Cam turned his back on Vince, reached for his phone and called SOCO. They said they’d be there in about two hours.
Behind him, there was a hiss of escaping air.
2
Cam shaded his eyes to follow the convoy of cars making its way along the gentle gradient of the dirt road back to the school. It was a clear straight view, unhindered by hills or trees of any substance. Apparently the science teacher, Ruth Tilly, had spotted the smoke from yesterday’s fire when she was working in the science lab.
Hands on hips, Cam regarded the distant school buildings. Glenroyd Ladies’ College had been built nearly one hundred years ago to cater for the needs of enlightened farming families who wished their daughters to have the same advantages as their sons. Only the state’s wealthy could afford to give their daughters such an education, but despite few early enrolments, the school’s reputation in excellence grew and it was soon attracting pupils from interstate and overseas.
It was twenty-five years since Cam had last stood in the grounds of his wife’s old school. The countryside hadn’t changed much. The winter creek beyond the burned patch was maybe wider and rockier than he remembered, and the hill beyond, once sparse of decent trees, was now covered in healthy regrowth.
And the prickling parrot bush was as thick as ever.
For a moment he could see Elizabeth and himself on horseback, stuck smack in the middle of it. She hadn’t known whether to laugh or scream at their predicament and he’d had to dismount to lead her protesting pony into the clearing. She’d slid her feet from the stirrups and jumped to the ground, turning her back on him to pick the holly-shaped leaves from her saddle blanket. He’d reached to circle her in his arms from behind, nuzzling the back of her neck so she would turn for that first kiss.
They’d been standing at the future site of yesterday’s fire.
“What now, Sarge?”
Her voice made him start; he shut the door on his memories.
“Sorry, am I interrupting?” Leanne said.
“No, I was just thinking.”
He turned to the young constable. She had to be at least twenty-one but her round face made her look no older than his fifteen-year-old, Ruby. Her thin hair had fallen from her cap and the wind was lashing it against her cheeks, red and shiny as store-bought apples.
“I want to have another look at the body,” he said.
“Oh jeez, Sarge.”
“I’m sure you’ve seen worse things on the road.”
“MVAs don’t smell like Mum’s Sunday roast, but.” She grimaced, bringing her hand to her mouth.
Cam stepped over the tape. “Stay in my footprints and don’t touch anything.”
With their eyes on the blackened ground, they walked towards the body. The scorched earth was snaked with tyre tracks and stamped with the print of heavy work boots. He hoped SOCO would attempt plaster casting, despite the surface ash. Cam pointed out the vague indentations of their own police boots to Leanne and compared them to the heavier prints of the firemen.
The fallen log lay at an angle across the path, the body next to it, so well camouflaged he could see how it could have been mistaken for an extra branch. Blackened bottles and broken glass gleamed on the ground near their feet.
Cam hitched his uniform pants at the knee and squatted down, beckoning Leanne to his level.
“OK, Leanne, what can you tell me about this body?” The girl made a gagging sound and turned her head away.
“Turn back and look at it carefully. Don’t let yourself think this was once human. Hell, we don’t even know who it is yet. Look at it as evidence, that’s all. Build up a picture in your mind and tell me what you see. It’s speaking to you, Leanne – what’s it saying?”
Won over by the patience of his tone, Leanne sniffed and straightened up. After scanning the surrounding bush for a moment she lowered her gaze to a blackened bottle, still unable to focus on the charred body.
Into her hand she said, “He was drinking and fell asleep. The bush caught fire.”
Here we go, Cam thought, manipulating the evidence to fit her theory. “Is that the evidence talking or is that Vince, Leanne?”
She said nothing for a moment as she tried to collect her thoughts. Then, with a sudden squeal she sprang back and broke into a vigorous jig, smacking at the bottoms of her pants as if beating out flames.
“Christ, Sarge, there’s ants everywhere. Shit...”
Cam brushed some ants off his own legs then pointed to a pile of fine stones about two metres from the body. There were so many ants on it the rocks themselves seemed alive.
“I’ve never known someone so drunk they would take a kip next to an ant heap – what do you reckon?”
