In summary, it was the vet’s belief that whoever did this was hoping to harm the owner of the pets, not just the pets. Her premise was that those who keep pets have a love for them, in most cases, akin to that towards a child, and the animals were all in excellent condition ante-mortem. They were well looked after. Loved. Thus, the pain and terror caused to the animals was apparently deliberately aimed at the owner. Kelly knew that Mary died after the fire and so perhaps she watched her animals die. She certainly witnessed their pain. She remembered what Demi said about who the attack was aimed at: it seemed that it was Mary. The vet’s report continued to say that burning was a particular method of cleansing evidence from the scene. The fire officer had said the same, and Kelly had seen it in other cases.

Animals can’t be witnesses and so it left Kelly with the glaring fact that whoever killed Mary killed her animals because they wanted to hurt Mary with such vehemence that they chose the thing she loved most.

But another attachment caught her eye. It was a photograph of some of the animals’ remaining pieces of flesh. Most of the bodies of the animals had been badly charred and left little fur or skin, however, a few of them had patches remaining and, on three of them, a triangle had been cut with a sharp instrument. The vet confirmed that the cuts were fresh and inflicted before they had time to heal, meaning they were scored into the skin on Friday evening. Possibly by the person who killed them. Kelly stared at the photos. The triangles were neat, small and deliberate. The vet had attached an appendix. She’d noted that she’d never seen any farming branding made in such a manner. She’d also proven, by the way the animal had bled and the blood coagulated, that they were alive when cut. The vet had done some research on the use of any forms of triangle symbolism and learned that alchemic tradition marks the element of sulphur – strongly associated with fire – the symbol of an upward-pointing triangle.

The final attachment was about the dead birds. They were all wrens. The vet, again, had done her homework and had commented that keeping wrens in cages was highly unusual; they were migratory. However, they did come back to the same breeding nests year on year and it was possible that Mary Hales’ garden was a firm favourite, and so the birds would feel comfortable there. She’d handwritten a note next to a photograph of a common wren. ‘Such a shame to see this bird treated in this way. The wren is the king of all birds.’