Hell to Pay (12 page)

“Oh.”

Now she hopped to the veranda and sat with him. Sulking a bit at the dirt and grass blades between her toes, she said, “Have you come to see me or Mum?”

“Either. Both. Just passing,” Hirsch said. “You haven’t seen that car again?”

“No.”

“There’s no need to be afraid, those men are far from here and will be caught pretty soon.”

There was silence and, “Me and Jack have been good.”

Hirsch grinned. “Not too good, I hope.”

“Really
bad
.”

“That’s what school holidays are for. Your mum at home?”

“Somewhere. Mum!”

Nothing. “Where is that dratted woman?
Mum!
”

Hirsch laughed.

Pleased, Katie edged closer to Hirsh. “Have you ever arrested anybody?”

“Yes.”

“Have you shot anybody?”

“Katie, the police don’t generally go around shooting people.”

“Me and Jack were careful that time you caught us.”

Her face was tilted up, her fine hair framing her face, cropped at the level of her eyebrows and shoulders—a cap of hair. No freckles, olive skin, beautifully shaped lips. He could see Wendy in her.

“I know you were,” he said, “but bullets can fly in unpredictable directions if they strike something, a rock. It’s called a ricochet.”

“I know what a ricochet is.”

“Okay.”

“
Mum!
” shouted the girl again.

Nothing, so she said, “Come with me,” and led Hirsch along the side of the house to the wind in the backyard.

He halted. It was heart-stopping, seeing Wendy Street at a Hills Hoist set in the lawn, battling a great flowerhead of white sheets onto the line. They flung themselves about, enveloping, licking and taunting, flattening against her body and filling with air again. He watched her writhe and dance, fighting, feeling blindly for the pegs and the line.

“
See the tea towels fly!
” sang Hirsch.

She eyed him balefully. “Very funny.”

She wore jeans and a T-shirt and patches of dampness, and crossed the grass toward him, drying her palms on her thighs. “Giving my daughter the third degree?”

“Trying. She won’t break.”

Wendy Street stopped a couple of meters from him and waited, giving him nothing.

“I’ve been out in the back blocks and thought I’d pop in,” Hirsch said.

She nodded. It wasn’t hostility she radiated, just wariness. She turned to glance at her daughter who, with a kind of tact, turned on her heel and disappeared toward the front of the house.

When she was gone, Hirsch took a breath. “Actually, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about Melia Donovan.”

“Melia Donovan?”

Hirsch nodded. “An accident team’s investigating the hit-and-run, and meanwhile I’m trying to get a picture of what she was like, as a way of tracking down her movements. Did you teach her?”

“Year 11 Maths.”

“You teach Maths?”

“Don’t look so surprised.”

Hirsch grinned. “What was she like?”

“Sweet—when she bothered to attend school, that is. I had nothing to do with her outside of school.”

“Any rumors?”

Wendy Street tucked a wing of hair behind her ear. “This and that, mainly to do with boys and partying and her mother.”

“Anything specific?”

“No, you’ll have to speak to others about that.”

“Did you ever see older guys hanging around the school, waiting for her?”

“No.”

“Do you know how she got to and from school?”

“There’s a bus. It runs between Redruth and Muncowie.”

“Muncowie. Was she friends with any of the Muncowie kids?”

“She wasn’t friends with anyone. I don’t mean she was friendless, I mean she seemed to have outgrown the kids at school, she didn’t need them.”

“So her friends were older? Older boys? Men? Can you give me any names?”

Wendy shook her head. “You don’t understand, I don’t know anything. Try a girl called Gemma Pitcher. She lives in Tiverton.”

“She wasn’t very forthcoming,” Hirsch said. Feeling that he was on thin ground, he said, “Did Melia seem sexually active or experienced to you?”

“I’d hate to have your job. Look, I barely knew her, but I did wonder if she’d had too much experience, too soon. She wasn’t knowing, didn’t flaunt it, just seemed a bit lost and alone, if you know what I mean.”

“Are the local kids into drugs? Binge drinking?”

“No more than city kids, and probably less, I wouldn’t know.”

Silence settled between them. “I popped in across the road,” Hirsch said.

“Is that why you’re here? Checking the kids aren’t out target shooting? Checking their mothers haven’t let them run wild?”

