The boy’s mother stood in an empty hospital room with Dan and Chloe beside her. In her early forties, she was pencil-thin, her narrow hips protruding in the skinny jeans she was wearing. They had already met her son, Corey, a slight boy who looked younger than his fifteen years and was reluctant to make eye contact with anyone. He was lying in bed in the room next door and had refused to speak to either Chloe or Dan. According to his mother, Leanne, he hadn’t yet said a word to her either.

‘I encouraged him to go out,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘This is my fault.’

‘It isn’t your fault,’ Chloe tried to reassure her. ‘You mentioned earlier that Corey struggles with social situations?’

Leanne Davies sank onto a plastic chair and rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. She wouldn’t make eye contact with either officer, as though too ashamed to look at them. ‘Corey is different. He always has been. He’s in a world of his own half the time, and when he does decide to join this one for a while, he doesn’t make an effort to fit in. He can’t go through his whole life like that. I just want him to try to be—’ She cut herself short. A flush of colour rose to her cheeks.

Normal, Chloe thought. That was the word she’d been about to use.

‘Where did Corey go yesterday afternoon?’ Dan asked.

Leanne sat back. ‘Only over to someone’s house. There’s a new boy not long ago started at his school, he’s been trying to get to know people. Why he’d choose to latch onto Corey I don’t know. Maybe no one else would have him.’

Dan glanced at Chloe.

‘Sorry,’ Leanne said quickly, seeming to sense the exchange without having witnessed it. ‘I love my son, I really do. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘Do you know what time Corey left this other boy’s house?’ asked Chloe. ‘We’ll need his name and contact details if you have them.’

Leanne nodded. ‘I don’t know what time he left there, though. I don’t know anything.’ Her tears were sudden and explosive, and they left Dan shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘Petrol,’ she said between sobs. ‘Who the hell would want to hurt him like that? He’s just a kid.’

Chloe looked to Dan. ‘Could you go and find us some tissues?’

It was more a reason to get him out of the room. Leanne Davies had been through enough already; having Dan looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else wasn’t going to help. Dan was useless around tears. He never knew where to look or what to say. He was so infamously inept in that area that the job of informing relatives of a victim’s death was no longer assigned to him. Perhaps that was what he’d been aiming for.

‘I sound like a terrible mother,’ Leanne said once Dan had left the room.

Chloe pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. ‘No you don’t.’

‘I don’t understand Corey, see, and the problem is he knows it. He can’t talk to me about things … he can’t talk to anyone.’ She used the heel of her hand to rub her eye, and a smear of yesterday’s fading make-up smudged across her cheek.

‘Is Corey’s dad around?’ Chloe asked.

Leanne nodded. ‘He’s in the RAF, though, so he’s away from home quite a bit. At least he gets a break.’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘I’m sorry. I get so frustrated sometimes.’ She looked to Chloe, making direct eye contact now. ‘When Corey was little, he used to say and do the most annoying things, weird things, but he was never a bad kid, not like some of them you see about. He would never hurt anyone.’ She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. ‘What if he’d been set alight?’

Chloe placed a hand on the other woman’s arm as the tears escalated again. ‘There’s nothing about this to suggest Corey was a chosen victim. It looks like a random attack. I know it won’t make what’s happened any easier, but there’s no one to blame here other than the person responsible, okay?’

Leanne nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. She was still blaming herself for encouraging her son to go out. She looked up as Dan came back into the room, gratefully accepting the box of tissues he handed her. ‘Do you think the samples are going to be any use?’

She was referring to the fingernail scrapings that had been taken from Corey and the man who had intervened during the attack. Both had come into direct physical contact with the attacker, so there was a chance that they might have carried evidence in the form of DNA from the man’s skin cells. Chloe realised it was a long shot; evidence rarely came about that way. The man had also told police that the attacker was wearing an outfit that had covered much of his body, making the chances of any DNA being transferred even slimmer.

‘We hope so,’ she said, neither wanting to raise the woman’s hopes nor leave her with no hope at all. ‘It might take a couple of days to get any results back from the lab, though.’

Leanne nodded, wiped the back of a hand across her eyes and stood from her chair. ‘Can I go back to see him now?’

Chloe nodded. ‘The boy Corey was with yesterday,’ she reminded her.

‘Oh yeah. Faadi Hassan.’

Chloe shot Dan a look.

‘You know him?’ Leanne asked, acknowledging the exchange.

‘We know of the family.’ Chloe stood. ‘When Corey does start talking, please let us know. Anything he might remember, no matter how small, might be a help to us.’

Once Leanne had left the room, Chloe turned to Dan. ‘Faadi Hassan. Small world, isn’t it?’

As they made their way out of the hospital, she retrieved her mobile phone from her pocket and turned it back on.

‘Have you heard from Alex?’ Dan asked.

‘Only to say what happened. She said she was fine, but she sounded a bit shaken up to me.’

Dan pushed open the double doors, holding one open for Chloe. ‘Car been looked at yet?’

‘Don’t know.’ Chloe waited for any messages or missed calls to come through, but there was nothing from Alex. ‘She’ll probably be at the station when we get back.’

‘Wonder why the brakes just went like that?’ Dan said, thinking out loud.

‘Don’t know. She’ll probably get rid of that car now, though. She’s never liked it anyway.’

They stepped out into the fresh morning air and headed across the bridge to the overflow car park. Chloe’s thoughts strayed from Alex to the boy they had left lying mute in his hospital bed. There was the obvious link of the petrol – and now that of Faadi Hassan – but other than that, what were the similarities between the recent cases involving fire, or an attempt at it? Was there a link between the victims?

She shuddered at the thought of what might have happened to Corey Davies. Someone had targeted him with the intention of setting him alight. The viciousness of the crime was difficult to comprehend. When she’d told Leanne that her son had just been unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, was she right?

The mobile phone still in her hand started ringing, breaking her chain of thought.

‘DC Lane.’

Dan stopped at the car, waiting as Chloe took the call.

‘The station,’ Chloe said, returning the phone to her pocket. ‘Sounds like someone might have CCTV footage of our victim.’