Wednesday, 1 a.m.
He doesn’t know how long he’s kneeling there, staring at the flames, the smoke, trying to reject the knowledge that no one can survive a fire like that. It feels like a lifetime, an eternity, but it might only be a minute or two before he hears the crowd muttering behind him, then someone calling his name, someone crouching on the ground beside him, arms around his shoulders.
He turns. It’s Blair. Blair is there beside him, concern in his eyes, shock even, but he’s there, he’s alive. Walker grabs him by the shoulders, stares at him. It’s Blair. It’s Blair. Enfolds him in a hug, feels Blair hugging him back. The relief. He’s never felt anything like the relief he’s feeling now. Blair helping him stand. ‘You alright, cuz? You alright?’
‘How … Where … Thank god you’re alive.’ He can barely speak, his throat choking with emotion.
‘I was talking to Tracy and having a smoke, down by the water on the other side of town,’ says Blair. ‘Wind’s blowing the other way – I didn’t smell it till I was almost home.’
Walker doesn’t care why or how. Blair’s alive and that’s enough. But Blair’s face is haggard.
‘Todd was in there,’ says Blair. ‘Did he get out? Have you seen him? I put him to bed earlier, he was out of it, pissed. Did he get out?’ There’s horror in his eyes as he looks at the flames.
Walker starts to run back towards the house, towards the fire crew. ‘Todd Mullins is in there!’ He’s shouting to be heard through their protective gear, the noise of the fire. The heat is still ferocious, hot on his face many yards from the house, little flakes of ash stinging the bare skin on his arms.
‘Get back, for fuck’s sake,’ Paul Campbell shouts at him. ‘If he’s in there, there’s nothing we can do now.’ Walker hesitates until Campbell pushes him in the direction of the road. ‘You’re in the way here, get back.’
Two groups of blokes are working with buckets and hoses, damping down the neighbouring gardens, spraying the neighbouring houses. There are three big fire hoses on Blair’s place, the water only slowly winning the battle against the flames, the smoke still pouring out, dark and lethal, the heat shimmering in the floodlights, but the flames lower now, slowly running out of fuel.
The group of onlookers is standing on the other side of the road now, pushed back by the heat of the blaze. Mrs Pidgeon, Vero, and he glimpses Dean Wilson further back beside an older couple he doesn’t know. But no sign of Todd. He and Blair walk over. Vero’s face is pink-hued and flushed from the heat, Mrs Pidgeon, with her thin lips pressed hard together, sitting in judgement as always.
‘Either of you seen Todd Mullins?’ he asks.
‘Not since the pub earlier,’ says Vero.
‘Was he in there?’ asks Mrs Pidgeon, nodding towards the flames. Walker doesn’t answer but she must read something in his eyes. ‘Someone’s killed him, then,’ she says. ‘That fire was set. I can tell you that for certain. A fire like that doesn’t start up out of nothing. Not with that kind of heat. That fire was deliberate.’
The first streaks of dawn are visible, pale pink on the eastern horizon, before they’ve got the fire dampened down and under control. Walker is exhausted. He and Blair have spent the night working with the local blokes to save the neighbouring houses and keep the fire from spreading. They were aided by a still night. Any wind and the conflagration could easily have taken half the town – the wooden houses, the dry gardens – with it. They’re gathered in a group now, in front of the smouldering remnants of Blair’s rental. Not much left of it, barely a carcass of a house. The group is sombre, Blair particularly hard-hit. There’s been no sight of Todd Mullins all night. It’s still too hot to check the house but it seems more and more likely he was inside.
‘I shoulda stayed with him or let him sleep it off in the car,’ Blair says. ‘What the fuck was he doing to start a fire like that?’
‘Probably got up to cook something, left it on the stove, fell asleep … A fire can catch pretty quick,’ says Jason, the nurse, who’d arrived with his first-aid kit and spent the night patching up and treating minor burns and scrapes. He touches Blair on the shoulder. ‘It’s lucky you weren’t inside too, mate.’
‘I coulda got him out,’ says Blair.
