Unforgotten

by Clare Francis

  ‘No.’

  ‘Except in the imagination.’

  ‘You don’t get flashbacks unless you’ve seen something for real.’

  ‘Depends on the imagination, surely.’ When Tom didn’t reply, Hugh argued strongly, ‘Come on, if you have a clear picture of what happened, of what you think happened, then it’s going to come back to you, isn’t it? It’s a flashback by any other name.’

  ‘You recover from grief,’ Tom said doggedly.

  ‘But not, I think, from flashbacks,’ said Hugh, unable to imagine a time when he wouldn’t be able to picture Lizzie in the smoke-filled bedroom. ‘These distinctions sound great in the textbooks, but it’s just an attempt to tidy people into compartments, isn’t it? To superimpose a neat model. That’s psychiatry for you. I’d be no bloody good to Ainsley, would I? As a patient, I mean. Refusing to fit into my slot.’

  ‘You fit,’ said Tom. ‘You don’t realise it, that’s all.’

  That just about summed up the therapy industry, Hugh decided. Allow yourself to be led by us and we will show you the true light! Hallelujah!

  The second wine bottle was empty and it wasn’t going to replace itself without positive action. Hugh hauled himself out of his chair. ‘Just going to see . . .’ He indicated the kitchen.

  Lou was at the sink, draining a pan in a cloud of steam. ‘Dad, is Mr Deacon staying for supper?’

  Hugh couldn’t work out why there was no more wine. He opened a couple of cupboards to look.

  ‘Dad . . .’ Lou came up beside him. ‘You don’t need any more to drink.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’ve got through two bottles.’

  ‘Have I? Oh . . .’

  ‘The food’s almost ready. Come and sit down.’

  He whispered, ‘I don’t want him to stay, Lou.’

  She gave a small nod. ‘I’ll find a way . . .’

  Hugh sat down, his elbows on the table, his head resting in his hands. He heard the murmur of Lou’s voice in the next room then footsteps in the hall. The footsteps paused then grew louder as Tom came in and stood beside him.

  ‘Take it easy, eh?’ His hand dropped onto Hugh’s shoulder.

  Hugh lifted his head. ‘Yeah, yeah. Just tired . . .’

  ‘Remember, I’m here for you, eh? And I ain’t gonna go away.’

  Hugh made no answer.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow. Yeah?’

  ‘Look, I’m going to be busy tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  Overcome by a sense of oppression, Hugh said, ‘Let’s meet on Friday. I can’t think about anything else before then. We’ll meet on Friday and talk about the case then.’

  ‘No need to talk about the case.’

  ‘Oh, but there is, Tom. There is.’

  Tom removed his hand. ‘If it’s about what you told me on Tuesday, forgive and forget, eh? Water under the bridge.’

  Hugh twisted round to look up at him. ‘What?’

  ‘The lie you told me about needing to see the judge. I was a bit pissed off when I got to find out. But, hey’ – he gave a bleak smile – ‘you did what you had to do, just like I did.’ At the door he paused to say, ‘Go slow on the vino, eh?’

  SEVEN

  Slater dropped down onto one knee in front of the sofa. ‘This hasn’t been moved or touched at all?’

  They had been inside the burnt-out room for several minutes but this was the first question Slater had asked. He was younger than Hugh had expected, no more than forty, a lean tidy man with quick eyes and a precise, energetic manner. He was wearing disposable overalls and carrying a clipboard on which he made frequent notes. On entering the room he had stood still and looked about him quickly, then slowly, and a third time for good measure before walking into the centre of the room and repeating his visual examination in the same methodical way.

  ‘It hasn’t been moved, no,’ Hugh replied. ‘And so far as I know it hasn’t been touched. Though I can’t answer for Ellis, the fire brigade investigator.’

  Slater studied the charred remains of the sofa, then the wall behind it, shining a torch beam on the electrical socket, before standing up and looking at the window and the ceiling immediately above it. ‘There were curtains here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Similar to the ones over there, were they?’ He indicated the smoke-blackened curtains at the other window.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how long were they, the curtains? To the floor, or did they stop under the window?’

