by Garry Disher
Finally, glee. Hirsch appearing, barely upright, on Radish the Clydesdale with a bulky sack of wrapped presents across his lap: one for every child in the district and a handful marked B and G just in case. Now he could be heard booming, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ and trying to read Joyce Gwynne’s handwriting. Tilting dangerously in the saddle as he dispensed his gifts, stretching muscles he didn’t know he had. Radish letting go thunderous turds and the kids cracking up.
Sight and sound, but what Katie’s video failed to record was Hirsch’s tortured tailbone and spine, the stink of sweat and horse, Santa’s whiskers feathery in his mouth.
Santa. It was ‘Father Christmas’ when Hirsch was a kid. He replayed the clip, began to smile, his muscle strains temporarily forgotten. The kids had been beside themselves with excitement. And they’d appreciated the joke, Santa on horseback. But distributing the presents had taken forever, so Katie had begun to use the pause button, filming freely again when it was time to award the prize for the best Christmas lights. Hirsch watched himself slip dangerously, grab Radish by the mane, haul himself upright, clearly trembling, before gingerly handing Nan Washburn her award, a framed certificate and a plum pudding wrapped in cellophane.
Thus ended Hirsch’s fifteen minutes of glory.
Walking would ease his stiffness.
But there on his bedroom chair was the Santa suit. He couldn’t return it unwashed—what would Martin say? Reflecting on the legions of people who went through life anticipating what Martin would say, Hirsch hand-washed and rinsed the pants, jacket, cap and beard and pegged them out on his backyard clothesline.
Then he stuffed a large garbage bag into his pocket and set out. First to the oval—football in winter, cricket in summer—circling the low rail fence twice. Tall, smooth, silvery gum trees around the edge of the park, galahs screeching among the branches, constantly rising and settling. He walked the town’s perimeter roads and occasionally up and back down one of the side streets. A distant kookaburra joined the bird chorus. Otherwise Hirsch heard only the scrape of his rubber soles and small creatures rustling, clinging to the last vestiges of night.
He passed a fence strung with Christmas lights, the colours washed out now, with the sun above the horizon. Hirsch was sick of looking at Christmas lights, sick of Christmas.
Six-thirty. The sun was above the droughty hills and slanting through the trees now, promising another cloudless, windless, stifling day. Time for his shower and shave, his second breakfast. But first he passed by the shop, quickly confirming that it had been a good idea to bring the garbage bag. Bending, pushing against his aches and pains, he scooped up plastic bottles, scraps of wrapping paper, dead sparklers, paper hats, cigarette butts. He moved further up Kitchener Street, hunting and pecking, and came upon a significant pool of blood.
Hirsch froze for a moment, then knelt. Touched his forefinger to it. Still sticky; spilt recently, then.
He gazed along the street. Kitchener was a short street, six homes on either side. He ran a mental checklist: who was capable of violence? Who was likely to be on the receiving end?
None of these people.
Movement alerted him, a shape behind a garden hedge, a disturbance of the sparse leaves. The house belonged to an elderly widower named Cromer. Calling, ‘Mr Cromer?’ Hirsch approached the driveway entrance.
A cry, just as he stepped onto the footpath. A queer, soft, alien cry, not of warning but of distress. And more blood. Spooked now, Hirsch entered the front yard. Blood new and glistening on the couch-grass lawn. A panicked sound, high-pitched, and Hirsch jumped in fright as one of Nan Washburn’s miniature ponies retreated, trembling, into the corner between the hedge and the side fence.
He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Not a person in distress. A little horse—covered in blood.
He took a breath and slowly approached, one hand reaching, his voice gentle. Who was he kidding? The pony lunged past, knocking him to the ground, smearing his baggy old morning-walk shorts. It was gone quickly, but one thing Hirsch was certain of: stab wounds. He knew what stab wounds looked like. And the poor creature had been stabbed several times.
He followed. The pony, weak and listing badly, headed back the way it had come, to the end of Kitchener Street and through Nan Washburn’s front gate.
Where it stopped to sniff at and nudge one of its mates, a bloodied shape on the ground. Sensing Hirsch again, it stumbled along the side wall of the house, then, tottering, a great shudder in its hide, settled onto its knees, its hindquarters, and toppled over.
