Peace

by Garry Disher

  Kellaher peered at it. ‘His prints are being run as we speak, so let’s hope he’s in the system. Meanwhile, Sergeant Dock will take your statement.’

  Dock took Hirsch to a card table beneath a wall photo: the Pandowie Downs shearing shed, appropriately, in its heyday, with 1950s Austin trucks, loaded with plump wool bales, lined up for the camera.

  ‘That’s where it kicked off,’ Hirsch said, pointing at the photograph as he eased onto a foldup chair.

  Dock shrugged. The photo was old, and he was not a man with any use for history. He sat down opposite Hirsch and said, ‘Been busy, mate.’

  Hirsch said nothing. He reached an exploratory finger to the green, mock-leather surface of the card table. A small brass label along the edge facing him read: Property of the Redruth and District Bridge Club.

  Dock removed a digital recorder from his pocket and set it on the table between them. ‘No objections?’

  ‘Go your hardest.’

  Dock also took out a notebook. He thumbed through it. Trying to intimidate, Hirsch thought. Second nature.

  ‘Okay, let’s get started.’

  But before the Homicide sergeant could form the first question, a voice called, ‘Mind if I sit in?’

  Vita Roesch was striding towards them. Hirsch expected irritation from Dock, but he clattered to his feet, pulled in his stomach and worked his eyebrows at a fair demonstration of wry charm for the attractive police officer from Sydney. Hirsch, less flustered, also stood.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said Roesch again, with a small, disarming smile. ‘I need to hear this.’

  ‘I’ll get you a chair,’ Dock said.

  He fetched it from a stack beneath a window, placed it at the card table and watched Roesch settle herself. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Almost 8 p.m., Hirsch thought: hair immaculate, dress barely wrinkled. She shot him a look, a smile.

  Hansen joined them, carrying a fold-up chair that he placed at the card table. Now they were a small, overpopulated island.

  ‘Go on, Sergeant Dock.’

  Dock cleared his throat. ‘In your own words, Constable Hirschhausen, starting with why you went to the location in question.’

  Again Hirsch outlined the day’s events, concluding: ‘Whether or not McAuliffe—or whoever he is—shot Mrs Rennie and her son? I don’t know. That’s for others to decide.’

  ‘He registered under the name McAuliffe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let’s call him that. Did you search his room?’

  ‘No. There’s a team doing that now.’

  Roesch interrupted: ‘I’ve had their preliminary findings. A change of clothes in a weekender bag, that’s all.’

  ‘No rifle?’

  ‘No rifle.’

  Dock turned to Hirsch. ‘Did you search the Audi?’

  ‘Well, yes…’ Hirsch shifted on the flimsy little chair. ‘I thought if there was a petrol leak…’

  Dock waved that aside. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Wallet with false ID. No firearm.’

  Roesch leaned in. ‘You replaced the wallet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shook her head as if frustrated. ‘Did you at least take note of the names?’

  Hirsch nodded and took out his phone again. He scrolled through the three licence photographs. ‘I’m betting you know him, senior sergeant.’

  A quick glance and Roesch frowned. ‘Vaguely familiar. Rob?’

  Hansen leaned in. Shook his head. ‘Don’t know him. Let’s hope his prints are on file.’

  That was enough of that. ‘Next question, sergeant?’ said Roesch.

  Dock complied. ‘The pistol you found. Could McAuliffe have ditched it?’

  Hirsch shook his head. ‘I found it past where he was killed.’

  ‘The shooter ditched it?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  Roesch inclined her head towards Dock. ‘Perhaps your people could have a thorough look tomorrow, in case the driver himself ditched anything.’

  Dock blushed very slightly. ‘Will do,’ he said.

  Hirsch thought of all the kilometres of road between the woolshed and the Audi. With any luck he wouldn’t be part of that particular search.

  Dock shifted his attention to Hirsch again. ‘Was there any indication McAuliffe had company with him? An accomplice?’

  ‘Nothing in his car to suggest it. I haven’t seen his room.’

  Roesch cut in again. ‘As I said before: just a weekender bag packed with clothing.’

  Dock nodded, accepting that. He said to Hirsch, ‘What about the kids? Any sign they’d been in his car?’

