Smoke Alarm

by Priscilla Masters

  Tuesday, 22 March, 9 a.m.

  First thing in the morning Alex Randall discussed the matter with his senior officers and the consensus was for him to interview the boy again using a bit more of a shock tactic. And so he summoned father and son in, without relish or optimism.

  The bandages were off the boy’s hands, leaving only smaller dressings now, but the look of pain and confusion in his eyes still lingered. He looked pale but resolute, his lips pressed together in a thin line, his brows drawn in and his eyes staring ahead blankly. Jude Barton was even more traumatized by the events than he had realized. There was a look of hopelessness about him, a droop of the shoulders that seemed to signify abject failure. Misery.

  It was Nigel Barton who opened the conversation, speaking in a quiet and controlled voice. ‘We’ve decided to return to Melverley just as soon as the Grange has been renovated,’ he volunteered and, although his voice was quiet it was firm, repelling any challenge or criticism of the decision. Randall made no comment. This was their choice after all, nothing to do with him. So he simply raised his eyebrows and sympathized. ‘I’m sure it’ll be hard for you both – at first,’ he said, ‘it being the scene of . . .’ There was no need to finish the sentence.

  He drew in a deep breath, ready to delve a little deeper, knowing he was about to embark on a risky plan. ‘Jude,’ he began, addressing the boy directly, ‘we’re working on the premise that it was your grandfather who started the fire, rather than an outsider.’ He waited for the boy’s response, wondering if this had been such a good idea. A shock tactic had seemed right when he was thinking about it. But it was patently risky, particularly as the boy was so traumatized by events. He had lost three members of his family, after all.

  Jude froze, his slightly almond-shaped eyes narrowed making him appear Oriental, inscrutable, unreadable. He seemed to shrink into himself and looked at Randall without blinking. Alex risked a swift glance at Barton senior and noted no response apart from a slightly pugnacious squaring of his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think Grandpa would have set a fire,’ Jude muttered finally, staring at the floor, his shoulders bowed. ‘He was a fireman.’

  Alex tried not to react to this titbit of information. But he knew it slotted in neatly – somewhere. ‘But he did set a fire six months ago, didn’t he?’

  ‘That was different.’

  Nigel Barton interrupted. ‘And how exactly do you explain the second fire?’ he asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Are you suggesting that my father returned from the grave to victimize some nurse?’

  ‘I’ll get to that,’ Randall said, trusting that at some point he really would. He returned his attention to the boy. ‘Jude,’ he said, ‘we were wondering about those stories your grandfather used to tell you.’

  The boy looked directly at him then, a frank question in his gaze.

  ‘We know he had some dementia,’ Alex continued gingerly, giving Nigel Barton a very swift glance to check he was not crossing the invisible line. ‘The way we’re thinking is that he wasn’t really responsible at all for what he did, not any more. He must have attended so many fires as a younger man. And perhaps it was these memories that preyed on his mind and persuaded him to act as he did.’

  Barton senior finally chipped in. ‘You’re putting all the blame on my father,’ he asked brokenly, his face twisted, ‘saying that he was responsible for what happened to Addy and Christie?’

  ‘We might never be able to prove anything,’ Randall said, uncertain whether he was being challenged or agreed with. He knew right after Barton’s next challenge.

  ‘Did you find petrol splashes on his clothes?’

  Alex was forced to admit that no, they had not.

  ‘Burns on his hands?’

  ‘There was a lighter in his pocket,’ Randall said tightly. ‘And he was in the hallway.’

  Barton looked angry now. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I think you’re using my father as a fall guy because you really haven’t got a clue how the fire happened or who started it or why. You need someone to blame and he can’t speak up for himself. He’s dead,’ he burst out. ‘He can’t defend himself. Thinking about it more carefully, particularly since the fire in the nurse’s house, I can’t believe he did it for a moment. My father wasn’t really like that. In his job he knew exactly what fire did to property and to people. He was careful.’

