Smoke Alarm (8 page)

Randall was brisk. He sounded as though he was having a very busy day. ‘Sorry to interrupt your work, Martha.' He spoke quickly. ‘I thought you might like to be kept up to date with the investigation into the Melverley fire.'

‘That's very thoughtful of you, Alex. Thank you. I was wondering if you'd found anything out.'

‘Well, not a lot so far,' he confessed. ‘That's why I didn't ring earlier. I've been at the hospital.'

‘How is Jude?'

‘
Physically
the doctors say he'll be OK,' he began.

Martha picked up on the implication. ‘But mentally?'

‘He's devastated. Got real survivor complex, feeling guilty he didn't wake and raise the alarm – that he saved himself, but left them in the burning house and failed to rescue them.'

‘Poor boy.'

Alex continued: ‘I don't think we'd quite realized how traumatic his descent on the ladder was. He was terrified the rope would burn and he'd fall. It must have been dreadful.'

‘Yes,' she agreed.

‘And that's on top of the burns to his hands. The doctors have told me he may need skin grafts but they haven't told him yet. His father knows.'

‘Has Mr Barton been able to throw any light on the arson?'

‘He's given us one or two leads but they seemed pretty feeble – business associates, a boy that Adelaide was involved with who came from a fairly unsavoury family, stuff like that. Nothing that really grabbed me.'

‘Did you run the idea past Nigel that his father might have started the fire? Did you tell him you'd found a lighter in William's dressing-gown pocket?'

‘No, I didn't tell him about the lighter. I thought he had more than enough to take in. I did mention the previous fire to him. He insists it was just an accident. And he definitely doesn't see his father as some sort of avenging arsonist.'

‘And how did he respond when you told him that his wife and daughter had been locked into their rooms?'

‘He absolutely insisted it must have been an accident.' Randall paused. ‘He couldn't believe anyone would do such a thing deliberately, let alone his father. He said his father could be quite confused. He ventured the explanation that when his father woke to the fire he might have been trying to help the women out of their rooms and accidentally locked them in instead.'

‘I could maybe swallow that one if only one door had been locked. But not both.'

‘Well, he describes him as nicely muddled.'

‘Two locked doors,' Martha said. ‘That's not muddled coincidence. It's deliberate.'

‘Mmm.' Randall's response was non-committal.

‘And how did Mr Barton respond to his son descending by a rope ladder?'

‘He couldn't keep the admiration out of his voice. He's very proud of Jude – and the fact that he tried to save the rest of the family. He thinks the boy's a hero.'

‘Which I suppose he is,' Martha said slowly. Then she added, ‘What was your impression of the dynamics of the family?'

Alex didn't answer straight away. It took him a minute or two to come up with a response so the line was quiet. ‘It's hard to say, Martha, with such a tragedy. I mean, I've never met Barton senior, Christie or Adelaide. But there's no doubt of the affection between father and son.' He paused, frowning before finishing. ‘Perhaps by spending time with Jude and his father I might learn a bit more about the rest of the family.'

‘What's your instinct, Alex?' She couldn't resist pressing him.

On the other end of the line, Alex laughed. ‘I had the feeling you were going to spring something like that on me. I don't know,' he said. ‘I really don't know. It's early days yet. So far I'm a bit flummoxed. Initially I believed it was a random arson attack. For no particular reason Melverley Grange was picked on, maybe because it is such a grand and beautiful old house. But if it was a random attack it doesn't explain why the women were locked in their rooms. I've wondered about the old man. He started a fire before but no one has described him as demonic or crazy.'

‘Alzheimer's isn't that sort of crazy, Alex. It isn't clever and it isn't calculating. As his son has said, William was nicely muddled, occasionally unhappily confused but not calculatingly deliberate or cunning. Where would he have got the petrol from? I take it he doesn't drive?'

‘No.'

‘Well, that'd take some planning. And if he had started the fire why didn't he escape when he could have?'

‘Overcome by smoke?'

