Bitter Wash Road Read online

  ‘Another moron,’ Nicholson said. He paused, computing rapidly. ‘This is what happened. We broke up a brawl. Someone pulled a knife and slashed you with it. He got away. Too dark and confusing to see who it was.’

  He shoved his chest at Hirsch’s. ‘Are we agreed on that version of events, Cuntstable?’

  Hirsch shrugged. ‘Whatever you like, but I don’t see where it gets us.’

  ‘It gets our mate ten thousand bucks compensation, that’s where.’

  ‘Hey, yeah,’ Revell said.

  ‘No skin off my nose,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘So long as we’re on the same page.’

  They drove to the hospital, bone tired now. The streets were deserted. The car made the hill climb quietly; even the radio was muted. Hirsch was lost to dreams, sprawled across the back seat in his regular position.

  ‘They gunna buy it?’ Revell asked at one point. Hirsch barely heard him; had his eyes closed.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Nicholson said.

  ‘Voice of experience.’

  ‘Tell you a story,’ Nicholson said. ‘I was with this chick, my car, she’s driving—and she prangs it.’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘Mate, no licence.’

  Revell’s light switched on. ‘You said you were the driver.’

  ‘No flies on you.’

  ~ * ~

  IT WASN’T MUCH of a hospital—minor procedures, a few beds— and tonight McAskill and another of the town’s doctors and handful of nurses were stretched to the limit. The waiting room full, the three policemen leaned against a wall of the main corridor. A tiny surgery bustled at the end; neon lights buzzed; the white walls were blinding. Four men and a teenage girl were already seated in the plastic chairs outside the surgery, holding their heads in misery or pain. Some blood was evident, soaking through bandages. Nicholson loved it. He was like Kropp at the football, striding up and down, full of badgering mirth. Knew them all by name.

  Eventually Revell came out, bandaged, pale and grinning. ‘Good as new.’

  ‘About fucking time.’

  They drove down to the square, through pockets of waist-high night mist. Dew glistened on parked cars and here and there broken glass glinted in the gutters. Hirsch felt hollowed out. ‘Can we pack it in yet? The town’s dead.’

  ‘Not yet, boss’s orders.’

  Sometime later the radio crackled: get over to the motel, possible drunk and disorderly.

  Nicholson swung the wheel and planted his foot. The town dwindled behind them and on its shadowy outskirts a Budget sign came into view. Nicholson slowed to a crawl, casting an eye over the cars parked in the motel grounds. Standard police procedure. Hirsch himself had done it a million times. It was like breathing. The place looked dead. He closed his eyes again.

  Snapped them open when his tired mind caught up. The police car was adjacent to the motel entrance-way and a pair of headlights was hurtling at them from inside the grounds. He cried out involuntarily. The other car struck where his left shoulder had been resting. He felt shocked, his head full of percussive sounds and sudden fright.

  A ticking silence, broken by Revell: ‘The cunt’s only gone and run into us.’

  They got out, Hirsch obliged to scoot across to the other door. He blinked to clear his head, rubbed his sore shoulder, then shuffled around to inspect the damage. It had been an almighty bang, but all he could see was a Honda with a broken headlight and dented bumper, and the dented rear door of the police car.

  Meanwhile Revell was jerking the Honda driver out of his car. ‘Bloody moron. You realise you hit a police car?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Been on the grog, is that it? Judgment impaired?’

  ‘What?’

  The driver struggled, gaining focus, and Hirsch saw who it was. ‘Mr Latimer?’

  Ray Latimer, ignoring him, tried to attract Nicholson’s attention: ‘Nick? Nicko?’

  ‘Don’t fucking move,’ Revell said. He turned to Nicholson. ‘You know this bozo, Nick?’

  ‘Who you calling a bozo?’ Latimer said, shrugging him off.

  ‘Sir, stay where you are.’

  ‘I’m not at fault. Why the hell did you stop there? How was I supposed to avoid you?’

  ‘Sir, I need you to calm down.’

  ‘I am calm.’

  Latimer craned his head around Revell’s bulky shoulder. ‘Nick, for fuck’s sake.’

  Nicholson had been standing back as if hoping it would all go away. He shook his head, disgusted, and came closer. ‘It’s okay, he’s not going to do anything silly.’

  ‘Tell this prick to get his hands off me,’ Latimer said.

  ‘You’re dreaming,’ Revell said. ‘You’re in a shitload of trouble.’ ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Just calm down, Ray, all right?’ Nicholson said.

  ‘I am fucking calm.’

  Nicholson, still disgusted, turned to Hirsch and gestured at the cars. ‘Don’t just stand there, get this mess sorted.’

  ‘All over it,’ Hirsch said, reaching into the police car for the camera. He started snapping.

  ‘The fuck are you doing?’

  ‘For the insurance. For the report.’

