Peace

by Garry Disher

  ‘Something to tell me, Craig?’

  Washburn’s stare was unfocused, but his face was mobile, one memory or emotion touching off another.

  ‘Craig?’

  Washburn blinked, turned, hurried to the caravan. Hirsch, hard on his heels, found him halted beside the sink, opening cupboards and drawers.

  Empty spaces. Hirsch said, ‘You’re missing containers of food and water, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ A murmur.

  Running his gaze around the interior, Hirsch pointed and said, ‘And a mattress.’ From the spare bed. Thin foam, easily carried.

  ‘Yes.’

  Hirsch gripped Washburn’s bony elbow and squeezed hard to wake some sense in the man. ‘Come and sit at the table.’

  Washburn, dazed, let himself be guided to one of the bench seats, Hirsch taking the other. The table top was dusty, untouched. Old nicks, stains and burns.

  ‘Did you hide the Rennie girls here?’

  Washburn struggled towards comprehension. ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t come back here at any stage?’

  ‘I’ve been at Nan’s since you took me there.’

  ‘Has Nan been out here?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘But you do. You’ve met the girls?’

  A long pause. A nod.

  ‘So, just now, when you saw the footprint and the empty cupboards, you thought at once it was the girls, not some stranger. Correct?’

  New expressions flickered over Washburn’s face. Calculation. Equivocation. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’

  ‘Craig…’ Hirsch said harshly.

  ‘All right, all right, I met the kids exploring the creek one day.’

  ‘When?’

  Washburn shrugged. ‘Last year some time. Winter. The creek was running.’

  ‘A long walk from their place to here.’

  ‘Not here, closer to the ruins. I was walking in one direction, the kids in the other.’

  ‘They didn’t run away, try to hide?’

  ‘No.’

  Hirsch saw another new expression on Washburn’s whiskery face: he’d grown close to the family and possibly knew their secrets.

  ‘You met Mrs Rennie, too? She told you why they were living out here?’

  Washburn considered that. ‘Eventually. A long time later, once we got to know each other. I don’t know if I should—’

  ‘She was shot dead, Craig. Her son was shot dead. Your friends were murdered, and it’s possible her daughters could be next. Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d met the family?’

  ‘Why should I?’ Washburn said with heat. ‘It wasn’t like I had anything do with anything. I wasn’t even here when Denise was shot, and the news said it looked like the girls were picked up by the side of the road. Didn’t occur to me they’d come here.’

  ‘But it was a possibility, surely?’

  Washburn shrugged. ‘I wanted to protect them.’

  ‘By keeping quiet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, they’re clearly not sleeping here, but it seems they sneak in and pinch your stuff and help themselves to a shower now and then, so they can’t be far away. There’s a spare key they know about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where are they, Craig?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You’re not protecting them by keeping your trap shut. Did you hear on the news about the man who was shot yesterday?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Washburn’s eyes wouldn’t settle on anything. ‘Might have.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes. It’s possible he was looking for the girls. An accomplice shot him before he could be arrested. What does that suggest to you, Craig?’

  Washburn pouted. He wanted to be left in peace.

  ‘Craig?’

  Washburn sat up straight. ‘Okay, okay. It means the girls could still be in danger.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Now Washburn cocked his head and gazed curiously at Hirsch. ‘Was he police?’

  Hirsch went very still. ‘What exactly did Mrs Rennie tell you?’

  Washburn’s eyes slid away. ‘Things.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. Where are the girls?’

  Washburn agonised, twitching the seams and whiskers that made up his face. ‘I think they’re hiding in the dugout.’

  An old miner’s dugout in the bank of the creek, Washburn explained: probably been there for a hundred and fifty years.

