Bitter Wash Road Read online

  ‘Not entirely,’ Croome said. She handed Hirsch a slip of paper. ‘Be at that address at noon tomorrow. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, don’t let yourself be followed.’

  ~ * ~

  16

  FEELING HE’D AMUSED himself sufficiently, Hirsch relinquished the original iPhone and $2500 to Rosie, together with his photographs of them in situ. He obtained a written receipt and returned to his motel.

  The next day he took a succession of short taxi trips, ending up in the parking area of a strip of shops in Tea Tree Gully. Walked through a door marked Maintenance and up a flight of stairs. Knocked on the only door at the top.

  Rosie DeLisle answered, leading him into a sitting room decorated in 1970s motel. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Safe house.’

  Croome was standing by the window. ‘Sit please, Constable.’

  There were armchairs and a sofa but Hirsch chose a stiff chair at the little corner dining table. With a glance at each other, the women joined him. ‘Inspector Croome has a request,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Why the cloak and dagger?’

  ‘Things will move easier and quicker if you sit and listen and shut the fuck up,’ Croome said.

  She still thinks I’m bent, Hirsch thought, or at least a bit deviated. ‘Language.’ He folded his arms. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You’re stationed at Tiverton.’

  Hirsch said nothing. She hadn’t asked a question, merely stated the bleeding obvious. That was probably his personnel file in her lap. Croome shot a look at Rosie DeLisle as if wanting her to run interference.

  ‘Paul,’ DeLisle said, leaning her slender elbows on the table.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The inspector would like you to tell us about Sergeant Kropp and his crew.’

  The anger came on quickly, as it often did these days, but Hirsch expressed it coldly, a withdrawal. ‘I’m not a spy. I’m not a whistle-blower.’

  ‘No one’s saying you are.’

  ‘Everyone’s saying it. And you’re about to ask me to blow the whistle.’

  ‘Paul,’ Croome said, ‘we have a situation and no means of monitoring it.’

  ‘Sex crimes? Kropp and his boys?’

  ‘I’ll explain in a minute,’ Croome said. She was back-pedalling now; she’d expected this to be easier. ‘First, do you think you could, ah, paint us a picture?’ She glanced at Rosie. ‘Internal Investigations have received several complaints about the Redruth police but what we lack is context.’

  Hirsch stared at her. ‘Before I say or do anything I need to know if either of you are acquainted in any way, shape or form with Sergeant Kropp, Constables Nicholson or Andrewartha, or the new woman, Jennifer Dee. No bullshit, okay?’

  ‘No connection,’ Croome said.

  ‘Never served with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not a second cousin or ex-girlfriend or ex-academy buddy with any of them?’

  ‘No.’

  He glanced at Rosie DeLisle. ‘You?’

  ‘Never met them, Paul, never served with them, no relationship with them at all.’

  Hirsch chewed on his bottom lip

  Croome said, ‘Please Constable, it’s very important.’

  Hirsch liked her better when she didn’t use his name. ‘I can give you local gossip, that’s all.’

  Croome’s face said she’d noted the fancy footwork. If he was merely repeating gossip, he wasn’t a spy or a whistle-blower. ‘All right.’

  Hirsch gathered himself. ‘Look, they’re not popular. Arrogant, heavy-handed. And this is a sleepy country town. It could be argued that Kropp’s been there too long. He’s networked his way into it so thoroughly and has so much power, he tends to think of the place as his.’

  ‘Like Quine?’ Rosie said.

  Hirsch nodded. ‘Like Quine.’ He considered his words: ‘Kropp likes order,’ he said. ‘That’s his style. But he and the others overdo it with the speed traps, the breathalysers...On-the-spot fines, screaming in people’s faces even if all they’ve done is jaywalk.’

  Then he recalled the way Nicholson and Andrewartha had talked about Melia Donovan and her brother. How they treated Jenny Dee. He cocked his head at Croome. ‘If you’re a female you’re probably a bit of a target.’ He thought about it. ‘Or black.’

  They fell silent. Is Kropp another Quine? Hirsch wondered. He pictured the full, frothing intensity of Quine, the stamp of his unimaginable expertise, but couldn’t quite match Kropp with that. Yet they were both hard men, and those could be found in police stations all around the country.

  ‘Care to elaborate?’

  Hirsch’s instinct was to shut up. Impressions were dangerous if there was no substance to them. But impressions were all he had. ‘I don’t have hard facts. I don’t know any of the local girls.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ Croome said, and Hirsch didn’t like the way she said it. He waited.

  ‘Melia Donovan and Gemma Pitcher.’

  Hirsch waited. Was the older man in Melia Donovan’s life a local copper?

  ‘Paul,’ Rosie said, ‘it’s been alleged the Redruth officers demand sexual favours from young girls in return for dropping charges they might be facing. Minor charges like shoplifting, drunkenness, possession...’

