He tilted his chair away from his desk and stretched his arms, revealing sweaty, dark patches in his shirt.

"Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum," he said.

Jade Lee giggled.

"I supposed you're used to it, where you come from." he said. "The heat, I mean."

"Oh yeah. I come from Melbourne. Didn't I tell you that? I did tell you," she said. "I was born in Clayton. Very exotic."

"Sorry--I must've forgotten. How come you look so cool, then, and I'm sweating like a pig? Whoops, pig! Get it? Can I get you a cuppa, then?" Foster was on dangerous ground. He'd been sent a constable who was not only a woman but also of Asian descent, even if she had been born in Clayton. They might be used to this sort of stuff in the city cop shops, but it was a new concept in Pelican East. He felt vaguely uncomfortable about the whole deal. He couldn't wait for Vandenberg to get back from his summer break.

"I'll get it," she said.

"No, you stay where you are. Now--how do you take it?" He could cope with tea making. Start on familiar ground, Al old boy.

The ceiling fan made a pathetic job of stirring warm air from one place to another. He opened the window over the sink and was smacked in the face by a blast of even hotter air. "Must be at least forty out there," he muttered.

The phone rang, and Lee answered it. "Hello, Pelican East Police Station. Constable Lee speaking. Oh, yes. Right. Mmm ... okay, I'll tell him. He won't be pleased."

So she knows me well enough, does she, to know if I would or wouldn't be pleased?

She stood in the doorway, smiling. "That was Constable Vandenberg, sir. Ringing from Northern Queensland. He's been cut off by floods. No idea how long he'll be delayed. Looks like you'll have to put up with me for a bit longer."

She was right. He wasn't pleased. Still, he'd have to make the best of it. He jiggled teabags halfheartedly in two cracked mugs with insides that looked like old varnish tins. They hadn't bothered him before, but maybe the station could run to some new ones--in the interests of health and hygiene.

He'd never understood why hot tea on a really hot day made him feel better than cold drinks, but it always worked and today was no exception. He lowered his bulk into his chair and pushed Lee's tea across the desk to her. He'd been feeling vaguely uneasy all day, and now he remembered why.

"How old are you?" he said, "If you don't mind me asking."

She looked surprised at the question.

"Twenty-three. Why?"

"You look younger. I thought you'd be younger, just graduated and all."

"I went to uni first. I've got a degree in psych. It's all in my file. Didn't you read it?"

He mumbled some excuse then drew breath.

"I was hoping you could help me, because you're young. And if you know something about psychology then that's even better." He looked at her sharply to see if she was listening. She smiled. "You see--we've been having a helluva lot of trouble recently with our youngest, Melanie. The other kids all went through adolescence without much more than pimples and the odd fit of the sulks. But Mel, I don't know--she's just beyond us. Whoops." A dribble of tea settled next to the gravy from his lunchtime pie, where his belly distended his shirt. He rubbed at the spots with a tissue.

"So, what's she been up to, then?"

"Since she turned sixteen, she seems to think she can do anything she likes, never mind what we think. She does things just to annoy us."

"That's fairly normal for a teenager, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I s'pose. To some extent. But she's taking it too far. Now she's seeing this petty crim from Dandenong, Gary Spillane. I mean, a policeman's daughter! I just feel like we've lost control. We had a big blow-up this morning. I was as close as I've ever been to hitting her." He concentrated on the stains on his belly.

"Why was that?"

"Oh, she was prancing round the house cleaning her teeth. That riled me to start off with. Mouth full of white goop, splashing everywhere. Said she was going to spend next weekend with Gary at some music festival over the other side of Melbourne, camping. Of course I said oh no, she wasn't. 'How're ya gonna stop me?' she says. 'Lock me in my room? Handcuff me to the bed? Put me in the lock-up?' Me and Dot, we're just at our wit's ends. Don't know what to do with her. We even think she's been climbing out of the bedroom window at night to meet him. It's bloody dangerous, apart from anything else." He looked as miserable as he felt.

