Peace

by Garry Disher

  23

  AT EIGHT-THIRTY ON Monday morning Hirsch was seated with two Internal Investigations officers at a bland table in a small, featureless room. He’d dealt with both officers and considered Rosie DeLisle a friend; Inspector Gaddis was a foe. Both had targeted him during the corruption inquiry; Rosie eventually believed that he was more or less clean, Gaddis was convinced Hirsch should have been charged.

  It was Gaddis who began. ‘Do you know why we’ve asked you here today, Constable Hirschhausen?’

  The sun was behind the inspector, lighting up his thin hair in a wispy nimbus. Not holy, just distracting. ‘No, sir.’

  Gaddis was always colour-coordinated. For this warm summer day he wore a lightweight tan suit and sandcoloured shirt, the collar too big for his scrawny neck, with a beige tie. Gold-rimmed glasses; twig-like fingers adept at shepherding disordered paper into shape and stabbing the next bullet point.

  He lifted a letter. ‘I have here a communication from a Damien Ablett of the district council of Redruth. Do you know this person?’

  ‘I know of him,’ Hirsch said, ‘but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him.’

  Prick though he no doubt was.

  ‘Mr Ablett advises that rate-payer funded asphalt was used to fill potholes in the driveway of the Tiverton police station recently. What do you have to say in regard to this matter?’

  Unnoticed by Gaddis, Rosie DeLisle rolled her eyes heavenwards then back at Hirsch. Apart from that, her face was flat, and Hirsch had to look away or he’d have started grinning.

  He chose his words carefully. ‘It was a donation, sir, from the crew of the council’s patching truck. Apparently, they often have asphalt spoils left over at the end of the day, and rather than let it go to waste, they—’

  Gaddis sharpened. ‘Your driveway was patched first thing in the morning, Constable. Not the end of the day.’

  Hirsch said nothing. If he waited, the blame might flow onto the Bagshaw brothers.

  ‘The council employees will face internal disciplinary proceedings. Meanwhile you will appreciate that the South Australia police service cannot be seen to accept favours? Did you pay these men?’

  I’ll buy the Bagshaw twins a couple of beers one day, Hirsch thought, for laying asphalt worth about two bucks. ‘No, sir.’

  Gaddis turned jocular. ‘So not a variation on the bitumen bandits who like to fleece the unwary, constable?’

  Hirsch gave a hollow chuckle. ‘No, sir.’

  But he knew all about bitumen bandits. His parents had been scammed by a man who knocked on their door one day, saying he had a load of bitumen left over from a large road-repair contract and rather than take it to landfill, a terrible waste of good tar, would they like their driveway paved at a greatly reduced rate? They said yes, in their generous way, paid a deposit, and never saw the man again.

  Gaddis tried for kindly uncle. ‘Hardly a sackable offence, of course, Constable Hirschhausen, but perhaps you might be a little more careful next time. It comes down to image, and it comes down to perception.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Hirsch.

  Rosie twinkled at him. ‘Did they do a good job?’

  ‘A great job,’ Hirsch said. ‘Every time I parked in the driveway, the potholes would put my spine out of whack.’

  Gaddis said coolly, ‘Moving along…’

  While a part of Hirsch tensed for some fresh hell, another part raced through the asphalt back story. Someone in town had witnessed the pothole patching and informed the council office. The town and district councillor was Martin Gwynne. Martin saw and knew everything.

  ‘The matter of your paperwork, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘A number of important memos, in need of your immediate attention, remain unattended to. Would you care to speak to this matter?’

  I would not, thought Hirsch. But his mind alighted on the ‘information cascade’ memo. Should have followed it up. He might have, if the damn thing had been written in plain English.

  ‘What with long daily patrols and two major crimes in my district, I’ve had to let some things slide a little, sir. But I will clear my in-tray in the next few days.’

  ‘Again, hardly a sackable offence, Constable Hirschhausen, but once a pattern of negligence is established, it can be difficult to shake.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Learn to make time in the day to attend to your paperwork. Now, failure to charge two teenage boys with the theft of a motor vehicle.’