  ‘So if you could get a bit closer to your colleagues,’ Croome said, ‘you—’

  Hirsch ignored her and flared at DeLisle. ‘The term “false pretences” comes to mind. I’ve helped you people enough. Consider this meeting over.’

  ‘Paul,’ said Rosie soothingly, ‘there’s someone we’d like you to meet.’

  Croome got to her feet and entered a short corridor at the end of the room. She tapped on a door, cracked it open, stuck her head in. Hirsch heard murmurs and then she was standing back and making a this-way gesture with one arm.

  A teenage girl emerged.

  ‘Nothing to be frightened of,’ Croome said, gently ushering the girl to the sofa and settling her into it. Rosie left the table and sat beside her, giving the girl a smile of warm brilliance, then Croome sat, and now Hirsch had the three of them staring at him from the sofa.

  ‘Paul, I’d like you to meet Emily Hobba.’

  Hobba looked barely fifteen but might have been older. She was pretty in an unformed, second-glance way, with a kid’s open round face, long brown hair falling from either side of a ragged centre part. Her frame was thin, almost bony, inside a lilac T-shirt, a scrap of floral mini-skirt and half a dozen clanking bangles. She caught him looking and gave him a lopsided smile, a hint of dark artfulness in her eyes. Startled, he struggled not to return it. It wasn’t quite neutral, that smile.

  And as if she’d immediately forgotten him, Hobba took out a mobile phone and began working it, texting crazily with a faint grin. Hirsch glanced at Croome, then Rosie. Raised an eyebrow. They shrugged minutely as if to say, It’s the way it is, nothing we can do about it.

  Rosie placed a hand on Emily’s forearm. Long, tanned, slender fingers. Hirsch looked away from them, concentrated as she said, ‘Late last year, Emily got involved in a...’ she hesitated. ‘A scene involving some other young girls and a number of men.’

  Emily lifted her head and said clearly, eyes bright and clear, ‘Sex scene.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie said.

  ‘The men wore masks, we wore nothing.’ She’d told this story before.

  Hirsch thought he should chip in. ‘Where was this?’

  Emily shrugged. ‘Here and there. People’s houses. I mean, I was totally wasted, you know? Out of it.’

  ‘She means Adelaide,’ Croome said. ‘Inner suburbs, outer suburbs.’

  ‘Sometimes the country,’ Hobba said, anxious to put her right. ‘We’d get picked up in this big car and stay away a couple of days. Free drinks and whatever, party, party, party. I’d be that sore.’

  The country. Hirsch said, ‘Where in the country, Emily?’

  ‘How would I know?’ />
  Hirsch frowned at DeLisle and Croome. Croome said, ‘Tell Paul what you saw in the newspaper.’

  Hobba brightened. ‘Oh yeah. Okay. Well, that girl that got run over, I reckernised her.’

  ‘Melia Donovan.’

  ‘Yeah, I knew her.’

  Hirsch had a vivid memory then of Wendy Street, standing in her back yard while sheets flapped on the line, telling him that Melia Donovan seemed to be someone who’d had too much experience, too soon. ‘She was at one of the parties in the country?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Who else was there?’

  Hobba was working her phone again. ‘What? Oh, right, there was this one other chick.’

  ‘Was her name Gemma?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

  Croome chimed in. ‘Emily nearly died of an overdose after one of these weekend parties. Someone dumped her outside a hospital in the Barossa Valley. It threw a little scare into you, didn’t it, Em? She told a counsellor and the counsellor contacted us.’

  Hirsch looked to the girl for confirmation. She shrugged and gave him the whisper of a bat of the eyelashes.

  ‘What was Gemma’s role?’

  A shrug. ‘Anal? Golden showers? She did what we did.’

  ‘I mean, was there any sense that she recruited Melia?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘How many times did you attend the same party as Melia Donovan?’

  ‘I dunno, it’s a bit of a blur, maybe only once.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Don’t you believe me? He doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘Em, it’s all right, he’s come into this new, he needs to fill in the gaps.’

  ‘Well he can shut up with the questions.’

  Croome said, ‘Emily, I know it’s a long shot, a lot’s happened, but if you saw photographs of the men who might have been involved, would you recognise body shape, body language? Even if you didn’t see their faces?’

  Emily gave a teenage shrug. ‘I was like, totally out of it. I just have this feeling of like, black masks over their eyes and this one guy wearing a uniform.’

  ‘Uniform.’

  With a bit of a grin she said, ‘Police uniform.’

  Croome and DeLisle stared at Hirsch as if to say, Now can you see why we want your help?

  Hirsch said, ‘He arrived in a uniform? You caught only a glimpse of it?’

  Emily snorted. ‘He wore it like, the whole time, like rubbing our faces in it. I need the toilet.’

  She leapt from the sofa and disappeared into a room off the hallway. Hirsch watched her go. ‘How did Emily get involved? Did someone recruit her?’

