Page 4

4

Sunday morning, early

The shower at the police station didn’t do much more than drip, but it got the smell of smoke out of Charlie’s hair. Like most coppers, Charlie had a stash of clean clothes at work, and he found some boxers to sleep in. But it was still miserable.

Too hot, too uncomfortable, too sweaty, too much night and not enough rest. When he awoke, to the sound of Patsy shouting into his ear about coffee and breakfast, Charlie thought he must have had some sleep, though he couldn’t be certain that it had lasted for longer than five minutes.

“We need to go and look at the remains of the shop,” he said after a mouthful of bacon sandwich, and a slurp of coffee.

Patsy nodded. “I came past it on my way here,” she said. “I think the fire investigator is there already. Keen or what? Sup up, and let’s go and see what he’s found.””

Now who’s keen? Someone who spent the night in a proper bed, that’s who.

Broken glass crunched under his feet, as he and Patsy followed the forensic fire investigator into the burned-out shop. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, and the temperature was climbing. It promised to be another scorching day.

“Stairs are at the back, which is a good job, because the fire was at the front. So, we can get upstairs without the ladder. Something isn’t right, up there.” The fire investigator was English, Jeff Britton, new to the area. He’d already complained about the length of time it had taken to get from Wrexham to Llanfair because of the hilly and winding roads. Charlie had to poke Patsy in the back to stop her explaining that it was in fact an easy and straightforward route. After a year of Patsy, he was starting to understand what she was likely to say next, and there was no way she was going to let that one pass. At least Britton wasn’t complaining about the heat.

Inside, the shop smelled of smoke and damp. Considering the size and intensity of the flames Charlie had seen the night before, there didn’t seem to be much actual fire damage. He’d expected to find a jumble of wood turned to charcoal and ash. There was some of that, as well as burnt remains of the vinyl flooring, along with whatever had formed the ceiling of the main shop. Water dripped relentlessly from somewhere out of sight, and the building creaked, making Charlie look around apprehensively.

“It’s just cooling down and starting to dry. Nothing’s going to fall on our heads,” Britton said.

Charlie wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, but he had to assume the guy knew what he was talking about. He had led them through the shop proper, into a back room that had been tiled, presumably to make a clean space for food preparation. The white tiles were streaked with soot, and the very walls seemed to be sweating with condensation. The smell of damp was in competition for dominance with the odours left by the fire. A warped and soot-streaked door opened onto the stairs, which were damp, but not obviously fire-damaged.

“Fire door,” Britton said. “They work. Smoke yes, a bit, combustion, no.”

The stairs were covered in a nasty brown carpet that might once have had some substance, but which was now flattened and greasy, as well as wet. They climbed up to the first floor, where another fire door blocked the stairs from the rooms beyond.

Jeff Britton kept climbing. The fire door on the second floor was closed, too. The smell of smoke and damp was still there, but perhaps not as strong. Or perhaps other smells were stronger. When Britton opened the door, the smell got stronger still, and Britton retched.

“It wasn’t so bad before,” he said.

The room beyond the fire door stretched across the back of the building, with a door opposite the stairs presumably leading into another room at the front. The room in front of them was carpeted in blue, the same blue as they had in the police station. A roll of leftover carpet sat in the middle of the floor, along with a single grey filing cabinet and a waste paper basket. Against the far wall, there was an elderly desk, but no chair. Charlie took it all in, as he put his arm out to stop Britton or Patsy moving into the room and contaminating the crime scene. Because it had to be a crime scene.

The prone figure on the floor next to the filing cabinet was already attracting flies. The figure lay face down, arms crumpled underneath, hair matted with something dark, which had spread in a pool beneath his head. Charlie knew it was a him, by the shorts showing hairy legs, and the dark beard, visible through the blood. Though he couldn’t see the face, Charlie had the impression of someone young. Maybe it was the heavily tattooed arm, maybe the Adidas trainers … there was something familiar about the figure.

“Wait downstairs,” Charlie said to Britton, “but don’t go away from the building. Like stay by the back door. Don’t talk to anyone. I mean it. I’m going to have a lot of questions, starting with why you didn’t report this the minute you found it.” He pulled his phone from his pocket to begin making the necessary calls: to the pathologist, to Freya Ravensbourne, to Eddy … but he was pushed aside by Patsy, so hard that he stumbled against the doorframe and dropped the phone.

“Pa …” Charlie started to say, when the scene in front of him came into a sharper focus, as Patsy fell onto the floor next to the dead man with a cry of despair.

It was Unwin.