by Garry Disher
Now the doctor stepped into the hollow. He crouched, felt for a pulse, poked and prodded for a while. He took the temperature of the body, rolled it onto its back, flexed the arms and legs. “Well, I’m pronouncing death.”
Hirsch scribbled time, date, location, names and circumstances in his notebook. “How long?”
McAskill shrugged. “Rigor is mostly gone. Animal damage. She’s been here a couple of days at least.”
“Since Saturday night, early Sunday?”
McAskill stood, frowned. “Possibly. The autopsy should establish time of death with more accuracy.”
Both men gazed at the slack limbs. Hirsch crouched for another look at the thin, unformed, pretty face. The right eye was intact and showed petechial hemorrhaging. “How old is she?”
“Fifteen? Sixteen?”
Hirsch said carefully, “Family circumstances?”
“Only what I’ve heard via local gossip. There’s no father on the scene. The mother’s a drinker, succession of boyfriends.”
“Siblings?”
“An older brother.”
Hirsch jotted the names in his notebook. “What can you tell me about Melia?”
McAskill grimaced. “Pretty wild.”
Hirsch pictured the girl’s home life. He could see the patterns, the dimensions. No stability, older boys sniffing around, the mother’s boyfriends, too. Maybe drugs and booze.
“But a sweet kid,” McAskill said. “Struggled at school, wagged it pretty often—I’d sometimes see her hitchhiking in the middle of the day. Arrested a couple of times for shoplifting.”
“Boys, men?” asked Hirsch.
“Who knows?” McAskill said.
He crouched again and rotated the head on its stem. “Broken neck.” Then he lowered the head and palpated the flesh and bones of the torso, chest and spine. “Christ,” he muttered, but didn’t elaborate.
Finally he let her go and, still squatting on his heels, said, “Massive internal injuries. Broken ribs and spinal cord damage and no doubt some trauma to her major organs.”
“She hasn’t been punched?”
McAskill shook his head. “Nothing like that. If I were to hazard a guess I’d say she was run over.”
“Run over, or knocked down?”
“I take your point. Indications are she was upright when it happened, and I’d guess the force of it tumbled her into the windscreen. I’ve seen it before.”
“Facing away—hit from behind?”
“You’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but my feeling is she was in the act of turning around.”
“So no way of knowing if it was deliberate or not?”
McAskill grinned. “Got your work cut out for you.”
He stood, brushing dust from his hands. “Would you like me to notify the family? I am their doctor.”
Hirsch didn’t think about it for long. “Thanks—though I will need to speak to them myself, eventually.”
“Of course.”
Both men looked up at the road, hearing a motor. “The hearse,” McAskill said.
He turned to Hirsch. “As I said, she liked to hitchhike. Did it a lot, if that’s any help to you. Anywhere, anytime. I even gave her lifts myself. Everyone did, just ask around. A sweet kid who sometimes had a bit too much to drink, tried drugs if she could get hold of them. I can see her staggering along the road with her thumb out, trying for a lift home, and you know the rest.” He gave Hirsch a look, partly philosophical, partly distasteful, partly grieving.
“A lift home from here?” said Hirsch.
“That’s for you to find out, sorry,” McAskill said.
The doctor scrambled up onto the road to greet the hearse. Hirsch remained where he was, ruminating glumly. How did she get here? Had she been at the pub? A party at a nearby house? Someone brought her here, and later this same someone couldn’t or wouldn’t take her home, so she set out to hitchhike in the early hours and was struck by a vehicle which failed to stop. Or it wasn’t an accident, she was killed elsewhere and dumped here.
He climbed up onto the road. The hearse driver and his off-sider were dragging out a stretcher. McAskill was in his car, a mobile phone clamped to his ear.
WHEN THE HEARSE HAD left and he was alone, Hirsch turned to the HiLux, and the first thing he saw was a crack in the windscreen, a shallow crater and a couple of short tributaries, smack in the middle. Roadside gravel was his guess, flipped up by the tires of a passing car or truck. Life on the frontier, he thought, and called Kropp.
The sergeant was a couple—or possibly a hundred—steps ahead of him. “About time, hotshot. Melia Donovan, of this parish.”
Hirsch waited a beat. “The doctor told you?”
“Finger on the pulse.”
“You knew her, Sarge?”
A snake in his voice, Kropp said, “I been here twelve years, of course I fucking knew her. Even caught her shoplifting once or twice.”
