Newcombe and Dutton. She pushed through the crowd of onlookers until she saw a familiar face.
“Chief Inspector! What happened? Did you— Was anyone—”
“There was no one inside, Mrs. Newcombe,” Babcock hastened to reassure her. “As to what happened, we released your husband’s partner about an hour before the blaze began. The door was padlocked, as we hadn’t got all the files out, but someone remedied that with a pair of bolt cutters.” He surveyed the damage with disgust.
“It was lucky all of Monk’s Walk didn’t go up.”
“You think Piers did this?” Juliet’s first relief was replaced with uneasiness.
“It would seem the logical assumption, yes. There’s only so much even a high- priced lawyer can do if there’s sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. It would have been worth the risk to get rid of it. A can of petrol tucked under an overcoat—” He shrugged.
“You’re sure the fire was set, then?”
“You could still smell the petrol. I’ve sent a car to Mr. Dutton’s house. If he’s not at home, do you know where we might find him?”
“I— His parents live in Chester. I don’t know where else he might go,” Juliet answered, but she was thinking furiously. This seemed much too blatant for Piers. He was a string puller, a manipulator—
direct action was not his style. And looking at the smoldering, black-ened shell of what had been Newcombe and Dutton, she sensed there had been more at stake than covering up evidence.
“—looks worse than it is,” Babcock was saying. “Even though some of the papers were strewn around the office, you’d be surprised at what we can re—”
But Juliet didn’t hear the rest. Muttering “Excuse me,” she eased
through the crush and slipped into the tree-covered tunnel of Monk’s Lane. Only light powder had drifted through the foliage, and it crunched under her feet as she ran.
By the time she veered into North Crofts and reached her front porch, a stitch in her side made her bend over, gasping until it had passed. Then she saw that the door stood slightly ajar. Her heart thumping with fear, she pushed it open and walked into her house.
It took her a moment to identify the unfamiliar smell. Petrol.
Dear God. Her feet felt weighted now as she followed the scent, and the wet footprints, down the hall and into the kitchen.
Still wearing his coat, Caspar stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing at his hands. He looked up when she came into the room, but didn’t seem surprised to see her. “It won’t come out,” he said. “I can’t get it out.”
“Caspar, what have you done?”
He turned back to his scrubbing, his words made indistinct by the sound of the running water. “They let me watch while they carried out the files. But they didn’t get them all, so they put a padlock on the door and said they’d come back for the rest in the morning.
“Some of Piers’s things were left. I wanted to see for myself. To prove you wrong. So I went back as it was getting dark. When no one was watching, I cut the lock.”
“
Caspar, seemingly unaware of the incredulity in her voice, went on. “I found your bolt cutters in the garage. I put them under my coat. A fl imsy thing, the lock. It was easy, like slicing butter. Once I was inside, I made sure the blinds were closed tight, then I used a torch to look through Piers’s files.” He turned to her, heedless of the soapy water dripping from his hands, down the front of his coat and onto the floor.
“He was cheating them. Almost all of them.” His eyes were dark s
with shock. “I couldn’t believe—I couldn’t—I came back from the house and got a can of petrol. I scattered the papers from the files. I thought if I set them alight—”
“Good God, Caspar, you could have been killed!” Juliet shouted at him. “Pouring petrol and setting it alight! Are you completely mad?” She shook her head in disgust. “And for nothing. You couldn’t have saved Piers. The police already have enough evidence to build a case against him; the rest was just icing on the cake. You might have got by, but now they’ll have you for arson and destroying evidence, and anything you could have salvaged from the business is ruined.
What in bloody hell were you thinking?”
Caspar collapsed into the nearest chair, like a scarecrow in a cashmere overcoat. Water still trickled from the tap, an echo of the tears flowing unchecked down his cheeks.
“I thought we were— I thought Piers would have done anything for me. I thought that if I burned the office he’d be—” He sounded baffl ed by his own emotions. “I just wanted to hurt him, Jules, that’s all.”
Kit followed Lally down the lane, trying to keep up with her when he felt blind and disoriented and she seemed able to see in the dark.
Gradually, the snow grew lighter, diminishing to a few dancing flakes, and Lally’s outline solidifi ed.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked, panting, when he managed a few paces by her side. They’d turned right out of the farmhouse drive, rather than left, the way he’d become accustomed to going in the car.
“Shortcut to Barbridge. You’ll see. We’ll come out at the bridge over the canal.”
“Lally, you said you had to meet Leo, but I thought you hadn’t talked to him. I mean yesterday you seemed—I don’t know—pissed off. And you haven’t been allowed to use the phone—”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said shortly. “Remember yesterday he said
for us to meet him? He will have waited last night. He’ll be there to night.”
“But I don’t un—”
“I have some things of his. Or at least, I’m supposed to have some things of his. The problem is, I don’t.” She giggled, the sound brittle as glass. “And Leo never stops until he gets what he wants.”
“What do you mean, things of his. What sort of things?”
Lally slowed enough to look at him. “Oh, Kit, don’t be so dense.
Pills. And other stuff. You sound just like Peter.”
“Peter?” Kit struggled to place the name. “Your friend who died?”
“Drowned. He drowned,” said Lally, with a vehemence Kit didn’t understand. “You even look a bit like him— that schoolboy-innocence thing.”
Kit felt the blood rise to his face, but before he could protest, she went on, “Leo called him a ponce, but he wasn’t. He was just . . . gentle. He was smart, and he was funny, and he could tell how I was feeling, you know? Without me saying.” Lally’s steps lagged until Kit had to slow his own. “And he knew how to touch me. It wasn’t that he’d been with other girls, it was just that he seemed to know what I was thinking, every minute, and he —”
“There’s the bridge,” Kit said, knowing it was idiotic but desperate to stop her saying more. He hadn’t realized Peter had been
After that thought he no longer felt the cold, and was glad the darkness hid his blush. “About Leo,” he said, trying to focus on the other thing Lally had said. Somehow he found he wasn’t surprised that Lally had been holding drugs, or that Leo had given them to her.
“You said you had Leo’s stuff, but you don’t anymore. Why not?”
“Because someone went through my fucking backpack and took it.” The swearing didn’t quite hide the fear in her voice. They’d s
reached the stone arch of the bridge, and instead of crossing it, Lally leapt down onto the canal towpath like a mountain goat. “It must have been my mother, but then why hasn’t she said anything?” she went on. “She should have killed me, grounded me for life, and then some.”
Kit was forced to follow her again, single file, and her words came back to him in bursts, carried by the wind.
“Won’t Leo be worried about you getting in trouble?”
“No—can’t be traced to him, can it? He’ll want me to get it back, or make it up—”
“What do you mean, make it up?” asked Kit, not liking the sound of that at all.
But Lally only muttered, “You wouldn’t understand,” and kept walking, head down, as if suddenly afraid she’d said too much.
It was dark, so dark that Kit could only make out the water to his left as a deeper blackness. When
