`Because he'd already lost the phone by then.'
`Right.'
`What about the Brighton angle?'
He gives me a heavy look. `You'll have to ask DC Quinn that. When and if he deigns to grace us with his presence.'
At Southey Road, Paul Rigby is organizing the tasks for the day ahead. After nearly two weeks on-site, the investigation team is finally hitting pay dirt. Though that's an unfortunate idiom in the circumstances. The rubble from the top two floors has been painstakingly sifted, documented and carried away, and they're getting to the sitting room now: the sitting room where the blaze must have started. The combination of the heat of the fire and the sheer weight that came down has left most of it little more than black and broken shards. But they know what they're looking for, and they'll know how to read it when they find it.
`OK,' says Rigby, running down the list on his clipboard one last time, `let's get this area sectioned off and get to work.'
Gareth Quinn is feeling a good deal better. Not just about his job, but life in general. Fawley was right `“ getting out of the office was a good idea. Gave him a fresh perspective. Not to mention the phone number of that female officer who was giving him the eye. And as for Alok Kumar, well, he's going to be very usefuclass="underline" more than happy to do the donkey-work and so far away he'll never know he isn't getting any credit for it. So there's a bit of the old swagger in Quinn's stride when he swings into the incident room at half past nine.
Gislingham glances up from his desk. He knows that look well.
`Nice of you to turn up,' he says.
Quinn tosses his car keys on to the table. `Got stuck in traffic.'
`Well, now you are here, do you want to brief me on what you got in Brighton?'
Quinn smiles. `Sure. Just let me get a coffee.'
Ten minutes later Quinn wanders into the meeting room, pulls out a chair and slides his tablet and his coffee on to the table. Then he opens a paper bag and starts eating a croissant. A chocolate croissant. Gislingham knows he's being wound up, but knowing it is one thing; rising above it is quite another.
`I thought you got stuck in traffic?' he says, eyeing the croissant. The smell is making his stomach rumble.
`Yeah, well,' says Quinn, his mouth full.
`So, go on then. What did you find?'
Quinn puts down the paper bag and fires up the tablet.
`No luck on cabbies or bus drivers,' he says, spraying crumbs, `so the inference has to be that Esmond walked from the station. And given he was only there two hours, that gives us a maximum range of about three miles.' He twists the tablet towards Gislingham and takes another bite. Shreds of almond drop on to the table.
Gislingham forces himself to stare at the map on the tablet screen. `What do the yellow marks mean?' he says after a moment.
`CCTV cameras,' replies Quinn, finishing the croissant and wiping his hands. `Shops mostly. Sussex are collecting the footage for the relevant times, but it might take a few days to get it all.'
`How much do you have so far?'
Quinn considers. `About half. Maybe a bit less. No sign of Esmond so far.'
Gislingham looks at the map again. Quinn's done a decent job of this, no doubt about that. It's good, solid police work.
`OK,' says Gislingham, getting to his feet and moving towards the door. `Keep me posted.'
As soon as he's out of sight Quinn smiles to himself, screws the paper bag into a ball and lobs it at the wastepaper bin.
`Yesss!' he says as it drops dead centre. `Still got it.'
I'm in the middle of a tedious update call with the Super when Baxter appears at my door, gesturing urgently.
I make my excuses to Harrison and get to my feet. `What is it?'
`Sir,' he says, half out of breath. `I think you should see this.'
I follow him to the incident room at the closest thing to a run I've ever seen Baxter manage. In fact, I've never seen him so animated. He beckons me to his screen and stands there, pointing. But it's just another still of a railway station. People in scarves and gloves, backpacks, duffel bags, suitcases. A scattering of cheap Christmas decorations `“
`Hang on `“ this isn't Brighton.'
Baxter's nodding. `No, boss, it's Oxford. On the night of January 3rd. And that man there,' he says, pointing, `is Michael Esmond. He didn't stay in London that night like we thought. For some reason we don't yet know about, he came home. And I reckon, whatever he was up to in Brighton, it's to do with that. Has to be.'
I look at the time code on the bottom of the screen.
23.15.
Less than an hour later, his house was on fire.
Sent:Weds 17/01/2018, 14.35Importance: High From:PRigby@Oxford.fire.uk To:DIAdamFawley@ThamesValley.police.uk, AlanChallowCSI@ThamesValley.police.uk, CID@ThamesValley.police.uk Subject: Case no 556432/12 Felix House, 23 Southey Road
Just to say we have now located the main front door to the house. The four glass panels are broken, but there are no obvious signs of a break-in `“ none of the damage we would expect to the wood, and the door was fitted with high-quality deadlocks. The question, therefore, comes down to the glass panels and whether someone could have broken one of those and accessed the house that way. We'll do more tests, but the pattern of fragments suggests to me that the glass broke from the inside out (i.e., it blew as a result of the fire) rather than from the outside in. Add to that the security alarm and the height of the side gate, and I think it unlikely someone broke into the house. Whoever set that fire had their own means of getting inside.
Bryan Gow meets me at a coffee shop round the corner from the university psychology department. He tells me he's working on a seminar series on personality profiling and psychopathology, though I suspect the profile he's really interested in is actually his own. My private theory is that all the academic stuff he does is just a stepping stone. What he really yearns for is TV. A credit at the end of Line of Duty, one of those talking heads on Britain's Darkest Taboos. He's done a bit with novelists over the years, straightening out the misconceptions, toning down the implausibilities, but there's no real money in that. I remember him saying once how much it amused him that the bloodiest books were always written by the meekest authors. Mousey middle-aged women or well-heeled yummy mums up to their Boden-clad elbows in decomp fluid. I told him there was a seminar series in that too, but he just thought I was joking.
`I don't have long,' he says as we sit down. `I got bogged down in family stuff over Christmas and didn't get as much done as I planned.' He pulls the sugar bowl over. `How's Alex?'
He doesn't usually ask. In fact he's never even met her. He looks up, sensing the hesitation.
`Everything OK?'
`Yes, fine. I'm just a bit stressed out. This case, you know.'
`The fire? In Southey Road?'
In the street outside two students are walking up towards New College. Laughing, despite the cold, muffled up in coats and scarves and those bobble hats with ear flaps and pom-poms. They get to the street lamp and stop, as if by silent signal, and the boy bends his head and takes the girl's face in his hands, tilting her mouth up to meet his. The movement is as beautiful as ballet.
Gow follows my gaze and raises his eyebrows. `Personally, I can't think of anything worse than being twenty-one again. Anyway, that fire `“ was that what you wanted to talk to me about?'