by Garry Disher
‘Don’t be idiotic, get in,’ Hirsch said, intentionally harsh. ‘I’ll run you back to Daryl’s, take all of two minutes.’
Adam glanced uneasily back the way they’d come, murmured to Daryl, and they crossed together and slid into the rear seats with barely a disturbance of the air. Hirsch said, ‘Buckle up,’ U-turned and headed back towards the town. ‘You guys know Katie, right?’
Daryl grunted. Adam said, ‘Her mum’s your girlfriend.’ A hint of smartarse in it.
Katie swivelled and leaned into the gap between the seats with friendly interest. ‘Hello.’
No hello in return, but Hirsch sensed shoulder shrugs from each boy. He imagined their jumble of emotions: not cool to say hello to a kid; embarrassing to ride with a cop; now he’s going to ask us what we were up to.
Hirsch said, ‘What on earth were you two up to?’
‘Just having a walk,’ Adam said.
‘Right.’
A minute later, Hirsch braked outside Daryl’s house. He switched off, turned to the boys and said, ‘Before you get out.’
‘What?’ said Flann, hostile now.
‘Adam, your mum’s in hospital.’
Explaining, he watched confusion, contempt and acceptance flicker on the kid’s face. ‘Wayne know?’
‘Yes.’ After a pause, Hirsch added, ‘Look, if you’d like me to run you out to your place…?’
‘Nup,’ and it was final. Adam poked Daryl in the upper arm and yanked on the door handle.
‘Suit yourself,’ Hirsch said, but by then the doors had slammed and the boys were gone.
‘Now,’ said Katie in a sunny voice, ‘where were we?’
Hirsch snorted. They had a mutual regard for each other.
Five kilometres south of Tiverton, Hirsch turned onto Bitter Wash Road, riding the now-familiar curves and undulations, passing an 1880s stone wall, property gates, grain stubble, skinny sheep in threadbare paddocks. The road climbed gradually, bisecting a range of low hills staked with windfarm turbines and offering a brief glimpse of distant ashen ground, the morning’s grass fire. Then onto a flat stretch, more grain heads and wheat stubble; finally a driveway and a small red-roofed house.
As arranged, a neighbour was there, her little Mazda parked in the partial shade of a massive oleander. Katie used to argue that she’d be fine alone until her mother got home. But she was linked to Hirsch, who probably had enemies, being a cop, and this was a back road. And violence, he’d learnt, was often random. So: an after-school minder. Giving him a peck on the cheek now, twinkling her fingers at him, she ran inside, backpack dragging and bouncing.
He turned to go. Then he realised: this was the last time. When school got out tomorrow she was going to a friend’s house. After the summer break, she’d start high school, the same school Wendy taught at. She’d be travelling there and back with her mother.
Hirsch headed for the highway, feeling an odd sense of loss. He slowed for the intersection, turned north, accelerated. And then, owing to the altered perspective on the return leg, he saw a flash of sunlight on glass a short distance from where he’d picked up Daryl Cobb and Adam Flann. A vehicle, half concealed by roadside grasses, was parked along a rutted farm track a hundred metres in from the highway. Ah hah.
Hirsch stopped to check it out.
5
HUNCHED IN AN airless hollow, partly screened by grain crops and dry grass on either side: a Holden ute. At least thirty years old. Dents, rust in the tailgate and wheel arches, bald tyres, a chipped windscreen, a frayed tonneau cover. Pungent warmth rising from the engine compartment, a stink of unburnt petrol and hot oil. It hadn’t been there long.
Hirsch opened the driver’s door. The glove box was open—the boys, probably, rifling through for anything of value—and the key was in the ignition. Dust caked the dash, the instrument panel and the shelf behind the seats. Not road dust, dust-dust—suggesting disuse and long-term storage. He turned the key, watched the fuel gauge climb to the quarter mark—so that wasn’t what had stranded Adam and Daryl out here. The edge of an ejected cassette poked from the tape player: The Seekers’ greatest hits. Hirsch’s mother, a sly stirrer, liked to bawl out ‘Morningtown Ride’ whenever her menfolk lapsed into their brooding silences at the dinner table. Hirsch wondered if Adam or Daryl had played the tape. Would they even know how to work the player?
