Bitter Wash Road Read online

  Muir conceded that. ‘He’s not home yet, but he’s probably not far away. He and a mate of his work at the grain shed.’

  Hirsch nodded. Tiverton Grains, a collection of sheds in a side street near the pub. ‘I’ll catch him tomorrow.’

  Muir, indicating the phone in Hirsch’s fist, said, ‘You glued to that?’

  And then he was crossing into the next yard, where a severely groomed couch-grass lawn was bordered by garden beds splashed here and there with red and white. A clean, older style Holden ute was parked in the driveway, Tiverton Electrics painted on the side. Hirsch glanced towards the rear of the property. He saw a large shed, door open, fuel drums, ladders, metal shelves and coiled wire inside. Neat house, shabby house. And that was a pattern repeated everywhere.

  ~ * ~

  5

  ALMOST SIX O’CLOCK. Hirsch parked the HiLux in the police station driveway, intending to walk the short distance to the shop. A mini bus pulled in next door, Redruth District Council stencilled along the side panels, half-a-dozen elderly people on board. The driver tooted, and here was Hirsch’s elderly neighbour limping down the path from her house. Hirsch shot a glare at the driver and took the old woman’s arm. He helped her up the bus steps. ‘An outing?’

  ‘A lecture at the old jail in Redruth,’ she said, ‘then dinner at the reform school.’

  Ruins dating from the 1850s, now tourist attractions. Hirsch registered her fragility under his manacling hand and hoped he hadn’t bruised her. ‘Well, you belong in both places.’

  She cackled and they all waved, and he was left in the exhaust gases.

  ~ * ~

  He walked on to the general store, an afternoon shadow tethered to his feet. Tennant’s Four Square was an off-white brick building, long, low, the shopfront glass deep inside a corrugated iron veranda, with a petrol bowser at one end, secured by a bulky brass padlock, and a chequerboard of private post boxes at the other. Nothing to entice shoppers except a dusty ice-cream advertisement on a sheet of tin and a board of daily specials. You couldn’t see in: the windows were painted a greyish white. As Hirsch approached, an elderly man in overalls emerged with a litre of milk. Nothing else moved in the entire town.

  The interior was a dim cave. The ceiling, pressed tin, was stalactited with hooks from the days when the shopkeeper would hang it with buckets, watering cans, coils of rope and paired boots. Refrigerator cases lined a side wall, shallow crates of withered fruit and vegetables the back, and in the vast middle ground were aisles of rickety shelving, stacked with anything from tinned peaches to tampons. The sole cash register was adjacent to the entrance, next to ranks of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines and a little bookcase thumbtacked with a sign, Library. If you were a farmer in need of an axe or some sheep dip you headed for the far back corner. If you wanted to buy a stamp, you headed a couple of paces past the library.

  No sign of Melia Donovan’s friend, but Hirsch was pretty sure he’d been served by the woman seated at the post office counter a couple of times. She glanced up at him and hastily away, one forefinger poised above the keypad of a calculator as if she’d lost her place. A thin, pinched woman, full of burdens. ‘Excuse me,’ Hirsch said, his footsteps snapping on the old floorboards as he approached, ‘are you the shopkeeper?’

  She whispered, ‘No,’ and nodded towards the dim rear.

  Hirsch set out between the racks of groceries and found a small back room furnished with a desk, a fat old computer, filing cabinets, a swivel chair and a middle-aged man, tensely thin and neat. When Hirsch knocked on the door frame, the man shot out of his chair. ‘Help you?’

  ‘Paul Hirschhausen, I’m new at the police station.’

  The shopkeeper reached out a long, thin, defenceless hand. ‘Yes, Ed Tennant. Thought I’d run into you sooner or later.’

  And without much joy in the anticipation, thought Hirsch, returning the shake. Tennant looked as sour as the post office woman.

  ‘I just met your wife.’

  Tennant didn’t reply to that. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m afraid this is not exactly a courtesy call.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Tennant, a soup of apprehensions showing. Then he firmed up a little. ‘I thought it was all sorted.’

  Hirsch decided to play along. ‘Depends.’

  Tennant bared his teeth without humour, a stringy man fuelled by nerves and grievances. ‘There was no need for Sergeant Kropp to send you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I will give the Latimers some leeway, but they can’t rely on shiny shoes and a smile to get them through forever. If they haven’t got the money they shouldn’t go shopping.’

  Hirsch thought back to the green-roofed house he’d seen that morning, the signs of neglect. It didn’t surprise him that the Latimers were in strife, he supposed. He stored that away for now and held up a palm. ‘Actually, Mr Tennant, I badly need to speak to Gemma Pitcher. I understand she works for you?’

  ‘She’s not here. What’s going on? She got a phone call and burst into tears and left, said she’d be back tomorrow.’

  ‘If you could tell me where she lives?’

  ‘Next to the tennis courts. Look, what’s it about? Is she in trouble? You speak to me first, all right?’

  Hirsch hardened his voice. ‘Mr Tennant, I’m not about to arrest or hassle anyone. But I do need to speak to Gemma.’

