by Will North
“And you’d be wrong, boss. Not anymore.”
Penwarren’s eyebrows rose.
“That cow was executed. It was heartbreaking, infuriating, that scene. The question is why? If it wasn’t just random violence, what was it?”
“Vegetarians gone wild?” Calum suggested.
“Shut up, you idiot, I’m serious.”
“I know you are; but like you I’m at a loss. It’s my nature to be a clown when I’m stumped.”
“It’s not funny.”
“All right you two,” Penwarren interrupted. “We need more information. Morgan, what are you busy with right now?”
“Paperwork. The bane of my existence, unless you count West here…”
Penwarren ignored this. “Then I have a short break in mind for you. I want you to go down to Zennor for the night. I know that area from my years at Penzance CID. The Atlantic side near Trevega House is rugged, but there’s a fine pub tucked away in Zennor, the Tinners Arms. It has rooms in an adjoining cottage.
“Book in and hang about with the regulars listening for news about the cow killing. Everyone would have heard about it by now. Unless I miss my guess, it’ll be the only news down there in weeks. Dig into it.”
“Am I a tourist or a cop?”
“I don’t think you ever could be undercover, Morgan, even in camouflage, but do your best.”
West laughed. Davies punched his shoulder.
HE WATCHED FROM the trees across the narrow valley as the color rose into the pre-dawn sky and smiled.
A very clear message: there is danger here. You are in danger. You must leave…
Five
IT WAS RANDI who sensed it early that Wednesday morning. His growl was barely a worried grumble at first, but then it grew louder. It was not yet dawn. Lee swam up out of deep sleep and called to him but he was pawing at her bedroom door to get out. She climbed out of bed and knelt beside him, stroking the dog’s thick coat, but the animal would not be calmed.
She pulled on a pair of jeans beneath her t-shirt.
“What is it, you crazy dog?”
She opened her door and Randi rocketed downstairs. She followed, still only half awake. In the kitchen, he flung himself repeatedly against the back door. It wasn’t until she opened it that she understood.
Across the narrow valley, the gardener’s cottage they’d been working on was on fire. She could see flames: small now, like a campfire, through the gap in the unfinished front wall. She ran across the gravel terrace, the stones pricking the soles of her bare feet, and raced across the field after Randi. She called out to him, but the big husky ignored her, bounding high through the tall grass. Then she remembered: their calico farm cat, Twitchy, a brilliant mouser, had just had a litter in the loft of the unfinished cottage. Randi was going after them.
She wondered where the men were, and then remembered Andrew and Jamie were at a Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust conference in Plymouth, where Drew was speaking. She looked behind her as she ran to see if Nicola was following, but hers and Andrew’s bedroom was on the far side of the big house. She should have roused her but it was too late now. She was operating on instinct only, and racing to protect her dog.
Because the gardener’s house renovation was still underway, there was framing lumber stacked in the middle of the gutted ground floor. When she dashed through the open wall after Randi, calling his name, the flames were rising from this stockpile and now licked at the beams supporting the loft above. At the far end of the building, still untouched, there was a temporary construction stair made of pine—little more than a ladder—leading to the upper story where Andrew and Jamie had only just begun working. She found Randi picking his way down it with Twitchy—called that because she had a jerky tail—in his soft mouth. He released her at the door, barked to shoo her and then, before Lee could catch him, raced back up the stair. Lee followed, calling him until she was hoarse. The smoke collecting upstairs was so thick she could barely see and the heat trapped there rose in waves that seemed to ripple in the air. Her eyes stung as if they, too, were aflame. She found Randi pulling two kittens from a bed made of old canvas seed bags. She could smell the stink of Randi’s singeing coat. The heat kept rising. She was amazed at how loud the fire was. Between the crackle of the burning timber, the whoosh of the soaring flames, and the blinding acrid smoke, she suddenly lost her bearings; she had no idea where she was in the loft or how to escape. And yet she felt guided by some other force. One arm over a rafter for support, she swung forward, reached the remaining pair of kittens, grabbed them by their scruffs, stuffed them under her tee-shirt, and crawled across the loft floor to find the way back to the rickety stair. The floor was hot as a cooker top, burning her free hand and knees.
