by Garry Disher
“Sarge?”
“Football final, so all hands on deck.”
Hirsch got a kick out of that. “You mean Redruth actually comes alive? People on the street?”
Kropp turned quiet and nasty. “If there’s any justice, someone might thump you.”
“Looking forward to it, Sarge.”
They were silent. Hirsch fiddled with his phone and stared at the empty tables. He knew he was here at the coroner’s discretion. Today’s hearing would merely establish the who, when, where and how of Melia Donovan’s death, invite witnesses to come forward, and then adjourn until the police investigation was complete, and that might take months. Footsteps and a cadaverous man appeared, stiff-backed, grey-faced. “He was in the job,” whispered Kropp, and Hirsch could see ex-policeman in the scowling figure, who halted beside the main table and called: “All rise for Her Majesty’s coroner.”
They stood, the air above them clanging, crashing, a symphony of cheap metal chairs sliding and colliding, and a middle-aged woman appeared in a whisper of fabric and rubber-soled shoes, her face kindly, apologetic, almost grandmotherly, a foil to the old cop. She gestured at them vaguely and they all sat and the man beside her boomed, “All mobile phones off, if you please.”
“That means you,” muttered Kropp.
Hirsch switched off, pocketed the phone.
The coroner remained on her feet, her hands moving folders around on the tabletop, and now she glanced out at the rows of chairs. She looked untethered to Hirsch, lost and adrift in the vast hall. Sit, he begged her.
She cast her voice over their heads, full, rolling, educated: “Thank you all for coming. You may be wondering at the choice of venue: quite simply, I wished to view the place where Ms. Donovan died, and I would welcome community involvement in the investigation into her death.”
Leanne Donovan cried out. The coroner put her hand to her throat, opened and closed her mouth. Nothing further happened, but then Leanne and her son thrust back their chairs and stumbled out of the hall, followed by Yvonne Muir.
The coroner, unsettled, said, “I hereby formally open the inquest into the death of Melia Anne Donovan on or about Saturday the twentieth of September and I will presently adjourn these proceedings to enable the police to complete their inquiries and for any criminal prosecution arising to take its proper course.”
She sat at last, removing her glasses. “What I must do today is confirm the identity of the deceased and the location, time and cause of death. Witnesses, including the pathologist and police members, will give evidence in regard to these matters and then my officer will give a brief summary of the circumstances, as far as these can be ascertained.”
The coroner replaced her glasses. “I have made my visit to the scene of Ms. Donovan’s death, and pray that opening the inquest here, her hometown, will encourage as many of her friends and family as possible to come forward and assist this court, and the police, to find the person or persons responsible for her death.”
Kropp half-turned his huge head to Hirsch. Hirsch read the accusation: We have you to thank for letting one such person do a flit.
“Anyone giving testimony will be speaking under oath and may subsequently be required to make a formal statement to police. Of course, this is not to say you need see this morning’s proceedings as in any way fraught with meaning and consequences. I wish merely to discover the truth.”
Hirsch heard backsides shift on the cheap, thin seats. He didn’t think anyone had anything to say, except to establish the groundwork and express grief.
Nancarrow was called first. He explained why he’d been driving south along the Barrier Highway and how he’d found the body. The coroner had no questions, and called Hirsch, who read from his notebook: times, the date, distances, the movement of personnel, the recovery of the body and plenty of cop speak like “female deceased.”
“Then I remained at the scene until accident investigators arrived.”
“Had a formal identification been made at this stage?”
“Dr. McAskill stated that he knew the deceased.”
“You relied on his identification?”
Hirsch glanced around at Kropp. Kropp held his hands wide, so Hirsch returned to the coroner. “Sergeant Kropp is in charge of the investigation and will provide further detail in regard to this matter, but I do understand that he, like Dr. McAskill, knew the deceased and later viewed the body and had no reason to doubt Dr. McAskill’s identification.”
The coroner was scribbling. She looked up. “I am able to confirm that another method of identification has subsequently confirmed the visual identifications of Dr. McAskill and Sergeant Kropp, namely dental records. Constable Hirschhausen, you may step down. I call Sergeant Exley.”