  Hirsch shook his head. ‘If he’d snatched and disposed of them, he’d hardly stick around.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Dock said. ‘So he was sticking around to finish the job, or he was there for some other purpose entirely.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hirsch said.

  Roesch cocked her head at Hirsch. ‘Why don’t you tell us what you think this fellow was up to, Constable Hirschhausen? You’ve been on the ground from the start, after all.’

  Hirsch was weary. ‘One scenario, he shot Mrs Rennie and her son—in which case he’d been staying somewhere else at the time, because he didn’t check in at the woolshed until after the shooting—and got rid of the rifle. When he heard on the news there were survivors, he stuck around to finish the job.’

  ‘The survivors were children. Why risk hanging around to kill them?’

  Hirsch shrugged. ‘Maybe, for whatever reason, his brief was to wipe out the entire family. Or he thought they could identify him.’

  ‘Okay. Any other scenarios come to mind?’

  ‘Honestly, senior sergeant, this is above my pay grade.’

  ‘Humour me.’ The little smile again.

  Hirsch took a breath and wished he hadn’t. The room was warm from the heat of many days, stale from the respiration of many people. ‘Okay. Someone else was the killer. Job done, he clears out. Then news breaks about the girls, and McAuliffe is sent in to clean up. Or there are two different outfits, after the same thing.’

  Roesch was expressionless, but for the first time he felt a wave of coolness from her, a warning: he was alluding to the witness protection betrayal: bent police. Only Dock reacted. ‘A lot of trouble to go to if Mrs Rennie’s already dead. And is it such a big deal if the kids see something? They’re traumatised. Not likely to be viable witnesses.’

  Roesch said, ‘Or he was there for some other reason.’

  Hirsch was busy trying to decipher mood and body language. ‘Do you know who McAuliffe is, Senior Sergeant Roesch?’

  Hansen’s phone pinged before she could reply. She glanced at it with a brief frown, then addressed Hirsch, speaking in sharp volleys, as if time was wasting: ‘We’re going around in circles. Why wasn’t this woolshed place checked days ago? How far is it from the Rennie house?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Hansen said. He was staring at his phone, one hand raised.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have an ID. Ian Lavau, an address in Sydney.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Senior Constable Hansen,’ Roesch said, clipped.

  Hansen, ignoring her, continued to recite from the screen of his phone. ‘He was police for many years. Regional—mainly in the Riverina. Not covered in glory but no red flags; more recently a compliance officer with Border Force.’

  Hirsch gave a laugh without much humour in it. ‘Maybe there’s an international drug ring operating from Tiverton.’

  This was Roesch’s show; she leaned forwards. ‘Don’t be a smartarse, constable.’

  I’m not flavour of the month anymore then, Hirsch thought. He wondered how much information she’d given her SA Police colleagues. He said nothing. Watch, listen and learn.

  Dock was interested. ‘Anything else you can give us, Rob?’

  Hansen was still looking at his phone. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Nothing to explain why he’s here? Links to Mrs Rennie?’

  ‘Nothi
ng so far. He worked in the Compliance Audits Unit. They check that tax invoices don’t understate the value of imported goods, so…no obvious reason why he was here carrying a false ID.’

  ‘We’re going to need anything and everything you can give us on Lavau,’ Dock said, addressing Roesch and Hansen. ‘We’ve got bodies piling up and two kids missing, presumed dead. He’s the only one in the frame, so who was he working for? Or with? Who knows him? Et cetera.’

  Good on you, thought Hirsch.

  Roesch said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t—’

  Dock cut her off. ‘The Passat you were tracking—it was driven by Lavau, right?’

  ‘I can’t really say.’

  Hirsch pitied Dock. He could keep pushing but Roesch would just keep stonewalling.

  Just then his phone buzzed. A text from Nan Washburn: Can I please take you up on your kind offer, take Craig back to his camp tomorrow?

  Hirsch felt flattened with weariness, and the day wasn’t done. He’d have to drop his tyre off at Redruth Motors, reassure the Dunners, reassure Whiteman the wildlife photographer, drive home…

  ‘If no one minds, I’m knocking off. I’ve been at it all day and I’ll be on all day tomorrow.’

