Smoke Alarm Read online

  This was a house fire.

  As they rounded the corner, siren shrieking out its message, Out of the way, out of the way, we stop for no one and nothing, he knew that this was the real thing. The real McCoy. The event they had been trained for. A proper, lethal, blazing fire. Smoke and flames streaming through blackened and cracked windows. People trapped inside. A chance to be a hero. Adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream. Even as they pulled up and started to assess the scene a window smashed and flames burst out gloriously, licking the walls with beautiful ferocity like a fiery, victorious tongue, and even though the hour was late and the house detached and in its own grounds it was watched with oohs and aahs by an awed bevy of bystanders, as though it was a fireworks party. But Colin knew different.

  This was no party.

  The boy stood on the burning deck.

  His favourite poem since he’d been a child.

  ‘Good grief,’ Tyler, the station chief, exclaimed. ‘Good friggin’ grief. I just hope no one’s in that inferno. Better get some back-up, Agnew. We’ve no chance of sorting this one out on our own.’ He grinned and quoted the famous Jaws movie line about needing a bigger boat with a poor attempt at a Yankee accent.

  Colin was already connecting the hose to the fire hydrant and left Carol Jenkins, a junior fire officer, to make the call appealing for reinforcements.

  The minute she was off the line he shouted to her, jerking his head towards the bystanders. ‘Try to find out, will you, from that lot over there, whether anyone’s inside. And let’s get some barriers up, keep ’em away. Don’t want no heroics.’

  Carol addressed the entire crowd. ‘Anyone in there?’ she shouted. ‘Does anyone know if someone’s in that house?’

  She had to recruit every decibel available to her normally soft voice to be heard over the deafening noise of jets of water, sirens, the yells of police and firemen and, worst of all, the crackle of the greedy God Vulcan as he consumed what must have been until a little while ago a lovely period house in a very desirable Shropshire village, Melverley, whose usual drama was flooding from its two rivers, the Vyrnwy and the Severn. As he aimed the jet of water through a broken upstairs window it struck Colin that Melverley Grange was a beautiful place. Victorian, Gothic, huge. It must have been someone’s treasured home, their pride and joy. Probably. Not now. Would it ever be again? His mind battled with the sums, the thousands and thousands of pounds of mortgage repayments, the years of hard work. All going up in smoke.

  The cost of restoration would be enormous. He just hoped they were insured.

  It was cruel to witness the destruction of such a beautiful place. It was the worst fire he’d ever attended. Just for a moment he almost wished that the call-out had been a cat up a tree.

  Even from here the heat from the inferno was intense enough to singe his eyebrows. It was a scene right out of hell. The demonic figures were his own colleagues dancing in their High Viz suits. He glanced to his left. Carol was talking to a man in a black anorak. Even under the stress of the moment, Colin smiled. In her uniform and yellow hard hat with sturdy boots you’d never have known Carol was a woman, let alone a petite size eight beauty. Though he knew her well, apart from her height even he wouldn’t have been able to pick her out from the figures silhouetted against the fire, trying to put it out, make sense of it all. Restore order. Ah, well.

  He wondered what the man in the black anorak was saying as Carol pointed at the property, entirely ablaze now. They were losing the battle with Vulcan. The God of Fire was winning.

  If anyone had been inside Colin knew it would be hopeless trying to save them. The best they could hope for would be the recovery of bodies, probably charred by now. As if to underline his point at that very moment the first floor caved in spectacularly and the flames leapt, triumphantly, out of the windows.

  A police car hurtled around the corner. PC Gethin Roberts had already had more than his fair share of drama. His career, though brief, had been eventful. One could say he’d been lucky – or unlucky, depending on one’s point of view. As he caught sight of the scene ahead of him Roberts squared his shoulders, stuck out his pointed chin and trusted he looked proficient, professional and just a little older than his twenty-six years. As he gulped and swallowed his Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck, giving him the look of a nervous chicken. He pulled the squad car up next to the second fire engine. Let the others do the crowd control bit, he thought, as he threaded his long legs out through the car door. He wanted a bit of the action.

