The sun has dropped below the horizon now, and the house looks bleaker than ever in the twilight. He walks up to the front door and nods to the PC standing guard. He steps back over the threshold into the tiled hallway. He isn’t really sure why he’s here, but his feet take him through the house until he finds himself back in front of the painting that hangs above the fireplace. He stares at the wrinkled, gray face of the fire watcher, and the painting stares back at him.

“Ugly bloody thing, isn’t it?”

He turns to find Doggett crossing the room to join him.

“I thought you’d gone.”

The DI tugs at a tie that’s already hanging loose at his neck. “I thought I’d head back to the station now, give Jordan an update. You all right getting things locked down for the night?”

Tyler nods his agreement and turns back to the portrait. “Can you make out the signature?”

Doggett squints at the painting for a moment. “Lowry?” he says.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But he was all landscapes, wasn’t he? Matchstick cats and dogs and all that.”

“So what’s your interest in the bloody thing?”

“I think it’s been moved. It was hanging in the attic at the time of the fire—there’s a patch on the wall that was protected from the smoke—and sometime since then, somebody’s moved it down here. Taken that picture down”—he points to the framed landscape propped against the armchair—“and replaced it. The question is, why?”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Doggett looking at the picture again. “Could have been kids messing about. God knows who’s been through here, ransacking the place, in the last six years.”

But the place doesn’t look ransacked. Badly fire damaged, rain soaked in places, but not ransacked. No one has helped themselves to the furniture or the many pictures, some of which would be worth the taking for the frames alone. Tyler’s eyes stray back to the portrait of the fire watcher. Why does it feel so important? If it had been stolen or smashed up by vandals he could understand it, but why would someone move it from the attic to the living room? And rehang it, moving the other painting out of the way in order to do so. Would some squatter or dope-smoking teenager do that? He supposes they might, if they liked the thing enough, but he can’t help thinking it means something to someone. Someone who was here after the fire, after Gerald Cartwright was bricked in the cellar. He looks down at the remains of the small fire on the floor and remembers the cigarette butts the SOCOs have since collected and taken away. “I think someone’s been living here,” he says. “Someone with a connection to the place. Maybe a connection to Cartwright.”

It’s a bit of a leap, but to Tyler’s surprise Doggett doesn’t try to bat his theory away. He runs his finger along the bottom of the gold frame. “Did the SOCOs get anything?”