Darren slipped off the towel and went back into the shower. The water had started to trickle from the shower head, but she knew he heard her when she spoke again.
‘I reckon it was your car that someone saw,’ she said. ‘Daz, I think it’s you they’re looking for.’
‘Give over.’
‘I think you should go to the police,’ she said.
‘You must have got it wrong. It wasn’t anything to do with me.’
‘I’m only telling you what it said.’
‘Well, what did it say
‘I can’t remember
‘Well, it might be,’ said Darren. ‘What else did it say?’
‘A man in a parka — that was it. Aged about thirty-five.’
‘I’m not thirty-five.’
‘You look it, though.’
He gave her an incredulous stare. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘It was you, Darren,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Well, it sounded like you. Your car, and a man in a parka, seen in the village about the time of the incident. That’s exactly what it said. I think.’
‘And they reckon this man in the parka did the shooting? That’s ridiculous, Stell. That’s stupid.’
‘No, that wasn’t quite it.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why can’t you remember anything properly? You’re so bloody thick, Stella. I don’t know why I bother with you.’
‘Piss off, Darren.’
He stamped off sulkily, but came straight back again. ‘I need to know exactly what they said, Stella. This is important.’
‘Witnesses, that was it. They said the police were looking for witnesses. And they particularly wanted to speak to the bloke in the parka, with the blue Astra.’
Darren didn’t reply. She glanced at him, and saw that he’d gone pale. He still wasn’t fully dressed, and the water was drying in patches on his arms. He shivered, like somebody had walked over his grave. She remembered him saying how much he hated being next to a graveyard, and all those dead bodies and stuff.
‘A witness, that’s what they reckon you are. Maybe the police think you might have seen something important. Did you see anything, Darren?’
Darren was silent for longer than she thought was natural. For him, anyway. He wasn’t the sort of bloke to be stuck for a word, even if it was to tell her to ‘eff off’. He was staring at the TV screen, though the news had long since finished, and there was some football match on.
‘Did you, Darren?’
‘No,’ he said finally. But he didn’t sound too sure.
Stella touched his chest, then flinched away at the coldness of it.
‘No,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Was there anybody about in the village when you left that night?’
‘I just told you, I didn’t see anything.’
‘You might be able to help the police find who did it.’
He grabbed her arm then, and for the first time Stella felt a chill of fear. He was stronger than she thought, and he had that possibility of violence in him, after all.
‘Get it into your head right now,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see anything that night. Got it, Stell? I didn’t see a bloody thing.’
Cooper always woke automatically to the sound of sirens, even when he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He listened for a few moments, until he recognized the distinctive rasping bullhorn of a fire tender approaching a road junction somewhere to the north. So it was nothing to do with him — not for a while, at least. At this time of year, the call-out was probably to a bonfire that had been prematurely set alight. It happened every year; some people just couldn’t wait for the fifth of November. Soon there’d be fireworks, too. Night after night of explosions over the town. Complaints to the police about youths pushing bangers through pensioners’ letter boxes.
The sirens receded gradually into the distance. Cooper remembered where he was, sighed, and turned over again. He felt the comfort of a warm body beside him in the bed, the reassurance of steady breathing that meant he wasn’t alone in the middle of the night.
It made a big difference, not to be alone. And for once, it wasn’t the cat.
15
It was Jimi Hendrix. When Cooper saw the can of Swan lighter fluid next morning, he knew immediately where he’d seen one before. It featured in one of those classic rock posters. Hendrix setting fire to his white Stratocaster at the Monterey Pop Festival.
Could it have been 1967? Somewhere around that time. The legend said that Hendrix felt upstaged by The Who, because the British group had ended their set by smashing their equipment. During his own last number, the guitarist had grinned at the audience, squirted lighter fuel on his guitar and struck a match, playing the final notes through the flames. It was one of the seminal moments in the history of rock music. Mad, and dangerous.
‘You can buy the hundred millilitre can for about three pounds, but it isn’t stocked everywhere,’ said Fry, when he’d examined the can.
‘That gives us a chance of tracing the shop it was bought from, then.’
‘Yes, it would do, if we had the manpower.’
In the poster Cooper remembered seeing on a friend’s bedroom wall, the can had been clearly visible in the guitarist’s hands. It was just like this one — square-sided and yellow, the same colour as Hendrix’s frilly shirt.
‘Anyway, we’ve got an initial report faxed through from Downie’s people at the FSS lab this morning.’ The neutral tone of Fry’s voice didn’t give away whether it was good news or bad news.
‘What does it say?’
‘I’ll read it for you: “The laboratory received two evidence containers of debris taken from the suspected seat of a fire. A head space sample from each container was subjected to gas chromatograph analysis. The chromatogram shows characteristic peak patterns of a common hydrocarbon fuel, n-Butane.”’
‘Lighter fluid, then.’
‘Right. Specifically, butane lighter fluid. The positive samples were taken from a section of carpet in the Mullens’ sitting room, and from the toy box in the corner near the video. Not much accelerant used — but then, it wouldn’t have needed a lot.’
‘It could have been an accidental spillage, couldn’t it?’ suggested Cooper.
‘Have you tried accidentally spilling lighter fluid, Ben?’
‘I don’t even smoke. I never have.’
‘Well, it comes in an aerosol can like this one, with a pressure valve that fits into the lighter.’
‘OK, I’ve seen it.’
‘The most you can do accidentally is create a bit of mist that makes your fingers feel cold. To spill it, you have to prise the top off the can.’
‘Even so, Diane, one of the Mullens’ kids could have done that.’
‘Maybe. So which of the Mullens was a smoker — Brian or Lindsay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The answer is, neither. And why didn’t the SOCOs find a lighter fluid can in the house? They’re metal, so it wouldn’t have been destroyed in the fire.’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Because there wasn’t one, Ben. The only can that’s turned up is this one, which was found in a wheelie bin down the road. And if this is the right one, then it wasn’t put there by accident.’