  They set out, passing the gravestone, passing through two or three stretches where the left-hand bank loomed above them, Hirsch glancing up, hoping to spot the dugout entrance. ‘Much further?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m assuming you showed it to the kids one day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They walked the length of another shallow reach, which led into another deep gully, and finally Washburn stopped. He pointed. The hint of an aperture fringed with grass halfway up the bank. You’d never know it was there. Rocks and stones protruded. Useful foot- and handholds, thought Hirsch. And, as he watched, a hint of movement. Not a trick of the cloudy light but a sliver of face—forehead, blonde hair and eyebrow—appearing and gone again in a flash.

  Washburn formed a megaphone with his hand. ‘Louise! It’s okay!’

  Silence.

  ‘He’s a policeman, the good kind.’

  A long wait and the face looked down, young, full of doubt. ‘Did anyone see you?’

  ‘There’s no one else here. We’re coming up.’

  ‘Be quick.’

  ‘Quick as we can, love,’ Washburn said.

  28

  HIRSCH FOUND HIMSELF in a space that was part natural hollow, part pick-axed cavern. About two metres high, at least in parts, and ten or so metres deep. Two small pairs of knickers were drying on a rudimentary clotheshorse fashioned from twigs in one corner, a styrofoam cooler packed with food and water bottles stood in another. The spare caravan mattress rested beside one wall, a candle stuck into a puddle of wax next to it. Face-down on a folded blanket, an illustrated guide to Australian birds. Craig’s book, he thought. The kids wouldn’t have picked up their favourite books as they fled. A cool, dim, oddly comforting space—except for the odour from a far corner, which the girls had been using as a toilet, kicking a thin layer of dirt over it.

  The girls. Hollow-eyed and wan. Cabin fever, Hirsch thought. Grief. Uncertainty. And fear of everything outside this hole in the ground. Sitting cross-legged on the mattress, they made room for Washburn and snuggled against him. Beaming up at Hirsch, he said, ‘This is Anna, and this is Louise.’

  Hirsch nodded hello, looked about for somewhere to sit, and paused. On the wall opposite Washburn and the girls there was an ochre hand. Beside it, three stick figures armed with spears chased a stick-figure kangaroo. He stared at the images, complicated feelings settling in him. He felt like an interloper, somehow; a despoiler. He found himself looking at his heavy footwear. Finally selecting a spot in the dirt, his spine uncomfortable against knobs in the lower part of the wall, he realised Washburn was looking at him with some sort of emotion he couldn’t place.

  ‘Apart from the girls,’ Washburn said, ‘I’m about the only one knows about this place.’

  Hirsch nodded. ‘Pretty amazing.’

  ‘Certainly is,’ Washburn said. He looked at the top of one head, then the other. ‘Clever of you girls to come here.’

  The little one, sucking her thumb, burrowed deeper into Washburn’s chest when Hirsch glanced at her. The older girl, Louise, glittered with hostility, waiting for Hirsch to show his true colours. He guessed she was thirteen or fourteen, with the temporary plumpness of early adolescence. Hirsch could picture her carrying Anna over the stony ground, all the way to the dust beside the road at Mischance Creek. He thought of Katie Street. She looked nothing like Katie, but she was similarly self-contained, a kid who played out the available options in her head before she acted. Right now, she was waiting and watching and keeping her
trap well shut.

  ‘Craig, are you sure no one else knows about the dugout?’

  Washburn shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen a soul out here, not once, and the entrance is hard to spot from the creek. The girls are safe.’

  ‘They can’t stay here forever.’

  A bird came to the mouth of the dugout, seemed startled to see them and flapped off again in a disturbance of feathers and beaten air. Anna jumped, briefly removed her thumb, sucked it again. Her shortie pyjamas needed a wash. Dust and scratches on her legs and feet.

  Hirsch said, ‘Louise, before we work out who does what, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

  She continued to scowl at him. She wore pale blue shorts, a white boy-band T-shirt, socks and runners. Her legs were badly scratched. But he thought she gave a faint upwards tilt of her chin. He said, ‘Anna was asleep in bed when it happened, but you were still up?’

  This time, the ghost of a nod.

  ‘When it was safe, you ran inside and grabbed her and carried her across the paddocks? That took a lot of strength and courage.’

