Challis - 01 - Dragon Man (25 page)

She paused to stare at him. Like
McQuarrie? Are you siding with him now?

Christ no, he said. I think the
charges should be reinstated against the little prick.

She laughed. Can I quote you?

First his mobile rang, then hers.

A fire.

* * * *

Jolic
swooned to see the flames. His skin tingled. He was breathless. A strange
pleasurable electric heat started in his groin and spread upwards to his
throat. He wanted badly to rut. Holding the hose on the CFA firetruck, Jolic
was a vengeful rutting king.

* * * *

John
Tankard was on Myers Road, his patrol car parked crosswise, emergency lights
flashing in the darkness. There was not much normal traffic at this time of
night, but an increase in the ghouls and gawkers, attracted by the sirens, the
Emergency Services helicopter, the evacuation warning for householders south of
Myers Road. A Triumph came barrelling toward him. He waved his torch and held
his gloved hand high to stop it, indicating Quarterhorse Lane, the detour that
would take all traffic away from the fire. But it was bloody Challis. He had
Tessa Kane with him.

Sorry, Inspector. Go on through.

Thanks, constable.

The editor leaned across Challis. How
bad is it, John?

One house destroyedthats where it
started. It spread quickly, jumped the road into the nature reserve. He looked
up, into the red-glow sky. This wind doesnt help.

Any casualties?

Some horses had to be moved.

Whose house got destroyed?

Tankard looked to Challis for
guidance. Challis said, Its all right. She has to know sometime, and so do I.

We dont know who lives there, sir.
A woman by herself, according to the neighbours.

Is she all right?

No sign of her, sir.

The wind seemed to shift then, and
shift again. It was hot on their faces and heavy with smoke. Ash alighted on
the back of Tankards glove. He brushed it away, smearing the white leather.
Funny, he could
hear
the dangerthe wind, the flames?but he couldnt
see anything but a glow in the distance.

Sir, I dont know how dangerous it
is in there. Were directing traffic along the lane here. Thats where the fire
started, but its safe there now.

Challis pulled the automatic stick
into Drive. We need to go in, John.

Tankard thought: Dont call me John,
you prick.

* * * *

A
part of Ellen Destry felt betrayed by the sense of exhilaration and
competence-edged-with-risk that the fire seemed to engender in everyone. They
were all equals, men and women, cops and civilians. They worked well together.
They faced the flames and beat them back. They communicated efficiently. There
were no shirkers. The lights, the trucks, the dirty men and women in their
yellow emergency gear, the roaring hot wind, the red coals and leaping flames.
Once or twice gum trees exploded above their heads. She found herself helping
Pam Murphy to pass out cups of tea, bind a couple of burnt hands, move vehicles
and stock away from the path of the fire, fetch an old womans cat. A part of
her could understand the sentimentality of newspaper accounts of community
disasters, when firefighters, policemen, ambulance workers and ordinary
civilians pulled together.

But another side of her recognised
that it was also essentially a blokey bonding exercise. Men embraced men and
the women were honorary mates.

Then she learned that she had
detective work to do.

* * * *

Challis
left Tessa Kane at the community refuge, where one of her photographers and two
of her journos were already interviewing people, then drove carefully along
Quarterhorse Lane to the house where the fire had started. The air was smoky
and hot. Smouldering fence posts marked a route between an untouched orchard on
one side of the road and ashy black earth on the other. He passed beneath a
burning tree. The odd thing was, as he was turning into the driveway of the
destroyed house, he saw signs of an earlier fire: a scorched pine tree. He
looked closer. A small, newish, metal mailbox on a length of iron pipe.

He drove in. Ellen Destry was
already there, staring at what had once been a weatherboard farmhouse and was
now a flattened patch of charred wood and twisted, blackened roofing iron. A
chimney stood forlornly at one end of the ruin. It was apparent to Challis that
the fire had started at the house. The wind had then carried sparks to the
grassy hill beyond it, and a firefront had developed, sweeping south toward the
roadside gums on Myers Road, leaping it and taking hold in the nature reserve.
Well, there wasnt much nature there any more, but the fire had been contained
before it reached the dozen or so houses south of the reserve.

Suddenly Ellen was doubled over,
coughing and spitting. You okay?

She wiped the back of her hand
across her mouth. Ive been breathing thick smoke for the past two hours.

A length of roof crashed behind
them. Kees van Alphen, kicking and tugging.

Leave it, Van. Wait for the fire
inspector.

A woman lived here, sir.

If she was home, she didnt survive
this, Challis said.

* * * *

Van
Alphen was there when they found her bodyor what remained of it. The ruin
bewildered him. All of his senses were turned around. Only the blackened
refrigerator and the stainless steel kitchen sink told him exactly where her
body lay in relation to the rest of the house.

And the flames had got her. It wasnt
smoke inhalation. If it had been smoke inhalation he might have touched her,
kissed her, even, for shed have been recognisable, but he wasnt saying
goodbye to this fire-wracked, shrivelled twist of charred meat.

* * * *

Nineteen

aybreak,
Wednesday, 3 January. Challis hadnt been long at the burnt house before the
fire inspector arrived and talked him through it.

Its my belief the seat of the fire
is here, at the kitchen stove. A hot, dry night, hot northerly wind outside,
plenty of natural accelerants like cooking oil, cardboard food packets, wooden
wall cabinets. Then weatherboard external walls, wooden roofing beams.

He pointed. See that? Open window,
creating a draught.

Challis said, How do you know its
the stove?

Look.

Challis looked. The stove top was as
black and twisted as anything else in the ruin.

See that? Thats the remains of a
saucepan, a chip fryer. Thats the seat of your fire.