What she could not see below was that three of the ancient, bone-dry oak beams supporting the upper story already had flashed into flame like struck matches. As she crept across it, the floor suddenly gave way just ahead of her, leaving a gaping hole directly above the center of the fire. She pulled the kittens close to her chest.
Blind now, choking, she was feeling her way through the smoke and darkness when suddenly a strong hand grabbed her leg.
“This way, you crazy girl!”
It was Flora’s commanding voice, powered by her years behind the bar at Boscastle’s Cobweb Inn. She dragged Lee across the remaining edge of the burning floor and very nearly threw her down the loft’s stair, which was itself now smoldering
“Get out!” she yelled.
“Where’s Randi?” Lee cried from below. “I have the kittens!”
“Get out, damn you! Now!”
Then Flora saw the dog, the tips of his thick husky fur smoking, trying to climb back up the stair for the kittens which were no longer there. She stood on a rung, placed a foot on the dog’s broad head below her, and shoved. The husky dropped to the floor below, yelped, but seemed unharmed.
Hands burning, Flora reached the bottom of the ladder just as it flashed into flame and the ceiling above her collapsed, raining burning timbers upon her. A falling beam grazed her skull and knocked her nearly senseless. Her nightdress caught fire and she screamed.
Searching frantically around the burning room Lee saw a canvas tarp in a corner and flung it and herself atop Flora to choke out the flames. Then, with a sudden surge of strength she did not quite fathom, she dragged the big woman toward the open wall. Randi barked madly around them as they cleared the building and, in the light of the inferno, she saw Nicola racing across the field toward them.
She, too, was screaming.
LATER THAT MORNING, having been notified by Comms because of the coincidence of the fire and dead animal at the same location, Calum West stood outside the blackened shell of the gardener’s cottage. The stone walls were intact but the roof had collapsed. The fire had run out of fuel but the stench remained. A water pumper from the Penzance Fire Brigade sprayed the smoldering mess inside. Ronnie Walsh, chief fire investigator for Cornwall Fire and Rescue, stood beside him. Walsh was short and thick as a hydrant, with a ruddy, bloodshot face that looked like it had seen too much heat over the years. West reckoned it might also be whisky. Like him, Walsh saw a lot of tragedy and death, but maybe he coped with it differently.
“We’ve not mucked about in there, Calum,” Walsh said. “Not much we could do anyway; we let it burn out. Our lads were more concerned with the survivors. The older woman, she’s been transported to hospital in Truro for burn treatment. The girl got oxygen for smoke inhalation from our people but refused to see a doctor, demanding to go with the animals to the vet in St. Ives instead.”
“Doesn’t surprise me; I’ve met her: formidable young lady.” He looked again at the charred cottage. “So, suspicious?”
“Has to be, Calum. Look around: there are no likely sources of ignition here: no mains electricity, no gas line. The place has been disused for I don’t know how long, almost derelict. And I don’t believe in spontaneous combustion. Wood and stone is all we’ve got to
work with.”
Walsh stared at the building for a moment and continued: “Let me tell you, that older woman was lucky to survive, trying to rescue the girl. Then the girl rescued the woman. Crazy. This one was so close to being fatal. So, it’s your case now, Calum. SOCO has primacy in suspicious fires like this one. But our lads are here to help: dig, dismantle, whatever. They know and trust you, as do I. They’ll do whatever you require.” He turned and looked behind him: “But what’s CID doing here?”
West followed his gaze. Penwarren and Morgan Davies had appeared outside the perimeter, behind the police tape. Andrew was there, too.
“Friend of the family, Penwarren is,” West answered.
“Okay. Sure. You calling in a fire scientist as well?”
“Already have: Ian McLellan, from Prometheus Ltd. They’re under contract. He’ll be here shortly.”
“Good man, Ian. Bit of a genius, he is, with fires like this.”
“You don’t mind then, Ronnie?”
