Jul 30

Jul 30 Murder In The Midst

Murder In The Midst - book excerpt

Charlie homed in on thrashing in the scrub. Someone on the run? She gestured to Gavin, did a zip motion over her mouth and indicated to fan out around their parked truck.

The sounds grew louder, closer, overlaid by groans that made the hairs on her forearm prickle. Her fingers closed on her holstered weapon. She tamped down the adrenaline buzz and controlled her breathing, lips barely parted and teeth filtering ash particles and hot air pungent with burnt eucalyptus oil. It was wrong to hope their offender was heading straight for them and carrying injuries – then again, no it wasn’t.

Eyes skimming the bush shrouded in a bluey-orange haze, she crept forward. A koala emerged, then froze, apparently stunned by the two humans.

Charlie gave a surprised snort. Her chuckle became a cough and she reached for the water bottle slung over her shoulder. She took a swig, winced, sluiced and spat, while the animal watched her.

‘Five minutes out of the esky and it’s already half-stewed,’ she told Gavin. But still parched, she shook her head and gulped some more of the tepid water.

As she wiped her mouth, the koala lifted its butt and bound to her feet, moving like a clumsy bunny. Stretching up on its hind legs, it reached towards Charlie’s bottle with its front paws.

She crouched down. ‘You want some, buddy?’

The koala pulled on her bottle with one paw and the other clasped onto her knee. Charlie dribbled water over its mouth and black nose. After it slurped up a few mouthfuls, she cupped her hand and held it near the ground, crooning until the animal drank from her palm. Each time she went to rise, the koala’s curved claws bit tighter and it kept lapping until she’d emptied her bottle and Gavin’s. Its thirst sated, the koala lumbered away.

‘New nickname for you – Koala Whisperer.’

Get known as soft and she’d lose her standing in Howie. Charlie shook her head. ‘Not.’

The corners of Gavin’s grey-green eyes crinkled, then he turned serious. ‘What’re you thinking?’

She verbalised what had been on her mind since the fire siren yowled a few hours ago. ‘Two separate seats of ignition about 400 metres apart. The male that called it in—first to the CFA, then to us direct, not via triple zero—was very specific with the details yet unwilling to give his name. He’s our arsonist.’

He nodded.

‘It could be an accomplice, but arsonists usually work alone unless they’re profit-motivated or hiding other crimes – which doesn’t seem to apply here.’

Gavin opened his mouth but was cut off by the peal of Charlie’s phone: the name of the Howie fire captain on the screen.

‘Neil?’

‘Safe, Charlie.’

She let out a relieved sigh. If Neil’s crew hadn’t been so quick to contain the fire at Shanks Bend it might’ve burnt for days or longer, destroying thousands of hectares of forest, jeopardising the abutting properties…and perhaps the town.

It made Charlie suspect their man rang immediately after lighting the fire. Some semblance of conscience, or attention-seeking?

‘We’ll finish up here. Come by the shed – say, an hour?’

She promised they’d be there.

‘Don’t like it, Charlie.’ Neil’s face creased into furrows caked with soot. ‘Not a bit.’

‘You think they’re escalating?’ Charlie ran a hand up her neck, toying with copper-brown tendrils damp with perspiration.

Neil answered with a sigh as something dropped heavily behind him. She glanced over his shoulder, taking in a bundle of blackened yellow on the driveway. Then she scanned over booted feet and up dirty over-trousers to land on a naked, tanned torso.

She drew her eyes away and fixed again on the fire captain. ‘Yeah, me too. The gap’s shortened between the fires and they’re getting –’

‘Closer to town,’ he finished.

Charlie grimaced. She had loved this little back-of-beyond place all her life, though merely as a frequent visitor before landing her first post here. Now she loved heading the cop shop that was only slightly less primitive than the fire brigade’s oversized tin shed. If she couldn’t catch the cocky arsonist, everything that mattered was at risk.

Absently, her gaze floated to the set of broad shoulders and biceps snaked with tattoos belonging to the guy behind Neil. He rubbed his fingers through his cropped, black hair and chatted easily. Charlie knew the crew well, but she wasn’t familiar with this volunteer.

She scuffed her boots in the dust, mind back on the job. ‘We’re going to need Roger.’

Neil nodded.

‘Let’s hope he’s not tied up.’

She’d take any available fire investigator, but Roger was exceptional, and he had been born and bred in Howie. He knew the trouble ahead for their little town if the arsonist kept at it…and these people never stopped voluntarily.

The captain said, ‘Makes you wish they never built Howie on top of the hill, doesn’t it?’

‘And it wasn’t surrounded by bush.’

An ill-timed rumbling chuckle made her peer at the new firie. She watched his trousers join the rest of his turnout gear. Now he wore nothing but board shorts. And he belonged on a calendar for Country Fire Authority fundraising.