Hirsch felt sick. Pausing to check the animal at Washburn’s front gate—lifeless eyes, intestines oozing across the dirt—he approached the fallen pony. It was still alive, snorting, eyes wild. Nothing he could do at this point, so he continued around to the pens, the small paddock and the stable block at the rear. Gates were open. More blood, gouts of it here and there. A further three bodies. Survivors, too: five traumatised miniatures and Radish at the far end of the paddock, the latter tossing his massive head; backing away as if doubting Hirsch had come in peace.
9
HIRSCH KNOCKED ON the back door.
No answer, so he walked right around the house, knocking. Locked tight, no lights, no breakfast radio or TV leaking through a window. But Nan’s Volvo was parked beside the back veranda. A victim? he thought. Or sound asleep. He needed to know.
He found the spare key in a magnetised tin stuck behind the hot-water tank and let himself in. Sounds—deep breaths in and out. Laboured? Injured? He couldn’t tell.
He traced the sounds to a bedroom. Door ajar. He nudged it open.
Nan lay on her back, her legs entwined in a sheet. Intact, unharmed, deeply asleep. He crossed to wake her, explain why he was there, then reconsidered, picturing her shock and distress. He felt unequal to it. And he had a crime scene to preserve. He let himself out, locked up, replaced the key. A string of calls to make.
The Muirs were Nan’s closest friends in the district. Apart from the support, they’d know if she had family who should be notified. They’d know how he could contact her husband, the reclusive gold prospector.
Yvonne Muir answered, the voice conjuring the woman in Hirsch’s mind’s eye: slight and nervy in contrast to her stolid husband, a woman whose hands were constantly at her hair and clothing, rotating her wedding ring.
He sketched the situation and she gasped, appalled; said she’d come immediately.
‘No,’ Hirsch demurred. ‘Wait for my word. I’d like to get a vet here before she wakes up.’
Yvonne was alarmed. ‘Are you sure she’s asleep? What if she’s been hurt?’
Hirsch said he’d heard snoring.
‘Well…I know she takes sleeping pills sometimes.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Hirsch said, ‘perhaps Bob could give me a hand?’
‘You just missed him,’ Yvonne said. ‘He’s rewiring a house in Spalding today.’
So Hirsch would have to examine and preserve the crime scene alone. He wasn’t confident that trained forensic officers would arrive before the end of the day, and half the town could be expected to traipse through Nan Washburn’s yard by then.
‘As soon as the vet gets here,’ he said, ‘I’ll text you to come over.’
‘Okay.’
Next, Hirsch called his boss. Jogging again.
‘You’re ruining another perfectly good run, Constable Hirschhausen.’
Then she listened, asking good questions—almost as if she could visualise the scene—and rattled off instructions: secure the area, take photographs of the dead and injured horses, preserve footprints and tyre prints. ‘As best you can in the circumstances. I expect the horses have trampled over everything? Better establish a radius too—search for discarded clothing, knives, machetes. Doorknock. I’ll try to get you a forensic team or at least a couple of CIB officers from Port Pirie.’ She paused. ‘Do you know who might be responsible?’
Hirsch did. He said, ‘Early days, sarge.’
‘All
right.’ The sergeant grunted. ‘I sometimes jog with one of the vets. I’ll give her a buzz.’ She finished the call.
Hirsch began scanning the dirt for signs of vehicle and foot traffic. No good: the areas not churned up by panicked horses or hidden beneath carcasses were baked hard by the sun. Maybe forensic technicians could isolate partial tyre or shoe treads.
He took photos: the blood-smeared railings, the dead ponies with their slit throats, the survivors with their stabbed and slashed pelts.
There was no other evidence. No discarded blades or bloodied clothing along the fence lines or in the shrubbery. Head down, he worked a grid pattern, advancing deeper onto the grounds of the property. Stopped before he reached the horses huddled in the back corner: he was distressing them. The bloodied miniatures were surging around Radish’s withers, eyeing Hirsch wildly, snorting, tossing their heads, one or two uttering little squeals of panic. He took more photos and backed away. Seven o’clock. The town was stirring, distant doors slamming, motors firing, breakfast table radios tuned to the ABC news.
