If someone arrested was still intoxicated, they weren’t supposed to be released. Jessica knew that what she was suggesting was anything but by the book. Reynolds continued to glare at the floor. ‘I don’t think he would protest,’ Jessica added. ‘I reckon he’s been sleeping rough.’

‘Why do you want to keep him in?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I think there’s something we’re all missing.’

‘To do with him?’

Jessica stood, adjusting her jacket. ‘I don’t know.’

Reynolds raised himself from the chair with a grunt and walked towards the door, standing in front of it and blocking the way out. Jessica wondered if he had done it deliberately. ‘Do you think he started the fire?’

It was the most direct question he could have asked.

‘I think he’s unpredictable,’ Jessica replied.

The inspector smiled in the fatherly way she knew he could. It was how he used to greet her when they shared an office and he didn’t have to control her. His head lolled onto one shoulder as he rolled his eyes and flashed his teeth. He stepped aside, clearing the exit and then put a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. ‘I’ll have a word with the custody sergeant but you’re going to be the death of me.’

Jessica thought about Reynolds’s words throughout the evening. Whatever he had said in the other station had done the trick and, however the paperwork had been fiddled, Anthony Thompson was going to be sleeping in a cell until the following morning. Jessica knew it wasn’t a particularly fair way to treat him but, as she suspected, he had offered no complaints.

At some point during the day, Adam had bookmarked a selection of potential wedding venues, which he showed her enthusiastically. She found it hard to look him in the eye as, every time she did, she remembered her confusion from the night before in thinking he was Sebastian. Largely because of that, she skimmed through the sites with him, saying all the right things about going to visit them.

Jessica couldn’t stop thinking about the way Reynolds had looked at her in the interview room. He was someone she had always respected, even though she had never been as close to him as she was to Dave and Izzy. One time when she was a child, her mother had scolded her for crossing the road without looking. She had said that she wasn’t angry, just disappointed. The inspector had given her that same look and she wondered why she was allowing herself to become so involved. In essence, it was a straightforward arson that might, at some point, be upgraded to an attempted murder. She had dealt with much more serious cases and not allowed herself to be drawn in the way she felt she was now.

Jessica struggled to hide her relief as the sound of her phone ringing interrupted their Internet browsing. She mouthed her customary ‘sorry’ as she took the call, strolling into the hallway as she had done the previous night. On this occasion, she barely had a foot on the bottom step before she turned and walked back into the living room to pick up her jacket from the chair where she had left it.

There was another fire.

14

In her old car, Jessica knew there was a good chance she would have been driving around in circles swearing at no one in particular before stopping to ask scared passers-by for directions. Another function of her new car that she actually found useful – when she could figure out how to use it – was the built-in satellite navigation device. That didn’t stop her swearing at the eerie flat tone of the voice telling her which direction she should be heading in. Adam would have laughed as she shouted ‘I just turned left, you mardy bitch’, only to get the reply: ‘Please turn around’. It also didn’t stop her becoming furious every time it beeped to tell her she was approaching a speed camera. That was something which seemed to happen a lot around Manchester.

She discovered to her surprise that the journey was largely along one road. Boothstown was an affluent area she had rarely visited. Jessica had been to plenty of large properties south of the city but rarely in the west. Outside the M60 ring road, it was close enough to Manchester to enjoy the transport links but far enough away that it was almost inconceivable that grim, dark housing estates were barely a fifteen-minute bus ride away.

The distance between houses began to increase and, as she passed a golf club, smoke drifted across the road and Jessica could smell the burned aroma she had tasted at Martin Chadwick’s house. Ignoring the sat nav and following the smoke, Jessica arrived in front of a property with huge metal gates that were opened inwards. From the road she could see the flames. She parked close by, grabbed the jacket that she still hadn’t returned from the back seat, and then hurried along the wide driveway towards where she could see the fire licking into the night sky.

In the light of the flames, Jessica could see three fire engines parked at the end of the drive, with large hoses pumping water as small groups of men gripped them. As she walked, she looked to her left where a large lush lawn stretched away from the driveway. Ahead of her, she could see the far sides of the house were untouched by flames. The sandstone ends were in stark contrast to the blackened centre, which was entirely engulfed by the fire. She heard a creak and then a crash, watching as the upper part in the centre of the house collapsed onto the ground floor.

Two of the firefighters darted backwards, shouting instructions over their shoulders. She could feel the heat on her face, although the wind was blowing the thick black smoke away from where she was walking. The property itself looked as if it would have at least five or six bedrooms. The window frames still untouched at either end were tall, showing off what she expected were large, high-ceilinged rooms.

As Jessica continued making her way slowly towards the site, she heard someone shouting and turned to her right where another fire officer was running towards her.

As he neared, he lowered his voice. ‘No public, you’ve got to go back to the road.’

Jessica fumbled in her pockets for her identification. ‘I’ve been called here,’ she said. ‘Detective Sergeant Daniel. I’m from Longsight.’

‘What are you doing all the way out here?’ he asked.

‘Long story. Where’s the owner?’

‘On his way. He wasn’t in.’ The officer pointed over his shoulder towards the next property along which was shielded from view by a large hedge. ‘We were called out by a neighbour. You might want to talk to them.’

Jessica heard sirens approaching and two marked police cars started accelerating along the drive towards them. The first one sped past, pulling up next to the fire engines, the second stopping alongside Jessica. She didn’t recognise the police officer who got out of the car, although that wasn’t a surprise. She wasn’t sure exactly what division was responsible for the area she was in. It was right on the border where Manchester West CID would take over from her Metropolitan division, although the responsibility for uniformed officers was far more localised.

Either way, given whose house was on fire, there was no doubt she would end up dealing with the fallout.

The uniformed constable who stepped out of the car put his hat on, straightening it, and fixed Jessica with a suspicious look. He was somewhere in his mid-twenties and, from the way he looked at her, she knew the type straight away. He was the sort who would ask all the questions first in a time-sensitive situation and then realise that they had left it too late to actually do anything. Jessica was the opposite, although, with everything going on around her and Reynolds’s clear indifference to her presently, she wondered whose way was best.