Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,89

down, placing some of the ash into a plastic bag that he produced from his pocket.

‘What have you found?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing special,’ he said. ‘It’s just for an accelerant test.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Test to see if an accelerant was present,’ he said. ‘An accelerant like petrol, paint thinners or paraffin, that sort of thing.’

‘I thought it was electrical,’ I said.

‘Probably was,’ he said. ‘Most fires are electrical but we need to do the test anyway. I don’t expect it to show much. This place is so badly burnt out that it will be damn nearly impossible to determine how it started.’

He went back to his poking of the ash. After a while he lifted something up on his stick as if landing a salmon.

‘Aha,’ he said. ‘What have we got here?’

It looked like a black molten lump to me. I didn’t recognize it as anything I had once owned.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Your smoke detector,’ he said.

I couldn’t remember having heard its alarm go off.

‘You should have had a battery in it,’ he said. ‘It’s not much use without a battery. You might have got the brigade here sooner and saved something if your detector had had a battery.’

‘But it did have a battery,’ I said.

‘No, sir,’ he said with conviction. ‘It did not. See how the Peat has caused it to seal up completely?’ He showed the lump to me. I would have to take his word for it. ‘If there had been a battery, then it would still be there, or at least the remains of it would. I can still see the clip but there are no battery terminals attached to it. It definitely did not have a battery in it.’ He paused as if for effect. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve seen this. Loads of people forget to replace a flat battery or, like you, they take out the old one and then forget to put a new one back in.’

But I hadn’t forgotten. There had to have been a battery in the detector. I had replaced it, as I always did, when the clocks went forward for summertime in March. It had gone off just last week when I had again burnt some toast. It definitely had a battery. I was sure of it, just as sure as my investigator friend was that it had been batteryless.

I went cold and clammy. Someone had obviously removed my smoke detector battery before setting my house alight with me in it. With or without an accelerant, an established fire at the bottom of the stairs would have given me little chance of escaping. I had simply been lucky to wake up when I had.

Suddenly I was certain that the fire had been the second time someone had tried to kill me.

CHAPTER 15

I was frightened. Very frightened. Twice I had cheated an assassin. I didn’t like to think of ‘third time lucky’ or ‘if at first you don’t succeed – try, and try again’.

‘Who could it be?’ I asked myself once more. ‘Who on earth could want me dead, and why?’

It was six o’clock in the evening and I sat in the rented Mondeo in the empty car park of the Newmarket July racecourse. I didn’t know why I chose there particularly, I just wanted to be somewhere away from anyone else and with enough space to see someone coming. The car park was deserted, save for my Mondeo in the centre of it. I looked all around. There was no one about.

Who could I trust? Could I in fact trust anyone?

Caroline, I thought. I would trust her with my life. I suddenly realized that, indeed, it was my life I would lose if I made a mistake and trusted the wrong person.

The safest course was to trust no one. Not even my kindly neighbour, dear.

But I couldn’t stay sitting here in this car park for ever.

Could I trust Carl? Was I safe to sleep in his house? Was he safe if I was sleeping in his house? I had witnessed only too clearly what a fire could do and how close I had come to joining my smoke detector as its victim. I really didn’t want to take that risk again.

Should I now go to the police? But would they believe me? It all seemed so unreal, even to me. Would they take me seriously enough to give me protection? It was not worth going to the police if they simply took a statement and then