‘Or you would have died too. That thing went up so fast, no one had a chance.’
‘Jesus,’ says Paul, ‘what a terrible way to go.’ Beside him, Susie Smith, her face streaked with ash and grime, eyes red, turns and retches into the gutter.
‘You OK?’ asks Walker.
She nods. ‘It’s the smoke,’ she says, but her face is pale and wan beneath the dirt. Another man dead, thinks Walker. In a small town like this, it’s hard to bear.
Eyes on the wreckage, they don’t notice the police cruiser until Stones pulls up, gets out, eyes bleary, shirt crumpled, two deep frown lines between his eyebrows. ‘What the fuck happened?’ he asks, looking around. ‘And why didn’t you call me?’
It’s Mrs Pidgeon who fills Stones in. ‘I live on the other side’ – her head jerks across the street. ‘Smelt smoke just before one a.m., saw it was this place and called the fire team. They were here no more than ten minutes later, I reckon. The place was already lit up. Burning like crazy. That wasn’t no cooking fire, no accident. It burnt that fast … I reckon it was lit on purpose.’
‘I’d agree with that,’ says Paul Campbell. ‘I head up the volunteer fire brigade here. Never seen anything like it. So fast and so hot, I’m sure there was accelerant involved.’
There’s muttering in the crowd, a shocked murmur.
‘We think Todd Mullins might have been inside,’ says Walker, speaking quietly to Stones.
Stones turns to him. ‘Mullins?’ His voice is thoughtful. ‘He was mouthing off in the pub last night, saying he knew who killed Mark and Karen. Pissed as a parrot – couldn’t get any sense out of him. But if this was lit deliberately, maybe someone took him seriously.’ He looks around, getting his bearings. ‘This isn’t Mullins’s place though?’
‘Nah, it’s Blair’s. Him and two blokes rent here but the others are away and Todd’s been staying here.’
‘Ah, yeah, that’s right,’ says Stones. ‘Who else knew Mullins was staying here?’
‘Common knowledge, I’d say,’ says Walker.
Stones casts his eyes around the group. The night is fading, dawn light illuminating the exhausted, ash-streaked faces of the volunteers. ‘Blair got out alright, did he?’
Walker feels the same sensation of shock and relief that he’d had earlier, of knowing that Blair could have died, of knowing he didn’t. ‘He wasn’t home, thank god. He’s OK.’
‘Right,’ says Stones. He raises his voice. ‘OK, this is officially a crime scene: I’m closing it off. No one’s to enter the garden or house until we’ve had specialist forensics check out what happened and to see if there’s a victim in the house or not. Anyone entering the scene will be arrested for tampering with evidence.’
There’s a long silence, then Paul Campbell says to the group, ‘Thank you all for your efforts tonight, we couldn’t have done it without you. You saved at least a couple of houses for sure. Breakfast at the servo, free of charge to all who helped. Let’s leave the officer to do his job.’
The crowd slowly disperses until only Stones, Walker and Blair are left standing there. Blair a little off to their left, looking at the remains of the destroyed house in front of him, shoulders slumped.
‘Grab some brekky, mate,’ says Walker, going over to him. ‘You can have a rest at the cabin, let Grace know where I am.’
‘Not so fast,’ says Stones. ‘I’m in charge here, and I need to talk to Blair. He’s a person of interest to this inquiry.’
Walker turns. ‘Can’t he get some rest first? He’s been up all night, he’s lost everything, a mate has died …’
‘It’s alright,’ says Blair. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’
‘We’ll do it at the station,’ says Stones, gesturing with his head at the police cruiser. Blair walks to the passenger door but Stones calls out, ‘Nah, get in the back, mate.’
Walker meets Blair’s eye and Blair gives him a nod. It’s OK, the nod says, no worries.
Stones is watching the two of them. As Blair gets into the cruiser, he turns to Walker. ‘Listen, thanks for your help so far,’ he says. ‘Appreciate it. But this is a Queensland Police matter, and I won’t be needing you, going forward.’