  ‘’Scuse me.’ Elbowing the fire officer in front of him out of the way, he addressed a stout, middle-aged female spectator who appeared transfixed by the sight of the sizzling flames, tilting her face upwards towards them – in worship, it appeared.

  Roberts cleared his throat noisily. ‘Do you know the people who live here?’

  She didn’t take her eyes off the burning building to look at him but continued to stare ahead as she nodded slowly. He could see the flames dancing gleefully reflected in her eyes.

  It was one of the fire officers who shouted him the answer. ‘A family lives here,’ he said. ‘A whole bloody family.’

  Roberts felt his face tighten as a window exploded. It looked as though the entire property would be completely destroyed, reduced to ashes even with the efforts of the fire service. He was no fireman but he could tell there wasn’t any chance of saving this unfortunate family now. ‘Were they in?’ he asked.

  Neither the woman with the mad eyes nor the fire officer could answer truthfully so both simply nodded. ‘We think so,’ the fire officer he had unceremoniously pushed aside said.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  Roberts had never quite given up the idea of heroics. He was so keen to impress his girlfriend, Flora, with tales of adventure and heroism that she had a distorted, dramatic view of life in the Shrewsbury police force as a constable. But the trouble with this fantasy was that PC Gethin Roberts had to sustain this drama to retain his girlfriend’s admiration, or so he thought. And it was getting rather difficult. His stories, in truth, were becoming more and more far-fetched and unbelievable. When fire officer Colin Agnew saw the lanky policeman stride purposefully towards him he read his intention quite clearly. ‘Not a chance, mate,’ he said, holding his hand up like a traffic officer so there could be no mistake about his message. ‘Anyone in there will be dead by now. No point risking your own life for roast corpses, Constable.’

  Roberts made a face. Still, he thought, Flora wouldn’t know what actually happened, would she?

  He so wanted to be a hero. He grabbed a fire blanket and darted round the back of the house, smashed the window and threw open the door. Someone or something staggered towards him, hands held out. He threw the blanket on top of it and dragged it outside.

  TWO

  Friday, 25 February, 9 a.m.

  The coroner’s office. Bayston Hill, Shrewsbury.

  Jericho had that look about him, Martha observed as she entered her office. She could read the expression perfectly – a certain smugness that her assistant habitually wore when he knew something she did not. Yet.

  She refused to rise to the bait. ‘Good morning, Jericho,’ she said briskly and waited, knowing he would soon crack.

  And crack he did. Starting with a rasping clear of his throat. ‘Ahem.’

  She waited.

  ‘Inspector Randall’s been on the phone, ma’am.’

  She teased him. He liked nothing better than for her to look keen – and curious – then dangle her on a string. ‘Really,’ she exclaimed, her face deliberately bland, ‘so early? I wonder what that can be about.’

  ‘There’s bin a fire in the village,’ he announced grandly. ‘A house fire.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Martha’s thought was inevitable – that as she was a coroner this house fire must have proved fatal to someone. Jericho’s next words confirmed her suspicion.

  ‘People’s missin’,’ he continued, shaking his straggly grey locks.

  ‘Burnt? In th
e house fire? How many?’

  ‘They don’t know yet. It’s still too hot in there and unsafe.’ Jericho couldn’t resist embellishing the tale. ‘Beams fallin’ in around their heads. Broken glass. Poisonous gasses and the like.’ He paused, allowing the graphic description to sink in before adding in something of an anticlimax, ‘Inspector Randall said he’d be over some time this morning to discuss it with you. He wonders if you’ll be wantin’ to visit the scene of the dreadful fire.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Martha responded quickly. She felt vaguely ashamed now of having treated Jericho with such levity when the news was so grim. She couldn’t rid herself of the image of a twisted, blackened corpse. There was something about the destruction of a person by fire that conjured up images of screaming, burning martyrs. She shivered. She wondered sometimes where this image, so physically painful, clear and visual, had come from.

