Bitter Wash Road Page 17

  He reached out a hand. ‘You...’ he said, about to say, It was you who put that stuff in my car.

  He didn’t. She gave him a curious look and a half smile of gratitude for looking after her. Then was gone out the door.

  ‘Bitch,’ Nicholson said.

  ~ * ~

  Hirsch discovered he had a bottle in his hand. The hours passed and the Redruth policemen sprawled, bottles, pizza crusts and cigarette butts accumulating on the floor and the tea room table. Two o’clock, three, the air heavy. Nicholson and Kropp arm wrestled, tipping more crap onto the floor. When the chairs couldn’t hold them they slumped on the floor. The phone rang unattended in the front office. Later Andrewartha found a stash of porn DVDs and Hirsch watched, absorbed for about thirty seconds, the others slightly longer, catcalling. They lapsed into talk and long pauses, then more talk, the sex a forgotten flicker in the background. When the beer ran out, Kropp staggered to his car and came back with three six-packs. Cans popped and foamed. It was the music of policemen winding down while a town sleeps, point and counterpoint.

  The others would say, ‘Drink up,’ and Hirsch would say, ‘Cheers,’ and the others would say, ‘Piker.’

  Hirsch had played this game before. He knew the moves. He swigged, burped, swiped his mouth. He roared and laughed through until three, then four, and presently the others forgot who he was.

  In those deep hours, people will come and go, you’ll scarcely register their movements, you’ll lose track, but at some point it occurred to Hirsch that Nicholson and Andrewartha were gone. Pikers.

  He struggled to his feet. ‘Time for some shut-eye.’

  ‘The night is young,’ snarled Revell.

  ‘It is somewhere, I’ll grant you that,’ Hirsch said, grabbing his cap and his jacket and the belt load of crime-fighting gear that threatened to do his back in. ‘Night, night, gentlemen.’

  Kropp waved a bottle at him. ‘Come on, get your laughing gear around this.’

  Hirsch shook his head. ‘I’m knackered, Sarge.’

  Kropp was disgusted. ‘I want you back here in time for court.’

  ~ * ~

  A cold, still, silent, dampish pre-dawn, with dew beading the HiLux. Hirsch climbed in and worked the wipers and fired the ignition, then drove back through the square and out to the edge of the town with an agricultural rattle, the motor as stupefied as he was. He passed the Overlander Hotel, an antique store and two bed-and-breakfast joints, the high school, and he thought about Wendy Street. He thought about Constable Dee. He thought about his love life, which had slipped away, somehow, about the time it all went wrong.

  ~ * ~

  Nicholson and Andrewartha bushwhacked him on a slow blind bend between Mount Bryan and Tiverton, flicking into his slipstream from a concealed farm gate, giving the siren a bit of a whoop. Hirsch pulled over, switched off, powered his window down. ‘Guys.’

  Andrewartha grinned, waving a breathalyser tube at Hirsch. ‘We have reason to believe, etcetera.’

  Pretending to scratch his ankle, Hirsch retrieved and pocketed the little Beretta. A desolate spot out here, the highway a black ribbon, the moon pushing shadows across the valley. Dawn was staining the horizon and there’d be early farmers and interstate truckies pretty soon, but Hirsch wasn’t taking comfort from that. How would they play it? We stopped him for driving under the influence and he just went crazy.

  But first they had to arrest him and take his service pistol. Andrewartha’s face-splitting grin said he knew Hirsch’s breathalyser reading would top .05. ‘If you would blow into this, please, sir. We need a steady, continuous exhalation, think you can manage that?’

  ‘Right across it,’ Hirsch assured him, beginning to blow.

  ‘Give it all you’ve got, pisspot,’ Nicholson said.

  Andrewartha retrieved the tube for testing, still with his killer grin. The grin faded. He shook the tube as if it were a thermometer. ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

  ‘Point oh nothing?’ Hirsch asked sweetly.

  ‘We’re conducting the test again.’

  Hirsch complied. He said, ‘Maybe they’re both faulty. Maybe we should go back to the station and take a blood sample.’

  Andrewartha waited for half-a-dozen sour beats. ‘Just fuck off home.’

  Hirsch turned the key and drove sedately towards Tiverton. The patrol car trailed him for a few kilometres, a disconsolate white speck, until it turned off and Hirsch saw the red rear lights as it sped south again. A hint of the sun out east and Hirsch thought again of Wendy Street and Katie out there, the sun touching them before it touched him. He thought of the cop shop tea room back at Redruth. The sink, the pot plants, drowned in beer when no one was looking.

  ‘One step ahead, you pricks,’ he said.

  ~ * ~

  18

  HIS ALARM SOUNDED at eight on Sunday morning. Hirsch lay stunned, trying to work out who and where he was. He swung his legs out of bed and planted them on the scratchy mat beside it. Yawned and stared at the floor.

  It was no good. He showered, brewed coffee and drank it with toast on a licheny chair in the back yard, a cumquat tree breathing down his neck, the filtered sunlight struggling to encourage him.

  Then, still feeling pretty ordinary, he walked for thirty minutes, exploring the town, saying hello to the bony horse on its patch of dirt, a galah in a cage and an old codger squirting his roses.

