In A Dark House

hundred times more sensitive than the mechanized hydrocarbon sniffers-”

“Don’t let him start,” broke in Farrell. “He’ll bend your ear till it’s blue. Not that Scully isn’t a good advertisement, but as I was just saying to Inspector Bell, we can’t take her in until the scene has cooled down sufficiently.” The dog whined and moved restively, as if aware her name had been mentioned, and Martinelli stroked her head.

“Easy, girl,” he said to her, then added, “she knows what she’s here to do, and she’s eager to get started.”

“Do you have reason to suspect arson at this point?” Kincaid asked.

“There’s always a possibility of arson with a fire, but no one’s reported a man running from the scene with a can of petrol.” Farrell grinned. “We should be so lucky.”

In Kincaid’s experience, fire investigation officers tended to be a cautious species, refusing to commit themselves to anything less obvious than whether or not the sun was shining until they had irrefutable evidence, and sometimes not even then. At least this one appeared to have a sense of humor. “What do you have so far?” Kincaid asked without great expectations.

“The alarm came in at twelve thirty-six,” Farrell began deliberately, ignoring the impatience radiating from the angular Inspector Bell, as well as the drizzle, which was steadily growing heavier again. It occurred to Kincaid that perhaps Inspector Bell’s temper was not improved by being wet.

Nor was his, and he was beginning to sympathize with Cullen’s craving for hot coffee.

“Called in by someone next door, a resident in one of the flats who looked out the window and saw flames,” Farrell went on, nodding towards the adjacent building, of similar but less elaborate architecture. Together, the two structures had formed a bastion of grace among an array of concrete shop fronts.

“Could it have been the torch?” Kincaid asked, knowing that sometimes arsonists called in their own fires.

“Not likely. According to Control, it was a woman, and there were small children audible in the background.”

“No sign of anyone hanging about when the brigade arrived?”

“No, and the response time was under three minutes. The appliances came from Southwark Fire Station, just up the road. The station officer believed the fire had been in progress ten to fifteen minutes when they arrived. It was well established on the ground floor and beginning to take hold on the upper floors.”

“The door wasn’t locked.” The soft voice came from behind Kincaid and he turned, startled. A young woman stood there, dressed in jeans and anorak. Her corn-fair hair was tied back in a ponytail and she looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed. “I’m Leading Firefighter Kearny, Southwark station,” she explained, seeing their expressions. “My partner and I were first on the scene, BA crew.”

Farrell seemed to assess her disheveled appearance. “You’re just off your watch, then?”

“Yes, sir. Thought I’d make sure the relief had it all under control.” Kearny smiled but shifted on her feet, as if she felt a bit awkward under their scrutiny. “And I thought, if you had any questions, I’d save you waiting until the watch came back on duty tonight.”

“You’re interested in fire investigation?” Farrell asked with a trace of amusement.

“Yes, sir.” The girl met his gaze squarely, her chin up. Although her face was scrubbed pink, her bare neck still bore traces of soot, and the contrast struck Kincaid as rather endearing. Both Cullen and Martinelli were eyeing her with obvious interest, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Were there persons reported when you went in?” Farrell asked.

“No, sir. We were just doing a routine search, trying to lay a guideline for the hose. But it got really hot, and when Simms and I started to evacuate, I crawled into… it.” She made a faint grimace. “We could see there was no point in rescue.”

“Any smell of petrol before you went in?” Martinelli asked.

Kearny frowned, then shook her head. “Not that I remember. And then afterwards I had my mask on…”

“You said you found the front door open,” Kincaid said. “Is there more than one entrance?”

“There’s a side door,” Farrell told him, gesturing towards the narrow street on their right. “It was open when we got here, as well. There’s no sign of damage to it, and none of the crew reported forcing entry.”

“So someone with legitimate access opened the doors?”

“Too soon to say,” Farrell cautioned.

