I'll say it, for your recorder: I am an arsonist.  Convicted, obviously.  And I don't mind giving you this interview.  I've had three before you come to me for the story, and I've given it to them, straight goods, every time.  Just like them, you'll never print or speak a word about the bit that matters.  Even if you type it up, nobody will publish it, in spite of the media interest in my crimes when they were discovered.

You doubt me, I see.  You won't believe this either then: nobody ever died as a result of any fire that I set.  There you go, that's the look again.  You're in a great position, with full access to the man who set a fire that took fifteen lives, and destroyed a building used by countless royal Tudors.  No doubt there's an exciting title for the manuscript sitting on your desk at home.

It's all been going so well, too.  Right up until I start denying the crime people really care about, the juicy one.  Sure, there is some interest in the others; all that history gone up in smoke.  But sex and death are what sell books, not dust.  The other fires are just context: background as you build your picture for the readers, to the night I murdered nine women, six men.  Except I didn't.  I turned around: walked away and left them living.

Oh sure, I pleaded guilty to doing it, offered no defence or mitigation, and took the sentence on the chin when the judge handed it down.  No point in fighting fate, and somebody had to go down for it.  But why deny it now?  Perhaps I'm just bored.  Might as well tell someone the truth.  Gives me something to do between the three o'clock buggering and the seven o'clock beating. Or perhaps I've a deeper motivation.

Yeah, I know.  You want the lurid fascination with fire that captivates me with its flickering dance, or some similar bollocks.  In my own words, of course, although you plan on substituting better ones if mine are rubbish.  Told you; you're the fourth, mate.  The first two, I let them dictate the pace.  Not any more, thanks.  I've got a written account of all the fires I set, from first to last, with chapters on my childhood and all that, in excruciating detail.  Et. Cet. Era.  If you want, when we're done here I'll ask the screws to take you to the library for a copy.  Nah, not in my cell.  Too much can happen to paper in a cell.  At least in the library it's stored properly, even if nobody ever reads it, except when I get assigned a new psych-nurse.  Gives them something to do, between the three o'clock rapist, and the seven o'clock strangler.

Anyway, let's get down to brass, shall we?  Hate to be late for my beating.

I was convicted of setting five fires, but I've set a lot more than that.  These five all had a theme the others lacked though.  Added a touch of humour to them, I did.  My little signature.  It tickled me, for starters, then bit me right on the arse, after Tunton burned and all those people with it.  And I know you want to know about that, and I don't deny I was going to burn it, but when I saw they had a do on, well...  I'd never injured anybody before and wasn't going to start then, no matter how exciting the flames and smoke against the sky.  So I dumped my stuff on my way off the estate, where the river pools under a stone bridge to the North.  Probably bad for the fishes, but worse for me when the coppers only turned up a couple of bits of it after.

Back to the signature though, just a bit of scene-setting, if you like.  An author knows about such, but others do too.  I don't exactly know where I got the idea from, nor when I knew I was actually going to act on it.  I just thought it would be a great joke, to plant the seed in people's minds that a time-traveller was visiting famous buildings just before they burned.  A real farewell tour.  I was pissing myself all through setting the first one.  Would have been even funnier if anybody had picked up on it.  I think that's why I kept doing it, really, repeating myself until someone got the joke.

Anyway, I was planning to burn Cromwell's Barn, which I'm sure Noll Cromwell could give less than a shit about.  Puritanical old bastard that he was, he'd be more bothered about the things we wear, and say, and nobody going to church any more, except for Christmas.  He'd really hate that part.  What?  Yes, sorry, my signature.

I thought it'd be funny, that's all.  So, when I worked out that the best time to torch the place was Sunday, because there'd be nobody nearby to get hurt, or to raise the alarm too soon, I got ready to play a tourist on Saturday.  I always scoped places out, one last time, ahead of the burn, but I expect you knew that.  It's part of what helped them catch me, after all; being picked out on the CCTV.  Turned out I wasn't the only one they picked out though.  There was one skinny woman with a large mole set on her right cheek, who had the misfortune to go to two places the same weekends I did, but they soon chalked that up to coincidence when they found my face popping up on more of the footage than hers, and my joke in the visitor books.

Anyway, Saturday came, and found me dressed a bit funny.  I was wearing a pair of track-suit bottoms, sandals and a suit-jacket I'd picked up for three quid in Oxfam.  You know why: I was going for the look of someone who knows what clothes people wear, but not how to do it right.  So then, feeling a right twonker, I'll admit, I got on the bus for Cromwell's Barn.

