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 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 this-this one’s, 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 she’s been beaten up.’
The pathologist smiled tolerantly. ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? But don’t jump to conclusions. Haemorrhaging and bone fractures are one result of extreme heat.’
Challis stepped forward, still holding the Vicks under his nose. ‘So you’re saying she simply burnt to death.’
‘Preliminary finding only, Hal. I haven’t 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 hadn’t thought she’d 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 beautiful-if streaked with soot. A nice neat backside, nice legs and a tapering back, but God, the smell-stale sweat, smoke and cum and her own contribution. She’d had to scrub herself in the shower. He’d be gone when she got back tonight. She’d 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.
Pam Murphy found the Tank in the canteen. ‘I’ve just seen van Alphen. He wants us to doorknock Quarterhorse Lane. Seems no-one knows anything about the woman who got burnt last night.’
Tankard forked rice into his mouth and chewed consideringly. ‘But Van knows her.’
‘Does he?’
‘Yeah. He went round there a few times. Her mailbox got burnt. He knows her.’
‘There’s knowing and there’s knowing.’
‘Oh, very deep, Murph. You must come from a family of brains or something.’
‘Look, the fact that van Alphen saw her when her mailbox got burnt doesn’t mean he knows where she came from or who her family is. That’s what we have to find out.’
Tankard scraped up the dregs from his plate. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
Pam drove. Beside her, Tankard was racked with yawns.
‘I was directing traffic last night. Didn’t even go home. Showered and changed at the station. God I’m buggered.’
And I’m not, Pam thought. I worked through the night too, but that doesn’t count. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Was it accidental?’