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bother checking any of the rooms — they held nothing of interest for him. The only place he did check was the kitchen, where his father used to hide money in the flour tin. George upended its contents and, sure enough, it wasn’t only flour that spilled onto the floor. He gathered up the notes, and to his astonishment found that he was holding close to £5,000. He did something he rarely did: he laughed.
    He wasn’t yet ready to strike a match, though. He’d give the police another 15 minutes. He didn’t want them seeing smoke and coming back. He wanted a head start on them, but he also wanted them to know that he’d been there, that the house fire had been deliberately lit, and that he, George Starling, had lit it. He wanted them to know that they’d missed him, and that he was smarter than they were. He walked out into the backyard and picked up the wood splitter — the same splitter whose condition Constable Manton had lamented. He took it with him into the paddock where the two horses and the donkey were eating the last of the hay. He opened the gate and called, ‘Oi!’ The animals looked up and, in expectation of more food, came placidly to him. He swung the splitter with a fierce precision, and broke a front and back leg of each animal. Starling thought for a moment that he might put them out of their misery, but decided against it. He wanted whoever found the creatures to know that the person who did this was pitiless. As he listened to the pathetic whinnying and snorting, he realised with satisfaction that he was indeed pitiless. He felt nothing, except perhaps amusement at the way the donkey tried again and again to stand.
    He returned to the house and threw a lit match at each splash of petrol. He waited to make sure that the flames took hold, and then put both fuel tins on the motorcycle and set out for Melbourne. The timing was perfect. He wasn’t happy about being in Port Fairy when police from Melbourne were sniffing around in Warrnambool. There was no doubt in his mind that those police were city wallopers — a female copper in the Warrnambool force was unthinkable. Now he had some time up his sleeve. Peter Hurley wasn’t going to take his boat out for a few days, so he wouldn’t be looking for him to clean the catch. He had money, fuel, and a machine that would take him all the way to Sergeant Joe Sable.
    DINNER AT THE Warrnambool Hotel was corned beef with boiled potatoes, leeks, and green beans. It was edible, although it arrived at the table without any sauce to disguise its blandness. The chef’s excuse would no doubt have been austerity, although David Reilly, who liked his leeks to swim in a white sauce, supposed its absence had more to do with laziness than patriotism. Inspector Lambert wasn’t interested in whether a sauce was white, green, or brindle, or in whether it was there or not. For him, food was fuel; he took no particular pleasure in it. Helen Lord found herself aligned with Reilly on the sauce question — although, as she wasn’t paying for the meal, she didn’t complain. Not that Reilly complained exactly. When the food was put down in front of him, he simply remarked that the plate looked naked.
    ‘Cook’s night off,’ he said, and smiled to indicate that he didn’t want this observation to be taken as a whinge.
    At the end of the meal, all three of them remained in the dining room. Reilly would have preferred to decamp to the bar, but Constable Lord’s presence made that impossible. As Homicide’s budget didn’t run to alcohol, he abstained from ordering a drink on his own account. He wasn’t willing to pay the surcharge added to alcohol served in either the dining room or the ladies’ lounge.
    Conversation over dinner had included speculation about the nature of the threat posed by George Starling. David Reilly wasn’t convinced that he was any more dangerous than a common or garden thug, and he felt that Starling’s connection to the Hitlerites made him a