by Clare Chase
But – if all that were true – how the hell had he managed to persuade Lucas and Christian to take the actions that led to their deaths?
She reached for her phone. Whatever the answer, they needed to pick Stephen up. He’d been in the right place to find the snake, in between writing his poems at the house on the bank. He could have been the man who rang Sadie Cairncross to ask her to look for the Maurice Fox-Thompson poetry pamphlet.
Poetry. Another cog slotted into place. It was Stephen’s field. And of course, if he’d become incensed about Ralph’s attitude to dying young, he might well have obsessively read up on other writers with the same views. He’d said he’d been away camping when Lucas Everett had died – but camping alone. That now sounded like something arranged to muddy the waters. The campsite owner remembered him turning up and leaving, but it was a pretty anonymous way of spending a holiday. He could have come and gone at any stage in between without people noticing.
Max was on his way. He’d said he’d catch her up; he might want to divert now, to see if he could pick Stephen up at his home…
She called him and started to make her points. She spoke as quickly as she could, but she felt panicky, her chest tight, her breath short. Verity had roused herself and was at the window. Every time she moved, she was perilously close to the candles.
‘Verity, careful,’ she broke off from Max to say.
‘Oh,’ the woman said suddenly. She sounded puzzled.
‘What is it?’
‘He’s out there…’
Tara was at her side in a second.
‘What’s going on?’ Max asked.
But for just a moment, she couldn’t speak. Down below, she could see Stephen. In the moonlight, it was hard to make out the detail. There seemed to be stuff piled up round the perimeter of the house. And he had something in his hand. She put her phone down to wrench the window open.
She was about to call to him when the smell hit her. And then she realised what he was holding.
She grabbed her phone again. Shit. Shit. ‘Max, we need a fire engine and an ambulance to the house on the bank now. Stephen Ross is outside. He’s piled up stuff that will burn round the edge of the house – he must already have been at it when I arrived.’ She wished to God she’d had cause to look round outside before she’d come in. He must have pretty much cleared the outbuilding of the junk that had been dumped there. She recognised odds and bits below: tyres, beaten-up soft furnishings, crates and pallets… ‘Max – he’s holding a petrol can.’
Down below, Ross looked up at her. He lit a match and she saw his eyes glint in the flame.
Forty-Three
Blake was still ten miles from the Forty Foot Bank when he got Max’s call. After the DC had explained the immediate danger he’d started to talk about Stephen Ross, but Blake hardly heard. He put on lights and sirens and slammed his foot to the floor. Shit. Ramsey and Chatteris were the two closest fire stations, but neither of them were staffed 24/7. The firefighters would be on call. And in weather like this, they might well be out on the road already, dealing with traffic accidents. Thank God the A142 he was travelling was a main route and reasonably ice-free.
The thought of the situation almost made him lose control. If Stephen Ross had already doused the entire perimeter of the house with petrol before Tara had phoned, and he’d added extra fuel to keep the fire going… It was all Blake could do to hold it together. The whole place would be up in flames.
‘We’ve got backup at the scene,’ Max was saying, ‘but they can’t get inside – the fire’s too intense. And they haven’t picked Ross up yet. They’re going to get the helicopter in. I’m on my way too. I’m not that far.’
‘What’s the situation on the ground?’ Blake asked.
Max’s voice had a wobble to it. ‘Not great. They say the flames had already taken hold when our lot got there. The heat’s cracked the downstairs windows and the curtains have gone up. They’re doing what they can, but one of them…’ There was pause.
‘What, Max?’
‘One of the guys said they could see flames on the upper floor too, where Tara was.’
Forty-Four
Fear had made Verity more alert, but her moves had become quick and panicky.
‘Careful! Stay calm, Verity,’ Tara said, shoving her phone inside her pocket.
But the woman was close to hysteria. She stepped backwards suddenly, away from the window, and Tara watched in horror as the edge of her dress caught one of the candles, knocking it onto the carpet.
Within seconds the hem of Verity’s skirt was on fire, and she was screaming. Tara hadn’t yet managed to close the sash window. There was no way they could escape via that route – the flames below were high and fierce – and the draught was now accelerating the progress of the fire inside, where the carpet had caught.
Tara grabbed a thick rug and flung it over Verity’s dress, pressing it and her to the floor, as far away from the carpet fire as possible. Verity was still screaming and didn’t seem to realise what Tara was trying to do. She struggled and tried to wriggle free.
‘We can’t run until the fire on your dress is out!’ Tara shouted, trying to make herself heard above the woman’s shouts and the sound of the fire. Who would have thought it would make so much noise? A loud roaring accompanied the wall of heat. There was a lot of smoke now too.
At last she managed to get Verity sorted. They needed to get out of there fast.
‘Come on,’ she said, dragging the woman by the arm. She touched the sitting room door handle but it didn’t feel hot, so she yanked it open. For a second the fire in the room leapt even higher as the through draught intensified, before she slammed the door shut behind them.
She knew they didn’t have long, and fire cut off their every escape route.
She swallowed down rising panic. Think. You have to think.
