Walsh?’
Sutton shrugged; he only knew the Gold Commander for Saturday’s operation in passing, but by all accounts she was a good officer.
‘Let’s not judge. It sounds as though she faced an impossible choice. I don’t think anybody was expecting that many protestors; she needed every warm body at her disposal in the centre policing the riot.’
‘Do you think the arson was planned, or just an opportunist? Could they have known that the patrol car would be pulled away?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ replied Sutton.
‘I don’t know what would be worse,’ said Hardwick quietly.
The two officers’ reverie was broken by the appearance of Chief Fire Officer Matt Brown, one of the county’s fire investigators. Sutton stuck a hand out and greeted a trim-looking man with steel-grey hair and thick crow’s feet that spoke of a lifetime squinting against smoke or bright light. Black smudges on his overalls confirmed that he was a hands-on investigator.
‘Walk me through it, CFO Brown,’ Sutton instructed after he’d introduced Hardwick.
‘Nine-nine-nine received a mobile phone call from somebody trapped on the top floor at 14.28. They called the volunteer appliance, but the roadblocks slowed things down and it took nearly eight minutes to assemble and another six to get to the scene. They only beat the crew from Cambridge by about two minutes. By that time the fire had taken hold of the whole ground floor.’
Brown pointed up. ‘Fortunately, everybody inside had managed to make it upstairs and was accounted for and we were able to start bringing them out by ladder.’
‘How did it start, you suggested arson?’
‘No question in my mind.’ He handed over a couple of hard hats and motioned for the two officers to follow him as he started up the front path.
‘Watch your step,’ instructed Brown as they stepped over the threshold.
The floorboards were warped and split and a pool of melted plastic had oozed across the floor.
‘The fire started here after somebody poured an accelerant, probably petrol, through the letter box. There was a plastic welcome mat that worshippers used to wipe their feet on here and as you can imagine that went up a treat.’
Brown pointed up the wall, where black smoke stains were visible.
‘Lots of soot and smoke damage, but the main structure remains sound.’
Straight ahead, the entrance to the prayer hall was visible. Stacks of rolled prayer mats still dripped water from the firefighters’ ultimately successful bid to stop the fire spreading further. To the right, a set of stairs led upwards. Black soot smeared the walls all the way up to a small landing halfway up that allowed the steps to turn through ninety degrees.
Either side of the entrance were open shelving units, with the remains of what looked like shoes, a number of pairs clearly children’s, the brightly coloured plastic burnt and twisted from the heat.
‘It’s early days, but as far as we can tell, there is no accelerant on the shoes.’
‘Meaning what?’ asked Hardwick.
‘It suggests that the person didn’t spray it through the letter box from a squirty bottle, but poured it from a canister. The doormat caught alight, which then spread and the shoes caught fire afterwards.’
Sutton scowled. If and when they caught the culprit, he could envisage a canny defence lawyer trying to use that as some sort of mitigation.
‘The fumes from these different materials are pretty nasty and would have filled the downstairs quite quickly.’ Brown pointed at the dark smoke stains travelling up the staircase. ‘Hot air rises, so we’d ordinarily recommend getting low, however in this case, going upstairs probably bought them some time as it took a little longer for the smoke to fill the landing and double back on itself.’
Sutton made a mental note to reassure Imam Mehmud that his decision to head upstairs had been the correct one.
‘What about the rear entrance?’
‘Come and see for yourself.’ Again, Brown led the way.
‘That metal wheeled bin was in front of the door to stop anyone getting out, so you can definitely add attempted murder to the charge sheet as well.’
The container was a large, heavy, dented affair with a lid, a design long since supplanted by plastic recycle bins. Sutton supposed it must have been an old one that the centre used if they filled the newer ones.
He squatted down and looked beneath. The wheels were rusted and at least one looked as though it would fall off if the bin was lifted.
‘We’ll get scenes of crime to take a closer look, but I doubt this has been wheeled anywhere for years.’ He pointed to white score marks leading back to a slightly darker patch of tarmac in front of the fence about three metres away. ‘I’ll bet it was dragged over.’
‘So no chance of it being an accident, then.’ Hardwick looked at her notes and then back at the door. ‘Imam Mehmud said that they rarely opened the back door and it hasn’t got a window so it’s unlikely anyone noticed when the bin was moved.’
Back on the street, Hardwick and Sutton were met by DS Hutchinson and a team of constables ready to start house-to-house inquiries.
Sutton consulted his notebook. ‘OK. According to the log, there was a patrol car with two uniforms sitting here as a visible deterrent until about 14.02 when they were called to the town centre to deal with the riot.
‘That leaves a twenty-six-minute window during which the arsonist or arsonists set the fire.’ He gestured at the street. ‘The street is a mixture of student and non-student properties and there was a fair-sized crowd of rubberneckers by the time the fire brigade turned up. Some of the morbid bastards were even filming it on their mobile phones. Let’s see if anybody saw anything suspicious; strangers hanging around, cars they didn’t recognise, people pouring petrol through the letter box, that sort of thing. I’d also like to know if there were any issues before Saturday. What were relations like with the neighbours?
‘Can anyone pin down when that charming graffiti appeared? We think it was late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Did anyone hear the bin being dragged? I imagine it wasn’t quiet. What about the CCTV camera? It was broken in the early hours of Thursday morning.’
As they headed back to the car, Sutton looked over at his younger colleague.
‘You were very quiet back there, Karen.’ Sutton had noticed her pale complexion.
‘I’m still a bit under the weather.’
‘That bug you caught on holiday still bothering you?’
‘It’s been over a month now. Every time I think I’m getting over it, it starts again.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet, I can’t get a bloody appointment.’
‘How’s Gary?’
‘Fit as a butcher’s dog, the lucky bugger. He was sick first. By the time he’d finished puking, I was just starting. He was done in twenty-four hours, but it took me nearly three days to get over the first bout.’
‘And you’re certain it’s the food poisoning coming back?’
‘Not one hundred per cent, but the doctor that treated me in France reckoned it was a viral infection, and warned me it might.’
‘You’d think they’d be able to make an omelette properly in Paris.’
‘I guess not.’