Liar Liar - [9]

Later, swathed in a thick towel, Helen looked out over Southampton from her large bedroom window. Dawn was about to break, heralding a day in which the full reckoning of last night’s devastation would become painfully clear. Waiting for the sun to rise, Helen suddenly felt very isolated. In the past, when dark feelings started to assail her, she would seek out her dominator, Jake, but she couldn’t do that now. He had started to develop feelings for her, so she’d had to sever their connection, before things became too complicated. She had no family to speak of and she couldn’t bother Charlie – she had enough on her plate already – which left Helen feeling very exposed.

Once the fracture in her relationship with Jake had become clear, Helen had considered turning to another dominator. She had always moderated and controlled her emotions through pain – the scars that decorated her torso and arms were a testament to this – and she missed her sessions with Jake. No one was better at driving away her dark thoughts than him. She had gone as far as calling one of his rivals – a dominator who went by the absurd name of Max Paine – but she had hung up before he answered, suddenly unsure about starting the process with a total stranger. With Jake, she could be herself, naked and unadorned. It would take a while before she could let herself be that vulnerable in front of somebody else.

Helen stared out into the night, pondering what the future might hold – for this city, for its inhabitants, for herself – one dark thought tumbling on top of another. Sitting there, framed by the large, picture window and silhouetted by darkness, Helen was the very image of quiet loneliness.

She held this pose for a few minutes then, angered by her self-indulgence, slid off the ledge and walked quickly to her wardrobe, pulling out a fresh set of clothes. Despite the late hour, she’d already resolved to go straight back to base to sift through the latest developments.

There would be no sleep tonight.

13

Blog post by firstpersonsingular.

Wednesday, 9 December, 07.00.

Winter sucks, right?

What else is there to say?

Ok, there is more. Let me try and explain it to you.

Everybody moans. As soon as the Christmas decorations appear in the shops everybody starts whinging: about the cold, how it gets dark early, about snow, about their relations, about their relationships, about how they fucking hate Christmas. But they’re lying. They love it. Otherwise they’d have nothing else to talk about, nothing else to do. It’s just an act – as predictable as it is false. They have no idea what winter really means. To people like me.

Imagine you’re standing on the beach, watching a huge black cloud coming towards you. It’s the darkest cloud you’ve ever seen – it’s huge – and it’s heading your way. It won’t rush – it wants you to know it’s coming, to anticipate its horror – but it’s moving. Inch by inch, mile by mile – it’s coming for you.

You feel the sun disappear as the storm blocks out the sun. Soon afterwards you feel the first flecks of rain, as the wind rises, whipping you again and again. Now you’re cold, really, really cold. It feels like… it feels like all the nice, kind, warm things in the world have been lost for ever. Now the cloud moves over you, surrounding you, stealing you. There’s no way out of it now. Even if you wanted to run you wouldn’t know which direction to go in. You are powerless. Unable to move. So you sit there. Doing nothing. Hoping for nothing.

It clings to you now, denying you light, hope, warmth. Day after day after day. But you never get used to it. Night and day – it’s hard to tell one from the other. Existence seems to stretch out far in front of you – long and pointless. You want to kill yourself but somehow can’t muster the energy. You are lost for ever, wandering around and around but always ending up at the same point. And there’s no one with you here, no one to guide you to safety. You are all alone. YOU ARE LOST.

THAT’S what winter feels like to me.

But this one is different. A good deal worse and a whole lot better. This year I am taking control of the situation – and the angels are on my side. I saw what people said online about the fire at the Millbrook – they said it was hideous, ugly, an abomination. But not to me. I thought it was beautiful.

14

‘Everyone’s here now, so let’s begin.’

It was only 8 a.m. but already the incident room was packed. Crime scene photos from the three fire sites adorned the walls and data officers were logging and labelling the many hours of footage – both police and amateur – that had been taken from last night’s incidents. Nearly everybody present had been up half the night, yet they had all assembled punctually, as Helen had requested.

‘I don’t have any detailed forensics for you yet,’ Helen continued, ‘but we are treating all three fires as arson. There was a strong smell of paraffin on the ground floor of the Simms house and at the timber yard. Both Thomas Simms and Dominic Travell have confirmed there was no paraffin stored on site. Presuming the same is true at Bertrand’s Emporium, then we can assume that all three fires were started deliberately by a person or persons unknown. CCTV was deactivated at Travell’s, Bertrand’s didn’t have any and of course there wasn’t any at the domestic property in Millbrook. We’ll see if street cameras picked up anything but it’s likely to have been busy at that time – it was kicking-out time from the pubs. The fires were extremely fierce and extensive so it’s very likely that any on-site traces of the perpetrator – DNA, hairs, fibres – were destroyed, plus the ground outside was frosty and hard, so we weren’t able to find any obvious tyre tracks or footprints. Which means… we’re going to have to rely on some old-fashioned detective work. I’ll pull in as many uniformed officers as I can as we’ll need to be knocking on doors, seeing if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious. DC Edwards, are you ok to coordinate this for me?’