Smoke Alarm (26 page)

‘Let's summarize,' he said, addressing the assembled officers, ‘starting from the very beginning.'

‘Monica Deverill hasn't been seen since Saturday, March the fifth, nine days after the Melverley fire. She speaks to her son, James, on the seventh promising to visit him and his family over last weekend but on that Friday night, the eleventh, her house too was set ablaze. Her car's been missing since then.' He glanced across at Gary Coleman. ‘Did you find out when her car was last seen?'

‘Nobody could be sure. She always garaged it.'

‘Mmm. No sightings of either her or the vehicle anywhere in spite of a Stop and Search going out countrywide. Neither she nor the car has gone through any borders and she hasn't flown out of any of the airports. So she's still in the country, dead or alive. She told no one she was going away, which is out of character; her mobile has been switched off since then and there's been no activity on either that or her bank account. The phone could have been in the house and destroyed in the inferno or it could be with her but switched off.' He was thoughtful. ‘Her house is gutted using exactly the same method as at Melverley Grange. That fire resulted in three deaths. No one died in Monica Deverill's house.' Randall scanned the room and caught the eyes of DS Talith, whose intelligent gaze beamed back something of his own thoughts.

He continued: ‘The only connection we can find between the two families is, coincidentally, another fatal blaze, which took place more than forty years ago at Shelton Hospital, and resulted in twenty-four deaths and eleven serious injuries. As far as we know the fire at Shelton was not started deliberately. Though inevitably rumours started to circulate no evidence was ever found that this was so.'

Randall stopped speaking for an instant and began to ponder the words he had said.
But what if
, he thought,
the fire at Shelton
was
started deliberately?
What if?

Followed by,
Who would know?
when the official version was that it had been started by a cigarette left to smoulder in a sofa which was not fireproof, emitting noxious fumes which quickly killed the patients in the upstairs ward. Forty years ago was quite a while. That, then, might be an area to work in.

He continued: ‘We find that two of the victims of the arson attacks were involved in the hospital fire, one as a
fire officer
and the other as a
nurse
. We have no evidence of contact between these two people either then or since. So what role, exactly, did Monica Deverill, née Gowan, play in that other fatal fire? Is she connected, somehow, to the fire at Melverley Grange? If so how and why? Why did William Barton set that other fire in his own house six months ago? How did he set it? Are there any similarities to the two recent house fires? Were the Barton family certain that it
was
William who started that fire? Is there a possibility it could have been someone else? Maybe our arsonist. Perhaps, even, the missing nurse, however unlikely that seems? And, I suppose, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, where the hell is she?' He was tempted to thump the desk to emphasize his words. But looking around at the alert faces of his team he knew there was no need for this. They were one hundred per cent attentive.

He scanned the room slowly, looking at each face in turn, hoping for some spark of inspiration to ignite one of the faces. He saw nothing. So he threw a last question into the room. ‘Does it strike any of you as odd that after that fire last year, instead of reviewing whether William Barton might be better in a residential home with more supervision, Nigel Barton stands by and watches his father help his son to set up an escape route i.e. the rope ladder which is not without its dangers and leaves his wife and daughter to fend for themselves?'

Suddenly he saw it.
The locked doors.
Obvious. The women locked themselves in to protect themselves from William Barton's wanderings or assaults.

He shared the idea together with the fact that they had looked at the locked doors from the wrong perspective. Not locked in. They had been locking something out.

Most of the officers adopted a thoughtful look. A few of them nodded.

Randall came to a swift decision. ‘Roberts, go and speak to Nigel and Jude Barton. Ask if William ever mentioned the fire at Shelton. Talith, you and I will go and have tea with Mrs Deverill's erstwhile colleague, Mrs . . . umm?'

‘Moncrieff,' WPC Shaw supplied. ‘Stella Moncrieff.'

‘Quite.'

Gethin Roberts was always proud when he was the one to be chosen to pursue a delicate investigation.

