Lizzie went back to her office and picked up her car keys. She nearly collided with Donald Chaplin as she rushed out of the door.
‘Got a minute?’ he said.
‘Thirty seconds. I’ve got to catch the garden centre before it closes.’
‘Here.’
Lizzie looked at the sheets of paper Donald was holding in front of her and tried to understand what she was seeing. He pointed with the tip of his biro at a smudge the shape of the Isle of Wight. Around the edge, it was just possible to see the frilly lines of a partial fingerprint.
‘It’s bottle glass and it was wedged under the bottom of the fridge at AK News, protected from the heat. I’ve picked up concentrated petrol residue and a few tiny drops of human sweat. Here are the fingers that held the bottle that started the fire.’
‘Nice one.’
‘We can have a go at matching the print,’ Donald said, ‘but it’s a bit of a long shot as it’s only partial. Any chance we can get a DNA test on the sweat?’
‘Yeah, go on. Leave it with the paperwork on my desk.’ There was already a neat stack of samples waiting to go off to the lab; Lizzie tried not to think of the budget implications.
Donald chewed on his pen. ‘The fire officers didn’t find any petrol on the pavement, right? Even after everything’s been soaked in water, you’d still expect to find traces of droplets falling away from the angle of an object being thrown. And here’s another thing, the window glass had mainly blown outwards, most of the glass inside the shop is from the stock, and from the front of a chiller cabinet. You said it yourself, how do you break a window that thick with one little bottle? You don’t. The back of the shop is shuttered up. The internal doors to the stockroom at the back and the flat upstairs are all closed. The smoke spreads but not the fire. Don’t you think that’s a bit too neat?’
‘Maybe,’ Lizzie said.
‘We know the crowd was getting out of control. Several people were carrying these torches – well, they’re more like a big candle wrapped in brown paper – and if one or two of these are thrown at the shop door, no harm done, but the incendiary device was meant to do real damage. The fact that there are no casualties inside the shop is bothering me.’
‘I’d say that’s a good thing, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Otherwise we’d have another murder inquiry to deal with.’
‘Perhaps they were tipped off.’
‘Who by?’
‘Someone they knew.’
Lizzie looked at the whorls on the partial fingerprint, like the edges of geological contours. ‘That could be anyone on the Chasebridge estate, Donald. It’s the local shop.’
Within half an hour, Lizzie was standing in the tools’ section of Fulton’s Garden Centre. She found the Scandinavian brand of tools that Huggins had mentioned. It was definitely the upper end of the sharp knife market, with the same leather loops she’d seen in Bill Coldacre’s potting shed. There was a long blade, like the one that had cut into her glove, then a stand of folding knives, ranging from tiny finger-length knives to heavier items that looked like they could slice the branches off a small tree.
‘Can I help you?’ A man wearing thick spectacles and a green apron was watching her. ‘Are you looking for something in particular?’
‘Yes, I am.’ She looked back at the display and willed him to go away, but he was still there.
‘These are excellent tools. A very popular range. What sort of task did you have in mind?’
She could hardly say throat-slitting, although she’d like to see the look on his face if she did. ‘Do you have something that’s shaped like a cheese knife? But not for cheese, obviously.’
‘A cheese knife,’ he looked at her as if she was simple, his eyes behind the spectacles almost as large as the glass lenses that covered them. ‘Do you mean like a pruning knife?’
He reached over her head and took something from the shelf with a wooden handle and smart leather sheath. He was about to take its cover off but she held her hand up to stop him.
‘That’s OK. Don’t open it. Is this how it comes from the manufacturer?’
‘Yes,’ the assistant sounded puzzled.
‘Thanks. I’ll take it.’
Lizzie walked over to the till and got in the queue.
‘Darling!’
It was her mother’s voice, loud enough to carry across Yorkshire, as her dad always said. Lizzie looked to see where it was coming from and spotted her mother in the company of two other ladies she recognised as neighbours from the village. They were sitting at a table in the garden centre café, separated from the main part of the shop by a stretch of ornamental trellis.
‘Come and join us!’
Lizzie waved the pruning knife hopelessly and nodded towards the till, where she was third in line. The neighbour women were grinning at her and she half expected one of them to blurt out some platitude about how much she’d grown. The queue moved forwards and Lizzie heard her mother’s voice, only partially lowered.
‘She works very hard,’ and then in answer to something one of the others must have asked, she added in a stage whisper, ‘oh, yes, much better off without him. We were terribly worried.’
Lizzie could feel the skin on her neck reddening. She needed to be back at the lab, measuring the width of a knife blade, phoning the manufacturer and finding out what oil was used to treat the metal before they were packaged for sale. The man with thick glasses was stacking some boxes next to the till and she called to him.
‘Excuse me, but what should I use to keep it sharp?’
He straightened up and came over. ‘Honing oil. Shall I find you some?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Right you are, Elizabeth.’
She was startled that he’d used her name, but as she looked at him more closely she realised how he knew her. He was the son of one of the women at her mother’s table, thirty going on fifty, and still living at home. She snatched a glance across to the café and shuddered. She wasn’t meant to come back here, slip into a life she’d grown out of, where everyone knew her business and felt no shame in discussing it while she was in the same room.
She paid and clutched her plastic bag in front of her like a shield, walking slowly over to the table, where her mother and her two friends were finishing off a pot of tea. They’d each had cake. The remains of cream, jam and chocolate were still smeared on the china.
‘The evidence suggests Black Forest gateau. Was it good?’ She smiled at her mum, conscious how proud she would be of this pathetic party trick.
‘Oh, Mary, isn’t she clever?’ One of neighbour women gushed.
‘It’s my job,’ Lizzie shrugged.
If only it were as simple as that. Part of her would have loved to accept the offer to sit down and play the guessing game of who ate what for afternoon tea. She could let the village gossip wash over her, the everyday stories of planning objections and divorces. The mother of the man with thick glasses had tried to push them together once, years ago when she was about seventeen. Lizzie was praying he wouldn’t be called over to join them. The other woman was chattering away about her own son and his life abroad, an American wife, a child on the way. Tremendously happy. How lovely. How lucky.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. I’m in the middle of a job.’
‘Darling, surely you can stay for five minutes, there’s still some tea in the pot.’
‘I really do need to get back. See you later, Mum. I’m not sure when I’ll be over, maybe next weekend?’
Lizzie turned away and her mother’s voice followed her out of the garden centre.
‘Why don’t you come back home for supper when you finish, darling, and stay the night? What about a nice piece of chicken and some couscous? She doesn’t eat properly you know, living on her own in that flat …’
Her mother’s voice was silenced by the closing glass doors. You don’t choose your family, she thought. Outside she blinked in the bright sunshine and decided she needed to focus on the job. Taheera Ahmed was lying on a slab in the morgue, lost to her family forever.