It was only a few miles out of the city but already rural. This was farming land, one side of the road lined with trees, the other nothing but fields with the odd farm building peeking above the flora in the distance. With a name rather than a number, Tamar House wasn’t identified on her mobile phone maps. Grateful she was wearing trainers, Connie shifted gears, ducking under the first piece of tape fluttering across the road to stop traffic from turning into the junction. A police car appeared from behind her, an officer getting out to release the tape and allow the vehicle entry then remaining in place next to the tape to control vehicular flow.

Connie embraced a dawning nausea. A column of smoke was just visible above the treeline ahead, not that she needed the visual. The smell of burning formed a brilliant orange colour in her imagination. If that was the house, then maybe everyone was in there.

She raced towards the flashing emergency services lights.

Set back from the road up a gravel track was a disjointed-looking building, three storeys high, with an amateur-build porch starting to fall down at the front, and a garage with one door hanging half off its hinges at the side. No vehicles to be seen. No one hanging out of the windows, either, shouting for help. Smoke billowing from the ground-floor windows.

She knew better than to waste time on yet another argument with a police officer. Going to the farthest end of the driveway from the police guard, she slipped between vehicles, the temporary ID she’d been given by MIT held out in front like a cross in a horror movie, in case anyone should approach.

No chance of that. All eyes were on the house.

Clutching the arm of a firefighter, she didn’t waste a moment.

‘Is the property on fire called Tamar House?’ she demanded.

He nodded.

‘Listen, it belongs to a man in his mid-thirties, but I think there might be other people inside. I need you to make sure they’re not locked up somewhere like a basement or an attic, possibly inside wardrobes or other large items of furniture. They’ll probably be restrained in some way, unable to get out, maybe unable to even call out for help.’

‘All right.’ He beckoned to colleagues and they circled around. ‘More information … how many people are we looking for?’

‘Thirty-year-old man, might answer to Fergus. A girl aged twelve, a woman also in her thirties called Elspeth, and a paraplegic male.’

‘The people from the news reports?’ one of the firefighters asked.

‘Yes. I don’t know what sort of shape they’ll be in. They might not all be alive. If not … if not, it’ll be important to the families to get the bodies out in good enough shape to know exactly what happened to them.’