by Garry Disher
“Yes.”
“Tying you effectively to the other members of the team.”
Hirsch said nothing. Gaddis said, “So the others trusted you by this time?”
“Not entirely, but they’d stopped thinking about me. I mean they were less cautious around me. I was part of the furniture.”
“In the first inquiry,” the grey-faced man said, “Senior Sergeant Quine’s barrister excuses some of the squad’s actions as ‘noble-cause’ corruption. Would you care to comment on that?”
Hirsch curled his lip. “It’s a weasel word for fabricating evidence in order to get a conviction in cases where you know someone’s guilty but can’t prove it.”
“Did you see Senior Sergeant Quine fabricate evidence in order to secure a conviction?”
“He boasted of it.”
The pale man said, “We have statements from other sources that Senior Sergeant Quine also misplaced evidence or concocted false statements in order to protect his informants or the criminals he did business with. Can you speak to that?”
Hirsch wasn’t sure what was going on. Gaddis appeared furious with his colleague, but said nothing. And who these other sources were, Hirsch had no idea.
“Sorry, no.”
The grey-faced man sat back, a little deflated, but said, “You got into the habit of keeping meticulous records while serving at Paradise Gardens?”
“Yes.”
“What things did you record and how were they stored?”
“Photographs and audio recordings,” Hirsch said. “Lists, copious lists.”
“Of?”
“Businesses that offered freebies. The quantities of drugs or valuables seized on raids versus the quantities later listed at trial. Vehicle registrations. Phone numbers. Plus my own recollections of events: what was said and done, by whom, and where and when, together with my doubts and suspicions.”
“No one saw you do this?”
“No.”
“It must have been well-hidden.”
Meaning, the raid on the station and on his house had not uncovered anything—except the Rolex. “I used an Internet storage site,” Hirsch said.
Then he had to explain how the system worked, and was asked by Gaddis, “Did you ever store material written by Senior Sergeant Quine?”
“No.”
“Tape recordings of the things he or his team said?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The squad was preternaturally suspicious and wary. They rarely communicated by phone, paper or electronic means.”
“So your records are limited.”
“Yes, but—”
“It has been shown that Senior Sergeant Quine invested in restaurants, bars, home units, racehorses, the share market … Do you have similar investments?”
“I have a ten-year-old Nissan,” Hirsch said, which raised a bit of a snicker here and there.
Gaddis said, “Tell the members of this hearing about your involvement with Ms. Eliza Ley.”
Asshole. Hirsch swallowed. “She’s a lawyer.”
“A drug lawyer.”
“I didn’t know that at the time.”
Eliza Ley was simply a pretty but harried-looking barrister he’d seen around the courthouse or visiting remand prisoners from time to time. They got to talking. Hirsch found her appealing in a scatty kind of way. The gutter press intimated that she was appealing in a big-breasted kind of way, but Hirsch had liked her for her mind, too. They met for drinks a few times and then later for sex. He’d not known until it was too late who she was, and tried to explain this now.
“You were slow on the uptake?” Gaddis said.
“Yes.”
“Your wife left you as a result?”
“We’d left each other long before that,” Hirsch said. “But she did move out as a result.”
Gaddis was enjoying himself. “So you shared a drug lawyer’s bed and knew nothing about her?”
“Not until warned by the Drug Squad,” Hirsch said.
He’d been sitting in the pub, minding his own business, when two senior Drug Squad detectives, venomous with it, slid into the booth, bookending him. “Eliza Ley,” one of them said.
“What about her?”
They told him: cops in her pocket, a drug-dealer boyfriend, sleeping with Quine, too, and photos to prove it. “You’re getting sloppy seconds, mate,” one of the detectives said.
Gaddis was saying, “And you expect us to believe that you had no idea who this woman was and what she was doing?”
“Not until it was too late.”
“What precisely did the detectives tell you?” asked the grey man.
“They’d noticed a pattern. If one of her clients appeared on a possession charge, Quine would go into bat for him, appear in court saying, ‘We’ve misplaced that evidence, your honor,’ or ‘We have no objection to bail in this matter, your honor.’ Also, they’d raid meth labs only to find no drugs or equipment or cooks or dealers.”
“They believed Senior Sergeant Quine was passing on information?”
“Pillow talk,” was how one of the Drug Squad officers had put it, squeezing Hirsch’s upper leg under the table, fingers like steel clamps.
