Signal Loss (2016)

Garry Disher's crime novel, first published by Text Publishing in Australia in 2016, is the seventh Hal Challis investigation, set on the Peninsula outside Melbourne. A pair of hit men working for a methamphetamine boss start a bushfire that exposes a drug lab and two burned bodies in a Mercedes, and Inspector Challis fights to keep control of the case, while Sergeant Ellen Destry, newly in charge of the sex crimes unit, hunts a serial rapist who leaves no clues. (Open Library)

Watches

Longines watch: Challis and Constable Pam Murphy search the house of Colin Hauser, shot twice in his study and dead for several days. Every drawer has been pulled out and the cupboards left open, but nothing has really been searched: no mattress moved, no cushion slit. Challis is sure the burglary was staged when he finds a Longines wristwatch in the bedside cupboard, half hidden by a packet of antacids, because a real burglar would have pocketed it. The watch never leaves the drawer; its value is the clue. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: He was sure of it when he found a Longines wristwatch in a drawer of the bedside cupboard, partly concealed by a packet of antacids. A proper burglar would have found and pocketed it. (Garry Disher, Signal Loss, scan cataloged as Soho Crime, 2017, p. 98; Hauser is named from his wallet on p. 97; Internet Archive scan OCR)