Shane jumped to his feet, spilling the last bit of lager from his can. Yes, it was smoke. He could see it now, grey tendrils of it creeping under the barn door. It stank of burning wood, acrid and toxic.
‘No! Not now!’
He scrambled to his feet and ran to big double doors. But the bar across them was too heavy to lift, the hinges too rusted to shift. He banged on the wood.
‘Hey! There’s someone in here. Let me out.’
There was no response. Only the increasing noise of flames crackling, the whoosh of a bale of straw igniting in the hayloft, showering sparks on to the floor below. The fire had started right here in the barn. Someone had done this deliberately.
Shane coughed as a blast of smoke filled his lungs, the hot fumes scorching his airways until he could barely croak out a breath.
‘Hey! Someone! Please!’
He shouted and banged on the door for as long as he could, until finally the smoke overwhelmed him and he sank to his knees, his throat raw and his eyes streaming.
And still there was no reply. Even the sheep had moved away from the barn to leave him to his fate.
8
Day 2
Ben Cooper stepped out of his Toyota. He didn’t need to sniff the air to know what had been burning. The air was still thick with charred embers of straw drifting on the breeze. A shower of black specks were settling even now on the paintwork of his car and on to his face as he turned to look up at the burnt skeleton of the barn. The ground around the building was muddy and running with channels of water from the firefighters’ hoses. The smell of hot steam mingled with traces of acrid smoke that stung his nostrils.
He looked around for the duty DC and found both Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst on the scene. The two youngest members of his team were very different. Irvine could turn a bit bolshie, if he wasn’t reined in. Cooper had overheard political arguments between him and Hurst and Irvine was definitely somewhere out on the right wing. Hurst was like a little terrier, no job too much trouble. She had good instincts too. When Carol Villiers wasn’t around, Cooper often looked for the coppery red of her hair behind a computer screen.
‘Another arson?’ he said.
Irvine nodded. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘Dry straw goes up so easily. It wouldn’t take much to start it off.’
‘And don’t these kids know it.’
‘Kids?’ asked Cooper.
‘Well, it must be, mustn’t it? Some youths who get a kick out of setting fires and watching them burn. They like to see the fire appliances turn up. It’s like they’re watching the telly, but in real life.’
‘There’s no evidence of that, is there?’
‘We just haven’t identified the right suspects,’ said Irvine. ‘Because no one is talking. They never do — even if it’s a murder case.’
Castle Farm stood in a small valley to the north of Edendale, at the end of Reaper Lane. It would once have been remote, lying at the foot of the moorland that separated the Eden Valley from the Hope Valley. But, as the town grew, the housing estates on its northern outskirts had crept nearer and nearer to Castle Farm, filling the bottom of the valley and coming within a few fields of the farm itself.
The mass of housing was visible to Cooper from the gate of the farmyard. The fields, barns and outbuildings were near enough for youngsters from the estates to reach in twenty minutes on their bikes. The old farmer was the last generation of the Marston family to run it as a going concern. Other Marstons had left to take jobs in Chesterfield or Sheffield. When Ron Marston retired or died, the farm would become vacant. The sheep would be sent off to market, there would be another farm machinery sale in the yard, and developers would be competing to get their planning applications in for a series of barn conversions.
‘We’re not classifying this as a murder case,’ said Cooper. ‘Not unless there’s any clear evidence. On the face of it, it seems unlikely to have been a deliberate killing. It was arson, certainly. But it looks as though Shane Curtis was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So manslaughter at most, I’d say.’
‘Of course, he might have been in the right place at the right time,’ said Irvine.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s quite possible he was one of the arsonists, isn’t it? Why else was he in the barn?’
Cooper looked at Hurst, but she shrugged. ‘It’s true we haven’t found any legitimate reason for him to be here.’
‘So Shane and his mates came along to have a bit of fun and set fire to the barn,’ said Irvine. ‘And somehow it all went wrong and he was trapped inside when it went up.’
‘So you think it was his own fault?’ said Hurst.
Irvine was unmoved. ‘Death by misadventure,’ he said.
‘Have you talked to Mr Marston?’ asked Cooper.
‘Yes,’ said Irvine. ‘He had the usual complaints about kids trespassing on his property and causing damage, or injuring his livestock. It’s true, too. Some of the incidents are on record. But he didn’t know any of the kids by name. Shane Curtis meant nothing to him. He didn’t see them either, but he doesn’t go outside much after dark.’
‘He lives alone?’
‘Apart from a couple of dogs. Long-haired German Shepherds, and they’re a bad-tempered pair. They’re chained up in a shed across the yard from the farmhouse. Mr Marston heard them barking last night, but he says the dogs often bark at foxes and badgers when they get their scent, so he didn’t go out to see if there was something wrong. Not until he noticed the fire, anyway.’
‘Surely he doesn’t work this farm on his own? He isn’t a young man.’
‘No, he uses a couple of part-time employees.’ Irvine held out his notebook. ‘He’s written the names down for me.’
‘Written them down for you? Have you lost your ability to write?’
‘No, just these names. His workers are both East Europeans.’
‘Where is Mr Marston now?’
Irvine inclined his head towards the farmhouse. ‘He’s watching us round the corner of the barn. You’re welcome to see if you can get anything out of him, boss. I can’t.’
Cooper found the old farmer leaning on a gate. Marston could have been any one of scores of farmers he’d seen leaning on the pen sides at the cattle market in Edendale, or grabbing a handful of fleece on a sheep at Bakewell Show. He wore the flat cap favoured by the older generation, rather than the baseball caps their sons and grandsons had opted for, and a pair of brown corduroy trousers tucked into his boots.
‘Mr Marston? Detective Inspector Cooper.’
‘Are you the bloke in charge here?’
‘Yes, sir. I gather from one of my officers that you have two East European men working here at the farm.’
‘You’re not immigration enforcement, are you?’
‘No, sir. Edendale CID.’
He scowled. ‘Same thing.’
‘I just wanted to ask a few questions about your workers.’
‘Look, those two lads have been helping me out on the farm,’ he said. ‘Feeding the pigs, moving arks, scraping muck off the yard. They’re hard workers and they’ve never been any trouble.’
‘Do you talk to them much, Mr Marston?’
‘Well, not beyond the basics. They don’t speak much English. I show them what to do and they get on with it. We don’t exactly socialise.’
‘So you don’t really know anything about them, do you?’
‘I know all I need to,’ said Marston obstinately. ‘If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask them yourself.’