Chapter 48
Tobias watches the ambulance leave, taking his son and daughter away, both mercifully alive and, in the main, well.
As he climbs back into his car, he allows himself a moment.
His brain is still racing to catch up with the rest of him.
The adrenaline running through his veins is sending shock waves around his body as if he has drunk cup after cup of strong coffee.
He is both wide awake and dazed. He feels numbed, dislocated, as though the events of the last hour or so have been happening to someone else, a different version of himself, a parallel Tobias.
He folds his arms over the steering wheel and briefly lays his head down on them.
He has barely slept – no more than an hour or two – and with a twinge of guilt he acknowledges to himself that his blood alcohol level is probably far too high.
He should never have driven here. But what was he to do when he received the SOS from Belle?
Both his children in trouble? He was hardly going to ignore it.
More importantly, he shouldn’t be about to do what he does.
But he has to get over to the other side of the bay and he is miles away, stranded by this quiet cove.
He’s not going to be able to get a taxi or, God forbid, a bus at this time on a Sunday morning.
Not round here. It’s not London, after all, he reminds himself yet again and with that thought, he decides.
Fuck it, needs must. He has to find Olivia, and assess the damage at the renovation.
Besides, all this sea air, oxygen. He’s as fresh as a daisy.
So he starts up the engine and drives off.
As he approaches the row of terraced houses, Tobias slows down.
In the back of his mind had been the oblique hope that the paramedic had somehow got it wrong or had been talking about another house undergoing building work, nearby perhaps.
But the burned carcass of his property, wedged between the other smoke-damaged houses, sends a blow straight to his heart.
He parks badly, abandoning the car to walk the last few paces up the street.
He cannot tear his eyes away from the house.
The roof is obliterated, the freshly painted facade now scorched and sooty, the windows mere blackened, gaping holes.
Everything looks slick with wet, saturated by the water hoses.
Tobias visualises the internal structure of the house; the timber joists, the herringbone wood floors, the recently wired electrics, the freshly plastered walls and, oh God, the new kitchen.
All that expensive joinery, those materials, fixtures and fittings, all sitting there ready to be installed.
Like one massive piece of kindling waiting to be set alight.
And then a thought occurs to him. What if this is no accident but the work of someone with an axe to grind?
He knows that he has made enemies in his life, is never one to worry about giving offence wherever he goes.
But this? And according to the ambulance crew, people have been injured, perhaps fatally.
His stomach gives a queasy lurch. Who would do such a thing?
He does a swift roll call of likely suspects.
Even just over the last week, he has managed to lock horns with several of the locals, he concedes.
The couple from the B harmless enough, though it’s always the quiet ones.
But no, they haven’t got it in them. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose, the pair of them.
Or perhaps that old crackpot Ted, who was round here only yesterday.
The swivel-eyed nut had been practically foaming at the mouth, demanding his money.
But surely not. Why jeopardise a relationship that is to be a source of income? It doesn’t make any sense.
Finally, his thoughts come to rest upon the couple next door; Tim and Lottie Jenkins.
Of course it is them. That woman has had it in for him and this build ever since day one.
He could tell she was a little unhinged as soon as he met her.
Lord knows what she might be capable of in a fit of anger. Well now we know, he decides.
Taking one last mournful look at the property, which has been cordoned off and secured as a no-go area, he gets back into his car.
He tries not to dwell on the thought of the money.
All the savings he has ploughed into the renovation, how he had been forced to move some money around, remortgage the London house to free up some capital.
Especially as one or two of his recent investments had tanked, not to mention a hefty unforeseen tax bill he’d been landed with recently.
Surely his insurance will cover it though.
Won’t it? He will have to look up the policy and check the small print.
To his shame, he has spent the last ten minutes ruminating on this.
His own fortune or lack thereof. Yet Olivia is still technically missing, unaccounted for.
Though, in his heart, he’s pretty sure she will turn up with a good excuse, fresh from a long bath and smelling of roses. But why isn’t she answering her phone?
He tries her mobile again but it goes straight to voicemail, his wife’s breathless, elongated vowels urging him to leave a message and promising she will get right back to him.
He doesn’t, of course. Then his mind leapfrogs to Marcus.
He’s not sure if he has ever been more or less in need of an architect than he is right now.
What can the man do, after all? The whole place is a write-off.
He finds he craves Marcus’s slick, confident tones, his to-the-letter approach to all things.
He wants a professional to reassure him that everything will be okay in the end, that this dire situation is somehow salvageable. So he tries his phone too.
But again, as soon as it is connected, the clipped business-like voice of a recorded message ensues and Tobias ends the call.
It is only now that he sees what a coincidence this is.
The fact that both Olivia and Marcus are not answering their phones.
But it is a Sunday, he reminds himself. And the whole town appears to be sleeping off a particularly big night.
Instead, he focuses on the one place that will be open.
A place where he will hopefully gain information and answers: the police station.
Who knows what kind of tinpot constabulary he will find when he gets there but he keys the destination into the satnav and sets off.
He wants this whole thing escalated, a full-scale investigation, and he wants Lottie and Tim Jenkins to be number one on the police’s hit list.