Bitter Wash Road (7 page)

‘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 dining 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.

Then the man grinned unpleasantly and stood. ‘That crack in your windscreen? Get it fixed.’ He paused. ‘Know why?’

Hirsch’s mind raced. Roadworthiness? He guessed, ‘Anything we don’t tolerate in the citizenry, we don’t tolerate in ourselves, maybe?’

‘Aren’t you a boy scout. Try Redruth Automotive.’

Then Kropp was gone and Hirsch heated and ate his lasagne— talking, for want of another candidate, to the less comfortable of the two chairs.

~ * ~

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, a pair of latex gloves. After a moment’s thought, he went back for a couple of evidence bags.

He started at the boot and moved forwards: toolbox, spare tyre well, under the boot carpet. Then the 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 first-aid box, but continued his search inside the engine bay, just in case. Nothing there.

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 took the rubber band off 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 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 Friday, mid-morning.’

Tennant was confused. ‘Somebody broke in? I’m not missing anything.’

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, put a flea in their ear.’

Stop babbling, he told himself.

‘Tax cheat?’

‘Not you,’ Hirsch assured the shopkeeper.

Irritated, Tennant took him to the back room and showed him the equipment and how to run a search. He wanted to hover, so Hirsch said, ‘Police business.’

~ * ~

HE
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 eight gig stick. ‘This do you?’

‘Fine.’

‘I can show you how to copy 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—which was presumably the point— 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 station, poked his head over the side fence, into the old woman’s back yard. 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 disturb the dust that covered it.

~ * ~

Back in his office,
Hirsch dialled an Adelaide number.

‘We need to meet.’

Sergeant Rosie DeLisle said tensely, ‘You bet we do. In fact, I was about to call you.’