His chin jutted at Ben. ‘Ask him. He knows all about it.’
Chapter Nine
‘What the hell, Ben? What’s in the letter?’
Leila had called a break after Toby’s revelation stole his ability to speak. There was only one letter he could think of. They now stood in the corridor, the air warmer than a moment ago. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Tiredness seeped into his bones.
He kept it.
‘It’s from me,’ he said. ‘I wrote it to him when we were younger. It was soon after our mothers died.’
He’d forgotten the exact words, but he remembered how a storm raged inside his chest when he wrote it. He’d railed against Toby’s denial, shouting out his desperation, disbelief and pleas, but it hadn’t done any good.
Eventually the storm passed and left him behind, sopping and miserable.
‘This keeps getting better.’ She walked a small square on the floor. ‘The guy is going to be your downfall. He’s incriminating you every step of the way.’
‘It wasn’t him.’
‘From where I’m standing, it is. Think about this.’
‘I am.’
‘No, you’re thinking about him. What you’re not thinking about is him being a suspect. He was at the scene. He’s got motive.’
‘Because his dad has dementia?’ He massaged his forehead. Was he being thick? Could Leila see this more clearly than he could? ‘That’s not enough. I know you think he’s pulled a fast one over me, but I would not be comfortable standing up in court to justify charging him with the fire.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re an idiot.’
‘That’s enough, Leila.’
‘He’s bad news.’ She raised her voice. ‘And now he’s trying to take you down with him. You think you’d have had enough of guys trying to ruin your career.’
Toby would have to care about him for that to happen.
‘This is different. This is nothing like Jared. You don’t like Toby so you’re trying to pin it on him.’
‘If the arrogant firefighter’s boot fits.’
Toby might have kept his retrieval of the letter a secret, but he understood why he hadn’t. Or at least he thought he did.
‘Let’s see what comes back from the crime scene,’ he said with a lot more confidence than he felt. ‘We’ll keep him here a while longer, but I’m telling you it wasn’t him.’
‘Why are you so sure when everything tells you otherwise? What if he started the fire and then grabbed the letter to throw you off the scent? Couldn’t that be as plausible?’
Cold burrowed into his chest. Could Toby really be that deceptive? That malicious? That good an actor?
A sigh rumbled out. ‘You’re right.’
‘I am?’
‘He’s a suspect and our history, as messed up as it is, shouldn’t cloud that. But I’m still not prepared to charge him further. He can go back to the cell until his time is up or unless we find something else that’s more substantial.’
‘You’re making a mistake.’
‘Then I’m the one who’ll wear it but as leading officer that is my decision.’ He’d decided. She couldn’t persuade him otherwise. ‘Is that a problem?’
Rather than get pissed off at him, she smiled. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
His nose wrinkled. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
He opened the door and walked over to Toby. Standing a foot away from him, looking down as he looked up, Toby’s body relaxed a little and his lips parted, not in readiness to attack, but in softness. Toby probably thought he was free to go. That relief wouldn’t last. Ben’s words took longer than expected to come out. ‘We’re going to take a break while we go check up on a few things. Please go with Constable Mayne.’
Toby’s eyes bulged as he looked from Leila to him. His hands slammed onto the table as he leapt to his feet. ‘The real arsonist is getting away!’
Ben ignored him and spoke to Leila instead. ‘Please take Mr Grimshaw to a cell.’
‘Come on, Ben, please. You can’t believe it.’
Leila intercepted him as he tried to get closer. She tried to direct him with her arm, but Toby remained with his eyes fixed on Ben. Hurt blazed in them. Ben’s mouth dried.
‘There’s no way I would have set fire to the house, not for any reason in the world, you know that.’ His voice vibrated from between his clenched jaw, and the lines between his eyes deepened.
Ben’s heart shivered, sensing danger.
Leila tried to lead him away and at first he followed but then he spun back.
‘If you felt anything for me, you wouldn’t be doing this.’
I’ve heard that before.
