The Babysitter(2)

‘Cummings.’ Mark nodded a curt greeting as he walked across to Lisa Moyes. He didn’t like the man, a chauvinistic prick who obviously considered sexual harassment one of the perks of the job.

‘What have we got?’ he asked Lisa, who didn’t meet his gaze. From the hand she ran under her nose, Mark guessed why. Petite in size, with blonde hair, which she purposely cropped short, and pretty, Lisa had had to work to prove herself in a largely male-dominated environment, determined to be as hard-nosed and detached as some of her male counterparts. As a mother herself, though, Mark suspected she hadn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of remaining detached now.

‘A young girl,’ Lisa answered, eventually, ‘white Caucasian, aged approximately four. Cause of death—’ Her voice catching, she stopped and fixed her gaze hard on the ceiling.

‘Smoke inhalation,’ Cummings supplied. ‘The door was closed. She got lucky though, better than being burned alive. Can’t imagine what must have been going through her mind hearing her mum and dad screaming. Poor cow must have been petrified.’

At that, Lisa turned around. ‘You really are a prat, Cummings,’ she muttered, pushing furiously past him and heading for the door.

Cummings watched her go, confounded. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked, looking clueless as he turned back to Mark.

Sighing, Mark shook his head. Married and divorced twice, Cummings had never had kids, but it didn’t take a great leap of the imagination to guess what might have been going through that child’s mind.

‘Lisa has two children under five,’ he pointed out exasperatedly, and turned his attention to the little girl, his heart constricting inside him as he did. Curled into a foetal ball in her child-sized bed, she had her thumb plugged into her mouth and a one-eyed Pooh Bear clutched close to her chest.

Mark took a second to compose himself. He didn’t have kids either. They had had a child, he and his wife, Melissa, and though his son’s life might have been too short, Mark had grieved more than he would ever let on. Melissa had needed him to be strong, Mark had realised that as he’d watched her nursing their premature child in her arms. Her heart had been breaking as Jacob’s weak lungs had stopped fighting. In those bleak weeks afterwards, Mel had fought to stave off a deep, dark depression born of carrying a child, giving birth to a child and then having that child cruelly stolen away. Mark had been dying inside. Probably the only person who’d guessed how much he was hurting, and how frustrated and angry he’d felt after two subsequent miscarriages, was Lisa.

No, it didn’t need a great leap of the imagination to envisage how terrified in such circumstances a small child might be. Swallowing back a tight knot in his throat, Mark closed his eyes, offering up a silent prayer for the girl, before turning back to Cummings. ‘You might as well go home,’ he said tiredly.

‘Oh? Why’s that then?’ Cummings asked, eyeing him warily as Mark headed for the door. Ever since Mark had caught him in the act of groping a female member of staff and attempted to wipe the floor with him, Cummings had been jumpy around him. More so once he’d realised Mark was on to his little transgressions with confiscated items. Drugs mostly, nothing major, but there was no way it could be overlooked. Cummings had also been quietly watching him, Mark was aware, as if waiting for him to slip up; probably looking for ammunition to use against him should Mark bring his suspicions to the attention of their superior officers.

‘You’re surplus to requirements,’ he clarified. ‘I’m thinking this isn’t a crime scene.’

Cummings looked doubtful. ‘But aren’t there traces of accelerant?’

‘It’s bonfire night,’ Mark reminded him. ‘Judging by the embers outside and the obvious signs of alcohol consumption, the family were partying. Chances are the accelerant was to make sure the party didn’t get rained off.’

It had got the fire going all right, hadn’t it, he thought jadedly. The idiots park the accelerant in the kitchen, a stray spark ignites the fumes, and bang, a fucking inferno. Mark quashed an overwhelming sense of anger. What were they thinking, taking that sort of risk with a four-year-old child in the house?

‘I’ll assess whether we need to drag the forensic specialists out of bed. DS Moyes and I can handle the rest. Once the coroner arrives, you might as well go and catch up on your beauty sleep. You look as if you could use it.’ The last was added acerbically, bearing in mind Cummings’ penchant for touring red-light districts.

Mark turned away from Cummings and headed for the main bedroom. There, the smell was more cloying; the coppery odour of iron-rich burned blood suffused with barbecued meat turned his stomach over. Supressing the urge to retch, Mark forced himself further into the room, almost stepping on what remained of one of the corpses as he did. The mother, he gathered. Burned where she lay, her body in much the same foetal position as the little girl, though through muscle flexion rather than fear, as she’d obviously been trying to get to the door.

Working to keep his nausea in check, he walked around the bed. The father had obviously headed for the window. Blackened and charred, clothes and curtain material melted into his flesh, his body was barely recognisable as human.

Mark couldn’t begin to imagine the pain they must have gone through. Was smoke inhalation a less painful death, he wondered, his mind going back to the little girl. A forensic specialist had once assured him it was, marginally. Either way it was a fucking horrific way to go. Dammit. He needed to get out of here. He needed to breathe. Curtailing his anger, Mark headed back to the landing to concentrate on the practicalities of what needed to be done.