“The builders’ crew might have left them open accidentally,” offered Cullen.

“One, maybe, but both?” Farrell shook his head. “I suppose it’s possible, but not all that likely, in my opinion. Which takes us back to an illegitimate entry, but if that’s the case, we’ve not turned up anything noteworthy on the preliminary outside search.”

The station officer came up and spoke to Farrell. “The SOCOs have finished their preliminary examination, guv, and the structure seems stable. I think it’s cool enough for the dog, if she wears her booties.” He gave the dog a friendly pat, but she ignored him, all her attention focused on the building. When Martinelli pulled a set of paw protectors from his tunic pocket, she began to dance and strain at her lead.

“All right, girl, all right,” he soothed, kneeling to slip the rubber boots over her paws.

“Let me get my kit from the van, will you?” Farrell said, adding, “It’s Rose, is it? Since you’re here, Rose, you can go through the scene with us, tell us if anything strikes you.”

Farrell strode to the brigade van, returning with a bulky evidence collection bag and a notebook. “Right, then, let’s have a look.”

They queued up behind Farrell single file – Indian file, Kincaid would have said as a child, and he felt a flicker of regret for a politically correct age in which his children would never be encouraged to play cowboys and Indians, or army. He had done both, and had still grown up relatively civilized.

But any pleasant thoughts of childhood were quickly banished as he stepped through the warehouse doorway behind Farrell and Rose Kearny. If the smell had been bad outside, in here it was choking, a physical substance that permeated skin, hair, clothing, sinuses. As he blinked his watering eyes, he detected another odor beneath the pervasive char, the faint, oily sweetness of roasted flesh.

Water from the firefighters’ attack had pooled on the warehouse floor, standing several inches deep in places, and Kincaid made a mental note to be careful where he placed his feet. Swallowing hard against the burning in his throat, he focused his attention on Farrell, who had stopped a few feet into the interior.

“Stay behind me if you can,” Farrell said. “We don’t want to muck things up more than necessary.”

“I’m not sure muck is the appropriate word,” Cullen muttered, and Kincaid heard what might have been a snort of agreement from Inspector Bell.

They stood in a large, open area, lit by arc lights powered from generators on the brigade lorry and by what weak daylight filtered in through the intact windows, but the illumination made only a feeble sally against the encroaching blackness. Walls, ceilings, floors, the unidentifiable objects that filled the room – all might have been black holes, absorbing light into a dense and solid darkness.

As his eyes adjusted, Kincaid began to differentiate shapes. To his left, near the windows, a long object resolved itself into a stack of lumber, but Kincaid couldn’t tell if it had been new or salvage from the renovation. Four posts, equidistant from the room’s center, rose floor to ceiling, and he assumed they were the structural supports left behind when interior walls had been removed. The charring on the posts seemed fairly shallow, but he still gave an anxious glance at the ceiling.

Then, to the left of the posts, he saw a large, lumpy pile of objects, an obscene parody of furniture. Blackened coils and springs protruded from the mass at odd angles, like a bizarre modernist sculpture.

Martinelli moved away from the group, murmuring words of encouragement to the dog as he began a careful circuit of the area’s perimeter.

“Tell us what you saw,” Farrell said to Rose Kearny.

“We couldn’t see. Not more than a foot or two. The smoke was low, and black.” She turned slowly in a circle, examining the space. “We must have come straight in, but after a few yards, there was nothing but the line to anchor us. We didn’t know there weren’t any walls, so when I bumped into that” – she gestured towards the furniture- “I thought I’d hit a wall or some sort of room divider. Then I realized it felt soft, but it still didn’t make sense for a few seconds – you don’t expect furniture to tower over your head.”

At the invitation of a mate in the fire service, Kincaid had once suited up and gone into a burn house on a training exercise. The memory of the searing heat and complete disorientation still made him shudder, but the experience had given him tremendous respect for anyone who could face such a situation on a daily basis.