  Another tiny movement of her chin: pleased for the acknowledgment but not about to be taken for a sucker.

  ‘What I thinkhappened,’ Hirsch said, ‘it was Christmas Eve and you were in the car-shed with your mum, wrapping the’—he glanced at Anna—‘wrapping a present to go under the tree, when someone arrived. Your mother went out to see who the visitor was, and…’

  He trailed away. Louise Rennie finished for him: ‘Mum screamed and there was shooting so I hid under the car.’

  Craig Washburn pulled her tighter against him.

  ‘A pair of sniffer dogs tracked you across the paddocks to the road where someone picked you up,’ Hirsch said, with a glance at Washburn. ‘How did you know to wait just there? How did you know it would be safe?’

  ‘We didn’t know. We just had to get away. Then a truck came along.’

  ‘A truck.’

  ‘A hay truck.’

  Hirsch had been seeing them since October, drought-relief hay trucked in from Victoria and New South Wales. ‘The driver picked you up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you seen him before?’

  ‘He wasn’t the man who came to our house,’ Louise Rennie said, eyes narrowed, anticipating his thinking.

  ‘Where did he take you?’

  ‘Craig’s.’

  Hirsch thought about it. An interstate truck driver on a tight schedule, wanting to get home by Christmas morning, bemused to find a pair of kids at the side of the road asking to be taken to a caravan in the middle of nowhere. But Craig’s campsite was tidy, and the solar panels and the old car would have shown the place to be inhabited. The man hadn’t shown much duty of care—but nor had he harmed the girls. And, what with Christmas, maybe he’d missed the news or didn’t connect picking up the girls with the shootings.

  ‘You asked to be taken there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Louise Rennie stared at Hirsch, unflinching, straightforward, wary. She went on, ‘We’ve known Craig for ages.’

  ‘How?’ said Hirsch, expecting Craig to interrupt.

  ‘We were exploring the creek and ran into him.’

  ‘And you’ve all been friends since then?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I showed you the dugout, didn’t I girls?’ Washburn said.

  Louise touched his wrist.

  Hirsch said, ‘Okay. Let’s go back to what happened at the house, Louise, is that okay? I don’t want you to go into detail, I don’t want…’ He cleared his throat. ‘But we need to catch whoever…hurt your mum and brother.’

  Her voice hoarse and hollow, she said, ‘Okay.’ The wariness was still there but the hostility had gone.

  ‘You were wrapping presents and you heard a vehicle arrive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see what kind? A car or a ute or a four-wheel drive? A motorbike?’

  ‘It was a ute.’

  ‘So, a cabin for the driver and passenger at the front, and a tray for carrying stuff at the back?’

  She frowned. ‘I know what a ute is.’

  Hirsch scooted a couple of centimetres sideways, seeking a smoother patch of wall for his spine. ‘Your mum stepped out of the car-shed to see who it was?’

  ‘We’re always super-careful about visitors. Mum said, “Stay here,” and when she pushed up the main door to go outside a man by the house ran back to the ute and brought out a gun.’

  Cutting the phone line, Hirsch thought. ‘The door was shut when I got there.’

  ‘I shut it.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked baffled. She shut it out of habit, he thought—but not until the killer had gone. ‘Doesn’t matter. Did you see what happened?’

  ‘Mum ran around to the back door and the man chased her.’

  The words tumbled out; her face collapsed, and, like her little sister, she burrowed hard against Craig Washburn.

  Hirsch waited, feeling like a bully.

  ‘You did the right thing, staying in the shed, love,’ Washburn said.

  She tilted her face to him. ‘But I could’ve…’ She didn’t know what she could have done. She broke into tears again.

  Hirsch said gently, ‘And after a while you heard him drive away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he in the house for very long?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ten minutes? He came in the shed.’

  ‘Looking for you?’

  ‘I stayed under the car.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Hirsch said inadequately.

  ‘He took stuff.’

  ‘Took stuff?’

  She nodded, trembling. ‘Stole stuff. Nick’s toolbox and…other things.’