She squatted down again, forcing herself to look at the body with some of the detachment Cam had encouraged. Finally she said, “Cecelia Bowman was right when she said the body was the same colour as the burned log. And it’s a bloke, what do you reckon, Sarge?”
Cam nodded; judging by the size, the body was most probably a man’s. He pointed to the bent arms.
“Looks like he’s about to go a round in the ring with Mike Tyson. Heat caused the muscles in the arms to contract, making it look like he’s boxing. The posh word for this is pugilist. Remember that. It’s always important to use the correct terms if you can, it impresses the jury.”
Cam leaned towards the head. Although the mouth was clamped shut, the lips were peeled back like the skin of a baked apple, revealing two missing front teeth. “ID through dental records shouldn’t be too hard with this one,” he said.
The fire would not have been long or intense enough to destroy the internal organs, and though badly charred, Cam was sure the autopsy would confirm his feeling that the body was burned post-mortem.
He made a circular motion with a finger over the victim’s chest.
“See that hard yellow patch there? That means the victim was probably dead when he was burned. If he were burned alive, given the lack of heat intensity, the skin would probably be blistered and still seeping clear cellular fluid. Hopefully the fire won’t have destroyed the internal organs so we should learn more from the post-mortem.”
“Maybe he died of natural causes first?”
Good. She was finally beginning to think.
“It’s a possibility. Could have OD’d on booze and pills first or had a heart attack. We have to explore every option.” He took in the anthill again, saying almost to himself, “Or maybe he was murdered.”
Leanne looked up in surprise.
“We’ll know more when the pathologist gets here. Until we know otherwise, I’m treating this as a suspicious death.” He paused and stared hard at the body for a moment. “One thing I do know, though: this body has been moved.”
His knees cracked as he rose to his feet and walked to the other side of the body. He reached for his reading glasses and resumed his examination.
“The victim’s lying on his back now, but have a look along his left side.” He pointed.“See there? The skin’s more pink than black.”
“Hey, yeah,” exclaimed Leanne. “It’s got small pieces of twigs and grass on it, too.” She seemed pleased with her observation and gave him a tentative smile.
“The fire never had the chance to get roaring hot before it was put out. When the body’s removed, I’ll bet SOCO finds a strip of ground that’s hardly been touched. That’s where he’d have been lying, on his side, as if he were asleep. Someone moved or tripped over this body and it ended up on its back.”
“But who? Cecelia said she never touched it.”
Cam thought for a moment. “Were you with Vince when he made the initial examination?”
“No, he was walking back when I arrived. He told me to go and look. When I saw it, it was already like this.”
There was little doubt in Cam’s mind that Vince had tripped over the body, a mistake he’d never admit. It wouldn’t have taken much of a kick; it had already halved its original weight through fluid loss. Scuffle marks beyond the body added credence to this tripping theory.
Leanne pushed a strand of hair from her eyes and squinted up at him. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. He looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Sarge…” she said.
“What?”
“You seem to know a lot about fires. I thought you were with the National Crime Authority, not the arson squad.”
“NCA, that’s right.”
Without thinking he touched the rough skin of his misshapen right ear lobe then traced the quilted pattern of scars running up his right arm. They fanned the underside of his jaw before ending at the hairline behind his ear.
He turned his face to the wind, narrowing his eyes against the flying dust and ash.
In his peripheral vision, Leanne appeared to be swaying on her feet. The dried leaves of the parrot bush rattled like tiny bones.
Cam thought: You’re a cop; it’s been over three years, you should damn well be able to block it out by now.
Leanne’s voice sounded far away, like she was speaking down a faulty telephone line. A familiar, distracting buzz began in his head and he had to suck in a deep breath for it to fade. He forced his gaze back to the body, to the head, to the face, to the ants eddying through the empty eye sockets. A fly emerged from one nostril. He watched the breeze carry it into a nearby bush.
And then something caught his eye: something pressed flat against the quivering parrot bush.
Cam pulled an evidence envelope from his pocket and used a stick to drop the strip of rag into it. After taking a sniff he placed the envelope under Leanne’s nose.
