Hell to Pay (20 page)

Andrewartha waited for half a dozen sour beats. “Just fuck off home.”

Hirsch turned the key and drove sedately toward Tiverton. The patrol car trailed him for a few kilometers, a disconsolate white speck, until it turned off and Hirsch saw the red rear lights as it sped south again. A hint of the sun out east and Hirsch thought of Wendy and Katie Street out there, the sun touching them before it touched him. He thought of the tearoom back at Redruth, the sink, the pot plants, drowned in beer when no one was looking. “One step ahead, you pricks,” he said.

HIS ALARM SOUNDED AT eight on Sunday morning. Hirsch lay stunned, trying to process who and where he was. He swung his legs out of bed and planted them on the scratchy mat beside it. He yawned and stared at the floor.

It was no good. He showered, brewed coffee and drank it with toast on a licheny chair in the backyard, a Kumquat tree breathing down his neck, the filtered sunlight struggling to warm or encourage him. Then, still feeling pretty ordinary, he walked for thirty minutes, exploring the town, saying hello to the bony horse on its patch of dirt, a galah in a cage and an old codger squirting his roses.

“Lovely morning.”

“Remains to be seen,” the bloke said, and Hirsch thought that was about right.

N
INE O’CLOCK NOW
,
A
civilized hour. Hirsch, using his office phone, said, “Hope I woke you.”

“You’d have to get up early,” Rose DeLisle said. “What’s up?”

“Overheard something last night,” Hirsch said, telling her about Nicholson and the girlfriend who’d crashed his car.

“No license?”

“Which might mean she was too young,” Hirsch said.

“Excellent. This is exactly what we want from you.”

At once, Hirsch felt dirty. He felt cleaner saying, “And I know who planted that stuff in my car.”

W
HEN HE GOT TO
Redruth there was no one in the lockup or the police station, so he walked around to the courthouse, a wood-paneled side room in the district council offices, wondering if Kropp had already released Raymond Latimer.

Not yet ten o’clock and court was already in session, the magistrate at a slightly raised table, the court reporter—a middle-aged woman—at a tiny corner desk, and Kropp sprawled with two of the overnight drunks on a bench in front of the public gallery, which at that hour on a Sunday was empty. Ray Latimer was seated at a long table across the aisle from Kropp, next to a natty suit. Lawyer, Hirsch guessed, taking in the briefcase and files. And something cute was going on between Latimer, his lawyer and the magistrate, a bit of humorous badinage about football grand finals, impossible long-range goal-kicking and high marks. Hirsch slid onto the bench beside his sergeant, barely covering a yawn.

The magistrate caught it. David Coulter, according to the nameplate, Coulter a twinkling butterball, a forty-five-year-old ex-small-town solicitor, already dressed for Sunday golf. “We boring you, mate?”

“Late night,” Hirsch said.

He was the center of attention now, the magistrate, the lawyer and Latimer, all three smirking at him. But Kropp was seething. Hirsch edged away and made himself invisible.

Thirty minutes passed. The two drunks were fined. And now the court reporter was packing up, getting out of her chair, leaving with a little finger wave to the magistrate and the lawyer.

“Sarge?” murmured Hirsch. “What about Mr. Latimer?”

“Done and dusted,” Kropp said. “Pleaded down to disorderly conduct and the minimum fine.”

Hirsch checked his watch. “I didn’t get here late, Sarge.”

Kropp folded his arms and snorted. Some deal had been cooked up, but why was Kropp still seething? His mate had got off with a slap over the wrist, after all. So his beef was with the magistrate and the lawyer?

The courthouse emptied, leaving Kropp, Latimer and Hirsch. And Kropp didn’t want to be there. He shook Latimer’s hand perfunctorily, said through his teeth: “Well, you were lucky,” and turned to go.

“Mate, what can I say? I was an idiot.”

Kropp was almost to the door. He raised a hand.

Agitated, Latimer said, “Mate, wait, I was hoping you could give us a lift home.”

“Ask Constable Hirschhausen.”

Fuck
, thought Hirsch, and now he was on his own.

Latimer’s vigor and gloss had been worn to nothing by tiredness and a night in a cell. His clothing was wrinkled, chin stubbly, eyes bloodshot, hair in crazy tufts. But he lit up and looked keenly at Hirsch. “Could you? I don’t know who else to ask and you have no idea how sorry I am about last night. I shouldn’t have taken a swing at you.”

