Authors: Kerry Wilkinson
There was something about the smell too.
The aroma was perhaps the best part: the thick scent of power hanging in the air before he used the lighter. It offered more satisfaction than a match. The enjoyment as he quickly scuffed his
finger along the round ignition was so much more thrilling than simply flicking a match along the side of a box.
Hiding the can close to the victim’s house had come to him in a moment as close to genius as he thought he had ever managed. He would find a nearby spot during daylight and then return to
hide the can not long after it went dark. He would leave it under a hedge or somewhere similar that the public paid no attention to. With that done, he would park around a mile away in the early
hours, hurry through the collection of side streets and back alleys he had memorised, and then retrieve his prize. After lighting the flames he would race back the way he had come and be in his
vehicle before someone had even called 999.
At that time of the morning, it was almost always clear and by the time anyone arrived to start investigating what had happened, he was well on his way home.
Well, that was how it worked now.
Martin Chadwick’s house had almost been a big mistake. The early evening timing had been utterly naive, but at least it had guaranteed the target was in – and allowed lessons to be
learned.
The man was glad it was spring, the early morning temperatures were relatively comfortable and the ground wasn’t frosty and slippery. He also didn’t have to wear a thick coat, making
it harder to run.
He crossed a road, ducking under an overhanging branch before hurrying through a ginnel and emerging onto the cul-de-sac he had chosen. The hiding place for the fuel had been pretty easy this
time around. Purely by accident when he had been driving to check the location earlier, he saw that it was bin day. Residents had already started to leave their large grey wheelie bins at the end
of their driveways ready for collection the following morning. The man had left his can in the one belonging to the house opposite and then driven off.
He put his phone into his jacket pocket and raised the bin lid, reaching inside and lifting the petrol container out. He had deliberately not filled it all the way, knowing how heavy it would be
otherwise. Making his way across the road, he could feel his hands trembling with anticipation.
At the end of the target’s drive, he stopped and placed the can on the floor, unscrewing the lid and inhaling just enough to enjoy the sensation without clouding his senses. His heart was
pounding as he walked towards the front of the property and began dribbling the liquid in a thin trail towards the main door.
The faint glow of the nearby street lights glistened from the liquid as he watched it seep into the ruts of the paved drive before he reached the front of the house. He continued to trickle it
gently as he never felt comfortable glugging the liquid over doors and window frames. The noise sounded wasteful, as if the fuel were simply being hurled away, rather than being used for a
legitimate purpose.
He was lost in his thoughts, the smell gradually reaching the point of empowerment when he heard the front door open. The man was so surprised that as he spun around the can slipped in his hand
and noisily clattered to the ground. He glanced up to see Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel standing in the doorway. The liquid gushed out of the container over his shoes. He could feel a
squelching sensation as he took an involuntary step backwards.
Jessica hadn’t left the doorstep but the man could hear movement behind him. He turned to see someone he didn’t know standing at the edge of the driveway. Looking from one person to
the other, he heard Jessica saying his name, telling him not to be stupid. Desperately, he tried to think of an innocent explanation for why he happened to be there but there was clearly none.
He knew it was game over.
His hand shot into his pocket and pulled out the lighter in an attempt to keep the man from advancing down the driveway towards him. He held it in the air in a silent threat, trying to think
what to do next. He wondered how they knew. Was it Jessica or was it the man he didn’t know who had figured it out? He thought he had been careful enough but there must have been something he
had overlooked.
He turned to see the stranger advancing one step at a time. He shouted ‘Stay back’, and held the lighter higher, his thumb resting on the trigger. Jessica still hadn’t moved
but she was saying his name again, telling him to think about what he was doing.
He could feel the fumes drifting into his nostrils. As the stranger took two steps closer, he flicked the switch, feeling the heat of the flame close to his thumb. ‘Stay back,’ he
shouted again, looking from side to side and wondering if there was somewhere he could run. He eyed the hedge that bordered the adjoining property. He might have been able to jump it but where
could he go then? If he somehow escaped, he wouldn’t know where to hide long-term. Even so, it was surely a better idea than simply standing still?