I did all the things I could find to do there; had a nice time of it looking around the exhibits.  Nowhere else I've been to has ever done ice-cream the way they did it there, I can tell you.  Pity.  Eventually I'd done it all.  And been seen doing it, mind: I certainly stood out, in that get-up.  So I went up to the gift-shop.

That was a part of the building they'd added on, more modern, with sprinklers and the usual things they put in against fires.  I reckoned that part stood a chance of coming out all right, more or less, so I made a quick note in the book there: “Really enjoyed visiting today, such a shame about the fire.”  And then I said something similar to the curator chap on duty, “Lovely day, really brought history alive for me.  Great to see the place before…” cutting myself off sharpish, and looking startled, you see.  Then I left in a hurry.

When I returned the next evening, dressed more normally, I cut a fence and hid behind one of the sheds until they shut-up shop.  Then I waited a bit longer so everyone had time to knock off, did a quick sweep to make sure the place was clear, and put a flame to it.

That really was a lovely old building.  Nice and airy, with high ceilings, wattle-and-daub walls that were certainly older than Cromwell’s time, and lots of nice and dry exposed beams.  Those beams couldn't seem to burn fast enough at the end there.  Dodgy preservative, I reckon.  The tapestry displays they had on were a blessing to a fire-starter too: whoosh, and they were gone.  And after a bit, so was I, because the cops were flashing lights all about the place.

I followed the story, waited to see if they picked up on the arson.  It had to look like an accident see, or the joke didn't work.  But they didn't, not then.  And they didn't notice my careful hints, either.  Shame.

So, I did it again.  And again.  I took care to dress exactly the same each time, and made sure my hair was the exact same length too.  Little details make a joke, they say, and I was really into playing the part.

I did have to start being more obvious though, because it took until the third fire, the episcopal church, before anyone connected the strangely-dressed man, and his odd comments, with the visitor's book.  They didn't have enough to come for me, not then.  They hadn't linked the fires together, although they were nearly there with Cromwell's Barn.  And although it was a thin disguise, the name I signed in the books wasn't my own.  They'd have to do a little digging to find me.

Almost all the papers got it right, once the strange visitor was noticed.  Figured somebody was going around, pretending to be a time-traveller on a tour, and then sparking the place up.  A couple went with the “what if it really was...” angle, but they soon dropped it when people complained.  Nobody saw the funny side.  Oh well.

So, with the coppers and fire-spoilers, and even the press, on my trail, I knew they'd get me eventually, if I didn't stop, which I didn't want to do.  Some of the volunteers, curators and guards were alerted too, so I had to be prepared to peg it off when I said my little bit to them, in case they knew my game.  I got away with it that fourth time though, against my expectations.  For my fifth target, I chose Tunton Hall.

I did my usual recce, and a bit more.  I watched it two nights running, while I made my plan, then dressed up and went for a proper visit to check it would work the last day before they closed up for repairs and renovations.  Added my name to the book, and the usual comments “so lovely… such a shame...” and said the same thing, more or less, to the gift-shop girl when I left.  Then I waited for a few more days while they cleared out the stock, and some of the pricier artefacts, and watched all the while, from the hill.  Finally, the family who lived there had cleared off on their hols, to be replaced by building-tools and equipment, and I could go to work.

It was a big place before the fire, and atmospheric by night, with everyone cleared out to make ready for the workmen to start in earnest on the Monday.  The only person who ought to have been near the place was the security guard, and he only showed up to check the perimeter was secure before driving off to do the same thing somewhere else.  If people actually cared about preserving history, they'd invest in a proper night watchman, but there you are.

So I did my Tarzan bit, up and over the fence, and checked the place was empty, like I always do.  I know my particular interest in fire is wrong, doesn't matter how much I love it, and my only rule has always been that nobody would die because I'm wired badly.  Got to draw the line somewhere, right?

Only this time, the place wasn't empty, not even close.  Some kind of party was going on in the drawing room.  I didn't know where they came from, hadn't seen anyone arrive.  Like everyone else, it interests me that they still haven't identified the bodies, even after all these years.  They did some DNA sampling a few years back, on the off-chance they had records of some close relatives, but no results came back that were closer than the most distant of relatives would be.  At the time though, they were just people enjoying the night.  And it really was a beautiful night.  They had candles out, and music playing softly while they danced.  The air was warm and still, and I could smell their wine on it, hear their happy laughter.

I will admit it, I was jealous of them then, because I thought it was one of those romantic moments they would remember all their lives, even when they'd forgotten half the people they shared it with.  It crossed my mind to go and join them, as I was pretty sure they were interlopers as well.  Probably slipped in from the village down the hill, I thought then.  But I didn't.  Instead, I watched to see if they were staying long, and heard more bottles being opened, so I decided they were.  And I left.  I just left.