Walsh smiled. “Calum, look: fire investigation’s only one of my jobs, yeah? But it’s Ian’s full-time patch. I’ll gladly defer to him. Funny little man, but brilliant.”
Nodding toward the group behind the police tape, Calum said, “I’d better go put them all in the picture.”
But across the field in the direction of the big house he saw McLellan approaching, a large kit bag in one hand.
Walsh followed Calum’s eyes: “Elvis has entered the building…”
McLellan strode right past the clutch of observers, ducked under the police tape, and met Calum near the cottage. He opened his satchel and pulled on a sterile white jumpsuit, Tyvek, just like the one Calum wore. McLellan was wiry as a monkey and nearly as antic, a restless whirl. He was nearly bald and his eyes were clenched in a permanent squint, as if they’d already been stung by smoke. He wore heavy, steel-toed boots and slapped a hard hat on his head.
“I read the report,” he barked at Calum. “Who’s been in there?”
“None but the survivors, Ian, and the boys who hosed down what was left smoldering,” Walsh said. “I made sure of it.”
“Good. Let me have a look. Then I’ll call in the burly fire laddies to excavate. You okay with that?” he said to West.
“You’re the boss, Ian. Meanwhile, my SOCO people will search the grounds.”
McLellan nodded and walked around the outside of the building, looking for smoke patterns on the exterior walls and anything around it that might have caused ignition. But he found nothing. Then he plunged into the scorched interior, eager as a terrier after a rat. Bent nearly ninety degrees, his hands clasped behind his back, he peered and sniffed around the soaked ground floor but touched nothing, all the while cognizant of the partially collapsed loft and roof above. He’d seen worse. The debris would have to be removed, as it no doubt covered the remains of whatever caused the fire. He prowled the interior like a rescue dog, walking in ever-narrowing circles from the areas of least damage to the areas with the most. He examined burn patterns on the stone floor of the cottage, moving from the edges to the center. Peripheral burn patterns were often able to lead to the central cause and tell a story, but in this case there was no obvious pattern. Near the center of the cottage the rubble was deep and sopping wet. Sometimes he wished people would just let a fire burn to make his job easier.
Here, at the center, he looked for a pattern on the stone floor. In the case of an arsonist starting a fire with a splash of petrol, McLellan knew to expect a V-shaped vector on the floor as the fire grew outward. But he didn’t find one. Instead, there appeared to be at least three points of ignition. Fire beginning at three separate locations could never be judged accidental.
After more than an hour, with the help of the Cornwall Fire and Rescue lads, McLellan had picked apart the central fire that had set the cottage ablaze and scoured the rest of what was left of the building. There was no question in his mind that it was arson. The start was too central, the heat too contained and too clearly ignited by some kind of incendiary device. But there was no obvious propellant, no tossed aside petrol can. Yet it had been a very hot fire.
When he finally stepped out of the building’s shell, West was waiting for him. In a latex-gloved hand Calum held out a small piece of thin, torn cardboard packaging barely three inches wide and two long. Its surface was printed in glossy black. Upon it were a few letters: a large ZI in yellow and, below this, the smaller letters, Od, in white.
Tired, filthy, and exasperated, McLellan snapped, “What? What!”
West smiled. “Something you might recognize, Ian. I use the same product at home almost every evening in the winter. Maybe you do, too. You’re the fire genius, Ronnie Walsh says. You tell me what it is…”
“Look, West, I don’t have time for show-and-tell games. I’m trying to get to the bottom of…”
McLellan stopped. You could almost see the light come on. He grabbed for the fragment, but West pulled it away: “Fingerprints, Ian!”
“You bastard!” McLellan shouted, smiling now. “That’s it! That’s why I didn’t smell anything in there: This is a bit of the top of a box of ZIP Odourless Firelighters for stoves. Of course! With that pile of building lumber just a few of them scattered about would have been all it took, and then they’d be undetectable.”
“And so?”
“Arson. Without question. I’d already determined that but this clinches it. I’m done here. I’ll send my report.”
“And your bill, no doubt, even though I solved it…” West said.
