enquiries. I made tea in the tiny kitchen which was set to one side of the living area, and we sat around a Formica-topped table which I had acquired courtesy of the Salvation Army. DC Pascoe took out his notebook and prepared to write, while the older man asked his questions.
Did my parents have any enemies that I knew of? Of course not, my dad was an insurance salesman, the most innocuous character anyone could wish to meet. Did anyone in the house have any hobbies which involved flammable liquids, or candles – anything like that? I didn’t think so. Did either of my parents smoke? No, they did not. My dad used to smoke twenty Capstan full-strength per day, but had given up altogether about five years earlier. Did any regular visitor to the house smoke cigarettes? I could not be sure, and anyway, I didn’t think I knew of any regular visitors.
Then they began to get to what turned out to be the point. Did I know that six months earlier my father had increased the insurance on his own life and that of my mother? No, I did not know that. I had no idea. How could I know?
“He had never discussed it with you?” asked Wallace.
“No, he had not, but my father spent his entire life selling insurance. He was a very prudent man,” I said. As I began to think about it, for the very first time, it was obvious to me that my dad would always have been concerned about the expense of taking care of Roger after he and my mumhad passed away. But quite why he had chosen this time to increase his insurance was a mystery to me. Both of them were in their mid-fifties, and I was aware of no reason why they would have begun to contemplate their own mortality.
It turned out that my father had been paying into what at the time was an enormous policy which would pay out £10,000 on his death through illness or accident, and that the unusually large sum was the reason that the police were making enquiries. I can honestly say that I still had not given more than a passing thought to what our financial situation would likely be, and this new information took a while to sink in. As they continued with their questions, I began for the first time to be grateful that I had been three hundred miles away at the time of the fire. By the time the question came, I was half expecting it.
“Would your brother be capable of lighting a fire?” asked DS Wallace.
“What on earth do you mean? Are you asking if he is able to strike a match?”
No, that wasn’t what they were asking. They were asking if I thought there were any circumstances in which Roger could have started the fire that burnt down our house and killed our parents. I was about to speak when my mind was suddenly filled by a vivid image of my older brother squatting in the corner of a cold dark shed, the palms of his hands clamped over his ears and face, to try to keep out the sound and smell of a fire raging in the house just a few yards away.Roger would have had no idea what was going on, and no idea what to do about it. I shuddered to think of what must have been going through his brain when, sometime later, the firemen came in and found him. The whole scenario made me angry about the detectives’ line of questioning.
“No, there aren’t.” I immediately wondered if my extreme vehemence would seem inappropriate, but then realized that I didn’t care what they thought. They were suggesting that my older brother had torched our house and murdered our parents, and that didn’t seem like a subject to be neutral about. “Roger has some learning difficulties, all right? But he has never hurt a fly in his entire life. Never done anything that would get him into trouble. Never so much as taken a sweet from a bowl without asking permission.”
“So you are saying that he does know right from wrong?” said Wallace.
“Of course he does,” I said, becoming even more angry. “He’s not a bloody half-wit.” And I knew as soon as I said it that in fact Roger was indeed a
Did my parents have any enemies that I knew of? Of course not, my dad was an insurance salesman, the most innocuous character anyone could wish to meet. Did anyone in the house have any hobbies which involved flammable liquids, or candles – anything like that? I didn’t think so. Did either of my parents smoke? No, they did not. My dad used to smoke twenty Capstan full-strength per day, but had given up altogether about five years earlier. Did any regular visitor to the house smoke cigarettes? I could not be sure, and anyway, I didn’t think I knew of any regular visitors.
Then they began to get to what turned out to be the point. Did I know that six months earlier my father had increased the insurance on his own life and that of my mother? No, I did not know that. I had no idea. How could I know?
“He had never discussed it with you?” asked Wallace.
“No, he had not, but my father spent his entire life selling insurance. He was a very prudent man,” I said. As I began to think about it, for the very first time, it was obvious to me that my dad would always have been concerned about the expense of taking care of Roger after he and my mumhad passed away. But quite why he had chosen this time to increase his insurance was a mystery to me. Both of them were in their mid-fifties, and I was aware of no reason why they would have begun to contemplate their own mortality.
It turned out that my father had been paying into what at the time was an enormous policy which would pay out £10,000 on his death through illness or accident, and that the unusually large sum was the reason that the police were making enquiries. I can honestly say that I still had not given more than a passing thought to what our financial situation would likely be, and this new information took a while to sink in. As they continued with their questions, I began for the first time to be grateful that I had been three hundred miles away at the time of the fire. By the time the question came, I was half expecting it.
“Would your brother be capable of lighting a fire?” asked DS Wallace.
“What on earth do you mean? Are you asking if he is able to strike a match?”
No, that wasn’t what they were asking. They were asking if I thought there were any circumstances in which Roger could have started the fire that burnt down our house and killed our parents. I was about to speak when my mind was suddenly filled by a vivid image of my older brother squatting in the corner of a cold dark shed, the palms of his hands clamped over his ears and face, to try to keep out the sound and smell of a fire raging in the house just a few yards away.Roger would have had no idea what was going on, and no idea what to do about it. I shuddered to think of what must have been going through his brain when, sometime later, the firemen came in and found him. The whole scenario made me angry about the detectives’ line of questioning.
“No, there aren’t.” I immediately wondered if my extreme vehemence would seem inappropriate, but then realized that I didn’t care what they thought. They were suggesting that my older brother had torched our house and murdered our parents, and that didn’t seem like a subject to be neutral about. “Roger has some learning difficulties, all right? But he has never hurt a fly in his entire life. Never done anything that would get him into trouble. Never so much as taken a sweet from a bowl without asking permission.”
“So you are saying that he does know right from wrong?” said Wallace.
“Of course he does,” I said, becoming even more angry. “He’s not a bloody half-wit.” And I knew as soon as I said it that in fact Roger was indeed a
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