A red fire investigation van drew up and Lizzie put her cup down and walked towards her own car to get her kit.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said, turning back for a moment. ‘Don’t forget your paper.’
She nodded to Maureen’s copy of The Doncaster Free Press, lying on top of the wall. He picked up the newspaper, glancing at the circles and underlinings he’d done earlier. There was something about Mrs Armley that he needed to get clear in his head. If Terry Starkey was her son, where was he living? And I said, there’s someone up to no good. Mrs Armley hadn’t mentioned anyone else, and they’d assumed she meant she was talking to herself, but what if she’d said it out loud, to someone standing by the window with her?
Lizzie was talking to the fire officer, who stood with his arms folded to maximise the bulging muscles crammed into his short-sleeved shirt. She was getting animated. As he got closer, Sean picked up something about procedure and priorities. The fire officer was expressionless, waiting for Lizzie to finish.
‘I can’t let you in there, darling, until we’ve isolated the electrics and I’ll need our specialist guy to come down for that.’
‘Meanwhile the evidence is deteriorating.’ She looked round as Sean approached. The other man glanced at him, trying to decide who, or what, he was.
‘Some people don’t understand protocol,’ he said to Sean, smiling through bleached white teeth.
Lizzie went back to sit on the wall and Sean followed her with a backward glance at the fire officer, who winked at him. If it was meant to be a sign of blokey solidarity, he’d got the wrong man.
‘What a complete tosser,’ Lizzie said. ‘I understand they have their own teams and their own way of doing things, but he’s actually obstructing us now and I’ve got a good mind to report him.’
‘So what are you looking for?’ Sean said.
‘How much do you know?’ She shot him a sideways glance.
‘Almost nothing. Except when the fire was raging I followed a suspect who disappeared into the back of the Health Centre. That same suspect and his sister were here this morning. She got some documents from the flat, but the boy stayed clear.’
‘Has he been charged with anything?’
‘Not as far as I know. Just another ticking off. He collects them.’
‘And you just happened to be here when they turned up?’
‘I was passing. On the way home from my dad’s, as it goes.’
He hoped he hadn’t given himself away. Rick was right about little white lies tying you in knots.
‘The flat’s not part of the crime scene, as far as we’re concerned,’ Lizzie said.
Sean stifled a sigh of relief.
‘Does the CCTV tell us who started the fire?’ he said.
‘Sadly not. There’s a camera on the Health Centre and one on the library, so although you can see people coming and going, there’s a gap in the middle of the parade.’
‘What about mobile phone footage?’
‘Rick Houghton’s on to that. He’s got half his team scouring the Internet. By the time the shop went up in flames, there were over a hundred people here, so there’s bound to be something.’
Sean was wondering what Saleem was up to.
‘Someone should check the appointments at the Health Centre for the day of the fire,’ he said.
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Saleem might have been running because he saw me, or he might have been running because he had a plan. What if he had an appointment at the Health Centre during the day, to check his stitches or whatever, went to the toilet while he was there and left the window open, ready to squeeze himself in later?’
‘What was he after?’
‘The usual. Prescription drugs to sell on. Anything he could get in his pockets. Living near such an easy source must be quite tempting.’
‘And the fire enabled him to cover his tracks?’
‘Or a happy coincidence,’ Sean said. ‘Perhaps he took the opportunity when he thought nobody would be watching.’
‘You should talk to DCI Khan.’
‘No chance. I’m suspended, remember? You tell him, if you like.’
The fire officer was coming back towards them. Lizzie adjusted her equipment bag on her shoulder and was about to say something, but Sean cut her off.
‘And while you’re at it, tell him someone needs to ask Terry Starkey where he was on the night of Mohammad Asaf’s murder.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Halsworth Grange
Chloe is praying for rain. She rakes the gravel on the path into straight furrows and at every pass wishes she’d had a shower this morning. She lingered too long in bed after her alarm went off, and when she got up there were people moving around. The broken lock on the bathroom door makes it too risky. Now the Icy Mist has worn off and she hates her body’s vinegary odour. If her mother could smell her now, she’d be horrified. She was a woman who moved around in a cloud of perfume, who sprayed the air if it didn’t smell gorgeous enough. Air freshener, beer and fag smoke all mingled together in the pub, but at home it was like a spring meadow, all year long. Well, Chloe smiles to herself, not a real one, not like the meadow here at Halsworth Grange, which prickles the back of your throat with the dry smell of hay and the sweetness of clover. But sometimes she catches the scent her mum wore, on the bus or the train, and she misses her. She looks at the patterns she’s been making with the rake. They’ve gone a bit wobbly. She needs to concentrate. She straightens them up and keeps her distance from the visitors.
After her break, Bill tells her there’s more mowing to do. He jokes about the dodgy haircuts she gave the long grass under the apple trees and she’s relieved he’s not annoyed about her poor mowing in the orchard. He points out a grassy slope next to the car park. It’s like a small field, fenced in from a wild patch of shrubs and trees below. Above it, a dry, brownish lawn is currently laid out with wooden picnic tables.
‘We’ll move the tables down there tomorrow. Give the other patch a rest. Let’s get it as short as we can while it’s clear of visitors and all their rubbish. OK?’
Under her ear defenders the buzz of the ride-on mower seems to be coming from miles away. The vibration through her spine is like the hum of bees. She’s the hive and the bees are inside her. She keeps a straight line, eyes fixed on a fence post at the foot of the field. As she gets close to the edge, she eases off the accelerator and prepares to turn, looping round to make the upward cut. The smell of newly mown grass and engine oil fills her nostrils. At the top of the field, in the existing picnic area, families cluster round tables covered in rubbish. Some of them will make the effort to transfer it to the bins. Some of them won’t. She drops her gaze, focusing on the line she’s following, and turns again.
At the bottom edge of the field another smell drifts across the perfume of grass and oil, but she can’t place it. Once she’s made the turn it fades away behind her. From somewhere in her memory she thinks of a fox’s scent, dark and musty. Maybe it’s something Jay taught her about. There were foxes on the allotment. He taught her so many things about nature. Her Jay, with his flapping coat and wild red hair, smoking a joint or just hanging out in the shed when it rained. He was almost happy there.
Ahead of her a group of teenage girls jump up from their picnic table screaming. They flap pointlessly at a wasp, but Chloe doesn’t care. The rhythm of mowing lulls her into drowsiness. Their screaming barely reaches her through the ear defenders as she steers around another loop and faces back down the slope. Beyond the wooden post-and-rail fencing, rhododendrons as tall as trees have escaped from the formal gardens and run wild. Their season is over and their spent flower heads are browning and sodden. For a moment she wonders if it’s the rotting flowers causing the smell, which is getting stronger and more metallic.