A Body in the Lakes by Graham Smith (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

Seventy-Four

There was nothing quite like the smell from a house fire. It held elements of woodsmoke from burnt timber, traces of charred fabrics and the unmistakable stench of electrical components that had been caught in the blaze.

The house’s roof was intact, but all of the windows had blown out and the raging flames had left soot stains on the walls above each opening. Old houses like this one with their lath and plaster walls burned quickly due to the amount of tinder-dry timber within the construction.

Firefighters moved through the wreckage of the house and there were several different agencies represented. The police were there, as was a fire investigator, and tragically, also one of the vans used to transport bodies to the mortuary.

The fire investigator had a dog sitting patiently at his side. Beth surmised it would be an Accelerant Dog, trained to identify the use of substances such as petrol or kerosene in cases where arson was suspected.

A TV news crew were present, as was a crowd of onlookers.

Beth stood with O’Dowd and looked at the house as two firemen carried out a stretcher bearing a body bag. She knew it was more her imagination than anything else, but Beth would have sworn she could smell the roasted pork scent of charred human flesh.

There would have to be a formal identification, but Beth knew it was Derek Forster’s body which was being loaded into the back of the plain white van. A firefighter had told Beth and O’Dowd the body had been found in the remains of a four-poster bed.

That Forster had stayed in his bed suggested to Beth that he died from smoke inhalation rather than being burnt alive. It was a small mercy in the circumstances.

The overriding feeling that Beth had was one of guilt. She’d failed to save Forster. Had fallen asleep when she was guarding him. She’d failed to awaken him or even get through the door and drag him out.

There was also disappointment. She believed in, and wanted, Forster’s charity to be established, but she knew that with him dead, the charity would never be founded without its main driving force and principal benefactor. She could have a stab at it herself, but without Forster and his connections, she’d be fighting a battle she was never going to win.

The fire investigator beckoned them over, his head shaking with an unvoiced fury.

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’re looking at murder. There’s a brick in the middle of the floor in what I’m guessing was a study. There were also remnants of a broken bottle there and an intense burning that’s synonymous with an accelerant.’ He pulled a face as he ruffled the back of the Accelerant Dog’s neck. ‘Nige here barked his head off when I took him near the bottle. There’s no doubt in my mind this was arson.’

Beth got the picture at once. Someone had lobbed a brick through Forster’s window and had followed it up with a petrol bomb.

It was a simple way to start a fire, and what it lacked in subtlety, it made up for in effectiveness.

Another wave of guilt hit Beth. If she’d not abandoned her job to attend the party, Forster may still be alive. The same applied to her date with Ethan. Had she been working on her theory about the mayor being targeted by someone other than the Lakeland Ripper, she may have been able to prevent a murder. There was also the feeling that she should have realised sooner that the mayor himself may come under threat and taken measures to protect him. With everything the framer had tried having failed, she should have anticipated his next move.

Beth knew that it was a leap to assume it was the framer who’d torched the mayor’s house, but considering everything else the framer had done, it made logical sense to think he was behind the mayor’s murder.

The weight of her guilt became suffocating as Beth revisited her idea that her life was currently on a good day, bad day cycle. She should have been aware that bad would follow the good and put her own agendas aside.

As she walked back to where her car was parked, Beth found herself plagued with doubts about her ability to focus on the job at hand. She’d been swayed by thoughts of doing some good for society and had abandoned her post when there was still a murderer to catch. That couldn’t happen again, if she was to retain her place in FMIT; she had to put the case first, second and third.

The theory she’d had about Felicia Evans’s killer seemed like their best lead, but she wasn’t sure about it.

Beth took a deep breath. ‘Ma’am, I’ve had an idea about something, but I’m not sure I’m on the right track.’

‘I don’t care. You’re going home. You’ve been through enough.’

‘With all due respect, ma’am, I’m not going home. I’ve a killer to catch. He killed a man who intended to help a lot of victims of sexual assault. Without Derek, that charity will never happen, it’s not just Derek I’ve failed, it’s all the people who could and would have been helped by the charity. Please, ma’am, don’t send me home. Not now. I feel bad enough about not saving Derek as it is. I have to catch his killer.’

Beth felt the look O’Dowd gave her was burrowing into her soul, but she stood her ground and made her face as determined as she could.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Felicia Evans only had a couple of weeks to live, right? Yet she was killed and sexually violated, but Dr Hewson suggested that she was assaulted with an object rather than raped.’

‘I do know all of this.’ O’Dowd scowled as she pulled her cigarettes from a pocket. ‘Get to your point.’

Beth needed to track it all out so O’Dowd could follow her thinking. ‘Hear me out, please.’

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