  Not entirely trusting the first impulse of his overtired brain, Hugh double-checked his memory. ‘To the floor.’

  ‘Anything else in the room that has been moved or altered in any way?’

  ‘We’ve taken some papers – and a computer – from my wife’s desk.’

  ‘The computer – it was definitely on the desk?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure. But I’ll check with my son. He was the one who took it.’

  Slater threw Hugh a swift mechanical smile, as if to reassure him, before moving closer to the desk and bending over to inspect the fire damage. His eyes went back to the window then up to the ceiling and back to the desk again.

  ‘Did the fire report mention whether any windows were open?’

  Hugh gestured towards the window over the sofa. ‘This one was, yes.’

  Slater gave a sharp sigh of satisfaction as if this confirmed the evidence of his visual inspection.

  ‘I thought it might have been on the vent setting,’ Hugh explained, ‘but they said no, it was definitely on the stay.’

  Slater nodded avidly as he made his notes.

  ‘Just one problem – my wife would never have left it open.’

  Slater’s eyes fixed on him with keen interest. ‘No?’

  ‘We always check’ – Hugh corrected himself with barely a pause – ‘checked every window and door last thing at night. Without fail. My wife wouldn’t have forgotten, particularly when she was on her own, particularly when we’d had a break-in two, three weeks ago. It wasn’t anything serious, the break-in, just a broken window and a bit of cash, but it made us extra cautious.’

  Slater absorbed this with the same show of interest. ‘I see.’

  ‘The door was open as well,’ Hugh volunteered.

  Slater nodded rapidly as if he had been well aware of this. ‘But the window – that was unheard of?’

  ‘Completely.’

  With a last thoughtful stare at the window Slater said briskly, ‘Right, I’ll get the men started.’ There were two of them, both ex-firemen, who had arrived in a large white van. They appeared wearing overalls, one bearing a camera, the other an instrument Hugh didn’t recognise, possibly an electronic tape measure, or maybe it was laser. While they began work in the living room Slater continued his tour of the ground floor, circling each room, paying particular attention to the floors and carpets. For a wild moment Hugh thought he must be looking for broken glass from a window, for a wilder moment still for footprints, until it dawned on him that he was looking for the remains of further, less successful attempts to start fires.

  Back in the hall Slater gazed long and hard at the scorched ceiling, before following the track of the flames up the stairwell. On the top landing he turned in a slow circle, scouring the walls and ceiling for information, before inspecting each room. He left the main bedroom till last. As he went in, Hugh started to speak, but Slater silenced him with a brief, apologetic gesture while he began his visual sweep.

  Hugh hung back in the doorway. When he had last seen this room he had been numb, almost devoid of feeling, but now the sight of it made him breathless with misery. Here were the ghosts of lost happiness. Here he and Lizzie had loved and laughed and slept and made their plans; here they had also worried and disagreed, but the years seemed flawless to him now. Her absence was like a chasm, endless and unbridgeable; yet even as it yawned before him he felt fresh anger on her behalf, and it was the anger that finally carried him forward into the room.
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  Completing his final scan, Slater threw Hugh an expectant look. ‘You were going to say?’

  ‘According to the fire report the door was open.’

  Slater nodded to show he’d already worked that out. ‘And the windows?’

  ‘They were closed apparently. Apart from the small one in the bathroom.’

  Catching the note of misgiving in Hugh’s voice, Slater raised his eyebrows. ‘And would that be normal?’