  ‘Don’t be a moron, just clear the bloody driveway, all right?’

  Hirsch climbed into the Honda, reversed it a few metres, metal shrieking, and got out. Suspecting radiator damage, he lifted the bonnet. The radiator had been pushed closer to the fan, but wasn’t touching. No leaks. He took more shots with the camera, then photographed the damage to the police car. One of the rear panels was buckled and seemed to be touching the tyre.

  Finally he backed the Honda into a slot outside an empty unit, his attention caught by a spill of light from a neighbouring doorway, then another, and another: guests, peering out at the racket. Catching his gaze, they retreated, curtains twitching.

  One guest didn’t. She stepped out of the light and crossed the dewy lawn in bare feet, wrapped in a bulky motel robe. Hirsch recognised her as the woman who’d been drinking with Latimer in the Woolman.

  Closing in on the men at the street entrance, she called, ‘Ray?’

  Latimer stiffened, slumped. ‘Oh, Christ. Finola, please, go back inside.’

  She stopped. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

  ‘Tell you later. Please, Fin, just go inside.’

  She came closer. ‘Did you have an accident?’

  Hirsch pocketed the Honda keys and intercepted her, touched her forearm. She flinched. ‘Let’s leave them to it,’ he said.

  The tension went out of her and she let herself be turned around and guided back across the lawn to her doorway. Number 6, noted Hirsch. Behind them, the three men were shouting now:

  ‘Not fucking drunk.’

  ‘Sir, will you consent to—’

  ‘I was barely moving when I hit you. Get off me.’

  ‘Ray, I need you to blow into this.’

  Hirsch saw the woman into the room and hovered at the door. The interior was generic and held no interest, but the bed was a mess, an empty champagne bottle neck-first in a bucket of ice. He turned his attention to the woman, who perched dejectedly on the end of the bed. A tousled forty, with a pretty but weathered face, the face of someone deeply fatigued or a drinker with her good looks accelerating downhill. An outdoors woman, he guessed, her tanned skin dark against the white of the dressing-gown. The gown gaped; she was naked under it. Her clothes were heaped on a chair. As if reading him, she pulled the towelling close around her breasts and knees. Girlfriend? Pick-up?

  ‘He was going out to find a bottle shop.’

  Hirsch nodded. Latimer’s shouting had escalated, and she glanced past Hirsch, gnawing her lip.

  He took out his notebook. ‘Could I have your name?’

  ‘Finola. Finola Armstrong.’

  The name rang a bell. ‘From Bitter Wash Road?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Have
you been drinking, Finola?’

  ‘I’m not much of a drinker.’ She paused. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘You might need to drive him home.’

  She looked at the floor. ‘What a god-awful mess.’

  ‘Are you okay to drive? Can I call someone to come and get you?’

  ‘No! God no. Look, does anyone have to know about this? Can you leave my name out of it? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘His wife left him, you know. Moved in with her parents.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know? How?’

  Hirsch shrugged.

  ‘I forgot—you’re all mates. Do you need a statement?’

  ‘Brief one.’

  Hirsch took it, then gave her the Honda keys and returned to the street. Latimer was swinging punches now, hitting nothing, Nicholson and Revell struggling with him, shouting at him.

  Spotting Hirsch, Nicholson snarled, ‘For Christ’s sake move our car out of the way.’

  ‘Don’t know if it’s driveable. Look.’

  They looked at the edge of the rear panel, resting against the tyre. ‘Fuck.’

  Some of the bleariness went out of Latimer. He’d noticed Hirsch at last. ‘Look who’s here.’

  Hirsch nodded hello. ‘Mr Latimer.’

  Latimer shot out his fist. Hirsch swayed neatly away, too late, the hard knuckles spending their energy on his cheekbone.

  He rubbed it. ‘Ouch. You want to explain that?’

  Latimer took a boxer’s stance, Revell jerking him back. ‘Moron.’ He glanced at Hirsch. ‘Well?’

  Hirsch sighed. ‘Raymond Latimer,’ he said, and ran through the formal arrest statement while Latimer struggled and Revell swore.

  ‘Do you understand these charges, Mr Latimer?’

  ‘You’re arresting me?’

  ‘Mate, it’s already done,’ Revell said. ‘Weren’t you listening? You’ve been arrested. You’re spending the night in the lockup.’

  Meanwhile Nicholson was shaking his head. He scraped both palms down his cheeks tiredly. ‘How do we get him there if we can’t fucking drive?’

  ‘The others can come and collect us,’ Revell said.

  Hirsch might have been invisible. He looked back across the lawn, where Finola Armstrong was standing outside number 6. She had changed into her black dress.

  Then Latimer began struggling, trying to shake off Nicholson and Revell, shouting, ‘How about you call Bill Kropp, he’ll sort this out.’

