Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (4 page)

Caine stood. ‘My mother wouldn’t try to kill herself,’ he said.

‘Okay, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘Look, right now this whole thing is very upsetting and confusing. We can talk more another time.’

‘I’m going to go and check on her,’ said Caine. ‘The surgeon’s supposed to be coming.’

‘Of course. I’ll call in again tonight to see how she is,’ said Scotty. ‘And in the meantime we’ll be trying to find out what happened to your mum.’

Troy stood and eyed the exit. He didn’t want to follow Caine into the ICU, but he’d prefer that to staying to chat with these cops. He just wanted to get out of here. But where was Lucy? He whipped his eyes around the room and spotted her, with Mona, standing before a vending machine way down the end of the hall.

‘So, what do you think of him?’ came Scotty’s voice, behind him.

He’s probably speaking to his partners, Troy thought. He turned around anyway. Scotty was waiting for his reply.

‘He’s pretty upset about his mother,’ he said.

‘You think so?’ said Scotty. ‘If it was me this happened to, I’d be up in your face demanding you find out what the hell happened.’

‘He’s probably just focused right now on making sure she gets through this,’ said Jackson.

Troy felt Scotty’s focus on him, and wondered whether he should tell him that he’d just voiced some of Troy’s own thoughts. But an urgent bustle of staff at the ICU doors stopped their speech. They watched as, further down the corridor, a matching set of swing doors burst open and a blue-gowned doctor skidded through, bolting into the ICU.

Troy dropped his eyes to the floor at the same time as the cops. There was no need to comment on what was going on now. They’d all been in wards like this enough times to allow the cases from the past to fill the silence. Troy felt ghosts writhing in the space between them.

The ICU doors smacked back again, and David Caine stumbled through.

This face I will remember, Troy couldn’t help but think. Now Caine wasn’t a man you could walk past at the shops. Lips drawn back in a silent scream, his eyes were portals to madness. He stared at something no one else could see. Troy wondered whether he was watching his mother’s soul leave the earth.

Caine took another step forward and stumbled, dropped to his knees, slumped forward, his forehead pressed to the floor.

Troy took half a step forwards, towards this portrait of misery.

David Caine threw his head back, his eyes crazed.

‘Mama!’
he screamed.

‘So, what are you going to do now?’ asked Jill. She was sitting on the grass on a slight hill in Centennial Park, facing the lake. With Scotty sitting behind, wrapping her in his huge arms and legs, she felt she had just a little more control than had she been facing him. Being touched, held, was still weird; every now and then her nervous system sent a brief but terrifying message – are you sure this is safe? She felt the question now; her gut clenched, her thighs stiffened and her toes gripped the ground, ready to spring away.

Scotty rested his chin on her head. ‘It’s okay, J,’ he whispered. ‘Check out the ducklings.’

Jill focused on the string of golden cotton balls stumbling after their mum at the edge of the lake. Her nervous system backed off – all right, if you think you know what you’re doing.

She reclined back into Scotty’s chest. They’d headed to the park for lunch after the hospital, but the afternoon was slipping away and they both had places to be.

‘So?’ she said. ‘What’s next for you this arvo?’

‘I’m gonna catch up with the fireys. They’ve got the fire investigation unit on the job.’

‘Where’re you meeting?’

‘Incendie. They want to see the scene again.’

‘I have to admit, this case is fascinating. I kinda wish I could be there.’

‘Well, you can’t come,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a lecture.’

‘Is Emma going to meet you there?’ she asked. Emma Gibson, jet-haired fantasy for most of the male cops in Sydney; probably for a good few of the females, too. In love with Scotty.

Jill felt him sigh into her hair.

‘Yeah, she’s already over there,’ he said.

‘Great.’

‘Well, she is my partner, J.’

