‘Yes, Diane?’

‘Where are you right now, Ben?’

‘Somerfield’s supermarket.’

‘I suppose that makes sense, does it?’

‘They have ATMs,’ said Cooper. ‘You know – cash machines.’

‘Yes, I know what an ATM is. Wait – you’re on the plastic crime initiative.’

‘Did you forget?’

‘No, I’ve been a bit busy this morning, that’s all.’

‘Something on?’

He heard Fry hesitate. ‘Don’t get excited. Just something I’d like you to take a look at when you’re finished. Get away as soon as you can, will you?’

‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’

‘A house fire last night. Multiple fatalities.’

‘Where?’

‘One of the Edendale estates. The Shrubs, I think they call it.’

‘I know where you mean.’

For all the time she’d served in E Division, Fry still didn’t seem to know the area all that well. Perhaps she didn’t think it was worth the effort because she wasn’t intending to stay long enough. Yes, that was the impression she gave. A visitor caught in a depressing stop-over while she waited for a connection to somewhere better.

Cooper remembered a few of the initial reactions to Fry when she’d first transferred from West Midlands. ‘A bit of a hard-faced cow’; ‘Could be a looker, but she doesn’t bother’; ‘Too tall, too skinny, no make-up’; ‘Stroppy bitch’. None of them had been fair, of course. But Fry hadn’t done much to make herself popular with her colleagues. In fact she seemed to relish her image.

In the background, he could hear Judson answering a question. ‘A blank piece of plastic, embossed and encoded with a stolen account number. Some of these plastic crime merchants practically steal your identity.’

‘Can you hear me, Ben?’

‘Yes, you mentioned a fire on the Shrubs.’

‘Great. Well, three deaths. A mother and two children.’

‘Evidence of suspicious circumstances?’

‘Not yet. But …’

‘You’re expecting some?’

‘We haven’t had the forensics yet. But I want to know if you’ll be around.’

‘OK,’ said Cooper, trying not to sound surprised. ‘I’ll see you back at the office after the session with Steve Judson. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, that’s absolutely fine.’

When he ended the call, Cooper frowned. Somehow, Fry hadn’t sounded her usual self.

Judson caught his eye across the group and raised an eyebrow. ‘They get your PIN by focusing a camera on the keypad,’ he was saying. ‘At the end of the day, they retrieve discarded receipts. They match up the time of your withdrawal with the tape from the camera, and they’ve got both your PIN and your account number. They can produce a duplicate card and make fraudulent withdrawals as easily as if they’d stolen the genuine card. And you won’t even know anything’s happened until you see your next bank statement. That’s more than bingo – it’s the jackpot.’

Edendale District General was on the northern edge of town, occupying a greenfield site where new wards could be added as funding became available. Fry had never seen the old hospital on Fargate. It had closed years ago, its Victorian buildings so primitive and crumbling that nobody had bothered saving them from demolition. But its location must have been very handy. Even at this time of the morning, it would take her fifteen minutes to get across town to the new site, once she got away from Darwin Street.

‘Tell me again, who made the emergency call?’ she asked Murfin when he came off the radio to the control room.

‘One of the neighbours dialled 999 when he saw the smoke. Bloke by the name of Wade. A bit of a know-it-all, by the sound of him. FOAs took a statement earlier.’

‘You know, we should have made sure we had complete information before we came out.’

Murfin looked aggrieved. ‘You said you wanted to get the job out of the way as soon as possible. In and out, and turn it over to the coroner, that’s what you said.’

‘OK, Gavin, thanks.’ Fry didn’t like her words being quoted back to her, especially when she’d been wrong. ‘It’s a bit irritating, that’s all.’

‘Is that why you made me look in that last bedroom?’

She sighed. ‘It had to be done, Gavin. You aren’t here just to wreck the place and make stupid jokes. There was nothing in the bedroom, anyway.’

‘You didn’t know that at the time.’

‘Right. How come the hospital staff have more information than we do, eh? So the youngest child wasn’t even at home, but with the grandparents? It shouldn’t have needed a call to the ward sister to find that out.’

Murfin was silent as he watched her get into her car. ‘You know I’ve got kids of my own, don’t you?’ he said quietly, before she closed the door.

Fry bit her lip, caught out by a moment of tricky human emotion when she hadn’t expected it. ‘Sorry, Gavin.’

But he didn’t seem to have heard her as he walked away. And by the time she caught up with him later, he was back to his old self, so she didn’t mention it again.

* * *

Brian Mullen was in a side room off one of the newer wards, with a PC on duty outside the door. Mullen was in his early thirties, sandy-haired, with a faintly pink complexion, as if his skin had been freshly scrubbed. His hands were bandaged, but otherwise he looked quite fit and healthy.

He was also sedated and deeply asleep, as motionless as the dead. There was no point in asking questions of a comatose body.

‘Naturally, he was in a very distressed condition when he was admitted,’ said the ward sister. ‘Apart from his physical injuries.’

‘But otherwise he’ll be well enough to be interviewed later?’ asked Fry.

‘You’ll have to get permission from the doctor.’

Fry didn’t like hospital doctors much. They seemed inseparable from a smell of disinfectant and a tendency to interfere. White coats and professional obstinacy; both unwelcome obstacles when she was intent on finding the truth.

‘Were you on duty when Mr Mullen’s parents-in-law came in this morning, Sister?’

‘Mr and Mrs Lowther? Yes, I spoke to them myself. It was helpful they came, because we’ll be able to reassure Mr Mullen his daughter is safe, at least. She was with them last night, apparently. Oh, but you’ll know that – someone called earlier.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Fry. ‘So when will Mr Mullen come out of sedation?’

‘Some time this afternoon.’

‘I need to know as soon as he’s awake and fit to answer questions, Sister.’

‘I’ll inform the officer over there, shall I? I presume he’s going to carry on hanging around here making a nuisance of himself?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Well, I hope we have less trouble with the patient when he wakes up. He almost injured one of my nurses when we had to sedate him earlier.’

Fry had been about to leave the ward, but she stopped halfway through the swing doors. ‘What do you mean, you had to sedate him?’

‘He was completely wild, shouting that he couldn’t stay here, he had to get out. You know, we see some troubled cases in this hospital, but Mr Mullen was in a dreadful state.’

‘He must have wanted to go back to his house. He knew his family were trapped in the fire.’

‘Probably you’re right …’ The sister hesitated, sounding doubtful. ‘I suppose it’s not my place to say this, but that wasn’t the way it seemed. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have said he was frightened.’

‘Frightened?’ Fry glanced back at Brian Mullen, lying motionless in his bed. ‘Well, whatever it was, I expect he’ll have forgotten it when he wakes up, won’t he?’

‘Not necessarily. It’s his brain and body that are sedated. Deep-rooted fears are in the subconscious. And the subconscious never sleeps.’

* * *

After a wasted trip across town and back, Fry was feeling even more irritable. When she pulled up near the Mullens’ house, she found just one miserable-looking uniformed officer standing outside the gate. He had his hands folded behind his back, and he was bouncing slightly on his toes, as if auditioning for a part in The Pirates of Penzance. At any moment, he might burst into ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one …’