‘Why did you want to know all that stuff about the cat?’
‘Oh,’ said Gemma, with a dismissive hand wave, ‘Just a general interest question. I’ve got a cat myself.’ She smiled, trying to put Minkie at ease, aware of the other woman’s intense scrutiny, wondering if she’d fall for the lie.
In the moment before Gemma turned away and the security door closed between the two women, Gemma realised she’d seen something else in the woman’s light green eyes.
Minkie Montreau was scared stiff.
•
Sitting in her car parked opposite Minkie Montreau’s house, Gemma made two necessary phone calls. ‘Thunderstruck!’ screamed the singer on the car radio, ‘Thunderstruck!’ She had to turn down the volume of one of her all-time favourite rock hits when Detective Sergeant Sean Wright from Physical Evidence answered. She made a date to see him, and in the second call she organised a meeting in an hour’s time with Nick Yabsley from the Fire Investigation Unit. She was about to pull out for the drive to Chullora when she saw Minkie Montreau’s slender figure get into a canary-yellow BMW parked nearby and pull out. On an impulse, Gemma turned her car around and settled down to follow. It’d been ages since she’d done a vehicle follow. At the first corner, she let another car come between her and her target. It was the sort of wind-whipped day that she hated, with the cold and the damp permeating everything and the rain only a nuisance, never a decent soaking shower. Thin drizzle meant her windscreen wipers were needed every few minutes.
She followed the car down the hill to Bondi Junction where it turned into a parking station. Keeping two other cars between them for cover, Gemma followed the unmistakable yellow BMW up two levels before the Beamer found a space. Gemma drove past, finding a spot further along and swung in, keeping her eyes on the slim figure that had just got out of her car and now hurried towards the exit. Gemma had to jump out of her own car and sprint so as to keep up with the woman on the stairs. She raced down after her and saw Minkie hurrying along the first floor level. Gemma followed, pulling her damp hair back into a short ponytail with a rubber band found fortuitously in her jacket pocket. She knew this altered her general appearance quite a bit, but she hung well back, just in case Minkie’s intuition was working. But the other was intent on moving as quickly as possible, hurrying through the crowds of the retail centre, making her way to a dark little coffee shop near one end of the level. This made things awkward for Gemma who had to pass by the glassed-off wall of the little café and the empty tables outside. She tucked her head down and quickly walked straight past, checking the interior with a brief glance. Minkie seemed to be staring, eyes fixed on the entrance. She’s waiting for someone, Gemma knew as she hurried past, searching for a place she could safely watch the coffee shop. The minute I left her house, she thought, Minkie organised to meet someone.
A large, open plan newsagency across the way offered her a vantage point from where she pretended to browse among magazines and journals, while watching the coffee shop unnoticed. It didn’t seem to be very long before a short, dark man hurried past the newsagent’s window. Gemma smiled to herself as she saw him turn into the coffee shop, walk straight to the back table where Minkie Montreau waited and sit opposite her. Gemma dawdled towards the shop’s exit, finding a good observation position from where she could look straight into the café opposite while remaining safely hidden behind a tall rack of cards. Now the two heads at the back table were huddled together. Gemma saw Minkie’s hand reach out and lift a packet of cigarettes from the man’s shirt pocket and that one intimate action revealed to Gemma the nature of their relationship. Minkie took a cigarette out, lit it and tossed her head back. She was taking to smoking again, Gemma thought, with enthusiasm. No sign now of her earlier disgust.
The conversation was animated, Gemma would have written if she were making a report, with frequent touching of hands, indicating a great degree of intimacy. ‘No other living relatives,’ Minkie had told her, so it couldn’t be a son. At least, not a Glass son, Gemma thought. Perhaps it was a Montreau son. Or a nephew. But it didn’t feel that way, she reflected, watching them as they drank their coffees.
