Peace

by Garry Disher

  Katie’s piping voice: ‘That’s okay, Mummy.’ Pause. ‘Tell him about Easter.’

  ‘God, Easter,’ Wendy said. ‘We went to their place as usual and there was an Easter egg hunt—the idea being everyone shared afterwards, right? But those kids—they just guarded their hoards like sticky-fingered little dragons and refused to share with my dear, sweet, wise, gracious daughter.’

  ‘Tell him about the money,’ Katie said.

  Wendy closed and opened her eyes and shot Hirsch a rueful look. ‘Do you want to know?’

  ‘Give me all the dirt,’ Hirsch said. The shoals and setbacks of ordinary life were mostly ridiculous, even funny. Definitely preferable to bloodshed.

  ‘A year ago, I lent Matt seven hundred and fifty dollars—which was fine, he lent me money when Glen died, and I paid it all back. But yesterday he gives me six hundred and fifty dollars, as if the loan was settled. I didn’t say anything. Now I don’t think I can. It’s only a hundred, but, you know, it’s…’

  ‘Symptomatic?’

  Wendy grabbed Hirsch’s hand, a tight, emotional squeeze. ‘What about you? Any weird, screwed-up family I should know about?’

  Hirsch cast his mind over them all. Generations of blandness. ‘I could make something up.’

  Wendy leaned across to kiss him. ‘I’ll settle for your weirdness.’

  Pancakes heavy inside him, his mood better than it had been for days, Hirsch headed down the Barrier Highway to Redruth. Thirty minutes later, he was seated with Brandl and the children around the briefing table, playing catchup. Break-ins, traffic accidents, stock theft, a Christmas Day suicide.

  ‘With New Year’s Eve upon us,’ the sergeant said, ‘we need to prepare ourselves for more self-harm, not to mention pub brawls, domestics and drink-driving.’

  Her face was drawn, her eyes pouchy with fatigue after her hours coordinating the Hamel Road line searches. ‘I’m taking a rest-day tomorrow and need you to fill in for me, Constable Hirschhausen. The others will be out on patrol.’

  ‘Sergeant.’

  She clapped her hands. ‘Right, anything else?’

  Tim Medlin flipped through his notebook. ‘A call came in from a Trevor Wesley, owns a property near Porters Lagoon, wondering why there’s been no follow-up on a report he made back in May.’

  Hirsch knew why. Back in May, the Redruth police district had been under executive management, a hiatus between the quiet removal of the old sergeant and his coterie of thugs and the appointment of the current team.

  Brandl winced. ‘The backlog. God, what a shemozzle. What did he report?’

  Medlin frowned at his notes. ‘He was getting ready for bed one night and heard a knock on the door. Wondering why he hadn’t heard a vehicle, he answered holding a shotgun. Two men ran off and when he tried to call triple-O, he found his phone line had been cut.’

  Hirsch tingled, stirred. ‘The Rennies’ line was cut. And I know of one other case.’

  The sergeant looked at him tiredly, giving his words some consideration. Finally she said, ‘But is that enough for a pattern? It’s only two instances if you factor in the likely how and why of the Rennie case.’

  Hirsch felt stubborn. ‘But can I do some digging?’

  She was too weary to object. ‘Knock yourself out. Just don’t waste hours on it.’

  The briefing over, they separated: Sergeant Brandl to her office, Landy and Medlin to their local duties, Hirsch to his Toyota. Armed with the Porters Lagoon address, he headed south along the Adelaide road for twenty minutes, until Google Maps directed him left along a side road leading into the hills. The lagoon was mostly a saltpan fringed with reeds now, but he’d seen 1920s photographs of it in full water, people rowing—yachting, even—and stilts, avocets and water fowl feeding along the edges. The road climbed in a shallow curve across a long, low hill, and then he was bumping up a driveway to an old farmhouse. Two storeys, which was rare, but the building was more an accumulation of rooms and extensions than a mansion. The arrangement was appealing, if a little random. It offered a big-sky view across the lagoon and valley farmland to hills and a broad horizon on the other side. Dusty pinks and tans over there, with khaki clusters that were distant farms and eucalypts.

