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  AND BY FIRE

  A NOVEL

  Evie Hawtrey

  CHAPTER 1

  Present-day London

  Sunday

  “Doesn’t it bother you that they got the spot wrong?”

  “What?” O’Leary’s comment snapped Detective Inspector Nigella Parker’s focus back to the road. She slammed on the brakes, and they screeched to a stop at a red light.

  “The point of ignition for the Great Fire of London.” O’Leary wiped away the coffee splashed onto the lid of his Caffè Nero takeaway cup by the sudden stop, took a slug, and then grimaced. “Ever since 1666, when it burned the city end to end, historians insisted the Fire started in Pudding Lane, and then some aging House of Common’s Clerk discovers it’s all wrong.”

  “Not all wrong. The Fire started two hundred and two feet from Wren’s monument, exactly as years of history said—just sixty feet east of where everyone thought.” Nigella tapped the wheel impatiently. It was ridiculously early on a Sunday morning, the City was dead, but she was stuck at the light despite the lack of cross traffic. This was what came from using her own car: no siren, no free pass to blow through lights. Although honestly, this one didn’t justify flashing lights.

  A nuisance arson: Why had the detective chief inspector called her out for that? True everybody called her “the moth” because she had a special affinity for fire cases, but she wasn’t on the early worm. She was an off-duty DI in the Crime Investigation Directorate of the City of London Police, summoned abruptly from an early breakfast, although no one would have guessed that given her crisp oxblood blazer and the perfect twist of dark hair pinned up neatly at the back of her head. Nigella thought longingly of the boiled egg she’d abandoned, with its yolk just the right amount of runny, and hot buttered soldiers of toast waiting to be dipped in it. It’ll be fit for nothing but the bin when I get home.

  “Sixty feet off is wrong enough,” O’Leary said.

  She glanced at him sideways: red-gold stubble on his jaw, unmanageable hair sticking up over his forehead. Nigella had texted her counterpart with London’s Metropolitan Police because she owed him one after the Postman’s Park murder case, and she knew he’d been assigned the Haringey fire. Her message had clearly found him in bed.

  “Why should that bother me?”

  “Because, Ni, you have to straighten your toothbrush if it isn’t precisely parallel to the edge of the basin.”

  The light changed at last, and Nigella made a sharper-than-strictly-necessary turn onto Fish Street Hill, catching O’Leary off guard and jolting a bit of steaming coffee into his lap. He winced, then gave her the look—the one that said, “You just hate it when I’m right, Parker.”

  Yeah, well, fuck him. No, she’d done that for a while, which might be part of the problem.

  Ahead, odd portions of Christopher Wren’s monument to the Great Fire of London appeared—a sliver of the base, the top of its massive Doric column sitting like a hat on a commercial building obstructing her view. Rolling up to the curve where traffic from Fish Street Hill bent left onto Monument Street, Nigella slowed. The department had erected a lean-to against the west face of the monument. The wide end of a soot “V” protruded above the upper edge of the tarp.

  That’s the spot.

  The right-hand section of Monument Street, generally off limits to traffic, was cordoned off and full of police cars. Lots of cops for a nuisance arson. A sergeant peered through her windscreen, then moved aside a cone and waved them in.

  Parking, Nigella grabbed her bag out of the back. She’d only taken a few steps when DCI Evans swung in beside her. “What’s with the Yard?” He tilted his head in O’Leary’s direction.

  “The Yard,” O’Leary responded, “thought this might be related to the arson last week that disrupted the East Coast Main Line.”

  “Not.” Evans shook his head.

  Nigella wondered how he could be so sure. Then they reached the tent, and he lifted the flap. Scorch marks defaced the stone, and at their base, on the pavement, a figure lay curled in a fetal position and entirely blackened.

  “Holy Mary,” O’Leary breathed.

  So, not a nuisance. Self-immolation … or murder. Nigella’s breath caught and her pulse raced. It felt as if her heart was rising upward to meet the air trapped in her lungs. And in her head she heard a voice from her childhood whisper, “You’re it, Jelly.”