‘Oh, really? I’d completely forgotten about that,’ said Jill, and she was suddenly propelled backwards. Scotty had scooped his hands under the arch of her legs and rolled with her. On her back, on his chest, she kicked in the air, trying to hurl herself upright, but Scotty held her. Swiftly, he swivelled her round, let her legs go and tugged at her hands until she sat, straddling his chest.

‘I’m not a fucking turtle,’ she said.

He grinned up at her. His blond hair was mussed with grass, his smile made faint crinkles around his eyes. Huh. When did they get there?

‘Tactically, not a good move,’ she told him. ‘You know I can go forwards and crush your windpipe with my knee. Or go backwards and wipe out the Scott Hutchinson procreation line with my elbow.’

‘Why do you go all schizo-borderline when Emma’s name comes up?’

‘Uh, maybe because I’m sleeping with you, and doing that has been her New Year’s resolution for the past couple of years.’

‘Yeah, well. No one ever keeps those resolutions.’

She slid off his chest but stayed close. The fight left her and she curled her knees up, leaning into his body.

‘We should get going,’ she said. She reached out and smoothed her hand down his face, over the stubble on his tanned skin, smudging her thumb across his lips. He closed his eyes. She did too. It was not a big thing, but it was the first time she’d done anything like it in her life.

‘Jill, I gotta tell you–’ said Scotty, his eyes now open and locked with hers.

She pressed two fingers against his mouth. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘The talking thing – you know it’s not my thing. Let’s do it when we’ve got more time.’ Like, when I’m drunk.

‘Well, yours or mine tonight?’ he asked.

‘As if I’d sleep in your apartment.’

‘I’ll clean it for you.’

‘Yeah? Well, you work on that and I’ll see you there in six months.’

‘You gonna cook?’ he smiled up at her.

‘No, you’re gonna shop. Could you pick up a Chinatown duck and steamed broccoli?’

‘And fried rice?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Gotta keep those carbs up. You’re such a weedy little thing.’

Scotty stood and gestured that he’d help her up. Jill noted him repositioning his right foot higher up the incline and caught the look in his eye. She held out her hand, listless. Aw, what do we have to get up for? Scotty grabbed her hand and then reached out with his other to grab her waist. Not this time, baby. As he leaned over her, Jill stretched up and clamped a hand around the back of his neck, placed her foot on his stomach and straightened her knee. His weight shifted forward and gravity did the rest. Scotty’s two-metre body tumbled forward and she rolled out of the way, watching as he turned the fall into a lithe somersault.

She lay on her stomach in the grass, her chin resting on her hands, her knees bent and her feet up in the air, swinging. ‘You’re getting slow, Hutchinson,’ she said.

‘Next time,’ he said.

She smiled sweetly.

Troy stood with the cops and investigators at the table closest to the bar, one row removed from the table at which Miriam Caine had dined last night. David Caine and his mother had last night been shown to a third-tier setting, seven metres from the window with the gorgeous city view, and far from the entry, where they placed the beautiful people. Whoever was seated up front had to add to the decor for the entering diners, had to intimidate them into jumping into the next bracket with their choice of wine.

Edward Chin, an investigator with the Fire Investigation and Research Unit, took them through his findings. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘the lack of physical evidence at the scene is almost as telling as if we’d found a gas can with prints.’

‘Well, except that then we’d be closer to identifying the perp,’ said Chin’s female supervisor. What did she say her name was? Troy wondered. Carol? Corrine? The surname came to him – Vrisakis.

‘What I mean,’ Chin hurried on, ‘is that although this scene was preserved as quickly as possible, we’ve found nothing useful, and that just doesn’t happen when a fire’s been deliberately lit. There’s usually a lot of trace.’

‘And you’re certain now that’s the case?’ asked Troy. ‘That it was deliberately lit?’ He directed his question to Vrisakis.

Vrisakis raised an eyebrow at Scott Hutchinson.

‘It’s okay,’ said Scotty. ‘Troy’s not just the manager here. He’s also a decorated ex-cop. He’s good people.’

