by Garry Disher
She steered down the empty back roads to Tiverton and was about to turn onto the highway towards the pub, when a third instinct asserted itself—the need to right the wrongs done to her. For there, fifty metres away, was the police station and Martin Gwynne and that prick of a cop out the front, yacking away. Arseholes, both of them. The cop had busted her more times than she could count, and Martin Gwynne seemed to keep a permanent sneer on, just for her. There was a dim memory of something more, quite recently: Gwynne’s hands on her? Brenda was fuzzy on the detail but she was certain the bastard had taken liberties of some kind. She planted her foot and yanked on the wheel as she shot onto the highway. Oops, too wide. She yanked again, overcorrected, and found herself fishtailing towards Hirsch and Gwynne, screaming obscenities at them.
Anyway, that was how Hirsch later reconstructed the workings of Brenda Flann’s sozzled brain. Right now, Brenda was intent on his annihilation, her crazed face nose-up to the windscreen, the crumpled front end of the Falcon looming, motor howling, bald tyres smoking, radiator steaming.
Good sense evaporated in him. He gaped, motionless in a half-crouch, his heart knocking behind the paltry defence of his skinny ribs. He might have died.
Martin Gwynne reacted first and shot out his arm. He clamped his pale, spidery fingers on Hirsch’s forearm and tugged hard, meeting no resistance from Hirsch. Their feet tangled; both men toppled into the gap between their cars as Brenda blew past, sideswiping the roo bar mounted on Hirsch’s police 4WD. A percussive thump, the shriek of metal peeling open. The old Ford paused briefly, as if to shake off a hindrance, then ricocheted across the highway and through the primary school boundary fence, wires twanging.
Peace, when it gathered itself, saw Brenda’s car stalled in a cloud of steam and dust halfway between the footpath and the nearest classroom. Small heads filled the windows. Birds resettled on the powerline, muffled talkback radio buzzed in a nearby house, a breeze filled the lungs of a supermarket bag and set it dancing. Then mundane reality as a semi-trailer load of hay rolled through the town, the driver craning to get a good look.
Hirsch extracted his arms and legs from Martin, brushed himself down. Glanced at Martin and said, ‘You okay?’
Gwynne used his please-take-note voice. ‘I think we can safely say it’s a good thing my reaction times are above average or you’d have been a goner.’
Hirsch breathed in and out. His thoughts leapfrogged to the ramifications: there was no way he could avoid a dinner invitation now.
‘I’ll just check on Brenda,’ he said.
Hirsch was surprised, and also relieved, to find that Brenda had been wearing her seatbelt.
‘Her injuries would have been a lot worse otherwise,’ the ambulance driver said, thirty minutes later. Broken nose, gashed forehead, whiplash, possible cracked ribs. Still unconscious.
‘And just as well you didn’t try to shift her,’ the other ambo said.
Hirsch said his thanks, waved them off, had a word with the primary school headmaster, retrieved Brenda’s shoulder bag from the footwell of the Falcon and crossed to the police station, where Martin was hovering. Didn’t the guy have anything at all to do?
As if replying to Hirsch’s inner grumbling, Martin said, in his managerial voice, ‘I think you’d better take my statement about both this and the pub incident while the details are still fresh.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Hirsch amiably.
He ushered Gwynne inside, ducked around the counter to his cramped bit of office space, tumbled Brenda’s bag into the bottom drawer of his desk, hunted out the relevant paperwork.
Martin watched, frowning, a man who required order and rarely found it. ‘Since we’re both involved in the most recent Brenda incident, let’s get that out of the way first.’
‘Good thinking,’ Hirsch said again.
Settling on a working ballpoint, Hirsch began to write, half-talking to himself: ‘Date, time, location. Who, what, where, when and why…’
Martin Gwynne, reading upside down, said, ‘It was more like two-twenty, not two-fifteen.’
‘Well spotted.’
‘Conditions calm,’ Gwynne said, ‘visibility clear despite a slight haze.’
‘Right.’
Martin gave Hirsch time to catch up, then dictated a first-person account: sequence of events, locations, distances. Possible witnesses. Three cars parked in the vicinity—one next door to the police station, two outside the shop. Their numberplates.
Hirsch blinked. He looked up. Martin was reading from a small spiral notebook.
‘You’re a thorough man, Martin.’
