What She Saw

by Diane Saxon

  The girls chorused their goodbyes with varying degrees of enthusiasm as Jenna made her way back to the unmarked vehicle and slid into the driver’s seat.

  Mason gave an exaggerated shudder as she pulled the car back onto the road. ‘Gah, teenage girls. To be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d like to think we could avoid them, but I’ve a horrible feeling we’re going to be meeting up with them in the not too distant future.’

  Her feeling of disquiet grew as she brought Mason up to date on the way to the scene.

  8

  Sunday 19 April 0155 hours

  Jenna stepped from the car and slammed the door at the same time as Mason climbed from the passenger side to join her.

  The cool spring night breeze whipped away in a blaze of fury as the wind changed direction and heat blasted through in a whorl of energy to suck the air from her lungs and knock her back a step.

  ‘Well, fuck!’

  She scrubbed fingers through her thick, choppy hair and snorted at Mason’s predictable response. She took a moment to adjust her senses to the full impact of the fire.

  It had been some years since she’d been to a bonfire, but the scent of the burning house evoked memories of freezing temperatures and fireworks.

  Jenna tipped her head back and gazed up at a sky ablaze with colour and deep, dark clouds of smoke. She’d never seen a bonfire of such epic proportions nor experienced such power as the inferno syphoned the oxygen from the atmosphere.

  ‘This is bad. Very bad.’

  Jenna scanned the area, pleased to note PC Walker had it in hand. Vehicles she needed to check had been logged were dumped outside of the double cordon the fire service had set up. Outer and inner with tighter restrictions the closer to the incident.

  With a silent nod to Mason, they made their way through the outer line and held still in front of the inner cordon as the heat seared through. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood in the pool of amber light to watch as the inferno spat golden sparks into the sky, accompanied by a cacophony of cracks, pops and small explosions, while Mason spoke into Airwaves, the Force radio system, to obtain an update on the vital information they’d need.

  Flames shot from windows devoid of glass where it had already exploded outward. Fire licked up the outside of the old stone building and danced like a live being to hold Jenna enthralled.

  A giant of a man kitted out in the ugly beige fire service PPE strode with purpose from the far side of the inner cordon into her eyeline to break the hypnotic pull the burning building had on her.

  He swiped the mask from his face, removed his headgear and scrubbed the fine sheen of sweat from his chin with the back of his hand.

  ‘Hey.’

  Jenna held her badge up high so he could squint at it in the liquid light of the flames. ‘DS Jenna Morgan, this is DC Mason Ellis.’

  ‘Charlie Cartwright, I’m the watch manager.’

  Jenna’s gaze darted down to the oblong sign on his chest to confirm his position. She reached out a hand to have it enveloped in his powerful grip.

  He jerked his chin in the direction of a circle of firemen at the far side of the inner cordon. ‘Phil Hutchinson, the incident commander, is over there.’ Masks on with the burnished orange flicker of flames reflected to obscure their eyes, in deep discussion, they paid no attention to Jenna and Mason’s arrival. It was of no consequence, the watch manager was as capable of updating her at this stage as the incident commander.

  Mason stepped forward and the two men exchanged handshakes. ‘Hey, Charlie. The information we have from Control is the Lawrence family are on the council register as living here. Mr and Mrs, together with four children under the age of eighteen. No specifics yet, but we’ll get that information shortly.’

  ‘So, possibly six people?’ Grim, Charlie’s lips tightened. ‘What are the chances they’re not home?’

  Jenna dipped hands into her pockets. ‘Doubtful. We just met some friends of Poppy Lawrence. They said she had a family party she had to go to. Maybe they went out for the evening, but even so, wouldn’t you think they’d be back by now with kids?’ She shrugged. What the hell did she know about kids? ‘Has anyone checked the garage?’ She glanced around. ‘The drive for cars?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Charlie indicated a huge barn to the left of the main house. Nestled amongst several outbuildings, it was being doused in water from the tenders. ‘Several cars inside I’m told, eight or nine. Looks like he may have been a collector. Can’t tell straight off if any of them are the “family” car.’

  ‘Is the outbuilding on fire too?’ Steam rose from all around, but she couldn’t see any flames.