  Then she remembered.

  ‘Coffee and chocolate biscuits are on your desk, Mrs Gunn.’

  She looked at Jericho curiously. Did he know she had this particular horror of fire? Chocolate biscuits were usually the portent of a particularly trying day. And this one had barely begun. ‘Thank you, Jericho.’

  DI Alex Randall arrived at a minute past eleven, when she was on her second cup of coffee, but had resisted the biscuits even though they were white chocolate – her absolute favourite. Jericho announced the detective over the internal phone, his voice holding a tinge of resentment. He considered Martha his responsibility – no one else’s. Nevertheless, if someone had to intrude the inner sanctum of the coroner’s office, he grudgingly told his friends, ‘it may as well be Detective Randall as anyone else’.

  Jericho stood in the doorway peering nosily behind the inspector, who greeted Martha with a grim smile. ‘Morning, Martha. Sorry to be the bringer of such dismal news.’

  ‘Hello, Alex,’ Martha replied, looking up from the pile of letters she was checking very carefully, correcting and signing. Her new typist was, she suspected, dyslexic and adept at ignoring spellcheck. ‘Come in. Close the door behind you.’ She could see her assistant’s inquisitive face peering round, almost until the door clicked shut.

  Alex Randall crossed the room in three long strides, a tall, spare figure in his early forties with irregular, craggy features, a large hooked nose and piercing hazel eyes beneath thick eyebrows, which were now almost meeting in the middle as he frowned. He was a valued colleague who was fast becoming almost a personal friend. Almost. He kept himself very private.

  ‘Sit down, Alex,’ she invited. ‘You’d better fill me in. Jericho tells me there’s been a house fire and I assume it was fatal or you wouldn’t be here.’

  The detective gave a terse nod but remained standing. ‘A neighbour sounded the alarm at a little after eleven thirty last night,’ he said, beginning slowly, but his eyes looked troubled.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s a family home in Melverley. Melverley Grange.’

  Why was he finding it so difficult? Martha wondered. He was a detective inspector – no stranger to violent death and tragedy. She watched him, puzzled.

  ‘Christie and Nigel Barton, a well-known couple in their early forties, lived there with two teenage children. And Nigel Barton’s elderly father, William, lived with them. He had Alzheimer’s.’

  She waited for him to continue.

  ‘Some time late last night fire broke out in the two front rooms downstairs, quickly spreading to the upstairs bedrooms.’

  ‘Two front rooms?’

  ‘You miss nothing.’

  ‘It’s a big property?’

  Alex Randall nodded. ‘A lovely old house. As you can imagine the scene is awful this morning, in broad daylight.’ He folded his long frame into the wing armchair and kept his eye on Martha. ‘There’s something about fires,’ he mused. ‘In the night they’re dramatic, exciting, all flashing blue lights and activity.’

  ‘Careful, Alex,’ she said, smiling. ‘You’re beginning to sound like an arsonist.’

  Alex grimaced and continued. ‘But in the daylight you see the home it once was so completely destroyed. Blackened timbers, soot-stained curtains, broken windows, wrecked furniture.’ He met her eyes. ‘All the damage in its ugly starkness.’

  She stayed silent. He had seen this. She had not.

  DI Randall leaned right back in the chair and half-closed his eyes. ‘Baldly, Martha,’ he must have realized she was watching him because he gave her the ghost of a smile, ‘the facts are this: the emergency services took the call at 11.38 p.m. from a Mrs Lissimore, a neighbour, who was returning home after a night at Theatre Severn. The play ended at eleven p.m. and she had driven home. As she turned into the road she saw smoke and flames coming out of a downstairs window. She dialled nine-nine-nine from her mobile phone. By the time the fire services arrived, four minutes later, the blaze had taken hold, engulfing the property. They were able to gain access but only to the rear without risk to life.’ Another ghost of a smile. ‘At least, the firemen didn’t gain access. They were too well trained and sensible. It was one of our PCs. Gethin Roberts, everybody’s hero.’

