Bitter Wash Road Read online

  Someone laughed. The grey-faced man said, ‘Do you have proof that the squad kept aside stolen items for sale?’

  Hirsch squirmed a little. ‘I attended a raid in which a large amount of stolen jewellery was recovered. I was later handed a Rolex watch from that haul.’

  ‘Did you sell it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you declare it to a senior officer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You kept it.’

  ‘In my locker,’ Hirsch said. ‘I didn’t know what to do about it.’ And Quine was clever, appealing, Hirsch would admit only to himself. He ran rings around defence barristers and made headline arrests of genuinely bad people, and Hirsch—isolated, marriage failing—had felt himself drawn to the man for a while.

  ‘You did nothing?’

  ‘I made a note for my own files,’ Hirsch said, waving his briefcase again. ‘Time, date, personnel involved, serial numbers and so on.’

  ‘You held onto the watch.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was found months later when your locker was searched.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tying you effectively to the other members of the team.’

  Hirsch said nothing.

  Gaddis said, ‘So the others trusted you by this time?’

  ‘Not entirely, but they’d stopped thinking about me. I mean they were less cautious around me. As I said, part of the furniture.’

  ‘In the first inquiry,’ the grey-faced man said, ‘Senior Sergeant Quine’s barrister argued for some of the squad’s actions as “noble-cause” corruption. Would you care to comment on that?’

  ‘Well, I know what it is.’ Hirsch curled his lip. ‘It’s a weasel word for fabricating evidence in order to get a conviction in cases where you know someone’s guilty but can’t prove it.’

  ‘Did you see Senior Sergeant Quine fabricate evidence in order to secure a conviction?’

  ‘He boasted of it.’

  The pale man said, ‘We have statements from other sources that Senior Sergeant Quine also misplaced evidence or concocted false statements in order to protect his informants or the criminals he did business with. Can you speak to that?’

  Hirsch wasn’t sure what was going on. Gaddis wasn’t happy with this line, but said nothing. And who these other sources were, Hirsch had no idea. He said so.

  The grey-faced man sat back, a little deflated, but said, ‘You got into the habit of keeping meticulous records while serving at Paradise Gardens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What things did you record and how were they stored?’

  ‘Photographs and audio recordings,’ Hirsch said. ‘Lists, copious lists.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Businesses that offered freebies. The quantities of drugs or valuables seized on raids versus the quantities later listed at trial. Vehicle registrations. Phone numbers. Plus my own recollections of events: what was said and done, by whom, and where and when, together with my doubts and suspicions.’

  ‘No one saw you do this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It must have been well hidden.’ Meaning the raid on the station and on his house had not uncovered anything—except the Rolex.

  ‘I used an internet storage site,’ Hirsch said.

  Then he had to explain how the system worked. Gaddis asked, ‘Did you ever store material written by Senior Sergeant Quine?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tape recordings of the things he or his team said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The squad was preternaturally suspicious and wary. They rarely communicated by phone, paper or electronic means.’

  ‘So your records are limited.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘It has been shown that Senior Sergeant Quine invested in restaurants, bars, home units, racehorses, the share market...Do you have similar investments?’

  ‘I have a ten-year-old Nissan,’ Hirsch said, which raised a bit of a snigger from the bleachers.

  Gaddis said, ‘Tell the members of this hearing about your involvement with Ms Eliza Ley.’

  Arsehole. Hirsch swallowed. ‘She’s a lawyer.’

  ‘A drug lawyer.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know that at the time.’

  Eliza Ley was simply a pretty but harried-looking barrister he’d seen around the courthouse or visiting remand prisoners from time to time. They got talking. Hirsch found her appealing in a scatty kind of way. The tabloid press intimated that she was appealing in a big-breasted kind of way, but Hirsch thought she was smart, too. They met for drinks a few times and then later for sex. He’d not known until it was too late who she was. He tried to explain this now.

  ‘You were slow on the uptake?’ Gaddis said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your wife left you as a result?’

  ‘We’d effectively left each other long before that,’ Hirsch said. ‘She moved out as a result.’

  Gaddis was enjoying himself. ‘So you shared a drug lawyer’s bed and knew nothing about her?’

  ‘Not until I was warned,’ Hirsch said.

  He’d been sitting in the pub, minding his own business, when two senior drug squad detectives, venomous with it, slid into the booth, book-ending him. ‘Eliza Ley,’ one of them said.

  ‘What about her?’

  They told him: cops in her pocket, drug-dealer boyfriend, fucking Quine on the side, photos to prove it. ‘You’re getting sloppy seconds, mate.’

  Gaddis was saying, ‘And you expect us to believe you had no idea who this woman really was and what she was doing?’

  ‘Not until it was too late.’

  ‘What else did the detectives tell you?’ asked the grey man.