‘Perhaps.' Martha continued: ‘Believe me, Alex, this just isn't the sort of thing people with Alzheimer's do – lock people in their rooms, set fire to a house then climb the stairs and perish with the rest. Did you consider that? If he was the one who started the fire downstairs he must have climbed the stairs afterwards. That doesn't make any sense.'

‘Unless he was trying to save his granddaughter and daughter-in-law.'

‘I wonder.'

‘But,' Alex pointed out, ‘remember, he was found with a lighter in his pocket.'

‘I still don't care,' she said stubbornly. ‘William Barton was a victim too. As much a victim as his daughter-in-law and granddaughter and very nearly his grandson as well if Jude hadn't been quite so resourceful and forward thinking. Worse than that, Alex, if Barton senior is
wrongly
blamed for the fire he is the fall guy. The scapegoat, which would mean that the real villain goes free. Someone wanted us to believe that this old man committed this horrible and deliberately cruel act. An elderly man whom his son fondly describes as nicely muddled. How do we know he was crazy, anyway?'

‘Mark Sullivan told us there were clear signs of Alzheimer's on a scan done a year ago of Mr Barton's head.'

‘Well, maybe you should just check up on that. See if he's had a proper psychiatric assessment.' She waited a while before putting another thought into his head. ‘Well, you've told me you have possible leads through Nigel Barton.' Martha pressed on. ‘And one via Adelaide. Is there no one else in the frame?'

‘No one, just the three business leads Nigel Barton gave us and Adelaide's boyfriend. We will check them out, of course, but I'm not hopeful that it'll be that easy or that obvious.'

‘Have there been other similar arson attacks?'

‘Not in Shropshire.'

‘Elsewhere?'

‘Not unsolved.'

‘So are we looking at an inside job? Something personal?'

She knew by his silence that Alex Randall was uncomfortable. His tightly uttered, ‘It would appear so,' was practically forced out of him.

‘What about Jude? Does he have any enemies?'

‘A fourteen-year-old boy?'

‘Yes, a fourteen-year-old boy.'

‘We've yet to question him along those lines.'

‘And Mrs Christie Barton. What about her? Is she Caesar's wife, above suspicion?'

‘I do wonder if she had –' Randall sounded angry with himself. ‘Oh, it's such a cliché. I wonder if she did have a secret life.'

Martha responded with an arch, ‘Don't we all?'

But Randall's silence on the other end of the line told her that he was confused by her riposte. Then it must have dawned on him that she was teasing. He chuckled but she noticed he did not pursue the comment. Instead he said slowly, ‘Martha, do you suspect everyone in this case?'

She answered calmly but with conviction. ‘Yes, I do, Alex. Looking at it plainly, this was a case of arson which resulted in three deaths. Nearly four. This was no serial gang of silly boys playing up and down the street with a box of matches to disastrous results. This was a house deliberately chosen. Selected, if you like. Someone deliberately entered that house, locked Christie and Adelaide in their bedrooms, then set fire to the house. I think William Barton was trying to effect some sort of rescue. Maybe I'm wrong but I believe it was deliberate murder, not an accident. No one else in the entire village was targeted, were they?'

‘No.'

‘Have there been other cases of arson in Melverley in, say, the last five years?'

‘No.'

‘And did anyone see strangers wandering around the village that night?'

‘Not that we've picked up on so far.'

‘I take it there's no CCTV in the village?'

His silence affirmed her assumption.

‘OK, so all I have is a great long list of questions that need answering. Why did this happen? What was the intent? To murder two women, or was the old man the target? Was it Jude they were really after – and failed? Why
did
he have a rope ladder installed? It seems an odd thing to me. Or was Nigel Barton the real target and our arsonist was unaware that he was not at home that night? Is there some vengeful woman behind this? Did Nigel Barton have a mistress who might wish his family harm? Why lock Adelaide and Christie in their rooms? Also, isn't it unusual for an arsonist to actually enter the property to splash the petrol around? It wasn't even ridiculously late. The family could have still been awake. Have your forensic people found any sign of him – or her?'

‘Whoa, there.' Randall chuckled. ‘Slow down. I can't keep up.' Then he added, ‘I've said this before: you're wasted being a coroner.'