  Martha looked at him warmly. ‘I seem to have heard that name before, Alex.’

  ‘He does seem to have a habit of stumbling right into things.’ Alex returned her smile before continuing. ‘As I said, a family lives – lived – there. Nigel Barton and his wife, Christie, their fifteen-year-old daughter, Adelaide, their son, Jude, aged fourteen and Nigel Barton’s father, William. Mr William Barton was in his late eighties and has Alzheimer’s.’ Alex hesitated, as though he was on the point of saying something. Martha waited but Randall didn’t enlarge. It could wait, she decided, knowing Alex’s habit of holding information back until he was certain it was true. He disliked conjecture.

  ‘Nigel Barton was away from home, in York. He supplies shops with window advertising. He’s worth quite a lot of money. The house is – was – lovely.’

  She felt like prompting him again. She wanted him to tell her quickly. Get it over with. Who had died? Had anyone survived? Which of these unfortunate people had been burnt alive? But she held her tongue and waited. And got her answer.

  ‘Mrs Barton, William Barton and Adelaide are all unaccounted for.’

  ‘And the son, Jude?’

  ‘Gethin Roberts,’ DI Randall couldn’t quite suppress a shadow of amusement, ‘quite against any advice, broke in through the back door and found him in the kitchen near the door. Jude Barton has ten per cent burns, mainly on his hands and arms.’ He met her eyes. ‘It’s always puzzled me,’ he said. ‘How do they calculate the percentage?’

  ‘It’s the rule of nines,’ she supplied, almost absently.

  ‘That doesn’t take me much further,’ Alex responded with a tinge of another smile.

  ‘They divide the body into eleven areas, head, right arm, left arm and so on. Each one represents nine per cent. That’s how they calculate the percentage of burns.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, looking a little disappointed. ‘Simple when you know how.’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘Then I shouldn’t have explained.’

  Randall returned to his story. ‘The fire services haven’t been able to do a thorough search of the house yet,’ he said. ‘It isn’t safe. So we can’t confirm exactly what happened but it already appears,’ he said carefully, ‘that there are troubling features.’ His frown deepened so his eyes seemed to sink further into his face. Then he gathered himself together. ‘Basically,’ he said, and she could almost anticipate his next words, ‘accelerants were used.’

  ‘Poured in through the letterbox?’

  His frown deepened. ‘No. You’d have to look at the house to understand. It has a huge hall with little furniture and stone walls. Any accelerant poured through the letterbox might well have had little effect.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One of the downstairs windows had been forced. We think that the arsonist entered the house through the window. It appears th
at petrol was poured in a number of places but the fire started in the downstairs lounge. Jude Barton has drawn us a plan of the house. The seat of the fire was right beneath Mrs Barton’s bedroom.’

  Without allowing her any time to absorb this he continued: ‘The old man had a bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor, as did the daughter, Adelaide, and Christie herself. All three, it would appear, died in the fire. Jude, the son, had rooms on the top floor.’

  Martha narrowed her eyes. ‘And he survived?’

  Randall nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Naturally he’s shocked and sedated and very upset but he claims he was awake and smelt the smoke. He says he tried to get down the staircase but the smoke and flames made it impassable. Their cleaner, a lady called June Morrison, rang this morning and has been very helpful with further information about both the house and the family. The top floor was originally the servants’ quarters and had a separate staircase which is very narrow and has a stout pitch pine door which opens on to the first-floor landing and is usually kept closed. It was probably this that saved Jude’s life – it kept the smoke out of his room. That and, because of the narrowness of the staircase, he says he kept a rope ladder in his bedroom. He climbed down the back of the building on this, anchored to a metal ring which was already attached to the wall.’