LITMIR.BIZ

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through a stack of marking that she wanted to finish that evening, and so Warren had offered to stop off at the local Indian takeaway.

      The dining room table was covered with GCSE controlled assessments when he arrived home. As Susan cleared them some space, Warren went into the kitchen and distributed the food. He was midway through pouring a well-deserved beer when the lights went out.

      ‘Shit,’ came Susan’s surprised voiced from the dining room.

      The unexpected transition to pitch black also caught Warren by surprise and he froze. A few seconds later the sound of glugging beer turned into the sound of dripping liquid as the glass frothed and overflowed.

      ‘Shit,’ echoed Warren as he tried to place the bottle back on the counter without knocking anything off.

      When the lights didn’t return after a few more seconds, Warren turned slowly to take stock of the situation; even the ever-present hum from the fridge-freezer was suddenly noticeable by its absence.

      ‘It looks as though the whole street is out,’ called Susan. ‘Not even the street lights are on.

      By now, Warren’s eyes were starting to adjust to the sudden darkness. Faint, grey shadows slowly took form as the dim moonlight seeped through the slats in the still open kitchen blinds.

      ‘I think I left my mobile in my handbag, can you use yours?’ called Susan from the other room. Feeling foolish for forgetting that his phone was essentially a torch, Warren fumbled in his jacket pocket. Nothing. It must still be in his overcoat, hanging in the hallway.

      The faint moonlight didn’t penetrate this far into the house and Warren found himself reaching out with his hands, shuffling slowly like a mummy from a childrens’ cartoon. They’d lived in the house for nearly four years, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall how many steps there were to the coat pegs. The flashing red light on the alarm system did nothing to help him judge the distance.

      Or see Susan’s book bag at the bottom of the stairs.

      After picking himself up and reassuring Susan that he was OK, Warren finally located his coat, and then his phone.

      The light from its screen was dazzling, and Warren had to blink several times before he could focus enough to locate the icon that turned the phone’s camera flash into a powerful torch.

      ‘It’s a good job I got takeaway or we’d be eating cold baked beans like cavemen,’ joked Warren.

      ‘Well, unless we want to eat in the dark, we’d better find some candles soon, my phone battery is only on 10 per cent.’

      Warren checked his, and found it wasn’t much better.

      It took a couple of minutes of fumbling around before Susan located the box of candles left over from Christmas dinner at the back of a cupboard. Fortunately, she kept a box of matches in her school pencil case.

      ‘I knew there was a reason I married a science teacher, instead of a geography teacher,’ teased Warren.

      ‘I assumed it was the leather elbow patches that put you off geographers,’ replied Susan as she lit the candles. She reached around the table and gave Warren’s backside a playful squeeze. ‘Eat up quickly before the power comes back on, you know how candlelight makes me feel.’

      Warren said nothing as he fumbled for his phone.

      ‘How could I be so stupid,’ he muttered, ignoring his wife’s flirting.

      No signal. The power cut must have been quite extensive to have also taken out the local cell-tower.

      Ignoring Susan’s questions, Warren scrolled through his contacts as he made his way to the hall phone. Fortunately, the local telephone exchange still had power and Tony Sutton picked up on the second ring.

      ‘You OK, boss? Have you lost your mobile or something?’

      ‘Have you got electricity?’

      ‘Yeah, course, I live in Middlesbury not Cornwall.’

      Warren ignored the man’s attempt at humour.

      ‘I need you to check your email for Andy Harrison’s scene inventory and read it out for me.’

      Still confused, Sutton nevertheless complied.

      ‘That’s it?’

      ‘That’s everything that’s listed. Andy’s pretty thorough, you know that. What’s this all about, Chief?’

      Warren explained his flash of inspiration. There was a silence at the end of the phone before Sutton spoke again.

      ‘You’d better call Grayson and let him know. He needs to be the one to escalate the death to murder.’

Monday 23^rd February

       Chapter 9

      Judging from the time displayed by the flashing clock on the oven, the electricity had been restored some hours previously, at about 1 a.m. A statement from the electricity company had been read out on the local radio as Warren drove into the office at 6 a.m., apologising to the thousand or so customers affected by a fault at the local substation.

      Warren was half contemplating writing a letter of thanks.

      ‘Sorry I didn’t spot it sooner,’ said Warren.

      Grayson waved a hand. ‘Nobody else did. So either somebody was with him when he set himself on fire, holding a light, or he was set alight by persons unknown? There’s no way he could have done it himself?’

      Warren shook his head firmly.

      ‘The last reliable sighting of Father Nolan was after dark and there was hardly any moonlight. I can just about accept that he could find his way to the chapel, then let himself into the undercroft, but it would have been pitch black down there. There are electric lights, but they were turned off at the switch at the top of the stairs. I can’t believe that he would have gone down there, set up the chair, then gone back up the stairs, locked himself in, switched off the lights, come back downstairs, doused himself in petrol and then set himself alight in the pitch black.’

      ‘And there were no other sources of light at the scene?’

      ‘Nothing. No torch, his mobile phone was back in his room and there were no candles.’

      ‘He had a box of matches, could he have used those?’

      ‘Doubtful, the box was almost full and Forensics only found a single spent match in the whole area. Besides which, you know how volatile petrol is. It’s doubtful he could have slopped petrol over himself with an open source of ignition in the room, the vapour would have ignited immediately. Forensics didn’t find any burnt paper or rags at the scene to indicate that he made a fire to see by.’

      Grayson pulled at his bottom lip. ‘You’re right. I’m not quite ready to publicly declare it a murder, but it should remain an unexplained death for now.’

      ‘There’s more,’ interjected Sutton. ‘I was thinking about this after last night’s call. There was no sign of any restraint, and I believe that the working hypothesis was that Father Nolan drank enough whiskey and took enough sleeping pills to numb the pain sufficiently not to run around like a mad thing when he set himself alight.’

      Warren agreed; he could see where Sutton was headed.

      ‘Well, is it likely that somebody that far out of it would have the manual dexterity to light a match, apparently first time?’

      The three men were silent as they thought through the implications.

      ‘We need the results of the toxicology,’ said Warren finally.

      ‘Call

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