Page 31 of Murder in Shades of Fire and Ash

Eddy drove them back into town at speeds far exceeding the mandated twenty miles an hour, and by Charlie’s reckoning, the journey took about ten seconds and involved several corners on two wheels. The car stopped outside the takeaway and Ravensbourne was out of the car first, with Charlie close behind.

Mr Hassan was on the opposite pavement, looking at his shop, which stood between The Crown pub and a haberdashery. It was a pretty part of town, nicer than the slightly run-down area where the old shop had been. Not that there was much distance between them. Looking along the street, Charlie detected the merest hint of pale pink in the eastern sky.

Mr Hassan pointed at his shop.

“Can’t see anything now,” he said. “But there was a light, and someone moving, I swear.”

Hassan was fully dressed, albeit in a pair of yellow shorts and a polo shirt, with trainers on his feet. He shrugged. “I heard the sirens, so I came to check.”

Charlie couldn’t blame him. And it seemed that maybe Hassan had been right to do so -- if there was someone inside the supposedly closed shop. They all stared at the takeaway.Downstairs, the window was covered in advertisements for the food on offer. Upstairs the two windows were empty. Unlike the previous shop, this had only two storeys.

“What’s upstairs?” Charlie asked.

“Storage, a bathroom, a room with an armchair and a kettle for breaks,” Hassan said.

The windows remained stubbornly dark.

“Have you been round the back?”

Hassan shook his head. “Not yet. The alley is very dark.”

Mmm. Dark alleys. Right up my street. It’s probably in the job description.

Ravensbourne gave Charlie a nod, and the two of them headed up the street and round the back of the terrace into the alley, which was indeed very dark. Charlie checked off the buildings as they walked by the light of their phone torches, watching where they put their feet on the uneven ground. A noise broke the early morning quiet. A cough. Charlie started forwards. Ravensbourne followed, moving faster than Charlie expected given the number of cigarettes she smoked. There was a clanging noise from along the alleyway, as if a steel door was being slammed. Charlie ran, flashing the torch on his phone, but there was no sign of anyone.

“This one,” he said. There had been no need to check the buildings. The steel gate hadLlanfair Fast Foodstencilled on it. Charlie tried the gate. It wasn’t locked.

“Police!” he shouted. “Show yourself!”

Silence, except for his own and Ravensbourne’s breathing.

Charlie shouted again.

Still nothing.

Ravensbourne pushed the gate open, shining her own torch into a neat yard, with three paladin bins along one side, and several empty five-gallon cooking oil containers next to them. The small rear windows of the shop reflected their torch lightback at them. The back door was wood, painted red and also signedLlanfair Fast Food,the letters blurred where the stencil had slipped.

The yard was quiet and tidy, the air humid and still. There was no sign of life from within the building, but something was wrong. Charlie felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He looked round again, and saw nothing different or disturbing: the bins, the oil containers, the stencilled door. The door Ravensbourne was about to open.

The door that was leaking the smell of gas.

“No!” he shouted, and sprang across the yard, grabbing his boss by the waist and pulling her backwards towards the gate. He got them through it, as the world turned upside down. The sheet of steel, with its crudely painted words, probably saved their lives.

Lightning-fast flames flashed out of the building pushing everything out of their way: bricks, door, windows, oil containers, bins. Heat rolled over him as he tried to protect Ravensbourne with his body, cowering under the small protection of the fallen steel gate. He felt his trousers burn, and the hairs on his legs, and then heard Eddy shouting, and sirens.

Behind him, Charlie could feel the building was aflame, burning hotter and more fiercely than the blaze three days before. Even the ground beneath him seemed to be on fire. He could hear the fire roaring, pulling the oxygen from the air. In the chaos, Charlie couldn’t tell if Ravensbourne was alive or dead.

Suddenly, there was water. Vast high-pressure buckets-full of water, hammering on the steel door, dangerously hard, but dousing the flames licking around them.

“Help! Here!” he screamed about the clamour, his mouth and throat filling with water and smoke. He tried to shift, to crawl, to drag himself and Ravensbourne clear of the boiling debris.

And finally, voices, and hands shifting the gate and moving the bricks, lifting his body.

“Help the boss,” he gasped, as strong arms pulled him upright. “I’m OK, help her.”

Charlie began to shake, scorching pains gripping his ankles, unable to draw more than shallow breaths, but hecouldmove. Sort of. Ravensbourne was still. “Help her,” he gasped again, and to his relief, paramedics with their big green bags of equipment appeared behind the firefighters and bent over the prone figure, feeling for a pulse and shouting over the noise. One of them turned to Charlie. “She’s alive,” and Charlie took another agonising breath, feeling tears of gratitude.

“She didn’t smell the gas,” he said.

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