Unwilling to leave the property unsecured while fetching crime-scene tape, he sealed off the driveway and entire backyard with a length of nylon cord from Nan’s shed. He could feel a bite in the sun now. He was damp and sticky, and soon the air would stink, the sun super-heating the carcasses, the blood and shit.
At seven-thirty a forest-green Nissan twin-cab fitted with a camper shell rolled up Kitchener Street, Redruth Veterinary Services scrolled along the side panels. The driver parked short of the pony in the driveway entrance, got out, crouched as if to ascertain it was dead. She looked young, barely out of vet school, and Hirsch saw that she had the slight, hard grace of a runner.
He quickly texted Yvonne Muir—Come now—and ambled over, offering his hand to the vet, conscious of his shorts, T-shirt, battered Dunlop Volleys and overnight whiskers. They shook. He told her to call him Hirsch.
Her grip was dry, firm, brisk. ‘Cathy Duigan,’ she said, already looking past Hirsch at the pony he’d found on his walk. ‘That one’s still alive.’
‘It was down the street, in someone’s front garden,’ Hirsch said. ‘There are three more dead ones near the stable block, and a couple in the paddock with what look to me like stab wounds.’
‘Where’s Nan?’
‘Still asleep. But one of her friends is on the way.’
‘She’ll be devastated.’
‘You know her?’
‘I do. You might call me the district horse vet.’
She looks about nineteen, Hirsch thought. ‘Look, this is a cop question, okay? Do you think—’
‘…that Nan was responsible? Absolutely not,’ Duigan said, unlocking the camper shell; plastic crates, metal lockers and sets of drawers containing vials, syringes and bottles. She shouldered a bulky surgical case and pushed past Hirsch, ducked under the rope, squatted a moment at the wounded pony, and disappeared in the direction of the backyard. Hirsch stayed where he was. Yvonne Muir was hurrying up the street.
A minute later, hovering just outside the bedroom and hoping his presence would be reassuring, Hirsch watched Yvonne shake Nan Washburn’s shoulder. The air was stale, overwarm; Nan propped on her elbows in a singlet top, slow to respond. Then slow to comprehend.
‘Dead?’ She sounded amazed more than anything. Then she scooted to the side of the bed.
Muir put an arm around her. Hirsch stepped into the room, began a clumsy explanation, tried to finish on a positive note. ‘But Cathy Duigan’s already here, looking after the others.’
‘I should get dressed.’ Nan cast about the room helplessly. ‘She’ll need help.’
Hirsch stepped out of the room. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Into the kitchen, where he filled the kettle, spotting Nan’s Best Christmas Lights certificate under a fridge magnet. With the water heating, he searched the overhead cupboards for mugs and tea, and then footsteps sounded in the hallway. Glancing at the open door, he saw both women pass by, Nan in shorts and a T-shirt, finger-combing her hair.
‘Tea?’ called Hirsch inadequately.
No answer. He abandoned the tea-making and followed the women onto the back veranda. Stopped abruptly, because they had stopped.
Nan, gasping, doubled over, groping with one blind hand for a veranda post.
‘Oh, sweetheart, sit a moment,’ Yvonne said, helping her into a deck chair.
Hirsch tried to see the yard through Nan’s eyes. The lumpen shapes in the dirt; blood pooled here and there; blood smears on the white railings; the survivors with their flayed red hides. They were less wild-eyed now, though. The vet’s a horse whisperer, he thought, watching Duigan among the jostling creatures.
‘She needs my help,’ Nan said, her strength returning. ‘Is it okay if I…?’
‘Go ahead,’ Hirsch said.
But he kept Yvonne Muir with him. ‘They know Nan, they don’t know you or me.’
Muir was wound tight, started to argue, then nodded and sank into a deck chair.
Hirsch sat beside her. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘You did the right thing, asking me.’
They watched as Nan entered the little paddock. ‘Does she have children?’
‘No. No brothers or sisters. Only me and Bob and a few other friends.’
‘What can you tell me about the husband?’
