Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Read online

  Mungo jiggled in his seat. ‘I’m gonna piss meself in a minute.’

  Pete put his hands flat on the table and pushed himself up. ‘I’ll go see how the plumber’s doing.’

  He walked over to the air-conditioning control and turned the cool as high as it would go. Goosebumps appeared on Leanne’s arms. When she caught his eye she gave him a subtle nod and took his seat at the table. The video camera was pointing at Mungo, the light still on, the tape whirring. The clock on the mucous-green wall ticked on, with each second seeming to take a minute.

  When Pete had left the room, Leanne said, ‘Come on, Mungo, out with it. It’s just you and me now. Do you really think the judge is going to believe that you were strolling around the bush in the middle of the night with an empty petrol can, just for the hell of it? Now, if you just cough up and admit to it, things will go a lot better for you.’

  Mungo sighed and rammed a rough hand through his few frizzy strands of grey hair, his face reflecting the struggle between his will and his bladder. He rubbed his arms and wrapped them around his torso. ‘Sure has got cold in here.’

  Leanne said nothing.

  ‘You reckon the judge will go easier on me?’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘Then you’ll let me pee?’

  ‘No one’s stopping you, just happens the loos are blocked.’

  ‘What about the sheep? I cooperated over the sheep.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about the sheep. For ten sheep, the most you’d get is a fine. Arson, now, that’s a different ball game. Arsonists don’t get much sympathy these days. The last one I put away got twenty years.’

  ‘Yeah, but someone died that time, didn’t they?’

  ‘And someone could have died the other night.’

  Mungo sucked at his lips, almost making them disappear. ‘Okay, okay, a fella come up to me in the pub,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘The night before the fire, I was at the Shearer’s Rest. He told me he wanted a diversion, just like you said. I didn’t know why and I didn’t ask. He offered me three hundred bucks, then another three hundred when the job was done. I figured it would probably pay the fine I had coming over the sheep and then the missus need never know about them. He put the three hundred on the table there and then. It seemed too good to be true, so I said I would. He told me where to light it. You know the rest.’

  ‘What did this man look like?’

  ‘Tall, young, wore a baseball cap, had a pizza face.’

  ‘He had a bad complexion?

  ‘Reckon he did. Never seen him around before. Said his name was John Smith.’

  Leanne rolled her eyes.

  ‘Well, what do I care what his real name was? The money was real enough.’

  ‘But you didn’t get the rest of the money, did you?’ she said.

  ‘He was supposed to leave it under a rock near my front gate, like how we’d sorted, only I got caught, didn’t I?’ Mungo’s eyes grew wide with an idea. ‘Say, you couldn’t check to see if it’s there could you, Angel? He might not know I’ve been arrested and the money would be mighty handy right now. ‘

  ‘Jeez, Mungo!’ she exclaimed, shaking her head. She took a calming breath ‘So you’ve only ever seen this bloke the once?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about him — any distinguishing features, accent?’

  He scratched his stubbly chin. ‘Nah.’

  Pete poked his head around the interview-room door.

  ‘Plumber finished up?’ Leanne asked, giving him a subtle nod when Mungo wasn’t looking.

  ‘Yup. Come on, Mungo,’ Pete said.

  Mungo cautiously eased himself from the chair, but remained stooped with his hand gripping at his crotch. Leanne looked at her watch and faced the camera. ‘Interview ended at 1830 hours.’

  ***

  Derek and a couple of seconded constables from Toorrup were busy in the front office. A double murder unfortunately did not mean the cessation of all other crime on their thousand-square-kilometre patch. By six o’clock that evening they’d had a bag snatch in the park, a kid knocked off a bike on his way home from school and a shoplifting at the supermarket.

  Derek’s voice carried through to Leanne, telling someone on the phone he’d look into their complaint. He slammed the receiver down, muttering to the constable next to him about an alleged glassing at the pub.

