46

Enveloped in a sterile suit, Helen climbed the ladder to the first floor. The fabric of the house was so unstable that a temporary scaffold and gantry had been erected to help the fire investigation officers navigate the gutted property safely. Cresting the ladder, Helen found Deborah Parks already hard at work in what had once been the master bedroom. It was a profoundly depressing site – the place looked like it had been bombed – and Helen’s feelings of anxiety were only amplified by the insistent thrumming noise of the plastic sheeting which now covered the shattered main window. The wind was strong today, rattling the temporary covering vigorously and ensuring that everyone working on site was chilled to the bone. Last night temperatures in here would have topped 600 degrees Celsius, now it was touching freezing.

Swallowing down her anxiety, Helen navigated her way along the walkway of planks towards Deborah. The Fire Investigation Officer rose as she approached, nodding soberly at her. Deborah was a scientist first and foremost, but she was also a mum to three boys and Helen knew from experience that she always felt the human cost of the tragedies she investigated. In many ways their lives were pretty similar – both spent their working lives immersed in the worst things that human beings could imagine or endure.

‘Your victim was found here, bang in the middle of the room. It’s very likely the smoke and the panic got to her and she just froze. You often see that in these situations. House fires are things that happen to other people. When it happens to you, people lose their wits, their sense of direction, everything.’

‘It must have been terrifying.’

‘The smoke would have been so thick in here that she wouldn’t have known which way was up.’

It was a horrific way to die. Terror, confusion and horror all colliding at the same time. Was this what their killer intended?

‘Any thoughts on why her body was so …’ Helen paused, not quite finding the appropriate word.

‘Carbonized?’

Helen smiled a brief thanks. It was hard to put into words what Denise’s body had looked like.

‘Oxygen basically,’ Deborah Parks continued. ‘There are massive scorch marks around the border of the bedroom door. The fire was started downstairs, rising upwards, consuming whatever it could. It met an obstacle at the door, which is solid and fire-resistant to a basic level. The heat built up –’

‘And then Denise opened the door as she tried to escape?’ Helen asked.

‘Probably. The frustrated fire would have gobbled up the fresh oxygen in the bedroom – these marks here show how the fire literally exploded into the new space.’

Deborah pointed to a number of long, livid scorch marks across the ceiling.

‘Denise may or may not have regained consciousness after that initial explosion. Either way, if she was motionless in the middle of the room, the fire would have consumed her, setting light to her nightclothes, her hair … If she was still conscious at this point, her body would have gone into a massive state of shock. Cardiac arrest, smoke inhalation, there are many things that might have spared her the worst.’

‘Please God.’

Deborah was already making her way across the gantry and down the ladder to the ground floor. Helen was glad of a moment’s respite from this narrative of destruction. She was used to being at crime scenes, of seeing unspeakable things, but this was different to anything she’d experienced before. Denise Roberts’s attacker was not human and there was no opportunity to escape, defend herself or fight back, as there would have been in a common murder scenario. Hers was an enemy that could not be beaten. Helen, who feared nobody, shivered slightly at the thought of what Denise had faced last night.

Descending the ladder, Helen found Deborah Parks crouching down by the bottom of the stairs. Helen joined her.

‘Your arsonist’s MO is pretty similar,’ Deborah outlined. ‘You can smell the paraffin for yourself and I found a charred packet of Marlboro Gold here. There’s no understairs cupboard, so the arsonist went directly for the stairs themselves, soaking the bottom three steps in paraffin before presumably lighting the delay device and leaving.’

Helen nodded, then said:

‘What are these things here?’

She was pointing at a handful of numbered forensic markers laid out by Deborah around the foot of the stairs.

‘Sodium flares,’ Deborah replied.

‘Matches?’ Helen queried.

‘Exactly. I’d expect to find them on the bottom step, where the delay timer was positioned, but there seem to have been a number of other matches scattered around the base of the stairs and on the floor.’

‘Was that to amplify the spread of the initial fire?’

‘Unlikely. There would be no point putting matches on carpet already soaked in paraffin – our arsonist would know that.’

‘So he or she was just clumsy?’

‘Or in a hurry. We think of these guys as being ice-cool, but they are human beings. Their victim was asleep upstairs but could have woken up at any moment. The arsonist would have wanted to be in and out of the house as soon as possible and when you rush …’

Helen nodded. It was a disturbingly human moment in the midst of a horribly premeditated crime.

‘Other than that it’s pretty much a carbon copy of Tuesday night’s fires. There’s more work to do, but I’m ninety-nine per cent certain it’s the same perpetrator.’

‘Any idea how they gained access?’

‘Looks likely it was via the back door. The front door had the chain on and as yet I’ve found no broken windows or other obvious means of access. The back door was unlocked when we arrived. You’d have to ask family members if the back door was left unlocked as a rule –’

‘Or whether someone unlocked it on their way out.’

If the fire had been started by whoever shared Denise’s bed last night, then it would make sense that he would exit via the more hidden back door to effect his escape. But they were still no nearer finding her mystery lover, so it was all supposition. Perhaps she was just careless of domestic security? Or perhaps just this one time she forgot?

‘Anything else that leaps out at you?’ Helen said, as she made her way to the back door.

‘Nothing tangible yet in terms of our perpetrator. The safety boys putting up the scaffolding disturbed the site anyway, so it would be hard to prove in court that any evidence hadn’t been cross-contaminated or brought in by them.’

Helen swore – that was all they needed.

‘My feelings exactly,’ Deborah returned before moving off to continue her work. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done.’

Helen thanked Deborah and went out through the back door. She did a quick tour of the garden, but, finding nothing of interest on the hard ground, turned to look back at the house. She shivered as she took it in – a modest, family home had been desecrated by fire, turned into a grim curiosity for local youths who lined the streets now, camera phones raised in approval. Denise Roberts hadn’t had many breaks in life, but the cruellest blow had been saved for the very end.

There was only one, tiny glimmer of light in this whole awful story. She had argued with her son and had probably regretted it subsequently, as parents were wont to do. But in doing so she had done him the greatest service a mother can do for her child. She had booted him out of the house to serve her own interests last night, but in doing so she had ended up saving his life.