  ‘And I’d like to know what about,’ Tennant said, a man of precise habits and concerns.

  Hirsch sighed. ‘Her friend Melia Donovan has been killed. Now, can I go about my business?’

  ‘Oh.’ Tennant subsided. ‘That explains the phone call.’

  Hirsch was curious. ‘Did she say who called?’

  ‘Nope.’ As Hirsch moved off, the shopkeeper added, ‘How did it happen? Melia?’

  Hirsch stopped. ‘She was hit by a car and found by the side of the road.’

  He could see the man picturing it, partly avid, partly horrified. He left the shop and went in search of the dead girl’s friend.

  ~ * ~

  HE HAD TO GET past her mother first. ‘She’s that upset,’ said Eileen Pitcher at a peeling front door, the house peeling too, separated from the town’s tennis courts by a line of overgrown cypresses.

  Hirsch was tired. ‘Won’t take a moment, Mrs Pitcher.’

  Gemma Pitcher’s mother was tiny and aggrieved and didn’t want Hirsch on her doorstep. ‘Wipe your feet.’

  She led Hirsch to a sitting-cum-dining room, semi-dark, a TV flickering and two boys crouched before it, thumbing X-Boxes. The dining table sat against the rear wall, and Gemma Pitcher was sprawled on a sofa, tissues in her fist, eyes damp. She was a plump eighteen, with a band of soft belly showing between the waistband of tight jeans and the scant hem of a T-shirt. Her navel looked sore to Hirsch, the flesh puckered around a thick silver ring. She wore her mousy hair long, a ragged fringe over her mascaraed eyes—the mascara currently leaking down her cheeks.

  ‘Hello,’ Hirsch said, telling her who he was.

  Gemma was one of those teenagers who can barely speak to or look at an adult but respond to greetings with a kind of mincing grimace. Hirsch crouched so that his head was on a level with hers. ‘You might remember serving me in the shop a couple of times.’

  She shrugged.

  Girls like this are shruggers, Hirsch thought, and they fill the world. ‘Are you up to answering a few questions?’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ the mother said.

  ‘Gemma?’

  ‘Don’t care.’

  ‘Gemma love, you’ve had a shock.’

  ‘Mum, it’s all right. You can go.’

  Mrs Pitcher turned her hooked, distrusting features on Hirsch. Scowled, touched Gemma’s upper arm as if conceding she was beaten, and left them to it.

  ‘Perhaps we could sit at the table?’ Hirsch suggested.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Gemma took one stiff dini
ng chair, Hirsch another. She lit up a Holiday using a pink disposable lighter. The three rings in the cartilage of each ear glinted as she sucked smoke from her cigarette and jetted it out through side-pursed lips. That was all the energy she could muster. Otherwise she was helpless, scared, a little weepy.

  ‘I don’t know if I—’

  ‘Won’t take a moment. I’m trying to fill in Melia’s movements on the weekend.’

  Gemma’s knee jiggled. An old, habitual deflection of shame or guilt? Hirsch sharpened his tone. ‘Were you with her at any stage?’

  Gemma didn’t want to answer. Her eyes cut across to the hallway door, her purple nails picking at the hard seam of her jeans.

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Gemma. Yesterday and the day before. Were you with her or not?’

  ‘Might of been. For a while.’

  ‘You went out Saturday night?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘You have a car?’

  ‘Mum’s car.’

  ‘You took Melia somewhere?’

  ‘I’m allowda.’

  ‘Sure, nothing wrong with that,’ Hirsch said, and he waited.

  It came: ‘We went down to Redruth.’

  ‘What did you do there?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Pub? Friend’s house? Café?’

  ‘Didn’t drink and drive if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Did Melia drink?’

  ‘Her mum lets her,’ Gemma said hotly.

  Hirsch smiled. ‘It’s all right, I’m not the underage drinking police.’ Which was a downright lie. ‘Which pub?’ he asked.

  ‘The Woolman.’

  ‘She was with you the whole time?’

  ‘Friends and that.’

  ‘There was a group of you?’

  Shrug.

  ‘You stayed there the whole evening? You, Melia, your friends?’

  Gemma launched into a blow-by-blow. They’d been joined by Nick and Julie but Julie’s ex-boyfriend Brad showed up so Nick told him to get lost and there was a bit of a fight and Lisa, that’s Jeff’s cousin, she calmed them down and Gemma’s boyfriend was like, let’s go to the drive-in. It made no sense and Hirsch lost interest.

  ‘Drive-in?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s one in Clare.’

  ‘Melia didn’t go with you?’

  ‘I told you that.’

  ‘So she was still in the pub when you left?’

  ‘I told you that.’

  ‘Was her boyfriend there? Ex-boyfriend?’

  ‘What boyfriend?’

  ‘Any boyfriend. How about the older guy she’s been seeing?’

  Gemma’s gaze was sliding away at every question now, as if to escape her own evasions. ‘Don’t know about no older guy.’

  ‘The one she was in an accident with,’ Hirsch said, guessing.