  Hirsch swallowed. ‘A judgment call, sir. One boy’s the carer, with his sister, of their mother, who has mental health issues. The other boy’s mother is in hospital and his father’s in jail. I felt a formal apology to the vehicle’s owner was the best course of action.’

  He paused, told a partial truth: ‘Both boys were suitably chastened and apologetic.’

  Gaddis stared at him without expression. ‘Very well. Now, this brings us to the unauthorised use of your official police fleet vehicle.’

  And instantly Hirsch saw Martin Gwynne: stationed at a window, hovering in his front yard, watching Hirsch sail by in the HiLux, Katie Street in the passenger seat.

  He played dumb. ‘Sir?’

  It was his friend Rosie who took up the charge. She was all business now, no longer rolling her eyes, so Hirsch knew for sure he’d fucked up. ‘You were seen, on numerous occasions, transporting a child in the passenger seat of your fleet vehicle, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  ‘Her name is Katie Street and she’s, er, the daughter of a friend who teaches at the Redruth high school and generally isn’t able to pick her up after school,’ Hirsch said. His face was burning. ‘She’s usually collected by a neighbour, but there were a few occasions when the neighbour couldn’t do it so I gave her a lift home—in my own car, actually, except for twice when it wouldn’t start and I used the fleet vehicle. I apologise. But it was only twice, not numerous occasions. And there won’t be other occasions because she’s going to high school next year—she’ll be travelling with her mother.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point,’ Rosie said. ‘You may use your fleet vehicle to transport civilians in certain circumstances—giving a lift to a stranded motorist, for example, or taking someone to safety or to hospital—but not for private purposes.’

  ‘Insurance obligations, for a start,’ Gaddis said, his gold teeth flashing. ‘Issues of propriety and image and good sense—the fact that you are a grown man and she a young girl…’

  ‘What if you’re accused of misconduct by mother or daughter, further down the track?’ Rosie demanded. ‘What if you fall out with them for some reason, and they decide to take it out on you? No matter how innocent those trips might have been, it’s not going to look that way to the rest of the world.’

  Hirsch felt mulish. ‘There’s not going to be any fallout from mother or daughter.’

  ‘You can’t know that, Paul—Constable Hirschhausen,’ Rosie said.

  She was right, of course. ‘As I said, there won’t be any further occasions.’

  Gaddis said, ‘Were you on duty, these times you took the child home?’

  How to explain that a country copper is always on duty? That an eight-hour shift is meaningless in the bush? That often he was setting out on patrol at dawn and if he happened to be in town when school let out at three-thirty, he’d already worked a nine- or ten-hour shift?

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did you consider the repercussions if, halfway through one of these trips, you were called to a road fatality or a suicide or a murder or to deal with an out-of-control ice addict? What that might do to the child?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t think,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘No. You didn’t.’

  ‘Just trying to help a friend.’

  ‘Help that was detrimental to your police work and your professionalism, however, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘No disciplinary action at this stage,’ Gaddis said, ‘but it will b
e noted on your official record.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Meanwhile the academy runs refresher courses throughout the year. Behaviour management and leadership, for example. You are strongly advised to enrol in a suitable course when classes begin again early next year.’

  Hirsch knew that strong advice was in actuality an order. ‘Sir.’

  ‘And consider studying for the sergeants’ exam,’ Rosie said.

  He flashed her a look, wondering if she was saying anything between the lines. Rosie, with her round figure, vivid eyes and glossy black hair, her air of looking for adventures, gazed back at him steadily, sombrely. Telling him to wake up to himself.

  He nodded.

  ‘We now come to the matter of the child locked inside a car on a hot day,’ Gaddis said. ‘Did you or did you not advise Child Protection?’

  ‘Did not, sir.’

  ‘Carry out a family check?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘A firm chat, sir.’

  ‘Chat. Why nothing stronger?’

  ‘I weighed up the circumstances and didn’t think a charge or a caution was warranted. As an officer on the ground, I made a judgment call. The offence didn’t seem serious enough to warrant intervention from Child Protection or anyone else. There was no aggravated behaviour, no violence, it was just a bit of carelessness.’

