Blood Harvest (20 page)

Harry took the chair nearest the desk. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see the cat reappear and leap on to the arm of the detective’s chair.

He started to get up again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll get rid of him.’

‘No, you’re fine, lad. I’m used to cats.’ Rushton held up one hand to keep Harry in his seat. ‘Wife has two at home,’ he said, switching his attention to the cat. ‘Siamese. Noisy little buggers.’ He reached up to stroke the cat behind its ears. The responding purr sounded like an engine being fired up.

‘I, on the other hand, am not used to cats,’ said Harry. ‘That one seems to have adopted me.’

Rushton raised his enormous eyebrows. Harry shrugged.

‘Maybe it’s part of the fixtures and fittings of the vicarage,’ he explained. ‘Or just an opportunist stray. Either way, it was waiting for me when I arrived and has been refusing to leave ever since. I haven’t fed it, not once, it just won’t go away.’

‘Does it have a name?’ asked Rushton.

‘That bloody cat,’ answered Harry truthfully.

Rushton’s lips twitched. Mike Pickup cleared his throat. ‘Vicar, thank you for seeing us at short notice,’ he said.

Harry inclined his head in his churchwarden’s direction.

‘The truth is I only heard from Brian less than an hour ago myself,’ Pickup continued. A glance was exchanged between the two men, then Pickup turned back to Harry. ‘Brian and I are old friends,’ he said, as Harry hid a smile. The tomcat was curled up on the officer’s lap, purring like a traction engine as Rushton’s large hand ran the length of his body.

‘Mike came to see me last Sunday evening,’ Rushton said. ‘After the incident during the harvest service.’

‘Jenny and I had lunch at her father’s house after the service,’ explained Mike. ‘I’m afraid we were curious about what happened during Communion. Sinclair obviously didn’t want to discuss it, but Jenny pressed and in the end he gave in and told us. He seemed to think it was just a stupid practical joke that we could all forget about, but after what nearly happened with the Fletcher child a couple of weeks ago, I really wasn’t happy. After lunch I went back to the vestry. Sinclair had poured the contents of the chalice away and washed it, but he’d forgotten about the decanter. I took it to Brian. He promised to have his lab look at it. Discreetly.’

‘I see,’ said Harry.

‘Brian phoned me this evening to tell me the results,’ continued Mike. ‘It was pig’s blood, which is pretty much what we expected. We slaughtered a number of animals on the Saturday and, as you may know, when a pig is killed the blood is drained and saved. It’s used for making black pudding. Someone must have got hold of some – it wouldn’t have been hard – and then found their way into the church.’

Rushton leaned forward in his seat. ‘Reverend Laycock,’ he said. ‘I understand you got everything ready for the harvest service late on Saturday afternoon. Who could have had access to the church between the time of your leaving it and the Sunday-morning service?’

Harry looked at Mike, reluctant to mention Jenny in front of her husband. Mike opened his mouth to speak.

‘My wife was in the church for about a quarter of an hour after Reverend Laycock left,’ he said. ‘Sinclair lent her his keys. I joined her at around four thirty and we both had a good look round the building. She told me you’d suspected children or someone of hiding in the church, Vicar. Is that right?’

‘It is,’ admitted Harry. ‘Someone was messing around in there. I probably shouldn’t have left Jenny on her own, but she did insist.’

‘Jenny was fine,’ said Mike. ‘It was good of you to allow her some time. And the church was empty when we left. We made sure of it.’

‘Who else has keys to the church?’ asked Rushton.

‘Normally, only the vicar and the churchwardens, possibly the cleaner, would have keys to a church building,’ replied Mike. ‘At present we don’t have a cleaner. To my knowledge, only the vicar, Sinclair and I have keys now.’

‘Reverend, I’m not a churchgoer myself,’ began Rushton.

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ said Harry automatically.

‘Quite,’ said Rushton. ‘But Michael here tells me it’s customary for the priest to take Communion first, is that right?’

Harry nodded. ‘Yes, always. The idea is I’m in a state of grace myself before I administer the bread and wine to the other communicants.’

‘Would most people know that, do you think?’

‘I guess so. People who attend Communion regularly, anyway.’

‘What’s on your mind, Brian?’ asked Mike.