  Randall played the card he’d kept up his sleeve. ‘And the fire he set six months ago?’

  It silenced Barton for only a minute. And then he found Randall’s weak spot. ‘What about the missing nurse?’ he taunted. ‘You told me that the two fires were started in a similar fashion. You cannot allege that my father torched her house too. He – was – already – dead.’ Barton emphasized the words as though to a naughty two-year-old and Alex was forced to agree. But he had one further card up his sleeve.

  ‘It could have been a copycat arson attack,’ he said.

  It took Barton aback. But he soon rallied. ‘So where is she, this missing nurse?’

  The taunting continued. Randall drew in a deep breath, which gave Nigel Barton further opportunity to mock him.

  ‘You mean you haven’t found her yet? According to the papers she wasn’t in the house, was she?’

  Randall simply waited.

  ‘And you haven’t managed to track her down, have you? Talk about incompetent,’ Barton sneered. ‘I ask you.’ He turned to his son then. ‘Come on, Jude,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The boy shot Randall a swift, unhappy, almost desperate look as they left. But for the life of him Randall could not fathom its meaning. He sat for a while, pondering. Something about the relationship between father and son seemed askew, but he wasn’t sure what it signified. They were close, for sure. So close that he couldn’t quite place a wife and daughter between them, picture the family dynamics. Or a father/grandfather, for that matter. The father/son relationship struck him as exclusive, very private and not altogether healthy. Or was this closeness something that had developed since the terrible fire? Only they were left. Sole survivors. He puzzled over this for a while but nothing quite slotted into place. A minute later he slapped his hand on his desk in frustration and gave up. But irritatingly, instead of moving on to other things, his brain tracked towards . . . Almost without conscious thought he found the phone in his hand and the number already ringing.

  Jericho Palfreyman’s gruff voice responded with frank hostility. ‘I’m very sorry, Inspector,’ he said politely but obstructively, ‘the coroner is very busy right now. I’m sure she won’t want to be disturbed. She’s talking to the family of a road traffic incident.’

  Randall smothered a smile. It was so typical of Palfreyman to use the current politically correct title. However, even Palfreyman was not going to stand in his way. He continued silkily, ‘Then would you ask her to give me a ring when she’s free, please, Jericho?’

  Jericho was still playing hard to get. He was very aware of his status as coroner’s assistant and used to using it to its fullest capacity. ‘She may not be free at all today, Inspector, she’s having a very busy day of it. Is it so urgent?’

  Randall caved in under such intransigence. ‘No, not really,’ he admitted. ‘It’ll keep.’

  And he replaced the phone. He had already called a briefing but it was a mere formality. No one had anything new to report, until WPC Delia Shaw stepped forward, her brown eyes bright, alert and sparkling with information. ‘I’ve been working through the list of Mrs Deverill’s friends,’ she said. ‘One of them, a Mrs Moncrieff, volunteered the information that she used to work with Mrs Deverill in the late sixties.’

  ‘Go on,’ Alex prompted, sensing something.

  ‘They worked together in Shelton Hospital, which was the same then as these days – a psychiatric unit. In February 1968 there was a huge fire there, on Beech Ward. It was a locked ward,’ she added. ‘The patients were all severely disturbed, suffering from a range of complaints, obsessive compulsive disorder, sc
hizophrenia, severe depression, what’s called bipolar disorder these days but then was called manic depressive disease.’

  Randall frowned. He couldn’t work out the connection here. Yet. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

  ‘Mrs Moncrieff said that she hadn’t been on duty the night of the fire but Mrs Deverill – she was Monica Gowan then – had been working. I’ve looked it up on the Internet, sir,’ PC Shaw said. ‘There were forty-three female patients resident on Barton Ward the night of the fire. Twenty-four of them died and eleven were seriously injured. It was the highest hospital death toll in fourteen years. The deaths were due to carbon monoxide poisoning and asphyxia. The patients on the general ward were the ones who died; their beds were placed top to tail because of overcrowding. The more severely disturbed patients survived because they were doubly locked, not only behind the ward doors but behind further heavy doors which were also locked. The doors provided a fire break and kept the smoke out.’

