“Okay, mate, listen. I believe you. I don’t think you set the fire at the scout hut or the church. You certainly didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. That’s why you helped me save PC Rabbani. I bet you would have helped me save the vicar, too, wouldn’t you? If we’d known he was in there. You knew him, didn’t you? You knew him by another name, though. Akela.”

He had found the word in Rabbani’s notebook, circled three times in black ink. But only now, in light of Doggett’s comment about Boy Scouts, has the significance clicked.

“He was your old Cub Scout leader, right?”

Barry’s eyes are filling up with new tears. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

“I don’t think you wanted to hurt him, or anybody else. But here’s the thing, Barry. Somebody did. And it’s too much of a coincidence you just happened to be there at the same time. You know something about this, don’t you? Do you know who killed your old Akela? If you do, and you don’t say anything, that makes you an accessory to murder. Regardless of the punishment for that, I don’t think you could live with yourself. So come on, mate, why don’t you just tell us who killed him?”

Barry starts to open his mouth, probably to deny everything all over again, but then something gives. Tyler sees it in the way his shoulders drop. The boy leans his head in his hands and lets out a long sigh.

“I don’t know who he is,” he says. “But if you let me have my phone I can show you.”

Tyler looks at Doggett, and they both smile.

—

“How on earth did you put that together?” Doggett is staring at the computer screen in front of them.

Tyler shrugs. “I didn’t, Rabbani did. There was a word circled in her notebook. The last thing she’d written in it. ‘Akela.’ I didn’t make the connection until you mentioned Cub Scouts. Then I remembered. The leaders all take the names of characters from The Jungle Book. My old Cub Scout leader was Baloo. He was a right little bastard, about as far from a bear as you could possibly imagine.”

“So Rabbani had been looking into Felbridge and discovered he used to lead the Cub Scouts at the hut. That’s why she went there? To question him? What the fuck was she thinking? Stupid girl! Why didn’t she just tell us?”

“No news yet then?”

Doggett shakes his head.

They stare at the screen together in silence.

“So what the fuck is this?” Doggett asks.

“It’s a blog.”

“I know it’s a fucking blog, I meant . . . I mean . . . well, I don’t know what I mean.”

Tyler glances over the entries again. “This is him. This is the killer. The fire watcher.”