       Funny thing was, I decided then and there, that I was done with my little joke.  Something about being on the outside of their happiness, looking in, had made me feel... sadness; regret; loneliness?  Take your pick.  Whatever it was, I didn't think my time-traveller schtick was funny anymore.  As I walked back to where I'd parked the car, I dumped my bag in the river, like I said, and seriously considered getting some help.  I thought perhaps I'd like to be the sort of person who dances in the evening air, rather than the person who set the dancing-hall alight.  Funny.

Anyway, you'll have the notes and references on the rest.  The fire started in the drawing room where I'd planned to set it, underneath some cross-beams that would carry it East and West through the building.  The accelerant used, my own mix and hard to trace, matched the other fires, and the spread pattern was the same.  Even the rolled paper wick was identical to the fires I'd been starting most my life.  Which is fair enough, since it was my gear that was used, my plan.

What was different was the small, sad group they found locked in the drawing room.  I threw up when I heard that.  I might seem like an unlikely hero, but as God's my witness I would have tried to get them out, or stop whoever put a flame to the room with them inside.  Not that I knew it was a deliberate fire, not at first.  Exposed wood on an empty building site, alcohol and candles?  Could have been an accident.  I mean, what are the chances of two fire-bugs turning up to the same place and time?

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I know, that seems ridiculous.  Probably I just wanted it to be true.  Didn't want to be even a little responsible, for all that I'd done nothing, in the end.  But ridiculous or not, I continued to believe it for a while, even after they'd arrested me.  You know about confirmation bias?  Yeah, I know the words.  Lots of time to read, in here.

The reason I ask is this: I knew I was innocent, for once.  But I'd been setting fires that looked like accidents, and people were catching on.  The cops and fire-killers, they had a mass-murder, of persons unknown, and they had seen a fire set like that before, so they looked for more. Thanks to my little joke, they found some.  And then they started going through the CCTV, where it had survived, seeing who showed up in all the footage.  That would be me.

As well as the footage, they had a name in the visitor’s book.  One that would lead back to me.  Why?  Honestly, I knew it couldn't go on for ever, and wanted to own my work.  I didn't know when I signed that they'd be following the name to a murderer.  And they knew it was murder, and not manslaughter, or any kind of an accident.  The doors jammed shut were proof of that.  Oh yeah, I already mentioned that.  Moving on then. When they started examining fires that seemed to be accidental, looking for traces of me in the rubble, they were expecting to find a culprit.  And in some cases, it was there, including the link my little bad joke gave them.  Bad luck, coincidence; karma on my end, confirmation bias on theirs.  They expected to find traces of me, and I had left plenty.

I kept stum at first; hoping that it would all go away; hoping that, despite everything, it wasn’t my fault.  I know better now.  Wishful thinking can't stack up against hard evidence, and blame finds its home.  There's something else as well.  There was someone in the group that night that I recognised, although not until later on.  But let's not put the horse behind the cart.

Arson investigations take time, especially when there are bodies to identify, so I knew that they wouldn't come for me right away.  But after a while I saw that they were joining the dots. Well, most of them.  The church had made the papers, but they were only then connecting that fire to Cromwell's Barn, and it was another week before they connected the library in Chester to the pattern.  If I hadn't confessed to it, I'm not sure they would have got me for the college chapel, for all the digging they’d done.

It became a race, although we had different finishing posts in mind.  They thought they were racing to stop me from killing again.  In fact, I was racing to get my defence sorted ahead of handing myself in.  I thought if I confessed to the first four, they wouldn't be able to prove I did the fifth.  I didn't know then that it was my plan that had been followed, or my gear, salvaged from the river, that was used.  Dumping it there was a stupid thing to do.  Water wasn't going to make it safe, not sealed up like it was.  Irresponsible, plain and simple.

It was close, but they beat me in the end.  I'd found a lawyer that let me explain I had some crimes I wanted to confess to, and one I wanted to deny, without going off and turning me in.  They pretty much have to do that, as officers of the court.  The solicitor I found was OK.  I could tell she was judging me for the fires I set, but she was prepared to defend me for the fifth anyway, let the court decide my guilt.  That’s all I wanted.

We agreed to meet at the cop-shop the next day, but they came and got me first.  I was still pleading innocent at that point, but that changed once I‘d taken a good look at the evidence.  The prosecution has to share what they have with the defence in this country.  Not just the evidence they're going to use to prove the case, but also material they've turned up along the way, that didn't fit in so well with the case they were building against me.  This included any lines of inquiry they had abandoned before coming to me. 

