The Burning (2 page)

Jenny hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks – he claimed his boss had demanded that he work over the holidays. In fact, she had seen him only a handful of times since October, when the
small airline for which he worked as a pilot had beaten off the competition to secure a lucrative freight contract. Now, when Michael wasn’t ferrying wealthy clients around the country, he
was transporting consignments of pharmaceuticals from Geneva and Zurich to the secure depot at Bristol International Airport. Weight for weight, his cargo was more valuable than gold, he had told
her. With £50 million worth of product on board a small aircraft, the clients insisted on the most highly qualified pilots. Having flown RAF Tornadoes from the age of nineteen until he was
forty, Michael was considered the safest pair of hands in the company.

What neither Michael’s bosses nor their Swiss clients knew, however, was that he had started seeing a therapist to deal with the combat stress that still plagued him with regular
nightmares. It had been Jenny’s suggestion, and to her great surprise he had agreed without objection. He hadn’t talked much to her about his sessions, but since the process had got
underway Jenny had noticed that, even more than usual, he tended to avoid situations that left him alone with his thoughts. She could only assume that was why he had agreed to work between
Christmas and New Year despite knowing it would mean her spending the holiday alone: the quiet days when the world stood still left the troubled mind nowhere to escape from itself.

She reached for another log, set it on the chopping block and channelled her frustration into a powerful swing of the axe. It was just her luck that as soon as she had begun to feel at peace
with herself Michael had started to turn inwards and become difficult. Still, if after all they had weathered he could continue to provoke such powerful and tangled feelings in her, she supposed
that must mean that somewhere in amongst them there was something approximating love.

The blood ran hotter through her veins and at last reached her frozen fingertips as she hacked through a stubborn, knotted log that resisted repeated blows. Days and weeks of dammed-up anger
exploded from her muscles. Michael was hard enough to forgive, but her son, Ross, had taken off to Morocco for the entire university vacation without even calling by to wish her a happy Christmas.
Things had been complicated between them since the previous summer, when he had nearly lost his life. He had dropped several hints that he was planning to ‘talk’ with her at the end of
his university term. Jenny had allowed herself to believe this might be it, the reconciliation she had been longing for, but Ross had found another girlfriend (she had lost count of how many there
had been in recent months) and his phone calls had dried up.

She was surrounded by men who couldn’t cope with their feelings. She always had been. It felt like her cruel destiny.

The work was cathartic. She filled the barrow to the top and hauled it down to the old stone shed at the end of the garden by the stream that had once housed the mill workings that gave her
isolated property its name: Melin Bach, Welsh for ‘Little Mill’. She set two wide planks on bricks to keep the damp from seeping through the dirt floor, arranged the logs on top then
returned for a second load. Crunching over the hard ground, her breath billowing in icy clouds, she felt a small surge of elation at being tough enough to look after herself. Who needed a man if
you could chop your own wood?

An hour slipped past in a steady rhythm of splitting, loading and stacking. The comfortable exertion calmed her racing mind until at last her thoughts were entirely absorbed by the task at hand.
She was more than halfway through the pile and determined to use the remaining daylight to work her way to the bottom when she heard the sound of a car crawling up the hill from Tintern. The
cautiousness of its progress told her that it didn’t belong to a local. The two other properties accessed by the loop of lane on which Melin Bach stood were owned by farming families whose
social circle was tightly drawn. Over many centuries they had become as deeply woven into the fabric of the valley as its Saxon hedgerows and medieval stone walls. When strangers came, it was not
for them.

Jenny buried her axe in the block and wiped the sweat from her forehead as the car drew up outside the front gate. She walked around to the front of the house as the driver stepped out of a
black Toyota. He was a young man, thirty-five or thereabouts, and tall, with short, slightly tousled blond hair. He wore a dark wool coat over a business suit and sober tie.

He came to the far side of the gate. ‘Mrs Cooper?’

‘Yes.’ She approached cautiously, noticing his wide green eyes that tracked her unblinkingly as she made her way towards him along the flagstone path.

‘Detective Inspector Gabriel Ryan. Gloucestershire CID. You’re the coroner, right?’

