Hell to Pay (21 page)

“Sarge, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“We need to preserve everything. We need crime scene people here.”

“What does this look like to you? Suicide. A tragedy. No one needs to see it. I know the protocol, mister, I’ve called in Port Pirie CIB, they’ll be here within the hour, and meanwhile that bloody car is in the way.”

“But Sarge.”

Kropp cocked his head. Hirsch heard it, too, a background rumble of vehicles.

“Get up there and make yourself useful,” Kropp said. “Make sure no one wanders down here for a look-see.”

Clambering up to the fence above the tin hut, Hirsch saw that a dozen cars, station wagons, utilities and four-wheel drives had poured in off Bitter Wash Road to jostle for room around the house and sheds. Jesus Christ. He began to run. Clearly some kind of phone tree had been set in motion, this past hour, neighbor phoning neighbor phoning football club member, churchgoer and Country Women’s Association crony, and here they were, bringing cakes and casseroles and hugs and tears and nosiness.

And—if Alison Latimer had been killed at the house—trampling over a crime scene.

More cars arrived. Hirsch barged through the front door. But it was useless. At least thirty people were crowding the hallway, kitchen and sitting room, with more on the veranda or climbing out of their cars. “Excuse me,” he said futilely.

He went in search of Raymond Latimer, finding him in a huddle with a dozen other people, enduring their embraces but aware of Hirsch, watching warily. Hirsch couldn’t get through. He gestured; Latimer ignored him. And then the crowd moved and reformed and wouldn’t budge, Latimer disappeared and Kropp was there, panting with effort, grabbing Hirsch by the arm. “The fuck are you doing?”

“We’re losing evidence, Sarge.”

Kropp dragged him through the room and out onto the lawn. “What evidence? You’re upsetting people. Get your arse back down to the creek.”

“Sarge,” Hirsch said, and backed away, watching Kropp apologize, shake hands, pat backs, share the grief.

W
HEN THE SERGEANT HAD
merged fully with the crush of people, Hirsch made as if to head for the creek. Walking until he
was screened by a clump of oleanders, he doubled back and entered the house by the laundry door. Another door led to the kitchen, where half a dozen women were getting in each other’s way. “Need a quick word with Sergeant Kropp,” said Hirsch amiably, not stopping to gauge their reactions but bustling by them to the hallway.

The door to the main bedroom was slightly ajar. He slipped through the gap and paused and scanned the room. Latimer hadn’t made the bed; dirty clothes lay heaped on the floor and a chair; the wardrobe doors were open, drawers spilling socks and T-shirts. Only a few traces of Alison Latimer remained. Hirsch crossed to the left-hand bedside table. Nestled in a dusty patterned dish were Alison Latimer’s rings: wedding ring and the engagement ring he’d noticed the day he met her.

Hirsch returned to the hallway. He left via the kitchen. He wasn’t challenged.

H
E WAS HALFWAY
across the yard when he saw the Subaru. It had been dumped beside a haystack beyond the sheds. Hirsch was fed up with it all. He stumped out of the yard and was almost to the creek when he changed his mind and returned. This time he lifted the Subaru’s tailgate and unzipped the lid of the case. Women’s clothing. Badly folded, which meant a lot or nothing at all. There was no reason to suppose Alison Latimer was tidy. Meanwhile, no twelve-year-old boy’s clothing. Hirsch closed everything and headed for the creek.

T
HE HEARSE DRIVERS SAT
in the sun, smoking. McAskill was still bent over the body, and when he finally eased her away from the wall for the hearse drivers, she moved like a sack of disobliging logs.

Feeling Andrewartha and Nicholson give him the evil eye from the edge of the tape, Hirsch wandered down along the creek, thinking it a pretty spot for a house and orchard, except that it gave him the creeps. And he supposed it was prone to
flooding, that’s why the Latimer ancestors had moved to higher ground. Why had Alison Latimer come down here to die? Was it special to her? He gazed at the lichen, the fruit trees choking themselves to death, the choked rushes and hoof-trampled muddy verges. A good place to die.

He took out his phone, found a number in the contacts list, and dialed.

A voice lashed at his back: “Who are you calling?”

Hirsch whirled around. Kropp, slithering down the grassy slope. “Sarge, we need to take Mrs. Latimer’s car to the lab.”

“Do we?”

