Peter Lovesey - The Circle

Lacking a loudhailer, she put her hands to her mouth and shouted. 'Police. Get down, get down, get down. Face down on the ground, hands stretched in front of you.'

Total compliance. Thomasine sank down.

'Move yourself, Johnny!' Hen shouted.

Johnny Cherry stepped into the pool of light and handcuffed her.

'Bring her in here.'

Seconds after Thomasine was bundled inside, the security light went out.

'I'm just praying he didn't see that,' Hen said. 'If he did, we might as well all go home and watch TV.' To Thomasine, she said, 'What were you playing at? Oh, don't bother. You looked at the website and worked out what was happening.'

'I didn't know you would be here,' Thomasine said, her eyes awash with shock and humiliation.

'My job, isn't it? Johnny, take her into a back room somewhere and cuff her to a radiator. We've got a real situation to deal with — if she hasn't fouled it up.'

Before Johnny had marched Thomasine out of the room, Hen's radio crackled. Duncan's voice. 'Porsche just arrived,' guv.'

She could hear it herself moving up the drive.

'Thank God for that. Talk about nip and tuck.'

She slammed the front door and returned to her observation point upstairs. If Lord Chalybeate decided to enter the house instead of using the sauna he'd find it as he would expect.

The security light was activated again. The Porsche came to a halt on the gravel area in front of the house. Hen swayed back from the window so as not to be caught in the light. She couldn't see Chalybeate, but she heard the car door slam, followed by steps across the gravel that seemed to be going away from the house. She risked leaning closer to the window.

He was definitely walking towards the detached wooden building that was the sauna.

She let out a long breath and muttered, 'Have a good sweat.'

Now the real stake-out could begin. Breathing more easily, she got back in radio contact and told her team, 'The heat's on, boys and girls.'

They were under orders to keep watch, keep in contact and do nothing until they got the order from her. According to Kate the housekeeper, Chalybeate took about forty minutes over his sauna. Patience was wanted now. The security light had gone off. All was quiet.

Her thoughts focused on the arsonist, waiting somewhere in the darkness with a can of petrol and some rags. Killers may be cunning, but they seem incapable of changing their m.o. Why mess with a formula that works? But there was a change here, an enforced change. The timing had to be earlier than usual. Would that be a disincentive? Hen hoped not. In open country here, well back from the road, with no other neighbour within hailing distance, there was no need to delay until the small hours.

Another cigar.

The suspense was hard to endure. She would have avoided this tiger trap with its attendant risks if at all possible. She preferred a simple knock on a suspect's door. In this case it was not possible.

Chalybeate had turned on the interior light of the sauna and the windows on two sides were sharply outlined. Steam suffused with light was already wafting from the tops of the windows and the little chimney on the pitched roof.

Fifteen minutes passed, and seemed like fifty.

Then the radio silence was broken. Stella's voice. Stella's position was close to the sauna. 'Someone approaching.'

'Okay, this is it, Stell. Don't go too soon. I want them stinking of petrol, right?' She radioed everyone and ordered them to move in closer to the sauna and await the order.

Steam in large amounts was billowing from the sauna. It was easy to picture the middle-aged, bollock-naked man inside, ladling water on the hot stones, unaware of the arsonist closing in, or the police in wait. He'd never have agreed to do this.

But it put a heavy responsibility on Hen to get the timing right.

'Guv?'

'Stell?'

'Suspect at the door.'

'Okay,' Hen said in as calm a voice as she could manage. Everyone on the team was listening. 'Can you see the can?'

'Not yet, but I think the door's open.'

This had to be it. She couldn't risk waiting any longer.

'Go, go, go!'

She'd have liked to lead the charge, but she had to get down the stairs and across the drive to the sauna entrance. She was in time to see in the glare of the lights the suspect felled like a tree as three of the team grabbed at the same instant. The resistance was brief and useless, the cuffs in place and a hood over the head.

'Top result,' she said. 'Bring 'im in the house.'

Keen to see who the prisoner was, they streamed through the front door and into the hall and surrounded Hen and the prisoner. She asked Shilling to remove the hood. There were gasps from the team.

Hen said,'Idon't believe this.'

They had nicked Bob Naylor.

He was blinking a lot. 'Something in my eye,' he said. 'Do I have to wear these bracelets?'

'What was he carrying?' Hen asked Stella.

'Nothing, guv.'

'No petrol? Smell his hands.'

Shilling lifted the cuffed hands and sniffed at them, causing the prisoner to bow. 'Nothing I can tell, guv.'

'What the hell were you up to?' Hen asked Naylor when he'd been allowed to straighten up.

'Look, my eye's giving me gyp.'

Ridiculous. 'Someone give me a tissue,' Hen said.

Stella produced one and Hen wiped the corner of Naylor's eye. 'Now will you tell us what you're doing here?'

His words came in a burst. 'I was trying to find Thomasine, wasn't I? She's here somewhere. Her car's on the road outside. I get back from work today and listen to my calls and there's this message she's left and some others about a website I ought to be looking at, so my daughter got it up on the screen and I guessed straight away what Thomasine was up to. Bloody dangerous, going it alone, but she's like that — fearless. It took me some time to find out where Lord Chalybeate's place is, but I did, and came looking.' He paused. 'She's got to be somewhere around here.'

'In the back room,' Hen said with resignation. 'You two have screwed up an entire police operation. Why couldn't you leave it to us?'

'Guv.'

Hen turned to listen to Stella, who was by the door. 'What's that?'

'The sauna's on fire.'

And it was well alight, flames and sparks leaping high into the night sky.

It couldn't get any worse than this. Now there was a helpless man about to be incinerated.

She told Stella to call the fire service. Then she raced across the drive with the rest of them to see what they could do.

Not much. The door to the sauna stood open and the fire had ripped through the ventilated area where you were supposed to cool off. Chalybeate's only chance of survival was that the closed inner room of the sauna was insulated to hold in the heat. But it was all made of timber and would soon be ablaze.

'No way we can reach him,'Johnny said. 'Can't get through that lot to the inner room.'

'Then we'll force our way in through the walls.' Hen looked around for something to use. There wasn't much at the front of the house.

The sauna had a solid look. Chalybeate didn't go in for flimsy building. This wasn't a job for shoulders. Or boots.

She stared across the drive.

'Can someone start the car, please?'

'The Porsche?' Johnny said.

Hen didn't answer. There was only one car in view.

'Duncan?'

DC Shilling knew about cars. First he opened the door of the Porsche and checked that the key wasn't inside. Then he released the bonnet lid and started loosening the leads to make a contact. The ignition fired and the engine started. He slammed down the lid.