The first book in the Detective Joe Sandilands series, 2001

The night before her sixth birthday Midge Prentice woke under her mosquito net and breathed the familiar smells of a hot Indian night. There was the smell of wet khas-khas mats hanging across the doors and windows to keep out the heat of early summer, sweet and musty; there was the smell of the jasmine which grew over the bungalow; there was the bass accompaniment inseparable from India of drains and of dung. But tonight there was something else.

Sharp and acrid, it was the smell of smoke. Midge sat up and looked about her. Running across the ceiling of her room there was a flickering reflection of flames. She struggled out of her mosquito net and, barefoot, stood down on the floor. She called for her father and then remembered he was away in Calcutta. She called for her mother but it was Ayah who answered her call.

‘Come with Ayah, now, Missy Baba,’ she said urgently. ‘Come swiftly. Be silent!’

Ayah gathered her up. ‘Put your arms round me and hold tight. Very tight. Put your feet on mine and we’ll walk together as we used to when you were a baby and then the bad, bad men won’t see my Missy Baba. If I hide you under my sari they’ll just think that Ayah has another baby on the way.’

She swept silky folds over Midge’s head and they set off to waddle together towards safety. They had often done this before; it had been a game of her infancy. It was called ‘elephant walk backwards’ and now this clumsy game was to save her life. Midge caught brief glimpses of Ayah’s sandalled feet and was aware of others milling protectively about them and then they were in the open air. They were free of the bungalow. Men’s voices – Indian voices – shouted harshly, shots rang out, a woman’s scream was abruptly cut short and then the roar of the fire as it took hold of the thatch grew deafening.