It was very apparent where the seat of the fire had been.
There was a huddle of people scrummed down near the bonnet of one of the police cars: cops, fire fighters and Tara Wickson. Tara was gesticulating wildly. One of the cops was trying to keep her calm, using soothing hand movements. Henry recognized one of the uniformed cops, and another of the plain-clothed variety.
He held back a second, made up his mind, and approached the conflab.
Tara Wickson saw him coming and the frustration and exasperation in her body language seemed to wither and die. Her shoulders drooped. She broke away from the group of officials and made toward him. She stopped in front of him, her face a brave mask, which immediately crumbled. She bowed her head and started to sob in big, raking breaths which rattled her small frame.
‘Get hold of me, Henry,’ she pleaded. ‘Squeeze me.’
Making sure there was no possible sexual connotation to this act, he put his arms around her and did as she wanted, though for the life of him he did not know why he did it. Instinct? He patted her back and almost said, ‘There, there.’
The detective Henry had recognized came and stood behind Tara, a disgusted expression on her face. She grimaced at him over Tara.
‘Henry, what the hell are you doing here?’ She surveyed him, head tilted back, eyes looking down her nose.
Henry managed a shrug. ‘Hello, Jane.’ Tara stepped back and wiped her hands down her tear-stained face.
DI Jane Roscoe shook her head in disbelief.
This, Henry thought sardonically, was always going to be the problem: the distinct possibility of doing some unofficial digging on behalf of someone and bumping into the real cops who would get very shirty at any encroachment on to their patch. And in this case, to make matters worse, a real cop with whom he had recently been ‘involved’ and who was also a witness in the internal discipline proceedings being brought against him.
With a bit of soft prodding and cooing words, Henry managed to steer Tara Wickson back to the house, where in the kitchen he made a pot of tea for her and left her in the capable hands of a policewoman who looked pretty bloody annoyed to be doing such womanly work. ‘Does it have to be a woman looking after her?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘This is so sexist.’ She folded her arms underneath her ample bosom.
‘It’s called caring for victims,’ Henry told her in reaction to the expression on her face.
The policewoman almost sneered at him.
‘Someone’s got to do it,’ he added. Political correctness interfering with the practicalities of policing often irked him intensely. To Tara, he said, ‘I’ll be back to have a chat once I’ve had a word with the detective inspector, OK?’ The proximity of the policewoman made him aver from adding the word ‘love’ at the end of his sentence. She would probably have thought it sexist and patronizing.
Jane Roscoe was still in discussion with the Fire Service when Henry got back to the scene. She was deep into it and Henry did not interrupt.
He took the opportunity to have a closer look at the seat of the fire — in a row of loose boxes now completely flattened, charred and blackened. There were a couple of fire fighters still damping down and ensuring the fire would not reignite, spraying copious amounts of brown water on the debris from hoses they had run all the way down to the River Wyre. They were pretty much destroying any chance of recovering any useful evidence. Henry did not comment. Not his problem.
It was a mess. Out of a block of six stables, three had been completely destroyed, one partially burned down, the two remaining seeming relatively untouched. A building adjacent to the block had also been razed to the ground. Henry stood back and let his eyes wander around the devastation. He sniffed the air. In the smoke there was the unmistakable reek which Henry recognized straight away. One of those smells that, once inhaled, is never forgotten: the smell of burned flesh.
In this case, he assumed, horse flesh.
He gagged a little at the combination of the smell and the thought. The memory of the severed ear came back vividly to him.
Jane Roscoe was nodding at the Chief Fire Officer in such a way as to indicate their conversation was concluding. She shook his hand, broke away and walked to Henry. He watched her and, under his scrutiny, she dropped her gaze and looked away until she reached him. She stood a couple of feet away from him, raised her face and stared challengingly at him.
‘Hello, Henry.’
‘Jane.’ He nearly bowed.
‘Nasty business,’ she observed.
He was not completely certain what she meant. There could easily have been a double meaning in her words because of their past history.
‘This, you mean?’ He jerked his head towards the remnants of the stables.
‘What else would I be referring to?’ she said flatly. ‘Of course I mean the bloody fire.’
‘Fair dos,’ he said, backing off. ‘What happened?’
‘The stables have burned down.’
Mmm, he thought weakly. This was plainly not going to be easy. It was blindingly obvious Jane was still very prickly about the way things had ended between them and she wasn’t going to give him an easy ride.
‘I’ll have that. But why have they burned down?’
‘Because they’ve been set on fire?’
‘Stop it, Jane.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘What’s it got to do with you anyway?’
‘Mrs Wickson has asked me to do a bit of poking around for her.’
Jane snorted. ‘Poking around for her? Or poking around in her?’
‘Stop it,’ he warned her again.
‘OK, OK, OK, I’ve stopped. Honest.’
‘Apparently some of the horses have been mutilated in the past and the police haven’t been very, let’s say, result-orientated. She asked if I’d do a bit of snooping for her, see if I could turn anything up. . then this happens even before I come and do an initial inquiry.’
‘You being a detective on suspension with no powers and no backup and plenty of time on your hands?’ Jane interrupted.
‘Something like that,’ Henry said. His voice was beginning to betray his growing annoyance, which seemed to please Jane by the look on her face. He guessed she might just enjoy some sadistic pleasure in winding him up.
‘Is that such a good idea?’ she wanted to know.
‘Probably not, but I’m doing it as a favour for her and I’m not getting paid for it in any way, shape or form,’ he said pointedly, ‘and because the local plods haven’t really done anything much to help in the past, is there anything to suggest things are going to be different just because there’s been a fire here? I can’t see I’ll be treading on anybody’s toes, because it’s more than likely there won’t be any cops walking around here, doing their jobs, will there?’ He sounded like Mr Moaner from Whinge Crescent, Cops ’r’ Crapsville — and he quite liked his little tirade from the other side of the fence.
A smoke-filled silence descended between them, broken when Jane said, ‘I miss you, Henry.’
‘And I miss you, too, Jane, but we need to move on.’ It sounded hard and the words did not come easily out of his mouth.
‘You bastard.’
‘Maybe. . but can we get on with this? If you’re going to help me, fine. If not I’ll just dig around for info by myself. Actually, we might be of benefit to each other. I’ll let you know what I find out, if you do the same for me.’
‘I’ll see,’ she relented.
‘I take it you’re the night cover DI?’
‘For my sins — and they are plenty.’ She gave Henry a long, appraising look, swallowed and nodded, as if accepting the icy situation between them. It was obviously over and out.
‘Is this an accident?’ Henry asked about the fire. He sniffed up, smelling the petrol fumes.