  ‘On the weekend?’

  ‘A few weeks ago.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  ‘If you think of anything,’ Hirsch said, his voice on the far side of weary defeat, ‘give me a call.’

  ~ * ~

  He returned to the Donovan house. Another car was there, a dinged-about Commodore. Melia’s brother, thought Hirsch. Or relatives or friends, and if Leanne Donovan was still sedated and the house was thick with grieving, there was no point in knocking on the door. He turned around and headed for the shop again, starving, thinking of dinner.

  Hirsch’s main kitchen appliance was his microwave, so he headed straight for the frozen meals. Almost closing time and the shop was relatively busy. He counted four women and two men in the aisles. Tennant’s wife was at the cash register, Tennant hovering. He followed Hirsch to the freezer, watched as Hirsch selected a frozen lasagne.

  ‘Gemma okay?’

  ‘Bit upset.’

  ‘We all are,’ Tennant said, and Hirsch realised he’d sensed it as he’d walked through the store, a community atmosphere of fear and sorrow and whispers. By now they’d all know the who, where, what, when and why. ‘Shop’s busy all of a sudden.’

  ‘It happens,’ Tennant said. ‘Won’t complain.’ He looked with miserable triumph at Hirsch. ‘You’re asking for a speeding ticket or whatever if you shop in Redruth. Business has picked up for me.’

  What the hell was happening in Redruth? Hirsch gestured with the lasagne. ‘Dinner.’

  Tennant gave Hirsch and his frozen pasta a poor-bastard look. ‘Your money’s as good as anyone’s.’

  ~ * ~

  A white police Discovery was parked foursquare outside the police station. Hirsch didn’t like that one bit. Hated it, in fact. Nothing in any way pleasant would come of it. And so he ignored it, unlocking the front door and shoving through, admitting late afternoon sunlight, which probed briefly, illuminating the wall cabinet, its glass doors finger-smudged with country-town boredoms and disappointments.

  Checking automatically for envelopes that might have been slipped under the door, checking the message light on the answering machine, he entered his office, public notices stirring in his slipstream, a rose petal tumbling the length of the vase he’d placed on the counter earlier in the week. Time he picked another bunch. The town was half knitted together with rose canes.

  As expected, footsteps came in hard on his heels, a bitten-off voice. ‘Constable.’

  Hirsch turned. ‘Sarge.’

  Kropp stood on the other side of the counter, a solid fifty-year-old with fierce eyebrows and short grey hair. ‘Did you call Spurling?’

  Spurling? Hirsch went blank for a moment. Spurling: right, the area commander. A superintendent based at Port Pirie. ‘Not me, Sarge.’

  Kropp grunted. ‘Well he heard about the hit-and-run from somebody.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he doesn’t want any fuck-ups.’

  Hirsch waited, enduring Kropp’s fury or whatever it was. The sergeant’s nose had been broken and badly set sometime in the past; now it seemed to steer him in scoffing and sceptical directions. His mouth was a barely visible slash across the bottom of his face.

  Hirsch said, ‘So you headed up here to see if I was fucking up?’

  ‘Don’t be a cunt, son. Here to see you’re settling in okay, your lovely new quarters.’

  Hirsch motioned to the stiff chair that faced his desk, but Kropp shook his head. ‘No thanks. Somewhere more comfortable, think you can manage that?’

  Hirsch pictured his living quarters and doubted it. ‘Come through.’

  The connecting door led to a short corridor and a shut-in smell, no natural light, boxes hard against the wall. Edging past, Kropp said, ‘You’ve been here what, three weeks already? You’re not going anywhere else, sunshine, so you might as well unpack.’

  ‘Had my hands full, sir.’

  The corridor opened on to the cramped sitting room. ‘Get your wife to do it,’ Kropp said, and stopped to give his meaty head a theatrical smack. ‘Oh, I forgot. She left you, I seem to recall.’

  ‘Kind of you to remind me, Sarge,’ Hirsch said, his voice full of light cadences. He opened the curtains without improving anything. He switched on the overhead light. Dust motes floated. This was a loveless place and Hirsch sometimes found himself talking to the furniture in the dark hours. Dumping Saturday’s Advertiser from one of the armchairs, he sat in the other, better, armchair. Kropp eyed the remaining chair and lowered himself as if clenching his sphincter.

  ‘Tea?’ said Hirsch. ‘Coffee?’

  The sergeant shook his head, thank Christ. ‘This hit-and-run. Anything leap out at you?’

  ‘Probably she was hitching home and a vehicle hit her. Possibly she was killed elsewhere and dumped. Until I know what she was doing there I—’

  ‘What’s this “I” shit? Team effort. Oh, I forgot, you don’t do team effort.’ Kropp leaned his forearms on his knees and stared at Hirsch. ‘Let the accident boys deal with the evidence and we will work out a plan of action to answer
your questions about her movements, okay?’

  ‘Sarge.’

  ‘Meanwhile I want you down in Redruth at noon tomorrow for a briefing.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  Hirsch waited, Kropp watching as if to chase him if he ran.