first arrived, we had to wear these,” she explained, tapping her mask. “The aroma of cyanide oxide was still very strong.”
“Burning foam?”
“This leather sofa—or what remains of it—would have been stuffed with polyurethane foam. Highly flammable and highly toxic.”
“Is that what would have killed Agnieszka?”
“Nothing so pleasant, I’m afraid,” Deborah said, pulling a face. “We found a melted paraffin container about five yards from the sofa. My suspicion is that your arsonist entered via the back door and poured the paraffin directly onto the sofa before setting light to it.”
“No delay timer?”
“I haven’t found any evidence of one and, believe me, I’ve looked.”
“And you think Agnieszka Jarosik was on the sofa when this happened?”
“Best guess is that the fire started just before midnight. If Agnieszka was on the sofa, we can guess she didn’t fight back because she didn’t have time or—”
“Or because she was asleep,” Helen interrupted, earning a measured nod from Deborah. “She’d had a busy day, sticks the TV on, falls asleep on the sofa. And the next thing she knows she’s being doused in paraffin...”
“It’s all supposition,” Deborah replied. “But it’s our best guess. The body was directly over the seat of the fire. She never moved.”
“She burned to death,” Helen said, her heart sinking even as she said it.
“Jim Grieves will be able to tell you more,” Deborah added, “but if you were an optimist you might think that she died of shock. When an individual is set on fire like that, the heart often gives out straightaway, the initial conflagration proving too much.”
“What a way to die.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Helen continued:
“What makes you think the arsonist came in through the back?”
