From The Ashes begins with a fire. Blaxon Hall is gutted.
When DI Bryant arrives on the scene, she discovers a badly burned body has been pulled from the fire. And Charlotte Ashe, who had no business being at the Hall, was last seen racing into the inferno.
Why was Charlotte at the Hall? Is she dead or has she somehow survived the blaze, and if so, where is she?
Just some of the questions Bryant needs to answer to get to the truth behind the fire. And she is not the only person searching for Charlotte…
If you haven’t yet read the opening chapter >>you can do so here<<
Here’s the scene where Charlotte arrives at the Hall.
Charlotte
Before The Fire
What the hell was I doing here? This was a brain injury clinic. I knew nothing about caring for people with brain injury. The closest I’d ever got to caring for anyone was sitting beside Maddie in that godawful hospice.
I’d been left to cool my heels in a cramped office that held none of the elegant splendour of the entrance to the Georgian building. Out there Blaxon Hall was all sweeping staircases and stained glass. In here it was junkstore chic, without the chic. With nothing to look at but IKEA cast-offs, I filled my time second-guessing my decision to come to Blaxon Hall.
Could I manage bed-pan duty or whatever it was an unskilled support worker might be called upon to perform? Assuming they took me on. What if they recognised me as that weather presenter from TVWE? I’d been gone from their screens for several weeks, so that probably wasn’t as likely as my fragile ego would have enjoyed. And if they did recognise me, wouldn’t they assume I was here to ferret out their secrets for a primetime-worthy story that would restore me to my chosen career path?
Of course they would. And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
The door behind me closed. A tiny bird of a woman tripped past me in heels that couldn’t possibly be suitable to the job and took a seat behind the cluttered desk. Her small features were lost beneath huge, dark-rimmed glasses. She could have been aged anywhere between thirty and sixty. Hard to tell with those glasses. I thought of those heels. Definitely closer to thirty.
‘I’m Naomi Serrano,’ she said clasping her hands together and resting them on the desk. ‘I have to say I wasn’t expecting you to turn up.’
She spoke with the barest hint of an accent. Hard to place. Probably European.
‘Why is that?’ I asked.
‘Not quite your thing, is it, Support Worker? No television cameras here.’
Naturally she knew who I was. She would have done her due diligence, and though my fall from grace hadn’t made a blip on mainstream media—thank God—it had spiked on the socials. Behind her huge glasses her eyes sparkled. At least one of us was having fun.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘how about you tell me why you want to work here.’
Mostly I wanted to know what the hell Garner was up to visiting Blaxon Hall in secret every Wednesday night. And I wanted to know why Dimitri Poitrowski was so certain that threatening the Hall would be the best way to get to Garner. There was bad history between them, but Dimitri having his men torch a facility that held two dozen vulnerable patients and almost as many staff seemed an extreme reaction.
But the reality was also that I needed a job. Desperately. If I didn’t find some way to pay the exorbitant rent on my riverside flat, I’d soon be homeless. There wasn’t even enough left in my account to spring for a one-way ticket back to Australia. Not that I had any wish to return. So who was I to turn my nose up at bed-pan duty, if that’s what I got. For all I knew they might need an office assistant. Or a PR officer. I liked that idea. If it involved some sort of reporting—an inhouse magazine, research reports or industry articles—I might even satisfy my visa requirements.
Oh, who was I kidding? The way my luck was running it would be bed-pan duty.
Naomi stared at me through those thick-rimmed glasses and waited. Christ, say something!
‘If you didn’t expect me to turn up,’ I asked, ‘why did you agree to see me?’
She whipped off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Without the heavy frames to disguise them, the dark circles beneath her eyes stood out like burnt timber in the snow. ‘I’m afraid I’m using you. Or rather I hope that you will use your skills to help me.’
Intriguing. A flicker of excitement took hold deep in my belly. I wasn’t the only one in this room with an ulterior motive.
‘There have been some strange things going on here in the last few months,’ she said. ‘Strangers sitting in the carpark or strolling the woods and grounds. Cars driving by at odd hours. I’m sure you’ve noticed we are quite a way off the beaten path.’
I nodded. To call the rutted unsealed path to the Hall a road was generous.
‘Someone has wiped records from the system. And the other day someone started a fire in the library room.’
‘A fire?’ The threat to burn down the Hall was no longer a threat. It was reality.
‘All those books!’ Naomi said. ‘If not for a quick-thinking staff member it could have taken hold very quickly.’
Neither Garner nor DI Bryant had wanted to listen to my warning about the Hall. Back then all I could offer was a second-hand account of an overheard conversation, but this was proof. They had to take it seriously. ‘Did you inform the police?’
