“Cause?” Tamara asked, turning her collar up to the dripping water raining down on them from above.
“An accelerant of some kind, probably simple use of petrol,” the officer confirmed.
Following the vandalism, arson wasn’t a shock to Janssen. He half expected it. Looking around, he noted the middle of the room was darker and more heavily fire-damaged than the surrounding areas. This encompassed where the double bed was positioned. “Is this the seat of the fire?” he asked, interrupting Tamara as she was about to speak. He apologised.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Was the door forced when you arrived?” Janssen asked, scanning the windows for signs of damage. Several were indeed broken but they could easily have been destroyed by the intensity of the blaze as by a wanton arsonist.
“I’ll check with the team but I believe it was locked.” The station officer pointed to a narrow slot in the stonework of the wall, perhaps an outstretched handspan in width and two-foot high, common in barns of this age. Here, there were four along the southern wall, the low point being around chest height, rising to just above Janssen’s head. They were infilled with glass. The one he was pointed to was broken. “That may have been a result of the fire popping the glass but, being directly positioned above the bed here, it’s quite likely the petrol was poured through there. All you’d need then is a flame tossed in and you’re away. The property isn’t overlooked from that direction. Your would-be arsonist could sneak up unobserved.”
Returning to the daylight, they left the appliance crew to their work. An investigation officer would need to examine the seat of the fire and ascertain if it was arson but it was a formality in this case. The question remained who would do it? The same person who vandalised the studio only days earlier was an enticing suspect.
“Mightily coincidental, isn’t it,” Janssen said. “Holly is murdered and Ken’s studio is vandalised and then set on fire. All within a few days of each other.”
“Especially as he has been sleeping with her.”
Any further exchange of ideas was interrupted by Ken Francis appearing at the back door. Hesitating for a moment, he hovered in the doorway before walking towards them. Each step appeared heavier than the last.
“I have something I want… I think you should see,” he said calmly before turning and disappearing back inside the house. They followed and as they entered the kitchen Janssen saw a confused look on Jane’s face. Seemingly, his wife didn’t know what he was going to say either. Perhaps that was fear rather than confusion. Half expecting the man to confess to the parentage of Holly’s unborn child, he pulled out a chair for Tamara and one for himself. He was well aware of the impact his physical presence had on people and if they were about to receive a confession, he didn’t want to run the risk of intimidating the man and so took his seat quickly. Ken struck him as someone unused to sharing his intimate thoughts and feelings. “I… I haven’t been entirely open with you.” Ken averted his eyes from them, flicking a nervous glance at his wife. “Any of you.”
“What is it you have to tell us, Mr Francis?” Tamara asked. That irritated Janssen. He would rather give the man space to talk. They could grill him later.
“I’ve been keeping something from my family,” Ken said, “but you must understand, I did so only to spare them from worry.” Janssen wasn’t sure who that comment was for, them or Jane? He stepped past them into the boot room and Janssen craned his neck to see the man disappear into what looked like his study, only to reappear moments later, papers in hand. “I’ve been receiving these.” He handed a clutch of handwritten notes to Tamara who accepted them with an incline of the head, immediately scanning the content. She passed them to Janssen, one by one. They were scrawled upon rather than neatly presented, with little care or attention to use of the printed lines. The path of the pen was erratic. Either they were written in haste or anger, it wasn’t clear which. The meaning of the content, however, was dark. “Someone has it in for me… maybe us. I don’t really know. They’ve threatened me, my work.”
“How long have you been receiving these?” Janssen asked. Ken glanced at his wife again before answering.
“Several months now.” He looked at Jane. Janssen followed suit and she put a hand across her mouth as if she appeared shocked by the revelation. “They started soon after we moved in. I didn’t think much of it at first. Kids mucking about. A jealous local who missed out on the property. Something like that.”
“This isn’t mucking about,” Janssen replied, holding a note in front of him and reading it aloud. “Scum! You should burn in hell.”
“They’ve not all been like that… but they’ve been getting worse over the past couple of months.”
Janssen held the note up and offered it to Jane. “Have you seen these?” She shook her head
