Smoke Alarm (30 page)

And Gethin Roberts watched, listened and learned.

Talith and Delia Shaw, in the meantime, were in another interview room, along the corridor, speaking to Gordon Deverill, while in a third interview room WPC Lara Tinsley and PC Gary Coleman were interviewing James Deverill. All with good results.

Delia Shaw had opened the questioning. ‘Gordon, you've said,' she glanced down at the printout of the phone bill, knowing he would be able to see what it was, ‘that you haven't heard from your mother since sometime in early March?' She looked up, eyebrows raised, questioning, giving the suspect a chance to redeem himself.

Gordon Deverill knew exactly what she was up to and consequently he looked wary, his eyes flickering around the room as restless as a butterfly, searching for not nectar, but inspiration. Inspiration, WPC Shaw thought? All he needed to do was confess the truth.

She gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Would you like to revise that statement, sir?' she asked gently and very politely, fixing him with her big brown eyes. Gordon startled; his shoulders twitched, his eyes opened wide, his forearms tensed.

‘Shit,' he muttered, dropping his face into his hands. Then he looked up. ‘Look,' he said. ‘I don't know exactly but Mum knew something about the fire at Melverley. For some reason when she heard about it she completely flipped. There's something terrifying her.' He paused. ‘She didn't just go underground on a whim, you know. She just had to get away.'

In the other room Tinsley and Coleman were provoking a similar response. But unlike his brother James Deverill looked angry. It was only as they proceeded with the questions that Lara Tinsley and PC Gary Coleman realized that the anger was not directed at them but at his mother.

‘I don't know why she had to go into hiding,' he said for the
n
th time. ‘I only know something seemed to . . . She was
paralysed
with fright. And then, without any explanation, she drags us into her deceit and made us promise not to tell you where she was.'

‘It's imperative that we speak to her,' Lara Tinsley prompted gently.

Suddenly James Deverill slapped his mobile on to the table with a clatter. ‘Go on,' he said flatly. ‘Ring her. She's listed under Mum.'

Coleman did just that. Picked up the phone, found the number, pressed the call button and had a surreal conversation with the ‘missing woman'.

‘Is that Mrs Monica Deverill?'

The reply was wary. ‘Who is that?'

‘This is Police Constable Gary Coleman of Shrewsbury police. We've been looking for you, Mrs Deverill.'

For a moment there was no response except a relieved release of breath. Then Monica gave a weary sigh. ‘I know,' she said.

‘Where are you?'

‘With a friend.'

Somehow Coleman knew that she would not give him either the name of her friend or her whereabouts but he asked the question all the same. And got the anticipated response. ‘I'm not prepared to tell you that.'

‘We need to speak to you. I take it your sons have told you about your house?'

‘Why do you think I fled? I knew what was coming, Constable.' Her voice was harsh with emotion. There was another tired sigh and then, ‘I take it you want me to present at the police station?'

‘Please.'

‘Then I surrender.' Said, surprisingly, with a hint of humour. ‘I'll be with you –' a pause – ‘soon.'

Coleman glanced at James Deverill who looked relieved. ‘Thank God,' he muttered, ‘for the end of that bloody farce.'

At no time when Randall related his story did he read anything but an affected boredom in Jude's face while his father stayed very quiet and still, not interrupting or even responding. It was almost as though the story was of no great surprise to him. He'd already guessed it. When Randall finally stopped speaking Jude's eyes lifted to the detective's face and there was a subtle change. Respect.

Then Gary Coleman knocked and entered the room, spoke in a low voice to his chief and Randall knew that at last that they were nearing their quarry.

E
veryone in the entire station was waiting, as though for a royal visit, not knowing how long it would be before Monica Deverill turned up. It could be a long wait. She could be in the Isle of Wight or the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the Westernmost point of Anglesey or the toe of Cornwall. She had deliberately given them no idea where she had been for the last couple of weeks. They did not know how long they may have to wait. They could have kept calling her mobile number but sensed she would not answer.

