Part 8 (1/2)
”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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 G.o.d,” 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 s.h.i.+fted 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, please, until Dr. Owens has had a chance to take a look at it.” He moved aside and Evans heard him requesting the Home Office pathologist.
While they waited, Evan was studying the way the body was lying amid the beams. ”It looks to me as if he might have been upstairs,” he suggested. ”See how that one beam is under him.”
”Not necessarily,” Potter said. ”If he'd been trying to get out when the top floor collapsed, a beam could have crashed in front of him and then he could have been struck or felled by smoke.”
Evan nodded, appreciating this possibility.
”You weren't wrong in what you said last night.” Watkins came back to join them. ”This certainly is one step further, all right. Whoever it is has just moved from arson to manslaughter.”
”If it is the same person,” Potter said. ”I've got the dog in the car, and I'll bring him out to take a sniff around, but I don't see any immediate evidence of the area being doused with petrol this time.”
”Is it possible that this was the bloke who set the fire and then got trapped in his own blaze?” Watkins asked.
”It's happened before,” Potter said, ”but I'd have thought in this case it would have been simple enough to get out. There was a back door here, wasn't there?”
”Madame Yvette managed to get down the stairs and out of the back door after the fire started,” Evan pointed out.
”And you thought that the bloke might have been upstairs, too?” Potter looked at him with sudden interest. ”You're suggesting that she was in bed with someone and she got out and he didn't?”
”But then why wouldn't she have told the firemen right away that someone was possibly trapped up there?”
Potter shrugged. ”Didn't want to ruin her reputation?”
Evan had to laugh. ”She isn't that kind of woman. I don't know her well, but I can't imagine she'd be the type who would just leave someone to burn.”
”The first thing is to find out who he was,” Watkins said.
”You're sure it was a he?”
”Pretty big bones,” Watkins said. ”And look down here, where the beam was lying across his feet-that definitely looks like the remains of a man's shoe, doesn't it?”
Potter knelt beside the body. ”If the beam was covering his foot there's a good chance the inside of the shoe might be intact. No oxygen will have reached it to go on burning.”
Watkins took out a clean handkerchief and cautiously eased off the shoe. The inside leather at the heel was still brown, and in one spot, s.h.i.+ny. Watkins held it up so that Evans and Potter could both examine it.
”I think it says Made in Spain Made in Spain.” Watkins's disappointment showed in his voice. ”That doesn't tell us anything. All shoes come from somewhere else these days.”
”If we take it to the lab, they could possibly identify the model of the shoe and where it was sold. But as you say, people buy their shoes all over the place these days. The wife stocked up in Italy last year.”
”It says forty-six here, I think.” Evan pointed at the numbers. ”That's continental sizing, isn't it? That probably means it wasn't made for the English market.”
”The boy's quick, isn't he?” Potter was half-mocking.
”Yes, he is,” Watkins agreed. ”So you're suggesting that the bloke was a foreigner?”
”Or, as Sergeant Potter says, he buys his shoes abroad,” Evan added ”Although I'd imagine you can buy imported shoes easily enough here.”
”Not much to go on.” Watkins sighed. ”I suppose the next thing is to find out if anyone was reported missing this morning. If he was a local and he didn't show up last night, we'd have heard by now.”
He pulled out the phone again. ”Wonderful invention, these things, aren't they? Too wonderful sometimes. The wife knows where to find me when she realizes we're out of potatoes, or to check on why I'm late.”
Potter brought out his dog and they moved around the ruin, examining burn patterns and taking samples. Evan waited for the medical examiner to arrive, glancing every now and then at the sprawled figure and trying not to feel pity. He'd been on the force long enough now. Why was he still so disturbed by death?
About half an hour later the white incident van pulled up beside Evan's car. The first person out was D.I. Hughes, Sergeant Watkins's boss and Evan's least favorite detective inspector. He didn't wait for the doctor to emerge from the other door, but strode toward the waiting group of men.
”So we've got a body this time, have we?” he called in his high, clipped voice. ”I hope you and your wretched dog haven't disturbed anything, Potter.”
”No sir.” Potter's face was sullen. ”n.o.body's disturbed anything, except for taking the beams away to get to him.”
”Ah, so he was covered in debris, was he?” Hughes peered down at the body.
”Yes sir. There were three big beams over him,” Watkins said. ”And some slates where the roof caved in.”
”Ah, quite.” He stared at the body for a long moment. ”Poor devil,” he said. ”Not a pleasant way to die, I'd imagine. Look how he's grimacing. Any idea who he was?”
”No sir,” Watkins answered. ”I put in a call to HQ to see if anyone's been reported missing. Evans and I interviewed the restaurant owner last night. She gave no indication that anyone else might have been inside. She says she locked up for the night. The next thing she knew, she woke up to smell smoke.”
”I suppose it's possible he was a customer trapped in the gent's loo,” Hughes observed dryly.
Potter sn.i.g.g.e.red.