Burn Patterns (2 page)

Iris acquiesced. She'd give them an hour. Extract a promise to be left alone.

Iris said, ‘Where are his shoes?'

Richards pointed at a uniform, repeated, ‘Where are his shoes?'

‘On it,' said the policeman, hurrying off.

Iris moved in to listen to the interview.

‘The big metal kettle gizmo started sparking.' Brent had a nice haircut, a good watch. He was a handsome, fit-looking boy.

‘I got it out and I climbed up and I yelled out and Mr Theolakis went down and yelled for everyone to get out. I put the fire out, you know!' He waved his bandaged hand dismally.

‘Why were you down there, Brent?' The lead detective's coat hung on the back of the school chair. His sleeves were rolled up. An older detective took notes.

‘To put some gear away.'

‘Who told you to?'

‘Nobody. I was being a good citizen.'

The detective leaned forward, dropped his voice. ‘Brent, do you understand how much fucking trouble you are in? Do you know the terrorist squad are on their way? They don't talk, those guys. They'll shoot your friends in a split second. This is all real, mate. Not a computer game. Real people, real consequences. And you're going to give me cheek? Really?'

Brent blinked. Lost his fake confidence. He wasn't a bad kid. Assertive, although not angry or resentful beyond the obvious circumstances. He glanced away, his voice neutral. ‘I went down for a cigarette. In secret.' The faintest start of a smile flicked his mouth, before he controlled it. He peered up at the detective, his eyes firming as he said, ‘I smelled smoke and saw these sparks coming out of the gizmo. A wire was glowing. It glowed white, and the papers and torn-up gym mat caught fire. It spread onto the floor, catching on the petrol.'

‘Petrol?'

‘It wasn't petrol, but it smelled, you know, not kerosene … anyway, the fire caught that and it started to run across the floor towards the boxes. I grabbed this other gym mat and I, um …' Brent did the actions, pushing downwards as he clearly remembered what he had done. ‘I pushed and pushed and the fire went out and I pushed the mat onto the gizmo and saw some of the petrol stuff on my hand.' He held up his bandaged hand.

He focused on a woman a few police away from the detective. She had tears in her eyes. He shook his head. ‘I didn't do this bad
thing. I didn't do the fire.'

His mother. She'd come from work. Brent wanted his mother to know of his innocence, yet had used an odd turn of phrase. A slight evasion. ‘This bad thing'? Nearly a confession – to something. He was telling the truth about putting out the fire. What bad thing wasn't he telling?

The detective noted Brent's mother, but moved on. A young, smart, confident detective doing his thing. ‘Brent. I smelled your breath when I got here. I don't smell cigarettes.'

‘Gum, so no one smells.'

‘See the thing is, Brent, the police officers have found no gum. No cigarettes. No butts. No lighter.'

Brent blinked. He tossed his head, sending his thick fringe flopping to the side in a reflex gesture as he went into himself to construct a new lie to shore up the one exposed.

The detective kept him off balance. ‘Sweeney, you find any of those things?'

An officer in forensic overalls shook her head. She held up two clear plastic evidence bags. One held a pair of black shoes. The other contained a diaphanous material Iris thought could have been stockings.

‘You didn't go down to smoke, Brent. You went down to start the timer on the ignition device you and your buddies had set up, didn't you? You were going to be outside or away somewhere when the floor caught alight. Was that it?'

Brent looked at his socks.

‘This can all stop, Brent. We can stop the whole thing right now. You can go home with your mum. We can find a way to fix things.'

Brent didn't reply.

The interviewing detective checked to Richards who nodded, turning then to indicate Iris. The detective examined her; a quick appraisal. He would be clocking Iris's lack of uniform, noting her age, gender. Three strikes already.

Iris read it all, not offended in the least. She was used to confident young men, their open priorities. She stared back.

Superintendent Richards whispered in the detective's ear. He shrugged, gestured towards Brent, offering him to Iris as
though he was lunch.

She moved to the front of the circle. She suspected she would not be given a lot of time. ‘Hello, Brent. My name is Iris Foster. I've got a couple of general questions if you don't mind?'