  New Year’s Eve: drunks on the road, tempers unleashed in kitchens and bedrooms.

  Roesch gave him a look. He could feel it digging around in his head and soul.

  ‘You may go,’ she said. Imperious—as if she wasn’t a mere visitor but in charge of the investigation.

  27

  TUESDAY MORNING, NEW Year’s Eve. A cool, cloudy start to the day.

  Old-timers had assured Hirsch they could recall temperatures below twenty degrees in the Christmas and New Year period, thunder clouds bunching, teeming rain: ‘We even had to light the fire!’ So it wasn’t unheard of, a cool change this time of the year. Hirsch walked the streets as he always did, and the town slumbered, except that Martin Gwynne was standing on the other side of his neat hedge, sprinkling his roses with a craft-shop watering can—a pastel blue thing with yellow flowers that Hirsch wanted to boot into oblivion.

  ‘Martin, I—’

  ‘Paul!’ cried Gwynne, as if Hirsch had never been known to walk the town at dawn.

  ‘Look, Martin, I—’

  ‘I expect you’re on duty all day, not to mention tonight, what with drunken idiots on the roads, but Mother and I were wondering if you’d care to have a bite to eat this evening? Earlyish, around six?’

  ‘That—’

  ‘Strictly no wine, of course, wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’

  Hirsch gave that last statement some consideration. Amazing how the guy’s mind worked. One gleeful part of Martin Gwynne was saying, ‘I hope you do have a drink, so I can report you,’ and another was saying, ‘Bet you don’t know I’ve already reported you.’ The remaining parts of Martin Gwynne were pure trash.

  Hirsch stepped through the fussy wrought-iron gate and into Gwynne’s personal space. ‘I was raked over the coals by Internal Investigations yesterday. Do you know anything about that, Martin?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The watering can dropped like a rock, splashing their shoes.

  ‘You reported me. Not once, several times. Why did you do that, Martin?’

  Gwynne stepped back, eyes darting.

  ‘Paul. What on earth are you on about?’

  ‘Why, Martin? What is your problem with me?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Gwynne said, with the weak bluster of a man caught out in lies.

  ‘No more meddling, Martin, let me do my job. And for god’s sake find yourself a hobby.’

  Gwynne straightened his back, inflated himself. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Paul, Constable Hirschhausen. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish watering.’

  There was a shape in the front window, hazy behind a lace curtain. Poor old Joyce; imagine being married to him. Hirsch turned away and stalked back along the street towards the police station, feeling better—but not much better.

  He was halfway there when a memory surfaced. It was the day he’d freed Anna Rennie from the backseat of her mother’s Hyundai. Martin waving his phone around. It was Martin who’d filmed the tussle and uploaded it to YouTube. Martin who had brought killers to the district.

  Whether or not that was the case, Hirsch would deal with it later. He showered, dressed, ate a second breakfast, checked in with Sergeant Brandl by phone, locked the police station and pinned his mobile number to the door. Contemplating his patched driveway gloomily, he backed the Toyota out onto the highway and trundled around to the pub.

  Kev the publican, a thin man with bulky, unrealised dreams for his establishment, was hosing down the veranda. He told Hirsch he wasn’t expecting trouble, there hadn’t been a New Year’s Eve punch-up in the main bar for as long as he could remember—but every year he hired the Bagshaw brothers as bar staff and bouncers, just in case.

  Hirsch eyed the metal struts supporting the roof section damaged by Brenda Flann and said, ‘Have a good one.’

  Two minutes later he was parked in Nan Washburn’s driveway. Craig’s voice floated to him from the veranda again, disembodied behind the screen of ferns in hanging pots. ‘All packed and ready.’

  Hirsch mounted the steps. How long had Craig been waiting? At his feet were an old kitbag and supermarket bags distorted by cans, bottles and packets. ‘Nan still asleep?’

  ‘The sleep of the dead.’

  Hirsch hoped not. ‘Let’s go. I need to make a few house calls on the way, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ Washburn said, hitching up his binder-twine belt, adjusting his duct-taped glasses.