  “It’s not what you think.” A crouching man in a jumpsuit looked up from beside the blackened form. Wilkinson—good. He’s as precise as I am.

  “What do you mean?” She stared at the form, unable to determine if it was male or female. The nose was nearly gone. Not a scrap of clothing remained, just a naked, desiccated form so consumed by flames that it resembled charcoal riven with fissures.

  “It’s wood.” Wilkinson rose. “Someone ought to tell the poor, terrified old woman who discovered it smoldering.”

  “I’m sorry to have called you out on your day off, Parker.” DCI Evans cast Wilkinson an accusatory look, as if the forensic officer was responsible for the misunderstanding, though doubtless Nigella had been phoned before he arrived on scene.

  “It’s fine, sir—I can always make a fresh pot of tea.” In the rush of relief that the body was not a body, Nigella worked to sound nonchalant. She felt anything but. Whenever she stepped onto a crime scene involving death by fire, Nigella was washed over by fear—the terror of the victim—fresh, urgent, and hot—conjured by a vivid imagination, followed by her own throat-tightening fear, always murmuring the same thing: I can’t die like this—any way but this.

  “Tea sounds good,” DCI Evans replied. “I’m heading back to Wood Street. You lads have this, right?”

  It wasn’t really a question, but one of the younger police constables piped up, “Sir, shouldn’t someone interview the witness?” He jerked his head in the direction of a blue and yellow striped police vehicle. Nigella could see a white-haired head through the nearest window.

  “I’ll do it,” she offered. The uniform looked disappointed; clearly he’d thought by asking he’d be assigned the task, and there really wasn’t any reason not to give it to him—nobody dead. But there was something about the humanity of the form, and the crazy boldness of bringing something that large to the center of the City and lighting it on fire at a monument to fire … Nigella’s police senses tingled. All cops, or at least the best ones, had them—the result of a subconscious loaded with years of prior case experiences. Every copper’s intuition was different, but each knew you ignored that “something is off” feeling at your peril.

  “Right then, that’s settled.” Evans nodded, satisfied. None of the niggling uneasiness she was feeling, Nigella thought, looking into her guv’nor’s composed face.

  “What am I supposed to do? Take a taxi?” O’Leary asked.

  “You”—Evans pointed to the PC who’d spoken up—“run the Yard wherever he needs to go.” He looked at O’Leary. “Professional courtesy.”

  And punishment, Nigella thought. Not for O’Leary—for the uniform. Evans didn’t like overeager. Never had. Overeager was getting the PC removed from the scene.

  Evans didn’t wait for a response, just strode off. O’Leary hesitated. “Thanks for the callout. Suppose now I owe you.”

  “You owe me nothing because you got nothing,” she replied. Just a coffee stain on your trousers and a ride home with a pissed-off junior officer. She felt vaguely guilty over that coffee spot.

  Turning her back on O’Leary, Nigella headed for the van and swung the door open. Nodding at the officer sitting opposite an elderly woman in a tracksuit, who clutched her hand, Nigella said, “I’ll take it from here. Mrs.—”

  “Miss Payne,” the uniform said, filling in the blank as she was meant to as she slid out to make way for the DI.

  As the van door shut, Nigella observed the witness’s posture. Nothing defensive in it—nothing to suggest Miss Payne was anything other than a trim woman above seventy and a complete wreck. Nigella thought about taking the hand the uniform had dropped, but hand-holding just wasn’t her thing.

  “Miss Payne, I am Detective Inspector Parker. Let me start by telling you that the figure you found, however disturbing, was not human—it was made of wood.”

  The witness’s eyes opened wide, full not so much of comprehension as a lack of it, and then she burst into tears. “What a cruel, cruel thing,” she sobbed.

  “Yes. This is someone with a twisted sense of humor, pulling an offensive prank. And we want to find them.” Nigella picked up the tissue box from the seat and held it out, waiting while the witness wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Can you tell me how you found the object?”