  ‘The windows maybe. But the door, no. We never left it open at night. Never. Not since the children were small anyway. The only time recently was the summer before last, in that bad heatwave, to get a through draught. But that was the last time, the only time. Normally we always closed it. I can’t think of any reason my wife would have done any differently.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Our son was expected home, but not till late, midnight or so. She would have been expecting him to come and knock on the door to tell her he’d arrived. That was the rule if the children got in late – they had to let us know they’d got back safely. So, you see, she wouldn’t have had the door open, she would have had it closed, waiting for Charlie’s knock.’ Even as Hugh said this it occurred to him with faint alarm that he might be quite wrong, that far from it being impossible, this was the one occasion when Lizzie might have gone against all habit and left the door open. With Hugh away and Charlie in an agitated state, she might have decided to wait for Charlie’s arrival and call him into the bedroom to talk things through. He could see it now, the door open, the light spilling in from the landing, Lizzie in a light doze waiting for the sound of the front door and Charlie’s steps on the stairs. But if she’d been keeping one ear open for Charlie, how come she hadn’t heard the smoke alarm? How come she hadn’t smelt the fumes?

  It was a while before he realised Slater had asked a question. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It was normal for you to keep the windows closed, was it?’

  ‘At night we always opened at least one’ – Hugh indicated the smashed and boarded window – ‘but in winter we had it on the vent setting, open just a crack. The fire fighters probably didn’t notice when they broke in.’

  Slater awarded the information a solemn nod before going across to the bathroom.

  Alone, Hugh looked down at the bed, the rumpled lower sheet, the slewed duvet and jumbled, indented pillows, and felt a lurch of doubt and inadequacy. Why doesn’t any of it make sense, Lizzie? Why do I feel such foreboding? Would you approve of what I’m doing? Or would you suggest that I was off on one of my wilder tangents?

  The disrupted bed worried him. He saw again the smoke-filled room of his imagination and the fireman arriving to find Lizzie still breathing. He saw the fireman throwing the duvet back and shoving his arms under Lizzie to lift her clear of the bed. He imagined the confusion, the need for haste, and how the sheet and all four pillows might have got rucked up in the process. And then it came to him – stupid not to have thought of it before – that the fireman wouldn’t have been working alone; there would have been another fireman close behind, maybe even a third, who in the thick murk would have yanked the duvet back and pushed the pillows aside to check for a second victim.

  No sooner was this question settled than his gaze turned to the button-back chair and his unease returned.

  Slater was a fire investigator not a detective, this wasn’t strictly his province, but Hugh had reached the point where he had to tell someone. When Slater came out of the bathroom he said quietly, ‘My wife never left her clothes like this.’

  Slater looked at the neat pile of clothes with the perfectly aligned shoes on the carpet beneath. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Dirty clothes went in the basket. Anything she was going to wear the next day she hung over the back of the chair. Well, she folded them a bit first, I suppose, but then she sort of draped them. She never folded things like this, not on the seat of the chair.’ They contemplated the stack of smoke-blackened clothing. ‘And shoes . . . she never left her shoes out. I don’t know why, but she always put them away.’

  ‘Let’s get this photographed before we touch anything.’

  Once the pictures had been taken Hugh picked up the first article. It was a cardigan folded in half, arm against arm, and then again the other way. The quarters not exposed to smoke damage proved to be a pale greeny-blue. Next was a shirt, once white. ‘My wife would never have worn a shirt twice,’ Hugh commented in a low voice. ‘She’d have put it in the laundry basket.’ Underneath the shirt were some jeans. Last of all, tights, bra, panties. He held them in a small bundle. ‘The bra, the tights maybe,’ he said. ‘But never the panties.’

  ‘She’d have put them in the wash?’

  ‘Always.’

  After a while Hugh turned away and went into the bathroom. He raised the lid of the laundry basket and dropped the underwear inside. The flimsy shapes fell lightly onto a bed of shirts and boxer shorts. He closed the lid abruptly.

  ‘Anything else that doesn’t seem right?’ Slater asked when he got back.

  Hugh stared at him. The folded clothes, the shoes, the open door seemed more than enough. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  Slater shrugged. ‘Anything that strikes you.’

  ‘Nothing that I can see, no. ’

  Slater’s team had brought piles of equipment into the hall and were laying plastic sheeting over the living-room floor.

