‘They told me that if I’d run outside, I wouldn’t have breathed in so much smoke. But then if I’d done that, I might have lost the whole ground floor.’

‘Instead of a carpet and some damage to the ceiling,’ Ronnie Ogilvie added. He looked perfectly healthy to Clarke. They were seated either side of Laura Smith’s bed. There were still specks of soot on her face and in her hair, and she had been coughing some gunk into a paper towel on Clarke’s arrival.

‘You know what I’m going to ask,’ Clarke said.

Smith nodded. ‘I’ve plenty enemies, Siobhan, including one who’s already shown his hand.’

Clarke turned to Ogilvie. ‘James Pelham was hanging around outside Laura’s home yesterday evening.’

‘Whatever for?’ Ogilvie asked.

‘It was Laura who exposed the affair he was having.’

‘I thought that was the Courant?’ He saw the look both women were giving him. ‘Ah,’ he said as the truth dawned.

‘Then there are the cops from Tynecastle,’ Clarke continued, ‘photographed by the Courant and flagged up as an example.’

‘Alan Fleck and Rob Driscoll,’ Smith said, nodding.

‘Should I be making a note of this?’ Ogilvie asked.

‘You seem to be in charge, Ronnie,’ Clarke told him. Then, to Smith, ‘Where will you go? There’s a spare bed at mine if you need it.’

‘I was thinking of a hotel.’

‘I come cheaper.’

‘Just for a night or two then, thanks.’

An exhausted-looking doctor, probably not yet out of medical school, arrived on the ward and approached the bed, telling the patient she was free to leave.

‘Can we drop by mine and pick up some stuff?’ Smith asked Clarke.

‘You sure you want to?’ Clarke watched her nod.

‘Should I tag along?’ Ogilvie asked.

‘Of course you should,’ Clarke told him. ‘It’s your crime scene, after all.’

Laura Smith lived in a terraced two-storey house in Bellevue, only a few streets north of Siobhan Clarke. The engine had departed, but a fire investigator remained. He was conferring with the scene-of-crime team. Despite it not yet being dawn, lights were on in the adjacent properties and, recognising Smith when she stepped out of Clarke’s car, a couple of doors opened, the neighbours approaching to ask if she was all right and was there anything they could do to help. While Smith reassured them, Clarke checked that the house was safe to enter. The fire investigator was holding a clear plastic evidence bag containing the neck of a shattered bottle, charred wadding stuffed into it.

‘Pretty basic stuff,’ he commented.

Ogilvie touched Clarke on the arm to get her attention. ‘Might start asking a few questions while memories are fresh.’

Clarke nodded her agreement. She watched Smith as she walked slowly towards her home.

‘You okay to do this?’

‘Takes more than an arson attack to scare me.’