A loud pop interrupted them, causing Mitch to stumble backwards and reach for his holster. Something black soared into the air and landed beside Mitch’s crew who were busy logging the evidence Chandler had dragged from the wreckage. The charred object smoked at their feet, an exploded aerosol can which had successfully escaped the cabin.

‘You might want to question it,’ said Chandler, making for the trees.

He wound the yellow and blue tape around the clutch of nearby eucalyptus trees and watched Mitch’s team fish more scraps from the blanket of ash, Luka welcomed into the fold as one of them. As the minions combed through the debris, the master prowled the outskirts, an iPhone pressed to his lips recording his thoughts and observations, while Roper, a muscular guy whose mouth hooked downwards in a permanent scowl, recorded every movement with a video camera.

After all immediately visible evidence was marked with cones or tags, Mitch organized his team to start at one side and carefully sift through the ash, spreading slowly but thoroughly over the ground. A few more shreds of paper were discovered, including a fragment of a map, the lack of contour lines suggesting an area of flat ground rather than the hill they were on. With the preliminary search completed Mitch extended the remit from evidence only to indications of how the fire started; for containers of flammable liquid, or unusual distribution of fuel, like piles of newspapers or furniture pushed together. They hunted for incendiary devices – aerosol can aside – lighters, matches or even some form of timing device. They fished more metal from the ashy mulch, including the rest of the chain-links, one roughly shorn through, the clean cut indicating that it had been hacked through rather than cracking in the heat.

Next they moved on to the job that would prolong their stay deep into the night – finding traces of people who had been there, voluntarily or otherwise: hairs, fibres, fingerprints, blood, bodily fluids. The fire would have destroyed much of it but Chandler knew that Mitch wouldn’t give up easily. He ordered Chandler to return to the cars and retrieve more evidence kits. It was a menial task, for someone of a lesser rank, but Mitch took great pains in picking Chandler out.

As Chandler left to trek back to the cars, Mitch was geeing up his troops, the calm, assured inspector that had sauntered into Wilbrook station beginning to melt under the pressure, his side parting plastered to his scalp, the wet look undiminished even in the heat. It was as if he was oozing sweat solely from the top of his head, his face still unnaturally dry, as if the pores had been plugged up with bitterness.

22

2002

Mitch swept his lank hair back into place, each strand like a sailor clinging to the deck of their sinking ship. ‘Come on! Come on! No time for rest,’ he announced. ‘Another kilometre and we’ll stop for the day.’