Hell to Pay (31 page)

“I’ll remember that,” Hirsch said.

“Go down the side of my place to the shed and you’ll find a ten-liter jerry can. There’s a forty-four gallon drum of unleaded against the back wall. How about I let them have twenty liters? Fifty bucks should cover it, get them a fair distance.”

“Thanks, Bob.”

Hirsch stepped over to the TV. “You won’t know yourself with this, Leanne.”

She smiled, tired, sad, thankful for small mercies. “Present from Sam.”

“Nathan’s mate?” said Hirsch, running his hand over the smooth flank. “Generous of him.”

“He won it at the pub, but doesn’t need it.”

“Wish someone would give me a new TV,” Hirsch said, peering into the gap between the rear panel and the wall. “All I’ve got is a little portable, lucky to get one channel, depending on the weather.”

There was nothing to say to that. Muir was fastening a connector to the cable end, ready for the antenna socket. Leanne continued to watch him. Hirsch left them to it.

W
HEN THE BACKPACKERS WERE
gone and Bob had his fifty dollars—“Do I get a commission?” “How about a second channel on your TV?” “Done.”—Hirsch opened up the office and hunted through the burglary reports, going back one year. Then he walked across to the Tiverton Hotel: Like the Muncowie pub on the outside but more appealing within. Dining room, main bar, side lounge, dartboard, snooker table, widescreen TV and no old-timers nursing beer.

And no raffle, not recently. Last Christmas, maybe? A ham.

Hirsch phoned a few other pubs in the area. Muncowie, Redruth. No raffles offering a TV set.

I
T OCCURRED TO
H
IRSCH
that he didn’t know where Nathan’s mate lived, and asking around would only alert him. But he did know where Sam Hempel and Nathan Donovan worked.

At eight on Monday morning he walked across town to Tiverton Grains, a collection of storage and processing sheds around a huge untidy yard, the admin area a cottage on a side street. Wracked with sneezes, he entered the main shed, a vast echo chamber, almost empty but for a few pallets, jute bags and
nameless items of equipment. Thick air, thick with grain dust. Seeing no one, hearing a truck motor and voices in the backyard, he continued through to a metal door in the back wall, stepping from dimness and scratchy air to drenching sunlight. The yard was a depressed expanse of fuel drums, rusted machinery, dead weeds and a broad patch of oily dirt that served as employee parking. Four cars this morning, including Hempel’s lowered Commodore.

Hirsch headed across to an open tin structure against the back fence, a service bay. Inside it, nose out, was a grain truck, two overalls peering into the engine compartment, one of them saying, “Give her another go.”

The motor ground over, didn’t fire. With the hood up, Hirsch couldn’t see who was behind the steering wheel, but he said, “Morning, gents,” as he approached.

Sam Hempel and an older man straightened, turned. “Help you?” the older man said.

Hirsch drew nearer incautiously, and when he said, “I’d like a quick word with Sam,” was punched in the stomach, Hempel waving his hand immediately, saying, “Ow, fuck,” and running.

“Jesus, mate, sorry, don’t know what got into him,” the older man said, touching Hirsch as if he might get bitten, not sure what to do.

Hirsch, sucker punched twice in as many months, was too sore to run. Building up to a tormented shuffle, stomach muscles pulling, he followed the kid past the abandoned machinery and drums to the four employee cars. Hempel had vanished. Hirsch prowled between the vehicles, looking behind, under and into them, itching to look into the boot of the lowered Holden.

A whisper of cardboard or plywood against fabric, a soft booming sound, a sense of items shifting, compressing.

The rubbish skip.

Hirsch banged his fist against the metal flank. “Sam? Come on out of there.”

After a while, “Leave me alone.”

“Not going to happen, and you know it.”

Hirsch waited. The morning was warm and still, the sun edging above the gums that marked the boundary between the town and the first wheat paddock. A vapor trail disintegrated as he watched it. Adelaide to Perth? Adelaide to Alice Springs or Darwin? He thought of the Dutch backpackers aboard the Ghan. Meanwhile Tiverton was silent, only a murmur in the background and Hempel trying not to disturb the rubbish.

“Sam? I promise I won’t give you up to Sergeant Kropp and his boys, okay? But if I have to call them in, it will be taken out of my hands and I can’t protect you, understood?”

He could hear the boy thinking.