Gemma followed them down the stairs again, back to the Beamer. She got in her car, noted the time in her notebook and wrote a quick description of the man: ‘Medium build, about 5’ 9’’, dark, longish hair, dressed in leather jacket and jeans. Looks years younger than subject.’ She considered and added the word ‘arty’ to her description. He was a gallant man too, she thought as she studied him opening the driver’s door with an exaggerated flounce for Minkie and closing it after her deliberately before walking round to the passenger side. So, they’re going off somewhere together, Gemma thought. If I didn’t have the appointment with Nick Yabsley I’d definitely follow them.
Gemma started her car and sneaked a look back at the BMW. It was still stationary. She drove past it, worrying that she might be seen. But there was no way the two people in the front seat could have noticed anything. Unless Minkie Montreau was guilty of incest, the man was no relative. Locked in a tight embrace, straining together, the two were kissing passionately. You should have told me, Gemma thought as she turned out of the parking station. Naughty, naughty girl.
Five
By the time she got to the Fire Investigation Unit in Chullora the light rain had almost stopped. She turned into the driveway, parked where the security officer told her and made her way inside, past the cluttered ad hoc waiting area, and into the warren of offices, some partitioned, some open with narrow walkways lined by filing cabinets. Nick Yabsley came out of his office almost the moment she walked past it.
‘Traffic must have been terrible this morning,’ he said, shaking her hand, his good-humoured face beaming. ‘I was expecting you earlier. Would you like a tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, thanks,’ said Gemma, following him into the small room, where a large table took up almost all the available space. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘Something developed and I had to follow it up.’
Nick nodded.
‘How are things here?’ she asked, looking around the squashed premises.
‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Always busy. I’d ask you to sit down, but I’m about to leave. Something’s come up. Sorry.’
He saw her face. ‘Look,’ he said, shrugging, ‘you know how it is in this job.’
‘Sure,’ she said, thinking quickly. ‘I’ll come with you. I’m a good navigator and I know some really bad jokes.’ She hurried on, leaving him no time to refuse her. ‘So what’ll Sean Wright tell when I see him?’
‘I shouldn’t do this, you know,’ he said.
But she followed him outside to where Fire Brigades’ vehicles were parked in a line.
‘Hell, Nick, you’re the boss. You know from the old days I won’t faint. I’ve got my camera.’
‘I wouldn’t do this for just anyone,’ said Nick, throwing gear into the back of a powerful station wagon—boots, overalls, a small black case.
‘Where are we going?’ Gemma asked, climbing into the passenger side
‘The very fire scene you’re interested in, as a matter of fact.’
‘Nick, you’re a doll,’ she said, patting his arm as he reversed too fast and turned the car around, prior to leaving the narrow yard.
‘A voodoo doll, maybe,’ he said, a smile creasing his amiable face.
The station wagon shot up onto the roadway, signalling a right turn, Nick’s hands on the wheel seeming about two sizes too big for the rest of him, Gemma thought.
‘Tell me what Sean said,’ Gemma persisted, her curiosity growing.
‘That it’s arson,’ Nick said, ‘and that it’s the same as the other two.’
‘What other two?’ asked Gemma, very interested now.
‘What do you remember about arson from your studies?’ he asked, swinging the car back onto the main road, heading no
rth.
‘Nick, this is my first arson job since I left the Kremlin,’ she said, referring to the concrete fastness that was the Police Centre, its Russian nickname reflecting its culture as well as its architecture. ‘And it’s a long time since my lectures at the Academy. That’s why I need your help.’
She settled down in her seat, finding a comfortable place to put her feet among all the folders and containers that lay on the front passenger floor area. She cast around her memory.
‘I certainly remember the tip about the family pet,’ she said. ‘I remember the lecturer saying that it’s almost always for insurance purposes, and the only deviations from that are the vengeful men who burn down the house after the divorce so the wife can’t have it. And something about fire bugs. And they’re not very common.’
