‘How’s Izz taking it?’

‘She’s furious, blames me because we weren’t there when it happened. If we were, she thinks we could have put the fire out and saved your fish, our computers, her toys—she doesn’t give a stuff about anything else.’

‘Thank God you weren’t there.’ He hesitated, unusual for him. ‘I don’t seem to have much luck with fish do I?’ His last fish had been ‘murdered’ a couple of years ago by a couple of thugs who’d broken into his flat. ‘Maybe I should find a new hobby.’

She knew he felt the same as she did about their house. The flippant comment, meant to trivialise their predicament, was contradicted by a look in his eyes she couldn’t meet. Was he thinking about their relationship too?

Surely not practical, pragmatic Monty.

She slipped off the bed and kissed his cheek. ‘I can’t stay. I need to get to Dot’s for a shower and a rest before meetings with the architect, the engineer and the insurance guy.’ And the arson squad, and Inspector Veitch and Angus, and... She wondered when this nightmare would end.

So much for the best laid plans: Stevie headed toward the MCI car yard, having only minutes ago been torn from Dot’s soft spare bed by the trilling of her phone. Col hadn’t said much; only that she was to meet him, Fowler and Tony Pruitt asap. Her stiff shoulder objected with every turn of the wheel as she pulled into a parking spot. Pushing through the unlocked gate, she found the men grouped around the battered remains of a Nissan minibus.

‘Sorry to get you out of bed, heard you had a hard night,’ Col said as she approached. ‘But I thought there’d be even more trouble if I didn’t call you about this.’

Stevie nodded a greeting to Pruitt and Fowler. ‘What’s all this about, Col?’

‘A horror bus crash south of Newman—six dead and two in the ICU, brought down here by Flying Doctor. No one was wearing seatbelts.’

Stevie regarded the concertinaed hunk of metal and wondered how anyone could have survived at all. ‘You got this wreck down to Perth quickly—when did it happen?’

‘Yesterday morning. We had it trucked down, it’s only just arrived,’ Col said. ‘The first cop on the scene was suspicious about the passengers and called me almost straightaway, suspecting the female passengers to be illegal immigrants. Only a couple of the girls survived, but they’re critical, too sick to be questioned. Two Australian men, probably travelling in the front of the bus, are also dead. We’re running ID checks on them now.’

‘How can you tell the girls were illegals?’ Stevie asked, making brief eye contact with Fowler.

‘Come and I’ll show you.’

As they followed Pruitt toward his demountable office, Fowler said to Stevie, keeping his voice low, ‘I hear there was a fire at your place last night—what happened?

Stevie’s mouth fell into a grim line. ‘Faulty wiring.’

He shot her a look of concern. ‘Really?’

She indicated to Col with a tilt of her head. Don’t tell him, he might tell Monty. Fowler nodded back and rubbed his nose, ‘Ah.’

Almost every spare inch of space in the demountable office was covered in bulging plastic bags. Pruitt explained that the personal effects were being temporarily stored here while they were waiting for transport to the larger storage facilities at the depot in Maylands. All the bags were labelled. Detailed descriptions of the contents filled several separate files stacked on the desk.

Stevie gestured to a metal trunk on the floor near Pruitt’s desk. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Evening gowns of varying sizes, and expensive lingerie,’ Col said. ‘Also paste jewellery, bags of sex toys and bulk packets of condoms. The contents had spilled down the ravine during the crash and alerted the attending officer as to what he might be dealing with. The presence of all those Asian girls in the bus confirmed his suspicions.’

‘And here?’ Stevie pointed to a collection of luggage and smaller individually bagged items laid out on a trestle table in the middle of the office.

‘We think these must be the girls’ personal possessions; most of the bags contain simple outfits, underwear and toiletries. Other stuff from the bus spilled onto the ground. It’s been photographed, boxed and labelled.’

‘Jeez, those guys in Newman have been busy,’ Fowler said.

Stevie scanned the pathetic amount of personal possessions, donned gloves and, with Col’s permission, joined Fowler in searching through some of the smaller bags: CDs, iPods, magazines, a stuffed toy in the shape of a white kitten with an embroidered love heart on its chest. Izzy had something similar. With an ache sharper than the wound in her shoulder, she wondered if it had survived the fire.

She dug into a small Thai Airways holdall and removed a green silk housedress, holding it up for Fowler to see.

He looked at it and shrugged. Amazed that he didn’t recognise it, she pulled a ‘duh’ face at him. After all that fuss over her and Skye’s initial interference, surely he knew what he was looking at. Stevie carefully laid the dress out on the table, then went to her handbag and removed the button that Fowler had refused to take from her what seemed like a lifetime ago. Taking the button from the paper bag she held it against one of the buttons on the dress.

‘A match.’ Fowler shook his head in amazement. He pointed at the gap left by the missing button. ‘And look, there’s a tear in the dress where the button was ripped off.’

‘Yes. Skye thought she must have caught it on the gate.’

Col and Pruitt stared at the two of them blankly.

‘This button,’ Stevie explained, holding it for them to see, ‘was found outside the Pavel house just after Skye and I came across the abandoned baby. At one time or another, one of these girls must have visited there.’

‘Which means at the very least there’s a connection between them and Jon Pavel, a suspected people trafficker. It could very well mean,’ Fowler added with a glance at Stevie, ‘that one of these girls was responsible for feeding the baby after the parents disappeared.’

‘Wasn’t the baby Asian?’ Col asked.

‘Sure was.’ Fowler grinned at Stevie, his face transformed with a boyish look she’d not seen before.

‘We need to speak to the surviving girls,’ she said.

‘I’ll ring the hospital, but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to see them yet,’ Col said.

Stevie said to Fowler, ‘That gives us plenty of time to organise an interpreter.’

‘Do you know the names of the survivors?’ Fowler asked Col.

‘One of the girls was conscious when the officers reached her, said her name was Mai and the other survivor, Lin. These names don’t correspond to any of the documentation found in the bags, but the papers are probably fakes anyway. We think Lin and Mai are their correct names. Some of the suitcases and the gowns are named: Kitty, Babe, Vixen—take your pick,’ Col said, wryly.

Stevie clapped Fowler on the arm. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do.’

‘Wait,’ Pruitt called out, ‘there’s a couple more things you need to see before you go.’

Stevie turned from the door, struggling to curb her impatience. With great mental effort she forced herself to stand still and not fidget as Pruitt took a couple of the labelled bags from his desk and handed one to each of them. Fowler held up the bottle of pills he’d been given and gave them a shake. ‘Amphetamines?’

Pruitt nodded. ‘Dexies probably, but we’re still waiting on the test results. They were found on the floor on the front passenger side.’

Stevie was only listening to this exchange; her attention was focused on the bag she’d been given and the long-bladed knife inside it. She carefully felt down the length of the blade, noticing the small serrations and the sharp pointed end, smeared with what appeared to be blood. It hadn’t completely dried and clung to the inside of the plastic evidence bag sticky as jam.