Burning at the Boss.

by Martin Roth.

PROLOGUE.

He is a gunrunner, and at this moment in our history a gunrunner is almost as important to me as life itself.

He is strong and stout, with a paunch and many dark secrets. He tells me his name is Grapper. Under a bright Asian moon we drink coffee from cans that once held beef and I tell him our three most urgent needs. Guns, guns and guns. Plus ammunition.

He regales me with anecdotes about smuggling weapons to rebel fighters throughout Asia, though I hear little. I have not eaten in two days, and yesterday I lost one of my best men.

But his arrival gives me hope. Because this provision of weapons from a secret donor tells me that someone cares. We are not alone in our struggle.

"I've always wanted to meet the famous Johnny Ravine," says Grapper. "I've heard all about you. Interesting. The leading freedom fighter has a Western name."

I am about to explain, when an enemy rocket explodes with a fiery flash. A cascade of sparks descends directly on our position. It is time to move.

So he never gets to learn my dark secret. And I never hear his. At least, not until a couple of decades later. But then it is probably too late.

A couple of decades later...

CHAPTER ONE.

You cannot love until you learn to trust.

I recall long nights in the mountains fearful that the next missile blitz will be the one that kills me. I recall just once allowing my heart to yield to a woman and much later learning she was an enemy spy. I recall the years of self-loathing that continued even after I gained sanctuary in Australia. I trusted no one. Not even myself.

Yet through a determined effort of discipline and willpower I have overcome my tendencies towards gloom and self-pity. I am no longer on a path of self-destruction. I have stopped cocooning myself for days on end in my dingy home, subsisting on instant noodles and DVDs of 1950s black and white movies. I actively try to mix with people, to take an interest in them. I no longer deny my weaknesses. I am beginning to trust.

Now I am ready to love.

"Turn left at the next junction," said Miriam Reezall, seated beside me in my spluttering blue Mitsubishi Sigma and directing me as we drove in the fearsome midday heat through a maze of wooded country lanes. "We're nearly there. Johnny, I am so, so nervous."

I had elevated the car air conditioner to the strongest setting, and it resonated like a light airplane buzzing alongside us, while drawing in smoke from the wild bushfires that were spreading through the Yarra Valley and making the car interior smell like a barbecue without the sausages.

It was a bushfire that overnight so mercilessly killed Miriam's father, Pastor Jim Reezall, in his Yarra Boss home, on the edge of the Valley. But this fire was no accident. It was deliberately lit, causing an intense conflagration that incinerated his ancient wooden house, probably in minutes, and then swept up the hillside, scorching several hundred mountain ash trees before the local volunteer firemen brought it under control.

Almost certainly someone had murdered the pastor.

Many would say he got what was coming to him. Pastor Reezall was renowned as the hellfire preacher who seemed incessantly to be calling for fire and brimstone to rain down on the unrighteous of the world. He was the elderly pastor who kept appearing in the local newspapers and on television to condemn sinners. He even had his own late-night show on Yarra Boss community radio where he stridently promoted his views.

I certainly did not welcome the death, but I did not feel entirely unhappy about it, either. I had never met the pastor. But he had two daughters, and for the past few months I had been dating Miriam, the elder of the two. It would be fair to say that love had yet to blossom, but we enjoyed each other's company. We just needed more time together to cement the relationship.

So, in a twisted kind of way that made me feel guilty, I was pleasantly surprised when she phoned this morning with the tragic news.

"Who would do something like this?" she had asked, after I expressed my condolences. It was a rhetorical question. Then: "Could you help me, please Johnny?"

Could I? Of course.

"I need to see Dad's house. What's left of it. The police said it's been pretty much destroyed. Would you drive me? I know it's right out of your way, and you're probably busy, but I really need to be with someone. I can't face going by myself."

She needs me. I'm her rock. The person she can rely on. The first person she reaches out to when she has problems.

I glanced at her. Miriam had a natural elegance that was appealing. She taught English at one of the local secondary schools, but she could have been a deportment teacher, the way she sat upright. Even on these twisting roads she could probably have kept a book balanced on her head. She was wearing a pleated blue cotton skirt and a floral blouse and I guessed that she had been pulled out of class with the news. I approved. It was appropriate clothing for a teacher. I could not comprehend those Australian schools that let their teachers turn up to class wearing jeans and T-shirts.

Had she been crying? It didn't appear so. Her freckled skin was smooth, her eyes were clear, her short, curly, brown hair was neat and tidy and school teacherish. She seemed supremely calm. Perhaps it was simply that the thunderbolt had yet to strike-that the sight of her father's house, or, worse, a visit to the morgue to view the corpse, would cause her to collapse into a paroxysm of weeping. I suspected the reason was somewhat different-after all, as she had told me several times, she and her father just did not get on.

We were passing a farm. Dappled cows huddled under trees to avoid the harsh sunlight. A roadside sign warned of a total fire ban.

"I phoned him a week ago," she said. "I did stay in touch."

"Yeah," I replied, glancing at her once more. What else could I say? In recent years she and her father had seldom communicated. Now I realized why she needed to see the death scene. She was stricken with guilt.

"He was still very healthy," she said. "Even at seventy-four. He was doing push-ups. And I could listen to his radio show. So I knew he was okay. I did stay in touch. And I lived nearby, in Healesville. Just a twenty-minute drive. He knew I'd quickly drive round if he had problems."

I had met Miriam at a fundraiser for Melbourne's small East Timorese community-she was actively involved in refugee welfare work-and she seemed fascinated to learn about my past as a freedom fighter for a couple of decades in East Timor. She had pumped me with questions about what it was like to be a warrior in the jungle, facing death every day, and I had ended up asking her out.

