by Garry Disher
“Paul Hirschhausen, I’m new across the road.”
The shopkeeper reached out a long, thin, defenseless hand. “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 woman in the post office.
“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.”
Thinking he was forever at cross-purposes, Hirsch decided to play along. “Depends.”
Tennant showed his teeth humorlessly, a stringy man fueled 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.”
The wealthy Latimers were in strife? Hirsch stored that away for now. He 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, like a man of precise habits and concerns.
Hirsch sighed. “Her friend Melia Donovan has been killed. Now, can I go about my business?”
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? Another accident?”
Hirsch stopped. “She was 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.
ENCOUNTERED 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, semidark, a TV flickering and two boys crouched before it, thumbing Xbox controls. 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 leaking down her cheeks now that she knew her friend was dead.
Hirsch introduced himself, crouching so that his head was on a level with hers. “Do you remember me, Gemma? You served 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 to Hirsch, scowled, touched Gemma’s upper arm as if knowing she was beaten, and left them to it.
“Perhaps we could sit at the table?” Hirsch suggested.
“Whatever.”
Gemma took one stiff dining chair, Hirsch another. She promptly lit up, using a pink disposable lighter. The three rings in the cartilage of each ear glinted as she snatched smoke from her cigarette and jetted it to one side. 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 Gemma 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, 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 toaster, so he headed straight for the ready-made 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 lasagna.
“Gemma okay?”
“Bit upset.”
“We all are,” Tennant said, and Hirsch realized he’d sensed it as he’d walked through the store, a community atmosphere of fear and so
rrow and whispers. Was the shop a clearing house of local gossip? “Shop’s busy all of a sudden.”
“It happens,” Tennant said. “Can’t complain.” He looked with miserable triumph at Hirsch. “You’re inviting a speeding ticket or a breathalyzer if you shop in Redruth, so business has picked up for me.”
What the hell was happening in Redruth? Hirsch gestured with the lasagna. “Dinner.”
“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. No good would come of it, no sweetness or light. 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 pronounced brows and short, receding hair. “Did you call Spurling?”
Spurling? Hirsch went blank, then remembered: 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 skeptical directions, his mouth 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. But, yeah—and 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, stopping to give his meaty head a theatrical smack. “Oh, 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 freezing his sphincter muscle.
“Tea?” said Hirsch. “Coffee?”
The sergeant shook his head, thank Christ. “This hit-and-run. Anything leap out at you?”
“She was hitching home and a vehicle hit her. Or 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.
Then the man grinned crookedly and stood. “I’m off. That crack in your windscreen? Get it fixed.” He paused. “Know why?”
Hirsch’s mind raced. Roadworthiness? Then he guessed: “Anything we don’t tolerate in the citizenry, we don’t tolerate in ourselves, maybe?”
“Aren’t you a sweetheart. Try Redruth Automotive.”
Then Kropp was gone and Hirsch heated and ate his lasagna, so alone that he talked to the furniture.
CHAPTER 6
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH him? Those kids this morning had seen a woman hovering around his car. He dumped his dirty plate in the sink and hurried out to the Nissan with a torch, a rag, latex gloves and, after a moment’s thought, a couple of evidence bags.
Started at the boot and moved forward: toolbox, spare tire well, under the boot carpet, then parcel shelf, under the rear seat, inside the door cavities, under the front seats, glove box. He found what he was looking for in an ancient, forgotten, unused first aid box, but continued his search inside the engine bay, just in case. Nothing there, so he returned to the first aid box.
An iPhone and a bundle of cash. First he photographed both items in situ, then removed them. Still some juice in the phone; it was an iPhone 5 in perfect nick. He scrolled through until he came to a screen showing the IMEI number, photographed it. The cash amounted to $2500 in hundred-dollar notes. He dismantled the bundle and photographed each note, twenty-five serial numbers. Finally he stowed everything in one of the evidence bags.