Troy tensed. He knew that he really shouldn’t be listening in on this conversation. He was a civilian now, and Hutchinson could catch shit for allowing him to hang around. Gibson seemed antsy too. The glamour girl with the grey eyes hadn’t steered them in his direction since he’d joined the group.

Vrisakis paused for a moment, staring right at him. Finally, she shrugged and continued. ‘Yes, we are certain that it was deliberately lit,’ she said. ‘We got nothing from the tablecloth, but the victim definitely had accelerant on her blouse.’

Vrisakis took a breath to continue, but Gibson spoke first.

‘Actually,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid we are going to have to ask you to leave now, Mr Berrigan.’

Troy looked to Hutchinson. Not now
–
please! He was finally learning something about how this could have happened. Hutchinson raised a hand to the back of his neck, rubbed. He gave Troy a half-smile. Troy sighed.

‘Sorry, buddy,’ said Hutchinson. ‘She’s right. It’s time to go. You understand.’

‘I’ll wait in the kitchen,’ said Troy. He could use the time to freeze some of the perishables – he might be able to save at least some of the money this place was going to bleed for the next few days.

‘Actually,’ Gibson said, moving towards him, ‘it might be better if we meet you in the lobby.’

‘Say, in half an hour or so,’ said Hutchinson.

Emma Gibson tried to keep the irritation from her eyes as she walked Berrigan to the door of his restaurant. It wasn’t his fault her partner was so soft on protocol. And what the hell was he doing bringing Jackson to the hospital, for crissakes. Emma hated that Jackson had no operational responsibilities right now. It was heaven when Jackson had been undercover – she’d had no time for Scotty at all. Now she was back, and much too close to him. Emma wondered whether Jackson would ever succumb to Scotty’s infatuation for her. On her way back to join the others at the table, she pictured them together at the hospital that day. She felt like hissing. Maybe Jackson already had.

Emma rejoined Scotty and the fire investigators at the table. Better get this meeting going properly, she thought, praying that Captain Andreessen didn’t ever find out that they’d begun it with a civilian sitting in.

‘So you know for a fact now that accelerants were used,’ she said to Vrisakis. ‘I was thinking that there had to have been some kind of fuel up around her face. I can’t believe how badly burned it was.’

Vrisakis frowned. ‘Yes, but there’s something else,’ she said, furrowing her brow and turning to face Gibson. ‘It’s about the face. The fire pattern indicates that some type of accelerant was used, but it’s not the methyl alcohol we found on her clothing.’

‘What?’ said Scott Hutchinson, lifting his head from his police-issue notebook. ‘There were two
different
accelerants? What else was used?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Chin. ‘We’re still trying to find out, but I doubt we’re going to.’

Scotty turned to Vrisakis, held his hand out, his whole face a question. Help me understand this, his gesture read.

‘Hospital treatment of the victim confounded the chemical trace,’ she said. ‘And there was not a lot of material left to work with. Most of the skin on the victim’s head was pretty much burned away.’

Gibson winced.

‘So how can you be sure it
was
a different accelerant?’ asked Scotty.

‘Flame pattern, ignition temp, odour,’ said Chin. He stood with his hands behind his back, a soldier at ease. Vrisakis had her hands in the pockets of her dark slacks.

‘I really don’t understand this,’ said Gibson. ‘How is someone supposed to have poured flammable liquid all over an old woman and no one sees anything? And
what
odour – I mean, I didn’t smell anything but a burned body, and the fireys at the scene said the same thing.’

‘Well, as to the odour of the accelerant on the blouse,’ began Chin. He sat down stiffly, sitting on his hands. ‘Methyl alcohol in its pure form has only a very slight scent, which is of alcohol. It would have been very difficult to detect in this environment.’ He pulled his hands out from under him and studied them. Finally, he clasped them in his lap, like an altar boy.

He’s got a lot more he wants to say, thought Emma, watching Chin. His hands are like his thoughts – they want to break free. He knows more than he’s saying.