“Apparently she liked to hitchhike.”
“Everyone knew that.”
Hirsch waggled his jaw in thought. “We’ll need to know if she was drugged or raped or beaten … Maybe some of her injuries aren’t consistent with vehicle impact … Stuff like that.”
“What, you’re back in plain clothes?”
“Come on, Sarge.”
“She’ll be in good hands. McAskill will do the right thing by her.”
Hirsch was doubtful. “Shouldn’t the body go down to the city?”
“McAskill’s been dicing and slicing for years.”
“Okay. So who briefs the coroner?”
“Me, sunshine, all right? What I need you to do is stay put until the accident team arrives, then head on back to Tiverton and follow up on McAskill’s visit to the family. Think you can manage that?”
“Sarge,” said Hirsch.
But Kropp had already disconnected. Hirsch returned to the hollow. After a fruitless examination of the area of dirt that had been hidden by the body itself, he made a head-down search of the highway for a few hundred meters north and south, both sides, looking around for anything that might have belonged to Melia Donovan or the vehicle that had delivered her here or the vehicle that had killed her. Anything, he told himself, but preferably something like a fragment of glass indicator lens with the ID number intact. Nothing in the dirt verges, so he walked the bitumen surface this time. Still nothing, and no skid marks. From his work with crash investigators in the past he knew to look for dual tire skid marks, or the scuff marks that indicated loss of control, or the skip marks of a shuddering trailer.
Nothing.
So he ran crime scene tape around the area and sat down to wait.
LATE AFTERNOON BEFORE THE accident investigators arrived. Hirsch wanted to hang around, he wanted to propose his theories, but they ignored him, two men and one woman conscious of the dwindling light, the sun smearing itself across the horizon, long shadows playing visual tricks. They took their photos, measured distances, crouched and poked and grid-searched and marked up their diagrams.
“You’re blocking the light,” the female officer said, her tone indicating she knew exactly who Hirsch was.
CHAPTER 4
THE DONOVAN HOUSE REFLECTED 1960s small-town tastes and aspirations: squat, low, double-fronted, with scorched-looking bricks, stubby eaves, a tiled roof, a carport, floor-to-ceiling windows in aluminum frames. Now dimmed by the sun and hopelessness, it crouched in unmown grass, hedged by a rusty gas barbecue, a cracked plastic chaise lounge and a listing red Mazda. A fence line of crumbling bricks on either side separated it from the neighboring properties: a similar but spotless house, and a vacant lot. Hirsch waded through weeds to reach the front door, a cheap plywood thing, warped, the red paint losing against the elements. He knocked, waited, knocked again. A wind had picked up since the morning. It bent the trees and, out where the Bitter Wash Road pushed into the dry country, clouds were shouldering the Razorback.
“No offense, mate, but I’d leave it for now.”
Hir
sch turned. A blockish male shape at the shadowed end of the veranda, middle-aged, taking unhurried stock of him, quietly smoking a cigarette.
“Why’s that?”
“McAskill gave her a sedative. The wife’s sitting with her and I’m keeping the snakes away.”
“Snakes?” Hirsch said, heading along the cracked veranda.
“One snake, a reporter for the local rag. I have to warn you he got a photo off Leanne and he’ll probably sell it to The Advertiser.”
“It happens,” Hirsch said, sticking out his hand, announcing his name.
“Wondered when I’d set eyes on you,” the smoker responded. “Bob Muir.”
Muir’s hand was a hard slab thickened by years of manual labor, fingers like stubby cigars, but dry, warm and gentle as he shook with Hirsch. A square head with heavy lids over intelligent eyes. “Live next door,” he said.
Hirsch nodded. They found themselves standing side by side, staring out at the miserable front yard and the HiLux at the curb.
“The doc said someone run over Melia?”
“Yes.”
“Poor bloody kid.”
Hirsch could hear muted sobbing inside, another voice murmuring, and said, “Maybe you could fill me in?”
“Go your hardest.”
They walked a few paces into the front yard. In the better light, Hirsch saw a man with a few years on him, a man with a tough hide, barrelly torso and small backside, dressed in comfortable faded jeans and a khaki shirt. A mild-looking character with greying hair cropped short around the fringes of his big, genial skull. An unhurried individual, he drew patiently on his cigarette and got in first:
“McAskill said she was hitching?”
“Possibly.”