  ‘Lovely morning.’

  ‘Remains to be seen,’ the bloke said, and Hirsch thought that was about right.

  ~ * ~

  Nine o’clock now, a civilised hour. Hirsch, using his office phone, said, ‘Hope I woke you.’

  ‘You’d have to get up early,’ Rosie DeLisle said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Overheard something last night,’ Hirsch said, telling her about Nicholson and the girlfriend who’d crashed his car.

  ‘No licence?’

  ‘Which might mean she was too young,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘Excellent. This is exactly what we want from you.’

  At once, Hirsch felt dirty. Less so when he said, ‘And I know who planted that stuff in my car.’

  ~ * ~

  When he got to Redruth there was no one in the lockup or the police station, so he walked around to the courthouse, a wood-panelled side room in the district council offices, wondering if Kropp had already released Raymond Latimer.

  Not yet ten o’clock and court was already in session, the magistrate at a slightly raised table, the court reporter—a middle-aged woman—at a tiny corner desk, and Kropp sprawled with two of the overnight drunks on a bench in front of the public gallery, which at that hour on a Sunday was empty.

  Ray Latimer was seated at a long table across the aisle from Kropp, next to a natty suit. Lawyer, Hirsch guessed, taking in the briefcase and files. And something cute was going on between Latimer, his lawyer and the magistrate, some sort of football banter concerning champion goals and high marks. Hirsch slid onto the bench beside his sergeant, barely covering a yawn.

  The magistrate caught it. David Coulter, according to the name plate, a twinkling butterball who looked like a forty-five-year-old ex-small-town solicitor. Already dressed for Sunday golf. ‘We boring you, mate?’

  ‘Late night,’ Hirsch said.

  He was the centre of attention now, the magistrate, the lawyer and Latimer, all three smirking at him. But Kropp was seething. Hirsch edged away and made himself invisible.

  Thirty minutes passed. The two drunks were fined. And now the court reporter was packing up, getting out of her chair, leaving with a little finger wave to the magistrate and the lawyer.

  ‘Sarge?’ murmured Hirsch. ‘What about Mr Latimer?’

  ‘Done and dusted,’ Kropp snapped. ‘Pleaded down to disorderly conduct and the minimum fine.’

  Hirsch checked his watch. ‘I didn’t get here late, Sarge.’

  Kropp folded his arms and snorted. Some deal had been cooked up, but
why was Kropp so pissed off about it? His mate had got off with a slap on the wrist, after all. So his beef was with the magistrate and the lawyer?

  The courthouse emptied, leaving Kropp, Latimer and Hirsch. And Kropp didn’t want to be there. He shook Latimer’s hand perfunctorily, said through his teeth: ‘Well, you were lucky,’ and turned to go.

  ‘Mate, what can I say? I was an idiot.’

  Kropp was almost at the door. He raised a hand goodbye.

  Agitated, Latimer called, ‘Mate, wait, I was hoping you could give us a lift home.’

  ‘Ask Constable Hirschhausen.’

  Fuck, thought Hirsch, and now he was on his own.

  Latimer’s vigour and gloss had been worn to nothing by tiredness and a night in a cell. His clothing was wrinkled, chin stubbly, eyes bloodshot, hair in crazy tufts. But he lit up and looked keenly at Hirsch. ‘Could you? Look, you have no idea how sorry I am about last night. I shouldn’t have taken a swing at you.’

  ‘I’m not a taxi service. What about your wife, father, girlfriend, lawyer?’

  Latimer shuffled his feet. ‘There isn’t anyone. My father’s taken the boys to the Jamestown air show, and obviously I can’t call Allie. My lawyer’s off to play golf with Dave Coulter and as for Finola, well, I might have done my dash there.’

  Hirsch was cranky. ‘I am leaving right this minute, all right?’

  ‘Right then,’ Ray Latimer said. ‘Lead on.’

  Out into the sun, down the steps and into the HiLux, the town Sunday-quiet and the air still. ‘Seatbelt,’ Hirsch snarled, but that expelled all of his energy and he let the four-wheel-drive trundle out of town, too tired to speed.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ Latimer said.

  Hirsch ignored him. Too tired to speed, too tired to speak.

  ‘And sorry again for last night. I got stuck into the booze after our win.’

  Hirsch grunted, creeping through the empty town. Latimer, a stale lump beside him, ran commentary, swivel-necking as if he’d never been to Redruth before.

  ‘Damn shame, Finucane’s going out of business.’

  A white goods shop, Closing down sale pasted across the windows. Hirsch couldn’t give a stuff.

  ‘It’s a heartache,’ Latimer said.

  Hirsch wriggled his shoulders as if that would shut his passenger down.

  ‘High costs, low returns,’ Latimer said. ‘When the man on the land struggles to survive, so do the local shopkeepers. There’s nothing for the kids, no reason why they’d hang on, better money in the city and excellent money up at Roxby Downs or on one of the wind farms. You can’t get shearers, shed hands or casual labour for love or money anymore.’

  Hirsch wanted to point to himself and say, ‘This is my caring and sharing face.’

