Barry looks up, wide-eyed. Tyler can’t help but feel sorry for the boy. They had fought alongside each other to rescue Rabbani from the church. He doesn’t want to believe this teenage lad is responsible for the fires in Castledene, and even less so the death of Gerald Cartwright. And yet . . . he was there at the scene with his homemade fire-starting kit. He lives and works in the village that was Gerald’s home. And Tyler has been sure, for a long time now, that the perpetrator of the fires is linked somehow to the body found in the cellar at the Old Vicarage. His head is pounding. Could he have been wrong all this time? Maybe it is just a coincidence, all these fires occurring in the same place as their murder investigation. Barry Nelson would have been eleven when Gerald died.

And Oscar was fifteen. Doggett’s words when they had gone over all this while waiting for Call-Me-Hels to show up. Old enough to knock your dad over the head and drag him behind a wall. Especially if you had a friend to help you.

Could there have been some connection between them? They hadn’t gone to the same school. Barry had been at the local comprehensive, a far cry and several miles distant from Oscar’s three-grand-a-term prep school. Could they have met somewhere else? Where else did boys of different ages meet other than school? Football practice? Something Doggett said earlier jumps into his head.

Barry snivels into his tissue. Call-Me-Hels stares into space, no longer smiling after her telling-off. Doggett is shaking his head, losing his patience. Tyler catches his eye and Doggett nods his permission.

“Barry,” Tyler says, “were you ever in the Cub Scouts?”

The question takes him by surprise, and Barry nods before he can remember not to.

“Did you like it?” Tyler asks. “I did.” He’s lying. He hated the Cub Scouts. Richard had made him go, following in Jude’s footsteps. He’d left as soon as he was allowed to. Why can’t you just learn how to play nicely with others? “Camping out under the stars, learning all those survival skills. I bet that’s where you learned how to light fires, isn’t it?”

Barry shakes his head but hesitantly, unsure perhaps if this wasn’t where he had first learned how to light a fire. Of course, matches and lighter fluid made it a lot easier.

“Was that you as well, then? The scout hut the other day? Why would you want to burn that place?”

Barry shakes his head more forcefully this time. “I di’n’t! I mean, that weren’t me. I swear, I’ve only done a couple of bonfires.”

At least he’s talking.