  ‘That might have cost a child its life.’

  Hirsch swallowed. He didn’t answer.

  ‘What about the assault on your person, Constable Hirschhausen. You didn’t think to pursue charges for that?’

  ‘No, sir. Again, a judgment call. The poor woman was distressed. You may not know, sir, that she’s subsequently been murdered? She and her family were in hiding and she clearly thought her daughter was in danger. She wasn’t thinking clearly.’

  ‘She got hold of your gun.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but not deliberately. She seemed shocked when she realised—she dropped it straight away.’

  Gaddis was running with this line of questioning. Rosie DeLisle looked on, leading Hirsch to think she supported his case.

  Gaddis paused a while to gaze at Hirsch. ‘We’ve all been there, Constable Hirschhausen.’

  Not you, Hirsch thought. You were born with a pen in your hand. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Heat of the moment decisions. Judgment calls.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Gaddis lifted another sheet of paper. ‘Your sergeant gives you a good report. “A sound officer,” she says.’

  ‘Good to know, sir.’

  ‘Quit the bloody shortcuts, all right?’ Gaddis said, his headmaster veneer slipping. ‘People are noticing. You risk bringing the force into disrepute, not to mention your own career and reputation.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘By the book,’ Gaddis said, gathering his paperwork. ‘Dismissed.’

  They left Hirsch there. Rosie gave him a rueful smile goodbye, and soon after he left the building, he received a text:

  Count yourself lucky, mate. I’ve got your back, but… xx.

  24

  AS HE RETURNED to the long-term carpark there was another text. Any chance of an update? Rex.

  Rex Dunner. Owner, with his wife Eleanor, of a grazing property named Pandowie Downs, whose heritage-listed woolshed had twice been spray-painted with swastikas and ejaculating penises. Hirsch reacted as he always did when reminded that he’d neglected, avoided or evaded his police duties—screwed his face into a mad grimace and stifled a groan. His fault for making promises, then putting the matter on the backburner.

  He checked the time. He’d reach the mid-north by mid-afternoon, too late to do anything more than make reassuring noises to Rex and his wife. Spend all day in a hot vehicle again, in other words. He climbed behind the wheel and took South Road to Port Wakefield Road and the Northern Expressway. Here the traffic was fast, sparse, giving him breathing space.

  Martin Gwynne.

  The man’s physical appearance dominated Hirsch’s thoughts before he could shake it off. Martin’s looks were hardly noteworthy—but maybe that was the most significant fact of all: Martin Gwynne was a monster disguised as a man you wouldn’t look at twice. His little pot belly, skinny legs, innocent round cheeks, neat scrape of greying sandy hair. Avid eyes behind prissy rimless glasses. An earnestness to make an ordinary person run for the hills. A small man at home in corners, scurrying away from searching eyes.

  But look behind that and you’d find a man with an infantile need to be wanted, noticed and appreciated. Hirsch doubted the need was ever fully satisfied. Martin often alluded to people and circumstances that had let him down. Until coming to live in Tiverton, he’d been a senior manager in an insurance company. Then, aged fifty-five, he’d been retrenched—fallout from murky office politics, was how he’d put it. Or, Hirsch thought now, Martin had been an underperformer or a pain to work with. Anyhow, he’d not been able to find other work. Hirsch had commiserated at the time, only to see Martin’s morose face flip 180 degrees. ‘It was the best thing that could have happened, Paul. A new lease of life. Mother and I downsized and came north to enjoy honest country living.’

  Not entirely true. The attraction for the Gwynnes was that their daughter Annette was living in Tiverton with her husband and son. Moving to be close to the little family gave Martin a heaven-sent opportunity to meddle in their lives. Martin babysitting, issuing gratuitous advice, dropping in at all hours of the night and day. Martin teaching his grandson to play tennis. Martin sitting on the primary school council, taking the lone teacher aside for a quiet word; directing traffic and ushering children across the road at school drop-off and pick-up. Wendy Street referred to fierce primary school mothers as mumzillas. Martin was a grandpazilla.