Exley summarized his team’s findings at the accident scene: no tire tracks or skid marks, no identifiable fragments from the vehicle that had struck Melia Donovan.
“Was more than one vehicle involved?”
“If you mean, was she knocked over by one vehicle and run over by subsequent vehicles, there was no evidence at the scene to support or disprove that scenario.”
McAskill was called. He confirmed identity, injuries and cause of death. “I submit that she was struck with some force by one vehicle, the impact sufficient to kill her and throw her body to the area where she was found. The locus of the impact was her right hip, arm and trunk, which might indicate that she’d had her back to the vehicle and was in the act of turning to face it when hit. There was also a massive injury to the head, which in my experience indicates that she was flipped up and into the windscreen or onto the roof of the vehicle before tumbling off the road verge.”
“Were there indications of third party violence to the deceased apart from vehicle impact injuries?”
In other words, had she been choked, stabbed, punched, burnt with cigarettes, tied up, poisoned, raped …
“There were not.”
“And the toxicology findings?”
“Indications of alcohol and cannabis use.”
“Sufficient to cause disorientation?”
“In my opinion, and taking account of her slight body mass, yes.”
Kropp was called. He confirmed identification and outlined the police investigation. He also disclosed that Melia Donovan was an inveterate hitchhiker.
The coroner thanked him and, as he returned to his seat, said, “That completes the initial formal input. It remains for me to invite members of the community to step forward.”
The chairs shifted minutely.
She waited, glancing keenly at their faces. “Very well, this inquiry is adjourned.”
“All rise,” the officer said.
“Fucking waste of a morning,” muttered Kropp. “Find her slag of a friend, all right?”
“I’m in the city next week, Sarge,” Hirsch reminded him. “The Quine inquiry.”
Kropp screwed up his face at the floor, not looking at Hirsch.
CHAPTER 12
ON SATURDAY MORNING, HIRSCH attended Melia Donovan’s funeral. A service at the tiny Catholic church, followed by a procession of cars, lights on, to the cemetery on the hill, a windswept patch of red dirt, busy ants and gum trees. Everyone wept; the kids from the high school were inconsolable, Wendy Street attempting to console. Katie toed the dirt, keeping company with Jack Latimer and his mother and a couple aged in their sixties. Maternal grandparents? Hirsch stood well back. He felt sad, but didn’t mourn. He watched, not wanting to appear that he was. Other than the schoolkids there were men and women, young and old. He could not name a tenth of the people there, but they all knew him. One or two nodded; others glared. Bob Muir asked him to come to the get-together afterwards, tea and cakes in the hall, but Hirsch declined.
THAT AFTERNOON HE WAS called to a farm contractor’s property a few kilometers outside the town. The man’s work was largely seasonal: plowing and harrowing, crop sowing, reaping, carting, hay baling. He mended fences and bores, crutched sheep, put up sheds, you n
ame it, and leading Hirsch across a dirt yard to a collection of implement, hay and toolsheds, said, “Feast your eyes on that.”
The door to a small tin structure had been jimmied open, the wounds raw in the metal skin. “I was at that poor lass’s funeral and come back to this. The bastards pinched me son’s trail bike, plus some of me tools, a chainsaw, brush cutter, cans of fuel, saw, plane, pipe wrench …” He glared at Hirsch. “I bet I’m not the only one. The pricks were at the service. They clocked who else was there, and knew we’d be out for a couple of hours, the cemetery and the rest of it, and snuck off and robbed us.”
Quite likely. It was a city crime but no reason why it wasn’t also rural. Hirsch gave the man an incident report number for his insurance company, made no promises and returned to town. Where two more calls came in, people returning from the funeral to find broken windows, doors prised open, tools, computers and TV sets missing.
A truck or a ute, thought Hirsch, returning from the last call. In a land of trucks and utes.