  ‘How about we add another charge, interfering with a police officer in the execution of his duty,’ Revell said.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Out of the night came a pair of headlights and a whooping siren, the other patrol car rocketing alongside them, tyres scraping the kerb. The passenger side window whined down and Andrewartha leaned out, full of humour. ‘Evening, gents.’

  ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Andrewartha exchanged a grin with Molnar, the driver. ‘Showing Dee Dee the town.’

  Hirsch went still. He peered in. The back seat was empty. ‘What’ve you done with her?’

  ‘Oh, she’s on official police business,’ said Andrewartha, helping to bundle Latimer into the rear of the car. Nicholson and Revell climbed in after him, Nicholson winding down his rear window to say, ‘You stay with our car, okay? See if you can get it moving.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I—’

  No one waited to hear what Hirsch thought he should or shouldn’t do. He was alone, the road deserted and not much light leaking from the motel now. The street lighting was dim out here, blurred by mist. With a shrug, he returned to the police car and tugged on the lip of metal, feeling it move. He pulled harder and a gap opened. He ran his hand along the surface of the tyre. No damage.

  Then he called Dee, and her voice in the barren night was far off and frightened. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey yourself. Where are you?’

  ‘Middle of nowhere. Those pricks just left me here.’

  ‘Where? I’ll come and get you.’

  He heard sounds on her end of the line: a squeaky gate, a knock on a door, murmurs. Then her voice was loud in his ear: ‘Apparently it’s easier if I give directions rather than a street address...’

  A minute later, Hirsch was heading north-east, crossing the dark town to a road signposted for Morgan, a town on the Murray River, on the far side of saltbush plains. Hirsch wasn’t going that far. A hundred metres down it, he turned off. There were no pretty stone houses out here. This was where people struggled on a couple of hectares of undernourished dirt, fibro dwelling and starved pets. Midnight and the sky was densely black. His headlights picked out Dee beside a rusty fence. She climbed in. ‘Thanks.’

  Hirsch planted his foot, headed back to the empty streets of the town. ‘What’s the story?’

  After a while she said, ‘Sex.’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘Sex, sexism and sexual harassment.’

  ‘Okay,’ Hirsch said, drawing the word out.

  ‘I can deal with the innuendo and the bullshit. I had it all through training. But they wanted to have it off with a kid.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘About fourteen, pissed out of her tiny brain when we picked her up. When I say “we”, Andrewartha nabbed her for jaywalking. Has anyone been charged with that in living memory?’

  ‘In this town, yeah,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘She was with a gang of kids, all of them a bit drunk, not doing anyone any harm. Andrewartha’s plan was for him and Molnar to take her home while I stayed behind and kept an eye on the friends.’

  She paused. ‘You should have seen the look on her face. And her mates’. Fear, pure and simple.’

  ‘They knew what would happen.’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  Hirsch circled the town square, the lights misty and no movement anywhere.

  ‘So I said no way, I’m coming too, and when we got to her house I walked her to the door and checked someone was home.’ She snorted. ‘That’s when they pissed off and left me.’

  Hirsch was driving slowly; they were cocooned together in the warmth of the car. Out past the mine, back to the square, out past the motel. No sign of Finola Armstrong’s Honda. Time dragged. The town was dead.

  Presently Dee said, ‘You do know that I know who you are.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So is this the new you or the real you?’

  He said nothing, just drove. And then at one o’clock in the morning, Sergeant Kropp came crackling over the radio: ‘Okay, boys and girls, call it a night.’

  ~ * ~

  Back at the station, Kropp took Hirsch aside and whispered fiercely, ‘The fuck you arrest Ray Latimer for?’

  Hirsch had had enough. ‘So if your mates break the law they’re allowed to get away with it?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. He didn’t have to spend the night in the lockup.’

  ‘Do him some good, Sarge. And it was Nicholson who put him there. All I did was arrest him.’

  Kropp shook his head as if seeing life in all its stupidity. ‘The magistrate’s offered to hear it at ten tomorrow morning.’

  Hirsch winced. Kropp smirked. ‘That’s what you get for being the arresting officer.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  As if it pained him to say it, Kropp muttered, ‘We generally have a few beers after an operation.’

  Called a ‘mongrel session’ at Hirsch’s old station. No reason to think this one would be any different. ‘Great,’ he said.

  ~ * ~

  They found Nicholson and the others in the tea room, herding Dee into a corner. ‘Come on, love, no hard feelings, stay and have a couple of drinks with us.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ Dee said.

  ‘Don’t be like that. You need to wind down, right? We�
�ve even got a bottle of woite woine in the fridge, got it just for you.’

  ‘Fuck off and goodnight,’ Dee said, inclining her head to drag the band from her ponytail, shaking her head to free the hair, free it to swing around her neck and over her cheeks, and at that moment, Hirsch knew he’d seen that precise set of movements in the recent past.