Bitter Wash Road Read online

  ‘Find the slag, all right? Drag her along to the inquest.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  And what’s this about a Quine hearing?’

  ‘I have to attend, Sarge. All next week.’

  Kropp said nothing but what Kropp was saying was dog, maggot.

  ~ * ~

  Next on Hirsch’s list was Dr McAskill. ‘Sergeant Kropp gave me the short version, but I was wondering if there’s anything to add.’

  There was a sense of the doctor drawing himself up on the other end of the line. ‘I don’t feel comfortable having a side conversation about it.’

  Hirsch sighed. ‘The thing is, Sergeant Kropp has all of us working on it and it’s my job to piece together the kid’s last movements. So, anything?’

  ‘I suppose you mean stomach contents?’

  ‘It’s a start.’

  ‘She’d not eaten much prior to death—a hamburger and chips some hours earlier—but she had been drinking wine.’

  ‘We’ll need a toxicology report. She might have been drug affected.’

  ‘Are you telling me my job, Constable Hirschhausen?’

  Moving right along...’Was it petechial haemorrhaging? The spots around her remaining eye?’

  Another silence, then the stiff voice saying, ‘If a vehicle struck her and tossed her aside, flipping her into the bushes, one might expect a range of crushing-type injuries, wouldn’t you say? And so, in and of itself, petechial haemorrhaging is not cause for suspicion.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘It’s a motorist you’re looking for,’ McAskill said. ‘As I suspected when I examined her by the side of the highway, she sustained severe internal injuries consistent with being struck and tossed aside by a largish vehicle.’

  ‘Going at speed? I didn’t see any skid marks.’

  McAskill recited, ‘All one can say for certain is that the victim sustained severe external and internal injuries consistent with being struck by a largish vehicle.’

  ‘Truck?’

  ‘I’d expect more damage. Possibly a van or a four-wheel-drive.’

  ‘She wasn’t punched? Struck with a blunt object?’

  ‘If she were, and I doubt it, such injury or injuries were masked by the other injuries.’

  Treading carefully, Hirsch said, ‘Doctor, you say you treated Melia from time to time. I wonder if—’

  ‘Hardly time to time. No more than a couple of times.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Earache, when she was little, and painful periods, if you must know.’

  ‘I was wondering if she was sexually active,’ Hirsch said. ‘Perhaps you prescribed birth control.’

  ‘She wasn’t a virgin, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Were there signs of intercourse in the hours before she was killed?’

  ‘I don’t rule it out, but she sustained massive injuries in the centre mass of her body, from groin to neck, consistent with the large, flat nose of a van or a four-wheel-drive. Am I getting through to you?’

  ‘So, no semen.’

  ‘Have you heard of condoms, Constable?’

  ‘No one seems to know who her boyfriend was.’

  ‘No good asking me,’ the doctor said.

  ~ * ~

  On Thursday Hirsch poked around out east for a couple of hours, buffeted by warm northerly winds, returning via Bitter Wash Road. Seeing the gates to Vimy Ridge reminded him of Katie Street and Jackson Latimer, their fear of Pullar, Hanson and the black Chrysler. Be the good copper, he thought, check to see they’re okay.

  A teenage boy answered at the Latimers’. He was about fourteen, solid, hair artlessly messy. Pimply, with one pimple raging at the cleft between nostril and cheek, and he could scarcely bring himself to look at Hirsch or get his words out. Craig, he said his name was.

  ‘I was hoping to say hello to Jack. Is he in?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘Nup, and good riddance.’

  Oh. So Hirsch said, ‘How is Jack?’

  ‘Good riddance to him, too,’ Craig muttered.

  Some school holiday thing, Hirsch thought. She’s taken the younger one to Adelaide or somewhere and the older one’s been left at home; grounded, maybe.

  ~ * ~

  He drove to the house across the road, parked behind the Volvo and approached the house. Katie Street called to him from a hammock on the veranda. She was full of a bright force today, not suspicion. ‘Poor you, finding Melia.’

  Hirsch sat on the warped boards, his back to a post. ‘Yes. Enjoying the holidays?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you reading?’

  She showed him the cover wordlessly. To Kill a Mockingbird.

  ‘Seen the film?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She collapsed onto her back again and all he could see was a skinny leg hanging over the edge, a grimy, callused foot. He heard her say, ‘Who’s your favourite character?’

  She wants me to say Scout, he thought, so he said, ‘Boo Radley.’

  ‘Huh.’

  But his answer satisfied something in her. She popped up again and looked at him. He said, ‘Is Jack okay? I thought you two would be playing.’

  Katie closed the book and swung both feet out of the hammock. She shook her head violently. ‘He’s gone away.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Now she hopped to the veranda and sat with him. Sulking a bit at the dirt and grass blades between her toes, she said, ‘Have you come to see me or Mum?’

