Medics had lifted Robert Hill onto a stretcher and moved him rapidly to an emergency vehicle. Although its lights still flashed, the siren was silent, but fire service activity made enough noise to cancel out any lessening of the racket from elsewhere.
Alex shivered, not just from cold but from horror. Alone and beyond the zone where people were intent on saving what they could, she felt useless.
There was a good reason why firemen were called fire fighters. They were fighting now, aiming powerful jets of water toward the all but demolished trailer, running swiftly about their determined struggle to douse the flames. The men worked as a practiced team, totally focused and confident, but forbiddingly intent.
Weren’t they worried the water would smash what was left of the trailer, float it away even? What did she know?
A man scuffed toward her in his heavy, rustling gear and boots, his face already blackened beneath his helmet.
‘You Alex Duggins?’ he shouted. ‘You called in the alarm?’
Shifting from foot to foot she told him, ‘Yes,’ and a familiar prickle of anxiety ran up her spine. ‘I just came up here to see the place because I’ve heard so much about it and I was curious. Everyone’s talking about it.’
He bore down on her purposefully. ‘The man who’s hurt talked to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say about the trailer? Dispatch reported he’d said something about others who didn’t get out?’
Without her anorak and with the sweat cooling on her skin, even in a thick jumper and wool slacks Alex shivered and wrapped her arms across her body. ‘He wasn’t very clear but his trousers had started burning. We put that out but he’s bound to be hurting.’
‘Yes.’ The tone suggested he wasn’t interested in obvious details. ‘But what did he say? The medics won’t let us speak to him yet.’
‘He said “did they?” after I talked about being grateful he got out. Then he said he couldn’t get whoever he was talking about out. He was really … he was as upset as anyone would be.’
‘Right. Don’t leave. The police are on their way and they’ll want to talk to you. We’ll get your particulars from them in case we need to contact you.’
‘Can’t you just take my address and I’ll get on my way there now? The Black Dog in Folly-on-Weir.’ She avoided using her actual home address since she didn’t spend a lot of time there.
‘I know where it is,’ the man said, glancing back at her. ‘You’ll have to wait here for the police, miss.’ He nodded toward the entrance to the development. ‘Someone’s up there to make sure no one goes in or out without clearance.’
‘I can’t do anything helpful here,’ she protested. ‘They’ll be worried about me in Folly if I don’t show up.’ She so wanted to get away from here.
The fireman didn’t respond this time.
Alex thought longingly of the blanket she kept in her Range Rover and considered going to get it, but she quickly realized she’d have to say what she needed to before she left and looking at the scene there was no one she could consider distracting for an instant. Trying to talk her way past some guard at the gate was a bad idea.
She paced, sending long glances toward the aid car where she could see movement inside. She didn’t believe Robert Hill was severely injured but it would take a while to make him comfortable and calm him down.
Talking to anyone in fire response was out of the question. She could feel the intensity there, both in dealing with the fire and in finding out if there were victims inside the burned shell of the trailer.
Robert Hill would have survived well enough without her intrusion, and she couldn’t have changed the outcome of the fire. She should have gone straight home after the book sale, as she had originally planned.
Reluctantly she used her mobile to call the Black Dog.
‘Good evening.’ Her manager, Hugh Rhys answered. ‘Black Dog. How can I help you?’
Alex bowed over and stared toward her feet in the darkness. ‘It’s Alex. I’m held up for a bit. If anyone asks, I hope to be back before too long.’
A short silence, then: ‘And that’s it? You’d rather not tell me what you’re held up with, or if you’re all right, or ask me to give a message to Tony – or Lily?’
Hugh was an enigma, a man of means who chose to manage a country pub and who kept his private life, private. For him to ask her questions meant that someone was agitated about her being so late back and had said as much. That would either be Tony Harrison, who was her lover and her best friend, or, just as likely, Lily Duggins – Alex’s mother.
‘Is my mother fussing?’ Alex asked, deliberately avoiding the other possibility since Tony hated any discussion of their combined lives with others. ‘Go ahead and tell her I got tied up but I’m fine and having a good time. I hope not to be too long.’
‘If you’re having such a good time, why are you hoping it ends quickly?’ Typical Hugh verbal callisthenics. ‘Sounds noisy where you are.’
‘Another point to you, m’dear. Hold down the fort, please.’ She hung up and considered calling Tony, but another siren made her pause.
