‘Is the outbuilding on fire too?’ Steam rose from all around, but she couldn’t see any flames.
‘No, they’re damping it down, purely precautionary at this stage to make sure no stray sparks send it up in a ball of flames. Everything is really dry.’
‘Okay.’
She made a mental note to get the registration numbers checked once they had access to the outbuilding.
‘What else have you got, Charlie?’
With a shake of his head, he glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s not good. We received a 999 call at 2335,’ he checked his watch. ‘The nearest neighbours, a Mr and Mrs Crawford, live over that rise.’ He jerked his head to indicate the direction. ‘They’d gone to bed, fast asleep when their smoke alarm alerted them. Elderly couple.’ He raised his head and scanned the area, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he narrowed them, looking for the couple. ‘They’re over there when you’re ready to speak with them.’
‘How come their smoke alarm went off if they live that far away?’
Charlie shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘The wind’s strong, all it would take was a sudden change of direction, which has happened several times now, and the smoke probably got blown into their open window. Trapped inside, it would activate their smoke alarm. It’s not unusual for that to happen.’
Jenna nodded. It made sense. ‘So, what about now?’
Face rippled in shadow as the fire raged on behind him creating a barrier of a roaring, gushing waterfall, she had to lean in as Charlie shook his head. ‘By the time we arrived, the place was already an inferno. You know, it’s out in the middle of nowhere, we don’t know what time it started, but we do know that once it got going, it was only a short sprint from the start to this.’
‘How long did it take you to get here?’ She glanced at the time on her phone. Just past 2:00 a.m.
‘After the call? The first tender arrived in under eight minutes from Wenlock, that was mine, I took control of the scene. We’ve sectorised the incident. Four sectors. Second tender arrived in nineteen minutes from Tweedale, third and fourth took almost twenty-two minutes from Bridgnorth. Because of the scale of the fire, the size of the property, the amount of barns and outbuildings, we requested another two tenders, but they’re finishing up at a house fire the other side of Telford. ETA another twelve minutes. It’s only the main house on fire, but with the wind changing direction, we’ve got to keep the outbuildings dampened down so they don’t catch a spark. Mostly wooden with roofs, they’d soon go up.’
‘Can you tell if anyone was still inside?’
Charlie manoeuvred himself to stand at her side so he could indicate the house beyond. ‘We can’t be sure. By the time we arrived the place was too far gone for me to risk my crews. Anyone in there…’ He shook his head. ‘The place is compromised, with the age of the building. It’s stone, but the structure inside could be anything. We conducted a risk assessment. Once at this stage, house fires tend to burn at around a thousand degrees.’ At her blank look, he expanded. ‘Five times the temperature of an oven you’d cook your Sunday roast in.’
‘Surely that’s hot enough to cremate?’ Not wanting to dwell too long on the effect it would have on anyone in there, Jenna fixed her gaze on Charlie.
‘No, 1400 to 1800 degrees for cremation, and don’t forget that when cremation takes place it’s under controlled circumstances.’ He used his hands to squeeze down the size of the imagined area. ‘Confined in a small area. It takes two and half hours to cremate a body.’
‘With nothing left but ashes.’
‘No. That’s a fallacy. Even then there will be a skeleton. They put it all into a grinder and…’ the hands he demonstrated closed into fists, ‘crush it.’
Rocked by the horror of it, Jenna sucked in a breath. Fire, ambulance and police never held their punches in their descriptions. Fact was fact. Between them, their sense of humour could be ribald at times, even when the occasion didn’t call for it. It was a defence mechanism. They dealt with death, and what some may consider worse. There was no cover-up of gory details, no hiding from the stark truth despite the macabre element.
Charlie tucked his helmet under his elbow and swiped at his forehead with the back of his other hand. ‘If I thought for one moment that there was anyone in there alive, I would have sent a crew in straight away. There isn’t. It’s not possible for anyone to have survived in there.’
Jenna squinted against the bright glaze of light flickering beyond Charlie, expecting to see the paramedics attending to victims of the fire, but apart from the crew with the elderly lady, Mrs Crawford, the other two teams were stood watching the blaze.
In amongst them all, her solid PC Walker had a handle on it. He raised a hand to acknowledge her as he pressed the people who’d come to observe back beyond the cordons. Relatively few were there at that time of the morning, such was the remoteness of Kimble Hall. Stood in its own fifty acre grounds, it was secluded, but surrounded by even more arable fields, it was isolated.
The sense of loss pressed heavy on her chest and she glanced up at Mason’s tight features as the realisation that there were no survivors hit them both.
‘When are we expecting NILO?’ NILO, the National Inter-Agency Liaison Officer, was the tactical advisor responsible for liaison between the separate forces to keep everyone informed in a major incident. The incident was major so far because of the ferocity of the fire.
‘On his way. Roger Ayman. He’s based in Worcester. They’re trying to contact him now. In the meantime, I can tell you anything you need to know, but there’s relatively little that I can say at the moment, except that’s a shit-hot fire and no one will be going near it until the morning. We’ll pour water on it from the outside. Keep an eye on that oil tank over there.’ Charlie indicated with a broad sweep of his arm. ‘We’re keeping water on it to make sure it doesn’t combust. And, as I said, dousing the outbuildings and barns so they don’t catch light. Other than that, there’s no more we can do at present than put the fire out. My crews won’t be going in there until we have it completely under control.’
‘Suspicious circumstances, or accident?’ The age of the property indicated it could simply have ignited and gone up like an inferno without much encouragement.
‘Can’t tell at this stage. If you can locate the residents, that would be good. Otherwise it doesn’t look promising.’
A cool breeze sneaked under the blaze of fury to stroke across Jenna’s fiery skin in a promise of relief only to be whipped away by another gust of heat.
She fell back a step and puffed out a breath before it scorched her lungs. ‘We’ll go and question the neighbours. If you need us, we’ll be over there.’
Across the stretch of land, she caught Ted Walker’s gaze and raised her right hand, circling her thumb and forefinger into the okay sign. He raised his thumb in acknowledgement and she pointed in the direction of the ambulance she was about to make her way to.
More than capable of setting up the scene, Ted Walker would shout if he needed her.
Mason followed her through the thronging mass of new arrivals as the two remaining tenders pulled in, making a total of six. Almost unheard of in a rural location where only one tender resided at each of the stations, manned primarily by reserves.