Firewatching

by Russ Thomas

  Doggett returns with DS Daley and a handful of uniforms. They begin setting up a cordon to keep back the crowd. Their next job will be to begin combing the area around the church, as closely as they can without disturbing too much evidence.

  The paramedics strap a mask across Rabbani’s face. Tyler thinks that must be a good sign. They wouldn’t be doing that if they were too late. Her lips are dry and cracked, and still she doesn’t cough. There are smudges of dirt all over her skin. She looks frightened. Even unconscious she looks terrified.

  He asks the kid his name. Barry. He shakes Barry’s hand, congratulates him, and thanks him for helping and for raising the alarm. Barry smiles sheepishly, and Tyler wonders what the boy was doing here.

  Paul Enfield arrives, surveying the gathered spectators as he walks. Tyler pulls himself up off the ground and tells Barry not to go anywhere; they’ll need a statement. He leaves Rabbani to the experts and meets Paul halfway. Interesting, how he thinks of the man as Paul now, rather than Enfield. A uniformed fireman intercepts Paul ahead of him, and they speak with lowered heads and whispered voices. He’s seen that talk before. Many times. He knows what it means. It never occurred to him to go back, to check if there was anyone else.

  He sees the confirmation in Paul’s face before he speaks. “Round the back.”

  They walk round the smoking church in silence. Before they can enter, Paul speaks with another uniformed fire officer. The flames are out in the small annex at the back, but the fire is still burning in the church itself. He’s reluctant to let them in but finally relents.

  Tyler sees the hands first, curled up into blackened claws. He thinks of Gerald Cartwright’s damaged fingers, and a cooked dog he once saw outside a restaurant in China, laid out on the pavement so the customers could choose their cut. Its flesh was the same mottled collage of black and red, the only difference the large slash of pink where the chef had carved out a portion of its belly for a diner. Its claws hooked into talons, its lips curled back from its teeth. The guy he was traveling with at the time told him a colorful story about the local culture, how the animals were cooked alive so the adrenaline in their veins enhanced the flavor. He never did find out if that was true, but even if it was he could justify it to himself. A different culture. Not wrong, just different. He can accept that intellectually. He can understand it. He looks down at the charred corpse. This he doesn’t understand.

  “The door wasn’t locked,” says Paul. Meaning the victim was dead before the fire started, or at least incapacitated in some way.

  “The keys were in the front door.”

  “It would have been quick,” Paul says. But spoils it by adding, “Comparatively.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The local vicar, we think.”

  Now he sees it. A trace of unspoiled dog collar visible beneath the griddled chin. The Reverend Sebastian Thorogood. Felbridge. Gerald’s old school friend.

  There’s an ominous creak above them and something gives. A crash of falling masonry toward the back of the room. They move as one, diving for the door. Fire officers rush forward to grab them and usher them back into the daylight.

  Back at the front of the church Rabbani is no longer visible, surrounded now by men and women in fluorescent jackets.

  Paul touches his arm. “You saved her,” he says.

  “That kid was already here.”

  “No need to be modest.”

  “No,” Tyler tells him. “I mean, we need to check him out. He was the first one on the scene.”

  For some reason Paul smiles. “I’ll get Forensics to check him for traces of accelerant.” He starts to leave and then stops again, looks up at the smoking church. He has an intent look in his eye, almost . . . worshipful. Only, if Tyler had to put money on what it was this man worshipped, it wouldn’t be the church so much as the fire that almost consumed it.

  “What is it?” Tyler asks.

  Enfield snaps out of his reverie. “Oh, nothing. I was just wondering when all this was going to end. With all these extra fires we’re pretty stretched. One more serious incident and . . . Well, best not to think too much on that.” He smiles and heads off in the direction of his colleagues.

  As soon as the fire officer has left, Doggett is there, appearing at Tyler’s shoulder as though he’s been waiting for his moment. They watch silently as the paramedics continue their work on Rabbani. One of them breaks away from the pack and runs toward the ambulance.

  “Do you think she was the target?” Doggett asks.