“I think so, Sarge.”

“The poor cow shot herself. I’m sick of this,” Kropp said. “I want you to piss off back to Tiverton in case someone reports a stolen lawn mower.”

“Sarge.”

“Dog,” murmured Andrewartha and Nicholson. “Maggot.”

A
LISON’S PARENTS
,
THOUGHT
H
IRSCH
when he reached the top. Everyone’s wringing their hands over the husband and the boys, but what about her parents, her friends?

The yard being choked with mourners’ vehicles, Hirsch was forced to steer a slow weave out of the yard, dodging a bulk fuel tank, heaped pine posts, haphazardly parked cars and utes. He was halted by a blue heeler, prone in a dusty pool of sunlight. He stopped; looked at the dog; willed it to move. Then he brapped the horn, and when that didn’t work, got out, grabbed the dog by its collar and walked it to another patch of talcy dirt.

Climbed back into the HiLux and bumped along the driveway and immediately onto the lawn as a black Explorer shot in, followed by an unmarked Falcon, on a mission. He didn’t recognize the suits in the Falcon but guessed they were the Port Pirie detectives, big men filling their seats and staring at him with the flatness and odium of policemen. But he did recognize the man at the wheel of the Explorer: the area commander,
Superintendent Spurling. As he waited for the dust to settle, Hirsch thought his irrelevance was pretty much fully underscored now. He steered back onto the driveway and out through the gate and onto Bitter Wash Road.

It gave him a curious jolt to see Wendy Street standing beside her car in the driveway of the house with the faded red roof. The boot was open, stacked with bags of mulch, one bag out and in a wheelbarrow beside a narrow strip of unforgiving soil. She stopped what she was doing and gazed at him, and even at some distance he felt the force of her frankness, as if she’d caught him acting discreditably.

So he steered into her driveway, lifting his hand in greeting. “Lot of cars,” she said when he got out, showing a little tension.

She doesn’t know
, Hirsch realized.
No one has phoned her
. He removed his cap and turned it absently in his hands. “Afraid I’ve got some bad news.”

One hand went to her throat and she said, instantly, “Allie? He killed her?”

Interesting. Hirsch agreed that Alison Latimer was dead, but wrapped it up in some mealy-mouthed cop talk, finishing with, “There’s no reason to suppose it was anything other than self-inflicted.”

“Fuck off,” Street said, her eyes filling with tears. “Beside the tin hut? No. She hated it there.”

She gave a tearing sob and went slack, backing away from him and grabbing a veranda post. Using it as a prop, she lowered herself, sat on the edge, her hands rubbing her thighs back and forth, back and forth, as if to bring herself back under control. Hirsch waited.

She looked up. “Who found her?”

“I did.”

Grim, intense, she said, “And where was Ray during all this?”

“Mrs. Street, he was in the Redruth lockup all last night and until lunchtime today. In fact, I gave him a lift home.”

“Don’t call me Mrs. Street. Has anyone told the boys?”

“That’s all taken care of,” Hirsch said, not knowing one way or the other. Surely Raymond Latimer would have called his father?

Wendy shook her head. “One can imagine the delicate way in which Raymond or his father might pass on the news:
“Oh by the way, kids, your mum’s shot herself.”

“Aren’t you being unfair?”

“Am I?”

“We have to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“You do, I don’t.” She bit her lip. “How do I tell Kate?”

Hirsch glanced toward the house, wondering where the girl was. “You’ll know what to say.”

“You think so?” Her eyes were full of tears, her arms folded to ward him off. “It’s just terrible. I know he did it.”

“Did you happen to hear a rifle shot this morning?”

“No, but there’s always someone shooting something. Plus I was mowing.”

A little Cox ride-on, parked beside the house, wearing a fresh chlorophyll skirt, damp cuttings in the tire treads. Hirsch glanced back at Wendy Street and saw that she was biting her bottom lip, something on her mind.

“What?”

“Katie saw that car again, that black car.”

“Well, you can put her mind at ease: Pullar and Hanson stole a Holden the other day.”

Then it dawned on him. “You think Katie sneaked the rifle out again and fired it?”

Wendy Street twisted in knots. “Could she have?”

And then her consternation disappeared, logic taking over. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”

“Exactly,” Hirsch said. “All indications are, Mrs. Latimer shot herself. The gun was still in her hands when I found her.”

