Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

‘Ugh. The Marie Celeste , with extra charcoal.’

Fry lacked the energy to answer Gavin this time, let alone to shut him up. It was too early in the morning, and she was too depressed at having been on call when something like this came in. Derbyshire’s E Division didn’t catch an incident like this more than once every ten years or so. Of course, Edendale had house fires like anywhere else, but it was bad luck when someone died in one. Today was unlucky all round.

At least the structure of the building was intact. From the street, it had been hard to tell that anything serious had happened, except for the broken windows and the scorch marks where flames had licked the walls. It might just have been a rowdy party that had got out of hand. Inside, it was a different story. Whether the story was anything to do with her, Fry had yet to find out.

Fry tried to tune down her senses as she followed the approach path towards the tape that marked the inner cordon. She realized that the hallway smelled a bit like her kitchen — charred bacon and evaporated steam. When it was her turn to kick the bucket, this was the way she imagined it would be. She’d be a kitchen accident statistic, one more victim of a faulty toaster, killed by an exploding microwave. Death in the throes of breakfast.

At the foot of the stairs, she turned right into the sitting room, keeping carefully to the stepping plates. Judging by what the neighbours reported, the occupants of 32 Darwin Street had been taken by surprise. Six weeks ago, Lindsay Mullen had ordered a new carpet for her lounge. It had a deep, thick pile, and it was a shade of cream Lindsay had always wanted, but her husband insisted wasn’t practical. It would show up the dirt, he’d said. It was a shameful waste of money.

Royal Wilton in chamomile, that was it. According to the uniforms who’d taken initial statements, the lady in the house to the left had heard the entire argument as Brian Mullen left for work one morning.

Fry looked around the wrecked lounge. Mr Mullen had been right. The carpet was black now, and trampled with charred debris. Dozens of boot prints had sunk into two inches of filthy sludge.

The problem was, the bottom edge of the door into the kitchen had sealed so tightly against the new Wilton that there was no gap for air to get through. When the sofa ignited, thick smoke would have filled this room in minutes, choking fumes that seared the lungs and stung the eyes. If only a few wisps of it had seeped under the door into the kitchen, they might have reached the smoke alarm, and the outcome could have been different. Unlike so many others, the Mullens’ alarm had been working, the batteries recently replaced. It just hadn’t detected any smoke until it was too late. Far too late.

‘They never stood a bloody chance, did they?’ said Murfin.

Fry glanced at him. His flippancy was gone, and he was sweating a little despite the draught stirring the curtains behind him. Of course, Gavin was a family man, with children of his own. There were some things that got to you, no matter how hard you tried to keep up the exterior.

‘They say it’s better to die of smoke inhalation than burn to death, anyway,’ she said, though she didn’t expect it to help. Her own flesh still crawled at the thought of the flames.

She looked away from Murfin before he could distract her concentration. This room had been packed with plastics, too — TV, video recorder, racks of CDs and DVDs, boxes full of children’s toys under a shelf in the corner. Most of the toys were just a molten mess now, multi-coloured pools of lava that had run on to the carpet and congealed in the spray from the firemen’s hoses. There were recognizable shapes here and there — the twisted controls of a PlayStation console, the burned edge of a Monopoly game. The head and one arm of a Barbie doll waved from a skin-toned puddle, like someone drowning in a sea of their own flesh. Something scorched and wooden gazed accusingly at her from blackened eyes.

Then a tiny flash of colour caught her attention. A glint of bright yellow, like a drop of sunlight in the blackness. She crouched towards the floor and gently blew away the ash. A broken section of Monopoly board lay at her feet: Piccadilly and the Water Works.

Of course, the untreated polyurethane foam in the furniture had been the real problem. Brian Mullen had definitely had a point. Lindsay could have spent her money more wisely if she’d replaced the cheap sofa instead of the carpet. The outcome really could have been different. For a start, her children might still be alive.

When she walked through into the kitchen, Fry found it almost pristine and untouched, apart from a few muddy footprints on the vinyl flooring. From the condition of the teak-effect units and the white painted walls, she would never have guessed there had been a fire at all. She felt as though she’d stepped out of one film set and into another, where an entirely different story was taking place. This one suggested a harmless domestic comedy — a family eating breakfast together in their spotless kitchen, Mum and Dad and the kids, all chattering and laughing, hurrying to get ready for work or school. Behind her, the other room might have been the scene of a cheap horror film, except the credits had already rolled and the crew had packed up and gone home.

‘Diane, do you want to have a look upstairs?’ called Murfin, without enthusiasm.

‘Yes, in a minute.’

Fry took a last look at the kitchen, with its silent smoke alarm. She noticed that the cooker was new, too. A Smeg dual-fuel with air-cooling system. A thousand pounds or so, she guessed. Money wasn’t all that short in the Mullen household, after all.

She went back through the sitting room and joined Gavin at the foot of the stairs. She wasn’t sure that she needed to visit the bedrooms. They might have been where the victims died, but they weren’t where the fire had started. If there had been a crime committed, it was here on the ground floor that the evidence would be found, surely?

As she was debating with herself, Murfin settled the question by hauling himself slowly up the stairs, sighing at every step. Fry had no choice but to follow him.

And, in a way, the bedrooms weren’t quite so bad. It was clear that the flames hadn’t reached here. The furniture was almost untouched, though covered by a layer of soot. The covers of the beds had been pulled back, revealing clean, unmarked sheets. The first room she saw might simply have been waiting for Lindsay Mullen to come home and clean up the mess. Apart from the markers where her body had lain when she collapsed from smoke inhalation, of course.

‘Have you got the photos there, Gavin?’

Murfin grunted and passed her the file. Fry had seen the photographs before she came out, and remembered the condition of Lindsay’s body, the cotton pyjamas she’d been wearing, with the left leg rucked up to expose a thin, white calf. Her face was only visible in the close-ups, turned to the right, her left cheek pressed tightly to the floor.

It wasn’t Lindsay Mullen’s face that Fry was interested in, but the position of her body, the angle of her limbs. She turned one of the photos to align it with the room, and checked the direction of the door. Lindsay had almost certainly been going the wrong way. It wasn’t too difficult to picture her, blinded and disorientated by darkness and dense smoke, feeling her way frantically round the walls in an effort to find the door, while her children screamed in the next room. It wasn’t difficult at all. In fact, it was too easy for comfort.

‘Next room, Gavin,’ she said.

‘That’s the kids’ bedroom.’

‘I know that.’

Jack and Liam Mullen had died without leaving their beds, according to the incident reports. They woke up choking, and died from the effects of smoke inhalation. Died calling for their mum, probably.