Burning at the Boss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery) Read online

“Come on,” I said to Miriam, eager to reassert my authority. “Let’s see where this takes us.”

  We didn’t have hats or any other kind of cover. I knew that my bronzed body would withstand the fiery sunrays. But Miriam’s pink skin and freckles would suffer. Never mind. It was my feeling that, right now, at some level, she was desirous of some pain, some suffering. So why should I intervene? Let her endure a bit of self-flagellation from the beating sun, to be followed, no doubt, by the penance of sunburn.

  We walked across the rugged field. Tufts of yellowing grass underfoot suggested that in better days this was a place where animals grazed. As we neared the ridge I realized that the officer in the patrol car would soon be able to see us. I looked around, seeking an alternative route. But short of getting on our knees and crawling we were just going to have to risk it.

  “Can you run?”

  She nodded. I took her hand and we dashed the final thirty-or-so yards across the lumpy, sun-baked terrain. We were now on the other side of the ridge. It was just a further couple of hundred yards to the charred trees, and presumably to the house as well.

  “I’m doing well, Johnny, don’t you think?”

  “You’re doing very well. Running across a field like that in the middle of summer.”

  “No. I meant that I’m not crying. Not yet. I’m doing well.”

  I flashed her a smile and squeezed her hand. “You are doing very well.”

  We walked towards the trees. The ridge widened into a low, flat mound, stretching up just to head height. And suddenly right before us, on the other side of the mound, past an expanse of grass, were the remains of the burnt-out house.

  Miriam gasped. Even I felt startled. Virtually nothing remained. We were looking at a smoldering pile of debris—just sheets of corrugated iron that presumably once formed the roof, interspersed with some black wooden beams. The pastor hadn’t had a chance. Mercifully it must have been over quickly.

  A brick chimney remained standing, as if on guard, and in one corner we could see what appeared to be an enamel bathtub poking out from under the rubble. Surrounding it all were blackened trees and a few stumps. A layer of dust and smoke hung in the still air.

  “Oh Johnny,” said Miriam, and her voice cracked. She took my hand again. It seemed an opportunity to wrap a protective arm around her, but suddenly she walked forward, pulling me with her. Then she stopped. “How could anyone...?” she began. She pulled me nearer. “I didn’t expect…” I thought she was about to start crying. But as I watched she seemed to be steeling herself. “Johnny, you will get them, won’t you?” She looked at me with clear brown eyes, and no hint of tears.

  “Get them?”

  “Whoever did this. You must find them. You’re a private detective.”

  “You want me to try to find who did this?”

  “I can pay you.”

  “Pay me? But…”

  “Yes, of course.” She looked at me oddly. “Why do you think I asked you to come with me today?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Exactly. What made me think that Miriam might need me for emotional support? She was a tough, twenty-first-century, self-sufficient woman. As far as I knew, she had lived without a man for many years. Come to think of it, why did she even want to date me at all? Loneliness, probably. I could think of no other reason.

  I actually thought I had changed. But now, as I felt the gloom descend, I realized that my self-pity was still there, an innate part of me, an ingredient of who I was; just like Miriam and her freckles. Sure, you might be able to get rid of them, but you would leave behind some pretty awful scarring.

  And I reflected—what sort of catch was I for a woman? Little money, a precarious and sometimes perilous job as a private detective, one disastrous marriage. Yes, I knew that I bore a certain aura as a former leader of the resistance movement in East Timor, a freedom fighter. But that had turned me into…what? A killer. Little more.

  * * *

  We stood together on a patch of blackened grass gazing on the ruins of the little home. I realized that a small path had been cleared to the center through all the rubble, with sheets of iron removed and tossed into piles. Presumably this had been to retrieve the body and to search for evidence. In the distance we could hear soft voices, reminding us that police and fire officers were still in the vicinity.

  “That was the living room,” said Miriam, pointing to a stack of corrugated iron sheets. “And next to it was his bedroom. And over there, near where the bathtub is, was a little room, a kind of storeroom that he used as his study. And that was it. Oh Johnny, this is too terribly, terribly sad.” She took my hand, and held it tight, and my self-confidence returned. She did need me for more than my detective skills. I turned to her and smiled.

  I reflected that people were naturally drawn to the place of a tragic death. Parents wanted to see the exact spot where their son died in a car crash. Or the beach where their daughter drowned. But these were to gain a sense of understanding about what happened, a feeling of closure. A few quiet tears might be shed, but my experience was that it was at the sight of the body or at the funeral that real emotions were expressed.

  And so now, as I looked at Miriam, it appeared that she was quietly reflective. Her face was taut but there was no sense that she was about to burst into tears. If anything, she appeared angry.

  Abruptly she walked forward, right into the house itself. “There’s just nothing left,” she said. “Just nothing at all.” I touched a sheet of corrugated iron. It was still warm.

  We moved around to the other side. Now I could see that we had approached the site from the back. The grass we had walked across was some kind of backyard, although no fence separated it from the expanse of farmland. As we walked around I could see the driveway that led out to the road.