  ‘Take my property,’ said Latimer. ‘Been in the family for generations and now we’re barely hanging on.’

  And yet you keep buying things and not paying your bills. Feeling nasty, Hirsch said, ‘Why not cut back on the spending?’

  Latimer continued as if he’d not heard him. ‘What with the economy and my wife...’

  ‘How is she to blame?’

  ‘Divorce? It’ll ruin me. My father and me.’

  ‘And yet you’re giving her the grounds for one.’

  Latimer snorted. ‘Am I a monk? Anyway, she’s unstable, mate. Tried to kill herself last year.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Fifty per cent of what I own, plus child support? Where’s the justice?’

  Hirsch was tired. Latimer stank, stale alcohol leaching and cigarette smoke in the weave of his shirt. Flicking a switch, Hirsch dropped his window a few centimetres, wondering if he should monitor the man’s movements for the next few hours. Keep him away from his wife. God he was exhausted.

  ‘We’re not made of money, we’d have to sell up if she goes through with it. A property that’s been in the same family for generations.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Can’t catch a break. They put a line of wind generators on Finola’s property, right? Not ours. Rent’s worth thousands of dollars a year.’

  He’s going to marry Finola Armstrong, Hirsch thought. Barrier Highway was quiet. Latimer would quiver alertly from time to time, tracking a family station wagon, a ute, a truck, remarking on the driver. Hirsch had no interest. He didn’t care if so-and-so in the white station wagon was a good bloke, or whosiwhatsit in the red ute had cancer. He wanted to sleep.

  ‘Next right,’ Latimer said.

  Hirsch made the turn onto Bitter Wash Road, watched by a cow. Almost noon and he was starving. No rain for the past week and so for the next several kilometres, dust poured behind him and the steering wheel transmitted the surface corrugations to his hands. Then they were in the shadow of the wind turbines again, and shortly after that Latimer was pointing to his driveway entrance.

  ‘Coming home to an empty house,’ he said, drawing his palms down his stubbled cheeks, a picture of desolation.

  ‘Your father and the boys at the Jamestown air show?’

  ‘They headed over there yesterday, after the game,’ Latimer said. ‘I’ve got an aunt lives there.’

  The old man’s complicit in the son’s philandering, thought Hirsch. The gravel complained under the tyres as Hirsch followed the track between the lawn beds, shrubs and silvery gums. He pulled in opposite the flagstones leading to the veranda steps and the front door, and saw that the door was ajar. He touched the man’s forearm, registering briefly strength and warmth through the creased cotton. ‘Did you leave your place open yesterday?’

  ‘What?’

  Latimer glanced wildly at the door and was out and powering towards the house before Hirsch could stop him. Up the steps and through the door. Oh, fuck, thought Hirsch, following him, but also thinking there’d be a vehicle if burglars were still on the premises. He paused on the veranda, hearing Latimer stomping around inside, and glanced across to the sheds, the yards, the paddocks.

  And there was a glint, sunlight flashing on a windscreen, down along the creek. Hirsch shaded his eyes. How would you get a vehicle down there? Was there an access gate, a farm track?

  He stuck his head in, called to Latimer: ‘Anything? Damage, things missing?’

  ‘Gun case is open. The twenty-two’s missing.’

  Hirsch recalled that there were two .22 rifles: the Ruger used by the kids and the Brno in the gun case. So the Ruger was still floating around somewhere, still stowed on the window shelf of the ute, probably. That’s what Hirsch was thinking as he trotted across the yard and slid between the wires of the fence. He spotted fresh tyre impressions in the grass, and realised there was a farm track concealed under the spring growth. The track ran beside the fence and then down an incline to the creek, and now Hirsch had a clearer view: the Tin Hut, some ancient quince, apricot and mulberry trees. The small clearing where Alison Latimer had parked her Subaru.

  He side-slipped down the bank to the edge of the creek. Reaching the car, he looked in: empty, a suitcase in the back, keys in the ignition. He straightened and ran his gaze in among the fruit trees, down into the reeds and pools of the creek, and finally over the rusted hut. He felt spooked, a shiver rippling over him as he approached the hut and came around the end wall.

  He found Alison Latimer slumped against the rusted tin, half-toppled with a rifle butt between her thighs, her thumb caught in the trigger guard. The barrel tip had been in her mouth, he guessed, but she’d jerked as she died. It was not the Ruger but the Brno. No exit wound; blood over her chin and inside her shirt front. The ultimate stillness of death.

  Hirsch had seen it before. But he advanced cautiously, keeping close to the undisturbed grass scratching the wall, and felt for a pulse. Nothing. Some residual warmth, so death had been no more than a few hours ago. He reversed his steps and took a series of photographs with his phone, keeping wide of the body. He had maybe a minute before Latimer arrived. Half an hour before Kropp and the doctor
and everyone else arrived.

  He started with a series of establishing shots of the hut, the grove of trees, the car and the creek. Then, closing in on the body, he photographed the dirt and the grass around it, the feet and legs, the rifle, the ring-less hands holding it, the bloodied chest, and Alison Latimer’s head. Then the same sequence but side-on, first the left flank, then the right, as Latimer came pounding down from the track above.