Forty-Five
Blake had narrowly missed an oncoming car as he sped past the turning to Chatteris. There was no sign or sound of a fire engine. He could only hope they had one coming from Ramsey. He didn’t want to take his attention off driving for one moment to call Max for an update.
At last, he turned onto the Forty Foot Bank. He slowed, but only by a fraction, concentrating furiously. If he went into the water now he’d be no help to anyone.
But then up ahead he saw the flames. The whole of the fenland sky was lit up, a wide, golden canopy, clouded with smoke. His mouth went dry, and he felt sick to the stomach.
And he’d sent Tara off whilst he and Patrick followed a wild goose chase. She ought to have brought Max with her at least. But would he have been able to help? Most likely he’d have lost two officers, not one.
The idea of losing Tara made pain shoot through him, hitting him at his core.
Forty-Six
Out on the landing, Tara had to make a split-second decision. Downstairs, the fire had already taken hold at the front door. And probably elsewhere, too. She might have less than a minute before the stairs went up in flames. If she went down there and that happened they’d be trapped, and death would be certain.
She steered Verity towards a back bedroom instead. She remembered from her and Blake’s previous visit that there was a sloping roof at the rear of the building, where the ground floor jutted out beyond the upper one. It had looked like a slightly more modern extension. If that roof had an up-to-date fire-resistant ceiling underneath, it might be several minutes before it went up in smoke. But they’d still have to leap clear of the flames beyond it to escape.
She pushed the bedroom door shut behind them and rolled up the duvet from the bed, jamming it round the cracks underneath the door to slow the smoke that was seeping through. Only then did she shove the window open.
She took a sharp breath. Beyond the sloping roof she could see flames, fierce and intense. But as she’d hoped, the roof itself was still intact. For now.
She took the under sheet from the bed, plus another one she found in a cupboard, and knott
ed them together. Then she pushed the bed against the wall by the window and tied one end of the sheet chain to one of the bed’s legs.
‘Come on, Verity,’ she said. ‘We can hold onto this as we climb. It’ll stop us slipping off the edge of the roof, into the flames.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said.
‘We’ve got no choice.’ Tara dragged at her arm until she gave in. At last she helped Verity clamber out, over the sill. She had to push the woman’s hands round the bed sheets and into position before she’d grip them for herself. Shock seemed to have sent her back into a dreamlike state.
The snow and ice that must have been on the roof had turned to water. The tiles felt warm to the touch. Tara was glad of the sheets; the slope of the roof was steep and long, and without them they’d have been sure to slip in the wet.
Suddenly, through the thick flames and choking black smoke, she spotted Max down below. There was another officer too, but neither of them could get near the house because of the fire. The combustible material Stephen had banked up had worked horribly well. He’d made good use of all the discarded crates and other flammable junk that had been left at the house. There were flames everywhere and they weren’t dying down. He must have been working on it ever since he’d left Verity earlier, only adding the finishing touches at the front of the house once Tara was safely inside, before dousing the whole lot with petrol. She’d definitely have smelt it if he’d performed that stage any earlier.
Beyond the end of the roof, not so very far off, was the outbuilding she and Blake had explored that day they’d come to interview Stephen Ross. The vision of her would-be killer flashed through her mind. He’d downed a lot of booze that day, but he’d come across as stone-cold sober. Slight though he was, she was starting to see how he must have been able to drink Lucas and Christian under the table. They hadn’t known what they were dealing with.
If only they could make the leap to the outbuilding. It was a hell of a lot less high than the one Christian had attempted, but the gap was far too wide. And falling meant landing in a fire so hot they’d have no chance. She glanced for a second at Verity in her long dress, coughing and then gasping for air. Tara’s own chest tightened as she breathed in the noxious smoke.
Help was so near, but utterly out of reach.
Forty-Seven
Blake slewed his car to the side of the driveway. He had just enough presence of mind to leave room for the fire engine. Yet still there were no sirens. He knew they’d do their damnedest to reach them, but they might already be out dealing with some multi-casualty pile-up.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the house as he threw himself from the car. His legs felt weak underneath him. Ross must have built the fire with care. Everywhere he looked, flames licked at the broken downstairs windows.
He was running full pelt, yelling as he went. ‘Any sign? Has there been any sign? Where are they trapped?’ The acrid, smoke-filled air caught at his lungs.
Max was waving and pointing. Blake’s heart lurched as he saw Tara out on the roof with the woman who must be Verity Hipkiss by her side. How long had they got? How long before that bloody roof gave way and they fell into an abyss of flames? The entire lower floor was raging.
But suddenly he realised Tara was gesticulating. Not just for help in general, but at him. She was pointing. Pointing at the outbuilding. She couldn’t be thinking of jumping it, surely? The gap was way too wide. And Ross had seen to it that the ring of fire round the house was several feet deep. If only they had a ladder to bridge the gap.
A ladder. Hell. Suddenly he got it. Inside the outbuilding, that day they’d looked round. There’d been something in there. A weird metal rack – for crop spraying maybe? It had been long. Long enough? He waved back and ran to the concrete structure, shouting to Max and two other officers who were with him for help.
The light for the outbuilding wasn’t working. Max pulled a torch from his coat pocket, switched it on and shone it round the interior, illuminating the object Blake was after.