  ‘A girl called Lily Humphreys, they were in a youth training program together,’ Croome said. ‘Humphreys got out first, took Emily under her wing when she was released. What that boiled down to was, “Would you like to party with these cool guys I know?” Emily said yes. They did this a few times over several months, city and rural locations. Sex, booze, cocaine, probably GHB. Then one day Emily wakes up in a hospital in the Barossa Valley, sore and torn and bruised. She mends slowly, but starts to have flashbacks. They scare her. She puts them together with the state of her body and talks to a counsellor who then gets in touch with us.’

  ‘Flashbacks.’

  ‘Men wearing masks, someone getting rough with her and another telling him to go easy, things like that.’

  ‘So speak to Lily Humphreys.’

  ‘Disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared as in she’s probably lying dead somewhere, or disappeared as in address unknown?’

  ‘The latter. Packed all her things and hopped on a plane to the Gold Coast, according to Emily.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘While Em was in hospital.’

  ‘Spooked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Be worth checking to see if Gemma Pitcher was in youth training with either of them.’

  Croome smiled. ‘One step ahead of you. Humphreys and Pitcher were there at the same time, but before Emily’s time.’

  Hirsch glanced at Rosie DeLisle. ‘Gemma’s disappeared. I’ve done all I can to find her, you’ve got better resources than I have.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Hirsch nodded his thanks. ‘What about Emily’s parents? Siblings?’

  ‘Paul, we’re talking ex-foster kids straight out of detention. No one is looking out for them.’

  Hirsch nodded gloomily. ‘When did you learn about her?’

  ‘Three months ago. We didn’t know where to start the investigation, and then a couple of days ago she texted me to say she’d recognised Melia Donovan’s picture in the paper.’

  Hirsch fetched out his phone. ‘I have a snap of Gemma Pitcher. I could show it to Emily.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Rosie said. Then she gave Croome a look. ‘She’s been in the loo a while...’

  Croome blinked. ‘Oh, fuck.’

  She raced away, and when they heard thumps and drama, Hirsch and DeLisle ran after her. They found Croome on the bathroom floor, slapping the teenager’s face.

  ‘What did you take? Emily, come on Emily, wake up! What did you take?’

  Hirsch left as Emily was coming round, groaning, and telling everyone to just push off and leave her alone.

  ~ * ~

  17

  HIRSCH HEADED BACK to the bush that evening. Spent Friday making his rounds and at nightfall received a call from Kropp.

  ‘A little bird tells me you came out of the Quine hearing smelling of roses. No flies on you. But given that you haven’t been sacked or jailed, may I remind you that your presence is needed here tomorrow?’

  ‘Crowd control, I remember. Football hooligans. With any luck they’re going to punch my lights out.’

  ‘Just get your arse down here for an eleven o’clock briefing.’

  ~ * ~

  Saturday. Hirsch showered, pulled on his uniform and strapped his baby Beretta to an ankle holster. He drove to Redruth. Kropp said, ‘Nice of you to join us, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  Hirsch checked his watch. Eleven a.m. ‘Am I late, Sarge?’

  ‘On my watch you arrive early.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, Sarge,’ said Hirsch, giving Nicholson a winning grin. Andrewartha was there, and Dee, but Kropp had also brought in two constables from Clare: Revell and Molnar. Big men, stony, full of dull menace.

  ‘Gents,’ said Hirsch with a wink.

  ‘Stop arsing around and take a seat,’ Kropp said.

  He’d pinned seven photographs to the board, head-and-shoulders shots of five white and two Aboriginal men. Four of the seven were young, three in early middle age. Sullen faces mostly, full of hard-won experience, men whose work, education, relationship and financial histories were slight to non-existent. Kropp’s view of them was simple. He slapped the flat of his pointer across the display. ‘If there’s any trouble today or tonight, it’ll be down to these characters.’

  ‘Or anyone with a Centrelink face, Sarge,’ Nicholson said, looking around with a grin.

  A couple of sniggers, irritating Kropp. Meanwhile Hirsch stared at the faces. They were not that different from guys like Nicholson and Andrewartha, really. Kropp’s constables were poorly educated and short of work and life experience too. Just as clannish and suspicious of anyone different. Attracted to police work because it gave them standing. And it licensed the art and craft of hurting other human beings.

  ‘As I was saying, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  Hirsch blinked. ‘Loud and clear, Sarge.’

  ‘As I was saying, these magnificent specimens of Australian manhood are a nuisance when sober and an absolute nightmare when they get on the grog. Stir in a football premiership...’

  You get blood and broken glass, mostly.

  ‘We have some long hours ahead of us, but I have managed to get you overtime. Best-case scenario, the night turns out to be a fizzer. But if you remember,
last year we had a glassing that resulted in the loss of an eye, a full-on brawl in the Woolman, resulting in hospitalisation, and a fatality from kids drag-racing just out past the motel.’

  Here Kropp’s voice cracked a little. Hirsch was curious. The guy-seemed genuine. He rose on the balls of his feet as he spoke, lifted by his emotions, as if the town were his and he its civilising force.