He screeched to a halt outside the Lord Hill Hotel in a squad car, storing every detail in his mind ready to relate to Flora, his adored and adoring long-term girlfriend who had a very distorted view of his job, partly through watching too many TV crime dramas and partly fuelled by Gethin Roberts's embellishments of the parts he played in investigations. Every detail of his day's activities, plus a generous dollop of imaginative drama, made their evening chats quite exciting.

Having forewarned the Bartons that he would be arriving they were ready for him in a corner of the hotel lobby, father and son leaning forward, deep in conversation. He introduced himself and plonked himself down on the sofa opposite them, questions primed and ready to go. ‘Mr Barton,' he began, angry with his voice for giving a small squeak at the end of his words, ‘your father set fire to the house six months ago?'

Barton frowned. ‘That's correct,' he said curtly.

‘How did he do it?'

‘In a very inept way,' Barton said tightly, ‘considering he had been in the fire service.' Roberts smiled expectantly and waited. ‘He had a pile of paper in his room,' Barton finally admitted. ‘He simply set fire to it.'

‘Was there much damage?'

‘More than you would have thought.'

Roberts waited for him to enlarge and reluctantly Barton did. ‘The bedding caught fire. There was damage to the ceiling and the rafters above.'

Roberts resisted the temptation to whistle and satisfied himself with a dry comment. ‘Quite a blaze, then.'

Barton dipped his head. ‘As you say.'

‘Were accelerants used?'

Barton shook his head.

‘How did he light it?'

‘With a cigarette lighter,' Barton said through gritted teeth.

‘You didn't think it would have been a good idea to have had more supervision for your father?'

Another shake of the head.

‘You didn't worry about the risk to your wife and daughter? Only to your son?'

Barton drew his brows together, chewed his lip and attempted some sort of explanation. ‘I thought being on the top floor that Jude was the more vulnerable. Obviously,' he added, ‘I regret that decision now. But I had promised my father that he would not be put in a home. I didn't judge him a risk,' he added.

‘And you thought a ladder might be helpful?'

For the first time Barton looked almost sheepish. ‘It was my father's idea,' he said. ‘A fire escape.' And then the instinct to defend his father's decision won. ‘And it worked, didn't it?'

Not for your wife and daughter
, Roberts thought and knew that to say this blunt statement would be to put him right in front of police complaints. He recalled his brief. ‘Did your father ever mention the fire at Shelton Hospital in the late sixties?'

‘Yes, he did. What's that got to do with . . .' Barton was no fool. He soon supplied his own answer. ‘The missing nurse,' he said. ‘Did she work there too?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you think there's a connection? After all these years?'

Roberts was about to say that it was one line of enquiry they were pursuing but he didn't get the chance. Barton supplied it for him. ‘That's preposterous,' he said. ‘It doesn't make any sense.'

And Roberts was inclined to believe him.

Stella Moncrieff proved to be a smart, energetic woman wearing a business suit who lived in a small, neat detached house on one of the estates that were springing up all around the ancient town of Shrewsbury.

She opened the door to them with a bright smile, her eyes gleaming with the whisper of scandal and drama.

After the inevitable introduction Randall launched straight into the reason why he had come. ‘Tell me anything you remember Mrs Deverill saying about the Shelton fire.'

Stella Moncrieff gave a sharp, explosive chuckle. ‘Monica Gowan, you mean,' she said, giggling like a girl. ‘Oh, she was a one. You know? We all were. Not like these days. Things weren't so serious. There weren't the lawyers and complaints systems watching our every move.' She gave another delighted chuckle. ‘You only had to say you were a nurse and everyone . . .' Her shoulders bunched up in recalled excitement. ‘Everyone just trusted you. We were the little angels of the health service.' She opened her eyes very wide. ‘You have no idea, Inspector. It was so very different. The entire atmosphere was so much less suspicious. Less litigious.'

Randall wanted to tell her to get on with it but he had the idea Mrs Moncrieff would not be hurried. However, he did try. ‘Mrs Moncrieff,' he began severely, ‘we are really concerned about your one-time colleague who is still missing.'