  Randall waited, trusting that this awful story would somehow lead back to the two recent fires.

  ‘The staff who were on duty that night were initially praised for saving the lives of some of the patients and for the way they handled the fire. But as the enquiry progressed and the journalists worked on the story behind the story the public mood changed and they came in for a lot of criticism.’

  ‘Yes,’ Randall prompted impatiently, still wondering what bearing this long-ago drama had on recent events. ‘And what was the cause of the fire?’

  Again, WPC Shaw bent over her notebook, determined to relate only the exact facts. ‘That’s the interesting bit,’ she said, looking up. ‘Although the wards had open fires it was not believed that this was the cause of the fire that night. There was talk that a lighted cigarette smouldered in a sofa for some time before igniting,’ she looked up again, ‘and releasing toxic fumes into the air. It was before the legislation for fireproof furniture.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Patients were led to safety via the fire escape but it was difficult as many were heavily sedated due to their mental illness. Others were bedridden. And some who had OCD refused to leave without certain rituals being observed, shoes on, sweaters on the right way, slippers under the bed, all their buttons done up correctly.’

  Alex Randall was interested now. ‘It sounds a nightmare situation.’

  ‘It was. Several members of staff were subsequently awarded bravery medals. One returned to Beech Ward six times to rescue patients at the height of the fire at obvious personal risk to himself. It appeared that the staff were all heroes and to be commended. But as the enquiries progressed contemporaneous newspaper articles started to paint a slightly different picture.’

  The assembled officers listened intently.

  ‘The subsequent accident investigation found that no night staff had had fire training for more than twenty years. A report five years earlier from the Shropshire Fire Service had stressed the need for proper fire training for the night nurses but none had been carried out.

  ‘It also blamed a delay between the nurse in charge first noticing smoke and ringing the fire brigade. They blamed the high number of deaths partly on this delay, as well as the obvious difficulties of persuading women with mental illness to leave their beds.’

  She had everyone’s rapt attention.

  ‘There was also some mention that the staffing levels were on the low side.’ She met Randall’s eyes and continued almost with an apology. ‘Locked wards were the norm in those days although the 1959 Mental Health Act had stressed that as few patients as was possible should be locked up. Following the fire safety procedures in the Midlands were reviewed.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ Randall said, appalled at the image of disturbed patients in locked wards unable to escape the toxic smoke. It was as bad as the fire at Melverley Grange with its tragic result. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Not factual, sir.’

  Randall waited.

  ‘But there is something unofficial.’ She paused. ‘A year after the fire and a month after the enquiries had been wound up a rumour started. A story was leaked. No one knew where it had come from. It was cited as “an unimpeachable source”. It started in the local paper and suggested that the fire had been started deliberately and that traces of accelerants had been found. There was nothing official. The fire service denied it and so did the health service.’

  ‘So where did the rumours come from and how did they spread? Was there any truth behind them?’

  ‘No one knows the original source and the paper subsequently printed a retraction but, you know,’ her brown eyes sparkled but behind them was a note of seriousness, ‘no smoke without fire.’

  Randall was tempted to scoff, but the old cliché held true. ‘That’s really good work. Well done, Shaw.’

  ‘There is one last thing,’ she said quickly, and the entire force knew that WPC Shaw was keeping the best little nugget for last so she could fling it to the floor with the maximum dramatic effect. ‘One of the firemen cited in the recommendations was . . .’

  They could guess it. But they could hardly deprive the WPC of her moment of triumph.

  ‘William Barton.’ She flung the name down like a trophy.

  But after their initial exhilaration they all realized this didn’t really tell them anything more. No one in the entire room could thread these facts into their current investigations. OK, they had found a tenuous connection between William Barton and Monica Deverill and fire: she had been a nurse on duty the night of the Shelton fire, he had been a fireman attendant on the tragedy. But where did it take them? They looked at each other blankly.