‘I am,’ she said, relieved that it was a professional visit and nothing to do with Michael. Having a pilot for a boyfriend had left her fearful of unannounced visits – she was
always at least partly prepared for a representative of the company arriving to inform her that there had been a regrettable accident.

‘Sorry to trouble you at Christmas,’ Ryan said.

‘Christmas was three days ago.’

‘If you say so.’ He shrugged his narrow shoulders and gave a hint of a smile. Up close he looked tired, with dark shadows beneath his eyes. A day’s stubble darkened his sharply
defined jaw.

Jenny unfastened the iron gate and let him through.

‘I tried to call, but could only get your voicemail.’

‘No signal. You didn’t think to try the landline?’

‘Sorry.’ He glanced over at the wheelbarrow and the axe sunk into the chopping block alongside it. Jenny watched him adjusting the mental picture he would have formed of a woman with
the title ‘Her Majesty’s Coroner for the Severn Vale District’.

‘I’m guessing you’ve not come all this way to tell me good news,’ Jenny said.

‘Afraid not,’ Ryan answered.

Jenny nodded. She wanted a moment to ready herself, to erect her defences before talking shop again.

‘You look like you might have been up all night,’ Jenny said. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’

‘Please,’ Ryan said. ‘I could do with it.’

She started around the side of the cottage to the back door, stepping past the remains of the wood pile. Ryan followed, tip-toeing over the partially frozen mud in his city shoes.

‘You live all the way out here alone?’ he inquired.

‘Some of the time,’ Jenny said, and left it at that.

Ryan sat at the small pine table in the warm, cramped kitchen while Jenny made coffee on the oil-fired range that dated back to the 1950s. From the corner of her eye she watched him glance at
the old Welsh dresser and worn quarry tiles with what seemed to be mild amusement. She guessed he had never been a country-dweller.

‘I had what the magazines call a “dream kitchen” once,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ve never felt more uncomfortable in a room.’

‘I like it. It’s cosy.’

‘I’ll believe you.’

She brought the steel pot to the pine table along with two cups and a jug of milk. ‘OK. Tell me the worst.’

‘You must have heard the news this morning?’

‘Only snatches. I try to avoid it if I can.’

‘There was a house fire. A place called Blackstone Ley – it’s over the river, near Thornbury.’

Jenny did remember a fragment of news bulletin reporting a fire, but at the mention of children she had mentally stopped her ears, as if anticipating that before too long it would become her
problem. She sensed that her holiday was about to come to a premature end.

‘Stepdad and two kids were killed,’ Ryan continued. ‘One girl of fourteen and the other eleven. He also had a child of three – a boy – whom we think he murdered and
disposed of elsewhere before setting light to the house. Only the mother survived. She works behind a bar in Bristol. Came home to a smoking ruin.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve just spent
the morning with her.’

Whom
. Jenny adjusted her assessment of Ryan. His precise grammar suggested he was a graduate. For reasons she couldn’t justify, she trusted graduate detectives less than their
unschooled colleagues. Perhaps because they were cleverer at disguising their motives.

‘You say the father started the fire?’

‘Looks that way.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out his phone. ‘You have got Wi-Fi, right?’

Jenny gave a tolerant nod.

‘Password?’

‘What would I need one of those for?’

He tapped the screen and handed her the phone. ‘The father’s name was Edward Morgan. He was known as Ed. You’re looking at his Facebook page. The last entry was made at 11.30
last night.’

Jenny looked at a photograph of a smiling Ed carrying his three-year-old son on his shoulders through a snow-covered field. He was a big man in his thirties, bearded with broad shoulders and
thick brown hair that covered his ears. The date was 21 December – a week ago to the day. The comment said ‘
Me and Robbie off to make a snowman up Tump field!
’ Above it was
another comment, text only, dated 27 December, posted at 11.28 p.m.

Jenny handed the phone back across the table to Ryan while at the same time fending off mental images of girls trapped inside a burning house. Hardened as she had become to
violent tragedy during her six years as a coroner, there were still cases that hit her like a fist in the heart. This was already one of them.

‘Kelly is who – his wife?’