  After Leanne had escorted the much-relieved Mungo outside to the waiting paddy wagon, she joined Pete in their hastily arranged conference room. It wasn’t as fancy as a city cop shop, but despite the absence of computer terminals and telephones, it had taken on the appearance of a real-deal incident room. A white board covering a large portion of one wall was covered in the sarge’s almost indecipherable squiggles and framed with grisly photos from the first autopsy. Polaroid pictures of both crime scenes surrounded a map of the area, on which the location of each body was marked with a red cross.

  A large table almost filled the room. Pete was sitting at it repacking Ivanovich’s belongings into one of the banana boxes, ticking them off on an inventory as he went.

  Leanne kicked the conference room door closed with a flick of her foot.

  Pete looked up from his inventory and flashed her a smile. ‘What a team, eh?’

  ‘Too right.’ She smiled back.

  ‘I never realised your old man knew Mungo.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad always said he was dead from the neck up. Years ago, he and his missus decided they wanted a water birth for their baby. They didn’t have a bathtub or a spa and ended up nearly drowning it in the horse trough. The kid’s grown up now, though, no harm done, swills his beer down every night at the Shearer’s Rest as well as the next bloke.’

  Pete grinned and shook his head, putting a stack of magazines on top of one of the boxes. ‘Christ. You’ve lived in this place nearly all your life, and still request to come back at first posting. Are you a masochist or what?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have a choice, you know that.’ Her gaze roamed the conference room, taking in the strip of barred windows running high along the length of one wall. The first twinkle of the evening star peeped through the darkening sky.

  Pete pushed the box aside. ‘Did you really hear from your dad the other day?’

  Leanne pulled a chair out from the table and lowered herself into it with the caution of someone three times her age. She took off her peaked cap and ran her hands over her thin hair. ‘No, we only got the one postcard from Broome, just after he left. He sometimes transfers money — if it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t even know if he was still alive.’

  ‘That’s too bad.’ Pete sounded like he meant it. He was a nice bloke really, Leanne thought, under all that cocky arrogance.

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘How do you think?’ Leanne was in no mood to say more. Her father had walked out on her mother last year. In his only postcard he’d explained how he couldn’t cope with the carnival ride of mood swings, the happy pills and the Blackberry Nip habit, which since his departure had expanded to include cough mixture with antihistamine chasers.

  Leanne often wondered if her father had ever stopped to think that by walking out on his wife, all he’d done was hand his problem over to his daughter, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her train-wreck of a mother.

  Pete said, ‘When this murder case is tied up, I’ll buy you a drink, we can chat then.’

  She shrugged in a do-what-you-like manner. ‘Sure,’ she said, not meeting his eyes.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Not long after Mungo’s departure for Toorrup in the paddy wagon, Cam was in the incident room, giving Pete and Leanne a rundown of his interview with Pauline Copley. The gist of it was that Jack Ivanovich was a mean tosser, better in jail than out, and they were to spare no effort in finding him. Cam had already put out an all-points bulletin, meaning that every cop in the state would be on the lookout for him. Rod had contacted the media and
distributed Ivanovich’s photograph. Now all they could do was wait and hope that something would turn up.

  Cam wondered if anything would. He tried to ignore the quiet but persistent voice niggling away in the back of his head, telling him their search might be a waste of time.

  ‘I’d like Pauline to have a look at the knife from the dam, see if it’s the one Ivanovich used to threaten her child,’ he said to Pete.

  Cam headed through the incident-room door, past the front office to the kitchenette. The details of Pauline’s rape had left him with a disgust that needed a strong cup of tea to wash away.

  Pete followed. ‘You want me to take the knife over to her now, Sarge?’

  ‘No hurry, she’ll be feeding her boarders now, it can wait. Ring her first thing tomorrow and arrange a time. I also want her to have another look at Ivanovich’s possessions here in the station with us.’

  They made the tea. Cam nodded to the banana boxes on the table when they returned. ‘Ask her if she thinks anything’s missing. I’d be interested to know if our mystery detective took anything.’ He put a mug on the table in front of Leanne. ‘How did you go with Rita this arvo?’