“I know you’re frightened. If you had your time over again, you wouldn’t punch me. Assaulting a police officer is pretty serious, you know. Hell to pay. Maybe we can work something out.”

“You promise you’ll keep them Redruth jacks off me?”

“Yes.”

“Particularly Nicholson?”

“Yes.”

Still Sam weighed his options. Hirsch said, “That was a lovely gesture of yours, giving Leanne Donovan a TV set. She hasn’t had a good trot, and it counts for a lot in my book that you did a nice thing for her.”

Silence.

“Even though the set was stolen, it was still a kindness to a woman who needed it.”

“She’s good to me. And I felt bad for her because of Melia and that.”

So bad that you went on a housebreaking spree on the day she put her daughter in the ground
, Hirsch thought.

“I understand,” he said. “But we do have to talk.”

The load shifted, the metal skin boomed faintly and Hempel hoisted himself onto the rim of the dumpster, wild-eyed, oil on his jeans, hands and forearms. He was sweating, jittery and gave the yard the once-over.

“It’s okay, there’s only me here,” Hirsch said.

Hempel jumped to the ground. His jeans slithered to his thighs. He tugged them up. “Where we going?”

“To the station for the time being.”

“Not down Redruth?”

“No.”

“I didn’t mean to hit ya.”

“I understand.”

They were moving toward Hempel’s car now, Hirsch shepherding and ready to grab, bolster, protect or brain the kid. “Keys?”

He lifted the boot lid. Two Blu-ray players, a Game Boy, a laptop, a media dock, a Samsung Galaxy phone still in its box. All on the list. Hirsch slammed the lid, said, “Get in,” and drove out of the yard.

Down they went to the main road, passing the general store, into Hirsch’s place of business, where Sam said, “If I tell yous who run Melia over, can I go?”

HIRSCH WASN’T MAKING ANY promises. “First things first, Sam. Tell me about the burglaries.”

They were in his sitting room, the front door locked to deter callers. He switched on the digital recorder, stating names, date and location.

Hempel, a forlorn shape in one of the armchairs, looked on in dismay. “Don’t I need a lawyer?”

Hirsch got comfortable. “You’ve every right to one. But Sam, once a lawyer’s involved I’ll formally charge you. I will throw the book at you: Assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, several counts of burglary, and I’m sure I can think of more charges. Then I will inform the homicide squad that you are a witness and maybe a suspect in the death of Melia Donovan. They don’t mess around, those guys. They’ll whisk you away and grill you for days and you won’t see daylight for twenty years.”

He paused. “That’s if we go the formal route. You will still face charges, but I’d like to protect you from the worst of it, at this stage.”

Hempel gnawed at his lower lip.

“So,” Hirsch said, “the break-ins.”

“It was me. I done them.”

“But you were at the service in the church, with Nathan and his mother. I saw you.”

Sam shifted, partly in agreement and partly in embarrassment. “I was like, you know …”

“Checking out who else was there.”

“Yeah.”

“You knew these people would be absent from their homes for a couple of hours.”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t Nathan or his mother wonder where you’d gone?”

“Said I had stuff to do.”

“Where do you live at present?”

“At Nate’s.”

“And before that?”

“With me mum sometimes, with me mates, mattress on the floor and that.”

Hirsch checked the recorder. Satisfied, he said, “I’ve been looking at burglary and theft reports for the past twelve months. There have been several similar break-ins: Farm properties over Easter, during the school holidays, Saturdays when people are playing sport. Was that you?”

Sam looked hunted. “Thought you wanted to know about Melia?”

“Was that you acting alone, or did you have help?”

“I didn’t kill her!”

“The burglaries, Sam: Was that you acting alone or did you have help?”

“Me.”

“Was Nathan ever involved?”

“Nate? No way. The cops are always hassling him.”

“Making it difficult for you to operate.”

“What?”

“Nothing. You stole quite a lot of gear in the past few months. The stuff in your car is the tip of the iceberg. Where’s the rest?”

“Sold it.”

“Bloke in a pub.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll need a name.”

“Dunno if I could find him again.”

Hirsch couldn’t count how many times he’d had this conversation. “What did he look like, this bloke in a pub? Which pub?”

“Can’t remember. Somewhere down Adelaide.”

“You drive all the way to Adelaide to do your drinking? Don’t answer that. Tell me why you gave Mrs. Donovan one of the stolen TVs.”

