AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Which was your room?’ asked Ethan as he got out of the car and walked around to stand on the grass verge gouged with the fire trucks’ heavy tyre tracks, and boggy from overnight rain. Emily thought that he sounded shaken, but when she joined him the stern profile tilted up at the house was like carved stone.
She pointed to the dormer window above what had once been the studio, the stark pattern of black and blistered paint on the weatherboards underneath stretching up like ugly fingers to reach over the scorched window sill. In parts, the flames had licked as high as the eaves, but the corrugated steel roof, although heat-buckled in places and singed at the edges, seemed largely intact. Not so some of the plastic spouting, which had melted and sagged to stick against the side of the house like stringy cheese.
‘My God, you could have died in your sleep,’ he murmured, his professional eye running over the structure, identifying the likely positions of invisible load lines and support beams within the architectural skin, noting the boards nailed haphazardly up to deter intruders.
‘The studio alarm woke me,’ she explained. ‘I inhaled a bit of smoke, that’s all, when I got downstairs and tried to get to the fire extinguisher in the kitchen—’
He swung around on her. ‘You didn’t get out right away?’ he erupted. ‘What in the hell were you thinking of? Smoke inhalation is as much a killer as heat and flame…more so because it’s insidious—you don’t realise what trouble you’re in until it’s too late!’
‘I know,’ she said huskily, disconcerted by his anger, putting a hand to the base of her throat, remembering the raw pain of her breath sawing in and out of her oxygen-starved lungs.
‘It can have lasting effects as well,’ he said grimly, his steely eyes probing. ‘I hope you got proper treatment—’
‘I was taken to the A and E that night, and Peter insisted on sending me to his ear, nose and throat specialist a couple of days later, to make sure everything was OK.’
She waited for Ethan to ask who had paid for that expensive visit, but instead he just gave her a hard look and turned back to the house.
‘That’s everything we want there, over there by the gate,’ she said, trying to turn him towards the small stack of cartons covered by black plastic rubbish bags hidden in the shrubbery. The neighbourhood was perfectly safe, but she had thought it wise not to put temptation in the way of some passing opportunist in the short t
ime she would be away. The letter box, she noticed with weary exasperation, was already stuffed with a fresh load of junk mail.
But Ethan had other things on his mind. ‘How much did you lose? I mean in terms of your inventory—how many valuable items belonging to clients were stored in the studio?’ he said, walking towards the gap where part of the white picket fence had been flattened to get the fire-hoses through.
She identified the guarded curiosity in his tone and gave a sour laugh as she trailed reluctantly in his wake. He evidently thought like an insurance man.
‘None, unfortunately. I’ve had to let our two employees go since my grandfather died so I tend to concentrate on single, high-value, complicated jobs or small bread-and-butter knick-knacks, and, since I’d just packed off a big commission from a dealer and was due to take delivery of another one from a museum the next day, I had pretty much cleared the shelves—that is, I had a couple of sentimental family heirlooms, but nothing that could be termed a treasure.’
‘Why is that unfortunate? It seems to me that you were very lucky.’
‘Too lucky,’ she said edgily, her steps slowing as they reached the rim of the shadow thrown by the house. ‘My insurance company seems to think that it’s an almighty coincidence that this should happen on the one day I didn’t have anything of great value in there…’
‘The result being a lot of expensive damage but nothing utterly irreplaceable or outrageously valuable that might cause a client to make a fuss and throw up a spike on their radar,’ Ethan reasoned. He nodded. ‘They think you set it yourself—or had someone do it for you.’
‘That’s one theory,’ Emily sighed, pushing at her curls, more disturbed than she wanted to let on by the abandoned air of the house and the acrid taint in the air. ‘They seem to have several just as ridiculous, and all of them take time to investigate. Hey—where do you think you’re going?’ she cried shrilly, catching at his rolled sleeve.
He pulled the fabric free from her clutching fingers with a careless flick of his elbow, forging on towards the remains of the studio. ‘Stay here. I’m going in for a look.’
Her heart began to pound.
‘You can’t!’ she darted after him, this time grabbing his bare forearm. ‘The tape’s there to warn everyone to keep out,’ she said, digging her heels in and feeling them slip in the churned grass, pulling her closer to the edge of panic as they neared the corner of the house. ‘Until they give the all-clear only authorised people are allowed to go in—’
‘I won’t go right inside, I just want to look in a window or two—’
Her hand tightened. ‘No, you mustn’t get any closer…If you do, we’ll get in trouble—’
He looked down at her white knuckles, and up again at her pale face, her lips parted by the rush of her quickened breathing, her dilated eyes jittering in their sockets.
‘What’s the matter, Emily?’ he said slowly, the angles of his face drawing tight. He twisted out of her grip. ‘What is it you don’t want me to see?’
Oh, of course, his first reaction was to suspect her of something criminal! thought Emily bitterly.
‘You can’t see anything. It’s too dark in there. It’s too dangerous—’ she said incoherently.
‘I’ll be careful.’ He turned his back and took a step.
‘You’re trespassing!’ Emily yelled, halting him in his second stride.
He rotated on his booted heel with a look of baffled outrage.
