Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

“Maybe Elaine was afraid of Roberta.”

“Elaine was never home when Roberta came during the week,” said Fanny. “And now that I think of it, the few times Roberta dropped by unannounced on a weekend, Elaine went straight up to her room without meeting her. And then on Sundays, of course, she was always out of the house.”

“That settles it, then.” Winnie’s pleasant face glowed with missionary zeal. “We’ll ring Roberta straightaway.”

Winnie had drawn her mobile from her belt and flipped it open when Gemma felt hers vibrate. Gemma pulled her phone from its clip, murmuring, “Sorry, sorry,” and feeling absurdly like a dueling gunslinger in an old western.

It was Kincaid. She found her throat suddenly tight and had to swallow before she answered. “Hey,” she said lightly. “I’m sorry about-”

“Gemma, hang on a second.” She caught the muffled slur of his voice as he spoke to someone else, then he came back on the line. He hadn’t heard her, she realized. He hadn’t heard her at all.

“Gemma, listen,” he said without preamble. “I need your help. Do you still have the list of names you and Doug found in Laura Novak’s house?”

SHE HADN’T THOUGHT of what she would do with the child. She hadn’t thought past wanting to hurt him, to punish him for discarding her without even a thought of apology, as if she had never been more than a convenience.

Nor had she meant to come back to this house ever again. She’d locked it up after her mother’s funeral, set up an account out of her parents’ estate to pay the taxes, so that there’d be no connection with the new name she’d taken, and walked away. Why she hadn’t sold the place, she’d never quite been able to fathom. When she tried to think about it, her mind slithered sideways and the memories crowded, clamoring, at the gates she’d refused to breach.

But then Tony had betrayed her; she had taken his daughter – oh, so easily – and there had been nowhere else to go. And the house had settled back around her, the smells and sounds fastening into her flesh like little claws, making it more and more difficult to separate the past from the present.

The room drew her – but no, there was another child in the room now, a different little girl who had been bad. Or had she? The confusion made her feel ill. She hadn’t slept, despite the pills she’d taken from Fanny, nor had she eaten much. The bits of food she’d found in the pantry stuck in her throat, dry as the dust of the years gone by.

When she tried to close her eyes, she saw the stairwell spinning, the bottom rushing towards her like a vortex. What had she done? No, she hadn’t meant the girl to fall, hadn’t pushed her, no, not this time.

Or had she?

All she knew for certain was that she had to get out, out of this house, before it devoured her. But where could she go? Not back to Fanny’s, not back to her job at the hospital – all that was finished, a life that seemed as distant as another universe. But… she had created a new life before; she could do it again. A new name, a new place, a new story – any story but this.

But what of the child? She climbed the stairs and stood outside the door. There was no sound from within. What would she find if she looked inside?

She should open the door, she knew, but the fear swept through her, leaving her trembling and sick. What child would she let out, if she opened the door? Would she ever be free of the little girl who had lived in that room?

At last she turned and retraced her way down the stairs, and as she went out of the house, she locked the door behind her.

Rose wiped her hands against the legs of her jeans for perhaps the hundredth time. Her fingertips had begun to crack from the hours of contact with the dry and dusty paper, and her throat felt parched as sandpaper. She had shifted position from table to floor and back to the table, but her back ached as if she’d been carrying hose all day.

“Want some coffee?” Bill Farrell asked as he set another stack of folders beside her. The initial reserve she’d felt with him had evaporated over the long day, and by now she’d almost forgotten to think of him as a senior officer.

“No, thanks,” she said, looking at the cups littering the room. “If I get any more buzzed I’ll have to run laps round the room while I read these bloody things.” She stared in dismay at the number of boxes yet to examine and tried not to rub the dirt on her fingers into her eyes.

At least the photo brought by Superintendent Kincaid had allowed them to organize their search more efficiently. Farrell had begun by winnowing out only applicants who were male and Caucasian for Rose’s perusal – with the help of the photo he was able to narrow his selection to those applicants whose photos bore at least some resemblance to the man caught by the security cam.

But in the end, it was Rose, rummaging through a fresh box on her own while Farrell had gone for more coffee, who found the file.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, looking from the application photo to the print, then staring back at the file in stunned astonishment.

When Farrell came back into the room, she was standing, waving the folder at him. “You’re not going to believe this. His name is Jimmy Braidwood.”

“What?” Farrell set the coffee down among the files on the table, careless of the sloshing, and coming to stand beside her, looked at the file. “You’re not serious? As in James Braidwood?”

James Braidwood had been the celebrated superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment, and he had been killed in the great Tooley Street fire of 1861, crushed under a falling wall. “Yeah. Although it’s just ‘Jimmy’ on the application, not ‘James.’ No wonder this guy has such a thing about Victorian fires.”

“And you’re sure it’s him?”

She looked again at the photos, comparing them both with her memory of the man glimpsed so briefly at the scene of the fire, and a rush of nausea made her swallow hard. “Yes. And look,” she added, flipping through the file. “He aced both the written and physical exams. It says he was rejected due to psychological assessment. There’s a note attached by the interviewer.”

She read it aloud. “Mr. Braidwood demonstrates a profound lack of the cooperative skills needed in today’s firefighting environment. He also displays a marked bias against females and persons of color, and in my opinion, suffers from delusions concerning an imagined connection with the legendary James Braidwood, and is a likely candidate for antisocial behavior.”

Farrell whistled. “Good God. The bastard’s a psychopath.”

Rose’s queasiness gave way to an icy calm. “We knew that,” she said with cold conviction, thinking of Bryan Simms’s burned and broken body.

Bill Farrell took the file from her and flipped back to the opening page. “At the time of application, he was employed by a private security firm-”

“The uniform.” Rose saw again the flash of dark blue sleeve.

“And it gives his home address as Blackfriars Road. If we’re right, he’s certainly set his fires close to home.”

“And he’s escalating in leaps and bounds. What I don’t understand is why he killed Laura Novak. Could she have somehow learned what he was doing?”

“There’s no obvious connection between them.” Farrell looked again at the CCTV photo, his brow creased in concentration. “From the video, it looks as if he happened to see the door that Chloe Yarwood had left open. But he works for a security firm, so he might have known, or guessed, that the premises across the street had a surveillance camera-”