  “I was on my morning stroll.” The woman paused for two deep breaths. “I smelled something odd—smoke. I started down Fish Street Hill, and there it was, smoldering against the Monument.” Miss Payne’s hand contracted around the used tissues until they entirely disappeared. “From a distance I thought it was rubbish. I pulled out my phone to report the disgraceful thing, and then, as I got closer …” She stopped and put a hand over her mouth, reliving the moment she’d recognized what she’d thought was a human form. “I dropped my mobile, then picked it up and called.”

  “Did you scream?”

  “I did.” She colored slightly.

  “Completely understandable.” Nigella held out the tissues again, but the witness shook her head. “Did anyone come running or react in any way?”

  “There was no one—no one but me. I thought perhaps there would be a policeman,
a courier—anyone. Then I remembered it was half six on a Sunday, and the fact that things are deserted is precisely why I walk early.”

  Nigella couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Fire this odd, this purposefully odd—she’d hoped the firestarter had stayed to witness audience reaction. Lots of arsonists couldn’t resist that moment. And this one wants an audience. I’m bloody sure of that.

  “Did you see anything unusual other than what you believed was a burnt body?”

  The elderly woman’s gaze bored into Nigella. “When you think you see a burnt body it’s rather difficult to focus on anything else. As soon as I had the police on the line, I went round the corner where I couldn’t see it. The dispatcher stayed on with me until an officer arrived.”

  First officer on scene—I’ll need that name.

  “Thank you, Miss Payne. I assume someone has taken your contact information.” The woman nodded. “I’ll have an officer run you home. Or perhaps you’d rather go to a friend’s?”

  Nigella gave appropriate instructions to the uniform outside the van. There were far fewer cops milling about, and fewer police vehicles. But the tent was still in place. She lifted the flap. Wilkinson stood, arms crossed, while a half dozen others strained to shift the burned figure onto a tarp. He stepped forward at the same moment Nigella did, and both peered at the newly revealed pavement.

  “No spalling,” Nigella said. “So maybe no accelerant.”

  “Maybe.” He gave a half shrug, considering but not conceding the point. “The monument would have acted like a natural chimney, but still.”

  “Send me a copy of your longitudinal section study. I want to know if this thing blazed or smoldered.” Nigella said.

  Every fire had its own language, and watching the team Struggle out with their grisly wooden burden, Nigella wanted to understand the fire that had made it as it was—she needed to understand. “Jelly, Jelly, ready or not, here we come!” The voices in her head were faint but chilling, like a sudden cold wind, and Nigella shuddered. A lifetime fear of fire and a desperate need to understand it in every particular hung upon those distant voices.

  “You don’t think we’ve seen the last of this fellow, do you?” Wilkinson asked.

  That was why she had to know.

  “’Fraid not.” And my instincts say, while this starts with a piece of wood that looks human, it’s not stopping there.

  * * *

  Present-day London

  Wednesday

  Nigella slid a folder from beneath the paperwork for the case they’d just wrapped, paperwork she’d stayed late to clear off her desk. It contained Wilkinson’s report on the monument fire. Pinus sylvestris—Scots pine, the commonest bloody pine in the UK. Why couldn’t the suspect have picked something exotic? Scots pine wasn’t going to be an easy trace point for this guy if she had to find him. She didn’t have to find him, she reminded herself. Not yet. But he is not done, and you know it.

  Nobody else seemed intrigued or concerned with the nuisance arson. In the three workdays since the incident, no one had even reviewed CCTV footage to determine how the wooden man had been delivered. The first officer to arrive on scene had been gobsmacked when Nigella tracked him down. “Evans put you on this case?” he’d asked, incredulously.

  “Call it a hobby,” she’d replied. The uniform shook his head but answered her questions because she was his senior.

  Nigella slipped the site pictures out. The charred form lay in a classic pugilistic attitude—curled into a fetal position, hands raised to head—just as if the large muscles in real human limbs had contracted under high heat. The first time Nigella had seen a burned body she’d come all over in a cold sweat and thrown up her lunch. She would never forget that moment.

