Simon stepped slowly round the stinking room. At his feet, a glass bottle, blackened by smoke but intact, another nearby. The cash register, melted out of shape. The door to the office and stockroom was only burnt splinters hanging off burnt-off hinges. Inside, nothing was left at all, the shelves were buckled, piles of debris, cardboard boxes, melted plastic tubes gave no clue to what they had held.

He shook his head.

‘But thank God no human remains.’

‘No, place was empty. And I understand the upstairs flat had been untenanted for a while.’

‘More or less,’ Serrailler said. He looked around again. ‘I’m not a fire expert, far from it, but this was deliberate. I’d put money on it.’

‘Insurance job?’

‘I doubt it. There’s a much bigger backstory.’

He came out and stood taking deep breaths to clear his lungs and throat. Even the damp, muggy air was refreshing after the acrid smell inside the shop.

One engine and a fire service 4x4 were parked up and they would be gone once the building had been secured and sealed off, with flashing warning signs and cones outside. A few people stopped to look briefly as they went by but there were no sight-seers left, Starly had gone about its business of the day, the shops were mostly open again.

Simon did not feel much better for his heavy sleep and had wakened with a dry throat and stiff limbs, and even his run had not refreshed him.

He unlocked his car and threw his jacket into the boot. He smelled of rancid smoke and ash, clothes, skin, hair, he needed to shower and change again before he could go anywhere near other people. He drank a full bottle of water, still standing outside, and though it was not cold, it cleared his mouth and throat, and he was debating whether to get straight off or buy another bottle, which with luck would come straight out of the corner shop’s fridge, when the message light flashed on his phone.

Fifty-Seven

Cat held the front door open as Sam took the box of food out and loaded it carefully into the car, the familiar ice chip of worry pricking. You carried every child for life, from the moment of birth, but the shards cut more deeply and painfully for Sam than the others. Hannah was her own woman, had been since childhood, and Felix lived in a quiet, purposeful world of his own, but Sam . . . sensitive, touchy, muddled Sam, kindest, most thoughtful of them all, marked by seeing his father seconds after he had died. He had taken that in and understood it, and of most people she knew, was least troubled by death, but it had helped to make him emotionally vulnerable.