  Tyler shakes his head. It’s too ridiculous. What could she have to do with any of this? But then, why was she here in the first place? Doggett motions for him to follow, and they move toward the church door. Water is still cascading from the ruined roof, and one of the fire officers tries to keep them back. Doggett argues but it’s a glance and a nod from Paul Enfield that gets them through.

  Doggett points down to the ground.

  Tyler kneels to examine the flagstones. There are traces of blood. “Someone hit him with something while he was locking up.”

  “They dragged him.” Doggett points to the flattened grass at the side of the path. “Felbridge was tall, but not particularly bulky; any number of people could have managed it. Any number of people.” Doggett taps him on the shoulder and points back out to the road.

  Tyler stands up again and scans the crowd.

  Doggett nods. “Like I said. It’s the bleedin’ Village of the Damned. I’ll get Daley and a couple of the lads to film them.”

  But Tyler can already pick out a number of faces from the crowd. There’s the solicitor, Michael Denham, his arm wrapped tightly around his daughter’s shoulders. They both look shocked, ashen and gray. Not far from them the old gardener, Wentworth, is leaning on a rake and staring at them intently. As soon as Tyler makes eye contact he looks away and shuffles a little further into the crowd. He isn’t the only one watching, though. Paul Enfield is talking to the young lad from the church, Barry. But he, too, keeps glancing over at Tyler. And the vicar’s wife, Jean Thorogood, who may well be in shock but has yet to shed a single tear. She is being comforted by friends and neighbors but seems to be listening to none of it. Instead she stares at Tyler. There’s a man in a butcher’s apron, splattered and crusted with dried blood. Gerald Cartwright’s old cook, Carol Braithwaite, with several members of her extended family. Half the village must be here, or more. All of them staring at him, waiting for him to do something. Or accusing him of not doing more sooner. The only one who isn’t here is Oscar.

  “He could have saved her.” Tyler looks at the keys still hanging from the lock. “He just left her there to die.” He doesn’t mean Oscar. It can’t have been Oscar. He was at the cottage with them. But as soon as he thinks that, he thinks about how close the cottage is, how quickly a young, fit man could set fire to a church and then hare it across the churchyard to where he knows the police will be, to establish an alibi. And if he knew they were there, then he knew what had happened to Edna as well.

  Doggett puts a hand on his shoulder. “You saved her,” he says, misinterpreting Tyler’s silence.

  Did he? He’s not so sure. The paramedics scatter suddenly, and Rabbani is lifted quickly onto a stretcher and bundled into the back of an ambulance. There’s an urgency to the operation that is frightening. In seconds the ambulance is tearing its way through the village, sirens blaring, assorted journalists chasing after it, their cameras flashing.

  “Sir!” DS Daley trots up to them. He’s holding aloft a backpack and grinning like a cheeky schoolboy. He’s enjoying himself immensely. He opens the bag for Doggett. “Found it in some bushes by the main gate. Matches, lighter fluid. Right proper little arsonist’s kit.”

  Some movement makes Tyler look up in time to see the young lad, Barry, speeding toward them across the graveyard. Paul Enfield shouts after him, but Tyler is already moving. Barry rea
lizes his escape is cut off and changes direction. He stumbles slightly and Tyler gains ground. His lungs feel like they’re on fire and he resists the urge to cough again, knowing that if he does, he’ll stop and he won’t be able to get going again. The distance between them closes. Barry is slowing, limping slightly where he’s twisted something on the sudden turn. But Tyler is running out of time. His vision is blurring, darkening, and he’s sure he’s about to pass out. He’s not going to stop, though; even if it means his lungs burst, he won’t stop. It’s now or never. Tyler hurls himself forward, arms outstretched to take Barry around the waist, and then they are falling, barreling over each other in a twisted tangle of limbs. Tyler feels the gravel of the path digging into his hands and face, and something heavy lands on top of his stomach and pushes the last of the air out of his lungs.

