Mystery fires kill three at Christmas

Police were last night investigating the cause of three separate fires in which two people and a four-year-old boy died.

Michael Gell, 4, from Helensburgh, north of Glasgow, died during a blaze at his grandmother's house. In Wolverhampton, police were last night questioning a man and a woman after a fire killed Michelle Bone-Knell, 34, at her family's home. Her partner, Graham Perrins, 33, and their two children, Chantel, 3, and Damien, 18 months, escaped and were last night being treated in hospital.

Paul Masters, a patient at a head-injury rehabilitation unit in Haydock, Merseyside, was found dead following a fire at the unit. Lee George Powell, 26, a fellow patient, has been charged with murder.