The Fire Baby

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE FIRE BABY

Praise for Jim Kelly

‘A significant new talent’ Sunday Times

‘The sense of place is terrific: the fens really brood. Dryden, the central character, is satisfyingly complicated … a good atmospheric read’ Observer

‘A sparkling star newly risen in the crime fiction firmament’ Colin Dexter

‘Kelly is clearly a name to watch… a compelling read’ Crime Time

‘Beautifully written… The climax is chilling. Sometimes a book takes up residence inside my head and just won’t leave. The Water Clock did just that’ Val McDermid

‘An atmospheric, intriguing mystery, with a tense denouement’ Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

‘Excellent no-frills thriller with a real bite. 4 stars’ FHM

‘A story that continuously quickens the pulse… makes every nerve tingle. The suspense here is tight and controlled and each character is made to count in a story that engulfs you while it unravels’ Punch

‘Kelly’s evocation of the bleak and watery landscapes, provide a powerful backdrop to a wonderful cast of characters’ The Good Book Guide

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Kelly is a journalist. He lives in Ely with the writer Midge Gillies and their young daughter. He is the author of five novels: The Skeleton Man, The Coldest Blood, The Moon Tunnel, The Fire Baby and The Water Clock, which was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best novel of 2002. He is currently at work on his new mystery, Death Wore White, featuring DI Peter Shaw (who is introduced in The Skeleton Man).

In 2006 Jim Kelly was awarded the Dagger in the Library by the Crime Writers’ Association for a body of work giving ‘greatest enjoyment to crime fiction readers’

To find out more about Jim Kelly and other Penguin crime writers, go to www.penguinmostwanted.co.uk

The Fire Baby

JIM KELLY

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Michael Joseph 2004

Published in Penguin Books 2005

This edition published 2007

6

Copyright © Jim Kelly,2004

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-00934-6

For John

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Beverley Cousins, my editor, for providing inspiration and advice in perfect measures, Faith Evans, for her determination to elevate the quality of writing in The Fire Baby, and Trevor Horwood, for creative and meticulous copy-editing. This book again centres on the case of a car-accident victim locked in a coma. I am grateful for the welcome extended to me by the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, Putney, and am happy to point out that donations can be made through its website: www.rhn.org.uk. I would like to thank Donald and Renee Gillies, and Jenny Burgoyne for helping with the text. Darren Fox, of Ely Fire Station, provided technical advice on the properties of fire. The US Air Force let me tour Mildenhall base, a privilege for which I am grateful. The oddities of the East Anglian weather system were expertly explained to me by Weather-quest, the forecasting company at the University of East Anglia. Midge Gillies, my wife, stepped in brilliantly to break the occasional logjam of ideas.

The Landscape of the Fens is, of course, real but topographical and historical details have been occasionally altered for the sake of the plot. All characters are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons is entirely