  Did the form of the ghastly carving mean the suspect knew what fire did to a living, breathing thing? Or had the pose been chosen for some other purpose? Nigella looked idly around, but there was no answer in the semidarkness ringing her. Damn, what time was it? It had been hours since her fellow DIs in the Crime Investigation Directorate had gone home. And at that precise moment, her phone rang—not her mobile, the phone on her desk. Nigella started like a rabbit and was glad there was no one to witness it. Never let the lads see you jump; she’d learned that early on.

  “DI Parker.” Her voice was strong and much steadier than her pulse.

  “Ni, still working, eh? Good thing you gave the cat to your mum.”

  “O’Leary, you lonely? Or just looking to be annoying?”

  “Neither. I’m on call and I have one. You’re going to want to get to St. James’s Piccadilly.” And then he was gone.

  * * *

  The taxi scooted down Duke of York Street, turned left, and dropped Nigella near an unmarked car with flashing lights. St. James’s Piccadilly, all red-brick and Portland stone, stood bathed in a combination of streetlight and moonlight. But the acrid smell of smoke, not the church’s impressive profile, grabbed Nigella’s attention. Other than police vehicles, Jermyn Street was empty. Little wonder. She’d checked her phone as she’d swung into the taxi, and it was past two AM. A pair of uniforms stood at a cordoned-off alleyway. Approaching, ID in hand, Nigella stopped in her tracks. The narrow lane dividing the rear of the church from a commercial building pulsed, illuminated by a pillar of fire inside the narrow churchyard. At the conflagration’s center, the figure of a man stood in profile, one arm stretched high, flames lapping at him and leaping into the air above his head. Another man stood, silhouetted, between her and the flaming object. Nigella waved her ID, lifted the tape and ducked under. She was two steps from O’Leary when he turned.

  “Detective Inspector Parker, knew this would interest you.”

  His use of her full title made Nigella aware of the half dozen other figures, including a police photographer, camera clicking away, and several firemen holding a hose run down from Piccadilly.

  “Got here a tick before the fire boys,” O’Leary said. “Asked them to wait. Wanted to document this before they put it out, and I knew you’d want a look.”

  Peering through the yellow flames at the wooden carving, Nigella stepped forward until the fire’s brutal heat stopped her. Another human form. Please let it be carved from something other than Scots pine. “Is he pointing at the church?”

  “Sure looks like it. All right boys.” O’Leary, took hold of Nigella’s elbow, pulling her back as the firemen’s hose blasted to life. The jet of water hit the burning man and the church behind him with such force that spray rebounded, causing the detectives to jump back and shake like wet dogs. In just a few minutes the flames went out.

  A spotlight came on, illuminating the drenched and smoking form. Nigella looked at the outstretched arm, then at her fellow DI.

  “He’s giving the church the finger,” O’Leary said, confirming her thoughts. “There’s something really wrong with this boy.”

  “Who phoned it in?” Nigella asked as they walked along the fence toward the churchyard gate.

  “Vicar. She was alerted by one of the homeless. The parish lets them sleep on the pews. Liberal parish. Anyway, the fellow smelled smoke, took a peek, and roused everyone. I asked the vicar to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t wander off, but told her I’d interview them both tomorrow.”

  Passing through the gate, they approached the burned figure from the side. Nigella noticed it wasn’t, strictly speaking, life-sized. Probably about sixty percent. “He’s well endowed.”

  “Parker, I’m disappointed, I’d always hoped you knew better than to judge a man by size. But, um, yeah. Suspect asserting his masculinity, or doubting it?”

  “Who knows, but it’s a little gem to file away.” Nigella pulled on a pair of gloves. “You have a torch?” O’Leary pulled a flashlight from his coat pocket and handed it over. She walked wide of the carbonized figure, panning the beam across the ground. “No visible footprints.” Then she turned and ran the light along the fence. Beginning about two feet from where the figure stood, a dozen or more fence spires wore little light-colored splinters of wood, as if they were hats. She widened her field of vision. Further along, a large piece of heavy plywood lay on the ground.

  “Could be how he got it over.” She illuminated the board.