Page 107 of Fire Must Burn

‘No,’ said Gwen. ‘They won’t.’

Parham was already at the restaurant when Sparks arrived. He stood to greet her when she came to his table.

‘As this is official business, I am buying you lunch,’ he said jovially. ‘But don’t break the department budget.’

‘They don’t serve champagne here, so you’re safe,’ said Sparks. ‘Thanks for meeting me outside your office. I didn’t want to risk bumping into my ex.’

‘I didn’t want to risk your bumping into any of my detectives,’ said Parham. ‘Let’s order, then we’ll talk shop.’

Tempted as she was to abuse Scotland Yard’s hospitality (and deep down, she felt they owed her a few meals), she held herself to a portion of shepherd’s pie and a pint of ale.

‘How goes the Danforth investigation?’ she asked.

‘There’s not much I can tell you,’ he said. ‘Not because I am withholding information, but because I really haven’t made any progress. Any luck on that Cambridge connection?’

‘We’re still looking into it,’ said Sparks. ‘We’ve eliminated more possibilities than we’ve discovered, unfortunately. I had what I thought was a thought yesterday, but it may only be a fever dream. But those go well with fire, don’t they?’

‘You know that by now I take your ideas seriously, Miss Sparks,’ said Parham.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Not everyone does. Now, I’m not prying into anything subject to any confidentiality requirements. My questions are about the actual mechanics of the petrol bomb. Would those fall within the parameters of our unofficial relationship?’

‘Ask and I’ll make the determination upon hearing them.’

‘It seems to me there are two categories of how a petrol bomb can be used,’ she said. ‘Either it was already inside Mr Danforth’s flat when he arrived, or it came in through the window after he opened it. Would you agree?’

‘I would,’ he said.

‘If it was the first, then it would have been a booby trap and needed either a trigger of some kind to ignite it or a clockwork mechanism set to go off at a certain time,’ she said. ‘Given that Danforth’s arrival could not have been predicted, we can rule out the clockwork. Did the fire brigade find anything that looked like a tripwire connected to some form of igniter?’

‘There wasn’t much to find by the time the fire burned down,’ said Parham. ‘They found fragments of a bottle, but nothing that looked like the remains of an igniter. We also considered the possibility of a fuse dangling from the window and lit from below, but there were no scorch marks on the outer wall or ashes on the pavement underneath.’

‘How far from the window were the bottle fragments?’

‘Scattered about, which one would expect from an explosion, but the pattern suggests that it happened five or six feet from the window.’

‘That means it came in from the outside,’ she said, nodding. ‘He would have noticed it otherwise.’

‘We’re on the same page so far,’ said Parham.

‘The window was too high to reach from the street,’ she said. ‘Am I correct in concluding that you believe the bomb was thrown from the building across the way?’

‘That seems to be the best theory,’ he said.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘Have you ever thrown a full bottle of wine?’

‘I have not,’ he said. ‘Have you?’

‘It would be unlikely for undrunk wine to escape my grasp no matter how plastered I was,’ she said. ‘The roof of the building opposite Danforth’s flat was set back from the base, which means that a heavy, ungainly, flaming object would have had to be thrown accurately some thirty feet through an open window. That would take an excellent arm. When you catch the fellow, send him to the Marylebone Cricket Club. They need a decent bowler right now.’

‘We’ll see if the fellow’s arm is still good after he serves twenty years,’ said Parham.

‘Nevertheless, I don’t think that’s how anyone would firebomb a flat,’ said Sparks.

‘Nevertheless, the flat was firebombed,’ said Parham. ‘And that seems the most likely method.’

‘Did you find any indications that someone had been on the opposite rooftop?’

‘No. The only fingerprints on the door leading to the roof belonged to the caretaker, and he was listening to the radio with his family when it happened. So whoever was on the opposite rooftop wore gloves.’