  And there on the road, about eighty yards away, was the fire engine that I had noticed before, together with a police car that I hadn’t spotted. A group of officers were standing and talking. A couple were eating food. If they turned and peered in our direction they would surely spot us.

  “We have to be careful,” I said in a soft voice. “Let’s not stay too long.”

  “This is my father’s house,” she said in a somewhat petulant tone. “I think I’ll go over and ask them to get moving and find out who did this, instead of standing around eating sandwiches.”

  “Don’t worry. Their bosses are doing that. But right now this is a crime scene. Let’s move out of their line of sight.” She let me lead her away to a spot on the other side of the still-smoking ruin.

  I pondered on the pastor. I had never met him and knew few personal details. At our meetings Miriam had spoken little about him, other than to make it clear that she had trouble being together with him in the same room.

  But I knew his reputation. This was the man the newspapers went to when they wanted to show up Christians as intolerant. He had extreme opinions on everything, from abortion to stem cells to gay marriage to feminism, and clearly enjoyed expressing them. He didn’t seem bothered that so many other Christians were embarrassed by his outspoken utterances.

  What the press seldom mentioned was that he also ran a major ministry helping the orphans of Asia. Almost single-handedly he had established a chain of orphanages around Asia, and Christians throughout Australia—indeed, Christians throughout the world—gave regularly to fund them. One of these institutions was in my homeland, East Timor. That fact alone was a further impetus for me to accede to Miriam’s desire that I try to track down the killer.

  “There’s nothing,” she said suddenly. “Nothing. I thought…” She stopped. “I don’t know what I expected. But I thought, well, I thought I’d walk inside his house. Or see his desk and his computer. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. But I didn’t think it was going to be like this. So…so complete.”

  It wasn’t the moment to tell Miriam that I had seen far worse—entire villages napalmed by the enemy. But that took nothing away from the fact that dying in a
fire is a particularly gruesome way to go. The pastor was an old man. He probably knew his best years were behind him. Yet he surely could never have expected to die like this.

  Miriam spoke: “I can’t see any of his belongings still here. Just nothing. It’s all gone. Nothing to take home with me.” I could see her eyes were glazed, though probably as much from the intense sunlight as from the emotion of our visit, and her skin was damp.

  “There might be something under this rubble. But I don’t think we should start fossicking around. It’s a crime scene. And it could be dangerous.”

  She seemed to see the logic in this. She didn’t object.

  It was then that I realized that a couple of the officers seemed to be looking in our direction. I thought that one of them might have been pointing.

  “Miriam, I think they might have seen us.”

  She stood rooted, as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Miriam, let’s go.” I took her hand. With reluctance she followed.

  We walked quickly across the grass and back along the ridge. I glanced behind me and saw the two officers walking towards the scene of destruction. But then we slipped behind the ridge and vanished from their sight.

  Escaping from the Australian police was easy. Escaping from my nightmares was altogether more difficult.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They started a few months earlier—the nightmares—around the time I began going out with Miriam.

  I am ten years old, and I am about to meet my father for the first time—the father who disappeared before I was born.

  The missionaries dress me up in grey pants and a white shirt and they brush down my thick black hair with some kind of oil. This is the day I have been dreaming about. I could not be more excited.

  My mother arrives. She is wearing a pink floral dress and purple high heels and bright red lipstick, and once again I think that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, even though I don’t see her often. She gives me a kiss, but through the heavy perfume I can smell something else. For she is drunk.

  Without acknowledging the missionaries she takes my hand and we walk together through dirt alleyways to a café alongside convoys of motor scooters and their wolf-whistling young riders. A man is waiting. He is young and swarthy, with a heavily pimpled face. He is wearing oil-stained brown trousers and a black shirt. He is the only customer, and he is seated at a back table, working his teeth with a toothpick. I look at him and in my nightmare I know one thing. He looks nothing like me. I am sure of something else too—he is not the sort of man my mother would have a romance with.

  He seems to know we are here, even though he has not even looked up. “Hello,” he says in our native Tetun tongue. “How are you?”

  “Good,” I say.

  Now he looks at me, but he offers no sign of friendship. He doesn’t try to shake hands or put a fatherly arm around my shoulders. “You want something to drink?”

  I shrug.

  He walks over to the lady proprietor. My mother follows. I don’t see what happens next, but suddenly they’re shouting at each other. My mother is screaming. She hits him. He hits her back.

  Then he walks to me. “She hired me to pretend I’m your father. Promised me something special. I hope you’re proud of your mother. Proud of having a mother who’s a whore.” He spits on the floor as he walks out.

  My mother is by the window crying. Then she runs out after him. I stand alone, terrified.

  That’s my nightmare. More nights recently than I care to imagine.

  And of course it isn’t just a nightmare.

  It actually happened.

  * * *

  I glanced at Miriam, who was now back in the car with me. Her elegant composure was no more. She was breathing heavily and her face was wet. The intense heat, the race across the field, the emotion of the occasion—all had conspired to drain her.

