The following morning, Alex, Chloe and the rest of the team gathered in the station’s incident room for a briefing. Alex now had both the post-mortem report from the pathologist and the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service investigators’ report, and put together, they made some of the suspicions she had begun to develop at the mortuary the previous day seem more than a possibility. She had stayed up late reading the reports, and the two sugared coffees she’d already drunk since arriving at the station that morning had done little to deter the tiredness she now felt tugging at her temples.

‘Okay,’ she said, bringing the low-level chatter that had passed around the team to a close, ‘we’ve now received both the post-mortem and fire-scene investigation reports and quite a few things have come to light. As we already know, the victim was male, aged between forty and sixty. He suffered from restrictive lung disease and is believed to have died as a result of restricted lung capacity either shortly following or during a brutal and sustained assault. The attack took place in the room where his body was recovered and he was set alight after death. Petrol was used as an accelerant.’

‘Someone set fire to the body in an attempt to conceal their crime?’ DC Daniel Mason asked.

‘Perhaps,’ Alex said. ‘Although I’m not convinced.’ She reached to the computer keyboard on the desk beside her and clicked on one of the already opened windows. A voice recording was paused, waiting to be replayed. ‘The 999 call came in at just after nine forty in the evening. It was made from a phone box on Station Road. We now know there are no CCTV cameras anywhere in the area, and I’d guess that whoever made the call was already aware of this.’ She clicked the recording.

‘Hello, you’ve requested the fire service … What is your emergency please?’

‘Fire …’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Fire. Old Llwynypia hospital.’

‘There’s a fire at the old Llwynypia hospital?’

The line was bad, made worse by the muffled noises that disturbed the sound of the voice making the call. It sounded as though the mouthpiece might have been purposely obstructed.

‘Could you tell me your name, please, caller?’

‘Now … please …’

‘Are you inside the building? Is there anyone else with you?’

At that point, the line went dead.

Alex minimised the window on the screen and returned her focus to the team. ‘Why end the call so abruptly if there was nothing to hide?’ she asked. ‘Why not answer the questions? My guess is that whoever made this call knows how the fire started.’

‘So that would ruin Dan’s theory that it was started to conceal the assault?’ Chloe said. ‘If you think we’re listening to the murderer?’

‘Not necessarily. But why set a fire in order to conceal a crime and then alert the authorities to it? Makes no sense.’

‘Why call then?’ The question came from DC Jake Sullivan, who was sitting on a desk at the back of the room, one leg crossed over the other.

‘I don’t know,’ Alex admitted. ‘Could be a number of reasons. Panic. Guilt. That’s something we may be able to work out a bit further down the line, once we’ve established who our victim was and why he was attacked. The fire-scene report holds a few possible clues about who he might have been, or at the very least some details about his life. He was lying on a sleeping bag at the time the fire was started. There were a couple of items of clothing found elsewhere in the room, along with empty beer cans. It’s highly likely our victim was homeless and was using the hospital for shelter.’

There were a few murmurs among the team.

‘Not many people sleeping rough up that way, are there?’

The question came from DCI Thompson, who was standing at the back of the room. He had always struck Alex as a curious figure, slight in frame and aloof in demeanour, and she had trouble imagining him out on the beat as a younger officer. He must have been eaten alive, she thought, although perhaps he had come to the job straight from university and been fast-tracked towards CID as a result.

‘Not according to recent figures,’ she admitted, ‘but they’re at least eighteen months old now.’

‘It might explain why no one has reported him missing,’ Dan said.

‘Perhaps. Now, if we work on the theory that this man was homeless, then either someone knew he was using the old hospital as a base, or someone happened to find him there by chance. Let’s say for a moment it was chance. Did he interrupt something? Might it be the case that he wasn’t expected there and was beaten to keep him silent?’

‘Silent about what, though?’ queried Chloe.

Alex raised her hands, surrendering to the lack of information. ‘These are the things we need to find out. I think going public with the known details of our victim needs to be our next step. Homeless or not, someone must know who this man is. We know there have been other fires up at the hospital, so maybe someone unconnected to this incident was aware it was being used as a shelter. I’m giving a statement to the press this afternoon. In the meantime, we need to speak to as many people in the local area as we can, in particular, shop owners, bar staff – anyone who may at some point have come into contact with the victim, who was also suffering from liver disease associated with years of heavy drinking. If we can get a possible ID, we may be able to find him on our database if he’s got previous. It’s a small community; people tend to know each other. If anything comes up, I want to know about it straight away, please.’

There was further chatter as the team dispersed, but Alex called Dan over, asking him to wait behind. ‘I think we should hold off before returning to the missing persons database,’ she told him. ‘If we do manage to get an ID today, it’ll save you a lot of time. You don’t fancy doing this statement for me, do you?’ It was asked with a roll of the eyes.

‘Go on,’ Dan said with a smile. ‘You know you love it.’

Alex made no secret of her dislike of press statements and TV appeals. On previous cases she had often been known to pass them over to Superintendent Blake, but she didn’t think DCI Thompson would appreciate the request.

‘Thanks for nothing. Well you’d better be around after it, so I’ve got someone to slag the press off to once I’m done. I’d usually bend Chloe’s ear, but she’s going to canvass local businesses with Jake.’

Dan smiled again. ‘I didn’t know you weren’t a fan of the press. You never mentioned it.’ He glanced over his shoulder at DC Jake Sullivan, who was standing at the doorway. ‘Still on thin ice?’

It was no secret that Alex wasn’t keen on DC Jake Sullivan. There was nothing specific he had done that had annoyed her, but maybe that was the problem: she wasn’t that sure what it was he actually did.

She rolled her eyes again. ‘He could be worse, I suppose. It’d be a good start if he lost the bravado.’

‘The ignorance of youth.’

‘I wouldn’t know … I can’t remember that far back.’ She glanced at her watch and sighed. ‘Wish me luck, then.’