He didn’t reply. He couldn’t. Instead he forced himself to watch as Leila pulled Toby out of the room. He wore the same horrified look that Jared had when they’d taken him away. History repeating itself? He hoped not, but he wouldn’t allow himself to be blinded again. He needed an open mind about this, even when he wanted to find a dark hole to crawl into and never leave. To have his trust torn up again…
What am I doing wrong?
His legs wanted to buckle and he could have sat. No one would have bothered him while he gathered his emotions and shut them down. But he had fewer than four hours in which to find something to keep Toby in a cell—or to set him free.
***
Ben pulled up in front of the remains of Toby’s house, and walked across the half-yellow, half-black front lawn. Smithy spotted him and left with barely a nod of his head. He’d put in the extra hours and Ben had called ahead to relieve him. He took it as his due; at least he wasn’t hanging around. Leila would arrive soon to monitor the scene, but Ben wanted to get in early to speak with the arson investigator. Despite the fact that his colleague and friend was currently residing in a cell, the investigator offered his hand when Ben arrived at his side. At least someone could be professional.
‘How’d it start, Carl?’ he asked, knowing the answer already but wanting the confirmation.
‘Petrol, poured into the kitchen.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Even so it left a smudge of soot across his skin. ‘Sprayed or splashed otherwise it would have been hard to get it up so quickly. I wouldn’t be surprised if accelerant had also been added to the roof.’
‘Sounds like someone really wanted the place to go up. Any idea who?’
He chuckled. ‘That’d be your job, Ben. But look at this.’
Carl led him out the front door and around the right side of the house to what had once been the kitchen wall. He pointed to the ground at a strip of scorched earth leading away from the window towards the road.
‘A trail?’ Ben asked. It continued for a few metres before stopping. Surely he would have been seen, especially if Bob had been shouting at him.
Carl nodded. ‘Whoever lit the fire was heading that way and probably in a hurry. They were sloppy. My guess is they poured the fuel in through the window, chucked a heap of it on the roof too and then lit it, carrying the container and whatever was left away with them. Some would have spilled out and whoever it was would have been lucky to get away without singed hair.’
Bob said he’d seen Toby through the window. But if so, was there time for him to evade Bob and double back to emerge out the other side of the house? No one had seen him leave the house through the back door, but wouldn’t someone have seen him running back? And where would he have dumped the container with the fuel?
They had to widen their search.
‘What about his clothes?’
‘Smoke-damaged probably, unless he was unlucky and they got burnt too. Could be a bit of blow back, ash stuck to it, that sort of thing. They’d stink too.’
Toby hadn’t worn a shirt until later but he’d worn shorts. Not that Ben had paid much attention to their condition. He’d been too busy holding Toby, his solid, lean body pressed against him. Whatever their state, he could have had a second pair lying around and d
umped his damaged ones. Forget circumstantial; Toby being the arsonist was sounding about as flimsy as a paper hat in a cyclone.
‘How’d they get the window open?’ he asked.
‘Bob and Toby probably left it open. Do you lock everything up?’
Ben raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh, guess you would, being a cop. But not these guys. Would have been easy enough to put a hose through the opening.’
‘Fingerprints?’
He shook his head. ‘The window’s gone. The frame’s turned to charcoal. I’m hoping to find some matches. They usually help. Mind you, if they’re local, there’s not a lot of choice of which brand to buy. Everyone in town probably has the same type in their drawer. I’ll keep looking though.’
‘Thanks.’
He jotted down a few more notes, but his concentration struggled under Carl’s scrutiny. The investigator tilted his head and his closed lips bulged as if he held back a swarm of questions.
He’s going to ask about—
‘Have you arrested anyone yet?’
Ben’s molars scraped against each other. He didn’t look at Carl; he kept his pen on the pad, although his writing couldn’t be said to resemble anything coherent. ‘The investigation is ongoing.’
‘Oh yeah? So, my mate Toby’s not sitting in a cell?’
