Hell to Pay (6 page)

Muir, indicating the Motorola in Hirsch’s fist, said, “You glued to that?”

And then he was crossing into the next yard, where a severely groomed grass lawn was bordered by garden beds splashed here and there with red, white, crimson, blue. A clean, older style Holden ute was parked in the driveway, Tiverton Electrics painted on the side. Hirsch glanced toward the rear of the property. He saw a large shed, door open, fuel drums, ladders, metal shelves and coiled wire inside. One neat house, one shabby, and that was a pattern repeated everywhere.

ALMOST SIX O’CLOCK. HIRSCH parked the HiLux in the police station driveway, intending to walk the short distance to the shop. A minibus pulled in next door,
REDRUTH DISTRICT COUNCIL
stenciled along the side panels, half a dozen elderly people on board. The driver tooted, and here was Hirsch’s elderly neighbor limping down the path from her house. Hirsch shot a glare at the driver. He took the old woman’s arm, helped her mount the steps. “An outing?”

“A lecture at the old jail in Redruth,” she said, “then dinner at the reform school.”

Ruins dating from the 1850s and now tourist attractions. Hirsch said, registering that she was skin and bone, hoping his manacling hand hadn’t bruised her, “Well, you belong in both places.”

She cackled and they all waved and he was left in the exhaust gases.

H
E WALKED IN THE
other direction to the general store, an afternoon shadow tethered to his feet. Tennant’s Four Square was an off-white brick building, long, low, the shopfront glass
deep inside a corrugated iron veranda, with a petrol bowser at one end, secured by a bulky brass padlock, and a checkerboard of private post boxes at the other end. Nothing enticed shoppers but a dusty ice-cream advertisement on a sheet of tin and a board of daily specials. You couldn’t see in: the windows were painted a greyish white. As Hirsch approached, an elderly man in overalls emerged with a liter of milk. Nothing else moved, not in the entire town.

The interior was a dim cave. The ceiling, pressed tin, was stalactited with hooks from the days when a shopkeeper would hang it with buckets, watering cans, coils of rope and paired boots. Refrigerator cases lined a side wall, shallow crates of withered fruit and vegetables the back, and in the vast middle ground were aisles of rickety shelving, stacked with anything from tinned peaches to tampons. The sole cash register was adjacent to the entrance, next to ranks of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines and a little bookcase thumb-tacked with a sign,
LIBRARY
. If you were a farmer or a gardener in need of an axe, sheep dip or nails and screws you headed for the far back corner. If you wanted to buy a stamp, you headed a couple of paces past the library.

No sign of Melia Donovan’s friend, but Hirsch was pretty sure he’d been served by the woman seated at the post office counter a couple of times. She glanced up at him and hastily away, one forefinger poised above the keypad of a calculator as if she’d lost her place. A thin, pinched woman, full of burdens. “Excuse me,” Hirsch said, his footsteps snapping on the old floorboards as he approached, “are you the shopkeeper?”

She whispered, “No,” and nodded toward the dim rear.

Hirsch set out between the racks of groceries and found a small back room furnished with a desk, a fat old computer, filing cabinets, a swivel chair and a middle-aged man, tensely thin and neat. Pale, as if he lived in his office and let women and teenage girls serve his customers. When Hirsch knocked on the door frame, the man shot out of his chair. “Help you?”

“Paul Hirschhausen, I’m new across the road.”

The shopkeeper reached out a long, thin, defenseless hand. “Ed Tennant. Thought I’d run into you sooner or later.”

And without much joy in the anticipation
, thought Hirsch, returning the shake. Tennant looked as sour as the woman in the post office.

“I just met your wife.”

Tennant didn’t reply to that. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m afraid this is not exactly a courtesy call.”

“Oh?” said Tennant, a soup of apprehensions showing. Then he firmed up a little. “I thought it was all sorted.”

Thinking he was forever at cross-purposes, Hirsch decided to play along. “Depends.”

Tennant showed his teeth humorlessly, a stringy man fueled by nerves and grievances. “There was no need for Sergeant Kropp to send you.”

“Right.”