  * * *

  —

  Tyler watches the kid sitting opposite him. Barry Nelson is seventeen, but he looks a lot younger with all that snot dripping freely off his nose ring, and the tiny balled-up fists he uses to try to staunch the tears leaking from his eyes. The “appropriate adult” sitting next to him is Helen Cooper (“Call-Me-Hels”). Doggett clearly knows her of old, and the vein in his head has been pulsing dangerously for the hour and a half they have been waiting for the social worker to arrive. She is an ephemeral woman in a floaty dress who spends a great deal of time asking Barry if he is okay, rummaging through her handbag for tissues, and apologizing profusely for keeping them waiting despite the fact she is still the one holding things up. Most AAs see themselves as something only slightly short of a solicitor. They are squarely on the side of the poor little blighters they have been called in to represent, and most have watched too many courtroom dramas and barely resist the urge to shout “Objection!” to every question put to their clients. Conversely, Call-Me-Hels is doing her best to be on everyone’s side and no one’s, which for some reason Tyler finds even more infuriating. He has to admit he’s with Doggett on this one; he dislikes this woman immensely.

  Despite her presence in the room, Barry appears completely alone. It seems he is estranged from his parents, who threw him out when he was just fifteen. Since then he has been working for the butcher and living above his shop, but when they rang George Simmonite and asked him to come to the station, he refused on the grounds “the lad” had nothing to do with him.

  Tyler’s head is pounding, and every now and again he is forced to cover his mouth while he coughs up black crap from his lungs, though the coughing fits are shorter and repeat less frequently. He had been unconscious in the churchyard for only a moment or two, but the paramedics tried to make him go to the hospital with them.

  Once Call-Me-Hels has finished doling out tissues and checking her makeup in a compact, she sits quietly and stares into space, smiling. It’s a little unnerving how switched off she looks. Doggett deals with all the usual persons present housekeeping, and Barry sits sniveling throughout. Finally, Doggett reaches down to his feet under the table and brings up a plastic evidence bag containing the backpack Guy Daley recovered at the crime scene.

  “Is this yours, Barry?” he asks.

  Barry looks up and immediately down again.

  “Because it has your initials written on the label in felt-tip pen, mate? See, here?” The plastic crackles under Doggett’s fingertips. “B.N. Barry Nelson. So . . . I’ll ask you again, does this belong to you?”

  Barry nods his head without looking up.

  Doggett says, “For the benefit of the tape, suspect is nodding.” He asks the lad to explain himself, but Barry refuses to look up. His shoulders are shaking, but he’s not saying anything.

  Tyler has seen this before. It’s always the young ones that freeze.

  Doggett glances at him for a moment and then goes on, in a softer tone than Tyler has ever heard from him before. “You need to talk to us, lad. All right? I think you realize how serious this is, don’t you? Now, you’re clearly no stranger to trouble, but by all accounts you’d put all that business behind you. You’ve got a home, an apprenticeship—that’s no small thing these days. I’m surprised you’d jeopardize all that. Mr. Simmonite weren’t too thrilled to hear we were taking you in, so you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do when we take you home.” Here he pauses for a moment before going on. “That’s assuming you get to go home. Right now, that’s looking far from likely.” Doggett reaches down to two more evidence bags at his feet and places them one by one onto the table. A bottle of lighter fluid. A large box of kitchen matches. “All this stuff . . . things aren’t looking so good for you.”

  Barry mumbles something.

  “What was that, Barry, lad? You need to speak up for the tape.”

  “I said, it was just meant to be a laugh.”

  Doggett nods. “We’ve all been there, haven’t we, DS Tyler?” He winks. “Well, maybe not DS Tyler, he’s too much of a Boy Scout.” He breaks off to raise his eyebrows at Tyler. Tyler mouths a “Fuck off,” and Doggett stifles a grin.

  “But I’m still young enough I can remember how it was,” he goes on. “Still, you’re not a little boy anymore, so you know how serious this is. A man is dead.” Doggett’s tone hardens. “One of my police officers is in a critical condition in the hospital.”

  Barry shuffles in his seat but still says nothing.

  Call-Me-Hels shuffles in her seat. “DI Doggett, I . . .”

