There was a surge of adrenalin and found myself frozen for a second before taking action. That’s the thing about being a copper. Instinct kicks in almost immediately. The shock of it had cost a few vital seconds.

I desperately hoped I wasn’t too late. I dashed off the shoulder of the road and towards the paddock. The man was less than fifty metres away, gouts of flame reaching skyward and plumes of smoke whorling, as he swung his flapped his arms desperately and collapsed on all fours. His skin was black and beginning to blister. Waves of heat radiated from the conflagration, I pulled off the flannelette shirt and started beating at the flames. They arced wildly as if fighting back. The stench of cooking meat filled my nostrils and I gagged on the smoke, stumbling backwards and choking. Gasping for breath, I tried again, launching myself at the burning man. The intense heat kept me from getting close and the smoke burned my eyes. I staggered backwards and looked at the burning man from a distance. He’d stopped moving, dead now, corpse twisted and charred, the sizzle and pop drowned out by the approaching sirens.

 

“You dripping, syphilitic cock,” Detective Senior Sergeant Colin Peterson muttered, standing at the edge of the paddock, hands on the hips of his flared jeans.

I was perched in the back of an ambulance with a blanket around my shoulders. The shaking had subsided but I was still pale and lightheaded. I took deep, regular breaths and pushed my way through the shock, taking small sips from a mug of hot tea. It was a purely physical reaction but the cracks in my composure, particularly in front of Peterson, irritated me. Problematic didn’t even begin to describe the situation. There would be reports and paperwork. The death of a suspect in a high-speed police pursuit always attracted scrutiny even before spontaneous human combustion was factored into the equation. Peterson was going to make my life hell. He despised working in Woorak and Holbrooke. They were a pitstop on the way to a grander posting in the city. The publicity surrounding the UFO incident was bad enough. How was he going to explain this to his superiors? 

“What the hell happened?”

“I identified myself. The suspect fled on foot.” I paused for a moment and took a gamble. “He smelled of petrol. Something must have happened when he knocked over that petrol station. He was carrying a lighter. Then…”

I gestured to the field.

“Fucking hell,” Peterson declared. “Write it up. Mail it to headquarters in the morning.”

He stormed back to his car, the door slammed and it disappeared into the distance. I glanced back to the corpse. The funeral director from Woorak, who doubled as the coroner when things got grim, was busy photographing the scene.

He was infuriated but, like all career cops, had a vested interest in playing down the incident. I could almost imagine the coroner’s findings. Death by suicide. Drug affected individual. The problem with Colin ‘Dickhead’ Peterson is that he didn’t actually give a shit about anyone. Investigating crime wasn’t about doing the right thing, upholding the law…it was about protecting and promoting his career. I listened to the muted pop of the coroner’s flashbulbs and sipped my tea.

Unlike Peterson, I needed to know what happened. There was weird bullshit afoot and I had to do something about it before more people were hurt. Shrugging off the blanket, I took a sip of scalding tea and paced towards the Regal. The constables from Woorak had already dusted for prints and the driver’s door was ajar while we waited for the tow truck. There was a small satchel on the passenger seat which had been taken for evidence. Some cigarette papers, a paperback by Hemingway that I hadn’t read, and a few notes. The car’s cigarette lighter was missing. Removing a pen from my pocket—best not to muddy the waters by leaving my fingerprints on the car—I pulled open the car’s ashtray. It was overflowing but, curiously, the car didn’t smell of tobacco. I hadn’t smoked for three months. There’s something nagging about the smell of tobacco.  Walking past the Coach and Horses, I’ll always feel a lingering desire to light up. He wasn’t smoking tobacco. I couldn’t detect the pungent, piney stench of marijuana. For a moment, I thought it might be the effect of smoke inhalation but…no, I’d had a chance to clear the acrid taste from the back of my throat. There was something odd about the car. A faint, persistent odour of…incense? I reached into the ashtray and removed one of the butts. Definitely not tobacco. Definitely not cannabis. It was crimson and I could feel its lumpy texture through the tightly rolled cigarette paper. I remembered the crazed intensity of the man’s eyes. A mysterious drug that causes spontaneous human combustion?

Fucking hell, I thought, trudging back down the highway towards the patrol car.