then it was back out into the garden.
The firemen had battered the front door down, which can't have been an easy task: the frame was peppered with three inch wood screws, just like last time. That was all they needed, another serial nut job. The part-glazed door lay on its back in the middle of the hall, half buried under a pile of broken roof tiles and charcoaled timbers.
Inside, the upper floor was, gone, just the occasional beam marking the level where a whole family had died.
The remaining walls were blackened and scorched. Rubble filled the corridor along with the twisted remains of the staircase.
Insch was in what would have been the lounge, dressed in amp; straining white paper over suit, balancing on top of a mound of rubble while a man in grimy overalls and a fire brigade hard hat poked about with a long pole. Teetering over fallen bricks and lumps of charred wood, Logan joined the inspector. 'You wanted to see me, sir?'
'Did I?' Insch frowned. 'Oh, yes. Family of four: mother, father and two little girls. Fire investigators say petrol was poured in through the letterbox, followed by petrol bombs through the windows. Sound familiar? Whoever did it made four hoax calls from a stolen mobile phone, every one of them on the other side of the city. By the time the fire brigade got here it was all they could do to stop it spreading next door.' He shook his head and picked his way down the mound of debris to the blasted remains of the front window.
'Poor bastards didn't have a chance. I was beginning to think the last fire – the squat – was drugs-related, but this feels more… I don't know, personal, if that makes sense.' He sighed and ran a hand across his round, red features. 'I can't get it to match up. That's why I want you to take a look: fresh pair of eyes.'
Logan nodded. 'They found the bodies?'
'Bits of them… Seems the girls' bedroom was above the kitchen. When the roof caved in, the whole lot collapsed.
Best guess the mother and father were in there with them.
We won't know till we get the room emptied.'
Logan picked his way through the remains of the house, moving from room to room, taking in the devastation. There wasn't much left he could recognize, everything had burnt or melted, the only thing even vaguely intact was the battered front door, still lying where it had fallen, the paintwork blistered and peeling, the glass panes cracked and nearly opaque with soot. He stood staring down at it – the only thing to survive a fire that claimed four lives. There was a little brass plaque on the door, just above the letterbox, and he squatted down, brushing away the dirt and debris until he could read it: Andrew, Wendy, Joanna amp; Molly Lawson. The
I
only thing missing was Rest In Peace. He was just turning to leave, when he thought he saw something through the door's fire-damaged glass. Heart hammering in his ears, he wrapped his hands round the edge of the door and pulled, the wood creaking and groaning as it came free of the debris, sending roof tiles clattering to the brick-strewn floor.
Underneath, part buried in bits of ceiling, was a burnt human face, features gone, ochre teeth the only really identifiable feature, the skull flattened on one side by a chunk of fallen masonry. Logan's hung-over stomach lurched.
When he called for help, DI Insch came lumbering through, took one look at what Logan was pointing at, frowned, then the swearing started. 'Every bastard and their dog's been through here!' He shouted for the bloke from the fire brigade, demanding to know why the hell no one had found this sooner? While they were arguing over whose responsibility it was to make sure people didn't go traipsing over dead bodies, Logan lurched across the threshold and out into the real world again.
The sun was still shining, but the air was full of the stench of burning meat and roasting timbers. Closing his eyes, Logan tried to take a deep breath. He wasn't going to be sick, he wasn't going to be sick – charred women and children, battered prostitutes, the skinned face of a young woman, rotting animal carcasses, Maitland… He was going to be sick.
Logan managed a few slow steps in the direction of the garden wall before abandoning all pretence and sprinting for the safety of a large purple buddleia, ripping his mask aside, falling to his knees and retching behind the bush. When there wasn't even any bile left, his stomach aching from the effort, he shivered to his feet, wiping the strings of bitter spit from his mouth with the sleeve of his jumpsuit. Please God let no one have seen him puking in the bushes… He cast a quick glance around, but everyone was going about their business, getting on with the job like he was supposed to be.
Standing on the flattened grass, looking up at the ruined building, he tried not to think about the faces of the dead.
The fire at the squat, where six people died, had been a spectator sport, he was sure of it. One man out there in a darkness all his own, turning human beings into charred corpses while he played with himself in the shadows. He would want a good view of proceedings. Preferably close enough to hear their flesh pop and sizzle. Logan started a tour of the garden, looking for the perfect position from which to watch a family of four burn, somewhere that wouldn't become a trap if the fire brigade turned up earlier than expected. There wasn't one. He did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn.
There was a hotel driveway across the road, the entrance marked by rusting lanterns set into the eight-foot- high stone wall. It would be the only place with a really good line of sight.
Still dressed in his white boiler suit, surgical gloves and booties, he sloshed through the puddle of soot-coloured water and into the hotel's grounds. You could lurk behind the granite posts, peering round the corner and hoping no one looked in your direction while you were busy having a wank, but that would probably spoil the romantic atmosphere … There was a huge rhododendron bush six feet in from the entrance. Perfect: if anyone looked, all they'd see were leaves and shadow. Logan walked through the wet grass to the rhododendron, peering under the fringe of dark green, waxy leaves. The flower heads were dying back, their delicate scarlet blooms battered away by last night's rain, lying like flecks of blood on the grass. There was a clear footprint in the mud, just inside the bush.
The manager of the hotel was a little concerned about the effect a blue plastic scene-of-crime marquee was having on his guests. It was bad enough that the road had been blocked off since last night, but to have a bunch of people wandering around the hotel grounds like something off the television was just… Well, he wasn't quite sure what it was, but he did send a nice young man out with a huge thermos of tea, another of coffee and a platter of Danish pastries. Much to DI Insch's delight.
Things were looking up. The leaves hadn't just kept their arsonist dry while he played with himself, they'd also helped preserve any evidence he'd left at the scene. In addition to the footprint, they'd also discovered another disposable paper handkerchief, smelling of semen. And the Identification Bureau were swarming all over the inside of the rhododendron, looking for fibres, traces, fingerprints, anything.
Insch was happily finishing off a third pastry from the tray when a patrol car pulled up outside the burnt-out shell opposite and a familiar bald-headed clinical psychologist stepped out. Hands behind his back, he strolled around the house's garden, peering at things.
'Oh joy,' said Insch, brushing the crumbs from his chin.
'You want to deal with Professor Patronizing, or shall I?' In the end they both sloshed back over the road. They found Dr Bushel squatting over a large white plastic sheet with four open body-bags laid out on it. There were bits of person arranged in each. A scorched femur, a blackened clavicle, the body they'd discovered under the front door, a lump of burnt meat that had once been a child's torso… Logan's empty stomach gave a warning lurch. The doctor smiled up at them as they approached, the sunlight glinting off his little round glasses.
'Inspector, Sergeant, nice to see you again,' he said, pulling himself to his feet. 'Lucky I was here, don't you think? The Chief Constable has asked me to produce a profile of your arsonist. It will take a little while to write up, but I can certainly give you the gist of it now, if you're interested?'