  ‘No, they’re damping it down, purely precautionary at this stage to make sure no stray sparks send it up in a ball of flames. Everything is really dry.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She made a mental note to get the registration numbers checked once they had access to the outbuilding.

  ‘What else have you got, Charlie?’

  With a shake of his head, he glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s not good. We received a 999 call at 2335,’ he checked his watch. ‘The nearest neighbours, a Mr and Mrs Crawford, live over that rise.’ He jerked his head to indicate the direction. ‘They’d gone to bed, fast asleep when their smoke alarm alerted them. Elderly couple.’ He raised his head and scanned the area, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he narrowed them, looking for the couple. ‘They’re over there when you’re ready to speak with them.’

  ‘How come their smoke alarm went off if they live that far away?’

  Charlie shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘The wind’s strong, all it would take was a sudden change of direction, which has happened several times now, and the smoke probably got blown into their open window. Trapped inside, it would activate their smoke alarm. It’s not unusual for that to happen.’

  Jenna nodded. It made sense. ‘So, what about now?’

  Face rippled in shadow as the fire raged on behind him creating a barrier of a roaring, gushing waterfall, she had to lean in as Charlie shook his head. ‘By the time we arrived, the place was already an inferno. You know, it’s out in the middle of nowhere, we don’t know what time it started, but we do know that once it got going, it was only a short sprint from the start to this.’

  ‘How long did it take you to get here?’ She glanced at the time on her phone. Just past 2:00 a.m.

  ‘After the call? The first tender arrived in under eight minutes from Wenlock, that was mine, I took control of the scene. We’ve sectorised the incident. Four sectors. Second tender arrived in nineteen minutes from Tweedale, third and fourth took almost twenty-two minutes from Bridgnorth. Because of the scale of the fire, the size of the property, the amount of barns and outbuildings, we requested another two tenders, but they’re finishing up at a house fire the other side of Telford. ETA another twelve minutes. It’s only the main house on fire, but with the wind changing direction, we’ve got to keep the outbuildings dampened down so they don’t catch a spark. Mostly wooden with roofs, they’d soon go up.’

  ‘Can you tell if anyone was still inside?’

  Charlie manoeuvred himself to stand at her side so he could indicate the house beyond. ‘We can’t be sure. By the time we arrived the place was too far gone for me to risk my crews. Anyone in there…’ He shook his head. ‘The place is compromised, with the age of the building. It’s stone, but the structure inside could be anything. We conducted a risk assessment. Once at this stage, house fires tend to burn at around a thousand degrees.’ At her blank look, he expanded. ‘Five times the temperature of an oven you’d cook your Sunday roast in.’

  ‘Surely that’s hot enough to cremate?’ Not wanting to dwell too long on the effect it would have on anyone in there, Jenna fixed her gaze on Charlie.

  ‘No, 1400 to 1800 degrees for cremation, and don’t forget that when cremation takes place it’s under controlled circumstances.’ He used his hands to squeeze down the size of the imagined area. ‘Confined in a s
mall area. It takes two and half hours to cremate a body.’

  ‘With nothing left but ashes.’

  ‘No. That’s a fallacy. Even then there will be a skeleton. They put it all into a grinder and…’ the hands he demonstrated closed into fists, ‘crush it.’

  Rocked by the horror of it, Jenna sucked in a breath. Fire, ambulance and police never held their punches in their descriptions. Fact was fact. Between them, their sense of humour could be ribald at times, even when the occasion didn’t call for it. It was a defence mechanism. They dealt with death, and what some may consider worse. There was no cover-up of gory details, no hiding from the stark truth despite the macabre element.

  Charlie tucked his helmet under his elbow and swiped at his forehead with the back of his other hand. ‘If I thought for one moment that there was anyone in there alive, I would have sent a crew in straight away. There isn’t. It’s not possible for anyone to have survived in there.’

  Jenna squinted against the bright glaze of light flickering beyond Charlie, expecting to see the paramedics attending to victims of the fire, but apart from the crew with the elderly lady, Mrs Crawford, the other two teams were stood watching the blaze.