  They left the town behind them, Hirsch curious about the altered light. He’d grown accustomed to weeks of cloudless days, a vast blue dome above, sharply-etched objects all around. Today he was traversing a piebald landscape, the sun pouring intermittently through ruptures in the clouds. Sun, shadow. Pouring, retreating.

  Meanwhile his passenger was silent, as if contemplating a return to solitude. What did Craig do or think about all day? Hirsch didn’t mind companionable silences, but this one seemed fraught. Had Craig squabbled with Nan? Was he rethinking his self-imposed exile? Hirsch wanted to dispel the mood—he was tempted to play the CD Katie had burnt for him. But if Craig was allergic to the twenty-first century, a burst of Leonard Cohen might tip him over the edge.

  Hirsch’s first stop, the woman with the rehab daughter. He knocked—no answer—and the car was gone. He checked doors and windows: the house felt unoccupied rather than touched by junkie-offspring violence, so he left it at that. It was a sense that all cops developed, knowing when a situation behind closed doors was right or wrong.

  He climbed behind the wheel. Craig said, ‘Lovely woman. Sad about the daughter.’

  Hirsch said nothing, surprised he was keeping tabs on events in the district.

  Then along a looping side road to a small 1970s brick-veneer house on a struggling carob-tree plantation, the home of a seventy-year-old widow and her son Trevor, who had Down syndrome. ‘Mrs Watts always serves a cuppa; I could be a while.’

  Washburn waved that off. ‘I’ll stay here, don’t worry about me.’

  The widow, answering Hirsch’s knock, spotted Craig in the Toyota. ‘That idiot,’ she muttered, gesturing at Washburn with a frail hand, veins like pulsing cords over the fragile bones. Then she smiled and stood aside for Hirsch to enter.

  Half an hour later, fuelled with leftover mince pies and rumballs, Hirsch stuck his card under an Eiffel Tower magnet on Mrs Watts’ fat old fridge and said goodbye. Unspoken between them, as always, the question: What happens to Trevor when I die?

  Feeling like a change of scenery, Hirsch decided to keep going rather than retrace his route back to the main Mischance Creek road. Craig Washburn remained subdued. The powdery dirt and corrugations marked their passage; the minutes passed. So much for a change of scenery, though: this was a road like all of the ot
hers and Hirsch realised he could be anywhere out east. Then the detour rewarded him: a kilometre of new pine fence posts and taut strings of shiny wire and a gleaming galvanised gate bearing a sign: Great Wall Pastoral.

  ‘Fucking Chinese,’ Craig muttered, ‘buying up family farms left, right and centre.’

  It was an old refrain. Hirsch drove on, merging with the Mischance Creek road again. At one point a few kilometres short of Washburn’s caravan he saw the flash of a windscreen down at the creek. A farmer? There was an old hayshed on the opposite side of the road, but no sheep that Hirsch could see between the fence and the creek.

  Then they were crossing at the Hamel Road T-intersection. ‘Almost here,’ he said.

  Washburn said nothing. Instead, he glanced in the direction of the kill house and crossed himself. Hirsch was astounded. Washburn might be a little bonkers but he was a scientist—surely a man of reason. Not someone who’d fall back on superstition to ward off evil.

  The cloud cover was almost fully gone when Hirsch turned at the wagon wheel marking the track that led to the camp. Washburn sighed and smiled. ‘Still the same.’

  Had he been worried someone would tow his caravan away? Hirsch pulled into the speckled shade of the gum tree. They got out and stretched their spines, then retrieved the kitbag and shopping from the back seat and carted them across the red dirt to the caravan.

  Hirsch stopped suddenly at the door, a bag in each hand. Something…

  He glanced around the immediate area, trying to spot the source of his disquiet. The day was like all the others: hot, still, peaceful. Then a water droplet, seeping from the base of the shower bucket, was struck by the sun. It hung, blazing like a diamond for a moment, before it fell to earth.

  Hirsch placed the supermarket bags at his feet and said, ‘Craig.’

  Washburn had unlocked the caravan. ‘What?’

  ‘Come here.’

  Intrigued, a little spooked, Hirsch stood beneath the bucket, looking up, then down. He heard the kitbag thump onto the floor of the caravan, heard Craig’s boots. Then they were both peering at damp soil; a child’s heelprint.