Gwynne nodded: it was his due. ‘Finally, owing to my quick reactions, a possible fatality or serious injury to Constable Hirschhausen was averted.’
Hirsch almost wrote it. ‘They like witness statements to be, ah, neutral. Just the facts.’ In the face of Martin’s faintly affronted air he added, ‘Unadorned language. How about you say this: “I pulled Constable Hirschhausen out of the path of Mrs Flann’s car”?’
Gwynne considered the rewording and seemed to find it wanting. ‘You know best, Paul. But the fact is clear, if I hadn’t been there, you might have been killed.’
Bridling a little at Martin Gwynne’s neediness, Hirsch nodded his head at the many fickle ways of chance. ‘Damn right,’ he said, still amiable. ‘Makes my skin crawl to think of it.’
Gwynne, satisfied, went on with his narrative, which Hirsch copied word for word since Martin would read it back before signing.
Then, a shorter account of the pub incident. When it was done, Gwynne clapped his hands together. ‘I think we could both do with a restorative cup of tea. Come around to my place for a quick cuppa, and you can collect the Santa suit while you’re about it.’
Hirsch visualised it: the dire sitting room; Martin telling him what was wrong with the world; Mother hovering.
‘Raincheck? I still need to gather other statements, write up reports, let Brenda’s sons know what happened.’
A brief tightening of Gwynne’s features, a glint of suppressed disappointment. ‘Fair enough. Dinner?’
‘The Christmas lights, remember?’ Hirsch babbled, ‘Maybe the weekend?’
‘Sunday, six-thirty,’ Martin Gwynne said, turning on his heel.
Hirsch took statements from an out-of-work shearer who’d reflexively spilled his beer when Brenda mounted the veranda next to him, the publican, and an elderly woman deadheading her roses on the other side of the road. Their accounts varied little, although the gardener believed that Mr Gwynne had been unnecessarily rough with Mrs Flann. Then Hirsch headed to the shop for a word with Ed Tennant.
Stepping from sunlight into dimness, he blinked to adjust. A woman from an outlying farm was browsing with a shopping basket in the crook of her arm. Gemma Pitcher, the young woman who occasionally worked the cash register and stacked the shelves, was flipping through a catalogue. Otherwise the shop was a silent place frozen in time. Along from the cash register was the post office counter, and beyond that a case of books that constituted the Tiverton branch of the Redruth Library Service, half an hour down the highway. On the far wall, rubber boots, work overalls, tools, trays of nuts and bolts, fuel cans, an aluminium ladder. And, massed in the centre, everyday household goods on rows of metal shelves: breakfast cereals, tinned peaches, laundry detergent, tampons, aspirin, shampoo.
Hirsch stalked through to the rear. He found Tennant in his office, a small space crammed with filing cabinets, desk, chair and a boxy old computer.
Ed, tidy, precise and middle-aged, said, ‘Heard what nearly happened to you.’
Hirsch nodded. Any news at all soon flashed around this town. ‘Live another day. Meanwhile, about this morning…’
‘One thing I want to make clear: it wasn’t my idea to take frigging Brenda back to her place. That was Martin’s brainwave.’
‘He can be forceful,’ Hirsch allowed.
‘I thought she should have been seen by a doctor, frankly. When
we got her home, there was no one to keep an eye on her. God knows where the boys were.’
‘Wayne was on the fire truck,’ Hirsch said. ‘Adam was visiting Daryl Cobb.’
Tennant shook his head: indifferent or philosophical, Hirsch couldn’t tell.
‘Quick question, Ed: did you and Martin arrest Brenda? Say those actual words?’
‘God, no.’
‘Hurt her in any way?’
Tennant gaped. ‘I’m starting to wish I’d kept my nose out of it. Are you saying this is all going to come back and bite me?’
‘Nothing to worry about, Ed. I doubt she remembers a thing.’
He shook Tennant’s hand and went in search of Brenda Flann’s sons.
4
HIRSCH SOUGHT WAYNE first, the responsible older one—‘responsible’ having other nuances when applied to any member of the Flann family.
On the little fire station forecourt, Hirsch found Bob Muir hosing down the elderly CFS truck, a mess of road dust, pollen and chaff swirling at his feet. Hirsch waited and watched. Muir was methodical: top to bottom, front to back; wheels last.