  Randall dismissed them with a few words of appeal to think this through and thanks to WPC Shaw for her investigative work. Then he stood in the room, chewing his lip and knew that now he really must speak to Martha again. This time he got past the bulldog at the door and was put straight through.

  She listened to Shaw’s revelations without comment, only saying when he had finished, ‘The Shelton fire was before my time but I heard about it. It became something of a cause celebre, a teaching tool, something we all learned about.’

  ‘I knew it would be before your time. It’s more than forty years ago.’ Randall wanted to make the quip that she would have been a mere child then but it seemed inappropriate and a little dangerous. Their relationship had hovered near the boundary that stands between a work colleague and a friend but whenever they neared the line they both stepped smartly back and it had become something of a habit now.

  ‘The thing is, Alex,’ and he could hear gravity, humour and a challenge in her voice, ‘what can it possibly have to do with the fires at Melverley Grange and at Monica Deverill’s, and will it help you find her?’

  He was frowning as he responded. ‘Well, surely it has to. It’s the only connection we’ve found so far between the Barton family and Monica Deverill. And the connection is a fatal fire.’

  ‘So your next move is?’

  ‘To find her.’ He spoke through gritted teeth, avoiding adding the cliché, Dead or alive, but thinking it just the same.

  ‘Then I wish you luck, Alex.’

  He thanked her and they rang off. DI Randall sat for a while not even seeing the phone but a pair of wide green eyes, a ready smile and thick red hair, and he wondered why life always felt so much better when he’d talked to Martha Gunn. Why did he feel soothed, as though she was a balm? Was it her voice? Her presence? Her optimistic/realistic approach? Her motherliness?

  He couldn’t answer, probably because it was a cocktail of all these things.

  The next thing he did was to pick up the phone and speak to both the Deverill brothers, in turn. He asked them both the same question. ‘Did your mother ever mention the Shelton Hospital fire?’

  And they gave the same answer. An emphatic NO.

  But, he noted, neither of them asked why he was asking this particular question about an event that had happened so long ago. Apart from the obvious connection, w
hich was a very tenuous one at best: their mother plus a fatal fire. He hadn’t mentioned William Barton’s connection with the Shelton tragedy but surely they might have wondered why his enquiry had taken such an unexpected turn. There would be no reason to make it the subject of a specific telephone call two weeks after their mother had disappeared. But neither of them had asked. Strange.

  Alex felt a sudden gust of irritation sweep through him. Where the hell was the woman?

  The initial elation at Delia Shaw’s revelation was fast beginning to evaporate. It had seemed such a promising lead but had led nowhere. It was a blind connection. Somehow he needed to piece all these fragments together and make a coherent case. Sense out of a ragbag of facts. He made a face. Who’d be a detective?

  He wanted to talk to Martha some more. Not simply ring her with the latest development but talk over it face-to-face, chat around it, drink coffee as they bounced ideas around. Alex Randall sat still for a moment, troubled. What exactly was he wanting? Friendship? That was outside the remit of a coroner. Too much to ask. It wasn’t part of her role. As realization started to seep through him he knew exactly what he was asking for. Her as a woman, not as a coroner. And then he remembered.

  It wasn’t possible. None of it was possible.

  He had a wife.

  SIXTEEN

  Alex Randall sat late in his office that night, thinking about what fate had dished out to him. Some people might have called it a rough deal but he was not one to indulge in self-pity. He only had one real regret. Realizing he was staying late a few officers knocked on his door, asked if they could do anything if he needed them, even if they could fetch him a coffee or some tea. He fended off all offers of help or sustenance until his mobile phone finally buzzed in his pocket and he looked at the caller ID.

  His wife. And that was the end of it. The familiar dark cloud wrapped around him. Dutifully he responded and went home.