Beth tried to hide the yawn behind a hand, but there was no disguising the crack of her jaw as her mouth stretched wide. The fingers of her other hand curled and uncurled as she repeatedly made a fist. She wanted a target for the fist, something to aim her frustrations at. Not only were they failing to make any decent headway with the case, they now had the chief super on their back.

The first thing she did once the chief super and DCI Phinn left the office, was check her emails. In among the departmental-bullshit ones, were a couple of gold nuggets. Dr Hewson’s friend, the burns specialist, had come back to him and given their verdict on the four victims’ burns. And, more significantly, the dental records team had come back with an identification for Woman 1.

Fiona McGhie was confirmed as the first victim of the Dragon Master. There wasn’t a lot of information on her, beyond learning she was fifty-nine and lived in a cottage overlooking Derwent Water. Beth knew her priority would be to get every detail about the woman’s life that she could.

But before she did, she wanted to see what the burns specialist had to say.

The report confirmed Dr Hewson’s theory that different amounts of accelerant had been used on each victim. It also upheld the idea that the two men had had extra accelerant added to them once the initial amount had burned away. This all made sense to Beth in a sick and twisted way.

The report was detailed to the point where she could picture each of the victims as their mouths were ignited. Fiona McGhie would have given a brief puff of flame before death; Rachel Allen had been overfilled, and when the flames travelling down her throat had died due to a lack of oxygen, the remaining petrol inside her had dissipated through her body.

Of the two men, Angus Keane’s death would have been the quickest. The Dragon Master had lessened the amount of petrol he’d fed into Keane’s stomach, but the specialist still predicted that, after a brief flash of flame, the petrol would have burned out. The next amount added had increased his pain to the point where he’d gone into cardiac arrest and died of a heart attack.

According to the specialist, Nick Langley’s death would have been slower, the amounts added smaller and, because his mouth had been held open by the piece of wood jammed between his teeth, the Dragon Master had been able to continuously add petrol so that his dragon kept breathing fire. The only problem Beth could see with this was that once Nick was dead, the flames wouldn’t have had the power of exhalation or screams behind them. Therefore the flames wouldn’t have shot from his mouth, they’d have gusted out at best before heading upwards as flames always did.

Beth lifted her gaze away from the screen and looked across to O’Dowd. There was a determined set to her jaw and Beth suspected the DI was reading the same email and seeing the same mental images: terrified eyes straining in darkness, gagging, choking mouths trying to reject the foul substances forced into them and then the flash. Bright flames shooting from human mouths only to be replaced with gurgled screams.

Suddenly very keen to distract herself from the unpalatable images, Beth got on with running Fiona McGhie’s name through the PNC. Nothing came back. No convictions, no charges. Not even any complaints.

Her next move was to run the woman’s name through Google.

A little to her surprise she discovered Fiona was a painter. She evidently sold her work through her website, and the ‘about her’ only mentioned living with a beloved cat. Her paintings were mostly watercolour landscapes with the odd commissioned portrait. From what Beth could judge by looking at the quality of her work, plus the prices Fiona charged for originals and prints, she would be classed as a successful artist.

The landscapes were all Lakeland scenes; Beth recognised lakes Ullswater, Windermere and Coniston. Some of the paintings looked to have been created from a vantage point on the high fells and there was one she recognised as a recreation of Honister Pass due to its depiction of the craggy outcrops towering over a narrow, winding road.

While she wasn’t a fan of watercolours, Beth could appreciate Fiona’s skill in capturing the beauty and primitive savagery of the Lake District.

Beth looked for Fiona’s next of kin in the General Registration Office database, and learned that she was an only child who’d never married. Both her parents were dead and there was no mention of any partner on the database. Beth could imagine the long winter nights Fiona spent alone. Without a life companion her existence would be a solitary one. Perhaps the odd word with a postman or the person she bought her painting supplies from, but like so many of the creative arts, painting could be a lonely task. While Fiona may lose herself in the moment when she had a brush in her hand, she had nobody to share triumphs with or provide support on the bad days that life dealt out.

A forlorn smile touched Beth’s lips as she realised the contradiction to her thinking. She herself lived alone, and while she also spent her nights alone, she had a job that saw her interact with other people during the day. Fiona’s was the kind of existence Beth dreaded. For a time after the bottle had been slammed into her face, Beth had wanted seclusion, to hide away and amuse herself with her own endeavours. Yet when she’d tried to cloister herself in her bedroom, she’d found the boredom stultifying. She’d needed company, interaction with other human beings and, most of all, a purpose. Friends and family had provided the interaction, and the police had provided her with all the purpose she needed.

‘What do you make of it, Beth?’

O’Dowd’s question was a loaded one.

The DI was now asking her opinion, canvassing her thoughts. While this gave Beth confidence, as she felt her contributions were valued, she was still wary of saying the wrong thing and changing O’Dowd’s opinion of her.

The Dragon Master was a step ahead of them whatever they did. He left no apparent forensic traces; he flitted in and out of places without being seen. At Highstead Castle, none of the people who lived in the houses by the track had even heard a vehicle drive by. He’d not been detected at Arthuret Hall, and there seemed to be no connection between any of his victims, or the two locations.

‘I don’t know. If we’re right on the dragon theory, there has to be some kind of reason as to why he’s doing it. Whether he’s got a Game of Thrones fixation or he sees himself as some kind of modern-day necromancer, I believe he’s got a reason. Maybe when the psychologist has studied the other victims and their deaths, his next report will give you a better answer than I can regarding his motives.’

‘Agreed. But what about the victims? Two women and then two men. What’s the reasoning there?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am. Maybe they fit his pattern. Perhaps there’s a personal connection. Or maybe they just happened to be around when he needed his next victim.’

‘I take your point.’ O’Dowd pursed her lips. ‘But I think that he’s selected them for a reason. Everything he’s done in terms of staging the bodies and leaving no evidence tells me he’s not being random in any way. Even his experiments with making them breathe fire speak of refinement, a willingness to adapt and learn. That’s not slapdash, Beth, that’s organised, planned even. I want you to use that sideways-thinking brain of yours to see if you can find a connection between our victims.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

So far as Beth could see, O’Dowd’s theory about the victims somehow being connected was about the only thing they could investigate. The way the Dragon Master was experimenting with different amounts of accelerant may have given them some clues were it not for the fact that petrol was something that could be bought in a hundred and one places. Had he tried paraffin or a different combustible then it may have given them a lead to follow, but all the tissue Dr Hewson had tested had proven to have been petrol.

If they’d been able to get a full sample of the petrol, they may have been able to trace it to a specific batch made by the refinery and then trace where it had been sold in Cumbria. However, even if they had CCTV footage for every petrol station, until they had a suspect, they’d do nothing but waste time watching endless footage.

For all of the victims except Fiona, they had reams of reports and statements galore. By tomorrow, a team of officers would have gathered further information on Fiona McGhie’s life. In the meantime, the best thing Beth could think to do was to create a simple spreadsheet which annotated all the key details they knew about each victim. It would aid her thought processes by giving her a central source where she could take an overview of each of their lives.

Even as she glanced at her watch, another yawn threatened to dislocate her jaw. She’d give it an hour and then go home. There was still half a bottle of wine in her fridge. It would help her deal with the day and slow her mind down to allow her to get some sleep. And after a few hours’ sleep and her morning run, she’d be better able to assess the finer details of the spreadsheet and hopefully highlight a connection between four very different victims. It was like a crossword. If there was nothing obvious, maybe there would be something cryptic that linked them.

The problem was, with no clear clues, where should she start?