There was no way I was making bail, and we've already spoken about paper in a prison, so I had to read the case-papers, all 800 plus pages, in the prison library.  Knowing I was innocent, I thought I might find something they'd overlooked, that would show the fire could have started accidentally.  What I found was damning evidence that my gear had been used to commit murder. 

I found something else as well, and had some hard thinking to do because of it.  One of those other lines of inquiry.

When I finished my review of the case, I went back to my cell, and didn't leave it for two days while I thought things through.  One of the things I thought about, was how many people I had seen that night.  I had counted, you see, in case I needed to be sure everybody had left before lighting the place up.  And by my reckoning there were sixteen people milling about when I was there, not the fifteen they’d found in the ruins.

Another thing I wondered was how someone had found the gear I had dumped in the river.  I was careful about being followed, so how had someone gone straight to the right place?  And then I thought about my little joke more carefully.  After I had kicked facts and fancies around for a bit I rang my solicitor, told her to change my plea to guilty, all charges.

I've been behaving myself inside these walls for years now, and my good behaviour got me access enough that I could do some research into unsolved arsons, and accidental fires.  Even fingered a couple of people who would otherwise have never been caught.  That got me in good with the powers that be.  I'm a model of redemption, me.  Gets me a different kind of attention from the pricks in the cells here, but who cares about them?

I have a theory about who actually set the fire at Tunton, one that I first thought up in my two days of hard thinking.  Like a lot of promising theories, it can be stretched to cover the points of fact, and allows room for imagination to fill the gaps.  It could be bollocks, of course, but I don't think so.

See, I've been looking for a face: one I saw for the first time at a party at Tunton Hall, lit softly by the candlelight and scored by Ragtime classics.  I saw it again, twice more, in the unused CCTV footage detectives had gathered investigating my case.  It looked younger in those grainy images, but I recognised it anyway.  And since my sentence began, I’ve found it once more; in the records of a fire that happened twenty years before I set my first house ablaze. 

Sounds like BS, doesn’t it?  But let's look at what I’d set out to do.  My joke was trying to trick people into thinking about a time-travelling tourist, seeing the buildings that history had lost before their birth.  It was a stupid joke, and looking back I don't think I ever expected anyone to take it seriously.  But I asked myself, what if?

What if, in some far-distant future time-travel becomes possible?  We'd never know about it.  Nobody's going to come up to you and say “Hi, I'm from the future.  That’s a nice present-day you have here, be a shame if something happened to it.”  Nah, they'd be blended in.  Where I’d dressed to stand out, be anachronistic, they'd actually dress just like any person of the time they were visiting would. 

Now think about the world a time-traveller would leave from, and what kind of state it might be in.  Will there still be polar bears?  No?  Oh, well then, if you want to see one, you'll have to go into the past to find it.  Want to see a dodo?  The past's the place to look.  Interested in old buildings instead, want to see York Minster before it burned?  Or San Francisco before any of the fires?  Well, you know where to go for that, right?  Seems to me that once people discover how to travel through time, other people will try and profit from it.  Businesses might well start up, selling trips through time to tomorrow's tourists.

But here's the thing: criminals go on holiday too.  Not just the thieves, but murderers, and arsonists, or both.  And some people never commit a crime in their life, until they leave home and its rules behind, and travel.  It might start off by someone buying a trip to tour the great houses of Europe before they burned, and maybe they stick around for the main event.  Maybe they discover they feel something raw and exciting, when the smoke billows up, and the flames change its colour.   Suddenly watching isn't enough anymore, they need to get more involved.

Oh, your face.  I know what you're thinking, behind it.  But screw you; you came for the interview and this is part of it.  Think about the history of criminal investigation for a moment.

Time was, a man could kill someone unseen and, provided they got out of the area quickly enough, he might never be suspected. Then those little greasy marks his fingers put on the knife turned out to be enough to hang him.  Skip forward some years, and gloves stop being enough.  DNA is discovered, and a desperate police force thought to ask the scientists if maybe they could help, and another dimension of evidence was bolted onto the world.

But that's history.  What about in the future?  What new thing might arrive to make a life of crime even harder?  What about time-travel-travel?  It wouldn't be discovered for that purpose, any more than DNA was, but think how effective it would be.  No sooner does a serial-killer's first victim turn up, than some science-cop whips back in time to watch the victim until they catch the killer in the act.  Never again would any crime go without a witness.