  ‘They’d noticed a pattern. If one of her clients appeared on a possession charge, Quine would go in to bat for him, appear in court saying, “We’ve misplaced that evidence, your honour,” or “We have no objection to bail in this matter, your honour.” They’d raid known meth labs and there’d be no drugs or equipment or cooks or dealers.’

  ‘They believed Senior Sergeant Quine was passing on information?’

  Pillow talk was how one of the drug squad officers had put it, squeezing Hirsch’s upper leg under the table. Fingers like steel clamps.

  ‘When in fact it was you passing on information,’ Gaddis said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were advised to drop Ms Ley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she do or say as a result?’

  In all honesty, Hirsch felt Eliza had been hurt that he’d stopped returning her calls. But he didn’t tell Gaddis that. He didn’t say that he’d grown more vigilant, changing his locks, buying the little Beretta, obtaining a silent number and a new mobile. And he absolutely stopped drifting into the grey areas of police work. When his cousin asked him to run a numberplate after a traffic altercation, Hirsch refused. He also refused to protect a school friend from an irate creditor—and just as well, for the friend had turned out to be a cheat and a liar.

  Gaddis said, ‘We have mobile phone records showing that you made several calls to drug dealers.’

  ‘I’ve explained that,’ Hirsch said. ‘Ms Ley made those calls.’

  ‘When your back was turned I suppose?’ sneered Gaddis. ‘Lots of things happen when your back is turned, don’t they, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  ~ * ~

  15

  THAT WAS MONDAY and Tuesday.

  On Wednesday Gaddis returned to the Rolex.

  ‘Why was the watch given to you, do you think?’

  ‘To implicate me. To make me one of theirs.’

  ‘And were you? One of theirs?’

  ‘No. Perhaps they thought so.’

  And yet Hirsch had shared some of the squad’s contempt for the justice system; the weak, partisan and unjust nature of courts, judges, magistrates. He felt some sympathy with the notion of taking
shortcuts, bending the rules, to obtain justice. Or at least punish someone. The feeling of us-against-them, an instinct to belong, had grown in him.

  ‘You didn’t wear the watch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It merely sat in your locker, ready to be found.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Officers from the Internal Investigations division had raided the Paradise Gardens police station right on the morning shift change, nabbing staff going off and on duty. Those on sick leave were taken at home. The building was cleared, locks changed, computers and files seized. Then the place was searched. Drugs were found in gym bags, guns in the ceiling cavities, bundles of cash in the air conditioning vents. Previously missing files, tapes and evidence bags were discovered under different case numbers.

  ‘You could have declared it. It’s now known that the officer in charge of Paradise Gardens was not involved in the corruption. You could have gone to Internal Investigations.’

  ‘I didn’t know who to trust. I believed then and I believe now that elements in Internal Investigations are supportive of Senior Sergeant Quine.’

  Gaddis said and did nothing, a quality of stillness that seemed like fury to Hirsch.

  ‘Instead you started babbling your innocence once the inquiry began.’

  The initial inquiry sat for ten months. Hirsch had turned over his records, starting with his taped conversations with Big Trev, the publican, who’d already been named during the inquest. Hirsch was gratified to learn that the Internals already knew most things— that his material mostly confirmed that knowledge. He felt less like a dog and a maggot, he supposed.

  One by one Quine’s crew went down, committed to stand trial, until only Quine and Hirsch were left. Then things got dirty. Late-night phone calls, gravelly voices asking if his mother, sister, niece were in good health? Bullets in his letterbox, a truckload of cement dumped in his driveway. Breathalysed three times in one week.

  Dirty in court, too. Quine’s barrister cited the Rolex and accused him of holding a grudge, turning on the other squad members because he hadn’t got his fair share. Hirsch thought that was a bit self-defeating, since it implied the barrister thought his client was guilty, but no one else remarked on it. Other accusations were thrown at him: failing to call witnesses, losing crucial evidence, accepting bribes and gifts, leaks to the media. And those calls to drug dealers made on his phone.

  Meanwhile Quine remained on his feet while his squad went down. Two constables jailed, two committed to stand trial, a senior constable on the run, and the constable named Reid had shot himself.

  The only good thing to come out of it was a kind of understanding in Hirsch. Police officers could drift over time, he saw. It wasn’t always or entirely conscious; more like a loss of perspective. Real and imagined grievances festering; a feeling that the job deserved greater and better public recognition. Or at least perks, rewards. More money, more or better sex, a promotion, a junket to an interstate conference. Greater respect in general. Cynicism set it. The bad guys always got away with it, and the media hammered the cop who took a bribe rather than recognised the one who helped orphans. So why wouldn’t you take shortcuts? Bend the rules?

  ‘Are you paying attention, Constable Hirschhausen?’