Hirsch returned to his Toyota and entered the plate details into the MRT, an onboard computer in tablet form. Unregistered since 2016; last known owner Nancy Washburn, 11 Kitchener Street, Tiverton.
Hirsch shook his head; it made sense. Nan Washburn bred prize-winning miniature ponies on a five-hectare block at the edge of town; Daryl Cobb’s sister earned pocket money helping her. If Daryl had also worked there, or visited, or gone there to fetch Laura because their mother had flipped out, he’d have known about the ute.
But would he have stolen it if not in the company of Adam Flann?
Back to the old ute. Hirsch tried the ignition key. The motor caught, shuddered on four of its six cylinders for half a minute, then belched and stalled in a cloud of toxins. Cracked head? Vapour lock?
He closed the door, walked around to the rear and unclipped the tonneau cover. More dust, rat droppings, straw, ropes, stirrups, a small cracked saddle, a plastic bucket, a five-litre fuel can, empty grain sacks. And under everything a coil of insulated copper tubing. Left over from some renovation project? Heating for the stable block?
Copper, anyway.
Locking the ute, pocketing the key, Hirsch drove back to the highway, paused for the Redruth High school bus and followed it into town.
Nan Washburn probably had the best of two worlds, rural and urban. Her lovely old stone house faced farmland and the distant ranges in one direction, the town in the other, and was close to everything. In thirty seconds she could be halfway across her property; three minutes to the shop, a friend’s house, the community tennis courts.
Hirsch rolled up Kitchener Street and into her driveway, noting the looping strands of fairy lights draped over shrubs, garden trees, the veranda and around several wire shapes: reindeer pulling a sleigh, a Christmas tree, Santa with a sack. Just now—unlit, bleached by sunlight—the display was nothing much, a pale ghost of Christmas. But it was stunning at night, and Hirsch had pretty much decided that Nan would win this year’s Best Christmas Lights award. He’d make one more tour of the town tonight, to make certain.
Following the driveway along the side of the house to the yard at the rear, he parked alongside a Volvo station wagon and got out. Engine heat wafted from the Volvo: she’s just got home, he thought. He checked the grounds: concrete troughs, four huge concrete tanks, a windmill, an old corrugated-iron shed, quince and apricot trees, a stable, two holding pens and a paddock for an old Clydesdale and ten faintly ridiculous miniature ponies. Only the Clydesdale registered Hirsch’s arrival, sticking its head over the top of a sturdy post-and-rail fence as if welcoming an old friend.
Hirsch returned the gaze balefully. Back when the town council had informed him the vote was more or less unanimous, he was this year’s Santa and expected to appear on a horse, kindly provided by Nan Washburn, he’d said why couldn’t he drive up in his police vehicle, lights and siren? That idea was shot down: it would terrify the little ones. Or how about he arrived on the back of a farm ute? No. Or simply strolled in from out of the darkness? No. Nan’s horse it was. Call it building bridges. He was fairly new to the district and it had been a rocky start.
He passed a tangle of staked tomato plants and a line of roses as he made his way along a crazy path to the back veranda. There was no clear indication that he was approaching a rear entrance: no external laundry, kitchen or bathroom plumbing, just generous windows and a wide doorway under a deep veranda set with worn decorative tiles and hung with grapevines. He stepped onto the veranda; knocked on the flyscreen door. Beyond it, the main door was open, revealing a dark hallway, closed doors on either side. He could hear a radio, drawers slamming, gen
eral kitchen business.
He knocked again. The noises stopped and the house seemed to listen, making certain. A third knock and Nan Washburn appeared, a woman in her fifties with untamed wiry grey hair, wearing a denim apron over loose tan pants and a white T-shirt. Stripping off rubber gloves as she approached, she saw at last who her visitor was. ‘Paul. You here to ride Radish again?’
The Clydesdale. Hirsch shuddered. ‘Another matter.’
‘Then come in, come in.’
Hirsch stepped into cooler air. Scented. Not furniture polish, not air freshener or perfume. Potpourri?
‘I’m in the kitchen. Cuppa?’
Hirsch realised a cup of tea was exactly what he needed and followed Nan’s comfortable shape into a kitchen at the side of the house. It was a vast, well-lit room with French Provincial-style sinks, copper-bottomed pans hanging above an island bench, a farmhouse oven, a burnished steel fridge and a sizeable wooden table with cane-bottomed chairs.