“I’m not a taxi service. What about your wife, father, girlfriend, lawyer?”

Latimer shuffled his feet. “There isn’t anyone. My father’s taken the boys to the Jamestown air show, and obviously I can’t call Allie. My lawyer’s off to play golf with Dave Coulter and as for Finola, well, I might have done my dash there.”

Hirsch was cranky. “I am leaving right this minute, all right?”

“Fair enough,” Ray Latimer said. “Lead on.”

Out into the sun, down the steps and into the HiLux, the town Sunday quiet and the air still. “Seatbelt,” Hirsch snarled, but that expelled all of his energy and he let the 4WD trundle out of town, too tired to speed.

“Sorry about this,” Latimer said.

Hirsch ignored him. Too tired to speed, too tired to speak.

“And sorry again for last night. I got stuck into the booze after our win.”

Hirsch grunted, creeping through the empty town. Latimer, a stale lump beside him, ran commentary, swivel-necking as if he’d never been to Redruth before.

“Damn shame, Finucane’s going out of business.”

A white goods shop,
CLOSING DOWN SALE
pasted across the windows. Hirsch couldn’t give a stuff.

“It’s a heartache,” Latimer said.

Hirsch wriggled his shoulders as if that would shut his passenger down.

“High costs, low returns,” Latimer said. “When the man on the land struggles to survive, so do the local shopkeepers. There’s nothing for the kids, no reason why they’d hang on, what with better money in the city and excellent money up at Roxby Downs or on one of the wind farms. You can’t get shearers, shed hands or casual labor for love or money anymore.”

Hirsch wanted to point to himself and say, “This is my caring and sharing face.”

“Take my property,” said Latimer. “Been in the family for generations and now we’re barely hanging on.”

And yet you keep buying things and not paying your bills
. Feeling nasty, Hirsch said, “Why not cut back on the spending?”

Latimer continued as if he’d not heard him. “What with the economy and my wife …”

“How is she to blame?”

“A divorce will ruin me. My father and me.”

“And yet you’re giving her the grounds for a divorce.”

Latimer snorted. “Am I a monk? Plus, you might not know this but she tried to kill herself last year. She’s unstable, mate.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Says she wants fifty percent of what I own, plus child support? Where’s the justice?”

Hirsch was tired. Latimer stank, stale alcohol leaching and cigarette smoke caught in the weave of his shirt. Flicking a switch, Hirsch dropped his window a few centimeters, wondering if he should monitor the man’s movements for the next few hours. Keep him away from his wife. God he was exhausted.

“We’re not made of money. We’d have to sell up if she goes through with it. A property that’s been in the same family for generations.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can’t catch a break. The wind generators, for example. They put a line of them on Finola’s property, but not ours. Rent worth thousands of dollars a year.”

He’s going to marry Finola Armstrong
, Hirsch thought. Barrier Highway was quiet. He cared nothing for the oncoming and overtaking cars and farm vehicles, but Latimer would quiver alertly from time to time, tracking a family station wagon, a ute, a truck, remarking on the driver. Hirsch had no interest. He didn’t care if so-and-so in the white station wagon was a good bloke, or whosiwhatsit in the red ute had cancer. He wanted to sleep.

“Next right,” Latimer said.

Hirsch made the turn onto Bitter Wash Road, watched by a cow. Almost noon and he was starving. No rain for the past week and so for the next several kilometers, dust poured behind him and the steering wheel transmitted the surface corrugations to his hands. Then they were in the shadow of the wind turbines again, and shortly after that Latimer was pointing to his driveway entrance.

“Coming home to an empty house,” he said, drawing his palms down his stubbled cheeks, a picture of desolation.

“Your father and the boys are at an air show?”

“They headed over there yesterday, after the game,” Latimer said. “I’ve got an aunt lives in Jamestown.”

The father is complicit in the son’s philandering
, thought Hirsch. The gravel complained under the tires as Hirsch followed the
track between the lawn beds, shrubs and silvery gums. He pulled in opposite the flagstones leading to the veranda steps and the front door, and saw that the door was ajar before Latimer did. He touched the man’s forearm, registering briefly strength and warmth through the creased cotton. “Did you leave your place open yesterday?”

“What?”

Latimer glanced wildly at the door and was out and powering toward the house before Hirsch could stop him. Up the steps and through the door.
Oh, fuck
, thought Hirsch, following him, but also thinking there should be a vehicle if burglars were still on the premises. He paused on the veranda, hearing Latimer stomping around inside, and glanced across to the implement sheds, the yards, the paddocks.

