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 wasn’t 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. ‘I’ve 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 didn’t survive this,’ Challis said.
Van Alphen was there when they found her body-or 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 wasn’t smoke inhalation. If it had been smoke inhalation he might have touched her, kissed her, even, for she’d have been recognisable, but he wasn’t saying goodbye to this fire-wracked, shrivelled twist of charred meat.
Nineteen
Daybreak, Wednesday, 3 January. Challis hadn’t been long at the burnt house before the fire inspector arrived and talked him through it.
‘It’s 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 it’s the stove?’
‘Look.’
Challis looked. The stove top was as black and twisted as anything else in the ruin.
‘See that? That’s the remains of a saucepan, a chip fryer. That’s the seat of your fire.’
Challis went away wondering why the victim had been cooking on such a hot night, and why she’d 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.
That’s 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, who’d been around to the house three times now, measuring and planning, and resentful because she earned more than he did.
She’d said, as she’d headed out to her car after breakfast, ‘I’ll be late tonight. I’ll 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 couldn’t 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. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He looked up. ‘What’s what supposed to mean?’
‘You said “whatever”. What do you mean by that?’
He shrugged, went back to his breakfast. ‘Doesn’t mean anything. You’ll be late tonight, you’ll get yourself something to eat, me and Larrayne will have to fare for ourselves again, so what’s 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.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You go around this house like you’re on heat, like you’re a teenager whose tits have been squeezed for the first time.’
‘Well, if someone’s squeezing them, it sure as hell isn’t you,’ she’d said, and she’d 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 hadn’t developed into anything. Rhys himself had seemed-not 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. ‘He’s a creep, mum, and a sleazebag.’
‘Hal, I’m cutting at eleven,’ the pathologist said.
‘Beautifully put, Freya.’
‘You know me.’
‘Eleven o’clock. I’ll be there.’
The region’s 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