Though I'm not really sure if dating is the right word to describe our involvement. As well as having a teaching job she was a devoted mother to ten-year-old Jonah, and she also seemed to be involved in a myriad of causes. Men were not a priority.

In any case, I hadn't dated a woman for...well, if the truth were known, I'd never properly dated a woman, despite being nearly 50 years old. My spell as a freedom fighter in the jungles of East Timor kept me out of the dating scene for much of my adult life. Yes, I did eventually get married, but to a young girl I hardly knew who later turned out to be an enemy spy. The ensuing couple of years when I tried to deaden all the pain with alcohol-before smuggling myself into Australia-saw me involved with a succession of bar girls. You wouldn't call it dating.

But I was in fine shape. I was good looking-so everyone told me-and had overcome the years of self-hatred. I didn't drink any longer. I didn't play around. I was now back in church, attending regularly. A pastor's daughter ought to appreciate that, even if Miriam didn't herself seem to attend any longer.

She directed me into a narrow dirt lane, surrounded by high, yellow grass, then spoke again: "A lot of people won't be sorry to see him go. He didn't have many real friends..."

Her voice tailed off as we rounded a bend and confronted the scene of the firestorm. I stopped the car and gazed up at a scene of destruction. Before us was an eerie sweeping hillside of hundreds of tall, skinny trees, every single one of them black and leafless, like huge used matches. It was as if we were seeing the trees in silhouette, even though they were starkly lit from above by the high, bright sun. Or as if we were looking at a television image that was all in black and white. A layer of ash on the ground below the trees resembled snow.

I stared ahead, squinting, trying to locate the pastor's house, or what remained of it. But nothing was visible.

A police car was parked obliquely in the middle of the lane, blocking any traffic, and one hundred yards further along, under a sprawling sycamore tree, I could see a fire engine. I drove towards the squad car and stopped next to a temporary sign that told me that the road was closed.

A lone officer, a skinny young guy with a lean face, dark glasses and swept-back brown hair, was inside the police car with the motor running and, no doubt, the air conditioner switched on. He remained motionless as I got out of my car into the searing heat. I approached, and he put his window down a touch.

I leaned against the car. "G'day. Johnny Ravine. I'm a private detective. And a friend of the family. Looking into the death of Pastor Reezall. I've got his daughter in the car with me." I pulled a name card from my pocket and pushed it through the slit at the top of the window. He gave it a cursory look.

"Sorry chum. It's a crime scene."

Chum? I had never been called that before. Wasn't that a dog food? I didn't expect to hear it from a scrawny Aussie policeman in his twenties who was probably half my age-or Miriam's for that matter. Already I was disliking the guy.

"It would mean a lot to her." I pointed back to my car. "Just a quick walk-round of the house where her dad died. She's pretty distraught. You can imagine. We won't be long."

"Crime scene's a crime scene. Can't be done. Sorry." He didn't look sorry.

"Even for his daughter?"

"She should have made some sort of arrangement with my bosses before she came. I can't let her through."

"Where are your bosses? Can I talk to them?"

"They'll be on the road back to Melbourne right now. You've missed them."

I scanned the area. "Where is the house? I can't even see it."

"There's a small dirt track leading to it. Further down where the fire truck is." He beckoned with a thumb, as if he were trying to hitch a ride. "You don't see it from here. It's behind that small hill."

"Someone poured petrol over the place...?" It was meant as a question, not a statement. The officer shrugged and pushed his dark glasses further back on his face.

"I don't see any cars down there with the fire engine. Where are all the investigators?"

"The place was swarming this morning. But they've left."

"Any suspects yet?"

The man seemed to be looking at me hard for the first time. "Look mate, your questions are getting above my pay grade. I don't reckon I'm going to be able to help you much more."

Mate. That seemed an improvement. Not that he was displaying any signs of mateship.

I drummed my fingers on the top of the patrol car, waiting. But he wasn't about to relent. It was at that moment I realized that Miriam had arrived.

"What's going on?" she asked. "We need to get through."

"It's a crime scene," I explained.

She didn't appear to have heard. "That's my dad's house." She banged on the patrol car window. "Excuse me, mister. Can you move your car please, and let us through." Her voice carried authority. No school kid would dare give her trouble. Even in the powerful heat she looked impressively composed.

The officer remained impassive. "You'll need to talk to my bosses."

"This is ridiculous," protested Miriam. "Do you think I'm going to steal something?" She looked around. "I'll have to walk." And she set off down the road.

"No..." I muttered helplessly. The cop would never let her through. He was too young and inexperienced to be expected to exercise discretion. But I could also see that she was determined and that she probably expected me to accompany her.

The officer was out of his car in an instant. He grabbed her arm. "I must ask you not to walk any further," he declared. "This is a crime scene."

I knew I had to intervene. "Miriam, he'll have to arrest you. He has no choice. I'll try to contact his bosses and get their permission. I'm sure they'll let you have a look."

She looked at me with-what? Disappointment? Anger? Pity? I wasn't sure. Without a word she turned and walked back to my car.

"I'm going to report him," she said. "It's my father." Then she pointed across a field to a long ridge that ran towards the scorched trees. "Turn around Johnny. Once we get to that ridge no one can see us from the road. We can get to the house that way."

I did a cautious U-turn in the narrow space. Then I drove back around the bend. Out of sight of the officer I veered off-road and stopped in tall grass, next to some bushes.

"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.