Chapter 25
On the Friday after Christmas I called the fire department to ask if they had completed their investigation into the cause of the blaze. They said they had found no trace of accelerants in the area where the fire started and suggested the most likely scenario was that hikers had left some cigarette butts around. I was pretty confident that innocent hikers wouldn’t be wandering around in the bush smoking at four in the morning, but I could hardly prove what I’d ‘seen’. It would have been easy enough to start a fire without using anything more than a couple of matches with the bush so dry.
Even though I was not naturally suspicious, I was sure the fire had to have been arranged by someone at Kolsom. It would have been an easy way for them to gain access to the valley if they wer