  Hirsch switched off, got out and was tackled by a slobbering kelpie. As he bent to pat it a piercing whistle sounded from a shadowy shed entrance and a voice growled, ‘Get behind, you bloody red mongrel.’

  The dog gave Hirsch a panting, apologetic grin and trotted for the shed. A genial-looking man of about fifty emerged, wiping his hands with a filthy rag. He was solid-bellied, shirtless in a pair of overalls, with lace-trailing old boots on his feet.

  ‘Won’t shake,’ he said. ‘Trying to fix a carburettor.’

  ‘Mr Wesley?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  Hirsch introduced himself and explained the reason for his visit.

  ‘Thought you lot had forgotten all about me,’ Wesley said.

  ‘As you know, there was a changeover of police staff,’ Hirsch said. ‘The new lot inherited a backlog.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now,’ said Wesley. He looked at Hirsch shrewdly. ‘But you’re the Tiverton copper.’

  Hirsch nodded. ‘I can still make a formal report and give you the information you need for your insurance company, but the main reason I’m here is that I know of two other cases of cut phone lines.’

  ‘True? I don’t care about the insurance, I care about strangers lurking in the middle of the night. You want to know what happened, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Wesley launched straight in. ‘It’s only me and the missus here, the kids have flown the coop. Once in a blue moon we get someone come in off the highway to ask for directions or a can of petrol, that kind of thing, and usually in daylight. But when it’s eleven on a still night and there’s a knock on the door and no engine sounds or headlights, you err on the side of caution. I grabbed the twelve-gauge—don’t worry, all legal, I’ve got the paperwork—and opened the door. Two blokes standing there. Took one look at the shotgun and ran off. I was in bare feet or I’d’ve gone after them. A minute or two later, I hear a vehicle take off halfway down the hill.’

  ‘You tried to call it in?’

  Wesley rubbed his chin, smearing it. ‘I did. The line was dead. Went and had a look, cut clean through.’

  ‘Anything stolen?’

  ‘Chainsaw.’

  ‘I’ll give you a case number for the insurance—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Wesley said. ‘The saw was cactus. They’re welcome to it.’

  ‘Can you describe these men?’

  ‘Not really. Youngish, wearing hoodies and jeans. Quick on their feet.’

  ‘The vehicle?’

  ‘No idea. There was a bit of moon to see by, and they didn’t turn on their headlights till they hit the highway.’

  ‘Which direction?’

  ‘Redruth.’

  Hirsch returned to Redruth, parked near the town hall and went looking for Kellaher or Roesch in the incident room.

  Only Hansen was available, working on an iPad and not inclined to be available to Hirsch. In a nod to the heat, he was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He looked less like a banker but not less like a prick. ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  Hirsch told him. ‘That’s three cases of cut phone lines now,’ he added. ‘There could be more, in other police districts.’

  ‘Mate,’ Hansen said, ‘I’m New South Wales police. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It could relate to the Rennie murders.’

  Hating to be torn away from the screen of his iPad, Hansen said, ‘Log it in, write it up, ask around, you know the drill.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s important?’

  ‘Everything’s important. Log it in, et cetera.’

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ Hirsch said, but the irony passed over Hansen. He gave a shrug that said it was the least he could do and returned to his iPad.

/>   Back in the Toyota, Hirsch checked his phone. Brandl: Call me. Not right now, he thought. Places to go, people to see.

  He found Monica Fuller in her backyard, repairing an arrangement of stakes toppled by tomato vines heavy with fruit.

  ‘Want some? More than we can eat.’

  ‘A few would be good,’ Hirsch said. Ed Tennant’s tomatoes were generally soft and floury.

  Monica took him to the kitchen, washed and dried half-a-dozen tomatoes and stowed them in a paper bag. ‘Here you go. Tea, coffee, water?’

  Hirsch settled for tea. He said, after a catch-up chat, ‘That time your phone line was cut.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were both at home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could someone have thought you were out?’

  She considered. ‘I don’t see how. Both vehicles were in the carport.’

  ‘Kip barked?’

  ‘He was beside himself. Broke his chain.’

  ‘And only the shovel stolen?’

  ‘Even then Graham wasn’t sure. It might’ve bounced off the back of the truck one day.’ She swallowed. ‘But if they’d got in the house…The TV isn’t much, but it’s not bad, and there was my laptop, that’s pretty new.’