‘Good girl,’ said Nick, with the easy, politically incorrect manner of men of his kind. Once Gemma would have snapped, but these days she was more tolerant, making the same allowances for them as she did for the aged, the frail and the ignorant. ‘And because you’re an ex-copper,’ he continued, ‘you’ll appreciate the fact that police investigations are based on a different premise from ours. Police treat all fires as suspicious. We don’t. We presume innocence until guilt can be proven.’
‘That’s why everybody loves a firey,’ said Gemma. ‘You’re all such nice, good, decent blokes.’
‘Give it a rest,’ he said. ‘Compared to coppers, anyone’s nice.’ He groped around on the back seat. ‘See that plastic container over there?’ he asked her and Gemma retrieved it for him.
‘Hungry?’ he asked, pulling its lid off to reveal a packet of sweet biscuits. She shook her head.
‘The Fire Investigation Unit is only called in two per cent of the time,’ said Nick, taking a biscuit. ‘In ninety-eight per cent of cases, the cause of the fire can be determined by the local officers in the field. They can see pretty clearly whether or not an accelerant’s been used, and when they get an inventory, the insurers can determine whether or not personal property has been removed prior to the fire.’
Gemma nodded, remembering her training.
Nick continued. ‘So what’s weird about these fires—’
Gemma interrupted. ‘Tell me about these fires,’ she said.
‘The fire that destroyed Benjamin Glass’s holiday house shared almost identical characteristics with two others that we’ve been working on. One was a derelict factory building at Botany. The other was a pharmaceutical warehouse out at Engadine.’
Gemma was intrigued. ‘What characteristics?’
‘We’ve never seen anything like it before,’ Nick was saying. ‘Not in this country, although the Yanks had a few in the seventies and eighties.’
‘A few what?’ she asked, increasingly piqued.
‘I’ve got a video cassette back at work that’ll show you better than I can tell.’
‘You mean you’ve got a video of the fire itself?’
‘Sometimes an old firey gets lucky,’ said Nick.
‘Lucky?’ said Gemma. ‘Who the hell took that video? I’d be wanting to talk to him.’
‘A neighbour.’
‘I find that very odd,’ said Gemma. ‘How come this neighbour was all set up to film the fire?’
‘He wasn’t,’ answered Nick. ‘He was filming his grandson’s birthday party but when he saw what was happening in the background, he forgot about the fairy bread.’ He pulled something out of his pocket. ‘Take a look at these,’ he said, passing her some photographs.
She studied them. Benjamin Glass’s house, painted in grey-green leaf and sea tones, had been a grand cement and glass edifice, big enough to serve as a small hotel. She could clearly see the three levels. Wrap-around balconies at each level surrounded three sides of the house.
‘It was through those glass doors downstairs—you can see them in the pictures—that the video shows what looks like a series of small, bright white flashes. Inside and behind the lower balcony.’
Gemma found the area he was talking about—tall folding glass doors that would have opened out onto the bottom balcony area.
‘Bright white flashes?’ said Gemma. ‘MIPs?’
‘That’s right,’ said Nick with a grin at her use of the acronym. ‘Multiple ignition points. A sure sign of arson. Then the accelerant goes up—columns of white-hot flame explode through the doors and start shooting up the sides of the building.’
Nick changed lanes to join a queue in a turning lane, indicator ticking. ‘It was only a matter of seconds,’ he said, ‘before all three levels were going up. White flame. Then it was no time at all before the roof was penetrated. It looked like some crazy pyrotechnic display. Huge white gouts of flame. Roof flaps bursting through in a matter of minutes. Then, less than a minute later, there’s a total collapse of the building as it caves in on itself.’
‘God almighty, that’s fast,’ exclaimed Gemma. ‘What on earth gets a fire going like that?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know.’
Gemma sat silent a few moments, considering. ‘So,’ she said. ‘What do you reckon you’ve got?’
‘We know we’ve got a case of arson,’ said Nick. ‘Identical to two others in the last couple of weeks and probably committed by the same person. And that’s about it at this stage.’
‘What is it that arsonists want?’ Gemma asked. ‘Is it always the money?’
