It clings to you now, denying you light, hope, warmth. Day after day after day. But you never get used to it. Night and day – it’s hard to tell one from the other. Existence seems to stretch out far in front of you – long and pointless. You want to kill yourself but somehow can’t muster the energy. You are lost for ever, wandering around and around but always ending up at the same point. And there’s no one with you here, no one to guide you to safety. You are all alone. YOU ARE LOST.
THAT’S what winter feels like to me.
But this one is different. A good deal worse and a whole lot better. This year I am taking control of the situation – and the angels are on my side. I saw what people said online about the fire at the Millbrook – they said it was hideous, ugly, an abomination. But not to me. I thought it was beautiful.
‘Everyone’s here now, so let’s begin.’
It was only 8 a.m. but already the incident room was packed. Crime scene photos from the three fire sites adorned the walls and data officers were logging and labelling the many hours of footage – both police and amateur – that had been taken from last night’s incidents. Nearly everybody present had been up half the night, yet they had all assembled punctually, as Helen had requested.
‘I don’t have any detailed forensics for you yet,’ Helen continued, ‘but we are treating all three fires as arson. There was a strong smell of paraffin on the ground floor of the Simms house and at the timber yard. Both Thomas Simms and Dominic Travell have confirmed there was no paraffin stored on site. Presuming the same is true at Bertrand’s Emporium, then we can assume that all three fires were started deliberately by a person or persons unknown. CCTV was deactivated at Travell’s, Bertrand’s didn’t have any and of course there wasn’t any at the domestic property in Millbrook. We’ll see if street cameras picked up anything but it’s likely to have been busy at that time – it was kicking-out time from the pubs. The fires were extremely fierce and extensive so it’s very likely that any on-site traces of the perpetrator – DNA, hairs, fibres – were destroyed, plus the ground outside was frosty and hard, so we weren’t able to find any obvious tyre tracks or footprints. Which means… we’re going to have to rely on some old-fashioned detective work. I’ll pull in as many uniformed officers as I can as we’ll need to be knocking on doors, seeing if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious. DC Edwards, are you ok to coordinate this for me?’