‘Well, it seems to me we have two possibilities. Either someone has a personal grudge against the vicar, and he was the one meant to be upset by the incident. Or the culprit didn’t realize the Communion wine would be tasted by the vicar first. Because if you’d taken that cup straight to the congregation, I bet you’d have got to around half a dozen before the first two or three realized what was going on. Then you would have had a problem on your hands. Can you think of anyone who might have a reason to play this sort of trick?’

Harry thought for a moment, because he knew it was expected of him. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wondering if maybe someone didn’t want the church to be opened again. Or perhaps I’ve upset someone since I’ve been here without realizing it.’

‘You haven’t,’ said Mike. ‘Actually, people are rather taken with you.’

‘What we’d like you to do, Reverend,’ said Rushton, ‘is to let us take your fingerprints so that we can check the decanter for any that don’t match yours.’

‘I’m happy to do the same, if it helps,’ said Mike, before turning to Harry. ‘Vicar, we need to think about church security. I’ll arrange to have the locks changed first thing in the morning. Make sure there are just the three sets of keys available.’

‘Fair enough,’ agreed Harry.

‘Good. I can have the new keys ready for you the day after tomorrow. Come and have some lunch in the White Lion with me. Shall we say one o’clock?’

Taking fingerprints was the work of a few minutes and then the two men said goodnight and left. Harry returned to his study. He
looked at the drinks cabinet. He’d had enough. He felt something warm moving between his ankles and looked down. The cat was rubbing its body against his jeans.

‘I hate cats,’ grumbled Harry. He bent to pick it up. It lay in his arms, purring, comfortingly warm.

Half an hour later the cat was fast asleep. Harry hadn’t moved.

19 October

E
VI
PARKED
HER
CAR
IN
THE
ONE
REMAINING
SPACE.
THE
huge hangar-style building of Goodshaw Bridge fire station was twenty yards away. She got out of the car and found her stick.

‘I struggle with stairs, I’m afraid,’ she explained to the fire officer at the reception desk. ‘Is there a lift I could use? Sorry to be a nuisance.’

‘No problem, love. Give me a minute.’

The fireman led her along the corridor. She tried to keep up but her back had been giving her trouble for days. Constantly leaning on her stick was putting too much pressure on the muscles on one side of her body and they were pressing against nerves. She should be using her chair more. It was just …

They reached the lift and went up one floor, then back along the corridor. Maybe on her way out she could just slide down the pole.

Ahead, her guide stopped at a blue door and rapped on it. Without waiting for a response he pushed it open. ‘Lady to see you, chief,’ he announced before glancing back at Evi. ‘Dr … er?’

‘Evi Oliver,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘Thanks so much.’

Inside the room, two more firemen were standing, waiting for her.

‘Dr Oliver, good morning,’ said the taller, older of the two, holding out his hand. ‘I’m station chief Arnold Earnshaw. This is my deputy, Nigel Blake.’

‘It was very good of you to see me,’ said Evi.

‘No problem. If the fire bell goes, you won’t see us for dust. Until then, we’re all yours. Now then, how about a coffee?’ He raised his voice. ‘Where you going, Jack?’

Evi’s guide reappeared, double-checked that his two superiors still took their tea milky with three sugars each and happily agreed to make Evi a white coffee.

All three sat down. Evi would have liked a moment to get her breath back but both men were watching her, waiting for her to begin.

‘I explained on the phone that I was interested in finding out more about a fire that occurred in Heptonclough a few years ago,’ she began. ‘It’s in connection with a case of mine, but I’m sure you’ll understand I can’t give you details. It’s a matter of patient confidentiality.’

Chief Earnshaw nodded his head. His colleague, too, looked interested, happy to help. She wondered if firemen were bored a lot of the time, actually quite welcomed distractions.

‘The fire was in the late autumn, three years ago,’ said Evi. ‘In a cottage in Wite Lane, Heptonclough, did I mention that?’

Earnshaw nodded and patted a manila file on his desk. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said. ‘Not that we really needed to look it up. That was a bad one. A little lass died.’

‘Were you there?’

‘Both of us,’ said Earnshaw. ‘Every one of our regulars and a few of our volunteers as well. What can we tell you?’

