Page 39 of Murder in Shades of Fire and Ash

Charlie did. Jealousy again. The trail had come full circle back to the trading estate. Was their victim camper van guy? It was the obvious solution. Time to get to the police station, a computer and his whiteboard.

“See what else you can find out about camper van guy,” Charlie said to Will. “He might not have an address now, but he must have had one once, and a birth certificate, a passport, parents or siblings, orsomething.”

29

Tuesday lunchtime

Before Charlie had time to move, his phone rang again, and this time it was Mal Kent.

“Sir,” Charlie said.

“Are you co-opting all my staff, or just a few?” Kent said.

Charlie didn’t answer. What answer could he give?

“Will Wayward hasn’t left the office in daylight hours in living memory,” Kent said, “but you have him checking up on missing persons.”

“Fair play, he volunteered,” Charlie said. “Sir.”

“Don’t start with thesirstuff,” Kent sighed. “I know you don’t mean it. I’m sending Will over to give you a hand, and there are half a dozen uniforms on their way as well. You’re going to need them. The press office has been inundated with calls about a second fire, and another body. The liberal press is convinced it’s hate crime against Muslims, and the rest of them just want the details, as gory as possible. And I’m getting grief from the local MP, and some bloke from the UK government about Mo’s Autoparts. Reading between the lines, Mo has a lot of friends in high places.” Kent sighed again.

“You’re saying:get this cleared up by this evening,”Charlie said.

“At the very latest.” Kent said. “Between you and Will, you should be able to ID the body, and then get Will onto finding your fake fireman. If it is a hate crime, we need to know, and we need arrests. If it isn’t, we are going to need a lot of proof that it isn’t. This is all about to get very political.”

“Got it,” Charlie said.

Thankfully, Tom came upstairs to help Charlie get the worst of the grime off his face and body — a shower being contra-indicated by the bandages. He felt much better in clean clothes, and better still once the pain pill started to work. Tom wrapped the handles of the crutches in soft dishcloths and together they went out into the heat of the day and drove to the police station.

The place was deserted, and very stuffy. Opening the windows did little to reduce the heat, but Tom uncomplainingly collected a couple of fans from upstairs in Charlie’s office and brought them down to the break room. He dragged the whiteboard out from behind the door, and propped it up, so that Charlie could write on it without standing up.

Charlie had started assembling coloured markers, and barely noticed as Tom kissed him goodbye and promised to be back in an hour with supplies of yet more food and drink.

When Will arrived soon afterwards, Charlie was in one of the armchairs, staring at the grid he had drawn on the board. On the left-hand side were a list of names: Patsy, Jeff ‘Britton’, Hassan, Mo, Dylan, AN Other(s), and across the top, the events: Fire in empty shop, Graffiti, Unwin’s murder, Gas explosion at takeaway, Fire at Mo’s Autoparts, Camper van man, Social media posts. Where he could, Charlie had filled in people’s whereabouts. There was a lot of information scribbled in all the boxes next to Patsy’s name.

“You need a proper spreadsheet for that,” Will said, flopping down into the next chair.

“I like to see it all in one place,” Charlie said. “And not on a tiny screen. I think there’s something about the process of writing, rather than typing, that helps, too.”

“Fair enough,” Will said, and contemplated the whiteboard. “You need something about access,” he said after a few minutes. “As in access to the buildings. The two shops in town, and the buildings on the trading estate. Because if you couldn’t get in, you couldn’t start a fire.”

“I looked at access after the first fire, but haven’t had time to check again,” Charlie said.

Will picked up a green pen and began to look at the columns. “Difficult to see how Patsy could get into all these buildings.”

“She was there, though,” Charlie said miserably. “She could certainly have started the first fire.”

“So could your fake fire officer,” Will said, “And don’t firefighters have keys to almost every lock, in case of emergencies?”

Charlie shook his head. He thought firefighters probably did have keys to a lot of buildings, but the key they probably used most often was an axe, or the kind of battering ram beloved of early morning police raiders.

“I’m assuming you’ve included Hassan and Mo on the list in case they were insurance jobs?” Will asked.

Charlie nodded. Though the notion that two businesses would set fire to their own premises in the same week stretched likelihood to breaking point and beyond. It also didn’t make sense for Hassan to set fire to his empty shop before blowing up the newly refurbished takeaway, and he said as much to Will.

“I’ll go and find out if either of them was about to go bankrupt,” Will said, and stood up.

“Start with our second victim,” Charlie said.

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