Today's anniversary of the Beslan siege has seen local anger focus on Moscow, writes Chris Stephen.
The photograph looks innocuous enough: three green bazooka-style weapons lie discarded on a rooftop overlooking the ruined Beslan High School where, this time last year, hundreds perished in an inferno.
But for the mothers of the dead, this picture is dynamite - evidence that the fire which engulfed this school in southern Russia may have been started by the security forces, not the terrorists.
Today's anniversary of the start of the three-day siege is providing a focus for the anger felt by residents here about Moscow's failure to answer key questions.
About the only thing officials and Beslan relatives can agree on is that the siege began on September 1st last year when Chechen rebels attacked the school just as it celebrated the start of the new academic year.
The rebels herded 1,200 children, teachers and parents into the school gym, intending to use them as a bargaining chip to persuade Moscow to free Chechen prisoners. To guard against attack, bombs were rigged over the children's heads and on the third day of the siege one of these bombs went off.
The blast was followed by a confused gun battle and the gym roof caught fire and collapsed on top of trapped hostages, leaving 330 dead, including 186 children.
Shortly after the killings, a commission of inquiry was set up, but it has failed to report, and relatives of the dead say it has dodged vital questions.
Question one is how did the terrorists get to the school in the first place?
There were at last 30, they were heavily armed and were able to drive to Beslan, North Ossetia, from neighbouring Ingushetia. Yet all roads between the two have been guarded by the army since the two provinces fought each other in 1992.
The Beslan Mothers' Committee, focus for local anger, believes one road in the north was left unguarded, with police taking bribes from petrol smugglers.
Secondly, they want to know why nobody took charge of the security forces once the siege began. Local officials, it seemed, simply did not want the responsibility, and neither did the Kremlin. The result was that there was little co-ordination between police, army, special forces and FSB troops.
When the explosions ripped through the building the special forces were not ready.
Some soldiers dashed into the flames without flak jackets, their bravery saving scores of children but also seeing 10 of them killed, at least one by friendly fire. There were not enough ambulances, and badly wounded children were instead crammed into commandeered cars.
And then there are those bazookas. The weapon in question is the Shmel, which fires a shoulder-launched missile equipped with a fuel-air warhead.
On impact this warhead discharges petrol-like liquid which ignites, forming a powerful fireball.
Residents want to know if these weapons were fired at rebel snipers on the gym roof, a tactic that would explain how the fire moved so fast.
For months investigators said no such weapons were deployed. Then residents produced the three launch tubes. In July deputy prosecutor general Nikolai Shepel admitted the bazookas had been used.
Then in August, Alexander Torshin, head of the investigation commission, said they were not used on the roof of the gym. The mothers are not convinced. "The government said no launchers were used, so what are these?" said Mothers' Committee member Zalina Guburov. "The commission is not searching for the truth."
She is furious that federal forces would deploy the Shmel in the first place: "How can you use such weapons if there are children in the school? I cannot trust this kind of government."
More mistrust has come from the unexplained decision to clear the rubble and vital evidence from the gym the day after the fire, and before forensic investigators had a chance to examine the scene.
Several truck-loads of rubble were found, along with skin and human hair and clothing, dumped in a hole outside Beslan last February.
Five policemen have been charged with dereliction of duty, but Beslan residents say the blame goes much higher.
"A soldier is a soldier, he follows the orders," says local journalist Murat Kabaev, who has spent the past year investigating the case.
"The guilty guy is the one who gives the order."
Last week 15 Beslan mothers staged an all-night occupation of the courthouse where the only surviving terrorist, Nurpashi Kulayev, is being prosecuted.
"Those in power do not want to help us," said Mothers' Committee head Susanna Dudieva. "People need to be held accountable."
A final irony is that the mothers have grown sympathetic to Kulayev, who claims he was a peripheral figure in the enterprise and shot nobody. They hope he can provide the answers they need.
Moscow has a patchy record regarding sieges. Three years ago security forces stormed Moscow's Dubrovka theatre when Chechens held the audience captive. The terrorists were killed, but the gas pumped into the theatre to immobilise them also killed 120 hostages.
Part of Beslan's anger is down to the isolation these people feel from Moscow. Until the Beslan horror, North Ossetia had been an island of calm in a war that, having started in Chechnya, now rages across the Caucuses.
And part of the anger here is the fear that, if the authorities can be so incompetent, such disasters can happen again.