‘There!’ he said. ‘Help me. We need to get this up on the roof, and then see if it’ll stretch far enough to reach Tara.’ He hoped to God that it would. And that it would hold. It looked knackered, as though it had taken a knock in the middle at some stage in its long history.
They tugged and pulled, finally freeing it from the other junk around it. The area was less congested than it had been. All of the combustible stuff they’d seen previously had no doubt been used as fuel for the fire…
‘Give me a leg up onto the roof and then shove it up for me to grab,’ Blake shouted.
‘Got it.’ Max meshed his hands together and Blake was up in one go, onto the outbuilding’s flat roof.
It took Max and both the other officers down below to manhandle the old bit of machinery and get it to the point where Blake could grab it. Then the other two gave Max a leg up as well, so he could help Blake drag it up onto the roof.
Blake looked across to Tara as he and Max hauled it into position. He could see flames reflected in her wide eyes. Below, the fire was all consuming, both inside and out. They couldn’t have more than a minute before the roof gave. Nothing could withstand flames that strong.
‘Ready?’ he said to Max.
He nodded.
They pushed down on their end of the rack with all their might as they slid it over the gap. They had to keep it from sloping down into the fire. Behind them, he could hear that another of the officers had made it up onto the roof.
The rack stretched. It reached about a foot beyond the edge of the roof where Tara crouched. It rested there precariously, balanced on the sloping surface.
Tara had made Verity knot her long skirt up round her waist. Now, as the fourth officer joined Blake and Max, adding his weight to their end of the rack, Tara got Verity to start the crossing.
Blake held his breath. If she fell… or if the roof collapsed when she was halfway across, with Tara still stranded…
Suddenly, Verity swayed. Blake, Max and the others felt the strain on the rack. Their weight kept it from sliding to one side. Blake felt sweat drop from his forehead and held his breath. At last Hipkiss regained control. The fright seemed to have made her more determined, but it had cost precious seconds too.
Blake was desperate for Tara to start her journey as well, but he knew the rusty rack might not hold their combined weight at once.
At last Verity was with them, and they edged round so they could pull her onto the roof.
‘Come on, Tara,’ Blake shouted.
She’d crouched down and had one hand on the rack. What if Verity’s journey had been as much as the structure could stand? What if it gave way now? He tried not to look at the flames below and willed Tara not to either.
She was edging her way forwards at last, but like Verity, she was struggling. The rack hadn’t been designed for scrambling. She kept her eyes on them, but the way she moved told him the metal of the rack was uncomfortably hot.
At last she was within arm’s reach.
And then the roof of the house collapsed.
The other end of the rack crashed down, but Tara must have felt it going. She scrambled fast, like a lithe animal acting on instinct, and in the same moment they were all grabbing her and dragging her up, releasing the rack.
Blake held her. He couldn’t help himself. If anyone leaked this to Not Now, they’d have a field day. ‘Good thinking, Batman,’ he said at last, and heard her laugh in response. It turned to a cough halfway through.
It took Max, tapping him on the arm, to make him notice the medics that had arrived and wanted to take a look at her. To his shame, he hadn’t registered that Verity Hipkiss had already been helped down.
In the distance, he was conscious of a fire engine’s siren. He hadn’t even heard the ambulance arrive.
Forty-Eight
Stephen Ross had been picked up overnight. He’d made off on foot, once he realised Tara had spotted him and was still in a position to pass the inf
ormation on to her colleagues. The thermal imaging camera in the helicopter had helped the team on the ground to track him down. It was clear that framing Philippa Cairncross had been part of the plan. Ross had used petrol cans from the Cairncross family garage when he was setting the fire at the house on the bank.
‘Where’s Detective Constable Thorpe?’ he asked. He was in an interview room. Blake sat opposite him, with Wilkins at his side.
Blake didn’t answer; didn’t want the man to know anything about Tara. In fact, she was still in hospital. They’d kept both her and Verity Hipkiss in overnight to be on the safe side, but they were doing well – under the circumstances. He imagined nightmares might be a problem for a while to come.
The interview had already run for an hour. They had plenty of evidence of Ross’s guilt, as far as the arson and attempted murder went, and, presented with a fait accompli, the man had started to talk. It was clear the anger and desire for revenge had built up to such an extent that now the dam was breached, he was going to give them what they needed. The recorder was going, and Fleming was watching from the observation suite.
‘Tell us about Thom King,’ Blake said. ‘You drove at him, didn’t you, hoping to collide with him and kill him?’
Anger flashed across Ross’s features. ‘It was a clumsy attempt. I let myself down because I was out of control. Letty had only just died, and Thom had joined in with the rest of them, celebrating her being taken from us whilst she was still in her prime!’ The man paused for a moment and Blake could see he was fighting to contain his emotions. ‘That hateful pagan ritual Ralph performed,’ he went on at last, ‘it was so false. And the moment we came back indoors, Thom started going on about his work again, and how excited he was to have got the keys to his new studio. Any emotion he’d displayed minutes earlier was only for show – that was crystal clear. I pretended to be interested in his new workspace so I could find out where it was.’