CHAPTER 15
The night before Eddie was due to fly to Bangkok coincided with his weekly bath.
It was as he was soaking himself and waiting for the water to grow too cold for comfort that he heard the noise downstairs. He stopped splashing to listen but decided it was a leaflet being pushed through the letterbox. Hearing nothing more, he gave his back one final scrubbing with his loofa. Eddie often spent more time inspecting the fibrous structure of his loofa, the dried tropical cucumber he’d bought in Vietnam, than actually washing with it. This time, though, he was distracted by the smell of smoke.
He hauled himself from the bath, sniffed the air again to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, then ran down the stairs stark naked.to find a pile of smouldering newspaper lying on the mat just inside the door. He stamped on it with his bare feet but the paper ignited again sending up a plume of smoke and a flicker of flame that, if he’d not been dripping water might have singed the hairs on his legs if he had any. He stamped again, then again and eventually the smoking stopped. What was left was a pile of black, ashy newspaper and a burnt patch on the Welcome mat.
He sat on the bottom step of the stairs and wiped his wet face. With water still dropping down his back, he stood up and opened the door. Whoever had stuffed that through the letter box and dropped a match into it would surely have gone by now but he opened it in case it was a couple of local lads who might be standing at the gate, laughing. There was no-one except a young woman waiting while her dog cocked its leg against the tyre of a car parked outside. Normally he would have said something about a dog-fouling offence but on this occasion, he withdrew quickly and shut the door. Then he sat on the stairs again and phoned Colin Asher. Asher sent a text to Mark Dobson.