The door alarm beeped as a client came through to the watch house counter. Foster partly welcomed the interruption, but wondered what new trouble he would have to cope with.

"I'll go, sir. You finish your tea."

She can't get away fast enough, he thought. I shouldn't burden her with my problems. She's only a kid herself.

She was back in less than a minute.

"It's a Mrs. Montague, sir. Something about missing horses, but she won't speak to me. It's got to be you, she says."

"Why?"

She grimaced. "Could be something to do with my age, race, or sex. Or the fact that I'm a stranger," she said. "Take your pick."

He grunted and moved through to the front office, whose long wooden bench separated him from the public. The walls were decorated with fly-spattered Wanted pictures of villains, Missing Persons details, and a few recruitment posters.

"Yes, Mrs. Montague. How can I help you?"

She was a skinny woman, probably in her late forties. Hide tanned and leathery, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, open-necked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Tight black jodhpurs and calf length boots made her thin legs look as if she'd borrowed them from a spider.

"Thank you. I really didn't want to talk to a ... you know." She jerked her head in the direction of the door.

"No, I don't know. Constable Lee is perfectly able to help you. Anyway, what's the problem?"

She had an upper crust drawl and looked down her nose at him as if he'd just farted. Which he was pretty sure he hadn't done. He'd been trying to control that aspect of his physiology since the young woman had joined his staff.

"Two of my fillies have gone missing. Damned expensive they are, too."

He choked down a smart reply about whether she meant her daughters. "Have you checked your gates and fences? Could they have got out by themselves, madam?"

"Yes, I have and no, they certainly could not. They've been stolen. No doubt about it."

"Right. Well, we'll have to fill in a Crime Report then. What's your address, please, and when would you say they went missing, Mrs. Montague?' He pulled out a green form and painstakingly extracted each necessary piece of information from her and entered it in a neat italic script.

"Answers to the name of Paint, does he?"

"She. I told you they're both fillies. Paint is a piebald. Princess is black, with a white blaze on her forehead."

"And what time did you notice their disappearance?"

"First thing this morning. They weren't there for their morning feed. We've had to supplement their feed for two months now, with this drought. I got the stable girls to have a good look for them, but they're definitely not on the property."

"How much would you say they were worth, then?"

"About two and a half thousand each."

"That much?" He glanced over the form, nodded, and looked up at Mrs. Montague. "That'll do for now. We'll let you know if we hear anything."

"But what are you going to do about it?"

He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd tacked a "my man" onto the end of the question.

"I'll circulate their descriptions to all stations, madam. And I'll keep my ear to the ground."

She huffed and abruptly turned on her heels and left, crashing the fly-wire door behind her and activating the alarm again.

He returned to the office and slid the form under a pile of documents on his desk.

"It's hard to feel like helping some of these people," he said. "She looked at me like I'm something that dropped out of the rear end of her horse."

Lee giggled.

He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. "Not getting any cooler, is it?"

The door banged again, and the alarm sang out.

"'Allo, 'allo, 'allo. Anybody home?"

"Sounds like Ricky Martello. Local comedian. See what he wants, would you?"

Lee returned almost immediately.

"Says he needs to speak to you, sir." She leaned on the doorway and watched Foster sigh as he approached the front desk. Martello was wearing overalls with the buttons undone to his waist. Black chest hair curled through the gap.

"Yes, Rick. What can I do for you?"

"No, mate." He raised his bushy black eyebrows and opened his eyes and his mouth like a magician after his best trick. "It's a case of what c'n I do fer you." He heaved a box of apples onto the desk. "First pickings of the season. Mum knows you like the new season's crop. These are very early because of the heat. Abbas, they are. Nice and crispy."

"Thanks. What do I owe you, mate?"

"No, nothing. Look on it as a gift from the Martellos to the local constabulary."

"Can't do that, son. Come on. How much?"