  ‘Either. Both. Just passing,’ Hirsch said. ‘You haven’t seen that car again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid, you know. Those men are nowhere near here. Anyway, they’ll be caught pretty soon.’

  There was silence and, ‘Me and Jack have been good.’

  Hirsch grinned. ‘Not too good, I hope.’

  ‘Really bad.’

  ‘That’s what school holidays are for. Your mum at home?’

  ‘Somewhere. Mum!’

  Nothing. ‘Where is that dratted woman? Mum!’

  Hirsch laughed.

  Pleased, Katie edged closer to Hirsch. ‘Have you ever arrested anybody?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you shot anybody?’

  ‘Katie, the police don’t generally go around shooting people.’

  ‘Me and Jack were being careful that time you caught us.’

  Her face was tilted up, her fine hair framing her face. Olive skin, no freckles, beautifully shaped lips. He could see Wendy in her.

  ‘I know you were,’ he said, ‘but bullets can fly in unpredictable directions if they strike something, a rock. It’s called a ricochet.’

  ‘I know what a ricochet is.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Mum!’ shouted the girl again.

  Nothing, so she said, ‘Come with me,’ and led Hirsch along the side of the house to the windy back yard.

  He stopped in his tracks, feeling a sudden lurch of desire. Wendy Street was battling a great flower-head of white sheets onto a clothes hoist set in the middle of the lawn. The sheets flung themselves about, enveloping and taunting, flattening against her slender limbs and filling with air again. He watched her wreathe and dance, feeling blindly for the pegs and the line.

  ‘Toga party!’ he called, but it didn’t come out right.

  She unwrapped herself and eyed him balefully. ‘Very funny.’

  Wearing jeans and a T-shirt and patches of dampness, she crossed the grass towards him, drying her palms on her thighs. ‘Giving my daughter the third degree?’

  ‘She won’t break.’ He shook his head. ‘Should’ve brought the bad cop.’

  Wendy Street stopped a couple of metres from him and waited.

  ‘I’ve been out in the back blocks and thought I’d pop in.’

  She nodded. It wasn’t hostility, he thought, just wariness. She turne
d to glance at Katie who, with a kind of tact, turned on her heel and disappeared towards the front of the house.

  When she was gone, Hirsch took a breath. ‘Actually, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about Melia Donovan.’

  ‘Melia Donovan?’

  Hirsch nodded. ‘An accident team’s investigating the actual hit-and-run, but I’m trying to find out how and why she ended up at Muncowie. It would help if I knew a bit more about her. Did you teach her?’

  ‘Year 11 maths.’

  ‘You teach maths?’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised.’

  Hirsch grinned. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Sweet—when she bothered to come to school, that is. I had nothing to do with her outside of school.’

  ‘Any rumours?’

  Wendy Street tucked a wing of hair behind her ear. Hirsch fought the impulse to help her with it. ‘This and that, mainly to do with boys and partying and her mother.’

  ‘Anything specific?’

  ‘No, you’ll have to speak to others about that.’

  ‘Did you ever see older guys hanging around the school, waiting for her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know how she got to and from school?’

  ‘There’s a bus. It runs between Redruth and Muncowie.’

  ‘Muncowie. Was she friends with any of the Muncowie kids?’

  ‘She wasn’t friends with anyone. I don’t mean she was friendless, I mean she seemed to have outgrown the kids at school, she didn’t need them.’

  ‘So her friends were older? Older boys? Men? Can you give me any names?’

  Wendy shook her head. ‘You don’t understand, I don’t know anything. Try a girl called Gemma Pitcher. She lives in Tiverton.’

  ‘She wasn’t very forthcoming,’ Hirsch said. Feeling that he was on thin ice, he said, ‘Did Melia seem sexually active or experienced to you?’

  ‘I’d hate to have your job. Look, I barely knew her, but I did wonder if she’d had too much experience too soon. She wasn’t knowing, didn’t flaunt it, just seemed a bit lost and alone, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Are the local kids into drugs? Binge drinking?’

  ‘No more than city kids, and probably less, I wouldn’t know.’

  Silence settled between them. ‘I popped in across the road,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Checking the kids aren’t out target shooting? Checking their mothers haven’t let them run wild?’

  Her manner wasn’t quite severe; maybe it was even a little amused, but Hirsch said levelly, ‘I’d hate to think they were feeling afraid needlessly, and I do need to know about Melia Donovan, and I do need to patrol out east from time to time.’

  Wendy Street crinkled her eyes at him. ‘All right. So you would have learned that Allies left her husband?’

  That explained the teenage boy’s manner. ‘Oh.’

  ‘She’s in town at her parents’. Jack, too. Craig sided with his father.’

