After the Fire by Jane Casey

was streaked with dirty water. The residents had cared about their home, I thought. The fire would be devastating for them in every way, not just the material loss.
    ‘The internal doors were closed, initially, which was lucky,’ Northbridge said. ‘One of the children opened the bedroom door and discovered the blaze.’
    There were scorch marks around the door and across the ceiling.
    ‘These are from the flashover that occurred when the door was opened,’ Harper said, playing his torch over them. ‘Fire is hungry. It needs oxygen. Any firefighter will tell you not to open a hot door. The little girl didn’t know any better. They were lucky the grandmother was nearby and managed to get the door closed before the fire could take hold out here. She gave the child first aid while the dad was on the phone to 999. That call came in at 17.36.’
    ‘Hold on. Shouldn’t there have been a smoke alarm in the flat?’ Una Burt asked.
    ‘It wasn’t working.’
    ‘What about in the hall?’
    ‘It was vandalised.’ Northbridge pulled a face. ‘Not all that unusual here. The alarms are linked to a main control centre in the estate’s management office and they’re supposed to inform us straight away when one of the alarms goes off-line, as well as getting it repaired.’
    ‘But they didn’t,’ I said quietly.
    ‘It happened this morning. No one got around to fixing it before this afternoon.’ Northbridge shook his head. ‘If everyone didn’t persist in thinking fire regulations are just there to annoy them, my job would be a lot easier.’
    ‘The real problem with this fire,’ Harper said, leading us out of flat 101 into the next-door property, ‘was the smoke. We had a lot of thick, black smoke and it made it very difficult for the residents to make their way to the exits safely. I gather there was a lot of confusion. The call-centre operators in our command centre encouraged people to use their own judgement about whether it was safer to remain where they were or risk making an attempt to escape.’
    Flat 102 was significantly smaller than its neighbour, but it was just as thoroughly destroyed. I nudged a jumble of wires and melted plastic with the toe of my boot. ‘How did the fire pass into this flat from next door?’
    ‘There’s a ventilation system running overhead. The hot air and smoke from the fire spread through the pipes. It was hot enough to ignite materials wherever it found an outlet.’ Harper smiled. ‘You shouldn’t assume the fire started in flat 101. The ventilation system could just as easily have passed it the other way.’
    ‘Who lived here?’ Derwent asked.
    Northbridge checked his notes. ‘It’s registered to a Mrs Edmonds. Someone made a 999 call from here at 17.37, saying that her flat and the corridor were full of smoke, but she broke off contact with the operator almost immediately. She said she was planning to use the internal staircase to escape.’
    ‘Did she say anything else?’ I asked.
    ‘She said she was scared.’
    There was a short silence and then Harper guided us back out to the corridor, to flat 103. ‘Now this is where it gets interesting. The fire went up from 102 to 113 on the floor above via the ventilation system. It caused significant damage. We’ve found two bodies up there. No ID on them yet. This flat, 103, was supposed to be empty. But when the firefighters got here, the door was open. All of the windows were open, not broken. Someone was here, and that person was desperately trying to get air. Smoke doesn’t just kill through suffocation. People start making bad decisions. They can become illogical or uncoordinated.’
    He led us through the flat, which was empty apart from debris from the ceiling and walls. ‘This was a bedroom and that was a bed.’
    ‘How can you tell?’ Liv sounded confused and I flashed her a smile. I couldn’t see it either in the rubble of charred planks and ashes that filled the small room.
    Harper crouched and dug in