It was mid-afternoon by the time I finished the paperwork. I’d rushed through because I still needed to check on Daphne’s daughter. When I was done, I’d stopped for a quick coffee, and flipped through Mysteries of the Unexplained. It was a hardcover book that I’d borrowed from the Holbrooke Public Library. I think the librarian was getting slightly shitty that I hadn’t returned it yet. On the cover, there was a picture of a solar eclipse, a pyramid and a disembodied eye floating in front of it. It was the only source of admittedly inaccurate information that I had on all the weird bullshit I’d been dealing with in Holbrooke. At least it was right about the werewolves. I flipped through the book quickly, past the page on sasquatches—which always gave me the willies—until I found the page on spontaneous human combustion. Unusually hot fires without any source of ignition. There are stories about it throughout history. In 1641, an Italian knight had a little too much to drink and started vomiting fire before exploding into flames. In 1725, a French innkeeper woke to the smell of smoke and discovered that his wife was nothing but a pile of ashes. The common denominator seemed to be alcohol. No mention of strange, crimson weed. I closed the book in frustration and rubbed the stubble on my chin. The memory of the burning, bubbling flesh was still fresh. The cigarette butt was tagged and bagged on the desk. No leads and a Detective Senior Sergeant intent on shutting down the case. Maybe I expected too much looking for answers in a book called Mysteries of the Unexplained. I marked the page with an old receipt and left it by the typewriter on my desk.
Needed to check on Sandy.
Finishing the paperwork, I took a quick walk down the main street to drop it in the post box outside the news agency, glaring The Giant Prawn most of the way. Bloody wankers.
There were already rumours of the dramatic police chase and subsequent death. It’s good to remind people that you’re still on the beat. I dropped the paperwork in the post box and paid seventy-five cents for a western called The Devil’s Number by Clay Anthony. With things getting weirder and more bullshittier, I needed to retreat into something clear-cut where the good guys triumphed and outlaws didn’t spontaneously burst into flames. Jack Fowler down at the news agency knew pretty much everything that happened around Holbrooke so I asked him about the family who owned the house where Sandy’s boyfriend was supposed to be living. There was money there, he said, they came up every summer from Kew or Cambetwell, wasn’t sure which.
There was a chill in the air when I returned to the station and pointed the patrol car towards the highway. Sandy’s boyfriend was living in the old, white house on Eagle Point road. I accelerated as the car left town, ocean on one side and the rolling hills on the other.
I didn’t know who owned the house but everything about it suggested money. Most of the year, the windows were dark, house unoccupied. Nevertheless, the lawn was well-maintained and the long winding driveway that was lined with ancient cypress trees was raked regularly. Most people in Holbrooke couldn’t afford that sort of thing which meant that we were forced to spend half of Saturday in the garden red-faced and swearing. I’d seen the occasional car there during summer: a sleek, black BMW that would have been hideously expensive to maintain.
I pulled up outside the house and killed the engine, it ticked quietly. In situations like this it, it was often advantageous to take your time and give people a chance to shit themselves. Law abiding citizens would wonder why the local constabulary had pulled up outside their house. They’d get nervous and make mistakes when you talked to them. For a job where you were often racing against the clock, silence was sometimes a copper’s best friend.
I stepped out of the car, strode up to the veranda and knocked on the door. I detected movement in the gloom of the house, through the lace curtains.
I knocked again. Louder and more impatiently this time.
“Police. We need to talk.” I raised my hand to knock again when the door suddenly opened. There was a young man on the other side. Calm and composed. There was a smile beneath the blue eyes. His blonde hair was parted on one side and slightly shaggy like Robert Redford in The Sting.
“Good afternoon, Officer. How can I help you?” There was a hint of concern in his voice but the words were too calm and calculated. Within a few seconds, I decided that I didn’t trust the little shit much further than I could throw him.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, playing along with the pretence of civility, “I’m looking for Sandy Cuthbert. Her mother tells me that she didn’t return home last night and I’m attempting to determine her whereabouts.”
“Sandy?” he asked innocently. “She’s asleep upstairs.”
“May I talk to her?”
“She’s very tired.”
“Perhaps you could wake her.”
“She’s really tired,” he replied, running a hand through his sandy blonde hair, “if you know what I mean.”
I gave him a cold stare and remained silent.
“Would you like to come in?”
That caught me off guard. I thought he was going to turn me away but he’d changed tactic suddenly, doubling down on the charm offensive.
There was something off about the kid. Every word, every gesture was obviously calculated to win me over. It probably worked on others. That charm had probably seen him through most of his life. In my time, I’d seen that sort of false smile and dead-eyed stare before. Criminals who drove around with a body in their trunk in the hope they’d be pulled over and be able to charm their way out of a minor traffic infraction. The ones who smiled and chuckled with you in the interview room, pretending they were your best friend and sharing a cigarette. I’d met criminals who were smarter and more charming that this little shit.
“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to come in.”
I pushed the door open the door and he was forced to step back. “Julian, right?” I said, wandering into the living area and casting my eye around. He was definitely off-guard now. Coppers. We’re worse than vampires. Don’t invite us in. We’re not going to drain your blood, but we are going to take a good bloody look around the place. This little prick had seriously misjudged. He’d just given me legal carte blanche to take a good nosey look around.
I marched into the living room. There was a pile of textbooks and some periodicals on the corner of the coffee table, I picked one up and started leafing through. “University student, then?” He took the publication from my hand, gave a forced smile and returned it to the pile.
“Yes,” he said. “Law, mostly.”
“And a little bit of literature as well.”
“Bit of a reader myself. Westerns mostly. Love a good cowboy story, don’t you?”
“Not really my type of thing. I tend to read contemporary literature.”
There was something refined and utterly slappable about the way that he pronounced contemporary. “Ever read any Hemingway?” I asked, peering through to the kitchen, where I could see a table with two places set.
His face remained impassive.
“Hemingway hasn’t written much lately,” he said.
Another smug smile.
“No,” I replied, “I don’t imagine he has.”
I turned my back on him and walked over to the window, watching him from the corner of my eye. He glanced fleetingly at the second-floor landing.
I rested a hand on the butt of my service revolver.
“Wouldn’t mind a cuppa,” I said, gesturing towards the kitchen. “It’s been quite an eventful day.”
He hesitated for a moment, before disappearing into the kitchen. There was the sound of water, the clink of cups and slow rumble of an electric kettle.
“Didn’t finish university myself,” I said, attempting to keep him talking. “Joined the police force instead. How’s the law degree going?” I padded quietly to the foot of the stairs, stole a glance at the landing: two doors probably leading to bedrooms.
Grey reappeared in the kitchen doorway. “I told you,” he said whispered, “she’s sleeping.”
I nodded slowly. The kettle clicked off. He turned and I heard him pouring water into the cups.
“I have a placement next year he said,” rummaging around in the cupboard, “with quite a prestigious firm.”
I stole up the stairs quietly while he was preparing the tea. His pretentious voice droned on downstairs. You could always depend on people who were obsessed by the sound of their own voice.
My footsteps were silent as I padded across the carpet to the first door. Afternoon light leaked through the closed blinds of an upstairs window. Glancing over my shoulder, I nudged it open with the toe of my boot. The room was empty. Turning quickly, hoping to make it downstairs before he noticed that I was gone, I opened the second door.
When I saw what I inside, my hand reached instinctively for the revolver at my hip, and I spun around.
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye.
Bloody hell. Didn’t clear the room.
The first blow knocked me to the ground, revolver cartwheeling across the carpet, and the second blow knocked me out entirely.