Likewise, they could have alerted police forces up and down the country. It was probable that she would be in her own car. But they decided simply to sit it out.

And wait.

At last, a little before nine in the evening, the desk sergeant brought in a woman. Randall stared at her. She was solidly built, square with a thick waist, but not fat. She merely looked strong. The phrase,
as an ox,
flittered into his mind and he smiled. Yes. That described her very well. Strong as an ox. Both physically but also, he suspected, morally and mentally. She had a plain, scrubbed face, but met his eyes with an unflinching gaze from direct grey-green eyes as he greeted her. ‘Mrs Deverill, I presume?'

‘Yes,' she confirmed, her voice, like her persona, firm and decisive without being harsh.

He shook her hand. ‘I'm Detective Inspector Alex Randall, senior officer investigating the house fires at both Melverley Grange and your home.'

‘Yes,' she said softly. ‘I understand that.'

They offered her a cup of tea and then Randall took Talith and Roberts with him into the interview room and they started their interrogation.

It was hard to know where to start. Like Barton, she refused the attentions of a solicitor, saying she was happy to speak to them alone.

‘I take it you know about your house?'

She nodded and leaned forward. ‘I knew it would happen, you know.'

‘I thought you might,' Randall replied gently. ‘Don't you think that you'd better start at the beginning? It all begins with the fire at Shelton, doesn't it?'

‘Yes,' she answered, apparently unsurprised that he was cognisant of this connection.

Randall sat back, switched on the tape recorder, fed in the names of all present, folded his arms and listened. ‘In your own time,' he prompted.

‘You already know about the fire in Shelton,' she began. ‘I was on duty on Beech Ward that night. William Barton was one of the fire officers who attended. He was a very clever man. And brave. Many of the patients there that night owe their lives to his heroism.' She smiled at a memory. ‘There was one particular patient, Dora Robinson, who had OCD.' She smiled at Randall, maybe sensing some empathy. ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You know what I mean, Inspector?'

Randall's answer was a heartfelt, ‘I do.'

‘Anyway, he dragged her out. But she was screaming she didn't have her slippers on and her feet would get dirty. Do you know what, Inspector?' Even more than forty years after the event her eyes showed her respect for the man who was now dead. ‘He went straight back in with his breathing apparatus and brought out her slippers. Everybody cheered.' She laughed and Randall had the image of a nurse cheering a hero. Then her face grew sad. ‘Isn't it awful to think that that fantastic man became the person who slagged me off in the middle of Shrewsbury, shouting abuse on a Saturday afternoon, saying I had murdered twenty-four people.' Her face had now changed. ‘Twenty-four of my patients.' She looked pinched and unhappy. ‘You see it wasn't just the fire, Inspector, it was all the people who were caught up in it. Quite a few patients had OCD and had to be persuaded to leave their beds without their slippers or their dressing gowns on. He couldn't go back for
all
their stuff. Others wouldn't leave because it wasn't morning yet. Plenty were too confused or sleepy to cooperate at all because of their medication. It was chaos.'

Monica Deverill gave him a sharp glance before continuing. ‘Officially the fire was put down to a cigarette smouldering in a sofa in the day room which burst into flames. The day room was directly beneath the locked ward, Beech Ward.'

Randall nodded.

‘Naturally the firemen were around the hospital quite a lot in the aftermath and I chatted a bit to William Barton. He made a few little hints to me that all was not
quite
as it had been presented, that the fire was not
exactly
an accident and that there had been a delay in raising the alarm.' Her face was frozen. ‘He hinted at there being traces of an accelerant and made the comment that he was surprised at the speed and ferocity of the fire's spread. It unnerved me.'

Randall glanced at Talith and frowned.