Challis went away wondering why the
victim had been cooking on such a hot night, and why shed been cooking so late
at night.

* * * *

Ellen
Destry made it a point always to switch off when she was at work. Switch off
the things that had happened earlier, at home, in the bedroom or around the
kitchen table.

She rang the post office. The dead
woman was called Clara Macris. Originally from New Zealand, the postmaster
thought, judging by the accent.

Thats as far as Ellen got. She
could feel the badness creeping up on her: the abductions, the woman burning to
death. She looked out of the incident room window and there was Rhys Hartnett,
effortlessly lifting and measuring, whistling even, as he worked, while at home
she had a husband who was getting fat because he drank and sat in a Traffic
Division car all day, jealous because he sensed that she felt something for
Rhys, whod been around to the house three times now, measuring and planning,
and resentful because she earned more than he did.

Shed said, as shed headed out to
her car after breakfast, Ill be late tonight. Ill get myself something to
eat.

The kitchen door opened on to the
carport. In the early days, Alan would have walked her to it and kissed her
goodbye. Now he couldnt even be bothered to look up at her. Whatever.

Morning light streamed into the
kitchen, giving the room a falsely homely look. Larrayne was still in bed. Alan
was reading the
Herald Sun
and forking eggs and bacon into his mouth.
His moustache glistened. After each mouthful he patted it dry. Ellen stood in
the doorway, watching for a moment, jingling her keys. Whats that supposed to
mean?

He looked up. Whats what supposed
to mean?

You said whatever. What do you
mean by that?

He shrugged, went back to his
breakfast. Doesnt mean anything. Youll be late tonight, youll get yourself something
to eat, me and Larrayne will have to fare for ourselves again, so whats new?
The story of this marriage.

She almost went back to the chair
opposite his. The story of every police marriage. We knew that when we
started. Mature adults know how to work around that.

He belched, a deliberate liquid
sound of contempt. Mature? What a joke.

Whats that supposed to mean?

You go around this house like youre
on heat, like youre a teenager whose tits have been squeezed for the first
time.

Well, if someones squeezing them,
it sure as hell isnt you, shed said, and shed slammed out of the house.

Now she picked up the phone. A long
shot, but she was calling the New Zealand
police. It would be different
if Alan had something concrete to be jealous about, but her lunch with Rhys
Hartnett hadnt developed into anything. Rhys himself had seemednot evasive,
exactly, but conscious of the proprieties of getting involved with a married
woman, especially one who was a cop. The dial tone went on and on. As for
Larrayne, her judgment of Rhys was brief and to the point. Hes a creep, mum,
and a sleazebag.

* * * *

Hal,
Im cutting at eleven, the pathologist said.

Beautifully put, Freya.

You know me.

Eleven oclock. Ill be there.

The regions autopsies were carried
out in a small room attached to Peninsula General Hospital in Mornington. When
Challis arrived, Freya Berg had a student with her in the autopsy room, a young
woman. Challis stood back, a handkerchief smeared with Vicks under his nose,
and observed.

White tiles, pipes, hoses, a
constant trickle of water. The pathologist and her assistant wore green rubber
aprons and overshoes, and goggles waiting around their necks to protect their
eyes against the bone chips and blood thrown up by the electric saw. The table
had a perforated, channelled stainless-steel top, pipes at each corner running
down to drains in the industrial-grade linoleum floor. A hose dribbled water as
Freya Berg cut into the body. Above her, dazzle-free lamps. Extractor fans
hummed in the ceiling, ready to take away the stupefying odour of the stomach
contents and internal organs.

Freya said:

Most fire victims die of smoke
inhalation. Their bodies will be intact and recognisable, although some may reveal
surface burns, particularly to the hands and face. In these instances the
evidence is all there in the lungs. If there is little smoke residue in the
lungs, then look for another obvious cause, such as failure of the heart. The
most surprising subjects may succumb to heart failure under extreme stress. But
thisthis ones, shall we say, been cooked.

Together Freya and her assistant
began to turn the body on the cutting table. Two patches of oily white colour
in the blackness of the upper arm and the hip stopped them.

The assistant photographed the black
flank of the body, and then Freya teased the fabric away with tweezers. Ah.
Cotton, I believe. A nightdress? T-shirt? She was lying on her side when the
flames finally reached her.

They completed turning the body
over. Freya began to cut.

The student assistant grew agitated.
Epidural haemorrhage, Dr Berg, she said. Bone fractures. Like shes been
beaten up.

The pathologist smiled tolerantly. Looks
like it, doesnt it? But dont jump to conclusions. Haemorrhaging and bone
fractures are one result of extreme heat.

Challis stepped forward, still
holding the Vicks under his nose. So youre saying she simply burnt to death.

Preliminary finding only, Hal. I
havent finished yet.

I have, Challis said, and he
pushed through the door to where the air was breathable.

* * * *

Boyd
had come to her in the early hours of the morning, smelling of soot and sweat
and smoke, with a kind of snarling hunger for her body. We fucked like rabbits.
It was a phrase from twenty years ago, when she was a student, and each new
affair started like that, hot and greedy, so you barely paused for breath. She
hadnt thought shed ever find that level of intensity again.

But now it was lunchtime and she had
clients to see. Boyd lay sprawled on his stomach. He looked beautifulif
streaked with soot. A nice neat backside, nice legs and a tapering back, but
God, the smellstale sweat, smoke and cum and her own contribution. Shed had
to scrub herself in the shower. Hed be gone when she got back tonight. Shed
have to wash the sheets and pillowcases and air the house. She had a beautiful
house, and the clash between it and what Boyd Jolic represented never failed to
puzzle and excite her.