"Okay, then, but the old lady'll kill me. Ten bucks the lot. What about you, darling? What can I interest you in?"

Lee shook her head. "I live by myself, thanks. I'd never get through a whole boxful."

"Lovely girl like you living by yourself? Let me know if you want any company, eh? Hot enough for you, is it? Well, I'll love you and leave you if I can't interest you in anything else."

As he left and jumped into his white ute, she laughed. "What a sleaze."

"The only good that comes out of that family is their apples," Foster said. "Have one. You'll find they don't have those pesky little stickers on them. Hate them. Once they're off the apple, you can't get rid of them. They just keep on turning up again." He threw an apple to Lee and shambled over to the window that looked out over High Street.

As he crunched into the crispness, he thought yet again what a stupid name it was. High Street for him conjured visions of shops, bustling pedestrians, and busy traffic. This High Street ran perpendicular to the main road, through scrubby bush, with a few houses hidden from the road and the Pelican East Golf Club fronting it a kilometer or so up the road. Too hot for golf today. There was so much traffic, a gray bitser lay stretched out in the middle of the road, having a quiet snooze in the shade. Looked like she'd been there for a while, too.

As he watched, he noticed the sky change color. It went that particular sickly yellow you don't see very often, and he'd rather not see now. The wind suddenly gusted strongly from the north, picking up wrappers from the bins outside the shops in the main road and stacking them against fence posts, tree trunks, and chain link fences.

"Oh, no," he said. "Not again."

"What's the matter, sir?" Jade joined him at the window.

"See that? That color in the sky? Bushfire. Perfect day for it, too. Let's go out the front and get a better view of what's going on."

From the front door, they looked across Pelican East Road, past the little weatherboard church, to the steep, heavily forested hills beyond. A huge column of smoke billowed gray in the far distance, screening the sun and turning it into a softly glowing red disc. The wind slapped hot in their faces.

"North westerly," he said. "Just what we didn't need."

"Will it come this way? The fire?"

"Depends on the wind. If it stays in this direction, with the air so hot and dry, then I'd say there's a good chance. Ever been in a bushfire?"

She shook her head. "City girl, me."

The siren started wailing at the fire station up on the corner of School Road.

"Always turns my stomach, that sound," Foster said. "Nothing good ever comes out of it. Fires, road accidents. Always something horrible."

As they watched, he saw Bob Carpenter run out of the newsagents, yelling something over his shoulder to someone inside. Ted Bailey ran from the hardware store. Phil McIntosh's scarlet ute screamed round the corner from his orchard on Two Hat Road. They and a dozen others rushed into the red brick fire station.

A woman hurried across the road from the white weatherboard cottage opposite. Her straight gray hair hugged her face. Her cotton dress hung limply over her thin frame.

"What do you think, Senior Constable?" she said in a thin, high, English voice. "Do you think we are in for a bad one?"

"Could be, Miss Gaye. Any sign of trouble and you get yourself up to the fire refuge area in behind the rec, quick smart. Just see us if you need any help."

"Thank you. I might put my computer and manuscripts in the car. Just in case. I had young Peter Halliday in only this morning, upgrading it. I'd hate to lose it after all that. Although maybe disconnecting it..."

She hurried back to her home, continuing her conversation with herself.

"What's an old lady like that doing with a computer?" Lee asked.

"She's our resident author. Our own Agatha Christie. A bit eccentric, but she's a nice lady."

A fire truck and a tanker moved out of the fire station, laden with men still pulling on their yellow boiler suits and helmets. Not all men. Lee asked Foster about the woman driving the tanker.

"Young Carrie Hamilton, from the Riding Academy. She's got a good, cool head on her." They watched as the trucks headed north, away from the police station.

"What do you think, boss? What should we be doing?"

"I'll ring HQ to find out what the big picture is. Our job is to sit tight until we get word that it's coming this way. Then it will be 'all systems go.' We'll need to evacuate the kinder, the schools, the nursing home, set up road blocks--"

"What? Just us?"