Monica explained. ‘I'd been in the day room earlier and had spilt a bottle of acetone – nail varnish remover – over the sofa. So when Fire Officer Barton started saying that an accelerant had been used, I knew that it was my acetone.' She made a face. ‘I knew I'd get into terrible trouble so when I discovered the fire I tried to put it out myself instead of raising the alarm straight away. Everyone knew about the delay. It was mentioned in the press but only I knew about the acetone. Or at least not just me but William Barton too. He was going to take this information to the authorities.' She turned her head. ‘Inspector Randall,' she said, ‘I was terrified. It was strictly against the rules to have anything inflammable in the day room as there was an open fire. I would have lost my job if it had all come out. Even worse, I would have been held responsible for the loss of all those lives. That terrible night. Murder. I didn't know what to do. In the end I confided in him that I had
accidentally
spilt some stuff and that was why I'd tried to put the fire out myself. He said it needn't go any further.' Her eyes appealed to Randall for understanding. ‘I couldn't have borne it, Inspector – all the headlines and stuff in the media blaming
me
for all those deaths when the images of bodies being brought out of a hospital ward were so graphic. I really could not have borne it,' she said again. ‘I forgot about the whole thing once the enquiry and the inquests were over. And as the years passed I thought I was safe. But then six months or so ago I was out in the town, shopping in the Darwin Centre and I bumped into William. He was with a youth I took to be his grandson. I think he had some dementia because he started telling the boy that I was responsible for the famous Shelton fire where he had saved so many lives and had been decorated for bravery by the fire service. He was speaking in a really loud voice and people started stopping and listening. He called me a murderess. And then he told the boy my name and asked if I was still living in Sundorne which was where I'd been based at the time of the fire.' She shuddered. ‘The boy looked at me with the sort of curious fascination you might give a Black Widow Spider on her wedding day. It gave me shivers down my spine. I was shaking by the time I got home. I felt more frightened than at any time since the fire. When I heard about what happened at Melverley Grange I just knew that boy, as he was the only one to survive, was responsible. But then he rang me,' she said, ‘the afternoon of the appeal and told me he wanted money or he'd go to the newspapers and give them the full story about the Shelton fire. I knew that if I gave him money it would never stop. He would want more and more until I had nothing left. And then he'd go to the press. I wanted to disappear. But you can't do that when you have a family. I was also frightened he would torch my house. The date, Inspector. February the twenty-fourth – the anniversary of the Shelton fire.'

‘Is that why you rang?'

She nodded. ‘I wanted to tell you about him. But I couldn't say anything without implicating myself, could I? So it wouldn't have done any good. There was no point. I dread to think what else William said to the boy but even in the middle of the Darwin Shopping Centre on a Saturday afternoon he said some pretty awful things, describing the people locked in the ward that they were unable to reach in time, the charred bodies, the screaming, the sheer terror of that night. I put my hands over my ears but I could still hear him accusing me. The way that boy looked at me I knew he meant trouble. When Melverley Grange was burnt down I was really, really frightened. And then when he rang I panicked, took some money out of the building society and ran to a friend's house far away. She put my car in her garage and I felt safe. When I heard about my own house I knew I'd done the right thing.' Her eyes met Randall's. ‘If I hadn't gone I would be dead.'

‘Why didn't you confide in us?' Randall demanded. ‘Keep your appointment?'

‘I suppose because I bottled out. You're the police, aren't you? If you had known about the spilt acetone and the reason I didn't sound the alarm you might still hold me responsible.'

‘But you couldn't have hidden for ever.'

‘No. I realized that at some point I had to come out of hiding. I suppose I sort of hoped that you'd arrest Jude. Then I'd be safe. But nothing seemed to be happening. And James and Gordon were getting increasingly annoyed with me and . . .'

Randall interrupted. ‘How much do they know?'

‘Very little. Not about the acetone. Only that I was on duty the night of the fire and that Fire Officer Barton somehow blamed me. In fact,' she said with a rueful smile, ‘it's a relief that you've found me. I don't know when I'd have emerged.'

Randall glanced at Talith. They had the story from Monica. Now it was time to face Jude Barton and his father with the truth. They arranged for her to be reunited with her disapproving sons and sandwiches and a pot of tea be provided. The panacea for all ills.

And so, again, now they faced the boy. Randall studied his face, wondering at the psyche of the teenager who returned his gaze with an air of defiance, throwing out a challenge to the detective.