  Hirsch blinked. ‘Sir.’

  ‘You’d like us to believe that you were tainted because you were an innocent member of a corrupt squad? That you naively supported a corrupt senior officer, not knowing the full extent of his corruption?’

  Hirsch was wary. It was coming now. ‘Yes.’

  Gaddis was wearing a dark blue suit today, with a pale blue shirt and mid-blue tie knotted fatly at the base of his scrawny throat. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and they glinted. He was a spotless man at odds with Grey Face, who was yet to speak this morning and looked washed-out, badly shaven and creased. He sat unmoving where Gaddis was full of motion, taking a box from the floor and crossing the room to where Hirsch was seated.

  He spilled an iPhone and some bundled cash onto the table. ‘These items were found concealed inside your private motor vehicle late last week. Perhaps you can account for them?’

  Hirsch took out a pen and poked at the phone, then the cash. ‘Never seen these before.’

  Gaddis was delighted. ‘Oh, really? You expect us to believe that?’

  Hirsch shrugged. ‘Believe what you like: I have never seen these items before.’

  ‘Have a closer look.’

  So Hirsch, using his handkerchief, lifted the phone from the table, held it in his palm and pressed the power button. He watched as the screen lit up. ‘An iPhone 4,’ he said at last. He was having fun but didn’t show it. ‘Apparently they had antenna issues.’ He peered at it. ‘Seems to be stuck on the boot logo. Maybe you could get a few dollars for it on eBay.’

  ‘Stop arsing about,’ Gaddis said. Reading from a file, he said, ‘That is an iPhone 5 that was last seen in the Paradise Gardens evidence safe, along with the cash.’

  ‘Really? This is the latest iPhone?’ Hirsch twisted around in his seat. ‘Anyone got a five?’

  Amused, Rosie DeLisle crossed the room, proffering her phone, looking spruce and intemperate in a swirling skirt. Hirsch compared them. ‘See? The five is longer and thinner. This is a four. Easy mistake to make.’

  He shot Rosie a look as he returned her phone: Hope he doesn’t take it out on you. She smiled and went back to her seat. Hirsch turned his attention to Gaddis, seeing a change in his manner. He was shooting glances at a man standing at the back of the room. The man went out.

  Hirsch smiled at Gaddis. ‘I mean, your investigators did check the IMEI number, right? Checked the IMEI of this phone against the one that was supposed to be in the evidence locker?’

  Strangling his words, Gaddis said, ‘I would have thought the first-aid box a strange place to keep a phone and two and a half thousand dollars.’

  Hirsch shrugged. ‘Like I said, I have no idea what these items were doing in my car, if indeed they were there in the first place.’

  Gaddis waved a folder at him. ‘My officers conducted a proper search, every stage photographed and witnessed, with no breaks in the chain of custody.’

  ‘Oh,’ Hirsch said. ‘Fair enough. So you’d have a record of all the serial numbers of each hundred-dollar note?’

  Gaddis didn’t bite. He froze, then left the room, giving off a ‘someone’s fucked up’ air. The grey man contemplated Hirsch. Fidgeting and murmurs. Then Gaddis came back. He said, ‘Are you pulling a swiftie on us, Constable? A dishonest man must expect dishonesty in others. You thought you’d embarrass the department by swapping the phone and the cash?’

  ‘Well, you do investigate devious people, sir,’ Hirsch said. He reached into the briefcase, took out his laptop. ‘Like the devious person on this bit of CCTV footage. It shows a woman opening my car and leaning in. Don’t know who she is. Your daughter, sir? Did you put her up to it?’ He peered at the screen. ‘She’s got a little of your nervy manner.’

  ~ * ~

  Afterwards Rosie DeLisle grabbed him.

  ‘You are such a smartarse. Gaddis is furious.’ She gave him a twist of her mouth. ‘You come out ahead, don’t you? I assume the cash they found is yours? You’ll keep the original cash, change a hundred every time you buy something? You get the latest iPhone too, I guess.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Hirsch said.

  Rosie shrugged. ‘Either way, the stink isn’t going away anytime soon.’

  ‘Fuck them,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘Another day,’ Rosie said. ‘Someone I want you to meet.’

  She grabbed him by the forearm, dragged him to where the hostile woman hovered. ‘Paul, this is Inspector Croome.’

  Hirsch went very still. Was this some new bullshit, coming on top of being grilled by Gaddis for three days?

  ‘From?’ he said. All things would flow from knowing which department Croome represented.

  Croome’s eyes were like pe
bbles. ‘Sex crimes.’

  Hirsch flinched. He’d had his share of underwhelming sexual encounters, but didn’t think he’d broken any laws.

  Rosie took pity. Her pretty hand rested on his forearm. ‘We’d like you to stick around for another twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Is that a request?’