The time was six thirty. Hirsch returned to the shop, still toting the evidence bag. Tennant had placed a CCTV camera above the petrol bowser. Might get lucky.
He found the shopkeeper switching off lights. Tennant frowned at the evidence bag. “You want a refund on your dinner?”
“Ha, ha. The camera above your bowser: does it work?”
“It works.”
“Video or hard drive?”
“Hard drive.”
“I need to see footage from last Friday, mid-morning.”
Tennant was confused. “Somebody broke in? I’m not missing anything, and I would have known, I was here then.”
With a “just routine” air, Hirsch said, “Someone put a note under my door, no big deal, something about a tax cheat, as if that’s the police’s business, but if the lens range and angle allows it, I might get an idea who left the note, and I can put a flea in their ear.”
Stop babbling, he told himself.
“Tax cheat?”
“Not you,” Hirsch assured the shopkeeper.
Showing doubt and irritation, Tennant took him to the back room and showed him the equipment and how to run a search. Wanted to hover, so Hirsch said, “Police business.”
HIRSCH WAS IN LUCK: Tennant’s camera had been angled to cover the bowser, but also showed the footpath and part of the police station. He saw a woman of slight build and above average height, shoulder-length fair hair swinging around her neck and cheeks, moving rapidly. No clear shot of her face, damn it all. Of course it helped that he rarely locked his old bomb, but she was in and out of his car inside a minute.
Hirsch found Tennant at the front door, anxious to lock up and go home. “Finished?”
“I need to buy a memory stick.”
“Really? You found something?” Tennant said, intrigued, unlocking a drawer, fishing around in it and coming up with an 8-gig version. “This do you?”
“Fine.”
“I can show you how to transfer the footage.”
“I’ll be right.”
So Tennant charged Hirsch twice what the device was worth and waited in a sulk at the door.
WHERE TO STOW THE phone and cash? If Internal Investigations officers searched his car now and found nothing, they’d tear the house, office and HiLux apart. And he knew and trusted no one here.
Hirsch walked around to the rear of the stat
ion, poked his head over the side fence, into the old woman’s backyard. It was overgrown by weeds and roses, the little garden shed mute testament to her inability to keep up anymore. He clambered over the fence. Concealed everything in an empty paint tin, taking reasonable care not to touch it, disturb the dust that covered everything.
BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Hirsch dialed an Adelaide number.
“We need to meet.”
Sergeant Rosie DeLisle said tensely, “You bet we do. In fact, I was about to call you.”
Making Hirsch tense. “What happened?”
“You tell me.”
Hirsch knew then that the Internals had some fresh hell in store for him: new evidence, a new slant on old evidence, something like that. Rosie had always been straight with him, ultimately gone into bat for him, but he’d always skated on thin ice, the sessions he’d had with her.
“I’m being set up,” he said.
“Is that a fact,” she said flatly.
“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
“Not over the phone.”
“That suits me. I can be in the city by ten.”
“Tonight? No thanks. Tomorrow afternoon sometime.”
“That works for me.”
“Somewhere off the beaten track, Paul.”
“I embarrass you,” Hirsch said, meaning, I taint you.
“Something like that,” DeLisle said. She named a winery in the Barossa Valley. “One o’clock.”
“You think your colleagues don’t visit wineries?”
“Not this one.”
“Ah, somewhere exclusive,” Hirsch said, “boutique. Are you sure you’re not on the take?”
“Just be there, all right?”
TUESDAY MORNING, AND HIRSCH had things to do, places to be, before he attended Kropp’s briefing in Redruth. He was on the road by 7:40, the sun smeared along the eastern horizon. A washed-clean day with vivid green on both sides of the road, the birds nesting or soaring. He lifted his forefinger to the oncoming cars, which didn’t expect it from a cop. The morning was still. All movement seemed concentrated here, on the Barrier Highway, but he sensed the potential for movement away from it—in the birds along the wires, the cow paused in the act of chewing her cud, the farmhouses crouched behind cypress hedges.
