‘I’ll call in and let Control know what we’re doing.’
‘OK, Phil. Then you’ll have to find a window to get through on the ground floor. I wouldn’t give much for your chances of reaching that open one.’
‘Hey, wait a minute –’
When Fry and Murfin arrived in Darwin Street, a man was standing in the garden of number 34. He seemed to have appointed himself some kind of supervisor, checking that everyone attending the fire scene did their job properly. He was holding a small digital camera and squinting through the viewfinder at a SOCO in a scene suit carrying two bulging plastic bags towards a van.
‘Hoping to sell some photos to the press, sir?’ asked Fry.
He glowered at her. ‘No such luck. They’ve all been here and done their own pictures, TV cameras and all. These are for my records.’
‘Records?’
‘I’m in Neighbourhood Watch. This’ll come up at the next meeting, you can bet. I was right here from the start, you know. In fact, it was me that rang 999.’
‘Would you be Mr Wade?’
‘That’s me: Keith Wade.’
He was either overweight or so bundled up in sweaters that it was impossible to judge his shape. He was sweating a little, but whether that was from excitement or exertion, she couldn’t tell. Keith Wade looked like a man who’d spent all his life in the driver’s seat of a lorry, eating egg and chips at truck stops and gradually turning pear-shaped.
‘Did you happen to take any photographs during the fire, sir?’ she asked.
‘’Course I did. Look –’
He turned the camera round and held it up as he fingered the controls. A picture appeared on the LED screen. It was very dark – almost black, but for a dull, reddish glow. Only the faint outline of a roof and chimney stack could be made out at the top of the picture.
‘Are they all like that?’
‘I followed the progress of the fire, and recorded how quickly the emergency services arrived. I took some with the flash when the firemen were here, but all I got was a lot of glare off the reflective strips on their jackets.’
‘We’d like copies of any shots you took during the fire.’
Wade looked pleased, then his face fell. ‘I haven’t got a colour printer.’
‘That’s all right. Have you got internet access? You can email them to us.’
‘Yes, I can do that.’
Fry gave him her card, and he fingered it happily.
‘Detective, are you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Is that usual?’
‘What?’ said Fry, ready to react to some sexist remark.
‘Sending a detective to a fire.’
‘When there are fatalities, yes.’
‘Fatalities, right. The two kids were killed, weren’t they? Never stood a chance, they reckon.’
‘And their mother, of course.’
He nodded. ‘Tragic. I knew Lindsay and Brian pretty well. We’ve been neighbours for six years.’
Wade’s house was so close to the Mullens’ that the smoke had stained his walls, too. Pools of water lay in his garden, and someone had trampled a flower bed on their way to the fire.
‘Mr Wade, has anyone been around in the last few weeks asking questions about the Mullens?’
‘Asking questions? Other than you lot, you mean?’
‘It’s a serious enquiry, sir.’
‘Sorry. No, there hasn’t been anyone.’
‘Think carefully, please. It might have been someone who appeared perfectly innocent at the time. A market researcher calling at the door, then dropping in a casual question about your next-door neighbours?’
‘No, I’d remember that.’
‘What about your wife? She might remember someone being around while you were out.’ Seeing Wade hesitate, she probed further. ‘I’m sorry. Are you married, sir?’
‘I’m divorced,’ he said.
‘OK. Tell me again what made you first notice the fire.’
‘Well, I think I smelled the smoke. I suppose the smell of it must have been strong enough to wake me up. At first, I reckoned it must be someone’s bonfire that had been set alight. Kids do that around here, you know – they think it’s fun to see the fire engines arrive. But when I got out of bed, I saw a funny light on the bedroom curtains. It was sort of flickering, like someone was watching a huge TV screen outside. Do you know what I mean?’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I put some clothes on, went outside to have a look, then made the emergency call.’
Yes, and that sweater was probably the first thing he’d put on. It looked as though he’d been wearing it for months. The thing was brown and shaggy, with little threads of wool springing out everywhere.
‘Did you see anyone outside at that time, Mr Wade?’
‘No, not a soul. But I wasn’t looking up and down the street, just at the fire. It had broken the sitting-room window by then, and there were flames going up the wall. Come to think of it, I suppose it might have been the sound of the window breaking that woke me up, not the smell of the smoke.’
‘Why do you think that, sir?’
‘Well, like I said, I’m in Neighbourhood Watch. I’ve sort of trained myself to hear the sound of breaking glass at night. We’ve had some burglaries round here, as I suppose you know. So I have to be on the alert.’
‘I see. But you don’t actually remember hearing glass breaking last night?’
Wade looked disappointed. ‘No, not really.’
He was so transparent. Fry imagined he was a bit of a nuisance at Neighbourhood Watch meetings, always claiming to have seen something that he hadn’t, to make himself more interesting. She wondered whether Wade was a member of other organizations, too. The Police Liaison Committee, the Keep Edendale Tidy Group – anything that would let him stick his nose into other people’s lives.
‘What about traffic, Mr Wade? Were there any cars going by when you first saw the fire?’
‘Not that I noticed,’ he said. ‘Just a minute.’
He raised his camera to his face and focused on something past Fry. She turned to see a liveried police car pull up outside number 32, and the driver spoke to a uniformed officer on duty outside.
‘Would it be all right if I took your photograph as well?’ asked Wade. ‘I don’t think I’ve got a detective.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be all right.’
He sighed. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Mr Wade, did you make any attempt to get into your neighbour’s house when you saw the fire? Or were you too busy taking photographs?’
He looked hurt. ‘Of course I tried to get in. After I’d made the call, I ran back out and went over the fence to their house. But there were already flames coming out of the windows, and I couldn’t see a thing for the smoke.’
‘You