‘Yes, I got the taxi driver to drop me off at the corner of Darwin Street. I’d already paid him off before I noticed anything wrong, and I didn’t realize what was happening at first. I saw the flashing lights from the fire engines. There weren’t really any flames then, you know. Just a lot of smoke. An awful lot of smoke.’

‘When did you realize it was your own house on fire?’

‘Not until I was almost there. Things looked so different with the lights and the smoke, and the hoses running across the road. It felt as though there ought to be a film crew somewhere. And all the neighbours were standing outside in their nightclothes. I was thinking, “Some poor bugger’s got a real problem there,” and wondering who it was. It didn’t seem possible that it was my house they were all looking at.’

‘I suppose you weren’t thinking too clearly at the time, either.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I expect you’d had a few drinks, hadn’t you, Mr Mullen?’

The look on his face changed then. His colour went a deeper pink, his mouth twisted into a less relaxed shape. Fry tried her hardest to read his expression as guilt, but it looked more like petulance.

‘Yeah, a few.’

‘Which club had you been in, by the way?’

‘The Broken Wheel. There are only two places that stay open late in Edendale, and the other one is full of kids on drugs.’

‘All right. So when you finally realized it was your house on fire . . . ?’

‘I looked around for Lindsay and the boys, obviously. There was a crowd of people gawping, and a copper trying to sort out the traffic. I couldn’t see my family anywhere.’

‘So you ran into the house?’

‘Yes . . .’ He hesitated. ‘No, not straightaway. I saw my neighbour, Keith Wade. I asked him where Lindsay was. He said he hadn’t seen her, or the boys either. Well, I knew from the way he said it, and the look on his face . . .’

‘Knew what?’

‘That they were still in there.’

Even Fry could detect a frisson of genuine emotion in Brian Mullen as he reached the next part of his story. A physical reaction was evident in the tightening of his mouth, the half-closed eyes, the sheen of sweat that appeared on his brow. Fear, yes – and a memory of pain, too.

But, of course, he had been burned by the fire, as proved by his bandaged hands and the notes on his chart at the end of the bed. His breathing had been affected by smoke inhalation, but that was only evident in the hoarseness of his voice, and perhaps in a peculiar inability to vary the pitch of his speech. That might be why his words sounded almost mechanical and insincere. Just might be.