He glanced up, clearly relieved to get a fifty year old woman instead of the tough detective.

‘So your full name is?'

‘Brent Leon Hughes.' He raised his chin slightly. He liked his name, was used to hearing it said.

Iris turned to the boy's mother. ‘Mrs Hughes?'

She seemed startled.

‘Sorry you've been brought from work. What do you do?'

‘I work in an insurance office, Mrs Foster.'

‘How are Brent's grades?'

Momentarily confused, Mrs Hughes answered. ‘He could do better in human biology.'

‘So he's in year –?'

Brent replied, ‘Eleven.'

‘Tell me about your dad, Brent.'

‘My dad?'

‘Yeah, tell me something good and something bad about your dad.'

Brent scanned his audience, defiant again. ‘He farts when he's watching TV.'

Iris smiled, went on quickly. ‘Name your four best friends.'

‘They had nothing to do with this. Or me.'

‘We can easily find out, Brent,' said the detective. ‘From teachers. From your mobile phone. She's doing a personality test on you. Not solving the crime.'

‘Well, yes,' agreed Iris. ‘It's kind of a party game, really. So, no thinking. Your four best friends.'

‘Chiko, Roosy … Jane, Frances.'

Brent had paused before Jane, then thrown in Frances too quickly, thought Iris.

‘You didn't let me say something good about my dad.'

‘You did. Good and bad. You watch TV together. You can joke about him. Your parents love you, Brent.'

Brent appeared embarrassed.

‘Thank you for your time.' Iris nodded to Mrs Hughes, then Richards, finally to the detective. The detective and Richards came after her as she stepped away from the interview group.

‘You don't think he did it,' said the detective.

‘Honestly, I don't think he did. He certainly doesn't tick any boxes on the firelighter scale. He's smart, loved, and socially confident. I suspect he's quite brave too, by the way.'

Richards said, ‘You think he's telling the truth.'

The detective interrupted, ‘He's not.'

‘I think he told the truth about putting out the fire. I think he went under the stage with his girlfriend, Jane. Fooling around.'

Richards said, ‘Because?'

The detective thought fast, putting it together. ‘Why he took so long to put the fire out yet described it in detail.'

Iris watched him turning over the elements of her theory. She let him own it.

He said, ‘Putting his pants back on. Forgot his shoes. Someone else forgot their pantihose. Bagged. Got her out in the confusion.'

‘I think he's being loyal. He's probably a bit of a hero.' She shot a look at Superintendent Richards. ‘On the other hand, I've been wrong before.'

The detective said, ‘No, it all adds up. Good detective work, Mrs Foster.' He actually patted her on the shoulder before striding back towards the boy. ‘Brent, the lady just read your mind. I'm going to whisper what she told me and you can decide how far that secret gets shared.'

Brent did not seem eager.

‘So, stud, you ready to hear our theory?'

Iris started to make her way towards the open doors of the gym, when Richards caught up with her. Iris said, ‘I hope he doesn't say it in front of his mother.'

‘He won't. The kid's going to have to tell her eventually.'

‘He'll tell his father and leave it to him to pass on.'

‘We'll hire you for the counselling. Now, can you prepare a bit of a questionnaire for this lot?' They'd reached the door. Richards pointed to the barely contained mob of students on the oval.

‘I can't.'

‘Aren't there multiple choice questions?'

‘Yes. There are. Superintendent, I don't know whether Brent has helped set the fire, even if he doesn't fit the profile. It wasn't profiling that excluded him. Most of what I discovered came from watching and listening. As you know, it's the pauses. The body language. The little glitches.'

‘You can't get that from a questionnaire. All right. So give us one day. Stay and help us find who did this.'

‘Superintendent.' Iris could feel herself pleading, hated herself for the weakness, him for pushing.

The superintendent was studying her.

Iris said, ‘Ask the teachers. Ask for the withdrawn ones. The non-mixers. Also, the secret snickerers, the nerdy ones who are unloved by their fellows yet act as if they have some special secret. The secret may be their intended revenge. Or it might be a secret from their other life on the internet. Or it might just be they are a fourteen year old boy. Because ninety-nine point nine nine nine will have the fantasies. Including their fantasies about girls. Powerful mixed-up thoughts are not bad deeds.'