  She’s reluctant to mention the bike, thought Hirsch. ‘He left after that?’

  Another nod. ‘I went inside and saw Mum on the floor…’

  She looked at him, a painful entreaty: she was saying that she hadn’t checked on her brother.

  Hirsch shifted uncomfortably, unable to conceal his distress, and she read it in him. Checking that her sister wasn’t watching, she mouthed the words: ‘He’s dead?’

  Hirsch gave an abbreviated nod. She closed her eyes tightly.

  To distract her, he said, ‘Did you see the man’s face clearly?’

  ‘Fairly clearly.’

  ‘Do you think you’d recognise him again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Get her together with a forensic imaging specialist. Let her look at mouth, nose, chin, hairstyle and profile templates in the hope of creating a composite. ‘There was only one man?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Two? Where was the other one?’

  ‘He didn’t get out. I could see him sitting in the ute.’

  ‘The man who got out. Was he young? Old? Fat? Thin?’

  ‘Do we have to do this now?’ Craig Washburn said.

  Hirsch felt chastened. ‘Sorry, Louise. Too much, too soon. Let’s—’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Pet,’ Washburn said, craning to look down at her as she craned to look up at him.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she reassured him.

  The other child said nothing but was curious, listening. Hirsch would have to be careful. If Anna had been woken by the shots, she might also have seen the shooter, who surely had checked the bedroom—and spared her life, through some skerrick of humanity. But would she be able to describe him?

  He returned to Louise. ‘Perhaps just give me a general impression?’

  ‘He wasn’t old, or fat or anything. Just normal.’

  ‘Short or long hair? Beard?’

  ‘No beard. Kind of short hair.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘Jeans and a shirt.’

  ‘How about the other man? Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long were they at your place altogether?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not long.’

&nb
sp; ‘Can you describe the gun?’

  ‘It was long.’

  ‘A rifle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hirsch took out his phone and showed her the David McAuliffe licence photo. ‘Is this the man?’

  She peered. ‘No. Who is he?’

  How much to tell her? ‘His name’s Ian Lavau. He was staying in tourist accommodation not all that far from here.’

  She craned her head towards the mouth of the cave, as if Lavau might appear there. ‘He’s dead, someone shot him,’ Hirsch said.

  She began to crumple. ‘What’s happening? They’re everywhere. How did they find us again?’

  ‘We need to get you kids somewhere safer than this,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘No!’

  She was breathless, close to panic. Hoping it would reassure her, Hirsch walked in a crouch to the lip of the dugout and peered both ways along the creek. No one. He returned to the mattress. ‘There’s no one out there. It’s safe. I’m parked at Craig’s caravan, we can walk there in a few minutes.’

  ‘No! We need to stay hidden.’

  Then, as Hirsch watched, she grew calm. Gave herself a shake, swallowed, and said, firmly, ‘No.’

  ‘Well. Let’s return to the other night: you okay with that?’

  A curt nod.

  ‘Did you stay in the car-shed for very long after the men had left?’

  She shook her head. ‘I could hear Anna screaming.’

  Hirsch felt his eyes moisten. ‘You raced in, grabbed Anna and ran off over the paddocks, where a truck picked you up.’

  Washburn broke in. ‘You did the right thing, going to the caravan.’

  Louise Rennie tucked herself against him. ‘You’re my safe place.’

  Hirsch blinked. Washburn’s eyes watered, too.

  ‘And you’ve been here ever since?’

  ‘We sneak down to Craig’s when we need stuff and have a shower.’

  ‘Clever girls,’ Washburn said. ‘The dugout’s perfect: safe, sheltered, and no one knows about it.’

  ‘They can’t stay here forever, Craig.’

  ‘We’ll work something out.’

  ‘You don’t understand. The search has been wound back, but people are still looking. The girls need to be checked over and then we can put them with a relative or a family friend, someone they know and trust. And I’m afraid they’ll have to answer a few more questions from people more senior and experienced than me.’