And there was a glint, sunlight flashing on a windscreen, down along the creek. Hirsch shaded his eyes. How would you get a vehicle down there? Was there an access gate, a farm track?

He stuck his head in, called to Latimer: “Anything? Damage, things missing?”

“Gun case is open. The twenty-two is missing.”

Hirsch recalled that there were two .22 rifles: the Ruger used by the kids and the Brno in the gun case. So the Ruger was still floating around somewhere, still stowed on the window shelf of the ute, probably. That’s what Hirsch was thinking as he trotted across the yard and slid between the wires of the fence. He spotted fresh tire impressions in the grass, and realized they followed a farm track concealed under the spring growth. The track ran beside the fence and then down an incline to the creek, and now Hirsch had a clearer view: the tin hut, some ancient quince, apricot and mulberry trees, and the small clearing where Alison Latimer had parked her Subaru.

He side-slipped down the bank to the edge of the creek. Reaching the car, he looked in: empty, a suitcase in the back, keys in the ignition. He straightened and ran his gaze in among the fruit trees, down into the reeds and pools of the creek, and
finally over the rusted hut. A shiver came over him. He was spooked. What made him think of bloodletting?

He approached the hut and, rounding the end wall, found Alison Latimer slumped against the rusted tin wall, half-toppled with a rifle butt between her thighs, her thumb caught in the trigger guard. The barrel tip had been in her mouth, he guessed, but she’d jerked as she died. It was not the Ruger but the Brno. No exit wound; blood over her chin and inside her shirt front. All in all, the stillness of death. Hirsch had seen it before. But he advanced cautiously, keeping close to the undisturbed grass scratching the wall, and felt for a pulse. Nothing. Some residual warmth, so death had been a few rather than many hours ago. He reversed his steps and, keeping wide of the body, took a series of photographs with his phone. He had maybe a minute before Latimer arrived. Half an hour before Kropp and the doctor and everyone else arrived.

He started with a series of establishing shots of the hut, the grove of trees, the car and the creek. Then, closing in on the body, he photographed the dirt and the grass around it, the feet and legs, the rifle, the ringless hands holding it, the bloodied chest and Alison Latimer’s head. Then the same sequence but side-on, first the left flank, then the right, as Latimer came pounding down from the track above.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Said a moment before the penny dropped. He skidded to a stop. “What the hell?”

Hirsch put a hand to the farmer’s chest. “Mr. Latimer, you can’t—”

Latimer was full of trembling potency. “She might still be alive.”

“I’m afraid she’s not, Mr. Latimer,” Hirsch said, obdurately maintaining the pressure, waiting him out. Slowly the quivering chest relaxed. Latimer stepped back, mouth open in shock. He took a ragged breath and said, “What am I going to do? How do I tell the boys?”

Hirsch turned him away. “First I need to call it in, and then I’ll help you phone your friends and neighbors.”

“How do I tell the boys?”

“What time do you expect your father home?”

Latimer was slow, dull, staring at the ground. “Late afternoon,” he said, rallying. “He’ll have his phone with him.”

They returned to the house, slipping and sliding on the grassy bank, Latimer babbling about his life now, the boys, emptiness and what might have been. “She was going to come home, I know she was.”

Hirsch tuned him out. He trudged across the yard, a hand on Latimer’s elbow. He felt mud paste to the sole of his shoes; there was a smear of it on one toe cap and his trouser cuffs.

And Alison Latimer’s white runners had been pristine.

And the beautiful diamond ring: had she taken it off, a tidying act or a gesture from a woman about to kill herself?

KROPP ARRIVED FIRST, ASKED fora rundown and elbowed Hirsch aside, then Dr. McAskill appeared to pronounce death, and Andrewartha and Nicholson showed up with crime-scene tape and hangovers.
Meaning Dee is holding the fort in Redruth
, Hirsch thought. All he could do was stand back and watch his crime scene—incident scene—be trampled over.

Then Kropp, still in management mode, began stalking up and down the creek bank, muttering into his mobile phone. Forty minutes later, a hearse arrived, ready to cart the body away, followed by a flatbed truck,
REDRUTH MOTORS
scrolled across each door. Hirsch watched it back up to the Subaru, two men hopping out, drawing on heavy gloves.