  “Be quiet!” Doggett snaps, and she does so, closing her mouth and sitting back. “Now,” Doggett says, turning back to Barry, “I don’t think you meant for anyone to get hurt, did you, Barry? But you need to start talking to us, telling us how this all came about. What the connection is with the body we’ve found. Because the only other alternative is I book you for murder. Right here, right now.”

  Barry looks up, wide-eyed. Tyler can’t help but feel sorry for the boy. They had fought alongside each other to rescue Rabbani from the church. He doesn’t want to believe this teenage lad is responsible for the fires in Castledene, and even less so the death of Gerald Cartwright. And yet . . . he was there at the scene with his homemade fire-starting kit. He lives and works in the village that was Gerald’s home. And Tyler has been sure, for a long time now, that the perpetrator of the fires is linked somehow to the body found in the cellar at the Old Vicarage. His head is pounding. Could he have been wrong all this time? Maybe it is just a coincidence, all these fires occurring in the same place as their murder investigation. Barry Nelson would have been eleven when Gerald died.

  And Oscar was fifteen. Doggett’s words when they had gone over all this while waiting for Call-Me-Hels to show up. Old enough to knock your dad over the head and drag him behind a wall. Especially if you had a friend to help you.

  Could there have been some connection between them? They hadn’t gone to the same school. Barry had been at the local comprehensive, a far cry and several miles distant from Oscar’s three-grand-a-term prep school. Could they have met somewhere else? Where else did boys of different ages meet other than school? Football practice? Something Doggett said earlier jumps into his head.

  Barry snivels into his tissue. Call-Me-Hels stares into space, no longer smiling after her telling-off. Doggett is shaking his head, losing his patience. Tyler catches his eye and Doggett nods his permission.

  “Barry,” Tyler says, “were you ever in the Cub Scouts?”

  The question takes him by surprise, and Barry nods before he can remember not to.

  “Did you like it?” Tyler asks. “I did.” He’s lying. He hated the Cub Scouts. Richard had made him go, following in Jude’s footsteps. He’d left as soon as he was allowed to. Why can’t you just learn how to play nicely with others? “Camping out under the stars, learning all those survival skills. I bet that’s where you learned how to light fires, isn’t it?”

  Barry shakes his head but hesitantly, unsure perhaps if this wasn’t where he had first learned how to light
a fire. Of course, matches and lighter fluid made it a lot easier.

  “Was that you as well, then? The scout hut the other day? Why would you want to burn that place?”

  Barry shakes his head more forcefully this time. “I di’n’t! I mean, that weren’t me. I swear, I’ve only done a couple of bonfires.”

  At least he’s talking.

  “Okay, mate, listen. I believe you. I don’t think you set the fire at the scout hut or the church. You certainly didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. That’s why you helped me save PC Rabbani. I bet you would have helped me save the vicar, too, wouldn’t you? If we’d known he was in there. You knew him, didn’t you? You knew him by another name, though. Akela.”

  He had found the word in Rabbani’s notebook, circled three times in black ink. But only now, in light of Doggett’s comment about Boy Scouts, has the significance clicked.

  “He was your old Cub Scout leader, right?”

  Barry’s eyes are filling up with new tears. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  “I don’t think you wanted to hurt him, or anybody else. But here’s the thing, Barry. Somebody did. And it’s too much of a coincidence you just happened to be there at the same time. You know something about this, don’t you? Do you know who killed your old Akela? If you do, and you don’t say anything, that makes you an accessory to murder. Regardless of the punishment for that, I don’t think you could live with yourself. So come on, mate, why don’t you just tell us who killed him?”

  Barry starts to open his mouth, probably to deny everything all over again, but then something gives. Tyler sees it in the way his shoulders drop. The boy leans his head in his hands and lets out a long sigh.

  “I don’t know who he is,” he says. “But if you let me have my phone I can show you.”

  Tyler looks at Doggett, and they both smile.

  * * *

  —

  “How on earth did you put that together?” Doggett is staring at the computer screen in front of them.