  In amongst them all, her solid PC Walker had a handle on it. He raised a hand to acknowledge her as he pressed the people who’d come to observe back beyond the cordons. Relatively few were there at that time of the morning, such was the remoteness of Kimble Hall. Stood in its own fifty acre grounds, it was secluded, but surrounded by even more arable fields, it was isolated.

  The sense of loss pressed heavy on her chest and she glanced up at Mason’s tight features as the realisation that there were no survivors hit them both.

  ‘When are we expecting NILO?’ NILO, the National Inter-Agency Liaison Officer, was the tactical advisor responsible for liaison between the separate forces to keep everyone informed in a major incident. The incident was major so far because of the ferocity of the fire.

  ‘On his way. Roger Ayman. He’s based in Worcester. They’re trying to contact him now. In the meantime, I can tell you anything you need to know, but there’s relatively little that I can say at the moment, except that’s a shit-hot fire and no one will be going near it until the morning. We’ll pour water on it from the outside. Keep an eye on that oil tank over there.’ Charlie indicated with a broad sweep of his arm. ‘We’re keeping water on it to make sure it doesn’t combust. And, as I said, dousing the outbuildings and barns so they don’t catch light. Other than that, there’s no more we can do at present than put the fire out. My crews won’t be going in there until we have it completely under control.’

  ‘Suspicious circumstances, or accident?’ The age of the property indicated it could simply have ignited and gone up like an inferno without much encouragement.

  ‘Can’t tell at this stage. If you can locate the residents, that would be good. Otherwise it doesn’t look promising.’

  A cool breeze sneaked under the blaze of fury to stroke across Jenna’s fiery skin in a promise of relief only to be whipped away by another gust of heat.

  She fell back a step and puffed out a breath before it scorched her lungs. ‘We’ll go and question the neighbours. If you need us, we’ll be over there.’

  Across the stretch of land, she caught Ted Walker’s gaze and raised her right hand, circling her thumb and forefinger into the okay sign. He raised his thumb in acknowledgement and she pointed in the direction of the ambulance she was about to make her way to.

  More than capable of setting up the scene, Ted Walker would shout if he needed her.

  Mason followed her through the thronging mass of new arrivals as the two remaining tenders pulled in, making a total of six. Almost unheard of in a rural location where only one tender resided at each of the stations, manned primarily by reserves.

  Jenna jiggled her shoulders to stretch out the cricks that had set in as she stared up at the old manor house. Not visible from the road, she’d never seen it before, had never needed to be there. As far as she was concerned, she’d never heard any rumours, seen any reports of trouble out there.

  An outlying house, with a quiet family.

  9

  Sunday 19 April 0220 hours

  Mason and Jenna turned their backs on the building and made their way towards the ambulance, where two paramedics tended to an elderly lady. Dressed in a quilted full-length dressing gown of faded pink, she perched on the edge of the flip-down seat in the ambulance. Her blue-veined hand gripped onto the bed rail, her wizened little face almost obscured by an oxygen mask.

  ‘Hi,’ Jenna showed her badge. ‘I’m DS Jenna Morgan, and this is DC Mason Ellis.’ She tossed a friendly smile at the short, round-faced female paramedic whose cheeks glowed an unnatural red in the white light of the interior of the ambulance. ‘Is everything okay?’

  The paramedic shot them an easy smile. ‘Sandy. I’m Sandy. This is Mrs Crawford. Mr Crawford is just outside. He was concerned Mrs Crawford was feeling a little faint, so we gave her some oxygen to assist her breathing.’ She raised her voice. ‘Didn’t we, Mrs Crawford?’ At the old lady’s owl-like blink, Sandy raised her voice another notch. ‘We’ve given you oxygen Mrs Crawford. To help with your breathing.’

  Mrs Crawford gave one long slow blink to make Jenna wonder whether she appreciated Sandy almost shouting.

  Jenna lowered her voice to a discreet level, just above the roar and crackle of the fire. ‘Is it okay to speak with her?’

  ‘Sure. She didn’t want to lie down.’ Sandy turned to pat Mrs Crawford on the knee and raised her voice to accommodate the lady’s ability to hear above the sound of the ambulance engine and the fire. ‘You’re good aren’t you, Mrs Crawford? Just a bit breathless there, but you’re okay now, aren’t you, my darling?’