  Then daughter and family moved back to Adelaide, ostensibly because their rural handicrafts business had failed; probably to escape the smothering, and their departure left a hole in Martin’s life. Unfulfilled by his roses and wife-bossing, he threw himself into town and district affairs: he had expertise, he explained, and wanted to give back to his new community. Soon he was representing Tiverton on the district council, chairing the tennis club committee, organising fetes and working bees for the Anglican church and writing letters to the Stock Journal and the Redruth Argus, dispensing wisdom.

  Interfering in Hirsch’s work life.

  Mindful of law and order issues, having a keen interest in police procedures, and being Tiverton’s elected district council representative, he was concerned to keep abreast of local policing activities. He had theories to offer. Advice to give. And wasn’t it a lucky thing he’d been on hand to save Hirsch’s life from Brenda Flann’s out-of-control Falcon?

  A man who’d sulk if he wasn’t fully appreciated, Hirsch thought. A man who’d hoard his grievances.

  He realised he had no idea how to deal with Martin. And what if it wasn’t Martin who’d snitched to the Internals?

  Hirsch’s shortest route to Pandowie Downs from a southerly approach was to cut across country at Mount Bryan and wind around to the dark side of a stony spine known as the Razorback. The land out there was parched, the roads powdery and chopped about. Hirsch headed up and down the folds of the earth, dust boiling thickly in his wake. His wrists juddered on the steering wheel.

  He came to the intersection of two flat, empty roads and took the Pandowie Downs turnoff, a sunken road between stony erosions and weedy paddocks dotted with dun-coloured merino sheep. Ten minutes later, reaching the stone pillars that marked the driveway entrance, he almost turned around and headed for town. Did he really want to face Rex and Eleanor Dunner just now, after the day he’d had? He took a breath. Build bridges. Forge healthy community relations. He was sure he’d read exactly those words in a memo. But had he replied to it? Joke, Paul. He checked the time. Almost five o’clock. If he was lucky, he’d be home by seven.

  He turned in. A sign on one pillar read: Pandowie Downs Unique Outback Experience Accommodation Horse
Riding Mustering Seasonal Shearing Demonstrations All Welcome.

  A theme-park take on old rural Australia, thought Hirsch, taking in the solar panels on the shearers’ quarters, a stone building that had been converted into a block of four pricey self-catering units. Two faced the woolshed, sharing a back wall with the two that faced the stony ridge overlooking the little settlement. Antenna arrays, fresh paint, parking bays marked by red-gum sleepers. Irrigated lawns dotted with old ploughs, wagons and tractors. Curtains drawn on one of the units, a dusty white Audi SUV parked outside it. Impossible to tell from this angle if there were guest cars parked at either of the rear-facing units.

  But the Dunners were about. Spotting their glossy-dusty black Range Rover parked at the rear of the woolshed, Hirsch steered down the flank of the long building and pulled in alongside it. Got out, took a moment to admire. The woolshed was a vast, beautifully proportioned structure of local stone. One of the side doors was open. He stepped in.

  High ceiling; massive posts and beams; holding pens with slatted floors; an odour of lanolin. Silent and empty now, but suggestive of a time when a grazier might shear sheep by the thousands.

  He stepped outside again and headed for the office, a partitioned space at the rear. Paused: a patch of the side wall was cleaner, sharper than the rest. It had been sandblasted. He peered: traces of white swastika and penis clung to the porous stone and friable mortar.

  ‘Expected you last week, young fella.’

  Hirsch turned. Rex Dunner had emerged from the office. He wore cream moleskins and elastic-sided R. M. Williams boots, all part of the unique pastoral-Australia mystique. Until five years ago Dunner and his wife had run a real estate agency in North Adelaide.

  Hirsch shook Dunner’s freckled, wrinkled old hand. He was a desiccated seventy, but wiry and brisk. ‘Mr Dunner.’

  ‘Constable. You bearing good news? A gang of graffiti artistes locked up, keys thrown away?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘I see.’

  He thinks I’m a sloppy policeman, thought Hirsch, or he knows it was a lost cause. Or both.