‘Jesus Christ.’ DC Chloe Lane put a hand to her mouth: an ineffectual attempt to hide her reaction to the horror that awaited them in one of the former hospital wards. It hardly resembled a person. What had once been human was now reduced to a charred and blackened mess of rags and barely identifiable remains. The scene-of-crime officers were going to have their work cut out for them, as were the fire-scene investigators who were on their way.

‘What was he doing up here?’ Alex wondered, thinking aloud.

The room was bleaker than the bulk of black night sky that stretched beyond the building, the fire having spread rapidly. Fire crew had responded quickly to the 999 call that had been made, with the station being just a few streets away. Alex hoped this would mean that evidence had been preserved. Lifting forensic evidence from fire scenes was always a laborious process, with a myriad of complications. Those complications would be passed on to the incident room, where they would be felt by the rest of the team.

She leaned closer to what remained of the body, her capacity for the brutalities of murder having broadened during her years as a detective. Each time she thought she had seen it all, someone else proved that evil knew no boundaries.

‘How could anyone do this to someone?’ Chloe said quietly.

Alex left the question unanswered. Chloe had seen enough evil in her life to know that sometimes there was no explanation for it, no matter how much they might seek one. In many ways, the senselessness was the most difficult thing to accept.

The abandoned hospital was in Llwynypia, just a few streets from the main road that linked Tonypandy with the smaller villages that stood between it and the top of the Rhondda valleys. Despite its central location, the trees and shrubs that lined its boundaries kept the derelict buildings fairly secluded. This particular room – still bearing evidence of its former use as a ward – was located at the back of the main hospital building, used now as little more than a brick canvas for spray-painted names and lewd graffitied drawings.

Despite the ravages of the fire, the remnants of messages sprayed and scrawled upon the peeling paintwork could still be seen on the far wall. Alex wondered for a moment whether whoever had been responsible for this person’s death had been brazen enough to leave behind a signature. Whatever else they might find here, this was going to prove to be no accident.

Her thoughts roamed for a moment back to her own front door. She hadn’t mentioned the graffiti to Chloe. What was the point? How many people had thrown verbal slurs and insults at her during the duration of her career, and much worse besides? The call from the station about the fire had come in not long after she had arrived home, so she hadn’t yet had time to speak to any of her neighbours. She doubted anyone would have seen anything. Her front door was pretty secluded from the street and it was nearing the end of October, already dark by 5.30.

Returning her focus to the scene, Alex took in the details of what lay before her. A pile of burned wooden planks and an array of charred debris covered the body, forming a human bonfire. The scene was gruesome and macabre, like something from a horror film. Its structure had held surprisingly well against the force of the flames that had consumed it.

‘What’s that?’ She gestured to the doorway through which they had entered the scene. By the wall, at the edge of the fire’s reach, there was a single trainer. She picked her way through the debris and lifted the shoe with a gloved hand. It was a brand she recognised from years back and wouldn’t have thought was still in production. The single shoe looked battered and worn, as though the owner had been wearing it all these years.

‘Remember these?’ she asked, nodding at the trainer.

Chloe shook her head. Alex had thought it unlikely; she hadn’t seen a pair of trainers of this make since she was a teenager, before Chloe had even been thought of. If the shoe belonged to the victim then it was likely this wasn’t a young person, although at that moment it was impossible to tell anything for sure. She had made the assumption that it was a man, though even that wasn’t certain.

There were three scene-of-crime officers in the room, all kitted out in protective white overalls. They roamed the room like ghosts, their silence only adding to the eeriness of the place. Alex gave one of them the trainer and it was placed into a clear plastic bag. She and Chloe moved aside, giving the SOCOs space to work closer to the victim.

‘Know how long this place has been left derelict?’ Chloe asked.

‘Ex-husband’s niece was born here. How old would she be now … twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? It closed not long after that.’

‘You heard from him at all recently?’

‘No, and he’d better keep it that way.’

A near reunion with her ex-husband almost a year earlier had led to disaster, leaving Alex suspecting she might be better off single for the rest of her life. Most days, the prospect didn’t seem too bad, but the attack on her home had made living alone less appealing.

They went back out into the corridor. It was a mess: loose wiring hanging in a tangled web from the ceiling, broken plastic panelling lying in sharp shards underfoot; an abandoned trolley still laden with medical paraphernalia resting beside an open doorway into what had once been another ward, sitting there as though waiting for the ghost of a nurse to retrieve it.

‘Place gives me the creeps,’ Chloe said.

‘Fascinating, though, don’t you think? As though time’s just stopped here.’

Chloe pulled a face. ‘If you say so.’ There was a noise at the end of the corridor that made her start.

‘That’ll be the fire-scene investigators.’ Alex picked her way across the debris to meet the men who had entered the corridor, all dressed in full protective clothing and armed with an expansive collection of equipment.

‘Detective Inspector King. This is Detective Constable Chloe Lane.’

One of the men introduced himself in reply and shook the hand Alex offered him. ‘Suspected arson?’

Alex nodded. ‘One victim, gender as yet unknown.’

‘It’s not the first fire we’ve had up here,’ the man told her. ‘I don’t know how many times we’ve said this place needs to be pulled down. It’s become a magnet for trouble.’

Alex led the investigators through to the room where the body lay, then turned her attention back to Chloe. ‘We need to find out if there are any cameras on any of the streets nearby,’ she said. ‘The call came in from a telephone box about two minutes from here – perhaps there’s CCTV somewhere. Let’s do a door-to-door, speak to the residents in the nearest houses. It’s a long shot, but if there’s regular trouble up here perhaps someone’s kept enough of an eye out to have seen something suspicious.’

‘I still don’t get why anyone would choose to come into this place.’

‘Curiosity, I suppose. Some people love derelict places.’ She watched for a moment as the fire-scene investigators set about their work. Until the pathologist arrived, they would have no details regarding their victim. ‘The call that came in was anonymous,’ she continued, thinking aloud. Something wasn’t sitting right with her. The fire hadn’t had time to spread beyond this room, meaning that whoever had placed that call had done so soon after the blaze had been started.

‘Think whoever it was might know more?’ Chloe asked.

‘They certainly knew about the fire quickly enough. And why else would you withhold your name? Whoever it was, they ended the call as quickly as they’d made it.’

One of the SOCOs had crouched beside the burned body and was using a gloved hand to retrieve something from amid the charred remains. Alex understood Chloe’s reaction to the place: there was an eerie, haunting atmosphere that was static in the air around them. It seemed an ironic place to die: a building where healing had happened; a place where lives had begun and been saved. It was almost impossible to imagine it now as it might have been then, clean and sterile, bustling with life.

‘DI King.’

Alex turned at her name. The SOCO was holding something up with a gloved hand, beckoning her to take a closer look.

‘Looks like part of a sleeping bag,’ he said.

Alex looked again at the remains that lay beneath the stack of blackened debris. Had the victim been sleeping rough in the hospital building? The circumstances of this person’s death now seemed all the more tragic. Had they sought shelter here; been killed in the place they’d considered the closest thing to a home?

Who had ended a life so brutally and callously here, and why had they done it?