Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

Dennis had tried to stop her but at six thirty, she’d turned on Midlands Today . It had been the top story, trailed over the pulsing theme music. ‘Police launch a murder enquiry after an Edgbaston house fire leaves a woman dead and her son with life-threatening injuries.’ A preview of other stories to come – three teenagers jailed for a knife attack; a planning controversy; a woman looking for a bone-marrow donor – and then straight to it. Nick Owen – silver-haired, kind-eyed. He’d been the presenter since they were at school, it had to be twenty years, and now he was saying Corinna’s name.

He cut to a reporter at the scene. Russell Road, where Rin and Josh lived, was busy, the woman talking over a hum of rush-hour traffic, but the houses themselves were set back behind a verge lined with trees and a small service road now cordoned off. The reporter was a few feet outside the tape, backed by a fire investigation van and a square white forensics tent. They had a uniform at the foot of Corinna’s driveway.

Floodlights blazed over the area, and the bare February branches gave the scene a weird gothic beauty. But then the reporter had turned aside, the camera panned out and they saw the house itself. Across the room, Christine had gasped.

When she was little, Lennie had called Corinna and Josh’s the ‘snowman house’. Built in the Thirties with some Deco influence, its white stucco façade looked out from under the hat of a steep dark-tiled roof like a cheeky face, or – with the small round porthole just under the roofline – a winking emoticon. A long stained-glass window – the carrot – lit the central stairs, and the bigger, horizontal windows of the bedrooms made the eyes.

The glass was gone, shattered by the heat, and the eyes were black and gaping, lascivious soot tongues licking over the stucco above each one. The size of them – the flames must have been eight or nine feet high. The creepers either side of the front door were burned to a network of fine charcoal, intricate etchings across a face now rendered macabre, a painted Mexican skull for the Day of the Dead.

Just visible against the evening sky, beyond the reach of the floodlights, was a hole at the apex of the roof, the supporting timber burned away, tiles collapsing inward like fish-scales. Peter. The skylights were at the back of the house, Robin knew, one over the back stairs, the other – the one he must surely have jumped from – in his room, over his bed, surrounded by his glow-stars. She imagined his terror at waking to find the house on fire around him. Had his door been open? Had it come into his room? The smell; the sheer noise: roaring flame, groaning timbers, the shattering glass.

Dennis had taken her hand, squeezed it so hard her knuckles ground together, and she’d heard the reporter say, ‘… DI Webster. To confirm, this is a murder investigation?’

The camera moved to a man of about forty-five wearing a wax jacket over a suit. Broad face, short brown hair greying at the temples. Large brown eyes.

‘That is how we’re treating it, yes,’ he said. ‘Obviously, the fire damage is significant so it’ll take time to establish exactly what happened here but we do have evidence that the fire was started deliberately.’

‘And you’re appealing for help from the public?’

He looked directly at the camera. ‘Yes. We’re keen to talk to anyone who was in the Edgbaston area last night and saw or heard anything that struck them as unusual. We’re also appealing to anyone who may have seen Josh Legge or believe they know his whereabouts. Mr Legge was last seen late yesterday evening, shortly before the fire started, but not since then, and we’re particularly anxious to talk to him.’

A photograph appeared onscreen. Robin recognized it: Boxing Day two years ago, she’d been there when Kath took it. Josh was standing by the sitting-room fireplace, a glass of wine in his hand, wearing the chunky grey jumper Rin had given him for Christmas and the saggy old dad jeans she mocked him for. Kath had caught him at the end of a laugh, eyes narrowed, the corners of his mouth turned up, emphasizing a dimple in his right cheek. Robin had seen the expression a thousand times – Josh laughed easily, he was such a soft target – and yet it seemed transfigured now, the half-closed eyes not twinkling, fanned by smile lines, but narrowed to calculate, look askance, the smile not open but wry. Sly. As if in front of the Christmas fire, his family around him, he was envisaging the future, raising a toast.

‘We’re advising anyone who sees Mr Legge not to approach him but to dial 999 or contact the incident room directly on this number.’

Robin had felt a flare of frustration: were West Midlands Police up to this? They were presenting him as their suspect but what evidence did they have? They couldn’t have any: he hadn’t done it. All that talk of other lines of enquiry – as far as she could see, it was nothing but lip service. There was nothing new in the report, not a single bit of information she hadn’t heard from Thomas and Patel hours ago.

Was he SIO, this Webster? If they had a DI leading, they were treating it like a simple domestic murder, a self-solver, and it was hardly that, was it, hardly the husband turning himself in at the nick, clutching the carving knife. Was he competent? He’d done all right on camera, but that was no gauge. With his broad face and wide-spaced brown eyes, the impression he gave was bovine: Aberdeen Angus in a green wax jacket.

DS Thomas had been the opposite. In the dark of the bottom bunk now, Robin felt her face go hot. You were in the job yourself, weren’t you? She hadn’t been ready for the shame. I’m not this person, she’d wanted to say as she’d sat in that godawful armchair, D-list celeb on a wedding throne; I’m a good detective – really good. This is short-term, a cock-up; I’d never buy an aqua three-piece suite!

And Samir. Their guv’nor. What would he tell them?

Lennie shifted, turning her face towards the pillow, and Robin peeled her arm from round her stomach, feeling the sweat between their bodies. The window was open and the garden glittered with frost but the cold air reached a foot into the room then stopped, repelled by the central heating. Even the wall behind her was warm.

Corinna was dead, Josh missing. Her best friends, and there was nothing she could do. She was a DCI in the Met, not even borough CID but an operational command unit, and there was nothing she could do. Whatever her skills, however well she knew the victims, she was powerless: she had to leave it to West Midlands Police. And even then, said another voice, sly, how thorough did she really want them to be?

She’d done her best but Christine was too quick. In the time it had taken Robin to get down the path and into the car, her mother had somehow lost the apron, gained a pair of shoes, a jacket and – could it be? – some lipstick and materialized at Maggie’s window.

Maggie lowered the glass. ‘Hiya, love.’ She reached her hand out and took Christine’s, perma-tan, rings and forest-green nails meeting pale, moisturized, French-manicured. Robin knew Maggie took pride in subverting expectation but still, after a lifetime, she was completely bamboozled by the friendship between the two of them. It was real friendship, decades long: Maggie was woven all through Robin’s childhood memories, not only there at Christmas drinks and summer barbecues but the person who stayed to do the washing-up and ended up sitting in the garden until the houses across the fence went dark and the only light in the sky was pollution. They went out together too, dinner and drinks, any film Dennis baulked at. Not that there were many, he was a sucker for a rom-com – his favourite film was The Wedding Singer – but Maggie was Christine’s partner for the dramas, anything emotionally gruelling. About monthly, when she’d been at school, Robin remembered, her mother would get back from their outings after eleven, relaxed – for her – and pink with Chardonnay. What the hell did they find to talk about?