Go home.
Except I knew one of the basic truths of life: you can never go home again.
If there had been no one in the house, then I had to wonder what Griggs was thinking. Had he finally lost it? He’d set the fire. Had to have been him. With Bako under arrest – although the way Donuts had laughed when I mentioned his name gave me pause for thought – Griggs was the only person with the balls to make such a direct move. This wasn’t the cockroaches crawling out from the dark spaces. Not yet.
But why?
Was he sending a message?
Why take my phone if he wasn’t going to use it? Didn’t need that to set a fire.
He had to be trying to lure the old man out into the open. It’s what I would have done: sent a text message from someone the old man trusted, arranged a meeting and then … well, done whatever it was I needed to do.
The fire was a puzzle, though. An unexpected kind of melodrama. It meant something. Perhaps cathartic. Cleansing in some way.
I remembered the way that Gemma Fairstead and Teale had talked about fire. Their thing had become sexual, but in the beginning, I had the feeling that the fire had been a release. A way of burning out their anger. Their frustration.
Was this what it meant to Griggs? In this moment, was he burning out all his frustration?
But what did he want, exactly? What was the end game? Where was all this leading?
A good investigator tries to think like their target. Attempts to understand their needs, wants, motivations.
What was Griggs thinking?
What would I be thinking if I were Griggs?
I would want revenge. I would want to see the old man pay for what he had done.
What did that mean?
That I wanted kill the old man? No. I could have done that at the house.
So, what?
David Burns had to suffer. And he had to know and understand what he had done to me.
How could I achieve that?
I’d need a place where we could be alone. Undisturbed.
Where?
Where would I go if I were Griggs?
It couldn’t just be somewhere quiet. That was only part of the requirement. It needed to be somewhere with meaning. Somewhere where the old man could not escape his guilt and complicity in what had happened.
You can never go home again.
The phrase was echoing in my head. Why?
Home was family.
Family was what had started Griggs’s vendetta. Forget the personal attacks Burns had made against Griggs. For a copper like Griggs that was business as usual. But CeeCee’s death had made it personal.
CeeCee.
Found dead at the back of a council house. Discarded among the trash and detritus no one wanted to see.
CeeCee.
Griggs had wanted to protect her. Never had the chance. He didn’t know who she had been, where she lived. All he knew of her was where she died.
That was all he had.
Where she died.
I knew where Griggs was. What he was planning.
I just hoped I wasn’t too late.