Liar Liar

128

‘Let’s take this from the top, shall we?’

Helen had pulled the entire team into the incident room and they crowded round, keen to hear the very latest developments.

‘Naomie Jackson has a male accomplice, whom we strongly suspect of having been the instigator of the recent arson attacks. He goes by the online moniker of “firstpersonsingular”. DS Sanderson has put together a short profile of everything we know about FPS, which includes his most recent posts on the net, social media and so on. He is male, appears to be local and is probably in his mid- to-late teens.’

Immediately a buzz went round the room – this was not the standard arson profile, which commonly placed offenders in their twenties or thirties.

‘He makes several references to schooling or teachers. He doesn’t give specifics but the incidents he refers to seem to be recent and would put him in GCSE year or slightly above. He could of course be lying to gain Naomie’s trust, but the overall tone of his posts is one of teenage anger and rebellion, infused with deep cynicism and bitterness, particularly towards his parents and authority figures in general. He types much less fluently than Naomie, which is curious. Is he a man of few words or is his access to unsupervised computers limited?’

The team were passing the sheets around now, but their eyes were glued to Helen.

‘We’re trying to trace his IP address, but if he’s using a tablet with 4G or similar, then this may be a dead end, so for now let’s keep focused on his character. His posts reveal clear evidence of depression, but also strong feelings of superiority. He craves control and seems to relish the effect that the fires have had. He seems to be calling the tune. So we are looking for a teenage male who until recently has been powerless, overlooked or neglected.’

‘What’s the tenor of their relationship? FPS and Naomie?’ McAndrew asked. ‘Were they lovers?’

‘Looks that way,’ Sanderson interjected. ‘They communicated every day during the summer and well into the autumn. He makes great play of idolizing her – calling her “Angel” repeatedly – and is always trying to boost her self-esteem. She in turn is very protective of him – seemingly worrying if he’ll come to any harm – though whether at his own hands or someone else’s is unclear. She keeps referencing the first time they met as if that explained the root cause of her anxiety.’

‘Had they been intimate?’ DC Lucas asked, to a few quiet sniggers.

‘Tough to say,’ Sanderson answered. ‘It’s hard to imagine they haven’t been but there is no mention of sex or intimacy in their communications.’

Sanderson continued her dissection of their relationship, but Helen’s mind was already arrowing away in a different direction, hidden connections forming now. Without warning, she walked away from the group, marching towards her desk. She picked up her files and searched through them quickly, until she’d located the hospital reports from the fires’ survivors. She flicked through them until she came to the page on Ethan Harris. Her eyes ran over the text, words and phrases now leaping out at her: ‘cerebral palsy’, ‘persistent shaking of the left hand’, ‘historic burn injuries’. Suddenly Helen knew why Agnieszka Jarosik had been singled out for special treatment. She knew why their arsonist had fumbled the matches during the second and fourth attacks. And she knew where she had seen Naomie’s scar – the burnt cross on the left palm – before.

Most importantly, she knew why Naomie had called 999 twelve minutes before anybody else after the Harris fire started. It wasn’t fear or excitement that motivated her to call too early that night. It was love.