‘Long-term partner. They weren’t married but had been together nearly ten years.’

‘What’s the family’s history?’

‘I can give you the few bits and pieces I picked up this morning. She moved up from London in her early twenties with a three-year-old and a baby. Met Ed a couple of years later, settled
down, then eventually had the boy by him. She’s as confused as everyone else is shocked.’

‘He called her a whore—’

‘She’s a pretty woman, but she insists she’s always been faithful. Often as not, in my experience, it’s all in the guy’s head. Some just have the jealous gene,
imagine things that aren’t there.’

‘Have you got a photo?’

‘Of Kelly? Sure.’

Another couple of taps on the phone brought up Kelly Hart’s profile page. The picture she had chosen of herself showed her dressed in denim shorts and a bikini top standing barefoot on the
beach. She was petite, dark-haired, full-lipped and olive skinned. Beautiful, but not in a provocative way. Her expression was almost demure, as if she’d been a reluctant subject for the
camera.

Jenny found herself impatient for more of Kelly’s story. ‘You said she’s from London? How did she end up in this part of the world?’

‘From what I can make out the girls’ father – his name’s Molyneux – worked as some sort of security guard or bouncer type in a West End casino. But according to
Kelly he made most of his money dealing coke to the punters. He got four years just before their youngest was born. Kelly wanted a clean break. She stayed with friends near Bristol, found a bar
job, then got offered a council house in Blackstone Ley. It’s a bit out of the way, but I guess she thought it would be good for the kids.’

Jenny looked again at Kelly’s picture. She seemed too exotic to have chosen to live in a small hamlet in South Gloucestershire.

‘I know it’s unusual,’ Ryan said, ‘but I get the feeling that there was a year or two after Molyneux was put away when she blew with the wind. Could have ended up
anywhere. Just so happened she fetched up on our patch.’

‘What about him – Ed?’

‘Local boy. Worked part-time for the Forestry and put in a few shifts each week up at Fairmeadows Farm near Sharpness.’

‘Why do I know that name?’ Jenny asked.

‘Fairmeadows? You’ll have seen the lorries – all the happy-looking animals painted on the sides. It’s not exactly a farm, though – more of an abattoir and rendering
plant.’

‘Ah,’ Jenny said. The smiling father in the photograph transformed into a man with a butcher’s knife and blood up to his elbows. ‘Ed worked as a slaughterman, then
slaughtered his family.’

‘That seems to be about the length of it.’ Ryan finished his coffee, then looked at her with what appeared to be sympathy. ‘It’s a shitty case and my super wants it off
our hands sooner than I’d consider decent. He aims to dump the file on you tomorrow.’

‘So you’ve come to give me a friendly warning?’ Jenny said doubtfully.

‘No. I thought you might want to look at the house before we bulldoze it. If we leave now, we might manage half an hour before dark.’

‘Is there anything to see?’

‘Not much, but at least we’ll have given you fair opportunity.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all my super wanted. Between you and me, I’m not his greatest
admirer.’ He stood up from the table with an air of finality. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’ He turned to the door.

‘Hold on,’ Jenny said. ‘You’re right. I ought to have a look at the place.’

Ryan nodded his approval. ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

J
ENNY DROVE CLOSE BEHIND
R
YAN
through the thickening fog, their two cars the only vehicles on the road winding through the
wooded trough of the Wye Gorge. It occurred to her that she was repeating a pattern: during each of the six Christmas holidays in her time as coroner, she had dealt with either a suicide or a
homicide. The cracks in fragile minds tended to work open when the hours of darkness far outnumbered those of light.

She had expected the fog to disperse a little as they emerged from the forest and arrived on more open ground alongside the Severn Estuary at Chepstow, but as they crawled the final mile towards
the old Severn Bridge it seemed to grow thicker still. Not a breath of wind blew in from the Bristol Channel. Jenny’s senses searched for anchors, a familiar landmark with which to orientate
herself in the claustrophobic gloom, but with every passing yard her field of vision grew smaller, until all she could see ahead of her were the two red dabs of Ryan’s tail lights appearing
and then disappearing again into the grey murk.