  ‘She said she had no idea if the bale hook in the dam was Darren’s or not, said she hadn’t seen his in ages. She also said she’d never seen the knife from the dam before.’

  ‘That figures.’ Cam sighed.

  Leanne pushed aside a Farm Weekly magazine. It was the same edition Derek had dropped earlier, the one with the opulent homestead on the front cover. Leaning on the table, Cam slid the well-thumbed magazine towards him and absently flicked through the pages. On his way to the properties he caught an advertisement in the stock section marked with a black pen. He scratched his head, looked at it for a moment then pushed the magazine away to focus on the topic in hand.

  Rita was holding something back and it worried him. ‘So far she’s not given us much to work with. Did you show her Ivanovich’s picture?’ he asked Leanne.

  ‘Yeah, but she didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘How did she react when you told her about Darren’s injuries?’

  ‘Very upset, poor thing.’

  ‘Know much about her background?’

  ‘Can’t find her in the database. My mum doesn’t like her much. That’s all I know, really.’

  Cam had heard about Leanne’s mother and decided the feeling was probably mutual.

  ‘Did she explain why?’

  Leanne hesitated. ‘Mum was feeling a bit tired, I might be able to get more from her later. Apparently Darren Pilkington was Rita’s second husband, her first died in a car accident. He was the one who got her into the Salvation Army. Mum said she’d never been religious before that.’

  Cam shook his head and speared his fingers through his hair.

  Leanne frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

  He pulled out the chair next to Pete and flopped into it heavily, flexing the fingers of his right hand. Leanne left the room for a moment and returned with the rubber exercise ball from his desk.

  ‘Looks like you might be needing this,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ He took the red and yellow ball and began to crush it in his scarred right hand, feeling the tight skin stretch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pete give Leanne a scowl and he wondered what the hell the kid’s problem was.

  Cam put the minor distraction to the back of his mind. ‘There’s something about Rita Pilkington, something about that woman I can’t put my finger on. I saw a different side of her when we were talking in the kitchen today. She was much more assertive than I’d first taken her to be.’

  Leanne frowned again. ‘Surely you don’t think she did her old man in, do you?’

  ‘A few days ago I’d have said absolutely not, but now . . .’ Cam hesitated then shook his head. ‘All my questions just seem to lead to more questions — not an answer in sight.’

  Leanne took a gulp of tea. ‘Well, you’re certainly no longer flavour of the month. She’s pretty pissed at you for wanting to take her dog.’

  Cam exhaled. ‘Maybe that’s all it is.’ He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, unable to take his mind off the ridiculous theories still churning around in his head. He gripped the exercise ball so tightly it almost popped out of his hand.

  Leanne seemed to think it was time for a change of topic. She got up, propped her hip on the edge of the table and started to swing one leg. ‘That RSPCA bloke’s dinkum, I checked with head office.’

  ‘Okay, but I still want a word with him,’ Cam said, opening his eyes again.

  ‘They said he’s based at the saleyard, just like he told me.’

  ‘And Mungo?’ he looked from one to the other of his constables. ‘You questioned him again, yeah?’

  ‘It was just as you thought,’ Leanne said. ‘The fire was a diversion from the stock theft. Some bloke approached him in the pub the night before and gave him three hundred bucks to start the fire.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Not much other than young, tall and pimply.’

  ‘Blond hair?’

  ‘He was wearing a baseball cap.’

  ‘Say, Sarge,’ Pete interrupted, ‘that could be the same man who told Pauline Copley he was a Toorrup detective.’

  Cam rubbed his chin. ‘Could be. This is a small town, the chances of two shady young blokes . . .’

  ‘Three if you include the RSPCA inspector,’ Pete pointed out.

  ‘Now, there’s a thought,’ Cam said. ‘Sound like your RSPCA bloke, Leanne?’

  ‘Well, he was tall, youngish, but I’d say his hair was more light brown than blond, and he had a big jaw, looked a bit like Roger Ramjet, with bling on his wrist, and no pimples that I remember.’

  ‘With what on his wrist?’