She waved a hand in front of her. ‘I know, I know,' she said. ‘You want to know about the fire.' And then suddenly, quite abruptly, she stopped her chatter, changed gear and became sober. ‘Monica blamed herself,' she said, looking around as though someone might be eavesdropping. ‘The subsequent enquiries went on and on. They were looking for someone to blame. Anyone. Fingers were pointed at all sorts of people, half of whom had nothing to do with it at all.' She leaned in. ‘Monica was probably just one of those unlucky ones.'

‘Probably?' Randall probed gently.

‘Well, I'm sure it wasn't her fault,' Stella snapped. ‘It just wasn't.'

‘Why don't you start at the beginning, Mrs Moncrieff,' Randall prodded gently. ‘Exactly what part
did
she play in the events of that night?'

Stella drew in a deep, regretful, sighing breath. ‘She was on duty that night, the only trained nurse. It was her job to make sure all was well. One of those duties was to check out the day room. The day room,' she explained, ‘was underneath Beech Ward.' She seemed to be losing confidence by the second.

‘And?' Randall prompted gently.

She looked panicky. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Not really.'

Randall waited.

And got his answer. ‘Not another human soul knows this,' she said, ‘and if Monica hadn't – wasn't,' she substituted, ‘missing' . . . Her eyes looked guarded. ‘I don't know where she is, you know.'

Randall still waited patiently. He knew he had
something
wriggling on the end of his fishing line. And then it burst out, like a boil.

Stella Moncrieff spoke slowly and reluctantly, the words dragging out of her. ‘Earlier that evening Monica had been in the day room with some of the patients. She'd been using nail varnish remover although it was banned but the patient was making a fuss.' She gave a rueful smile. ‘Some of the patients were very hard to nurse, Inspector. Everything always had to be done in a certain way. And this patient had been making a fuss about something. So Monica . . . Well. She told me afterwards that she'd spilt half the bottle of nail varnish remover on a cushion on the sofa. When she discovered the fire she panicked and tried to put it out.'

And Randall began to understand. Acetone. Flammable. Acetone plus a smouldering cigarette equals major fire. Add in the non-fire-retardant sofa and you had a recipe for toxic smoke. And like Adelaide and Christie Barton there had been locked doors. It didn't make sense. Not yet – but it was beginning to have a certain rhythm to it. No wonder Monica Gowan had delayed summoning help. She must have realized she'd be implicated and had tried to contain the fire herself.

But even with this new knowledge, where did it leave the investigation now?

‘Where is she?' he asked.

DI Randall had thought the blunt question might provoke hard rebuttals, denial. Outrage. But Mrs Moncrieff took the question perfectly seriously. She didn't proffer an answer, simply opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water then bowed her head. ‘I told you. I don't know.' Randall didn't sniff much conviction in the words.

‘I know what you
told
me.'

There was no further response so Randall replaced the question with another.

‘You say no one knew this – about the acetone?'

A firm shake of the head.

‘I've read the reports. There was no mention of an inflammable substance furthering the fire.'

‘No.'

‘So who do you think burnt her house down and why?'

Again she gave no answer but her features altered slightly to a shifty look and a loss of the preening confidence. And still no response.

Randall tried again. ‘Mrs Moncrieff, do you think there is a connection between the three fires? The arson attack at Melverley, your friend's house and the fire at Shelton in the sixties?'

This time the answer was a slight, jerky nod. ‘There has to be,' she muttered.

‘How?' In reality Randall's question was not how but who?

‘I don't know any more,' she pleaded. ‘Honestly, I just don't know. I really don't. We didn't see so much of each other until we found out a couple of years ago at a reunion that we were both widowed. That's when she confided in me about the acetone. It had always been on her conscience.' She opened her eyes wide. ‘I honestly think she was glad to tell someone else and I tried my best to reassure her, to put her conscience to rest after all this time.'

‘Could anyone else have heard her confession to you that night?'