‘Sit.’
Hirsch sat. The window looked over more roses, a clothesline and a side fence and farmland. Nan put the kettle on and rummaged for biscuits. Good, Hirsch was starving, too. Still bustling about, she turned off the radio, reached for cups and side plates, filling him in on her day. Had he stopped by earlier? She’d been out since breakfast, just got back. First her mother, in a nursing home over in Port Pirie, then visits to the bank and her accountant, had her hair done for tomorrow night, generally a day trying to fit everything in. It isn’t nerves, Hirsch thought, she likes to talk. There was a husband, but he lived in a caravan out east and spent all of his days ranging the back country with a metal detector. A bit cracked in the head, apparently, but harmless.
Finally, tea made and biscuits delivered, Nan said, ‘Now, what can I do for you?’
Hirsch took a sideways approach. ‘Did you happen to look in the shed when you got back?’
‘No. Why?’
‘So you wouldn’t have seen that your ute is missing?’
A look of pure astonishment. ‘Missing?’
‘Have you driven it today, by any chance? Did it break down on you?’
‘It’s undriveable. What are you getting at?’
‘I found it abandoned just off the highway a little while ago. Not far, about a kilometre past the silos.’
‘How did it get there?’ As if aware that she’d asked a silly question, she added, ‘I never drive it, it just sits in the shed.’
‘So you haven’t let anyone borrow it?’
‘They’d be in for a shock. It conks out after a couple of minutes.’
‘Where do you leave the key?’
She wriggled uncomfortably. ‘In the ignition. No one was going to steal…Well, I guess someone has.’
Hirsch reached for a biscuit. His fingers melted the chocolate. ‘How do you manage without a ute?’
‘I don’t really need one. Things like hay or oats I get delivered, and I can always load things in the back of the wagon. I use the wheelbarrow if I need to move hay from A to B.’
‘Heavy lifting?’
‘There’s always someone I can call on,’ she said, and Hirsch saw a glimmer of understanding reach her eyes. Looking away, she added, ‘Laura Cobb helps me with the grooming and feeding and her brother lends a hand if we need extra muscle.’
A pause developed. Hirsch said, ‘Is Daryl ever here with his friend, Adam?’
‘Adam Flann? Once,’ Washburn said, and she straightened her back and shut her mouth.
Hirsch said gently, ‘And?’
‘And let’s just say Daryl hasn’t made the wisest friendship choice.’
True, but as far as Hirsch could tell, there were no other boys Daryl’s age in the town. He told her about spotting the ute, half-concealed on a side track, and earlier spotting Daryl Cobb and Adam Flann nearby. ‘Walking back to town along the side of the highway.’
Another silence. When it grew uncomfortable Nan said, ‘People say you’re fair.’
Hirsch said nothing.
‘Please don’t charge them with anything.’
He sat back. ‘Of course, it’s always possible they didn’t take it.’
She shook her head. ‘We both know it was them.’
‘It’s theft, Nan,’ Hirsch said. ‘And driving an unregistered, unroadworthy vehicle. And if Daryl was at the wheel it’s driving without a licence.’
With some heat, Nan Washburn said, ‘But no harm done, and it would have been Adam’s idea, and think what a court appearance would do to Daryl, not to mention his poor mother or Laura.’
Hirsch folded his arms. ‘What do you suggest?’
Nan gave him a half-humorous grin. ‘A stern talking-to?’ She warmed to the theme. ‘Neither of those boys has had a proper father-figure in his life. They’d listen to you.’
Hirsch wasn’t so sure. He said, ‘First, was there anything of value in the ute?’
‘Maybe they were just joyriding, not stealing.’
‘Nan, listen to me. Was there cash in the glove box? Or tools, a mobile phone, prescription painkillers?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘Any kind of firearm?’
‘No.’
Good. If the boys had removed anything from the ute, they’d have hidden it in the grass, and Hirsh didn’t fancy poking about. This weather brought out the snakes. ‘Copper tubing?’
‘Oh.’ A look of mild amazement, a memory returning. ‘Actually, yes, left over from when I had the laundry done.’
But would those boys know the copper was worth a few dollars? Had they even looked under the tonneau cover? Hirsch said, ‘Will this affect your relationship with Daryl? And his sister?’