‘Nine times out of ten it is. They want the insurance, but they want the full amount. No point in just a bit of damage and a couple of grand for a repaint. It must be total destruction if they’re to collect the full amount. And that’s hard to get.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s the reason for using an accelerant in the first place.’
‘But surely that’s counterproductive,’ she said. ‘Because then you blokes will know it was arson. Arsonists must know that.’
Nick shook his head. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, ‘how many people commit serious crimes without doing any research into what the outcome might be.’ Gemma thought about that for a moment. ‘But if they’re a little bit smart,’ Nick continued, ‘they’ll try and introduce the accelerant in some sort of plausible way. That’s difficult, too, because a lot of insurers won’t pay up if people have stored highly flammable material in their houses. There are regulations covering this sort of thing. So the arsonist tries to make it look natural in some way, by shaving electrical wiring to make it seem worn, and making sure there’s a lot of fluff and dust or wood shavings lying around near the short circuit. And making sure everyone’s away on the day of the fire so that no one can put it out prematurely.’
‘What do you think the accelerant was?’ she asked. ‘At a guess.’
Nick shook his head. ‘I can’t guess,’ he said. ‘We’ve never seen anything like it before these fires. And I’ve been looking at fires now for over thirty years.’
‘What next then?’ Gemma asked.
Nick swung the wheel with his too-big hands and they settled down to follow the highway north.
‘We’re waiting to hear back from the experts,’ he said. He leaned forward and shoved a cassette into the tape deck. A jazz singer’s cool voice floated above a husky piano and whispering percussion: ‘The very thought of you, and I begin to . . .’
‘If these three fires are the work of the same person,’ Nick said, ‘then there’s someone out there using the accelerant from hell. And that by itself is some sort of lead. If they were three insurance jobs, then the police will need to find if there’re any connections between the three fire sites. Like who owns them, or leases them. That sort of thing.’
‘Like if they all belonged to Benjamin Glass, for instance?’
Nick nodded.
‘And if there’s no connection and the three are just random burns?’ Gemma asked.
‘Then we’re deali
ng with someone very sick. And very dangerous.’
Gemma thought of Minkie Montreau. The woman was an enigma.
‘We could have one death already,’ Nick said.
‘Benjamin Glass?’
He nodded.
Because she’d known Nick for years and knew him to be a man of discretion, she almost told him what she’d seen Minkie Montreau doing in the car in the car park. But instead, she changed tack. ‘Did you know Benjamin Glass had a cat?’
‘I did not,’ said Nick. ‘I wonder what happened to it. We’re always very interested in the pet.’
Gemma smiled. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘I remember more from those lectures than I thought.’
Nick gave her an appraising glance.
‘I’ve made an appointment with Sean Wright,’ she said. ‘See if Physical Evidence come up with anything interesting.’
‘Sean Wright and his mob will be going back to Nelson Bay,’ said Nick, glancing at his watch, ‘working away with their little sieves. If Benjamin Glass or his cat was in that house,’ Nick continued, ‘and there’s anything left of either of them, they’ll find it. If not, well’—he paused—‘that’s a whole new story.’
‘What if he’s there, but the cat’s not?’ Gemma asked.
‘Then that’s a different story again, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Gemma. In the silence, Gemma found her thoughts drifting with the jazz singer’s words, wondering where Steve was and what he was doing so that when Nick’s mobile phone rang, it startled her.
‘Yabsley,’ said Nick in his calm and pleasant voice, putting the ear phone in. ‘What do they mean, they don’t know?’ he said sharply.
Gemma glanced sideways at her companion, now frowning deeply. ‘They’re supposed to know. It’s their job to know.’
Gemma’s curiosity index rose several points.
‘Yeah, I’ve got that,’ said Nick. ‘Only traces of the fire load itself.’ There was a pause. ‘No accelerant?’ His voice rose. ‘That’s impossible. I’ve been in this game a long time. I know when an accelerant’s been used. I could see it!’
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