  Mrs Crawford patted her chest and squeezed out a weak smile as she nodded.

  Sandy turned to Jenna. ‘What a darling. Heart as strong as an ox. She’s eighty-nine, she’s going to live another bloody thirty years with a heart like that.’

  Jenna glanced at Mason. Lips twitching, he dipped his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet as he kicked at the dirt.

  Jenna gave a quick survey. She’d stick with Mrs Crawford and let Mason deal with the older man lurking at the side of the ambulance, a sneaky cigarette, lit end turned inwards to the palm of his hand. He shot guilty little glances over in his wife’s direction. His thin shoulders hunched over, less as a defence than a sign of age, Jenna suspected. Before his wife caught sight of him, he turned his back on them and a stream of smoke floated above his head and then was whipped away by an errant gust of wind. As though his wife wasn’t astute enough to notice he was smoking.

  ‘Okay. Thank you, Sandy. Mason, would you like to speak with Mr Crawford? See what you can get from him.’

  Mason grunted out an agreement and ambled over to speak with the gentleman who hovered a few paces away.

  Jenna climbed into the ambulance, edging past the attentive Sandy, and hunkered down, so she came face to face with the other woman. In the bright, unforgiving lights of the ambulance, Mrs Crawford’s pale, parchment skin stretched translucent across her cheekbones.

  ‘Mrs Crawford?’ Jenna reached out with a light touch to the older lady’s elbow.

  Washed-out grey eyes turned their sadness on her. ‘He wasn’t a very nice man, but I wouldn’t wish this on him.’ Her voice, muffled by the oxygen mask, croaked out.

  ‘Who wasn’t nice, Mrs Crawford?’

  Confusion stole into the woman’s eyes as though Jenna should know exactly what she meant. She plucked at the mask and pulled it from her mouth to speak around it. ‘Why him. Gordon Lawrence, of course.’

  ‘Gordon Lawrence.’ Jenna slipped her notebook and pen from her top pocket and scratched down the man’s name. Not that she’d forget it. She tapped her pen on the page, interested to note that the second person to comment on Gordon Lawrence had the same opinion as the first, Olivia, and was similarly quick to express it. ‘You k
now him?’

  Mrs Crawford stretched a tight smile. ‘Not well. He didn’t allow that.’ She glanced over Jenna’s shoulder at the fire raging on and slipped the oxygen mask further down onto her chin so she could speak unrestricted. ‘Shouldn’t speak ill of him. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.’

  A frisson of awareness sneaked through Jenna’s system and she shuffled closer, her curiosity piqued at the old lady’s words, a reiteration of Olivia’s earlier assessment. ‘You said he’s not nice? In what way was he not nice, Mrs Crawford?’

  ‘Ethel, you can call me Ethel. I prefer it. Him out there will be called Mr Crawford, never known to anyone else as anything other than Mr Crawford.’ Her lips twitched. ‘Even me. Mr Crawford, or Father. Once the children came along, I only ever called him Father. Like he was the lord of the house.’ Laughter cracked out of her and she pressed a pristine white handkerchief to her lips.

  Jenna waited. Gave her a moment to recover herself but found she didn’t need to prompt Ethel. The woman was a talker. It happened. Some people simply went with nerves or adrenaline and ran with it. Some wanted to vent, and some were simply lonely. As a police officer, it proved highly useful when they came across a talker.

  ‘But this man. He wasn’t nice. Gordon. He said to call him Gordon, but he was the devil.’

  Jenna blinked, but remained quiet. Interesting that of the people she’d met so far in a short space of time, he wasn’t well liked. She needed to revisit the girls. There was more. Definitely more.

  ‘He’s a show-off. Egotistical. Thought he could come along and invade our community just because his wife originated here. Doesn’t mean you belong. She’s a quiet thing. He thinks he can throw his money around and buy people’s respect. It worked with some.’ She half closed one eye and pinned Jenna with her sharp look. ‘Respect isn’t bought in my book, it’s earned. Others aren’t always so discerning. They believe along with money comes a God-given right to demand anything without question.’ She paused while she scrubbed the end of her little bobble of a nose with her handkerchief. ‘Not everyone saw it.’