“That struck you as strange?”
“What kid leaves a packet of unopened jelly beans. They were M&S branded.” I check on Freddie. He’s frowning with his eyes closed again. “I don’t know, why would kids get sweets at M&S rather than cheap ones from the pound shop a street away?”
“Was that the only unusual thing you noticed?”
“We could smell petrol. The film on the windows began to blister and melt, and then we saw the true extent of the damage to the ground floor. It was more advanced than we first thought, and we used both hoses, one either end of the building, but the catches holding the windows open melted under the velocity. They swung shut. Darren made the call to break the windows to put out the fire.” I grimace. “We didn’t know anyone was in there.”
Freddie’s eyes peel open to slits, flashing me a sliver of blue. He squeezes my hand.
Liam clears his throat. “I need to ask you a few questions too.”
The “you” he’s referring to is Freddie. He must be bad if he can’t even say his name or look in his direction.
“Okay,” Freddie says, then he tries to remove his mask.
I stop him. “Ah, that stays on. We can hear you just fine.”
Liam stares at the nib of his pen on the notepad rather than Freddie. Apart from the first long look he gave Freddie when he stepped into the cubicle, he’s not looked at him since.
“You were sleeping at Hunter Healthcare?”
Freddie sighs. “Yes. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Did you hear anything suspicious? This could be hours earlier. A crash, a thump, footsteps, kids laughing, or a car or cars outside?”
“No. I didn’t hear anything.”
Liam nods. “You thought you might lose your job, why was that?”
Freddie opens his eyes a little wider. “I . . . I skipped a step on one of the processes, wrote in the logbook I’d completed something before I had.”
Liam’s pen rests on the page but he doesn’t write anything down. He doesn’t say anything, compelling Freddie to say more.
“The last six months there’s been a few firings. When I ran into one of my ex-colleagues, Andy, he told me why Stephen had let him go. He told me he’d been caught on CCTV incorrectly documenting a process. He blamed me for it. The same happened to someone else. They’re small errors, mainly due to SOPs needing updating. They don’t affect the product, but you can lose your job over them.”
“How many people has Stephen fired in the last six months?”
“Five.” Freddie coughs weakly. “I think.”
“You thought you’d be number six?”
Freddie shrugs. “I made the same errors. But a few days ago I asked Stephen outright, and he told me he had no plans to fire me.”
“And how did he seem when he told you that?”
Freddie wets his lips with his tongue before answering. “Shocked that I thought he might be considering it. He was . . . in a good mood that morning. He even . . .” He chuckles and drops his gaze to the bed.
“What?” Liam asks.
“He noticed my neck.” Freddie glances to me, then to Liam. “You two had mauled me and marked it. He found it . . . he found it amusing. He thought I’d ditched work the day before for a hookup, but he wasn’t angry. He laughed, told me not to make a habit out of it.”
Liam’s scribbling away in his notepad. “Which was unusual for him?”
“Yeah, I guess so, this last year at least. He’s been much more uptight. What . . . what has Stephen got to do with the fire?”
“Thank you for your time,” Liam says as he flips his notepad shut.
He turns and leaves.