His feet squelched again, this time uncomfortably, as he edged away from the two people towards the hedge. Jessica called his name again, seemingly sensing what he was thinking, but the stranger
was now moving quickly towards him. He stepped backwards without looking and clipped his heel on an uneven part of the driveway.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The man felt himself tumbling while instinctively putting his hands down to stop himself. The stranger leapt sideways. The man turned just in time to
see Jessica dashing into the house. As the lighter slipped from his grasp, he thought the flame was out. He stretched forward to catch it but couldn’t control his falling body as he landed on
his backside, the lighter dropping onto his foot.
For a moment he thought nothing was going to happen but then he felt the heat. Somehow the flame had ignited and, as he felt pain surge through his body, he stared down in disbelief at the fire
that had engulfed his feet.
In the weeks that had gone by, the power of the flames had entranced him in their initial moments before he had to run off. He could barely comprehend the sight of the blaze that was covering
his lower half. He couldn’t even scream as the heat and the pain overwhelmed him.
He tried to roll before he heard a woman’s voice shouting and then something hammered into his legs. He heard the liquid hitting him before he felt it but, as he scrambled onto his back
and stared down, he saw Jessica holding a fire extinguisher and spraying white foam over his lower half. He couldn’t feel anything except for an intense pain and didn’t even know if he
was screaming.
The man breathed in, desperate for clean air, but all he felt was a gagging sensation in his throat as the stench of his own burned flesh tore through him.
A FEW DAYS EARLIER
Garry Ashford looked up from the newspapers. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘That depends on you,’ Jessica replied.
‘You know it can’t be him.’ The journalist was wide-eyed with shock and Jessica could see his hand shaking.
‘Why not?’
‘Because . . . well, why would he?’
Jessica shuffled onto the floor so she was sitting next to Garry and took the paper from him. She opened it at the relevant page and spread out the rest of the stack she had isolated, finding
the articles she was looking for.
‘I went to see my friend Izzy the other day,’ she said. ‘She’s just had a baby. She’s not had much sleep and she’s hardly stopped since the birth but she
looks amazing. She’s younger than me but it feels like she’s the grown-up. While I was busy trying to figure all this out, I’ve been fussing over other things and allowing my own
personality to get in the way. But she asked the simplest of questions. It was the one we all should have asked at the beginning – but we were so caught up in the pace of everything and the
things we thought were obvious, that we ended up missing that one issue.’
She paused, not for effect, simply because she thought she might cough. Garry asked the obligatory ‘what?’ as Jessica allowed her throat to settle.
‘Who gains?’ Jessica replied. ‘And Iz was right. Who gains from all of this? Martin didn’t, he lost a house. Anthony had already lost his son and could have lost his
liberty. Ryan got his dad back but could have lost him again. What about Harley? He lost his daughter and then his house. I couldn’t see past that – because I couldn’t understand
how the two things couldn’t be connected. No one is that unlucky. It was too much of a coincidence.’
She picked up one of the papers. ‘When you look at these, though, you realise it didn’t happen by chance – because there was always one person at the centre of it all. One
person who gained.’
‘But what kind of person would go that far?’
Jessica pointed to the picture byline underneath the story about the fire at her house. ‘This guy,’ she said, pointing to the photograph of Sebastian Lowe.
Izzy grinned at Jessica. ‘You don’t have to hold her if you don’t want to.’
Jessica held out her arms and cradled Amber to her body, relaxing back into the sofa. ‘They’re not too bad after all. She still has big scary eyes but at least they’re
closed.’
Izzy sat in the recliner and curled her feet underneath her. ‘Can you stop saying my only child has enormous body parts, please?’ she said with a smile.
‘Okay, let’s just say she has her mother’s eyes.’ Jessica looked up at her friend and grinned.
