Smoke Alarm (2 page)

Hopefully an angel. An angel of sleep.

T
he smell of smoke seeped into her dream, teasing around in the air, swirling like mist over water. Still in her dream she sniffed and smelled and wondered what could be burning. In dreams we use and translate our senses, adding little pieces of fiction to rationalize it all. And so it was with her. She sniffed and seemed to smell wood smoke, even seeing the flames, crackling and spitting at her like a fire-tongued cobra. Still in her sleep, she smiled. It reminded her of something pleasant. A barbecue on a summer's evening. Roasting pork. Now her dreams took flight across the oceans and deposited her elsewhere, somewhere equally pleasant, to a South Sea island, waving coconut palms fringing a sparkling sea. In her dream, Christie Beech fumbled at the connection until she remembered, while still the charcoal burned. She had read, somewhere, that the scent of human flesh cooking smells just like that – roasting pork. Cannibals from the South Seas, she mused dreamily, called edible man Long Pig. She smiled into her pillow. Long Pig.

At some point the smoke drifted into her conscious mind, so she felt alarm in that last second before waking. She sat up. And began to cough. Then she heard the noise. Crackling, roaring, glass breaking and a terrified scream.

And finally she was properly awake, knowing that this was no dream but reality. If she didn't get out of here she would soon be Long Pig.

She choked on the smoke of her own home which was being destroyed. She had to find the door. Get out.

Where was the door?

The light didn't work – she hadn't really expected it to. She put her hand out, tapping for something familiar to anchor her bearings, picturing the layout of her bedroom. She was sliding out of bed to the floor. Smoke rose, didn't it? So she must creep along the floor underneath the smoke. She crawled around her bed. Now the door should be in front of her. Her eyes were smarting as she tried to peer through the smoke. If only she could see something familiar: the mirror, a picture. Feel something solid: wall, window, door. Help!

The noises were increasing now. Glass cracking, flames devouring. Someone screaming. Not her.

It was that that galvanized her into desperation. ‘Addie!' she screamed over the noise. ‘Addie.' She could not call again. She was coughing too much. Something terrible tugged at her mind. ‘Father?'

But her brain, like her room, was filling up too quickly with smoke. If she did not escape now she would die.

Long Pig.

Die along with her family? Jude, Addie, Father? All Long Pigs? It was enough to send her, on her hands and knees, to where she thought the door was. But when her hands reached out they touched not a door handle but the feet of the chest of drawers. ‘Wrong place,' she spluttered, angry with herself. ‘Wrong place. Try again.' She coughed again, only this time she heard her lungs dragging the smoke in, her breath rasping noisily. She tried to wipe her eyes, tears of frustration bathing them. Oh, if only she could see. But rubbing only irritated them so she could not keep them open. They streamed. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and tried to fight off the rising panic, tried to think. Rationally. There were two chests of drawers in her bedroom, both along the back wall, one either side of the bed which she believed she had rounded. If she had touched the one near the door it should be . . . here. She groped around for it. If it was the other then in her confusion she had got out of the wrong side of the bed and was nearer the window. Too high to jump out. She would have to skirt round the bottom of the bed again to reach the door. But where was she? Near the door or the window? One meant possible life; the other probable death. It wasn't a great choice, was it, to leap or burn?

She could smell the pork. Choking now she groped around with her left hand and touched . . . nothing. Her right hand. The bed. So she would have to manoeuvre round the foot of the bed to reach the door. And safety?

She had little time to work it out.

Even in the dark she could see the smoke swirling around, feel it. Taste it. She pressed her face to the floor, struggling to breathe air. Every breath now was more difficult, but she must breathe or she would die. She must get out. There were the others. She must save them. The others. She coughed and already seemed to hear a death rattle in it.

She could feel the heat rising.

Had anyone raised the alarm? Was anyone going to help her and her family?

She heard wood splintering. Help? A fireman with an axe?

She crawled around the foot of the bed. She thought she had her bearings now, helped by the mental image she had pinned in her mind. Think. Think bed. Think window. Think door. Door. She had reached it. She groped upwards for the handle. Thank God,' she breathed. ‘Thank you, God.' She depressed the handle. Pushed. It was locked. She fumbled around. Where was the key?

She was lost. Her daughter, her son and her father-in-law. All lost. Long Pig.

She screamed.

And a finger dialled triple nine.

In all the years that Colin had heard the alarm sounding in the station and they set off through the streets, blue light strobing, siren screaming, he wondered what would be at the end of it. Most of the time not a lot. A bit of burnt toast that had set the smoke alarm off, and before anyone bothered to investigate someone panicked and dialled 999. Of course, he thought as he took his place on the seat and strapped himself in, he might be a bit more lucky tonight. It might be something a bit more dramatic: a car accident where the victim had to be cut from the wreck. Personally he rather enjoyed those jobs, slicing through the doors of a beloved vehicle like a can of baked beans, particularly if the vehicle was a Mercedes or a Porsche or a Lexus. Once he'd sliced through the door of a Jaguar XJS to find a quivering octogenarian inside. That had given him a certain buzz. But too often there was a complete and utter lack of drama. People got stuck, didn't they? Kids with fingers down plugholes, fat people in bathrooms, their backsides jammed solid into the toilet seat. Nothing but embarrassment there. And no kudos for the rescue team. And then there was the fireman's best friend, the old chestnut of cats in trees. So Colin's heart had almost stopped racing when he was summoned to the scene. Almost.

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.

J
ericho 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.'