The Circle

'No. He owned the whole thing, put some money of his own into it and took out a loan. How long he would have survived like this we don't know, because a publisher employs loads of specialists: designers, editors, proofreaders, printers, salespeople.'

'And the writers.'

'Well, his idea was to get the writers to cover the cost. It's known as vanity publishing. Believe it or not, there are millions of people whose greatest ambition is to see themselves in print. Personally, I'd rather spend my money on a really good cause like shopping in Knightsbridge, but we're all different. Vanity publishing is okay by me so long as the writer knows what he's getting into. Blacker's writers didn't. We're holding a first-time author called McDade who was asked for five grand shortly before his book was due for publication. He didn't pay up and he was dumped. You nicked him, Johnny. Maybe you'd like to say some more.'

DI Cherry looked as if he'd prefer to say nothing, but there was no get-out. 'When we charged him he was looking bang to rights. He'd been to the house and had a run-in with Blacker on the day of the fire, and he's got form as a fire-raiser. There wasn't anyone else in the frame.' Cherry hesitated and cocked his head, as if listening to his own voice played back to him. 'However, these other fires have raised a few doubts.'

'Cue another fire,' Hen said. 'This one may appear to be unrelated. There's a link that I'll explain.'

The remains of the boat house appeared on screen with wisps of smoke still rising from the damaged roof.

'Not a private dwelling, but one of the two boat houses used by the local canoe club. It's beside the canal, a stone's throw from here. A week ago last Friday a middle-aged woman called Amelia Snow takes a call from a voice she doesn't recognise. Male. The caller says he can prove Maurice McDade is in the clear if she'll meet him at the boat house at eight next morning. I should explain that McDade is the chairman of the Chichester Writers' Circle and Miss Snow is the secretary. An extremely loyal secretary. But she's also a canny lady and she asks someone else to go in her place. He's Bob Naylor, a Parcel Force driver who recently joined the circle. Naylor gets there as arranged. The door's open, so he goes in. Through this end.'

She shone a point of light at the screen.

'Soon as he's inside, the door slams behind him. It's a strong metal door and there's no way he can force it open. In minutes, the building is on fire. Some kind of accelerant was placed in the space under the floor and it spreads quickly. Luckily Naylor is pretty fit and climbs up a boat rack and batters his way out through the roof with a canoe paddle. According to his statement he saw no one.'

A long shot of the exterior, showing the hole in the roof and the blackened source of the fire in the space below the building.

'It's safe to assume Miss Snow wouldn't have got out of the boat house if she'd acted on the phone call herself. She was wise, or lucky, to ask Naylor to go in her place. Her luck ran out a week later when her dinky little town house went up in flames with her inside.'

The shell of Miss Snow's house appeared on screen.

'The fire service categorised this as a fire out of control. They were called too late to make any difference, except to limit the damage to the neighbours. A clock in the kitchen stopped at four twenty a.m., so it's a fair estimate that the fire-raiser struck up to thirty minutes before that. I went to see the building this morning. You often hear the word 'gutted' used about a fire. In this case, it's accurate. There's nothing left inside except ash and some objects that resist fire. The conditions were special. A mixture of convection and radiation produced an effect known in the service as a firestorm. All that's left of Miss Snow is a few powdery bones, including parts of the skull.'

'And the teeth,' Stella Gregson prompted her.

'And the teeth. We're checking them against dental records.'

'Do we know where the fire started?' a sergeant asked.

'Front door, same as the fire at the cottage. Forensics are checking to see if the same accelerant was used.'

'Witnesses?'

'None so far, which is surprising in a built-up area like this, but Chichester isn't exactly a hub of night life. We'll be making the usual appeals for information. It was on local telly and radio and that may help.' Hen switched off the video. 'To sum up, we have two victims, one near-victim, and a suspect, and all four have a connection to this writers' circle.' She turned to a DC in the front row. 'What do they do in a writers' circle?'

'Write, ma'am?'

'They can't spend all the time writing.'

'Do they drink?'

'Do they drink?Ml the writers I've ever heard of are winos, and most of them are weirdos as well. However, we're dealing with part-timers here, so they may not all have got the habit. Johnny, how often does this circle meet?'

'Once a month,' Cherry said. 'In the New Park Centre. Blacker gave them a talk at the July meeting. We've got it on video. They did it themselves.'

'Useful. I'll watch it after this. And was that the last meeting they had?'

'Last but one. August was the last proper meeting.'

'The last proper meeting. Do they have improper meetings?'

Laughter.

'There's a serious point here,' Hen said. 'The meetings certain individuals have outside the regular meetings could be the key to this. For example, Amelia Snow must have met the Parcel Force driver to persuade him to go to the boat house in her place. What was going on between those two? Was someone else made jealous?'

Cherry said, 'Unlikely.'

'Why do you say that, Johnny?'

'Miss Snow was an old maid.'

He regretted it.

'As opposed to a nice bit of skirt?' Hen said. 'Or a dolly bird? Or crumpet? I thought you people might have got the message that I don't do labelling. How many are in this circle?'

'Eleven now.'

'That's eleven potential suspects, right, and each one is an individual. So we're not calling them old maids or fat gits or, em. .'

'Winos and weirdos, guv?' Stella Gregson said.

After a moment's extreme tension, Hen's lips softened into a slow smile. 'Thank you for that, Stell.' She made the shape of a gun with two fingers and pointed it at the side of her head. 'Let's all agree to treat them as human beings, shall we? We're going to get to know them, who their friends are, what they do for a living, where they live and what sort of writing they do. From now on, this is the incident room. I want the usual display board on this wall with all the names on it. Pictures, too, if poss.' She paused, and looked around the room. 'As for you lot, you're just a faceless murder squad, so you're going to get labels. Johnny, you're my office manager. Get us up and running today. Stella is my admin officer. I'll also be appointing a receiver, an action allocator, statement readers and indexers. Cheer up, kiddos. This could be a positive experience. At this point, I'm going out for a smoke. Ten minutes — and then I want your theories.'

Hen's smoke was a small cigar. The bliss on her face as she took the first deep drag left no doubt that this was serious dependence. 'How did they take it, Stell?'

Stella Gregson was a non-smoker used to standing among the fag ends with her boss. 'Mr Cherry's pissing his pants that you've taken over, but no one else seems to mind.'

'He thought the case was done and dusted.'

'Are you going to talk to the guy he nicked?'

'Have to. I'll read the paperwork first. It should be a feature of this case, the paperwork. Instead of 'I am John Smith, unemployed, and I was proceeding up the street' we're going to get stuff like 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again'. Some of the statements could be worth a fortune in years to come.'

Stella smiled. ''It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.''

'Who wrote that? We don't want crazy stuff.'

'George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four.''

'As long ago as that?' She spoke without a smile. Stella would never know if she was serious.