‘Good as new,’ Hirsch remarked, as Muir coiled the hose.
Muir patted the shiny flank. ‘Held together with fencing wire and sticky tape. What can I do you for?’
‘Wayne here?’
Muir stowed the hose, taking his time. Contemplating his cop friend as if weighing his loyalties. Wayne Flann belonged to the district; he was a CFS member—but he was also trouble. Hirsch was accustomed to seeing these mental machinations in the locals. He let the process play out.
‘Went home an hour ago,’ Muir said finally.
Hirsch explained: Brenda, the pub, Gwynne and Tennant, Brenda’s blazing return.
‘What you might call a busy morning,’ Muir said, unsurprised. He’d heard and seen a lot from Brenda over the years. ‘She in hospital?’
‘For a few days at least.’
Muir calmly shook water from his hands, wiped his palms on his thighs. He cocked his head at Hirsch. ‘You know about her husband, right?’
‘Currently incarcerated.’
‘Half a dozen armed holdups over a two-year period,’ Muir continued. ‘We’re not talking guns—Stu prefers screwdrivers and cricket bats. Service stations, the odd milk bar. Last time he stepped it up a bit—knocked off a bookie after the Clare races, got away with close to thirty grand.’
Hirsch nodded; there was a story coming on. A point to it, knowing Bob.
‘On his way home, he feels a bit peckish. Pulls into a roadhouse, grabs a Coke and a packet of chips.’
Muir eyed Hirsch sleepily. The point was coming.
‘There he is, swimming in cash, but does he pay for his little snack? Not our Stuart. Shoves everything under his jumper and walks out.’ Muir paused. ‘The whole thing caught on CCTV. Arrested a couple of hours later.’
‘It’s called an incapacity for consequential thinking,’ Hirsch said.
‘Oh, is that right?’
The men grinned at each other. Hirsch understood Stuart Flann’s actions because he’d seen it a hundred times before. Bob Muir understood them because he was a smart man.
‘Was he a drinker?’
‘He was,’ Muir said. ‘Brenda not so much, not before she married him. He was a nasty drunk. Knocked her around.’ He paused. ‘I went to school with her. She was just one of the gang. Stu fucked her up.’
‘The boys, too.’
‘Count on it.’
Hirsch glanced at his watch. ‘I need to let them know about Brenda.’
Muir pulled a leather flip case from his pocket. ‘Landline number. Wayne should be home by now.’
He scrolled through his contents, touched the screen, listened to the dial tone and thrust the phone at Hirsch. ‘Here you go.’
‘Wayne?’ Hirsch said. ‘This is Paul Hirschhausen on Bob’s phone, I’m calling about your mother.’
He explained. Not too badly hurt. Redruth hospital. The car? Still on the school oval. ‘A write-off, I’d say,’ Hirsch said.
Silence on the other end, then Wayne Flann said, ‘Understood,’ and ended the call.
‘Profuse with his thanks,’ Hirsch said, returning Muir’s phone. ‘A wailing and gnashing of teeth.’
Muir gave him a look: mates or not, don’t overstep the mark.
A Land Rover rolled through the town, caked in back-country dust, plates obscured, only a half-moon of windscreen available to the driver. Hirsch geared up for the chase, then slumped. He was tired, overloaded, been running around all day. He’d notify Redruth to pull the vehicle over. Or not.
He checked his watch again. Twenty minutes before he was due to collect Katie Street from school, and Wayne Flann’s last question echoed in his mind: the car?
He said, ‘Bob, if you’re free, maybe you could—’
‘Help you tow Brenda’s heap of junk somewhere.’
‘Amazing how your mind works.’
‘I could have been a professor.’
Yes, you could, Hirsch thought.
They used the Tiverton Electrics ute and a fire-service rope to drag the damaged Falcon back along its path of destruction and onto the highway. Then, hooking the rope to the front of the car, they towed it to the outer edge of town, where a cyclone fence housed a storage shed and the district’s sole grader and road-maintenance truck. The area was a wasteland of hard baked red soil and dead grass; a couple of heat-stunned gum trees. Muir had the key. He has the keys to the town, Hirsch thought. Literally and figuratively.
‘It can’t sit here forever,’ Muir warned, coiling the rope hand to elbow, hand to elbow.
