Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,16
glad to see me instead of him, aren’t you?”
“You can say that again,” Evan muttered.
“Gave you a hard time, did he? Don’t worry, he’s not winning any popularity contests with the rest of us either, but I gather he’s the cat’s whiskers when it comes to arson.”
They walked across the car park together.
“It doesn’t look as if much harm was done this time,” Watkins said.
“Luckily it was only a storage shed at the back that went up. It could have been worse.”
“Any sign of a note this time?” Watkins asked.
“Not that we’ve found so far.”
“So it could be accidental,” Watkins commented, stepping carefully over the rubble. “Phew,” he added, pointing at a pile of scorched cans. “Paraffin. Lucky they put the fire out before that lot went up.”
Evan was staring thoughtfully at the giant Swiss chalet shape of the Everest Inn. “You know what I keep asking myself, Sarge—why this?”
“Because the inn’s full of rich foreigners?”
“In that case why not go the whole hog and try to burn it down?” Evan asked. “Why bother with a piddling little outbuilding that does no real damage?”
“Maybe they got cold feet about burning something as large as the inn,” Watkins said, scowling at it, “or maybe they knew that flammables were stored in here and they expected the whole lot to explode and spew burning liquid on all these nice cars.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Evan said. “Why not torch some of the cars, if that’s the aim? Nobody has come forward to claim responsibility yet. There’s not much point in burning down buildings if nobody knows who’s doing it.”
Watkins nodded. “You’ve got a point there. We’re busy trying to match up fingerprints but no luck so far. I hope we get them before there’s much more of this.”
“So you think it is arson again, then?”
Watkins bent and retrieved something with his handkerchief. “This looks like the same type of fuse that was used at the cottage. I reckon it was the same bloke all right.”
As Evan and Watkins came down the street from the inn, the Reverend Parry Davies was standing in the pulpit addressing his newly acquired flock.
“My dear friends,” his voice boomed out through open windows, “a great evil has come among us, an evil that mocks one of the Ten Commandments—a heathen foreigner who thinks she can besmirch the Lord’s day. I am referring to that new house of iniquity down the pass—the French restaurant. As I drove up with a vanload of new worshipers today, what do you think I saw? I saw that the restaurant was open—open today on the Sabbath!
“My dear friends, I, your pastor, warn you to stay away from that house of sin. Any place that does commerce on the Sabbath day is a house of the devil and anyone who frequents it is asking for an eternity of hellfire and damnation.”
Across the street the Reverend Powell-Jones couldn’t help overhearing. “Vanity!” he boomed at his own congregation. “Vanity is a tool of the devil! There are those among us who seek to better themselves, who seek to better their own position in life—who waste money on costly vans to swell their congregations. And why? Not for the salvation of more souls, but to swell the amount of money in the collection plate!”
As soon as his service was over he rushed out to his billboard and pasted a new text: “Before you criticize the speck of dust in your neighbor’s eye, remove the beam from your own eye!”
“And very apt too, Edward,” Mrs. Powell-Jones commented, glaring at the van parked across the street. “If it’s not nipped in the bud, that Parry Davies woman will be using that van to get members for her women’s prayer group and then there will be no stopping her!”
Chapter 7
On Monday morning Evan received a brief visit from Sergeant Potter on his way back from his inspection of the crime scene.
“It looks like we’ve got ourselves a serial arsonist here allright,” he said. “Same modus operandi—same accelerant dropped in through a broken window, same type of fuse.”
“But no note found this time,” Evan pointed out.
“Not yet. It could have been burned by mistake.” He stood staring out of the open doorway, then suddenly turned to Evan. “So who is it, then?” the sergeant demanded. “Come on, man, you must have some idea. It’s a village. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, don’t they?”
“Are you saying that someone from the village has to be responsible?” Evan asked.
“Stands to reason,