  ‘Who fixed the line for you?’ Hirsch asked, thinking a local telco technician might know of other, unreported cases.

  ‘Bob Muir. No point calling Telstra; you get someone in Mumbai who doesn’t have a clue what you’re on about.’

  Hirsch returned to Tiverton and called in at the Muirs’. Bob was rewiring a generator in his workshop. ‘Constable.’

  ‘Mr Muir.’

  Hirsch watched for a while, mesmerised by his friend’s deft fingers and the gleaming copper. ‘I understand you fixed a damaged phone line for the Fullers?’

  Bob’s gaze didn’t move from his fingers. ‘I did.’

  ‘Describe the damage?’

  ‘It wasn’t wear and tear, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a cut, very neat, straight through, one snip.’

  ‘Have you had any other cases?’

  Now Muir lifted his gaze. ‘No. But I’m betting you have.’

  Hirsch explained, Muir listened.

  ‘Not statistically significant.’

  ‘No,’ Hirsch admitted.

  ‘But suggestive.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hirsch said, glad someone agreed.

  He spent the rest of Friday afternoon searching for Gemma Pitcher, Daryl Cobb and Adam Flann. Eileen Pitcher was agitated because she needed her car for a hair appointment in Redruth, Laura Cobb was morose—her mother had been hoarding her meds again—and there was no one at home at the Flanns’.

  Hirsch returned to the police station. Checked his phone when he got inside and remembered the sergeant’s message. He called her, and she said, ‘You’re wanted in the city, Paul. Internal Investigations, first thing Monday morning.’

  22

  SATURDAY MORNING HIRSCH phoned his parents.

  ‘I was thinking of driving down tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and spending the night.’

  His mother was pleased, and she was shrewd. ‘Oh, good, a belated Christmas. Is everything all right?’

  She was referring to his old troubles, the disbandment of his CIB squad, the Internal Investigations interrogations, the inquiry, the prosecutions. He came clean. ‘I’m due at Angas Street at eight-thirty tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, Paul, what this time?’

  ‘Mum, I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you need a lawyer?’

  ‘I’ll ask for one if it gets tricky.’

  His mother was brisk and practical. ‘Will you be here for lunch?’

  ‘Depends on traffic.’

  ‘If we go out, I’ll leave cold meat and salad in the fridge,’ his mother said.

  His parents were bound to go out. They were energetic in their early retirement, never home: golf, bridge, roadside clean-up campaigns, bushwalks, handing out how-to-vote cards. Hirsch’s own busyness was more pragmatic: being neighbourly and civic-minded oiled the wheels of his police work.

  Part of his police work was standing in for a Redruth officer now and then. Hirsch reached the town by 8 a.m., stationed himself behind the front desk and waited. The hours passed. He witnessed two statutory declarations, directed three German backpackers to the visitors’ centre and had one of those conversations—fairly common, in his experience—that proved most crims were idiots.

  A man came in and said, ‘I was robbed.’

  Hirsch tutted in sympathy, pen poised. ‘Name and address, please, sir.’

  Tony Alford, a street behind the old railway station.

  ‘And what was stolen?’

  ‘All of my weed.’

  Alford was one of those men or women so tall they stand at a slant. About forty, greasy hair, three-day growth and bony arms and shoulders inside a Redruth High School polo shirt. His son’s? Op shop? Grimy jeans barely clinging to his hipless middle.

  ‘Your weed was stolen,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘All of it. In pots on the back veranda.’

  ‘Your weed.’

  ‘You know, grass,’ Alford said. ‘Dope.’

  His eyes hadn’t alighted on Hirsch or anything else in the police station. He was so twitchy, Hirsch couldn’t stand it. ‘You do know there are laws against growing it?’

  Alford knew his rights. Folded his arms and stated that there were also laws against stealing.

  Might as well roll up the whole drug empire while I’m about it, Hirsch thought. ‘Do you happen to know who might have done it?’

  But Alford shrugged. ‘That’s for you to find out.’

  ‘How much weed are we talking about?’

