After the Fire by Jane Casey Page A

was all I could do to stop myself from putting my hands over my ears. Nina looked disgusted. Nathan drew his knees up and tried to curl into a ball on the chair, like an armadillo. He pulled his hoodie over his head and tightened the strings so his face was hidden.
    ‘Lola, stop it. Tansy, you too.’ The fair-haired woman spoke in a high, wispy voice, her words barely audible from where I was standing.
    ‘Come on, Louise, can’t you keep them quiet for five minutes?’ Rocco demanded.
    ‘I’m trying,’ Louise whispered. ‘It ain’t easy. They’ve got the hump because we’ve been stuck in here all day.’
    ‘Supporting my family in their hour of need.’
    ‘That doesn’t matter to
her
,’ Nina said venomously. ‘She’d see us on the street sooner than offer to take us in.’
    ‘That’s not true.’ Louise looked wounded. ‘I’d never leave you with nowhere to go.’
    Derwent had obviously judged that the family squabbling could go on all day. He raised his voice so he could be heard. ‘Where is Debbie?’
    ‘She’s with Becky,’ Carl said.
    ‘No, she’s not,’ Nina snapped. To us, she said, ‘She wanted to stay with her but she’s not allowed. They let her wait in the hall, by Becky’s room.’
    ‘We’ll go and speak to her in a minute.’
    Nina snorted. ‘She won’t be able to tell you anything. Never pays any attention to what’s going on around her. She’s in a dream half the time.’
    ‘You never know. Sometimes people see things or hear things that don’t seem significant at the time but they’re important for us to know,’ I said. ‘And on that point, did any of you see anything suspicious yesterday? Or hear anything?’
    Carl and Nina shook their heads in unison. Nathan was invisible.
    ‘Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to harm you or anyone in your family?’ Derwent’s tone was matter-of-fact and the question was routine but the effect on Carl Bellew was striking. He went pale and started opening and closing his mouth like a recently landed fish.
    ‘Course not.’ Nina shot a look at her son. ‘There’s no reason, is there, Carl?’
    ‘No.’ He shook his head again, this time so violently that his jowls rasped on the collar of his shirt.
    ‘Why are you making out this was something to do with us?’ Rocco leaned forward, his hands balled into massive fists that he braced on his thighs. ‘We’ve done nothing to bother anyone.’
    ‘We have to ask,’ I said smoothly. ‘You’d be surprised. Anyone can get into a fight, can’t they?’
    ‘People don’t fight with us,’ Nina Bellew said.
    ‘Not if they know what’s good for them.’ Rocco said it in a mutter but I heard it, and Nina heard it. She turned and treated her other son to the look she’d given his brother.
    ‘What’s your date of birth, Carl?’ Derwent asked.
    ‘Seven, seven, seventy.’
    ‘The seventh of July, 1970.’ Derwent was writing it down.
    ‘That’s what I said.’
    ‘And what do you do for a living?’ I asked.
    ‘Handyman,’ Carl muttered. Louise couldn’t quite keep the look of surprise off her face, I noticed. She bent her head over one of her daughters so I couldn’t see her expression any more.
    ‘You must be doing well,’ Derwent said pleasantly. ‘You bought your flat, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He looked shifty. ‘It was a right-to-buy type of thing. The council was selling so we bought it.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘Me and Mum.’
    ‘You’re not on the paperwork, Mrs Bellew,’ Derwent said.
    ‘I gave him some money. So what? It was a family matter.’ She smiled at her son, revealing shining white dentures that were as even and unsettling as the teeth of a ventriloquist’s dummy. ‘He knows better than to try and kick me out.’
    ‘I wouldn’t want to even try,’ Carl said. Sweat glinted on his upper lip and across his forehead.
    ‘Have you lived there long?’ I asked.
    ‘Only since it was built; 1966, I moved in,’ Nina said. ‘Never lived