Charlie’s portable radio squawked, and the new guy looked across, smiling at whatever Neil’s deputy, Pauline, had said. His head-tilt gave away that he’d caught Charlie’s stare. She went for her radio as Gavin rushed to her side. Her embarrassment heightened. Gavin never missed a thing – a good and bad attribute in her right-hand man.

He was still hovering when she ended the radio call and focused again on Neil.

She said, ‘We’ll go back to Shanks in case our man’s returned.’

Both men nodded, then Neil stepped sideways to let the board-shorts guy join their huddle. He waved between them. ‘You haven’t met Dylan properly.’

Over introductions, Charlie shook the tall firie’s hand, dodging his deep blue eyes but tuning into his lilting accent.

‘Irish?’

‘No, but close.’ His voice glided high and low. ‘Welsh.’

‘He’s only been in town a few weeks.’

Gavin’s chin gave a jerk. Charlie didn’t like the coincidence either, but the captain was a good judge of character. If he didn’t find the overlap of their arson attacks and Dylan Owen’s arrival suss, she probably shouldn’t, either.

‘Works at O’Shaunessy’s,’ Neil continued.

As Howie’s largest employer, if the vineyard closed, they’d all be in trouble. It propped up most of the other businesses—even the cop shop could end up abandoned with Charlie, Gavin and the others lucky to be redeployed to Wangaratta or Mansfield—though about a third of those working at O’Shaunessy’s were transients, mostly seasonal workers from overseas.

‘On his way up the ranks there.’

Dylan agreed, but it was hard to take him seriously wearing just board shorts. Charlie pegged him as a charmer, a backpacker and likely to be gone by Christmas.

He said, ‘A week in the forties and only the tenth day of summer – are you worried, Captain?’

Neil’s forehead took on more lines. ‘It’s not looking good.’

A line of sweat ran down Charlie’s back. Four fires in the nearby bush this December, none natural – her first fire season as sergeant-in-charge at Howie and third working in the town was already the worst she’d ever tackled.

Dylan spoke again. ‘We’re all going for drinks later. Charlie…be seeing you?’

She felt like a pinned bug as three sets of eyes turned to her.

Gavin touched her shoulder and answered, ‘We’ll be there.’

‘Maybe.’ She shrugged off his hand. ‘Time to go, Senior Constable.’

Dylan’s low chuckle followed them as she and Gavin moved to the marked truck. She regretted pulling rank but couldn’t undo it. If black-haired Dylan could grace a Hot Firies calendar, then Gavin could be his blond cop counterpart, and he was as off-limits as the charismatic potential fire bug.

They returned to Shanks Bend in a strained silence broken only by the squeaks of the truck’s suspension, thuds as sticks and rocks hit its underbelly and spatters from the police radio.

Gavin’s hurt was palpable right through the rest of their shift and Charlie eventually mollified him for the sake of workplace peace.

‘See you at the pub later, Gav-Man?’

She used the station nickname to make it clear they were going as mates, but suspected he didn’t get it when he grinned and named a time.

Charlie craved a long shower, but the town’s water reserves were critical. She made do with a ninety-second soap and scrub under the water-saver outlet. Her hair was still infused with eau de bushfire when she strolled into The Junction, Howie’s only pub. Maybe all she had to do was work her way through the place, sniff for burnt bush aroma and wait for the arsonist to give themselves away?

She laughed at the dumb idea and greeted her friend Sammi over the counter.

‘Gavin’s got your usual, Char.’ The publican grinned, her cheeks dimpling and a gleam in her nut-brown eyes. ‘Where can I find a fella like that?’

Her wave fanned over the room, as a guy in a blue singlet and shabby cargo shorts butted in with, ‘Where’s the sheila’s trough for me missus?’

‘You mean the ladies toilet –?’ Sammi’s eyebrows lifted.

Her friend’s point well made about the quality of some men in Howie, Charlie scanned over the faces and spotted Gavin at a table with two empty wine glasses and a bottle of red in front of him. She made her way over and was bemused when the new firie promptly joined them.

‘G’day, Dylan.’

Gavin smiled as he shook hands with the Welshman. His expression turned guarded as Charlie did likewise. But she was distracted by the scents of the two men: strong citrus aftershave emanating from Gavin’s red-blotched neck and a musky rum from Dylan…overladen with smoke. Not surprising – they’d all spent most of the day at Shanks Bend.

Charlie missed an exchange between the two guys and wasn’t sure how it came about, but somehow the three of them ended up seated around the table, sipping wine and planning their counter meals.

She let the guys do most of the talking, her mind obsessing over the arsonist. The attacks were coming faster together and increasingly close to town. Roger would be able to determine more from the fire scenes than she and Neil, identifying accelerants and materials used and behavioural patterns that might help Charlie and her team pinpoint and arrest the offender. But he was working a job in Rutherglen and couldn’t get to them until lunchtime tomorrow.

That might be too late.