"No, love." He saw her flinch at the term. Better be careful, you silly old sod, or she'll go you for sexual harassment. "They'll send reinforcements if it looks like things are getting bad."

The phone started to ring, and Foster ran inside to grab it. He snatched at a pencil and took hurried notes. He slammed the receiver down and called Lee over.

"Okay, this is the picture. There are five separate outbreaks in the Mount Misery State Forest. Looks like they could have been lit by a firebug--it's a bit too coincidental, five outbreaks in the same area." They walked over to the big map on the wall, and he pointed the details out to her. "See, there's this very big area of bush northwest of us, and the main reservoir, surrounded by bush, over to the east. That's a lot of fuel. The wind's a northwesterly, so unless they can cut the front off at Bogs Road or the front changes direction, then there's a good chance we'll cop it. Even if it's spot fires, we'll be in for a bad time."

"Not here, though, in the town itself?"

"Well, we call it a town, but look around you." He led her to the window. "We're completely surrounded by bush. Most of the houses are in overgrown bush gardens. The greenies have been such a big influence round here--they lobbied the council to bar people from cutting down trees on their own properties, unless they can get a permit. Which is okay to a point but bloody stupid when it comes to fire control." She's probably a greenie, he thought. Uni education, grew up in the city, she's bound to be a greenie, and I've probably insulted her. Oh well. "So what was reasonably safe a few years ago is heavy with fuel, and there are a lot more houses scattered through the trees now. One good thing, though, is that we've had town water connected, pumped from the reservoir. Before that, you had to rely on your tanks and dams for your water. If it had been a dry season and storages were low, then you didn't have much to fight fires with. Of course, the outlying areas still depend on their own water supplies."

"Have there been many fires here, in your time?"

"A few close shaves. We lost a bit of bush, a couple of sheds, in the past. But no houses or lives, thank God. Not round here, anyway."

"But you think it's more dangerous now? That we could lose people?"

"I'm just saying it's possible. I don't know. But, yes, it's been bothering me for a while, the way things have been developing here. Once a fire gets going, it races up steep hills like these. And the wind can carry burning leaves well ahead of the main front to start new fires in the dry vegetation. We've just been lucky we've had wet summers for the past few years."

Jade smiled. "Funny to think of wet summers being lucky. We always think they're miserable in town. Specially when we're on holiday."

The phone rang again.

"You can answer it this time, Constable. If people are worried, tell them to go to the Fire Refuge behind the community hall. I'm going to listen in to the brigade's radio operators--see if we can't get a clearer picture of what's going on."

He listened intently, the crackling voices and bursts of static hard to decipher at first until his ears became tuned in properly.

The phone rang constantly; Lee became adept at calming the callers and giving them some useful information. All the same, he wished Vandenberg was there. He was country born and bred and used to this sort of emergency. Foster had the feeling that Lee would be more encumbrance than help if push came to shove. Still, he had to make do with what he had. If the situation did get really bad, he was sure to get reinforcements.

The voices on the radio were suddenly agitated. The fire had jumped the main road through the forest where firefighters had been trying to hold it. They were going to head northeast and come round to attack it from the next parallel road.

He looked at his watch. 2:30 now. Must be about half an hour since the siren went off. He rang the weather bureau. There was no change expected for several hours: 41 degrees C and strong gusty northwesterlies. It was not looking good. The fire was still twenty kilometers away and moving at a steady five kilometers an hour.

Unless the situation changed, they had until about six o'clock to have everyone safely evacuated. By then, of course, the kids would all be home from kinder or school. Most commuters would have heard the news and would soon be on their way home and trying to enter the area. Best to get started now.

"Right, Constable Lee. I'm regarding this as an emergency. We'll leave a message on the phone telling people where to go, and we'll evacuate the kinder and the schools before school gets out and we have hundreds of kids scattered through the bush."

Lee took a big breath. "Right, sir. You just tell me what to do."