Page 2 of Glasshouses

There was only a small chance that Jenna Osei, crime scene investigator and my half-brother’s girlfriend, would answer her phone. Jenna was the best crime scene tech I’d worked with; she had the ability to hyperfocus and block everything else out, which meant she was useless at answering her phone.

Unusually, she answered. “Mia, are you on your way?”

“About twenty minutes away. Wrigley’s just called me.” I weaved through traffic, keen to get there and see the scene for myself. “What can you tell me so far?”

She sighed, which made my heart sink a little. Jenna was usually optimistic, factual and didn’t have time for deep sighs.

“How bad is it?” Any plans for this evening – not that I had any – became a fantasy.

“There’s no doubt this is arson. The kitchen’s virtually untouched and the point of origin for the fire is the dining room underneath the bedroom at the back of the house. The victim was found on the floor of that bedroom – I’ve taken a ton of photos and we’re in the process of working out how to remove the body.” She sounded slightly more cheerful. “The firefighters are concerned about the safety of the structure and don’t want me or Nate walking across as it is at the moment to get to it.”

“How bad is the damage to the property?” I was paused at lights, so I used the opportunity to put the street name into my sat nav.

“One side of the house is gutted. My guess is that the perp used petrol or something similar, so it’s caught quickly. It started in the early hours of the morning at the back of the house, and nothing backs onto the garden, so it wasn’t noticed until it’d really got going. The front of the house isn’t too bad considering, but it’ll have to come down. I doubt it’s salvageable.”

“The house belongs to a Mike Mulligan who’s in his seventies. Could he be the victim?” The sat nav started to direct me down a road I would’ve missed.

Jenna laughed. “Not unless he had long hair and liked to wear women’s clothes. No, I’d say your victim is unlikely to be Mike Mulligan.”

I pulled up outside the house at the same time as the pathologist, Nathaniel Venn, otherwise known as Nate, as well as my half-brother. He’d moved back to Manchester a few months ago and I’d found out when we’d bumped into each other at a crime scene. Family issues were something we specialised in.

“Fancy seeing you here.” He shot me a grin as he opened his boot, pulling out his kit.

“Coincidence indeed.” I glanced up at the clear sky, no sign of any clouds, just chem trails crisscrossing the blue. “We don’t know who the victim is.”

He nodded, non-plussed. “Noted. Let’s go and see what the craic is.”

We passed through the crime scene tape, a copper I knew nodded at me in recognition. The place was a hive, firefighters still moving like ants across the scene, Jenna’s team dotted around the place with cameras and sharp eyes. It was familiar and strange at the same time.

Jenna met us at the back door, arms folded, expression in work mode. She was the reason Nate had moved back to Manchester; it hadn’t been for family. After a few weeks of awkwardness, we’d settled into something that was resembling a friendship, and I’d actually had dinner with Jenna at Nate’s the night before.

“We need to go in through the front; there’s a risk of the first floor collapsing at this side.” She pulled off shoe covers. “But Paul - ” she pointed to a tall, broad-shouldered man in his fifties. He was a fire investigation officer and would be crucial in working out how the fire had taken hold and travelled. “He thinks the fire was started here, just round the corner of the back door, then whoever set it has left through the back.”

I looked around the garden, most of it empty of people, including an area at the back where the hedge screened off a field. At the end of the field was a railway line, one used solely by freight trains.

“Can you get one of the team to check the back to see if there are any signs of someone leaving the garden that way?” I pointed to the corner where the hedge was thinner, a gap near the bottom that someone could get through.

“Will do. We’re combing the garden for anything dropped and I’ve got one of the dogs coming in to see if we can get traces of the accelerant picked up. Come through the front with me, I’ll take you to the body. You’re not going to be able to get any closer than the doorway to the bedroom – part of the floor has just come through so Paul’s overseeing retrieving the body.” She left her eyes on me. “Did you hear that, Mia?”

“Every syllable.”

“No acrobatics.” She used the same tone as my foster mum had on many occasions.

“I’ll try not to.”

“Not filling me with confidence.”

We followed her around the building, an Edwardian detached with gardens on all four sides. The gardens were better kept than the house, signs of the brickwork needing attention, and some of the wooden window frames looking weather worn. It didn’t matter now; I’d seen enough at the back of the building to know that the building wouldn’t be structurally safe. The fire had done a real number.

A uniformed officer stood at the front door, managing not to look bored. I checked in with him, found a smile because I knew that was a difficult stint. He was young, probably recently joined and he’d have a few more shifts like this before he got onto something more exciting, like the door-to-door enquiries some of his colleagues were already doing.

Another officer was in the entrance hall of the house, the requisite hard hat not quite subduing the mass of blonde curls. Katie Hardwick and I had trained at the same time. We were both sergeants, although she had chosen to stay in uniform.

“Welcome to your new problem.” She put her hands on her hips and smiled, the smile of someone who is about to get rid of a headache. “I’ve got my team speaking to neighbours and checking for any CCTV or video doorbells, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful.”

“It’s all happened around the back.”

“Indeed. And the way the house is positioned, it’s unlikely any neighbours will have any security cameras that cover the garden. This is a quiet street, the average age of the residents is probably around sixty, so don’t hold out for anyone hearing anything unusual.”