Hirsch said levelly, “I don’t want them to feel afraid needlessly,
and I do need to know about Melia Donovan, and I do need to patrol out east from time to time.”

The tension slipped a little. “Fair enough. So you would have learnt that Allie has left her husband?”

That explained the teenage boy’s manner. “Oh.”

“She’s in town at her parents’. Jack, too. Craig sided with his father.”

“Permanent?”

“Seems that way.”

B
ACK IN TIVERTON,
H
IRSCH
saw his elderly neighbor wheeling her shopping cart into Tennant’s. He ran to the backyard, vaulted the side fence and retrieved the iPhone and cash. Then he drove to Clare, hoping no one would call him to report a stolen stud ram or a cat up a tree. Entered the post office there and addressed the phone and cash to himself, poste restante, Balhannah, a town in the hills.

FRIDAY, AND THE TOWN’S first inquest.

Hirsch’s first inquest, and his first time inside the Mechanics Institute, a fine stone building two hundred meters from the police station. Wooden floors, wooden half paneling around the walls, pastelly blue paintwork, vases of flowers on solid wooden stands, pressed tin ceilings and photographs of prize rams and former councillors here and there. A staircase to one side, a corridor of meeting rooms—the Country Women’s Association, he was guessing; the RSL; council chambers. A cardboard sign sat on a plain wooden chair outside the doors to the main hall:
INQUEST HERE TODAY
.

He stepped through, pausing to take in the vastness of the hall: high windows, more wood paneling, good ballroom dancing floorboards, and a stage at the far end complete with wings and a bushland scene painted on a canvas backdrop. Hirsch doubted that plays were still performed here, but the town did need an arena for the primary school concert, the New Year’s Eve ball, the debutante ball, the strawberry fete, Liberal Party fundraising events. Below the stage was a table with a microphone and two chairs, a smaller table, chair and microphone
stood to one side of it. The coroner and her assistant at one table, guessed Hirsch, witnesses at the other. And there was an easel, supporting a shrouded rectangular shape. Blowup photographs? Bird’s eye diagrams showing the road and the position of the body?

The grandeur was spoiled by a dozen rows of metal folding chairs. Someone had been optimistic: the only onlookers—great gaps of empty chairs separating them—were Kropp, Dr. McAskill, one of the accident investigators, a reporter from the Redruth rag, the shopkeeper, the Broken Hill mine worker who had discovered Melia Donovan’s body, and the Muirs, who were sitting with Nathan Donovan and his mother.

Kropp turned his massive head and jerked it at Hirsch:
Get your arse over here
. Hirsch complied. His shoulder brushed Kropp’s, it couldn’t be helped.

“Morning, Sarge.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you live a two minutes’ walk away.”

“Phone calls, emails.”

“Speaking of emails, yours didn’t say how long you’ll be away next week.”

“Could be a few days.”

Kropp grunted. “At least we’re not going through a crime wave.” He paused. “So long as you’re back by Saturday.”

“Sarge?”

“Football final, so all hands on deck.”

Hirsch got a kick out of that. “You mean Redruth actually comes alive? People on the street?”

Kropp turned quiet and nasty. “If there’s any justice, someone might thump you.”

“Looking forward to it, Sarge.”

They were silent. Hirsch fiddled with his phone and stared at the empty tables. He knew he was here at the coroner’s discretion. Today’s hearing would merely establish the who, when, where and how of Melia Donovan’s death, invite witnesses to
come forward, and then adjourn until the police investigation was complete, and that might take months. Footsteps and a cadaverous man appeared, stiff-backed, grey-faced. “He was in the job,” whispered Kropp, and Hirsch could see ex-policeman in the scowling figure, who halted beside the main table and called: “All rise for Her Majesty’s coroner.”

They stood, the air above them clanging, crashing, a symphony of cheap metal chairs sliding and colliding, and a middle-aged woman appeared in a whisper of fabric and rubber-soled shoes, her face kindly, apologetic, almost grandmotherly, a foil to the old cop. She gestured at them vaguely and they all sat and the man beside her boomed, “All mobile phones off, if you please.”

“That means you,” muttered Kropp.

