In a small town, it's not too difficult to track someone down. A quick search of the computer files, and we'd found him. His name is Bang Cheol Yong aka Mir, a young lad of twenty-two with a few minor offences behind him. The size twelve feet, the muddy trainers with soles that matched the footprints in the mud, and the white mark around his finger where his ring had once been, pretty much clinched it, before we even started on comparing his fingerprints to those left on the petrol can. With evidence like that, he could hardly deny it all, could he?

"Why did you do it, Mir?" I asked him when we'd got him settled in the interview room with the tape recorder going. "Got some kind of grudge against Mr Lee, have you?"

He slouched in the hard, wooden chair we don't like to mak the room too comfortable and fiddled with his ringless fingers, saying nothing.

"Look, we'll be charging you with arson, Mir. Almost certainly a jail sentence. Are you sure there's nothing you want to say before we get that far?"

He just went on staring at me, sullen and silent. I left him with a constable and a lukewarm cup of tea and went to look through his things. Something bothered me. These seemed this kid and the Lees. Why did he do it? What was in it for him? Evidence is one thing, but every crime needs a motive too.

I sifted through the bits and pieces he'd had in his pockets when they brought him in. It was when I came to the bank card that something clicked. Money! It could only have been fror money. Bang Cheol Yong had no obvious link to the factory or reason to destroy it, so someone must have paid him. Someone who wanted the factory to burn but wasn't willing or able to do it themselves. I went in to see the Chief. We had to look at this lad's bank account and, knowing the Chief's personal interest in the case, I don't think it would b too big a problem. I just hoped the whole deal hadn't been conducted in cash or we'd have real trouble proving anything at all.