‘My job is to protect the people under my charge.’
What was she saying—that she hadn’t gone to the police? That she didn’t want them involved? ‘Surely that makes it more important you go to the police.’
Oh boy, wouldn’t Bryant laugh to hear me utter those words.
‘You’ve got to understand.’ Naomi peered at me. ‘Many of our long-term residents are extremely distressed by anything that differs from their routine, and others find noise and new faces very disorienting. They can act out, harm themselves or others. I need to protect them. And my staff.’
There was something in the way she uttered that last sentence that had me on high alert. Now we were getting somewhere. ‘You think the firebug is someone here? One of your staff?’
‘I don’t know. I hope not. But I can’t ignore that it must be someone with easy access. Files have gone missing. Rooms have been, well, not searched exactly, but gone through. I want it dealt with internally.’
‘You want me to pretend to be a staff member and ferret out what’s going on?’
‘Pretend? There’ll be no pretense about it. If you’re here as a volunteer support worker, our insurance will cover you. And we are so short-staffed all assistance will be welcomed with open arms and few questions.’
The universe was surely laughing at me. All that university education, striving for success and my father’s approval, and I end up a support worker in a brain injury facility. A volunteer support worker. I wasn’t sure how that would satisfy my visa requirements, but it might get me a story that would get me back on track. A story that would prove to everyone that they shouldn’t underestimate Charlotte Ashe.
Naomi ran through the duties I’d be expected to perform, but beyond orientation I barely heard a word. My head was with the fire in the library room. Naomi was wrong. The threat was external. Still, I knew from experience Dimitri was well capable of using someone on the inside. I’d start with staff records, see who lived above their means or was susceptible to pressure.
‘Now, while you’ll be expected to perform all those duties, I actually want you to prioritise exposing the culprit threatening the Hall.’ Naomi said. ‘Keep your eyes open, walk the grounds, chat to the staff and any regular visitors. Tell me what you find. Tell me what you think it means.’
‘I’ll need your staff list, current and past employees. Anyone with a grudge. I assume you do background checks on everyone?’
Naomi bit her full bottom lip.
So, no background checks. ‘On anyone?’
‘We ask for references of course, and proof of qualifications.’
‘And do you follow up on all of them?’
She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. ‘You need to understand how hard it is to get staff out here.’ She’d put her thick-framed glasses back on and they made her pleading eyes owlish. ‘The job’s not easy or well paid. Winchester is our nearest town, but there’s a lack of affordable accommodation and even then it’s almost impossible to get to the Hall without a car.’
Good god. The woman refused to bring in the police because it would disturb her residents and yet she hired anyone with a car and a half-decent reference, and maybe not even that. Dimitri might be the least of her problems.
‘The new Blaxon Estate was the answer to my prayers,’ she said. ‘Now it doesn’t look like getting finished.’
‘Why not?’
Naomi got to her feet and moved toward the door. With little choice, I did the same. Just before she showed me out, she said, ‘I must say that you don’t seem very surprised to hear about the fire.’
‘Because I know about Dimitri’s threat.’
She froze with her hand on the door handle. ‘Pardon?’
‘Tyrone Garner didn’t tell you?’
Naomi’s face was in shadow, her expression as hard to read as her silence. Then she pushed open the door and the light from the Hallway fell across her face. Her lips were curled in derision.
‘The great man doesn’t condescend to talk to us.’
‘He visits—’
‘Visits!’ She huffed and lifted her chin. ‘I can tell you this categorically. That man plays the bleeding heart with his charities and what-have-you, but since the day this clinic opened he has crossed our threshold the grand total of once. And that was for the photo op.’
I hope you enjoyed this excerpt of From The Ashes. If you would like to pre-order your copy, you can do that here.
If you would like to download book #1 in the Ashes to Ashes series, you can find buy links to Bad Things Happen here.
If you would like to download book #2 in the Ashes to Ashes series, you can find buy links to Less You Know here.
If you would like to see my backlist of titles, including the multi-award nominated All That’s Left Unsaid check out my ‘books’ page here.
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About Rowena Holloway
I consider myself a reformed academic who discovered fiction writing was preferable to the real world. My love of suspense fiction is thoroughly indulged through writing novels and short stories about Fractured Families and Killer Secrets. My novels have been nominated for the Ned Kelly Award and semi-finaled in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and my short stories have been included in several anthologies including the Anthology of Award Winning Australian Writing. I also review my favourite books, interview fellow writers, and blog about books and writing.
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