Read Into The Fire for Free Online Page B

‘I’d put good money that there’s a fracture under here. If he was hit hard enough to break the bone, he’ll have been dazed, at the very least.’
    Not an accident, then, but still possible that he is, as Ducat said, collateral damage; an unfortunate who disturbed the fire setters in their act of arson, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    Picaut stands up and a photographer steps in and leans over the body. Three bright-white flashes light the room. In their wake, both Picaut and Masson take their own images with their phones. They’re not for use in court, but they’ll be uploaded on to a computer back at the lab and case notes will be built around them.
    ‘So who was he?’ she asks.
    ‘No idea.’ Masson sweeps his pen in a wider arc that takes in the fried mess of the bed, the burned remnants of the dressing table, the wardrobe that has fallen in on itself … and the absolute absence of anything to mark the man on the floor: no clothes hanging over chairs, no suitcase lying open. ‘No passport, no credit card, no mobile phone; nothing. The room’s been cleared out.’
    So, not collateral damage. ‘Fuck.’ Picaut stares down at the charred remains of her maybe-American visitor and counts the ways in which her life has just become more complex.
    Éric Masson’s quiet smile greets her as she looks up again. ‘I think this is what they pay you for.’
    ‘And they pay you to get me DNA and a dental imprint in record time.’ They are friends; the words lack any sting. ‘I can’t find out why he was murdered until I know who he was.’
    ‘Give me two hours.’
    Picaut sinks down to her hands and knees, peers under the bed. ‘He had a mobile phone. He was seen speaking on it at dinner. It must be here somewhere.’
    It isn’t. Later in the day, a fingertip search by the forensic team finds fragments of plastic and some parts of a battery ground into the carpet as if the whole thing has been crushed underfoot, but of the phone there is no sign. Nor is there any particular sign of who has been here, or why, although Martin Evard of the Fire Department tells her that, as in the previous fires, all the surfaces in the room were soaked with gasoline before it was set alight.
    Picaut follows the stretcher bearing the charred remains out into the small square in front of the building. Her car is covered in a fine layer of soot and ash. She is the same. Every time she runs her hands through her hair, they come away grimier.
    It is four minutes past seven. She weighs risk and counter-risk and decides that being (and looking and feeling) clean matters more than being at her desk ten minutes ahead of time. Pocketing her car keys, she sets out to walk three blocks west towards the apartment she once shared with Luc; the place she still notionally calls home.
    On the way, she prepares in her head the report she will email to Ducat, the prosecutor, and the broader-ranging, more speculative one she will present to her team when they gather in her office later.
    She has had less than three hours’ sleep.

CHAPTER FOUR
J ARGEAU,
12 June 1429
    TOMAS RUSTBEARD’S FIRST chance to kill the Maid comes on the second day of the assault on Jargeau, just over a month after the disaster at Orléans.
    The army is camped in the suburbs, preparing for another day of fighting. The king has been prevaricating or they would have been here a month ago. His advisers are divided. The Maid, to whom all now look for advice, has spent the past month persuading him to let her march his army against the English garrisons of the Loire valley.
    The king, not surprisingly, is somewhat reluctant to let a woman lead his troops; it’s not a good precedent. Also, his religious advisers are divided between those who think she is a gift from God and can do anything, and those, most notably the Archbishop of Rheims, the king’s spiritual adviser, who think she is a charlatan at best, the devil incarnate at worst, and should be sewn in