“Petrol?” she said, screwing up her face.
Cam nodded. “Under normal conditions, we leave the evidence for SOCO to gather, but I don’t want to lose this in the wind.” He handed her the envelope. “So remember to give them this and tell them exactly where we found it.”
“Me?” her eyes widened. “Where will you be?”
“I want to see how Vince is going with the interviews at the school.”
At that moment there was a rustling in the bushes. Leanne gave a small start, clamping her pudgy fingers on to Cam’s arm as a skinny merino bounded into the clearing. It stopped and stared at the intruders, a piece of dry grass hanging from its mouth like a bent cigarette.
Cam made a move towards the sheep, waving his arms. His farmer’s whoop sent it crashing back through the bushes to rejoin its hidden flock.
He turned back to Leanne. “And for God’s sake keep them away.”
“I think they belong to the farmer next door,” she blurted, her eyes darting around like panicked beetles. “I think he agists some of his sheep on the school property. How ’bout I call him and get him to drive them away?”
Not waiting for his answer, she turned in the direction of the police ute.
“Hey!” Cam beckoned her back and pointed to the ground. “You stay right here. You’re more than capable of keeping a few sheep away. It’ll give you something to do while you wait for SOCO and the pathologist.”
She folded her arms. The white lines around her mouth were a stark contrast to the rest of her cherry red face. Funny, he seemed to have that irritating effect on young girls. Still, he couldn’t resist just one more stir of the pot. He reached into his pocket and handed her a tube of sunscreen. She took it with a roll of her eyes, letting out a long sigh, just as his daughter would do.
By the time he’d left she was gleaming with grease like a blob of melted ice cream.
3
The atmosphere in the staff room loomed like a headache. Cam realized it was caused by more than the chemical smell of the surrounding newness, and silently berated himself for allowing Vince to tackle the first round of interviews on his own.
Vince introduced Cam to Anne Smithson, the principal, and her husband Jeffrey, explaining that he’d allowed the other staff members to leave.
Cam remembered reading about the couple in his wife’s Old Glenroydians’ Magazine. They’d been recruited from the eastern states by the School Board in a last ditch effort to prevent the school from closing down. Assisted by the generous endowment of an old girl, they had, according to the magazine, been performing restorative miracles, including an ambitious building renovation programme.
Smithson rose from the table and offered Cam a firm, moist hand but no smile, in keeping with the sobriety of the occasion.
“As I was explaining to the constable here,” he said, “we were not even on the school grounds the day of the fire. We ’d been to the city for the day -”
“They have an apartment in the city – all right for some eh, Sarge?” Vince exaggerated a wink. Cam felt the temperature in the room drop several degrees.
Mr Smithson shot Vince a look that suggested he’d just picked him off the sole of his shoe. His wife frowned when Cam shook her hand, telling him with her deep grey eyes that she’d had about as much of the Senior Constable as she could endure.
Mr Smithson continued in a tone of restrained calm. “The first we knew about the body was when Cecelia arrived at Monday’s staff meeting, late as always.” He caught his wife’s eye in a way that suggested this topic had been discussed before. “And broke the news.”
Anne Smithson nodded her agreement. “We’ve given our statements. May we go home now, Sergeant?”
“I won’t keep you much longer, Mrs Smithson. Please bear with me for just five more minutes.”
Anne Smithson pursed her lips, the only sign of impatience she gave. Her ash blonde hair, stretched tight against her skull, was fastened at the back with a tortoise-shell clip. She sat in her straight-backed chair, hands clasped in her lap, her eyes half-closed. Cam wondered if she was reciting her getting-through-appointments-with-ranting-parents mantra. He knew the signs; he’d used the technique often enough himself on tedious witnesses.
Jeffrey smoothed down his thin moustache and beat a soft tattoo on the table’s surface, waiting for Cam to finish skimming through the witness statement forms. When Cam met his eye over the top of his reading glasses, the drumming abruptly stopped. Then, as if deciding the ordeal had lasted long enough, Jeffrey pushed his chair back and climbed to his feet. A small round belly peeped through a gap in his blazer when he indicated the door to his wife with a tilt of his head.