  ‘Permanent?’

  ‘Seems that way.’

  It was pleasant, standing in the sun with an attractive woman. Wendy Street seemed in no hurry to return to her laundry basket. She dragged her errant wing of hair into place again. A simple act—arm raised, shirtfront tightening, chin tilted, neck briefly exposed—that sank Hirsch for good.

  ~ * ~

  But the uniform got in the way, as it always did.

  Kicking himself for not acting on what he felt, Hirsch drove back to Tiverton, and the first thing he saw was his elderly neighbour wheeling her shopping cart into Tennant’s. He ran to the back yard, vaulted the side fence and retrieved the iPhone and cash. Then he drove to Clare, hoping no one would call him to report a stolen stud ram or a cat up a tree. Entered the post office there and addressed the phone and cash to himself, poste restante Balhannah, the town in the hills where his parents lived.

  ~ * ~

  11

  FRIDAY, AND THE town’s first inquest.

  Hirsch’s first inquest, and his first time inside the Mechanics Institute, a fine stone building two hundred metres from the police station. Wooden floors, wooden half panelling around the walls, pastelly blue paintwork, vases of flowers on solid wooden stands, pressed tin ceilings and photographs of prize rams and former councillors here and there. A staircase to one side, a corridor of meeting rooms—the Country Women’s Association, he was guessing; the RSL; council chambers. A cardboard sign sat on a plain wooden chair outside the doors to the main hall: Inquest here today.

  He stepped through, pausing to take in the vastness of the hall. High windows, more wood panelling, good ballroom-dancing floorboards, and a stage at the far end complete with wings and a bushland scene painted on a canvas backdrop. Hirsch doubted that plays were still performed here, but the town did need a venue for the primary school concert, the New Year’s Eve ball, the debutante ball, the strawberry fete, Liberal Party fundraising events. Below the stage was a table with a microphone and two chairs. A smaller table, chair and microphone stood to one side of it. The coroner and her assistant at one table, guessed Hirsch, witnesses at the other. And there was an easel, supporting a shrouded rectangular shape. Blow-up photographs? Bird’s-eye diagrams showing the road and the position of the body?

  The grandeur was spoiled by a dozen rows of metal folding chairs. Someone had been optimistic: the only onlookers—great gaps of empty chairs separating them—were Kropp, Dr McAskill, one of the accident investigators, a reporter from the Redruth rag, the shopkeeper, Nancarrow the Broken Hill mine worker who had discovered Melia Donovan’s body, and the Muirs, sitting with Nathan Donovan and his mother. No Wendy Street—but then, why would she be here?

  Kropp turned his massive head and jerked it at Hirsch: Get your arse over here. Hirsch complied. His shoulder brushed Kropp’s, it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘Morning, Sarge.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you live two minutes’ walk away.’

  ‘Phone calls, e-mails.’

  ‘Speaking of e-mails, yours didn’t say how long you’ll be away next week.’

  ‘Could be a few days.’

  Kropp grunted. ‘At least we’re not going through a crime wave.’ He paused. ‘So long as you’re back by Saturday.’

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Football final. All hands on deck.’

  Hirsch got a kick out of that. ‘You mean Redruth actually comes alive? People on the street?’

  Kropp turned quiet and nasty. ‘We get lucky, someone might mess your face up a bit.’

  ‘Looking forward to it, Sarge.’

  They were silent. Hirsch fiddled with his phone and stared at the empty tables. He knew he was here at the coroner’s discretion. Today’s hearing would merely establish the who, when, where and how of Melia Donovan’s death and invite witnesses to come forward. Then it would adjourn until the police investigation was complete, and that might take months. Footsteps; a cadaverous man appeared, stiff-backed, grey-faced. ‘He was in the job,’ whispered Kropp, and Hirsch could see ex-policeman in the scowling figure, who halted beside the main table and called: ‘All rise for her majesty’s coroner.’

  They stood, the air above them clanging, crashing, a symphony of cheap metal chairs sliding and colliding, and a middle-aged woman appeared in a whisper of fabric and rubber-soled shoes, her face kindly, apologetic, almost grandmotherly, a foil to the grim-looking old cop. She gestured at them vaguely and they all sat and the man beside her boomed, ‘All mobile phones off, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘That means you,’ muttered Kropp.

  Hirsch switched off, pocketed the phone.

  The coroner remained on her feet, her hands moving folders around on the table top, and now she glanced out at the rows of chairs. She looked untethered to Hirsch, lost and adrift in the vast hall. Sit, he begged her.

  She cast her voice over their heads, full, rolling, educated: ‘Thank you all for comi
ng. You may be wondering at the choice of venue: quite simply, I wished to view the place where Ms Donovan died. I’ve now done that. I also want to say I welcome community involvement in the investigation into her death.’