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.
47
Callum Roberts stared straight ahead as he walked along the gloomy, forbidding corridor. He refused to look at the police officer – DS Sanderson – who kept pace with him. He knew that if he did so, she would start to work on him again, trying to dissuade him from doing this. This was hard enough as it was without her chipping away at him, eroding his determination and preying on his fears. And he knew that if he allowed himself to falter, then he wouldn’t take another step.
They had all urged him not to view his mother’s body. They had identified her from DNA and dental records, so there was no need for him to be here in this sterile, lifeless place. Callum had seen police mortuaries on TV crime shows but he now realized how fake those versions were. The real deal was washed out, soulless and just… dead.
Sanderson seemed to have given up trying to talk him down now and walked mutely beside him. Which was fine by him. He had been irritated by her presence at first, but as they approached the doors to the body storage area, he was suddenly glad to have her with him. He had no idea how he would react once he was in there.
Why was he here? Did he really believe that it wasn’t his mum in there? The DNA tests had proved it was her and yet he still had to see. He couldn’t logically say why, but he did.
They had euphemistically hinted at the state of his mother’s body, then when he’d refused to play ball, the gloves had come off and they’d described in concise but graphic detail what remained of his mother. Even so he’d refused to be put off. He knew instinctively that refusing to see her now would be the grossest betrayal of all.
Why had he been such an idiot? So ungrateful? So hostile? Sure his mum had messed up plenty of times and was a doormat, with terrible taste in men. But she had raised him single-handedly when other lesser women might have abandoned him to his fate, fobbing him off on a relative or putting him into care. And in the early years they had got on well. She was a relaxed parent, happy to have a laugh and a joke. And she doted on him, often going without so that he could go on school trips, have birthday parties, even the odd holiday. He had never missed having a dad, which had to mean something, didn’t it? She even came with him when he got his first tattoo, advising him on where to have it and what to go for. She looked after him afterwards, making sure that the tattoo didn’t get infected, giving him hot Ribena and powdered paracetamol to dull the pain in his throbbing arm. She wasn’t the best of mums, but she was very far from being the worst.
‘This is Jim Grieves. He’s our Senior Pathologist.’
Callum suddenly found himself shaking hands with yet another stranger. He never shook hands – who the fuck did? – and yet he seemed to have been doing nothing else for the past few hours. Shaking hands with medics, police officers, fire investigators and now the pathologist who’d been prodding and probing his mother’s body.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ the man was saying. He was a big guy with a gruff manner but kind eyes. Callum couldn’t think of what to say in reply, so nodded briefly. He wasn’t here to chat.
They walked on to the body storage area. ‘Body storage area’ – how the hell had he ended up here? It was a nightmare, a living bloody nightmare. The man was talking again, but he couldn’t hear a single word, his conversation drowned out by the clamouring panic within him. Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but here. He wanted to turn and run, run, run…
‘Are you ready?’ the pathologist said, sounding like he was repeating the question for a second time. Callum snapped out of it, nodding and smiling at his interrogator. Why had he smiled? What was there to smile about?
They were standing by a long metal table – he knew they called them ‘slabs’ but couldn’t bear to think of them like that. With one last look at him, the pathologist leant forward and lifted the sheet.