‘I understand that once the fire is contained, there are two basic questions that you need to answer,’ said Evi. ‘Where the point of origin was and what was the cause of the fire?’ Gillian still hadn’t told her how the fire had started. If it had been due to negligence on her part, or her husband’s, it might go some way towards explaining her anger, or her guilt. Both men were nodding at her.

‘Is that a good place to start?’ she asked.

Blake leaned forward. ‘You need three things to make a fire, Dr Oliver,’ he said. ‘You need heat, a fuel source such as paper or
gasoline, and you need oxygen. Without any one of those, no fire.

Do you understand?’

Evi nodded.

‘In most circumstances, we can take the oxygen bit for granted. So, what we’re looking for is a combination of heat and fuel. After that, fire travels sideways and upwards from its point of origin. If a fire occurs at the foot of a wall, you’ll see the burn patterns spreading up and away from it in a V shape. Are you with me?’

Evi nodded again.

‘Some things in a house, like synthetic materials or stairways, can distort this, but as a rule of thumb you track the fire damage back to the point at which it was greatest and then look for the heat-and-fuel combination. At the Wite Cottage fire, the point of origin was pretty clear, even though the upper floor eventually collapsed. It was the kitchen, the area around the cooker.’

‘And do you know how it started?’ asked Evi.

‘Largely guesswork,’ replied Blake, ‘because the damage in the area was so extensive. But we understand cooking oils were kept around the cooker, never a good idea. We suspect a pan was left with a gas flame underneath. It happens a lot with omelette pans. People make an omelette, concentrate on tipping it on to a plate without breaking it and they put the pan down, forgetting they’ve not turned the gas off. The pan gets hotter and hotter until the oil left in it catches light. If a plastic bottle of olive oil was close by, the plastic would melt and the oil run out. You can see how …’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Evi, making a mental note to move the bottles of cooking oil she kept close to her own hob.

‘In this case, though, the real problem was the Calor gas,’ said Earnshaw. ‘The cottage wasn’t connected up to the mains gas supply, so the family used a cooker that was powered by Calor gas. It’s not uncommon in rural areas, but in this case, the family had three spare canisters stored in a small room just to one side of the cooker. Once they caught fire …’

‘I see,’ said Evi, wondering if she really had the nerve to ask her next question. ‘I know this is a difficult question and please excuse me for asking it, but did you ever consider the possibility of arson?’

Earnshaw leaned back in his chair. Blake was frowning at her.

‘We always have to consider arson,’ said Earnshaw after a while.

‘But on this occasion, there was nothing to cause us any undue concern. The fire had an easily identifiable point of origin.’

‘One that could be readily explained,’ chipped in Blake.

‘Had it started in a wastepaper bin in a bedroom,’ said Earnshaw, ‘or if we’d found a trail of petrol around the house, it would have been a different matter.’

‘The house was rented, so there was no possibility of insurance fraud,’ said Blake.

‘And the couple lost their child,’ said Earnshaw, as though Evi should have thought of that herself. The arson-to-disguise-accidental-death theory wasn’t going anywhere. Evi began to think she might be outstaying her welcome.

‘I do understand that,’ she said. ‘I know I’m asking insensitive questions. I’m sorry I can’t explain why.’

‘Hiding evidence of arson really isn’t that simple,’ said Blake. ‘Arsonists often use matches and then just throw them away, thinking the fire will destroy them.’

‘And it doesn’t?’

Blake shook his head. ‘Match heads contain something called diatoms,’ he said. ‘Single-celled organisms containing a very tough compound called silica. Silica survives fires. Sometimes we can even identify the brand of match used.’

‘I see,’ said Evi. ‘I’ve got one last question, if I may, then I’ll leave you in peace. How soon after the fire was extinguished did you realize that the child’s body had been completely destroyed?’

The two men looked at each other. Blake’s frown had deepened.

‘The fire burned for several hours, I understand,’ Evi went on. ‘Even after it was extinguished, you would have had to be sure the structure was safe.’

‘The upper floor collapsed,’ said Blake.

‘Yes, exactly,’ said Evi. ‘So you would have had to search through the wreckage, it must have taken quite some time, before you were sure.’ And all that time, Gillian had been traipsing over the moors, willing herself to keep believing. ‘Before you were sure the fire had obliterated the child’s body.’

‘Dr Oliver, it’s very rare for bodies to be completely destroyed in fire. Very rare indeed,’ said Earnshaw.