‘No girls?'

‘Soon, I'm sure. I have no current data, Superintendent. Not my field.'

‘It's all your field, Iris. Part of your gift. The breadth.'

‘Out. Out. Everyone out now!' A technician by the stage shouted.

The fire investigators and forensic police tumbled from beneath the stage like angry ants.

Police began shepherding. ‘There are pipes running under the floor. Tanks of chemicals!'

‘Don't use your phones. No mobiles. Don't use your phones!'

‘Out now. Out!'

They evacuated with haste rather than panic.

Iris became caught in the crowd on the school sports ground, pushed back onto the oval, watching across the asphalt as a fully suited bomb disposal officer tottered into the gym like a fat child learning to walk. Police continued to herd them further back on the grass.

A couple of officers started poking at a garden delivery truck
parked out the front of the gymnasium, possibly looking for a way to move it.

The fire crews were back on full alert, running out their hose lines once more. Moving purposefully, assessing where they might direct the water stream. The station officer signalled for one of the appliances to move back. His hands were up, miming a push-back motion, when he was engulfed in the sudden blossom of explosion.

The gymnasium spread in yellow and orange flame from its base, a billowing golden gush, like a big balloon of water bursting with a whoosh of hot air rushing, followed by the grind of brick splitting.

Someone ordered, ‘Down!'

Schoolkids, police and Iris were dropping, trying to get under the sweet hot air, the brick fragments rushing towards them. A new silence lasted for a good two seconds before new noises came, scattered cries and moans, joined by sirens. Fire alarms started away in the other school buildings, car alarms began calling from all directions. Iris could hear it all through the ringing in her ears. She gazed up over other heads bobbing up to see two fire appliances burning, the school beyond seemingly untouched. They could see more of the school. The gymnasium had gone. A large pile of bricks smoked whitely with no fire.

Iris caught a flash of red flame. She saw Georgina at the upstairs window, fearful on the other side of the security screen. Iris smelled the nasty plastic smell. She recognised the image of the flashback, of the fire at her old practice. She saw Georgina again, her hair on fire, bashing at the locked window screen. Black smoke billowed from the roof. Iris hadn't moved then. She'd stood watching her secretary burn to death twelve months before. She couldn't seem to move now. Only bend her head down to look away from the burning fire trucks to her hands, to watch the drops of blood falling on them, dribbling into the grass.

Iris sat on a gurney in a corridor. She could hear a dull murmuring, the occasional moan. A doctor examined a girl in school uniform four or five beds down the corridor. A nurse pushed an empty wheelchair in the other direction. Iris stared at an air-conditioning vent near the ceiling when it whirred. She saw her dead secretary Georgina again. It was the earlier fragment, when her hair was not on fire. It was the moment Iris thought Georgina saw her down in the carpark holding her coffee. In the hospital, Iris smoothed down her skirt. She saw a scratch on one leg. She felt for her temple, touching dried blood, which she supposed meant it wasn't a deep cut. Her mind jumped to the school, to the station officer trying to get the fire appliances to move back. He was gesturing with his arms up, like surrender. She searched the gurney for her purse but became distracted by the smear of blood on the pillow.

‘The truck,' said a voice.

‘What?' Iris looked to the man next to her. He was one of the fire investigators, still dressed in his scene overalls. He sat with his back against the wall in a tiny space between Iris's gurney and the next.

‘There was something in the truck, a secondary ignition device.'

‘What?'

‘I think he was going to back the truck up to the front doors, when everyone was inside. They open outwards. I think the gas cylinders were for later. I think he wanted a slow fire first, with smoke and kids finding all the doors locked, and only once the
heat reached a critical point, did he want the whole thing to go. The truck was a failsafe.'

He was in his mid-fifties, overweight, blotchy, balding on top with longish hair at the back. ‘You don't recognise me, do you?'

‘I'm sorry, no.'

‘We've worked similar cases. You're the Fire Lady.'