But it probably will, thought Hirsch, gazing glumly at Brenda Flann’s wrecked car.
Feeling sticky, grimy and fatigued, Hirsch walked through to the highway and on to the Cobb house, hoping he’d find Adam Flann there with Daryl, the boys glued to an Xbox or watching a DVD. Ten minutes until the school bell sounded.
The Cobbs lived in a small 1970s brick veneer ravaged by time and the inland sun, sitting low in the dust as if waiting for further blows. No front garden, no decoration, no Christmas wreath, just weariness and stored heat. Marie Cobb was rarely seen in the town. Unemployed, chronically shy, she suffered from bipolar disorder and her children were her carers. If families like the Flanns were not uncommon, nor were families like the Cobbs, Hirsch had discovered in his brief career.
He set himself to knock, wondering who would answer. Daryl Cobb, seventeen, a big, soft, sloppy boy with a touch of ADHD, easily led by someone like Adam Flann? Laura, his younger sister? No: Laura wouldn’t be back from high school yet. She was the calm, practical, organised one. Did well at her studies and earned a few dollars after school grooming miniature ponies for a local breeder. That left Marie, who, in all probability, wouldn’t answer the door.
Hirsch rapped his knuckles, waited in the heat. The house seemed to grow tense, barely breathing, and he could sense Marie Cobb alone in there, either manic and afraid or depressed and asleep.
Laura would be home on the bus soon, but where was Daryl? Hirsch shrugged; nothing more he could do. With any luck, Adam had scrounged a lift home with someone, and would hear about his mother from Wayne.
He walked back to the police station just as the final bell sounded in the school on the other side of the road. Fished out his car keys and got behind the wheel of his ancient Pulsar just as the kids poured from their classrooms.
Ignition: nothing.
Flat battery.
‘Six fours,’ he was saying a couple of minutes later, behind the wheel of the police Toyota.
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Four sixes.’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘The square root of the third integer taken as a percentage of the hypotenuse.’
‘Three-and-a-half.’
‘I didn’t think you’d get that one, frankly,’ Hirsch said. ‘Very good.’
Katie Street touched her shoulder to Hirsch’s briefly. S
he was a wisp in the passenger seat, skinny legs, short dark hair damp on her neck. Wearing the Tiverton Primary School uniform of tan shorts and dark blue polo shirt. Scuffed sneakers with yellow laces propped on the dash, a massive backpack in the footwell. A solemn, watchful kid when Hirsch had first met her, but different around him now. A practical kid. She’d had some trauma in her short life, but seemed okay. No nightmares, no tendency to take a memory out and agonise over it. He didn’t think so, anyway.
But a withholding kid sometimes. Finally she said, ‘Is Mrs Flann okay?’
‘She’s in hospital. She’ll be okay.’
Another silence. ‘Was she drunk?’
‘Yes.’
Katie wasn’t looking for a life-lesson, so Hirsch said nothing. He’d let her ruminate and prod the matter into a shape she’d find satisfactory. He began to accelerate, heading out of the town, past the shop, the sign to the side-street grain dealer, past Martin Gwynne and his wife attacking their box hedge with electric clippers. Martin paused in the act, narrowed his eyes to see Hirsch sail by. Joyce Gwynne paid no attention. Hirsch saluted and then he was on the outskirts, passing the silos.
A kilometre further on—mirage shimmers on the unspooling highway, the afternoon sun high and hot—he saw two figures in the distance. They clarified: not mirages. Daryl Cobb and Adam Flann on the other side of the road, heading for the town.
Hirsch braked and pulled onto the gravel verge. All around were grain heads and wheat stubble behind drooping wire fences choked with parched roadside weeds. Farm tracks, a couple of exhausted gums, and one distant farmhouse roof behind a cypress hedge. Nothing else under the vast blue haze. What were the boys doing out here in the heat? No water, no hats, no shoes—just rubber thongs on their feet.
He wound down his window, propped his elbow on the sill. ‘Want a lift?’
They gaped at him, burning up, exhausted. ‘Come on,’ urged Hirsch, ‘hop in.’
Daryl Cobb stared down at the softened asphalt. A shapeless, indistinct boy, the down on his cheeks adding to his general blurriness.
Adam Flann was sharper: slight and calculating. ‘We’re good,’ he said with sleepy insolence.
