He swept the stick through the debris again, whipping up a whirlwind of soot. Something yellowed and singed at the edges made a break for freedom. Paper. He grabbed it at the second attempt, delicately, trying not to damage it further. Another careful sweep of a corner, where the wall had not quite burned to the ground, brought a second piece, fuller than the first. Pretty soon he had recovered a number of documents – including something very important, Heath’s missing driving licence, the plastic surviving the inferno better than the paper. The name had burned away, but Heath’s face stared back at him in black and white, unsmiling, almost sullen. Like a mug shot.

Mitch and his team arrived suddenly, appearing from the woods like Marines on a covert mission, armed with evidence bags and latex gloves. It had taken them barely forty-five minutes.

Rather than grateful, Mitch was angry. Chandler expected nothing less.

‘What did you do?’ he said, accusing Chandler.

‘Put the fire out. We had to make sure there wasn’t another victim in there.’

‘And is there?’ spat Mitch.

‘No, but there’s some paper—’

Mitch grabbed Chandler’s shoulder and pulled him aside, the contact unexpected and unwelcome, crossing an unspoken line for a brief second before letting go.

‘You should have informed me of the call, Sergeant. Like it or not, I am your superior officer and in charge of this investigation. Any fuck-ups will fall back on me and I’m not prepared to let that happen. It’s not how I work.’

‘I dealt with it how I saw fit,’ said Chandler, standing his ground.

‘You deal with it how I see fit, Sergeant. Understand? And if that means coming to me to get the go-ahead to have a piss, then that’s what you do. Everything runs through me. You made your decision to stay here, Chandler. That was up to you. Don’t let jealousy cloud your decisions.’

‘No, Mitch, you think I’m jealous. I chose to have a family, you chose to have a career.’

This received only a grin from his opponent. ‘Maybe I have both,’ said Mitch.

‘What do you mean?’

Mitch didn’t reply. Was he intimating that he had a family? His cousins had said nothing about marriage or a family when he’d last seen them. He certainly wasn’t sporting a ring on his finger but of course that proved nothing. Chandler wondered why he cared. Mitch was – had been – ten years and hundreds of kilometres removed from his life. It was only this unfortunate series of events that had brought them into contact again.

‘Let’s get back to work,’ said Mitch, markedly pointing at Chandler and then to the trees. ‘Go put a cordon around—’