No point avoiding it. He flipped the pad and tucked it away. ‘Word travels fast.’
‘That’s Echo Springs for you. Toby would rather bite off his own foot than start a fire, especially with his dad in the house.’
‘I’m following procedure,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re doing the same.’
Carl’s smile slipped and he closed the few inches between them. ‘You wouldn’t be questioning my integrity, would you, Ben?’
‘No more than you’d question mine.’
Ignoring Carl’s glare, Ben slipped the pen into his top pocket and turned at the sound of Leila’s car pulling up out the front. Grateful for the distraction, he went to meet her. He gave Leila a recap of what Carl had said, cut down any of her scoffs and eye-rolls when it came to his suppositions, and then said goodbye. She’d stay and work on gathering evidence and write a report. Meanwhile, Ben was keen to talk to the neighbours. They might prove to be the witnesses he needed. Then he could get Toby out of that cell, and find out who had tried to kill the Grimshaws.
He knocked on the neighbours’ door, which opened after the first rap of his knuckles. Sharon and Ian Cooper, both in their fifties, and a fixture of the local community organisations, greeted him and bundled him inside. Ian retreated to the kitchen to boil the kettle. Ben had barely taken a seat on their couch before Sharon started talking.
‘We couldn’t believe it when we saw it.’ She tucked a dirty blonde curl of hair behind her ear. ‘The home of a firefighter going up in flames! Wait, two firefighters because Bob used to be one, of course. Before he got sick, I mean.’
‘Do you have much to do with the Grimshaws?’ he asked.
‘We say hello when we see them, and we try to keep an eye out for Bob.’
‘Any problems?’
‘We’ve seen him go wandering down the street—haven’t we, love?—but he’s looked pretty compos mentis.’
‘And the last time was…?’
Her lips pursed before her eyes widened and mouth opened. ‘A few days ago. Same day you showed up at the house. What was that about?’
The temptation was obviously too great not to ask for the full story though Sharon had probably already mentioned their visit to a half-dozen people.
‘Just a routine enquiry,’ he said, keen to keep her moving.
‘Hartley says that to us when we ask him things.’ As well as being two of the town’s ‘concerned’ citizens, Sharon and Ian were Detective Senior Constable Hartley Cooper’s aunt and uncle. Ian was Sergeant Cooper Senior’s brother—a good reason to keep it friendly. ‘Still no word on Peter Hanson’s whereabouts?’
‘None I’m afraid.’
‘Erika must be so worried. She’s such a lovely girl, good for Hartley, even if she has been through some tough times.’ Sharon obviously didn’t share her brother-in-law’s harsh opinion of Erika. ‘That Mabel was always a hard one to deal with, but Peter seemed to have the magic touch. And after all he did for her, to just vanish like that.’
‘We’re still working on it, but right now I’d like to know what you saw this morning.’
Sharon didn’t seem to mind the redirection. ‘There’s not much to tell really. I’m a pretty light sleeper—Ian snores.’
‘Rubbish,’ her husband interjected as he came into the room with a tray. Despite the dig, he smiled benevolently at his wife and handed out the tea. He seemed very different from his brother.
‘What time did you wake up?’ Ben prodded, putting the cup on the table and pushing it away.
‘I was half-awake sometime after four—Ian’s snoring rattles the windows—and I tried to get back to sleep but then I heard, well, the fire really.’ Sharon blew on her tea. ‘At first I thought it might have been in our house so I jumped out of bed—I woke Ian too—but we couldn’t find any damage. Then I looked out the window and saw what was happening next door so I call the fire brigade, but they already knew about it.’
How Toby had the presence of mind to search for his dad, get out of the house and call the fire brigade staggered him but didn’t surprise him. Toby was nothing if not an experienced firefighter.
‘Can you describe what you saw?’
She took a sip, enough to wet her lips as the steam still rose off the surface of the tea. ‘We look out onto what I think is Bob’s room at the back, but I can see their kitchen too. The fire was worse there. I was worried it would leap across to us.’