The headlights of a vehicle bounced over the higher points in the track to enter the construction compound. A marked police car followed. On the unmarked car a bubble on the roof near the passenger door rotated light.
The sedan paused, its siren whining to a stop and the flashing light disappearing, then the driver cut the engine and both front doors opened.
Two men strode downhill toward the fire trucks and aid car.
Alex stared hard but didn’t think there was anyone she recognized. That, at least, was something. She wasn’t in the mood for any falsely cheerful reunions – not that she could even be certain of any cheer, false or otherwise. Her too frequent encounters with the Gloucestershire Police had set up an ‘interesting’ dynamic between her and several detectives.
‘Sir!’
A fireman’s shout captured her entire attention. One of the men who had been using a hatchet on the smoldering trailer framework jogged back toward one of the trucks. They’d found something. Alex scrunched the neck of her jumper between her fingers. Someone? Or what was left of them? You didn’t need a working knowledge of what happened to a human inside a conflagration like she’d just seen to know what it would do to a body – or bodies.
Intent on the dark and moving silhouettes in the huddle of police and firemen, Alex didn’t notice one figure separated from the rest until a torch beam landed at her feet and flashed away. The man with the light jogged toward her, coat flapping, his hat tipped forward over his forehead.
When he drew near he looked up and called, ‘Alex? For God’s sake, you do get around. What are you doing here?’
She groaned and took a step backward.
Detective Sergeant Bill Lamb in the flesh. It never took him long to make her feel superfluous, a nuisance and a few rocks short of an otherwise fine dry-stone wall.
‘Hello, detective sergeant,’ she said formally but in what she hoped was a cheerily impersonal tone. ‘You’re all over the place yourself. Welcome.’ Now she sounded as if he was visiting her patch, darn it.
‘Where’s your coat?’ he asked, coming even closer.
This was not a good moment. ‘It got ruined because of the fire.’
Even in the darkness she could read the disbelieving expression on his face. ‘In the fire? This fire?’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
‘Not exactly.’ At least he couldn’t see her red face. ‘Or, well anyway, I suppose … I was wearing my anorak when there … a man ran from that trailer and his trousers were singed and smoking so I threw the coat over his legs and helped roll out any fire. He was on the ground then, of course.’
The detective’s notebook appeared from an inside pocket and he started scribbling with the aid of his torch. ‘So, he’s a friend of yours?’
‘No!’ Alex sucked cold air in between her teeth. ‘That’s not what I said and it’s not the case. I just happened to be here looking at the development. Everyone in the area is talking about it, so I wanted to take a look for myself.’
‘“Just … happened”,’ he muttered as he wrote. He looked up sharply with bright eyes she knew too well were disturbingly light blue and unblinking when you got a good look at him. ‘You drove all the way over from Folly just to “take a look” at this – in the dark on a Sunday evening?’
He was so good at ruffling her. Why could she never control her reactions to him? One of her trusted friends thought he was a wonderful man so it had to be something to do with her own muddled impression.
‘Bill,’ she began firmly. They were on first name terms and any formality was pointless. ‘I was on my way back from Stanton late in the afternoon. I saw the sign for the development and drove here. It was later than I thought and getting darker than I expected, but here I am. And it was probably a good thing because that man needed help.’
More writing in silence but for the sound of Alex’s own breathing.
‘Bill! Over here!’
That was one more voice that was well known to her, Detective Chief Inspector Dan O’Reilly. And now another awkward encounter was in the works.
‘Come with me, please,’ Bill said and called, ‘coming, guv.’ He shrugged out of his raincoat and settled it over Alex’s shoulders, already moving back toward his boss.
Alex said, ‘Thank you,’ and shuffled along beside him, hitching the coat above her boots.
‘Can we speed this up, Alex?’
Darn it! You couldn’t snap at a man who just lent you his coat on a cold night. You probably shouldn’t think nasty things about him, either. All this was going to take some explaining when she got back to Folly – especially to Tony. Tony took her tendency toward what he called, ‘impulse excess’ with indulgent, even fond acceptance – most of the time. This one would be convoluted to explain.
‘Toward the back of the trailer, sir,’ the fireman was saying. ‘I’d say there was one of those separate compartments with a couch you can make into a bed across there. That’s about gone.’
‘No sign of another body?’ Dan asked, glancing at Alex and nodding. She raised the fingers of one hand and stayed back while Bill joined his boss.
‘Just the one so far, sir,’ the fireman responded to Dan’s question. ‘The fire was pretty intense.’