McLellan stepped out of his coveralls, stuffed them into his kit bag, doffed his hard hat, and smiled: “Always a pleasure, West.”
Six
AFTER MCLELLAN LEFT, Calum walked across the valley and knocked on the kitchen door at the rear of Trevega House. To his surprise, Lee opened it. She was back from the vet’s.
“Well?” she demanded.
West heard laughter behind her.
Andrew came to the door. “Lee, for goodness sakes, let the man in; he must be knackered. Tea, Detective West?”
“A pint of something strong?”
More laughter. Andrew gestured and West came through to the big kitchen.
“You’re on duty, Calum,” DCI Penwarren warned, smiling. Morgan Davies sat beside him at an old oak kitchen work table so long that it had three legs along both sides, each thick as a mare’s shank. The top, worn by what seemed like centuries of use, was at least two inches thick. There was a chipped sky-blue jug in the center filled with late spring wildflowers: blue harebell, oxeye daisy, magenta foxglove, and white cow parsley.
“Lee, sweetie,” Nicola said, “Can you offer Mr. West a chair?”
The girl complied, though grudgingly. She was desperate for an answer to her question. The harder she thought about it the less the fire made sense at all.
“God, but I hate smoke,” West said as he sat. “Sticks to your lungs.”
“You got that right,” Lee said. She was still standing next to him, like a guard.
He looked at his mobile phone and saw it was nearly two. He was famished.
“Any chance of some biscuits with that tea, ma’am?” he asked Nicola.
She laughed and pulled a sliced beef sandwich and a bowl of salad from a stainless-steel fridge big enough for a restaurant and placed them before him. A mug of milky tea followed. The others had already eaten.
As he ate he looked around the kitchen. Somehow, despite its size—acreage was the word that came to mind—it was remarkably cozy. The lighting was soft and sun fell through the window above a deep, stained, white porcelain double sink that looked like it had been there for a century, maybe more. There was a hulking great four-oven Aga cooker, easily a meter and a half wide against one wall, its shiny face and doors enameled in the warm ivory of Devon clotted cream. New, he reckoned. The cupboards were faced with raised pine panels that had been rubbed and waxed golden over the years. The counters were topped with thick slabs of white marble streaked wit
h grey, as in a butcher’s shop, but stained here and there from use.
The spare furnishings—the long oak table, the ladder-backed chairs around it with their thin, mismatched embroidered seat cushions—wore their age with nobility. The flagstone floor, the slabs worn smooth by time and rounded at the edges, was scattered here and there with somewhat threadbare Persian rugs of various dimensions. And then there were the two inglenook fireplaces at each end of the room, the maws of which were so wide and their interiors so deep they could almost have been rooms of their own. They were cold now but he could imagine the cooking fires burning there back in the nineteenth century when the house would have been abuzz with staff. In front of the one that looked most recently used there were three well-loved easy chairs upholstered in fading flowered chintz. A coal grate sat in the center of that hearth, looking like it rested in the mouth of a whale. A small, multi-colored oval braided rug lay before it. Randi was curled up there now, his thick coat clean but clearly singed. He lifted his head once, took in the new arrival, and promptly went back to sleep. West didn’t know what the formal rooms upstairs looked like, but he reckoned he could live in this kitchen forever.
He pulled himself back to the present: “How is the lady, Ms. Penwellan? Has anyone heard yet?”
“I’ve just checked,” Andrew answered. “She has relatively few second-degree burns, mostly first. She was pulled out just in time. The doctors at the hospital are treating her for pain but have every confidence that her skin will heal. No need for grafts. She should be released very soon. Jamie’s with her. I left him at Truro with the car and took the train back down here.”
“Jamie?”
“Her partner,” Nicola said. “Jamie Boden.”
“Wait, Boden the stone mason? Good Lord, he’s legendary all across this county!”
“He and Flora live here, now, on the estate,” Andrew explained. “We’re sort of business partners, restoring this estate and doing contract stonework.”
“Drew’s an architect!” Lee piped up. She was warming to West. “But he’s learning new stuff from Jamie. Drew says I could be an architect, too. Good space sense, is what he says.”