  ‘What happens now?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘What happens now, Mr Gwynne, is that we make a hundred per cent certain we don’t miss anything.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  Slater said cheerfully, ‘Good question.’ He went to the living-room door to give the men some instructions before going out to his car and returning with a Thermos flask and an extra cup. Pouring Hugh a coffee, he apologised for the fact it was sugared. ‘My only vice,’ he said, and Hugh believed him.

  They drank their coffee standing in the hall where Slater could keep an eye on the work in the living room.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Slater echoed. ‘Everything and anything is the short answer. No stone unturned. If there’s something to find, we’ll find it. Needles in haystacks a speciality. But there’s always going to be a risk that we’ll find nothing, you do realise that, don’t you, Mr Gwynne?’

  ‘It’s Hugh. Call me Hugh. Yes . . . Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Or that we might find it was an accident after all.’

  ‘I can’t see how.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Hugh, but at the end of the day we have to keep an open mind. We can’t rule it out altogether. And it’s David.’ He gave his quick smile.

  ‘She didn’t smoke, David.’

  ‘Smoking’s not the only cause of accidents.’

  ‘What else could it have been, then?’

  Slater paused thoughtfully, gazing at his men as they folded the surviving curtains and placed them in a transparent plastic bag. ‘Well, we can safely rule out lightning, gas leaks, sunbeam magnification. Which leaves appliances, faulty or misused, electrical faults, or careless use of other combustibles. Out of those . . . well, the fire started on the sofa, no question of that, on the right-hand side, so that rules out the wiring and the sockets. Appliances . . .’ He shook his head. ‘There was no sign of an appliance near the sofa, no lamp, hair drier, computer, or similar. You say the computer was definitely on the desk there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And not damaged, apart from smoke?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Though I’ll have to ask my son.’

  ‘So in the accidental category we’re left with human error involving cigarettes, cigars, candles, lighters. If it was a lighter, we’ll find it, plastic or metal. A candle . . . we might find some wax if we’re lucky. Cigarettes, cigars . . . they don’t leave any trace. But we’ll take the sofa away and try burning a cigarette on it, test it for combustibility, see what happens. Ditto with a candle.’

  ‘Ellis kept going on about candles, no matter how many times I t
old him my wife wouldn’t have lit one.’

  ‘Eighty per cent of house fires are accidental, Hugh. In the absence of other evidence he was always going to go for an accident.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t look too hard. He was only here a couple of hours.’

  ‘They’re never going to dig deep unless there’re obvious indications of arson.’ Slater finished his coffee and, crunching across the debris to the front door, shook out the last drops from his cup.

  Hugh said, ‘If it was a lighted cigarette or a candle, it could still have been deliberate, couldn’t it? It could still have been arson.’

  Slater came back with his cup. ‘Too right.’

  ‘So how can you tell? Whether it’s deliberate?’

  ‘Ha! The million-dollar question,’ said Slater, screwing the plastic cup back on his Thermos flask. ‘Like I said before – there may be nothing to find. I could put five men on the job, sift through every shred of debris in the room two, three times over, run every kind of chemical analysis in the book, and we’d be none the wiser. That’s the first thing.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Next, if this is arson, then it could be clever stuff. Someone who did his homework. Not impossible to get the technical knowledge nowadays, unfortunately, not with all these websites and real-crime books and stuff. You have to hunt around a bit, but it’s there, most of it. He left no obvious traces, you see. If he used petrol or paraffin, then he was careful to use very little. No irregular burn patterns, no obvious smell. And he didn’t try to light more than one fire – always a bit of a giveaway – instead he made sure that the one fire ignited properly. And he didn’t do anything stupid like breaking and entering to make it into a crime scene. No, he planned it well.’

  ‘Go on,’ Hugh urged, wanting an end to the bad news.

  ‘So he’s a clever boy, but with luck he’s not going to be that clever. With luck he’ll have left a trace. If he used one of the common accelerants, then we should find some residue. If he used something like acetone, then . . . well, that’s more difficult. Leaves no residue, acetone. But he’ll have used something, that’s for sure. A cigarette on its own isn’t enough, you see, not for a serious arsonist. A cigarette might just smoulder, burn a hole, but fail to ignite the cushion.’