She tried to calm herself; to rub away the tears that the fumes had produced; to steady her shaking hands and press the buttons. What should she say? Was it terrorists? Had there been an explosion?

Just say FIRE.

Rosa felt her head starting to spin. Lights flashed, dots appeared and she went floppy. Her mind slipped sideways and everything stopped.

Maya, 2.30 p.m.

Maya, 2.30 p.m.

I scraped my scruffy hair into a ponytail and took a deep breath. It was the first moment’s peace in the MIT room since seven this morning. I opened the email app on my phone and scrolled down to the one from Forensic Services with ‘Mr K A Rahman’ in the subject line. The message had dropped into my private inbox moments earlier. My finger was poised, ready to click, when Dougie’s advice popped into my mind. ‘If you’re going to do this, you need to be prepared for all possible outcomes,’ he’d said.

Was I?

I wasn’t sure.

I’d given up trying to find out what had happened to Dad. We’d all accepted he was dead, until a year ago when Mum started saying he’d visited her. And now it seemed like he might be alive after all.

‘Emergency services have been on the blower, eh.’ Dan’s Australian accent cut through my thoughts. Never one to enter a room slowly, he lobbed his keys on the desk, curved his athletic frame down on the seat next to me and whacked the space bar on his computer. The impact made my desk shake.

I grunted my disapproval and tucked my phone back in my pocket. ‘What about?’ After eighteen months of working with Dan, I still found some of his behaviour—

‘If you stop texting your boyfriend, I’ll tell you.’ He faced me, his hazel eyes red-rimmed and puffy. ‘Listen to this. First response has flagged up the smell of accelerant.’ He pressed ‘play’ on the recording on his phone.

‘Poleece?’ The woman’s voice was shrill. A heavy accent. ‘My husband is in the fire in Brick Lane. I think someone’s tried to kill him.’ Her words came out in snatches. There was a female voice in the background. It sounded like the person was prompting her. ‘I think someone’s murdered him.’

‘Shit.’ I searched Dan’s face for a reaction, but it was its standard pallid hue. ‘Do we know who made the call?’

‘Can’t trace it. Cell site data places the phone in East Ham but it’s an unregistered mobile. Goes straight to voicemail and there’s no personalised message.’

‘Is there a fire in Brick Lane?’

‘Yeah. Massive one. Uniform are there now with the fire brigade. Here.’ He passed me a transcript of the call. ‘No CID yet though.’