Wendy rubbed her face. “This is just awful.”

She was glancing across at the Latimers’ as if she should head there but knew she might not be welcome. To divert her, Hirsch said, “Was Mrs. Latimer more than usually down lately?”

“You mean suicidal? No. She’d made up her mind to leave Ray. Get a divorce. She seemed freer if anything.” She gasped. “Her parents!”

“I’m off to see them now.”

Wendy was this way and that. “I should come with you, but I need to be here for Katie.”

The youngest boy might need you, too
, Hirsch thought. He nodded goodbye, seated his cap upon his head and reached for the driver’s door.

“I Googled you.”

Fantastic. Hirsch turned his blank face to her. “And?”

“And nothing.”

“O
UR DAUGHTER HAS KILLED
herself, and you know how he informs us? By
phone
.”

Heather Rofe was ragged, bleary, angry. Hirsch gently steered her back into the house, to the kitchen, where Keith sat dazedly, a solid man diminished, his decency more threadbare now. Man and wife, they’d been to church probably, best clothes on their backs. They’d made and poured tea but that was as far as they’d been able to take it.

“Is there anyone I can contact for you?”

Keith Rofe lifted his head. “Our other daughter’s coming over.”

Hirsch stood there, spinning his damn cap in his hands. He felt, and probably looked, like a storm trooper.

“How’s he breaking the news to the boys?” Heather Rofe said. “Text message?”

All kinds of statements were issued via text message these days.
Your services are no longer required; by the way, your husband’s having an affair; I want a divorce; here’s a close-up of my pussy
. Hirsch said gently, “Alison spent the night with you?”

Keith Rofe didn’t have the wherewithal to answer. He glanced helplessly at his wife, who said, “She was in bed when we left this morning.”

“Church?”

“A christening,” Heather said. “My niece’s daughter, down in Gawler.”

Two hours’ distance. “What time did you leave?”

“Seven.”

“So you were away half the day?”

Heather Rofe’s tears welled and rolled down her cheeks. “We just got back.”

“Did she tell you what she intended to do today?”

Rofe shrugged. “Sleep in. Rest. She offered to re-pot my geraniums.”

“Didn’t say anything about going out?”

“No.”

“She’s not a churchgoer?”

Heather struggled. She said, “Not lately.”

“Can you think why she’d go to the tin hut?”

“No, she didn’t like it there—and you’re grilling me. I’d like you to stop.”

Hirsch backpedaled. “Sorry, terribly sorry, that’s not my intention.”

“No, I’m sorry, I know you do have a job to do.”

Hirsch rotated his shoulders in uneasy agreement. “One last question: was the house locked when you got back from church?”

“We don’t bother, usually,” Heather said. “Nothing worth taking, and we know everyone in …” Her voice trailed away.

“What?”

“It
was
locked. I had to fetch the spare key. Remember, Keith?”

“What?”

Hirsch tuned them out, letting his gaze roam around the kitchen and into the hallway and mentally retrace his route as he’d entered the house a few minutes earlier. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest forced entry or a struggle, and how would he raise that question with them? “May I see her room?”

Heather Rofe fixed him with a level stare, still raw with grief but not about to lose herself in it. “Why?”

Hirsch did his uncomfortable shoulder rotation again. “I was wondering if she might have left some kind of goodbye.”

“Like a suicide note. Well, she didn’t. Last night over dinner she was quite chirpy. Not a hundred percent enamored with the idea of Jack spending the weekend with his grandfather, but a weight had been lifted from her shoulders over the past few days.”

Heather gave in to the grief again. Hirsch moved to her. He placed a hand on each shoulder and, after the briefest hesitation, she let herself be consoled.

Hirsch waited, glancing over her shoulder at the husband, who was again staring sightlessly at the top of the table. Presently Heather stepped back and mustered herself and said, “Her old bedroom, down the passage.”

A spare room now, all vestiges of the child and teenager removed. Hirsch surveyed it first and then began a search. The drawers yawned emptily, and all he found in the wardrobe was one wire hanger, a white bowls uniform in a drycleaner’s bag whispering in the eddying air.

He popped his head into the adjacent room. An untidy bed, a child’s pair of trainers on the floor, warm cotton pajamas poking from under a pillow, a laptop on top of the pillow, pasted with footballer stickers.