Alex didn’t want to look at the burned-out trailer but couldn’t help it. The fire smoldered in places, and hissed, but appeared mostly under control. Several firemen stood to one side at the back of the crumbling wreckage, all staring at what looked like the same area. She was too far away to make out details but she couldn’t miss a twisted thing among the debris. That didn’t have to be a body but it could be.
‘The cavalry is on its way,’ Dan told Bill. He said, ‘Hello, Alex,’ over his shoulder.
‘Hi, Dan.’ If there was anything else to say, she couldn’t think of it.
Bareheaded as he usually was, Dan stood in signature pose: coat pushed back and hands sunk in his trouser pockets. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said. ‘Not you, Alex. Stay where you are, please.’
Stomping her feet to try kick-starting her frozen circulation, she did as she was told but wished she could transport herself far away.
The back doors of the emergency vehicle were still open. The darkness was complete now and light shone from inside. How was Bob Hill, she wondered and walked to stand at a respectful distance, but close enough to call out, ‘Excuse me. I was with Mr Hill. How is he, please?’
A medic poked her head out, but pulled it back again, talking to someone. ‘Come over if you like,’ the woman said, looking outside again. ‘Mr Hill’s doing well. We’re making sure he’s comfortable.’ She jumped down and met Alex. In a low tone she said, ‘He’s trying to talk himself out of going to the hospital but that’s not going to happen. He thinks he can just drive himself home.’
Alex walked beside her. ‘Typical male reaction, I should think,’ she said, grinning sideways at the medic.
The woman made an athletic upward leap into the vehicle. ‘Your friend who was with you is here, Mr Hill.’
Already clambering in, Alex started to say she didn’t know the man but had to concentrate on getting herself and Bill’s raincoat up slippery metal steps.
Bob Hill was laughing.
‘He’s had something to settle him,’ the second medic said with a meaningful look at the patient, ‘but he’s a feisty one.’
‘I didn’t know him before this evening,’ Alex said, grinning at Hill who didn’t seem to be feeling any pain at all. ‘We met out there after the fire had broken out. How are you, er, Mr Hill?’
‘Call me Bob and tell these nice people I’m perfectly capable of driving myself home now. Thanks, by the way. You saved the day for me. Don’t even know if I’ve got a mobile. If I do, I don’t know where it is.’
‘Glad I was here,’ Alex said. Hill had a slender good-looking face and straight dark hair, well-cut and flecked with grey. ‘They’re going to get you checked out at the hospital. That’s the best way.’
‘I’ve got my own car,’ he said, grinning broadly. They had cleaned his face – a vast improvement. He tried to sit up but was promptly eased back onto pillows.
‘Someone else will drive it home for you,’ Alex said. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Temple Guiting. Knighton House.’
‘What’s the number there, sir?’ the male medic asked. His nametag showed he was Pain, which Alex thought an unfortunate name.
‘No point calling?’ the patient said, less jolly now. ‘No one there. All away.’
Pain looked at Alex. ‘Not far, anyway,’ he said. ‘You can drive his car, can’t you? Follow us to the hospital. I don’t think they’ll keep him in. The police will want to speak to him before we leave if he’s up to it. How are you doing, Bob?’
‘Tickety-boo,’ Hill said. ‘Absolutely, bloody marvelous.’
‘That’s good to hear.’ Bill Lamb had arrived quietly and leaned in to see Bob Hill. ‘Are your wheels in a safe place, sir?’
‘Safe as houses,’ Bob said with what sounded like a giggle. He sobered again. ‘I’ll get it later. Or my new friend will drive it to the hospital for me. Good girl, she is. Couldn’t have managed without her.’ His eyelids drooped.
Bill didn’t look at her but said, ‘The DCI told you to stay where you were,’ very quietly. ‘Questioning witnesses isn’t your job, remember?’
She ignored him. ‘Could I write something for him?’ she asked Murdock, the female medic, who gave Alex a notebook and pen.
‘This is my name, address and phone number,’ she said, writing. ‘For you, and for Mr Hill if he needs them.’ She tore out the sheet and handed it over before jumping out onto the crackling, frozen ground.
‘And I wasn’t questioning him,’ she said. ‘Just asking how he was.’
‘That was nice of you,’ Bill said. ‘You obviously saw a good deal – if not everything.’
‘Well—’
Bill cut Alex off. ‘I’ll put you in a car to wait for DCI O’Reilly. He’ll deal with you now.’