“Like I told you, I felt sorry for her and that.”

“Sorry how?”

“Sorry Melia got killed. A tragedy.”

Hirsch gave him a look. “A tragedy. You’re close to the family?”

“Yeah. Me own family’s fucked.”

“How do you know the Donovans?”

“Ever since I was in primary school with Nate. His mum let me doss down at their place when my mum was drinking or had a bloke over to stay.”

“That’s been a pattern for a while?”

“Years.”

“So you’d known Melia since she was a baby?”

“She was kinda like my sister.”

Sam had curled into the armchair. Fear, nerves and shame had shrunken him, it seemed to Hirsch. The kid’s clumsy height and bulk counted for nothing. Here out of the light he was pale, very gingery, the hairs downy, no spring or verve at all.

“She was special to you?”

Sam shrugged.

“I’ve seen photos of her. A lovely girl. Beautiful, in fact.”

Another shrug.

“But a bit wild, right?”

“I tried to look out for her.”

“Like a brother.”

“She’s just a kid. She was just a kid.”

“Old enough, Sam. So you looked out for her. What about Nathan and his mother? Shouldn’t they have been looking out for her?”

“What can they do? I got more … I got more contacts and that. I go all over. The car and that. I hear things.”

“Was it hard keeping your relationship with Melia a secret from her brother and her mother?”

Hempel’s jaw dropped. “What? What relationship?”

“She infuriated you sometimes? Wouldn’t do what you wanted? There was a bruise on her face dating from before she was killed.”

“Fuck you. I never hit her, never touched her. I can tell ya who did.”

“Maybe she hit her head when she was in your car? Was that it?”

Sam got out of the chair, no longer an unlovely ten-year-old boy in disguise. “I never done nothing to Melia.”

“Sit down,” Hirsch said in his whiplash voice.

Sam collapsed.

“Sam, were you the older boyfriend I’ve been hearing about?”

“What? No way.”

“All right, try this. You kept an eye out. You know who she spent time with. Boyfriends, girlfriends.”

“That’s right.”

“You saw her with an older man.”

“Yep.”

“Well, who, Sam?”

“That magistrate bloke, Coulter.”

“Really? You know who he is?”

“Sure.”

“How did Melia get involved with him?”

“She got done for shoplifting.”

“He was the sitting magistrate?”

“Yeah.”

“She caught his eye?”

“S’pose.”

“They went out together?”

“You could say that.”

“What would you say?”

“He took her to parties and that.”

“Anywhere else? A film, a restaurant, the pub …”

“She was fifteen. How’s he gunna do that?”

Hirsch nodded. “I had this girlfriend once, told me I wasn’t good enough for her, wasn’t making enough money, and who’d want to go out with a cop anyway?”

Hempel chewed on that. “You saying she said that to me?”

“Did she? Told you about her rich boyfriend, rubbed your face in it?”

“No.”

“It can get under your skin, that kind of knowledge. No wonder you followed her around.”

“I was lookin’ out for her. Nothin’ filthy like you’re suggesting.”

“You saw her with Coulter a few times, or only once?”

“Few times.”

“He must be what, thirty years older than her?”

Sam shrugged.

“But loaded, right? Big house, flash car.”

“I’m gunna get an apprenticeship,” Sam said, as if announcing a path to riches.

“So you were hurt that she chose a rich man over you?”

“No, I’m just sayin’, he’s no better than me. Least I never killed no one.”

Hirsch would come back to that. “Did she ever reveal to you, or anyone else, that she was involved with David Coulter?”

“Dunno. Prob’ly Gemma.”

“Did she ever tease you about the affair?”

Hempel twisted about in his chair. “Tease me? Nah. Why? When I told her she was makin’ a big mistake she told me to mind me own business, but that’s all.”

“What kind of big mistake?”

“I go, the guy’s a creep, Mel, he’s using you, he’ll hurt you, you’re not careful.” A shake of the head. “Sure enough …”

“Did Nathan ever go with you when you followed Melia?”

“Like I said, he’s a magnet to the Redruth cops.”

Hirsch checked the recorder again. “Was Melia by herself when she saw Coulter, or did Gemma Pitcher accompany her sometimes?”

“Gemma was there a coupla times. Why?”

“How did it work? Gemma recruited Melia? Melia recruited Gemma? Or maybe Coulter recruited Gemma, who recruited Melia, or vice versa?”