  And I thought: why does every adult seem to travel through life feeling angry that their parents didn’t do enough for them (me), or guilty that they haven’t done enough for their parents (Miriam)? Or both? Is there not some location, some state of grace, where all relationships are mended, where all dwell in harmony and sweetness and light? I guess that place is heaven.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As we walked into Miriam’s kitchen I knew her mood was fragile. She had barely spoken at all during the journey back. I felt she somehow blamed me for—what? That her father had been killed? No, of course not. That I still didn’t know who did it? No, she wasn’t so unreasonable. Probably it was that I hadn’t supported her sufficiently when the police tried to stop her viewing the house.

  “You’ll have a coffee, won’t you?” It was spoken almost as a reproach. Like so many of the women I met in Australia, she insisted on drinking herbal teas that tasted like freshly brewed grass clippings.

  “Go and sit down,” I said. “Or freshen up. I’ll make you some tea.”

  “I think I should keep busy. I need to make myself tired if I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.”

  Miriam lived in a compact wooden bungalow a few streets over from the main Healesville shopping strip. She’d bought the place soon after moving out here to teach. It was tiny by local standards, with three petite bedrooms and a small living room that opened onto a back garden. I guess it was all she could afford at the time. But house prices had since soared beyond anyone’s imagination, even out here in Healesville, and it had proven a good investment.

  “You probably need lunch,” she said. Her face was still damp.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t be offended if she went and took a quick shower, or at least changed into dry clothes.

  But I felt she was still in self-punishment mode.

  I sat at the kitchen table. This room was small, like the rest of the house—just a narrow space with a table and a few chairs. A sink, a stainless steel bench and an oven were on one side, a refrigerator and lots of white-painted cupboards on the other, and, at the end, a walk-in pantry. It resembled a picture from a 1970s women’s magazine.

  With silent efficiency she brewed tea and coffee, then placed the cups on a tray, along with milk, sugar, a packet of wheat crackers and some slices of cheddar cheese. I carried the tray to the living room.

  Harsh sunlight flooded the room. Miriam turned on a tall fan and drew a long white curtain across the high French windows. Even with the curtain pulled the room remained bright. I placed the tray on a table and we sat together on her sofa.

  She looked at me. “He was a good man.”

  “He had a good heart,” I agreed. I knew I had to be careful in what I said. But I was happy to hear her words. She wanted to talk.

  “He was doing all that charity work. All those orphanages. Why didn’t the newspapers mention those? Instead of always making him out to be so intolerant?”

  “I think he was his own worst enemy. He loved the microphone.”

  “Exactly. But if people really got to know him…”

  She stopped, unable to continue. For no one knew Pastor Reezall better than his two daughters, Miriam and her younger sister Sarah, and neither could stand him.

  “He was a difficult man,” she muttered. I busied myself putting milk and too much sugar into my coffee. She sipped at her tea.

  She looked at me again. “Johnny, I am sorry to impose on you like this. When I got the news I was so confused. I didn’t know who else to call. It sounds silly, but you’re a private detective.”

  “I’m a friend.”

  “A friend. Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean you’re not. I mean…” Her voice cracked, and I thought she was about to break down in tears. But she tightened her face and continued: “A dear friend. And that’s the reason I called.”

  I placed cheese on a cracker and munched it. She did the same.

  She spoke again. “I’d just dropped Jonah at his school. The local elementary school. They run a before-school program for working mothers like me. Then I drove to my school and w
ent to the staff room for a cup of tea before class. Next thing a couple of police officers arrived, a man and a woman, looking for me. They took me into the principal’s office. Of course I thought it must be Jonah, even though I’d just dropped him off thirty minutes before. You can imagine how I felt. I was shaking. But then they said it was my father. A fire destroyed his home. Last night. And they said it was almost certainly deliberate. The smell of petrol was everywhere.”

  “Where is Jonah?”

  “Still at school. No need to take him out of class. I’ll tell him when he gets home. I’ve arranged for a friend to bring him.” She looked at her watch. “He’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

  “How’s he going to take it?”

  “Why should he care? A grandfather who hardly acknowledges you exist.” Her voice now became bitter. “Seldom sends you presents. Doesn’t take you to the park or to the movies or fishing or whatever. Probably wishes you’d never been born.”

  “It was hard on your father...” Immediately I regretted my words.

  “Hard on my father? You mean because Jonah’s a…?” She didn’t complete the sentence. “Because I’m not married. Had a baby without a ring on my finger?”

  “Your father should have been more…”—again it was important to find the right word—“more accommodating. Perhaps a little more loving.”

  “Perhaps a lot more loving. All his life.” And with that she burst into tears.

  I put an arm around her. It was at least five minutes and many, many tissues later before she could talk again.

  “Thank you Johnny,” she said at last. I gave her a sympathetic grin. “You will find who did it, won’t you? I’ll pay you.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not taking your money. But you do realize that the police will do a far better job than me.”

  “Why should the police care? He wasn’t a popular man.”