‘Any reason?’
‘There was fire on the other side of the fence, not in the house, but on the ground too. It wouldn’t take much for ours to go up in flames too.’
If that were the case, then that matched Carl’s report, and she must have looked up after Bob had scared the arsonist away.
He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Did you see anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘Did you, hon?’
‘I was already out the front so I didn’t get a good look,’ Ian said. ‘But I ran into Bob.’
‘And did he say anything to you?’
‘He was wandering at that stage, staring up at his house. I think he was in shock.’
At least no one had so far implicated Toby.
‘Do you know where Toby was?’
‘I asked Bob but he was off in his own world. I was about to run into the house but…well, I heard the sirens.’ Ian shrugged. Heroism had its glory but it didn’t come without risks. It also often went hand in hand with stupidity. Ian had done the right thing. ‘I went looking for Toby down the side of the house and that’s where I met him. He was shouting for Bob and the relief on the kid’s face…heartbreaking, especially as Bob didn’t even register him.’
A dull blade twisted in Ben’s heart. If Bob had died, Toby would have lost both parents. And instead of letting Toby celebrate the fact that his dad was still alive, Ben had thrown him in a cell.
If only Bob hadn’t said he’d seen Toby light the fire.
‘Did you notice anything strange about his appearance? Any burns or ash, or a particular smell?’
‘He was shirtless,’ Sharon said, a little too quickly before the glint in her eye vanished. ‘That was about it. No shoes either, his hair a mess, but then it always is.’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘No smell. Mind you, hard to get the stench of fire out of your nose. I think we go a bit crazy when that’s in us, worried about whether the whole town is going to go up in smoke.’
Two fires within a week during a dry spell and here he was locking up firefighters.
Innocent firefighters.
He pressed on. ‘Have you noticed anything unusual the past week? Anyone hanging around the place?’
Ian sat back, resting the mug on his paunch.
&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know if it’s unusual or not,’ Sharon said, pausing to take a mouthful of tea. ‘But yesterday, I’m sure I saw Toby walk down the side of the house. It was fleeting but I was in the kitchen and looked up at that moment to see him peering into one of their windows. I was hoping to catch him to ask him about the cemetery fire—my dad’s buried there, you see—and I hadn’t been able to get out to look at the damage myself. So, I dried my hands and hurried out to catch him—he’s so busy I rarely get the chance to talk—and when I got outside I called out but he’d disappeared.’
Ben’s body stilled, inside and out. Any sudden movement might muddy the recollection and this was the first witness, other than Bob, who might have seen anything of use. ‘And you’re sure it was Toby?’
‘Same black hair. I didn’t get a good look at his face but…’ The curl fell forward and she tucked it back again. Her fingers continued the loop and hovered in front of her lips. ‘I assumed it was Toby.’
‘What time was this?’
She took a second to answer, her eyebrows furrowing. ‘About two,’ she answered absent-mindedly. ‘When you think about it, he would have been at work, right?’ She looked at Ian and reached out to take his hand.
‘And Bob wasn’t home?’
‘No, Narelle had picked him up about an hour before. I meant to go see Toby later that evening, but I got distracted. Next time I saw him was at the fire the next morning.’
Ben’s pen moved as fast as his heart agitated inside his chest. Either Sharon had seen Toby—and in which case, why was he there at that time and what was he doing?—or she’d seen someone else. Someone who could be the arsonist.
‘Thank you, this is very useful,’ he said, rising from his seat. ‘If you remember anything else, please let me know.’
She rushed up off the couch. ‘Have you seen Toby? We thought he would have been around by now. We wanted to offer our help.’ The lightness with which she’d greeted him had fallen away, replaced with the concern of someone who wanted absolution.
He couldn’t give her that. He had his own forgiveness to seek.
He smiled, hoping it would offer some reassurance. Sharon couldn’t have known this would happen. ‘He’s helping us with our enquiries, but I’ll be sure to pass on your thoughts.’
Embers and Echoes Page 7