“I will give the Latimers some leeway, but they can’t rely on shiny shoes and a smile to get them through forever. If they haven’t got the money they shouldn’t go shopping.”

The wealthy Latimers were in strife? Hirsch stored that away for now. He held up a palm. “Actually, Mr. Tennant, I badly need to speak to Gemma Pitcher. I understand she works for you?”

“She’s not here. What’s going on? She got a phone call and burst into tears and left, said she’d be back tomorrow.”

“If you could tell me where she lives?”

“Next to the tennis courts. Look, what’s it about? Is she in trouble? You speak to me, first, all right?”

Hirsch hardened his voice. “Mr. Tennant, I’m not about to arrest or hassle anyone. But I do need to speak to Gemma.”

“And I’d like to know what about,” Tennant said, like a man of precise habits and concerns.

Hirsch sighed. “Her friend Melia Donovan has been killed. Now, can I go about my business?”

Tennant subsided. “That explains the phone call.”

Hirsch was curious. “Did she say who called?”

“Nope.” As Hirsch moved off, the shopkeeper added, “How did it happen, Melia? Another accident?”

Hirsch stopped. “She was found by the side of the road.”

He could see the man picturing it, partly avid, partly horrified. He left the shop and went in search of the dead girl’s friend.

E
NCOUNTERED HER MOTHER FIRST
. “She’s that upset,” said Eileen Pitcher at a peeling front door, the house peeling too, separated from the town’s tennis courts by a line of overgrown cypresses.

Hirsch was tired. “Won’t take a moment, Mrs. Pitcher,”

Gemma Pitcher’s mother was tiny and aggrieved and didn’t want Hirsch on her doorstep. “Wipe your feet.”

She led Hirsch to a sitting-cum-dining room, semidark, a TV flickering and two boys crouched before it, thumbing Xbox controls. The dining table sat against the rear wall, and Gemma Pitcher was sprawled on a sofa, tissues in her fist, eyes damp. She was a plump eighteen, with a band of soft belly showing between the waistband of tight jeans and the scant hem of a T-shirt. Her navel looked sore to Hirsch, the flesh puckered around a thick silver ring. She wore her mousy hair long, a ragged fringe over her mascaraed eyes—the mascara leaking down her cheeks now that she knew her friend was dead.

Hirsch introduced himself, crouching so that his head was on a level with hers. “Do you remember me, Gemma? You served me in the shop a couple of times.”

She shrugged.

Girls like this are shruggers
, Hirsch thought,
and they fill the world
. “Are you up to answering a few questions?”

“No, she’s not,” the mother said.

“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 to Hirsch, scowled, touched Gemma’s upper arm as if knowing 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 promptly lit up, using a pink disposable lighter. The three rings in the cartilage of each ear glinted as she snatched smoke from her cigarette and jetted it to one side. 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 Gemma 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.”

H
E RETURNED TO THE
Donovan house. Another car was there, a dinged-about Commodore. Melia’s brother, thought Hirsch, or relatives, 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 toaster, so he headed straight for the ready-made 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 lasagna.

“Gemma okay?”

“Bit upset.”

“We all are,” Tennant said, and Hirsch realized he’d sensed it as he’d walked through the store, a community atmosphere of fear and sorrow and whispers. Was the shop a clearing house of local gossip? “Shop’s busy all of a sudden.”

“It happens,” Tennant said. “Can’t complain.” He looked with miserable triumph at Hirsch. “You’re inviting a speeding ticket or a breathalyzer if you shop in Redruth, so business has picked up for me.”

What the hell was happening in Redruth? Hirsch gestured with the lasagna. “Dinner.”

“Your money’s as good as anyone’s.”

A
WHITE POLICE
D
ISCOVERY
was parked foursquare outside the police station. Hirsch didn’t like that one bit. Hated it, in fact. No good would come of it, no sweetness or light. 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 pronounced brows and short, receding hair. “Did you call Spurling?”

Spurling? Hirsch went blank, then remembered: 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 skeptical directions, his mouth a barely visible slash across the bottom of his face.

Hirsch said, “So you headed up here to see if I was fucking up?”