FIVE THIRTY NOW, THE HiLux threw a long shadow as Hirsch returned to town, the fence posts and power poles striping the paddocks. He found a dusty Holden parked outside the police station, a woman piling out of the driver’s seat, clutching a mobile phone. “Thank God. I tried calling the number you pinned to the door but I had no signal.”
Hirsch recognized her from the funeral, the older woman with Alison and Jack Latimer. “Something wrong?”
She was comfortable, greying, grandmotherly, but in a state and wringing her hands. “It’s my son-in-law. He’s making a scene and I’m scared someone will get hurt.”
“Lead the way. Is it far?”
She was already climbing into the Holden. “Better if you came with me, then I can explain.”
Hirsch thought about it. Would he need anything from the HiLux? Would this end in a car chase? “Hurry,” the woman said, so he slid into her passenger seat, belted himself in. “May I have your name?”
The woman shot away from the curb, no signaling or mirror-checking. Then again, Barrier Highway was always quiet. “Heather Rofe. Our daughter appeared on our doorstep during the week with her youngest, asking if they could stay for a while. Her marriage hasn’t been the happiest so of course we said yes, but her husband keeps ringing her to come home, and a little while ago he turned up, yelling and swearing.”
“Your daughter is Alison Latimer?”
She was astounded. “Yes. How do you know that?”
“We met briefly,” Hirsch said. He paused. “Is her husband violent, Mrs. Rofe?”
A ragged sigh. “I’m not sure. Ray can be overbearing, needs to get his own way, I know that much.”
Hirsch sat back as Heather Rofe swung the car into a short street beyond the Catholic church. Hirsch counted four houses on either side, the end house on the border of farmland. Eight old houses choked with cottagey shrubs and peeling gums, small-town houses that never opened the front curtains or spoiled the quiet. A beefy green Range Rover was angled outside the end house. The man on the path between the little gate and the front door was tall, solid, wound tight, dressed for a reconciliation in grey trousers, black shirt and a sports coat. A middle-aged man stood at the door, barring him.
Rofe pulled into the curb and Hirsch climbed out, adjusted his uniform cap and approached the house. He stopped at the garden gate, eyeing both men, who eyed him in return, the householder mostly unreadable but, sensed Hirsch, relieved—with an undertone of I probably could have handled this. Raymond Latimer was different, flexing his hands, a rampager not rampaging but wound tight as a spring.
“Gentlemen,” said Hirsch.
Latimer ignored him. “Heather, you fetched the police?”
“Sir,” Hirsch said, “your business is with me, now.”
Latimer shook his head like a reasonable man pushed to the limit by fools. “You’re not needed here. We can sort it out ourselves.”
Huge, flexing hands. Hirsch watched the hands, the torso, for a hint of the man’s intentions. Alison Latimer’s husband was savagely shaven at this late stage of the afternoon, wearing his best casual gear. A big, practical man out of costume, but no joke, despite the tidy comb tracks raked across his skull. Regarding Hirsch with a kind of exalted fury, in fact, as if he’d never been challenged like this. Hirsch didn’t feel trepidation, exactly, but an intense expectation. His fingers flicked over the equipment strapped to his belt. He gauged distances.
“You hear me? We can sort this. No need for the police. A civil matter.”
“Ray,” said Heather Rofe, “you were scaring us. I had to fetch the police.”
“That’s bullshit, Heather, and you know it.”
Keith Rofe said, from the veranda, “Banging on the door, shouting and swearing, we felt threatened, Ray. You said some pretty terrible things.”
“Heat of the moment. I only want to speak to Allie, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Not now, not today. Give her a chance.”
“What about me? When’s anyone going to give me a chance? That’s the coward’s way out, leaving home without talking it over with your husband. I think it’s in everyone’s interest if Allie comes home with me now.”
“You’re frightening her,” Heather Rofe said. “You’re frightening Jack, poor little boy.”
Latimer put aside the fury. He shook his head and stomped out onto the footpath in a huge, martyred capitulation. “Unbelievable. A concerned husband and father tries to find a solution to a family difficulty and everyone gangs up on him and the police are called.”