Hirsch switched off, pocketed the phone.

The coroner remained on her feet, her hands moving folders around on the tabletop, and now she glanced out at the rows of chairs. She looked untethered to Hirsch, lost and adrift in the vast hall.
Sit
, he begged her.

She cast her voice over their heads, full, rolling, educated: “Thank you all for coming. You may be wondering at the choice of venue: quite simply, I wished to view the place where Ms. Donovan died, and I would welcome community involvement in the investigation into her death.”

Leanne Donovan cried out. The coroner put her hand to her throat, opened and closed her mouth. Nothing further happened, but then Leanne and her son thrust back their chairs and stumbled out of the hall, followed by Yvonne Muir.

The coroner, unsettled, said, “I hereby formally open the inquest into the death of Melia Anne Donovan on or about Saturday the twentieth of September and I will presently adjourn these proceedings to enable the police to complete their inquiries and for any criminal prosecution arising to take its proper course.”

She sat at last, removing her glasses. “What I must do today is confirm the identity of the deceased and the location, time and
cause of death. Witnesses, including the pathologist and police members, will give evidence in regard to these matters and then my officer will give a brief summary of the circumstances, as far as these can be ascertained.”

The coroner replaced her glasses. “I have made my visit to the scene of Ms. Donovan’s death, and pray that opening the inquest here, her hometown, will encourage as many of her friends and family as possible to come forward and assist this court, and the police, to find the person or persons responsible for her death.”

Kropp half-turned his huge head to Hirsch. Hirsch read the accusation:
We have you to thank for letting one such person do a flit
.

“Anyone giving testimony will be speaking under oath and may subsequently be required to make a formal statement to police. Of course, this is not to say you need see this morning’s proceedings as in any way fraught with meaning and consequences. I wish merely to discover the truth.”

Hirsch heard backsides shift on the cheap, thin seats. He didn’t think anyone had anything to say, except to establish the groundwork and express grief.

Nancarrow was called first. He explained why he’d been driving south along the Barrier Highway and how he’d found the body. The coroner had no questions, and called Hirsch, who read from his notebook: times, the date, distances, the movement of personnel, the recovery of the body and plenty of cop speak like “female deceased.”

“Then I remained at the scene until accident investigators arrived.”

“Had a formal identification been made at this stage?”

“Dr. McAskill stated that he knew the deceased.”

“You relied on his identification?”

Hirsch glanced around at Kropp. Kropp held his hands wide, so Hirsch returned to the coroner. “Sergeant Kropp is in charge of the investigation and will provide further detail in regard to this matter, but I do understand that he, like Dr. McAskill, knew
the deceased and later viewed the body and had no reason to doubt Dr. McAskill’s identification.”

The coroner was scribbling. She looked up. “I am able to confirm that another method of identification has subsequently confirmed the visual identifications of Dr. McAskill and Sergeant Kropp, namely dental records. Constable Hirschhausen, you may step down. I call Sergeant Exley.”

Exley summarized his team’s findings at the accident scene: no tire tracks or skid marks, no identifiable fragments from the vehicle that had struck Melia Donovan.

“Was more than one vehicle involved?”

“If you mean, was she knocked over by one vehicle and run over by subsequent vehicles, there was no evidence at the scene to support or disprove that scenario.”

McAskill was called. He confirmed identity, injuries and cause of death. “I submit that she was struck with some force by one vehicle, the impact sufficient to kill her and throw her body to the area where she was found. The locus of the impact was her right hip, arm and trunk, which might indicate that she’d had her back to the vehicle and was in the act of turning to face it when hit. There was also a massive injury to the head, which in my experience indicates that she was flipped up and into the windscreen or onto the roof of the vehicle before tumbling off the road verge.”

“Were there indications of third party violence to the deceased apart from vehicle impact injuries?”

In other words, had she been choked, stabbed, punched, burnt with cigarettes, tied up, poisoned, raped …

“There were not.”

“And the toxicology findings?”

“Indications of alcohol and cannabis use.”

“Sufficient to cause disorientation?”

“In my opinion, and taking account of her slight body mass, yes.”

Kropp was called. He confirmed identification and outlined
the police investigation. He also disclosed that Melia Donovan was an inveterate hitchhiker.