The team were passing the sheets around now, but their eyes were glued to Helen.

‘We’re trying to trace his IP address, but if he’s using a tablet with 4G or similar, then this may be a dead end, so for now let’s keep focused on his character. His posts reveal clear evidence of depression, but also strong feelings of superiority. He craves control and seems to relish the effect that the fires have had. He seems to be calling the tune. So we are looking for a teenage male who until recently has been powerless, overlooked or neglected.’

‘What’s the tenor of their relationship? FPS and Naomie?’ McAndrew asked. ‘Were they lovers?’

‘Looks that way,’ Sanderson interjected. ‘They communicated every day during the summer and well into the autumn. He makes great play of idolizing her – calling her “Angel” repeatedly – and is always trying to boost her self-esteem. She in turn is very protective of him – seemingly worrying if he’ll come to any harm – though whether at his own hands or someone else’s is unclear. She keeps referencing the first time they met as if that explained the root cause of her anxiety.’

‘Had they been intimate?’ DC Lucas asked, to a few quiet sniggers.

‘Tough to say,’ Sanderson answered. ‘It’s hard to imagine they haven’t been but there is no mention of sex or intimacy in their communications.’

Sanderson continued her dissection of their relationship, but Helen’s mind was already arrowing away in a different direction, hidden connections forming now. Without warning, she walked away from the group, marching towards her desk. She picked up her files and searched through them quickly, until she’d located the hospital reports from the fires’ survivors. She flicked through them until she came to the page on Ethan Harris. Her eyes ran over the text, words and phrases now leaping out at her: ‘cerebral palsy’, ‘persistent shaking of the left hand’, ‘historic burn injuries’. Suddenly Helen knew why Agnieszka Jarosik had been singled out for special treatment. She knew why their arsonist had fumbled the matches during the second and fourth attacks. And she knew where she had seen Naomie’s scar – the burnt cross on the left palm – before.

Most importantly, she knew why Naomie had called 999 twelve minutes before anybody else after the Harris fire started. It wasn’t fear or excitement that motivated her to call too early that night. It was love.

129

Blog post by firstpersonsingular.

Saturday, 12 December, 10.30

She was a funny-looking angel. But she was beautiful to me.

Her sad face was framed by that crazy, afro hair and the shadow of a black eye haunted the left side of her face. Her face was so close to me, I could feel her breath and at first I was confused. Who was this person? What did they want with me? I thought I was seeing things – she had a kind of aura that framed her head, her voice was smooth and comforting – but later I knew I had seen right. She was an angel. More than that, she was my angel.

It’s funny how things work out. How you can swallow abuse, neglect and more, but can be undone by a simple act of kindness. Others might have walked past me but not her. She raised me up that day and made me what I am. Together we are more than the sum of our parts.

But things have changed now. We can’t be what we were. So it’s time to remember the good times as we prepare to finish the job. People will castigate us for what we’ve done, but all we’ve done is show them in their true colours and, boy, have they done that. I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke when my parents were giving their interviews after the fire. Saying how much they loved me, how relieved they were I was ok. That rhyme kept going round my head: ‘Liar, Liar …’. I was their ‘accident’ – my dad actually said it to my face once. How can someone be accidental??? But it’s not him I blame really.

They wished I didn’t exist. Farmed me out to nannies, who did the minimum required, then ignored me. I was an embarrassment to everyone, a guilty secret. They would either beat me or sedate me into submission and if that didn’t work they’d scream at me. I used to like those moments – the flecks of spit landing on my face as they ranted and raved – at least then I existed in their world.

Well, I exist now. And before I’m done I will have made them both famous. This is my last post, Mum and Dad. My last offering to you. My last offering to you all. My name is Ethan Harris and I am the firestarter.

130

Helen took the stairs three at a time, as DCs Lucas and Edwards struggled to keep pace behind. Sanderson was busy organizing a perimeter cordon, in case Ethan Harris tried to escape, but Helen was determined to deny him the opportunity. After the fire, the Harris family had moved into a rented apartment in Upper Shirley, supported by a new carer, Anastasia Teplova. It was amazing how soon normal life re-established itself in the Harris family. Both parents were already back at work, leaving the care of their son to paid help.

Helen quickly reached their apartment on the third floor. She had wasted too much time chasing shadows on this case, when the solution had been under her nose all along. There had definitely been something ‘off’ about the way the Harris family behaved together and Helen now realized it was because they were acting – pretending to be a loving family. Ethan had been acting for many months now, cloaking his plans and later his nocturnal activities from his parents and carers. The one thing he wasn’t able to conceal was the burn mark on his left hand. When she’d glimpsed it at the hospital, Helen thought it had been sustained in the fire, but now the cross-shaped pattern was plain to see. Firstpersonsingular had referenced burning himself in his blog – was this the pact that he and Naomie had sealed, testing their commitment to each other through fire?

As DC Edwards joined her, Helen didn’t hesitate, ordering him to break down the door. She had considered using the concierge or even knocking on the door herself, but she couldn’t sanction even the tiniest delay. Edwards took a run up then launched himself at the door. The latch tore from the woodwork with a satisfying scream and the door swung open. Helen was through it in a flash, to be confronted by a very surprised-looking Bulgarian, who was playing Fruit Crush on her phone, rather than attending to her duties.

Anastasia Teplova stammered some protestations in broken English, but shut up when confronted by Helen’s warrant card. The young woman was barely older than her charge and clearly had a very basic command of English. Just how uninterested were these parents in their son?

‘Where is Ethan?’

Anastasia just stood there, still speechless with shock, so Helen gestured to Edwards and Lucas to start searching. Then she approached the home help, putting her warrant card away.

‘You’re not in any trouble, but I need to talk to Ethan. Is he here?’

There was another long pause, before she finally said:

‘He’s in his room.’

With that she gestured to a small, ancillary bedroom towards the back of the apartment. Helen ran towards it now and, throwing open the door, stepped inside.

To find an empty room.

Nothing on the walls yet. Nothing on the bedside table. Just an old laptop, closed and powered down, sitting next to a dirty coffee mug on the table. Ethan clearly had been here but, as the open window by the fire escape revealed, he was long gone now.