A truly gifted criminal turns the tools meant to stop them to their advantage.  With a bit of research, they can find out whose deaths were ruled natural causes, or which killers were never caught.  Think of Jack the Ripper.  But there's a problem with that.  How do you kill someone in the past, without risking your own existence?  Even if you trace your family tree, who's to say that all of the people listed actually fathered the children they're credited with?  People have been known to stray, after all.  A killer would have to be brave, stupid, or both.

Of course, lots of theories say that the past can't be changed, but would you take the chance?  I know I wouldn't.  Yeah, you didn't come here for philosophy or physics, but I'm nearly done.  Bear with me a little longer.

What kind of crimes might be safe to commit in the past? Larceny, probably, and blackmail.  Arson?  A simple fire, with no casualties, won't wipe anyone from existence.  And the agency selling the tours to olden times has compiled most of the research you’d need to do into a little electronic pamphlet.  This building burned on this day; that one on that day.  Easy.

Arson is a compulsion though, and people get better at it.  Someone in the future who gets away with torching buildings in the past will want to do more.  And want more of a thrill from their fires.  Which might mean they stop looking for fires that were ruled accidental, and start looking for known arson jobs that were never solved.   Something they can enjoy knowing they got away with, provided it poses no risk to their own existence.

If they carry on, they can become even more sophisticated, and start looking for convicted arsonists.  All of the information about their crimes might be recorded somewhere: enough to copy their methods and frame them for one last fire.  That’s how I’d do it: nobody investigates a crime that has already been solved.

So our killer does their homework.  Perhaps they might even find some notes, made by a would-be author of an interview with a murderer.  The notes describe a building that burned down long ago, and the people that died when it did.  That's an exciting thought: fire, and death, and the location of the materials to make it happen.  And someone to take the fall.  How could they resist?

Oh, but we already worked through that one.  Too much danger to the time-stream if you kill anyone in the past, right?  They've got an itch, and they really can't scratch it.  It burns them inside: a fire that brings no pleasure.  They know of the perfect crime if only they can face the risk: what, oh what, to do? 

But do you remember the oddest thing about the Tunton?  All those bodies, and not a one of them were identified.  Not a one plausibly reported missing to the police.  How could that be?  I solved that in under two days.  And perhaps I did kill those people, after all, by showing someone how to get away with murder.  Then again, perhaps they worked it out for themselves, and my words had nothing to do with it.   It really doesn't matter: the outcome is the same.

Have you got the answer?  It's really quite obvious.  The victims all came from the future as well.   No-one can match bodies to a list that hasn't been written yet.  Make a brochure, one that doesn't mention the bodies, and sell the trip to people who won’t be missed.  Our killer has all the time they need to find them, after all: they can select two people two years apart, and take them to the same point in the past to kill.  15 people could be sourced over one year, or one hundred, and all that while the plan keeps our killer warm inside, until they can wait no longer.  

Make the evening sound magnificent.  Is it a crime to eat animals in the future?  Good.  There'll be people who want to try it, so sell them on roasted pig in the past.  Anything taboo can be found in the past, but there'll be laws about travelling in time, just as there's laws about driving cars now.  And that's perfect.  The more illegal, or at least immoral, the trip is, the better.  Make the victims cover their own tracks, wanting to avoid being shamed by their peers.

Deliver on your promises, deliver the victims everything they asked for, everything they can’t get in their own time.  Make it magical, make it romantic.  Right up until you slip a wedge under the door and spark the match.  When you have fulfilled your own fantasy, and the flames has been doused, leave the smoking past behind, and return to a world that knows nothing of your sin.  And, perhaps, start all over again.

I thought about all of this, before I changed my plea to guilty.  I realised that, somehow, I was going to deliver fifteen people to their killer, and that’s guilt enough for me. 

But that's also why I give these interviews.  Just as my theory says a killer will find one of them, my hope is that some future copper will too.  And look into things, just a little bit.  Maybe they’ll link some missing-persons cases together, and check some DNA against old and musty records.

The cop I'm imagining might just decide its worth visiting the places I set on fire, around the time I did, to see if anyone looks familiar.  I think that, besides my own, a face will stand out in the crowd for them, just like it did for me when I saw it on the CCTV, and recognised it from a candle-lit party.  And then perhaps, they'll take one last trip to a warm summer night, and stand, still and silent in the darkness while screams drown out the music.  And when another shadow turns to leave, they’ll follow.

I am an arsonist, as I said, and my actions have led others to their deaths, but alongside my guilt I keep a hope.  I hope that one day, instead of being the spark who inspired a murderer, I’ll be the man who led detectives to the skinny, mole-faced bitch.

Yeah, I know.  You'll never publish any of that, just like I said.  And I’ll keep my word, let you read my journals in the library.

But do me a favour, why don't you?

Leave your notes handy.