fitted after all. It’s… the time’s not right.’
He jerked away from her, ‘I didn’t like being the focus of your husband’s dislike anyway. Or your daughter’s.’
‘Oh, Rhys, it’s not that, it’s-’
‘I’m not stupid.’
She watched his face, then said, as firmly as she could, ‘I’m very sorry.’
He looked away and stood there, stiff and chafing. ‘It happens.’
‘You won’t be out of pocket?’
‘It’s summer. People always want aircon.’
‘That’s good.’
His shapely fingers took a small calibrated instrument from the box. ‘I’ll be finished here this morning. Just have to mount a few of these thermostats and I’m done.’
They gazed at the courthouse. ‘I’ll miss seeing you around the place,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well…,’ he said.
‘Look, I feel terrible.’ She fished in her wallet. ‘Here’s a hundred dollars. You spent hours measuring up the house, doing costings, all for nothing. Call it a kill fee.’
He stared at the money. She knew at once that she’d been graceless, and wanted the ground to swallow her up.
Challis nodded at Ellen Destry and waited for her to sit down. He’d called an emergency briefing, and the incident room was crowded with his CIB officers and all available uniformed sergeants and senior constables.
He stood. ‘We’re not downgrading the abduction inquiry, but, until further evidence or leads come in, we can’t do much more than follow through on what we already have. Meanwhile, our fire in Quarterhorse Lane. As you know, it’s now officially a murder investigation.’
He pointed to a photograph pinned to the wall; the body was revealed as a glistening smudge. ‘The victim was one Clara Macris. It appears that she was bashed to death before the fire started. As for the fire, it was intentional but constructed to appear accidental, by someone who knew what he was doing. Was he trying to conceal the fact that it was a murder? Was he getting a kick out of lighting the fire? In any event, we’ll have to follow up the suggestion in today’s Progress that we have a firebug on our hands.’
Challis saw amused and knowing grins. They know about me and Tessa Kane, he thought. He went on:
‘I want you to look again at any fire we’ve had recently. That rash of mailboxes, for example; that Pajero, the attempted torching of that house over near the racecourse. Is our firebug also a burglar? Is he escalating? Are there any nutters fighting fires in the local CFA units? Check with the Arson Squad. Have any known pyromaniacs settled in the district? Sergeant Destry will brief you further on who will do what.
‘Now, the dead woman. Clara Macris. That’s about all we know about her. Her neighbours say she kept to herself. We’ve still to talk to shopkeepers, bank tellers, anyone else who may have come into contact with her. Apparently she had a New Zealand accent, but we don’t know how long she’d been in this country. It may have been years. New Zealand police have been contacted to see whether or not she had a record. We do know she moved into the area about eighteen months ago. Was she renting, or did she buy? I want someone to check that out. Did she go to the pub regularly? Play sport? Travel? Check the local travel agents. Someone else can look at her mail as it comes in.
‘Meanwhile, her car is missing. See if it’s been reported stolen, found abandoned, impounded or taken somewhere to be repaired.
‘See if she ever took taxis anywhere.
‘All of this is necessary because we don’t know who she is, and the fire destroyed any personal papers that might have told us.
‘Now, let’s keep an open mind on this. Maybe our firebug isn’t responsible. Someone else, someone she knew, was let in-or broke in, it’s impossible to tell, given that the house was destroyed-and killed her. Why did he kill her? — assuming it was a man, and I don’t want you necessarily making that assumption. Was he a burglar, caught in the act? In which case, this incident relates closely to our latest aggravated burglary-except that Clara Macris clearly wasn’t wealthy and this one happened at night.
‘Or was it someone she knew, friend, relative or lover, and they had a disagreement over something? We badly need to know something about her personal life. Van, you were investigating officer when her mailbox was burnt. Can you tell us anything?’
The question, the way it was posed, the switch from the general to the particular, seemed to silence the room and draw everyone’s attention on to Kees van Alphen. His lean, pale face coloured. He opened and closed his mouth, then coughed, then recovered completely and said, ‘She was pretty close-lipped, Inspector.’
‘You didn’t meet anyone else there? She didn’t talk about herself?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Your officers have been questioning the neighbours. Have they turned up anything?’
‘Nothing. One neighbour, a Stella Riggs, is still away, returning tomorrow.’
‘We’ll need to speak to her. We need to cover a lot of ground very quickly, so I want you to go out in pairs, one uniform, one CIB, asking questions wherever Clara Macris might have gone.
‘Now, let’s brainstorm a little. Let’s say the killer wasn’t a family member or an intimate, and wasn’t our firebug. We have a house on a quiet back road. Who and what, in terms of people and vehicles, might we expect to see on it? Scobie, do the honours.’
Hands went up, and Scobie Sutton, his eyes wide and self-conscious, made a list on the whiteboard: neighbours, mailman, newspaper delivery, garbage truck, recycle truck, LPG gas truck, meter reader, council grader, power company linesman, taxi, courier, surveyors, council weed-control and fire-control inspectors, rates assessor, take-away food delivery.
Challis said, ‘I live on a similar road. I’ve seen sewage carters, blackberry sprayers, water carriers, repairmen of all kinds. Men delivering firewood-though not in this weather. A man comes with a portable machine to shear my neighbour’s half-dozen sheep. Another slashes grass with his tractor. Young people work in the vineyards. Maybe we’re looking at a contract gardener. Anything else?’
‘Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
Sutton wrote it down on the board. The men and women in the room sank a little deeper into their chairs.
In the canteen John Tankard said, ‘You little ripper.’
He was across the table from her, stretched back in his chair, the newspaper open and concealing his head and trunk, which suited Pam just fine. There was a headline about a firebug, which apparently was causing senior officers in CIB to get very pissed off. She sipped her tea, thought of Ginger.
But the newspaper shook. ‘Listen to this, Murph. “According to police reports, Superintendent Mark McQuarrie of Peninsula District rang the arresting officers on behalf of the Bastian family and charges against Julian Bastian and his girlfriend were withdrawn on the authority of another officer, Senior Sergeant Vincent Kellock.”‘
‘We know that,’ Pam said.
‘But listen to this. “Sources also report that the charges against Mr Bastian had been dropped after his family agreed to drop charges of wrongful arrest and harassment against police.”‘
Pam leaned forward. ‘They did a deal? The bastards.’
Tankard was still behind the paper. ‘Yep.’
‘I thought it was simply a case of, he’s got rich and powerful mates so you can’t touch him.’
‘Nup.’
They fell silent. Pam stared across the table at the newspaper. The Progress seemed to like causes of one kind or another. According to canteen gossip, the editor was having it off with Challis.
Tankard cleared his throat. ‘“Arresting police are reportedly furious.”‘
‘It says that?’
‘Yep.’