‘And we didn’t say that the victim had accelerant
all
over her,’ said Vrisakis.

‘Because what we’d have then is a fire trail,’ said Chin. ‘The accelerant fluid would have flowed down her body, and we’d have run-down burn patterns. We’d also have a liquid burn pattern area on the floor or table here. And because the fire was extinguished so quickly,’ he continued, ‘we would have expected some ignitable liquid residue recovery on the floor around her.’

Emma noted that Chin’s hands now rested, but his eyes glowed with more.

Vrisakis pulled a tissue from her pants pocket, removed her glasses and wiped them. ‘And that’s why Inspector Chin here made the comment about the lack of evidence telling us a lot about this offender.’

‘Go on,’ said Scotty. Without a table to lean on, he sprawled awkwardly on a spindly dining chair.

‘Well, your perpetrator planned this act for some time,’ said Chin. ‘The methyl alcohol on the blouse was squirted from a small device with a narrow propulsion point.’

‘Like a syringe?’ asked Gibson.

‘Exactly,’ said Vrisakis, voice flat.

‘But there was an insufficient amount of this accelerant to reliably cause death,’ Chin went on.

‘None of this makes sense,’ said Scotty. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about who we’re looking for?’

‘Your perp is a cool, collected individual,’ said Vrisakis. ‘Almost all arson attacks have no witnesses. This person had potentially eighty. You’re not looking for your typical crazy. Like Chin said, this crime was planned and meticulous.’

‘He has detailed knowledge about fire behaviour,’ said Chin. ‘Which means he may have committed similar crimes in the past, or have a law-enforcement background.’

Gibson glared at Scotty. He kept his eyes on his notebook.

‘And your offender, who may or may not be male,’ said Vrisakis pointedly, giving Chin a school principal eye, ‘was of course in this room and in the vicinity of the victim within moments of her being ignited.’

A moment passed, then an elevator’s chime sounded faintly outside the restaurant.

‘I gotta say, it seems most likely that Miriam Caine set herself on fire,’ said Scotty.

‘Well, to explain the sequence of events, that possibility may be the most plausible,’ said Chin. ‘Given what the evidence tells us, however, that possibility is less likely than the fire being caused by another person.’

‘How so?’ asked Gibson.

‘Well, we’re not ruling anything in or out,’ said Vrisakis. ‘We should make that clear first off. But there’s the matter of how the accelerant was applied. No trace of it was found on her hands, and no device has been located that could have been used to apply it. More importantly, we found no incendiary device – the implement that ignited the fire. With suicides, the deceased has the lighter or matches on their person; there’s no option to dispose of the incendiary device, nor any reason to.’

‘Couldn’t it have burned in the fire?’ asked Gibson.

‘Nothing like that could have been destroyed so completely in this fire,’ said Chin. ‘We would have found it, or whatever it had been reduced to.’

‘So you believe someone ignited her and took whatever they lit her with?’ said Scotty.

‘We don’t believe anything, Detective,’ said Vrisakis. ‘We’re just pointing out the preliminary evidence.’

‘I still don’t get the two accelerants thing,’ said Scotty. ‘Why would the perp do that? I mean, that would take more time. It’d put this fucker at even more risk of being caught. Why wouldn’t he just double the amount of shit he shot onto her blouse?’

‘I agree,’ said Vrisakis. ‘That, we can’t help you with. It doesn’t make sense, and I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘So you’re positive that there were two accelerants?’ said Gibson. ‘I mean, she was an old lady. Maybe what was on her blouse
was
enough to kill her.’

‘There were two accelerants,’ said Chin. ‘Methyl alcohol has a high vapour pressure, which will flash and scorch a surface, and that’s why the fire flashed so quickly on the blouse. But whatever was on your victim’s face had higher boiling components. These take longer to ignite, but when they do, they’re going to wick, melt and burn, leaving stronger burn patterns.’

‘How revolting,’ said Gibson.

‘Quite,’ said Vrisakis.