‘Unexplained,’ he said.
‘So you’re telling me that you don’t know how it started.’
He couldn’t resist proving me wrong.
‘One of our lines of enquiry concerns the remnants of a cigarette lighter that has been found. The metal parts survived the inferno. We think it may have been used to start the fire, perhaps accidentally.’
Or perhaps intentionally, I thought.
‘Was it found close to the body?’ I asked.
‘Yes, right next to it, as if it had been in a pocket.’
I thought back to Ryan’s theory of the smoking homeless person.
‘Did you find any cigarette ends?’
‘No, but the intensity of the fire would have made that impossible, even if they had been present initially.’
‘How about a mobile phone?’ I asked.
He paused for a moment as if deciding whether to tell me any more.
‘None has been found as yet,’ he said finally.
‘Anything else?’
Another pause. He’d already told me more than I’d expected him to.
‘Not at present,’ he said. ‘Forensic tests still have to be carried out to determine if an accelerant was present — petrol, for example.’
‘You wouldn’t need petrol to start a fire in those stables, not with all that shredded paper on the floor.’
‘No, indeed not. But you are jumping to conclusions, Mr Foster. There is no evidence as yet that the fire was set deliberately.’
‘What else could it be?’
‘It may have been started accidentally by the victim, or maybe it was the result of an electrical fault, or some other reason. I am confident that our investigation will eventually determine the true cause.’
‘Has the post-mortem given you any clues?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t give you that information even if I had it, which I don’t. Not before the coroner has been informed.’
‘But a post-mortem is being conducted?’
‘Certainly,’ said the detective. ‘As already reported in the press, the human remains were removed from the stables this morning and taken to Lowestoft Hospital for examination by a Home Office pathologist.’
‘One of your scene-of-crime officers told me that he thought there was enough of the body left to get a DNA profile. Will you check that against Zoe Robertson’s?’
The DCI pursed his lips as if he didn’t like the fact that the scene-of-crime officer had spoken to me. Or maybe it was because he didn’t appreciate me telling him his job.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘And you’ll let me know the outcome?’
‘If it is found that the remains are indeed those of Zoe Robertson, her next of kin will be informed first, followed by a press release. You will find out the results from that.’ He collected his papers together. ‘Now,’ he said, standing up, ‘is there anything else I can help you with?’
‘How about the horses?’ I asked.
‘What about them?’
‘Are you carrying out DNA tests on their remains as well?’
‘Why would we?’
‘To ensure they are the horses they are claimed to be.’
The policeman laughed. ‘My, Mr Foster, you do have a suspicious mind.’
‘Acquired by experience,’ I assured him. ‘Well, are you?’
‘No, we aren’t, and we won’t be. It would be a waste of our limited resources. As I understand it, all racehorses are microchipped to confirm their identity. In this case, the microchips are unlikely to have survived the intensity of the heat but that’s no matter. If the horses had been switched, it would be to no avail as their microchips would prevent them being passed off as others anyway.’
‘How about at stud? Prince of Troy would make someone a fine stallion if he’d been spirited away prior to the fire.’
‘But not for producing racehorses,’ said DCI Eastwood. ‘And that’s only where any gain would come from. We had a case here a few years ago concerning the alleged mixing up of two valuable foals at the sale ring. One owner accused the other of theft. You get that sort of thing in these parts. But it was easily resolved as all Thoroughbred foals registered since 2001 have had their parentage verified by their DNA. You’d never be able to pass off a foal by Prince of Troy as being by another stallion. Its DNA simply wouldn’t fit.’
‘Oh,’ I said. So that was one wild theory I could disregard. ‘So what now happens to the remains?’
‘That will be up to Mr Chadwick. Once we have finished our examination of the scene, disposal and clean up of the site will be his problem, not ours, provided he does so in keeping with the law.’
The chief inspector opened the door and stood there waiting for me to go out. He was determined that the interview was over.
‘His Highness Sheikh Karim has instructed me to remain in Newmarket for as long as it takes to discover the reason for the death of his horses. He is concerned that his decision to move two fillies from Ryan to Declan Chadwick may have exacerbated the bad feeling between the brothers and that may have had some bearing on the circumstances of the fire.’
‘Mr Foster, please leave the detective work to us.’
‘But...’
‘No buts,’ interrupted the policeman. ‘I hear what you are saying. All scenarios will be considered, thank you. But I must now ask you to leave so that I can get back to examining the evidence.’
‘Anything to help,’ I said, walking out of the door. ‘You have my card. Call me if you need anything.’
I thought the chance of the detective ever calling me was slim to non-existent but I didn’t want to be accused of obstructing the police, and I had no intention of leaving Newmarket just yet.
‘Do whatever the Sheikh tells you. He’s paying us, and handsomely. If he wants you to stay in Newmarket, you stay there.’ ASW was in full flow down the phone line. ‘I’ll get Georgina to negotiate a better rate with the hotel for a long-term stay.’
‘I need some more information,’ I said.
‘Shoot.’
‘Further depth concerning the whole Chadwick family and in particular about the daughter, Zoe Robertson, and her husband, Peter.’
ASW didn’t ask me why I needed the information. If I’d asked for it, he assumed I must need it. That was enough.
‘I’ll get the research team on it straight away. Top priority. Something should be with you by the morning.’
The Simpson White Research Team was the rather grandiose name for two young men in the Motcomb Street office, only just old enough to be allowed out of school, who were absolute wizards on the internet and could seemingly discover everything there was to know about anyone. They bounced ideas off each other and could hack into almost anything digital.
No one’s secrets were safe from them.
Knowledge was power, ASW claimed, and his operatives were to have more knowledge than anyone else.
All we craved was the wisdom to use it properly.
‘Anything else?’ ASW asked.
‘You could always send Rufus up,’ I said. ‘He’s forgotten more about horses than I’ll ever know. He’d enjoy himself here.’
‘I’m sure he would, but he’s still in Italy. Seems the wine company’s complete year’s production is contaminated by lactic acid bacteria. The whole lot’s off, hundreds of thousands of bottles of the damn stuff already in stores all over Europe. And now they’ve gone and publicly denied it’s their fault. It’s another Perrier disaster and Rufus is trying to arrest the meltdown.’
Rather him than me, I thought.
The response to the discovery of toxic benzene in Perrier’s ‘naturally carbonated’ sparkling mineral water in the early 1990s remains one of the prime crisis-management examples of how not to handle a major problem. There was a lack of a coherent response from the French company, with confusion created by contradictory statements, and then the media was given incorrect information, in particular about the way the so-called ‘natural’ carbonation of the water was achieved. The resulting drop in public confidence and market share has never been reversed.