  ‘Three pot plants.’ Alford sniggered. ‘Three pots of pot.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Hirsch said, ‘we can send in our forensic team and go right over your property, inside and out, collecting fingerprints and other samples for the lab.’

  A late-dawning gleam of awareness in Alford’s glassy eyes now. ‘No, she’s right, I’ll put it down to experience,’ he said, hurrying out and down the street.

  Hirsch entered it in the log.

  Then nothing for a long stretch of time. At twelve-thirty he locked the station, texted Medlin and Landy that he was off to lunch and walked down to the Redruth town square. Even with the reduction in police numbers the bistro and deli were crowded, so he bought a salad sandwich in the milk bar and ate it sprawled in a patch of shade near the rotunda.

  At 1 p.m. he crossed the road to wander back and, as he passed the bistro, a face in profile caught his eye. He stopped, looked in. No clear sightline to the back corner, so he shifted position. Vita Roesch and Inspector Kellaher. Kellaher spotted Hirsch and nodded, prompting Roesch to turn her head. She rewarded Hirsch with a smile. Discomfited, he moved on, not wanting them to think he was spying.

  He paused at the window of Redruth Real Estate, the only agency in the district. Houses, farms, businesses for sale. A couple for rent. And an idea tugged at him. He was about to push inside when Vita Roesch was nudging his arm and saying, ‘Great minds think alike.’

  The kind of cop who catches suspects, culprits, witnesses and victims unawares. Dressed in a plain, bold-patterned sleeveless dress, a hint of shampoo, warm and grinning, the air faintly electric around her. Hirsch said, ‘Okay, what am I thinking?’

  ‘You’re thinking did Denise Rennie buy or rent the house on Hamel Road and if so, from whom, and what might the paperwork reveal?’

  ‘I was, in fact.’

  ‘Got there before you—we checked yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Rented it, fully furnished. No takers for two years, the agency was glad she took it off their hands.’

  Hirsch glanced past Roesch’s shoulder, expecting to see Hansen lurking. ‘Where’s Mr Personality today?’

  She gave him a crooked smile. ‘Be nice.’

  ‘Always,’ Hirsch said. ‘Did you find out who owns the place?’

&nb
sp; ‘Some anonymous agri-company.’

  ‘How did she pay?’

  ‘Excellent question. Cash.’

  ‘Cash,’ Hirsch said. ‘Did she have access to a bank account? You’d have monitored that, right?’

  Vita Roesch gave him a sunny smile. ‘We did. It seems the day before she and her husband went into witness protection, they withdrew fifty thousand dollars of their savings.’

  Hirsch nodded. Forethought.

  Roesch prodded him in the chest. ‘You’re wasted out here.’

  ‘Not country-town cop material?’

  ‘I’m from a country town,’ Roesch said. ‘Nothing against country towns. You just don’t want to get trapped in one.’

  The remainder of his workday was quiet; he was back in Tiverton by 6 p.m.

  On Sunday morning he packed an overnight bag, pinned his mobile number to the police station door and headed south along the Barrier Highway again. On any other long drive, he might have slipped a CD into the slot, but his mind was racing today, his thoughts chaotic. He hated not knowing what the Internals had on him, or who’d be grilling him tomorrow. He tried to think it through: ran various scenarios in his head. Pictured himself clinically demolishing every accusation, holding his head high. Then the doubts. He imagined them dredging up old charges—supported, this time, by new and unanswerable proof.

  Or was it something new? Had he fucked up in Tiverton without knowing how?

  The YouTube clip? He’d thought that was old news.

  His fingers were white on the steering wheel, his jaw tight.

  He rolled through Tarlee and what took his mind from the turmoil a minute later was passing the old stone farmhouse where his father’s grandparents had lived. His father remembered a gruff, remote, upright man haunted by his experiences of trench warfare on the Western Front. In the twenties he’d settled in Tarlee to manage the property for the cattle king Sidney Kidman, growing wheat and tending mobs of wild outback brumbies brought down by train and destined for the Indian Army. Hirsch told himself: My concerns are not that important. He felt the aggravations fall away.

  By noon he was parking in his parents’ driveway. Hugs, home cooking, uncomplicated evening company, his parents eyeing him with concern but always exquisitely tactful. His old room, his old bed…