‘Am I?' The question was not asked to provoke flattery or invite compliments but as a genuine query. And DI Randall responded in kind.

‘Well, no. Not really. You aren't wasted as a coroner.' He cleared his throat in embarrassment. ‘What I mean is you'd have made a bloody good cop.'

She laughed. ‘Thank you very much, Inspector. Praise indeed.'

‘You're welcome.'

They both sensed that the conversation was over, said their goodbyes and hung up.

And somehow the exchange with DI Randall had made St David's Day doubly special. The awkwardness was over, the intrusion forgotten or at least forgiven.

Both a leek
and
a daffodil.

A
lex conducted the briefing, his eyes roaming around the room speculatively. They'd taken over the church hall in Melverley as their operations headquarters. The place had a gentle feel in spite of the whiteboards, graphic photographs and rows of chairs holding police personnel. As an environment it wasn't hugely conducive to crime solving but it served its purpose and at least it was near the burnt-out house.

As Randall wrote on the board he was well aware that the lines of enquiry he was outlining coincided with Martha's ideas.

At the top he wrote a list of these potential lines, underlining the categories heavily.
Business associates of Nigel Barton.

Next he wrote the name,
William Barton,
underneath detailing questions:

What exactly was his mental state?

Is he a serious suspect?

Is it possible he deliberately started the fire and locked the women in their rooms?

What was he doing on the landing?

Why did he have a lighter in his pocket?

Randall stood for a moment, staring out over the faces of his force. The two people best placed to answer these questions were the old man's son and grandson. Could he rely on them to be honest in their responses? One had to hope so.

Next he wrote: Did William Barton smoke?

A minor question, surely easy enough to obtain a truthful answer? A simple yes or no. Randall would soon learn that this case would not be simple from any angle. There would be no simple yeses or nos.

Next he wrote
Jude
followed by a question mark – nothing else.

Then the
‘unsavoury man'
– probably a boy who had had some sort of relationship with Adelaide.

And lastly he wrote
Nigel Barton.

Underneath:

Money concerns?

Another relationship?

Business associates?

It was a simple matter of checking out the man's alibi, surely. If he had been miles away at the time of the fire – whatever his personal life – he couldn't have had anything to do with it. But Randall was a realist. Nigel Barton couldn't have had anything to do with it unless, he added mentally, someone had done the dirty work for him.

But at the back of Randall's mind was the fear that none of these lines of enquiry would lead them to their arsonist, that this was not a personal, planned attack but a random selection. In which case, as they had no local leads, they were in trouble. It threw the entire investigation wide open. It could have been anyone who poured the petrol, anyone who locked the doors, anyone who threw the fatal match. He didn't want to explore this particular avenue even in his mind.

He threw more questions out into the room for the officers to consider. ‘Who was the intended target? The obvious answer is the women. They were the ones who died, after all. But . . .' He eyed Talith and Roberts, knowing they would mentally wrestle with every problem he threw their way plus a few more, ‘one could question whether they were the intended victims. Fires are an unpredictable method of murder. People do die but sometimes they do not.' He turned back to the board and studied it for a while without speaking.

The name Jude seemed to pop out at him. He frowned. This was the boy who had had the foresight to keep a rope ladder in his bedroom, as though anticipating a catastrophe. The boy who managed to escape the inferno alone, with no more than minor injuries and those mainly to his hands sustained, presumably, in the rescue attempt. Suddenly he was very curious about Jude. Leaving the officers to pursue the lines of enquiry he'd suggested, he singled out Gethin Roberts. ‘Can you just run through what happened last Thursday evening?'

Roberts cleared his throat, wondering whether he was about to get a ticking off or praise. Scanning his superior's face, he still wasn't sure. ‘When I got to the house,' he began, ‘it was obvious that the entire front was going up in flames. They were shooting out of the bedroom windows. The noise was terrific. Glass breaking and this whooshing noise – it was like the fire was alive.' He decided to risk levity. ‘I can see where the ideas of dragons came from. You'd swear—'