‘Laura’s lovely. She’s not involved, and no way am I tarring her with anything. She thinks both boys are idiots, anyway. As for Daryl, the only useful mothering he gets is from his little sister. And me, to a lesser extent. I’ll talk to him. It’ll be okay.’
‘Adam?’
‘Adam I want nothing to do with. But I suppose the police can’t take it up with one boy and not the other—how about you deal with him and I’ll deal with Daryl?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Hirsch said. ‘We need something…stronger. More formal.’
Leaving Nan to retrieve the ute with the help of a neighbour, Hirsch drove back to the police station, parked, and made for Marie Cobb’s house on foot. He phoned the Redruth hospital as he walked: Brenda Flann was awake and cranky. Cuts, bruises, re-set nose, rib fractures. She’d be in for another three or four days.
He was stepping off the footpath onto the weedy dirt that was the Cobbs’ front yard when Laura appeared from the rear of the house, wheeling a bike. She had changed out of her school uniform and into an old T-shirt and torn jeans. Pale skin, dark hair; chipped pink nail polish on the fingers curled around the handlebars. A pannier hung over the rear wheel, crammed with a small backpack and a variety of curry combs. On her way to Nan Washburn’s, Hirsch thought.
‘Laura.’
‘Hello.’
She was shy, embarrassed, whenever she met him. It dated from an incident earlier in the year when she’d knocked on Hirsch’s door to say that her mother was acting weird, ranting, hadn’t slept for days, she and Daryl couldn’t cope. After checking for himself, Hirsch had called an ambulance. Rehab, a different medication, and two weeks later Marie was back with her children.
Now Laura gave him a frightened look. ‘Did Mum do something today?’
Hirsch smiled. ‘Nothing like that. I need a quick word with Daryl and Adam. Are they here?’
Worry creased Laura’s face, emphasising the curious half-centimetre-wide white flash across one eyebrow. An old injury? Finally, she said, ‘They’re in Daz’s bedroom.’ She stuck out her jaw. ‘Whatever he’s done, Adam would’ve put him up to it.’
‘Just a few questions,’ Hirsch said.
She was marking time, anxious to be off to her job, anxious to protect her brother. Her face cleared. ‘Is it about Mrs Flann?’
‘That’s one of the things,’ Hirsch said.
Still not satisfied, she propped her bike against the side wall and said, ‘Come around the back.’
They never use the front door, Hirsch thought, following her. Expecting more dirt and weeds, he found three raised garden beds. The staked tomatoes, broad beans and silver beet he could identify but there was a patch of leaf heads that defeated him. He crouched to read the small plastic tags stuck in the dirt: carrots, radishes.
Creaking upright, he asked, ‘Who’s the gardener?’
‘Me. Nan showed me. Mrs Washburn.’
‘Great,’ said Hirsch inadequately.
She led him through a warped screen door and into the kitchen. It was as unlike Nan Washburn’s as any kitchen could be: cramped; worn linoleum; elderly electric stove and refrigerator. Marie Cobb was sitting side-on to a round chrome and laminate table, one elbow propped beside an ashtray piled with butts, the other elbow flexing as she drew on a cigarette. Her hair was greasy, eyes vacant. She didn’t look at Hirsch or her daughter but flopped her arm straight down, spilling ash onto the floor, then seemed to forget that she was smoking.
‘It’s one of her good days,’ Laura said. ‘Through here.’
Down a short, airless hallway to a door halfway along. Hanging at eye height was an earthenware sign in crooked, primary-school letters: Daryls room. And Daryl—or someone—had booted the bottom of the door at one point, the plywood outer shell jagged and splintery.
‘See ya,’ Laura said.
So Hirsch knocked, and walked into a dope haze. Adam recognised him first. Seated on the floor between a narrow single bed and a plywood wardrobe, his back to the bedside table, he edged an ashtray beneath the bed with his right hand. ‘We meet again.’
Hirsch ignored him. ‘Daryl? I need you to wake up.’
‘He’s out of it, man.’
‘Anything stronger than pot? I’m not here about the pot, by the way.’
Adam smirked and Hirsch wondered if pot was a word kids still used. He took in the dirty clothes dumped on the floor and draped over a rickety chair, a pile of graphic novels under the window, and three posters: a Formula 1 car, one of the Transformer movies, the Adelaide Crows. Daryl himself was sprawled face up across the bed.