  ‘Bling, jewellery — where’ve you been for the last ten years, Sarge?’ Pete shot Leanne a wink. She explained, ‘A gold identity bracelet jingling and jangling all over the place. I’d have thought he’d be fairly easy to describe.’

  ‘Easy for a cop to describe. Your average person in the street is oblivious to the details most of the time.’ Cam thought aloud. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would be very practical for an RSPCA inspector to wear a dangling bracelet — the job’s quite physical. Wouldn’t it get in the way, catch on things?’

  Before anyone could add to Cam’s speculations, the door opened and Derek broke into their conversation, handing him a fax sheet.

  ‘From Toorrup, it’s the preliminary autopsy report on the body in the hole.’

  Cam jumped up and reached for his glasses. Pete and Leanne left their seats to gather around him and Derek.

  ‘Body identified through dental records as Shane Brock, aged forty-nine, from Toorrup, Cam read aloud. ‘It is my opinion that this man died as a result of exsanguination from numerous penetrating injuries.’

  ‘Knife wounds?’ Pete asked.

  ‘Wool hook?’ Leanne suggested.

  ‘Dog bites?’ Derek added his bit.

  Cam held up his finger and continued to read in silence. Eventually he spoke. ‘Says here that due to high levels of decay, the object that caused the wounds could not be clearly identified.’

  Disappointed moans all round.

  ‘So we have one body hidden in a wool bale and one in a rubbish pit. Seems Jack Ivanovich likes variety,’ Pete said. ‘Maybe he used the knife on this one?’

  ‘If Ivanovich is the murderer,’ Cam cautioned. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.’ Part of him was itching to share his theory, but he managed to restrain himself, knowing that at this stage it would only confuse the issue. ‘It also says the man was believed to be alive when he first landed in the rubbish pit. Apparently SOCO found a lot of blood and they figure he must have bled to death in the hole.’

  Leanne and Pete exchanged grimaces.

  Cam turned the fax over then flapped it at Derek. ‘This it?’

  Derek told him it was.

  Disappointed at the absence of DN
A results, he handed the fax to Pete to pass around.

  ‘It says here the time of death was approximately the same as Pilkington’s,’ Pete remarked as he looked at the report.

  ‘No surprises there,’ Leanne said.

  Cam nodded. While his constables continued to discuss the case, he sat back down at the table, collecting his thoughts. After a moment he said, ‘Pauline Copley said Ivanovich had a mate called Shane. It has to be the same bloke. I’ll get Toorrup onto it.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  That night, as he drove to Jo’s house, Cam’s mind hovered over the image of Jack Ivanovich like a bird of prey. Sickening scenes of Pauline Copley’s rape competed for space in his head with the playback of Pizzle’s final agonising moments.

  If the body in the wool bale belonged to Pizzle.

  Doubting Thomas might have expected the worst, but Cameron Fraser hoped for the best. He was determined to cling to the smallest ray of hope until the DNA tests proved otherwise.

  And the evidence suggesting Jack Ivanovich was the perpetrator was by no means conclusive. The man certainly sounded as if he was capable of cold-blooded murder, and his disappearance was suspicious enough. But their case against him had more holes in it than an onion bag and Cam had no trouble imagining what it would be like once a defence lawyer had finished with it.

  The presence of Ivanovich’s fingerprints and hairs in the shearing shed, a lawyer would say, did not mean he was there at the time of the murder; the prints could have been left over from some other visit. Pauline Copley had seen Pizzle pick Ivanovich up in the car on several occasions, so they obviously knew each other. Perhaps he was a frequent visitor to the shed; perhaps he was thinking about investing in the tearooms?

  But if that was the case, why did Rita claim to know nothing of their acquaintance? She was either lying to Cam for some reason of her own, or Pizzle had been lying to her, not wanting her to know about the bad company he was still keeping.

  And then there was the death of Shane Brock, another of Ivanovich’s acquaintances. How had Ivanovich been able to overpower both of them? Although the forensic evidence didn’t suggest it, Cam toyed with the idea that there might even have been a fourth party in the shed that night.