Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,28

he wondered why he felt so terrible—until he remembered that he didn’t function well on less than five hours’ sleep. It had been almost two when he’d left the burned restaurant and then he’d had to drop off young Terry. He’d also allowed Terry to climb back up the drainpipe so that his mother would never suspect his absence. Evan could remember a few forbidden things he’d done at the same age.

When he was in his room, he found himself too wound up to sleep so he started studying the lists of people he’d noted at each of the fires. The comparison of the lists had been disappointing. As far as he could tell, no spectators had shown up at all three fires, except young Terry, who was hardly likely to be able to get his hands on cans of petrol, or to carry them on his bike. So either they were looking at two different arsonists or this latest blaze was indeed an accident with unfortunate timing.

Evan put on his uniform and went downstairs. Nobody was stirring, which was unusual. Mrs. Williams was always up at the crack of dawn. So he drove down the hill without the fortification of a cup of tea. It was another beautiful day, crisp and autumnal but so clear that the sky looked like an arc of blue glass and the colors of the landscape glowed.

The front of the former chapel was still in good shape but the back was a ruin. The top floor and the roof had fallen in. Charred timbers and large roof beams lay haphazardly. Evan looked around for a note, but had found nothing when Sergeant Watkins arrived. Watkins looked as washed out as Evan himself was feeling.

“Solved the crime yet?” he asked, as he approached Evan.

“I haven’t a clue this time. I’ve compared lists of people and nobody was at all three fires.”

“I’m more inclined to think this was an accident in the kitchen,” Watkins said. “I mean, if someone was outside, surely she’d have heard him. She says she was just dozing. She’d have heard a door being forced or a window breaking, wouldn’t she?”

Evan stared, deep in thought. “Something’s just struck me, Sarge,” he said. “She said the smell of smoke woke her. Why not the smoke alarm? This restaurant was brand new. It must have had a fire inspection before it got its license to operate. So why didn’t the alarms go off?”

“Good question,” Watkins said. “Come on, let’s have a little snoop before wonder boy gets here.”

He started to pick his way through the rubble to the back of the building.

“Not much left back here,” he commented.

Evan nodded. “This part used to be two stories. She had her living quarters in the old organ loft above the kitchen.”

“That’s why it burned so well.” Watkins bent to retrieve a twisted cooking pot. “She had all those furnishings up there to fuel it.”

“And the wooden floor and stairs, too.” Evan stared down at the jumble of charred beams. There was nothing now to indicate that Madame Yvette’s upstairs room had ever existed—no sofa or bed in the corner. Nothing but blackened ashes.

Something caught his eye beneath a half-consumed roof beam. He moved closer and looked again, then he nudged Sergeant Watkins. “Is that what I think it is?”

They were looking at a charred hand.

“Oh God,” Watkins muttered. “Here, help me lift this beam.”

The two men were struggling to move it when they heard a shout behind them.

“ ’Ere. What do you two think you’re doing?” Peter Potter leaped from his car and stalked toward them. “I thought I told you to touch nothing until I’d had a look in the morning!”

“Yes, well, things have shifted a bit,” Watkins said dryly. “It’s moved from your territory to mine.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that it looks as if we’ve got a body under here.”

Potter came closer. “Christ. You’re right. Come on. Let’s get these away.”

The body lay sprawled amid the ash and mud. If it had been wearing clothes they had now melted into the charred flesh. It was hard to tell if it had been a man or a woman, impossible to believe that it had been a living person until recently. It reminded Evan of the Egyptian mummies he had seen on a long-ago visit to the British Museum.

“I thought she said she’d checked the place and shut up for the night?” Potter demanded.

“She was wrong, wasn’t she?” Watkins pulled out his cell phone. “Don’t touch the body,