In the lounge of Rose Cottage, the pile of heavy wooden furniture was now destroyed. The brass hinges and handles from the chest of drawers lay on the floor just in front of the hearth and, on the obliterated sofa, part-melted into the springs, lay a dead body, charred and blackened beyond recognition.

“Jesus,” muttered Sally as she got out her camera and filmed the scene, starting at the front door and moving methodically toward the center of the lounge and the dead body. Her young SOCO waited outside until instructed to do otherwise.

“Sally, stop!” Sub shouted. She stopped dead. Sub was a man of very few words and everyone who worked with him knew that he only spoke when he had something important to say. “Retrace your steps, Sal. Now. Please.”

Sally started walking backward, toe to heel, following exactly the same path as she’d taken to come in.

There was a deafening crack from directly above Sally’s head. A hand grabbed her belt and she flew backward with the force of a recoiling bungee rope, to be caught by Sub’s waiting arms. Once he had a firm hold on her, he fell backward onto the floor, taking Sally with him. In the next split second an iron bed frame dropped through the air and landed right where she had been standing. A cloud of ash and debris flew upward and took an age to come back down. When visibility returned, Sub was still on the floor, Sally held between his legs, his arms gripping her tightly round the waist. The two legs of the bed that were closest to them had smashed deep holes through the lounge floorboards, and the other two were straddling the remains of the sofa and the charred body, which was still, miraculously, in one piece.

Sub momentarily tightened his grip around Sally’s waist before letting go. That tiny squeeze reassured her that she was safe. As she gripped Sub’s raised knees to lever herself to her feet, and he eased her forward with his hands politely in the small of her back, she couldn’t help thinking what a massive shame it was that he looked so like her dad.

When he arrived on the scene, Detective Inspector Martin Prescott was frustrated to be held back from entering Rose Cottage until the risk assessment had been done. He couldn’t imagine three more infuriating words in the English language than “risk fucking assessment.”

Prescott had been senior officer to Sally Bown’s older sister for more than twenty years, and the families were close. This was not unusual for rural Aylesbury, or for the local emergency services. Sally knew he’d be impatient so, while the fragile ceiling and crumbling walls were made safe, she kept him occupied by showing him the video footage of the interior.

“At first we thought he could be a vagrant,” Sally told Prescott.

“He?”

Prescott smiled as he corrected Sally’s assumption. It was clear from the video that there was no way of knowing the gender of the charred remains at this point. Prescott made Sally smile without even trying. She thought his thick Yorkshire accent made him sound happy, even when they were disagreeing with each other.