‘You think Craig did this? I very much doubt it,’ Yvonne said.
Craig Washburn’s story came out haltingly. He’d been the district council surveyor until he lost his job. ‘He was getting quite eccentric and paranoid. He thought hidden forces were altering the landscape when he wasn’t looking, that kind of thing. Some places he refused to survey. He said the mallee scrub out east was the only pure area left, and that’s where he lives now, in a caravan Nan bought for him. He goes out prospecting with a metal detector, which somehow doesn’t upset the landscape balance. We all keep an eye on him—take him food, check that he hasn’t fallen down a mineshaft or died of snakebite. He’s not completely bonkers, he takes his meds. But he is odd.’
‘Odd as in paranoid, voices telling him to kill Nan’s horses?’
Yvonne Muir slapped the back of Hirsch’s hand. ‘No. Do not go there. Craig’s harmless, he doesn’t need you hassling him.’
Hirsch raised his hands and Yvonne backtracked. ‘If you do talk to him, go easy, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Hirsch’s default position, an amiable okay to everything.
A short time later, they joined Nan and the vet by the pony in the driveway. Squatting in the dirt, Duigan said, ‘Sorry, Nan, but this one’ll have to be put down.’
‘I know,’ Washburn said, tears flowing. Sitting cross-legged, she lifted the pony’s long neck onto her lap. ‘But it’s hard, they’re not just show ponies, they’re pets. They’re family.’
‘Of course they are, dear,’ Yvonne said, crouching with her.
The vet nodded, busy with a syringe. First a sedative, she explained, then an overdose of barbiturates.
Hirsch looked on, feeling helpless. Nan, stroking, crooning, watched askance as Duigan slid the needle into the pony’s neck and depressed the plunger. A shudder in the hide, then, quite soon, the legs grew still, the eyes less frightened. Nan continued to stroke, blink away her tears.
‘She’ll go quickly now, Nan, no pain,’ Duigan said, administering the kill shot.
But Hirsch was alarmed to see muscle tremors and leg movements. The pony took in a great breath.
‘It hasn’t worked,’ he blurted.
Duigan said gently, ‘What you’re seeing is involuntary. All part of the process.’
Quite soon after that, Hirsch experienced a curious sensation of loss, as if he’d been linked to a life that had suddenly drained away. He peered at the pony: simply a carcass now, all tension gone. It might never have been alive.
A hundred metres away, Radish screamed and whinnied. Tossed his head and wheeled around and dashed from end to end, kicking up p
addock dust and divots.
Nan looked over at him, wretched. ‘He knows.’
‘Yes,’ Duigan said, also upset, ‘I think he does.’
Yvonne squeezed hard and Nan wept, and no one spoke for some time until Duigan, quietly packing her gear, said, ‘That’s it, Nan, she’s at rest now, you can let her go.’
‘I just want to be with her a while longer,’ Washburn said.
Duigan touched the blood-smeared forearm, got to her feet and walked to her Nissan. Hirsch, trailing her, asked, ‘What about the other horses?’
‘Superficial injuries, thank God. But they’re traumatised, so it’d be good if people could be kept away for the time being.’
Hirsch felt wrung out. How could he achieve that? CIB officers were on the way, and townspeople—ghouls and well-wishers—would soon hear what had happened. ‘And the bodies? A mass grave?’
‘Not here,’ Duigan said firmly. She blew a strand of hair away from her bottom lip. ‘The property’s too small, and it’s semi-urban.’
‘Dump them in the bush?’ Hirsch was improvising wildly.
The vet frowned at him, as if he were slow. ‘I’ve just administered poison. If a fox or a dingo feeds on the carcass…’ Then her face relaxed. She touched his forearm. ‘I’ll make a call. There are professional cremation services for the disposal of large animals.’
She cocked her head, itching to say something. Hirsch waited for it.
‘As a policeman,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ll have seen this kind of thing before…’
Out with it, Hirsch thought. ‘Actually, no—but I’ve met the odd axe murderer type who probably tortured cats as a kid…’
‘I did a special subject in my honours year,’ Duigan said. ‘The psychological underpinnings of animal cruelty.’ She paused. ‘It was interesting.’