‘Come on then, let’s hear it.’
‘Is Amber going to mind if I say it all in front of her?’
‘Well, firstly she’s asleep and secondly she’s a tiny, tiny baby, so I think she’ll be all right.’
Jessica hugged the baby closer to her. ‘I know Dave’s spoken to you about the case a bit but, in the end, I figured it out by working my way back to what you said. It was so
confusing because we were looking for the link from Harley and his daughter to Martin and his son. There was no way it could be a coincidence but we missed the obvious connection –
Sebastian.’
‘He’s the reporter, yeah?’
‘Exactly. To be honest, I think things just got out of hand. We went through all of his stories. There are around a dozen crimes we think he may be responsible for, which he then reported.
There was this old lady bashed over the back of the head three days after he started at the paper. He got the story before anyone else because he somehow knew where the woman lived. At the time no
one there questioned him. After the assault had been reported, we didn’t pay much attention to the coverage. It was only going back now that we could see there was no obvious reason for him
to know her name and address – we only gave out the woman’s age. We assumed she had approached him about the story but she says he came to her.’
‘What else have you got?’
‘A few things we’re not completely sure of but which seem likely. There’s a shop robbery where the person was wearing a balaclava. The physical description matches Sebastian
but we would never be able to prove it. But then the fire stories started. He wrote something about this disused off-licence being set on fire a couple of months back. It wasn’t even
something on our radar and we never put out a press release, yet he wrote about it. When he stumbled across the legitimate story about Martin, it gave him ideas. When Anthony made those threats,
that meant there was a motive. The attack on Chadwick in that alley kept it in the news – and kept them on edge over each other. When the first attack on Martin’s house happened, we
went straight to Anthony’s. We found a paint tin and petrol can which I guess Sebastian left there. I unscrewed the shed door to get in, so he may well have done the same.’
‘So he set the fire at Martin’s?’
‘I think so. Sebastian is in hospital with burns. He set fire to his own feet. The doctors don’t know if he will ever walk again. He hasn’t been talking. I think he literally
just wanted to light the fuse and see what would happen between the two men. To us, it looked like Anthony waging war and Ryan or Martin fighting back. Really it was just one guy attacking both
sides.’
‘But why would he want to burn down the house of that girl who killed herself?’
Jessica pulled up the blanket to cover Amber’s ears, just in case the baby could somehow understand what was being said. ‘I reckon he got the bug after that. When I spoke to Martin
in hospital he talked about the addiction he had to the flames. For some people it’s booze or fags, for him it’s fire. I wonder if that’s how Sebastian felt after he tried it the
first time? My theory was that he was just targeting people in the news, which would then generate bigger stories.’
‘And that’s how you found him?’
‘Pretty much. I’m mates with this private investigator guy. He followed Sebastian over a couple of days and saw him leave this petrol can in a wheelie bin opposite Peter and Nicola
North’s house. We had to be careful so we made sure there were fire extinguishers around. We wanted to catch him doing it, of course. I waited in the house, Andrew was just around the corner,
and our other lot were at the end of the road out of sight.’
‘Wow, he was really going to target those poor people?’
Jessica nodded. ‘Horrible, isn’t it.’
‘And why you?’
It was something Jessica didn’t want to think too deeply about. ‘Same reason, I guess. Think about the coverage it got. Everyone was reporting it.’
Izzy reached onto the coffee table and picked up her mug of tea, interlocking her fingers around it and taking a sip. ‘When you arrested him, were you scared . . . after what happened to
you?’
Jessica ignored the question. ‘The stupid thing is that, in the end, I don’t know how much more he was going to gain. He got a promotion, he looked good among his colleagues, but
what else was he going to do? With me, everyone reported it so there was no personal gain to him. I think he started by doing this to make himself look impressive but, by the end, he was addicted
to what he was doing.’
‘Dave told me you put the flames out when Sebastian was on fire.’