So, to the first interview, conducted the evening after the fire, once the arson investigator had given his preliminary findings and the death toll had been confirmed.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ asked Louise, leaning in the driver’s window. ‘That stuff at the station tasted like shit. There’s a stand over there and we’ve got ten minutes.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We can go and wait in the car park at the Paignton Club. I can see it from here, at the end of the promenade there.’
He flicked through the interview while Louise wandered across the green to the coffee stand on the far side. Dixon had never been good at speed reading, but the document ran to sixty-one pages, the interview lasting over two hours, and he only had ten minutes before his meeting with retired DCS Campbell. Talkative, was Sean Rodwell – at least to begin with – some answers running to over half a page of A4; DC Allott, as he then was, reluctant to interrupt him. And why would he?
If they want to talk, let them.
DC Allott: Three people died in a fire you started because you’d been sacked, Sean. Seventy-two-year-old John Compton, his thirty-six-year-old daughter Miriam Hudson, and her son, Patrick. Patrick was three months old.
Rodwell’s answer ran to two pages of A4. And he hadn’t even been asked a question that time.
‘He’s here, Sir,’ said Louise. She was standing by the Land Rover, a coffee in each hand. ‘I’ve just seen him going—’
She stopped herself, noticing Dixon was reading something. ‘Sorry,’ she said, tipping her head, trying to read it through the window of the car.
He took a deep breath, closing the document before folding it in half lengthways and slotting it into his coat pocket.
‘Let’s go and see what retired DCS Campbell has got to say for himself, shall we?’
Campbell was hiding behind a broadsheet newspaper in the bay window, a coffee on the table in front of him. The bar was deserted, the door open to the kitchen behind it, the clattering of plates and glasses – the familiar sound of a dishwasher being loaded.
It was a grandstand view, waves lapping against the sea wall outside.
There were worse ways to spend your retirement, thought Dixon. Walking a dog on the beach, playing snooker. He moved the cue from the seat next to Campbell’s leather armchair and sat down.
Sleeping at night might be a bit more of a problem.
No movement from behind the newspaper, not even a curious glance around the side; Campbell knew who they were and why they were there.
Dixon slid the transcript of Rodwell’s police interview out of his coat pocket and dropped it on the table in front of Campbell. The newspaper moved, a shaved head peering around it.
‘Every single thing Rodwell said in that first interview was the truth,’ said Dixon, matter of fact. ‘How he started the fire, where he started the fire, it all corresponds exactly with the arson investigator’s findings.’
Campbell folded his paper slowly and placed it on the table, covering the interview transcript, then he took off his reading glasses, slotting them into the top pocket of his jacket. ‘I know where you’re going with this. We looked at it at the time, of course we did, but there was no evidence to support his version of events. None whatsoever.’
Louise was trying to catch up. She wouldn’t be able to; she hadn’t read the interview.
‘D’you know how many witness statements we took?’ Campbell was gathering steam and volume. ‘Hundreds, and not a single witness mentioned it.’
‘Were they asked?’
‘Of course they were bloody well asked. Don’t you come in here questioning my investigation, you little—’
‘We’ll be asking them again,’ interrupted Dixon.
Campbell was doing his best not to bristle, and was managing it, after a fashion. ‘Look, I understand you’ve got a job to do. I know that all four of your victims were at that bridge tournament, but you have to understand it from my side. I was SIO in a major investigation, one of the biggest we’ve had in the bay, with hundreds of witnesses, three dead, and a known arsonist who confessed to starting the fire.’
Louise was still none the wiser, her frown taking on a look of permanence.
‘Two dead and one missing, to be technically correct,’ said Dixon, firmly.
‘The evidence from the pathologist was quite clear on that.’ Campbell sat up, taken aback for a second. ‘The body of a three-month-old child in a fire of that intensity, burning for that length of time’ – he threw his arms in the air – ‘there’d be nothing left. All that bollocks in Rodwell’s interview was just him trying to absolve himself of blame for the child’s death. He could live with killing two adults but not a baby. That was too much even for him.’
Dixon picked up the transcript and began reading from the interview. ‘“I stayed to watch the fire. It started in the corner of the kitchen area at the back of the ballroom. It’s not used for cooking, just keeping stuff warm for the buffet lunches, so there are gas bottles and hot plates. I’d stuffed a newspaper in a toaster and disconnected the gas. There was a flicker through the window, then the gas bottles went up, the fire alarms went off and it was chaos, people running everywhere, shouting and screaming. I was in the trees behind the ballroom, watching the fire spread along the wall inside. That would’ve been the velvet wallpaper. The windows blew out, sending bits of glass right across the golf course. I felt bad about that because there were people being cut and I could see blood. I never meant to hurt anyone, I really didn’t.”’
‘I know what it says,’ protested Campbell, taking his chance when Dixon drew breath.
‘“There were groups of people out on the terrace, staff trying to usher them out on to the course. It was like the bridge teams were sticking together, that’s what I thought at the time, but it might have been families as well. Someone had a clipboard and was trying to take a roll, ticking people off as they shouted over the sirens. That’s when I saw it. There was a group of six, one of the bridge teams – I’d served them lunch in the ballroom that day – standing at the end of the terrace. Four men and two women, and I remember one of the women was carrying a baby. It couldn’t have been hers because she was too old, late sixties or early seventies, and you said the only other kids in the hotel were toddlers and have been accounted for. It was screaming and crying on her shoulder, then another woman ran up to her and took it off her. I don’t know whether it was a boy or a girl, to be honest, I couldn’t see at that distance, couldn’t hear what was being said, but this woman took it and disappeared into the crowd further along the terrace. She had short, dark hair – mid-thirties, maybe – and was wearing a red coat. Look, I accept entirely that I killed the woman and her father, but the baby isn’t dead.”’
‘He was lying.’ Campbell was breathing deeply, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘He knew if he went to prison labelled a baby-killer he was in deep shit and he was trying to lie his way out of it.’
‘That baby would be twenty-one now,’ said Dixon.
‘So, what, you think he’s come back for revenge on the bridge team that gave him away that night?’ A tremble had crept into Campbell’s voice. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘What if . . . ?’ asked Dixon, watching Campbell ask himself the rest of the question. Answering it too, judging by the look on his face.
‘That baby died in the fire. We spoke to every single bridge player there that night, all of the tournament staff, referees, the tournament director, everyone, and not one of them saw a thing. And, like I said, according to the pathologist, there’d be nothing left of a baby in a fire like that.’
‘Did you speak to the baby’s father?’
‘That was, without a doubt, the most difficult conversation I ever had to have in my thirty years on the force.’ Campbell’s eyes glazed over. ‘To tell a man who’s just lost his wife and son in a fire, that the man who started that fire is alleging his son was carried off into the night by some mysterious woman. You can imagine it, can’t you? I had to tell him though. Rodwell pleaded not guilty to the murder of the boy and it would have come out at the trial. He’d have been watching from the public gallery, for heaven’s sake. In the end, there was no trial. The CPS dropped the third charge and Rodwell pleaded guilty to the other two. Not in the public interest, they said. Imagine having to explain that to the boy’s father, on top of everything else.’
‘Was he there that night?’