Muir slid his gaze at Hirsch, taking on a calm, sardonic interest in what Hirsch wasn’t saying. “Possibly?”
“Questions remain.”
“Is that right.”
“It’s possible she was hitching and a vehicle hit her. All I can say is she was found lying in a hollow near the side of the road and not noticed until today.”
Muir took the cigarette from his mouth. “Poor little cow,” he said, turning to stare unseeingly across the quiet rooftops of the town, a flat skyline, interrupted by the grain silos at the railway station.
“Do you know anything of her movements over the weekend?”
“Not me.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Known her all her life.”
Hirsch brought out his phone, made to check the screen, waiting for the patient man beside him to go on.
“A bit wild.”
“So I understand,” said Hirsch.
“Not mean and nasty with it, a sweet kid in fact, just a bit unmanageable.”
“What about her friends?”
“You mean boyfriends.”
“And female friends.” Hirsch paused: “Older friends.”
“Older friends. There was a whisper she was seeing someone older, but they broke up. Me and the wife, there were times we wanted to step in, but you can’t, can you.”
“Any names come to mind? Friends, ex-boyfriends, anyone at all?”
Muir stared at him and finally said, “Good friends with Gemma Pitcher.” He checked his watch. “Works in the shop, you might just catch her there.”
Hirsch bought his groceries there, in the absence of alternatives, and recalled a solid pudding of a girl stacking shelves or sitting at the cash register. If asked to bet on it he’d say she was a lot older than Melia Donovan. “They’re at school together?”
Muir shook his head. “Gemma left school two or three years ago.” Providing context he added, “There are only six or seven teenagers in the whole town, mostly boys, so it’s not as if Melia and Gemma were spoiled for choice.”
Hirsch nodded. No jobs, no nightlife. Net migration would be out of the district, not into it. “Were they close?”
“Thick as thieves, always off somewhere.”
“How did they get around?”
“Gemma drives.”
“Parties? The pub?”
Muir gave him a long look. “Wouldn’t have a clue.”
“Any other names you can think of?”
“I stay out of it, mate.”
Muir paused. “Though come to think of it she did turn up one day last month with a black eye, said she’d been in a bit of a crash, said it was nothing.”
Check accident reports, insurance claims, local panel beaters.
“Who else is in the family?”
Like a massive ship turning on the ocean, Muir stepped around to face Hirsch. “Mate, what brought you here?”
Hirsch frowned. “Melia Donovan. Her death.”
“No, what brought you to this town?”
The vehemence was barely there but it registered. Hirsch put a snarl in his voice: “I was assigned here.”
Muir stood close, crowding Hirsch. He was more animated, suddenly, and Hirsch could smell shaving cream, talcum powder, cigarette smoke and the heat of a day’s work. Not unpleasant: decent smells, given off by a man who was decent but hot under the collar right now.
“I was thinking maybe you’re a mate of Kropp’s.”
“And?”
“And Kropp arranged it so you’d get posted up here.”
“Mr. Muir, what are you trying to tell me?”
But Muir had subsided, hands in his pockets, face turned away, muttering.
“Sorry, what?”
Muir said, very plainly, “Kropp and his boys like to take the Abo kids out into the bush, give them a good hiding and let them walk home.”
“I don’t understand.”
Muir studied him, then finally nodded. “I guess maybe you don’t. There are two kids in the family. Melia, white father, and Nathan, black father. Both are long gone.”
He flicked his cigarette away. “Filthy habit.”
Both men stared at the butt. Then Muir gestured at it, saying, “Maybe you should fine me for littering. And when you’ve done that, breathalyze me every time I leave the house. Then scream in my face for jaywalking.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You wouldn’t need a reason, not if you’re one of Kropp’s boys.”
Hirsch didn’t want to get into it. “I’d better speak to this Gemma.”
Muir gazed at him levelly. “Like I said, she works in the shop.”
“Thanks,” Hirsch said. He stopped. “Is Nathan inside with his mother?”
“Leave the poor bugger alone.”
“I fully intend to,” Hirsch said in his reasonable voice, “after I ask him about his sister’s movements on the weekend.”
Muir conceded that. “He’s not home yet, but he’s probably not far away. He and a mate of his work at the grain shed.”
Hirsch nodded. Tiverton Grains, a collection of sheds in a side street near the pub. “I’ll catch him tomorrow.”
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.
CHAPTER 5
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 refor
m 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.
HE 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?”