Heather Rofe slipped past him to join her husband. “Allie needs time, Ray, all right?”
“Time? A day? A week? What do you mean, time?”
“Time,” Rofe said and pushed her husband ahead of her into the house. Hirsch sensed that the daughter and grandson were in there, peering through the curtains.
Latimer was about to climb into the Range Rover. “Sir, a quick word before you go?”
The man paused, taking a cold, summarizing interest in Hirsch. “You’re the new cop. You can’t do anything to me, Kropp’s a mate of mine, all right?”
“I’m not fully convinced that you won’t hassle these people again, Mr. Latimer.”
Hirsch expected hostility. What he got was a grin. “I know all about you, you prick.”
Hirsch waited. Waiting had become one of the chief conditions of his life. He waited right through a stream of oblique and wrathful abuse because he’d heard it all before. At the end of it he nodded, said “Sir,” and walked past Latimer to enter the Rofes’ yard. He heard the Land Rover drive away as he lifted his knuckles to knock.
Heather opened the door. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Do you wish to take out a court order against him, Mrs. Rofe?”
She smiled. “That won’t be necessary.”
Hirsch gave her his card. “Call me anytime.”
CHAPTER 13
“GOT CHURCH THIS MORNING?”
Hirsch’s parents had church every Sunday morning. His asking was part of a pattern: he would call after breakfast, ask this question, catch up on what his sister was up to in the UK, ask after everyone’s health, ask who his parents had seen lately … Every Sunday, and running behind the chatter were Hirsch’s overpowering sense memories, aroused by their voices: the smell of eggs and bacon on weekends, his father’s cigarettes, the play of light in the little hill towns above Adelaide, the stutter of the lawn sprinklers.
And their unspoken question: Are you really bent, son?
Then they’d sign off, but this time Hirsch said, “I should arrive sometime after lunch.”
“Drive safely,” his mother said.
TWO AND A HALF hours to Adelaide, then a quick climb into the hills, the road fast until he turned off for Balhannah. Cooler air up here, scented with spring grasses. He’d struck some Sunday-lunch traffic but the road was quiet now, lunchgoers sprawled at home or in cafés. Greenery pushed in on him from both sides, and he was
woolgathering, not fully engaged, when the siren whooped.
A patrol car, in snarling white and martial black. A 90 km/h zone and Hirsch was doing 85. All his electrics worked: brake light, indicator light. No broken lenses. No failure to stop back there at the crossroads, no failure to give way. So Hirsch woke up pretty quickly, the daydreams dissipating like smoke.
If they wanted to pat him down they’d find the Beretta around his ankle and no paper to go with it.
He pulled over onto the verge and sat there, motor running, watching the rearview mirror. Two figures on board, but the angled windscreen gave him no more than shapes, heads and shoulders. Time passed and Hirsch felt for the pistol and tucked it against his thigh, under a flap of his street directory. They could have been calling it in, he supposed, but didn’t seriously suppose it. Or they had their windows down and were gauging sounds, here above the plain, in the land of little hill towns and doubling-back, up-and-down roads. You’d soon hear a vehicle coming. If you were here to kill Hirsch, you’d want to wait until the coast was clear.
A car did come, an unmarked white Holden. Hirsch watched it crawl past, pull over and reverse until he was hemmed in. He cranked a cartridge into the firing chamber of his pistol, safety off.
Nothing happened, and then something happened. There were four men in the Holden, plain-clothed, and one of the rear passengers held up a mobile phone, waggling it at Hirsch without revealing more than a white shirt cuff under a dark suit sleeve and a shaven bullet head.
Was he to expect a phone call? Make a phone call? Hirsch took his Motorola from the dash cradle, clamped it against the windscreen, his way of saying, “Your move.”
The Motorola screen, slumbering, woke with sound and light. Hirsch said, “Hello.”
“Hello?” his mother said.
So Hirsch said, “Hello,” wondering how the pricks had managed to network the call.
When there was no response, he said, “Mum, it’s me.”