“When in fact it was you passing on information,” Gaddis said.
“That’s a lie.”
“You were advised to drop Ms. Ley?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do or say as a result?”
In all honesty, Hirsch felt Eliza had been a little hurt that he’d stopped returning her calls. But he didn’t tell Gaddis that. He didn’t say that he’d grown more vigilant, changing his locks, buying the little Beretta, obtaining a silent phone number and a new mobile. And he absolutely stopped drifting into the grey areas of police work. When his cousin had asked him to run a number plate, citing a traffic altercation, Hirsch had refused. He also refused to protect a school friend from an irate creditor—and just as well, for the friend had proved to be a cheat and a liar.
Gaddis said, “We have mobile phone records showing that you made several calls to drug dealers.”
“I’ve explained that,” Hirsch said. “Ms. Ley made those calls.”
Gaddis sneered. “When your back was turned I suppose? Lots of things happen when your back is turned, don’t they, Constable Hirschhausen.”
CHAPTER 15
THAT WAS MONDAY AND Tuesday.
On Wednesday Gaddis returned to the Rolex.
“Why was the watch given to you, do you think?”
“To implicate me and to make me one of theirs.”
“And were you? One of theirs?”
“No. In their minds, perhaps.”
And yet Hirsch had shared some of the squad’s contempt for the weak, partisan and unjust nature of the courts, judges, magistrates and the justice system. He felt some sympathy with the notion of taking shortcuts, bending the rules, to obtain justice. Or at least punish. The feeling of us against them, an instinct to belong, had grown in him.
“You didn’t wear the watch?”
“No.”
“It merely sat in your locker, ready to be found.”
“Yes.”
Officers from the Internal Investigations division had raided the Paradise Gardens police station right on the morning shift change, nabbing staff going off and on duty. Those on sick leave were apprehended at home. The building was cleared, locks changed, computers and files seized. Then the place was searched. Drugs were found in gym bags, guns in the ceiling cavities, bundles of cash in the air conditioning vents. Previously missing files, tapes and evidence bags were discovered under different case numbers.
“You could have declared it. It’s now known that the officer in charge of Paradise Gardens was not involved in the corruption. You could have gone to Internal Investigations.”
“I didn’t know who to trust. I believed then and I believe now that elements in Internal Investigations are supportive of Senior Sergeant Quine.”
Gaddis said and di
d nothing, a quality of stillness that seemed like fury to Hirsch.
“Instead you started babbling your innocence once the inquiry began.”
The initial inquiry sat for ten months. Hirsch had turned over his records, starting with his taped conversations with Big Trev, the publican, who’d already been named during the inquest. Hirsch was gratified to learn that the Internals already knew most things—that his material mostly confirmed that knowledge. He felt less like a dog and a maggot, he supposed.
And one by one, Quine’s crew went down, committed to stand trial, until only Quine and Hirsch were left. But things got dirty. Hirsch received late-night phone calls, gravelly voices asking were his mother, sister, niece, in good health? He found 9mm shells in his letter box. A truckload of cement was dumped in his driveway. Breathalyzed three times in one week.
Dirty in court, too. Quine’s barrister cited the Rolex and accused him of holding a grudge, turning on the other squad members because he’d not received his fair share of the loot. Hirsch thought that a bit self-defeating, for it implied the barrister thought his client guilty, but no one else remarked on it and soon other accusations were thrown at him: failing to call witnesses, losing crucial evidence, accepting bribes and gifts, leaking to the media. And those phone calls to drug dealers, made using his phone.
Meanwhile Quine remained on his feet while his squad fell into disarray. Two constables were jailed, two were committed to stand trial, a senior constable was on the run and the constable named Reid had shot himself. The only good thing to come out of it was a kind of wisdom in Hirsch. He’d grown to understand that police officers can drift over time, and it isn’t always or entirely conscious but a loss of perspective. Real and imagined grievances develop, a feeling that the job deserved greater and better public recognition. Rewards, for example, in the form of more money, more or better sex, a promotion, a junket to an interstate conference, greater respect in general. Some of these rewards were graspable, others the thwarted dreams that drove their grievances. Cynicism set it. The bad guys always got away with it, and the media seized on the police officer who took a bribe rather than the one who helped orphans. So why not take shortcuts and bend the rules?
“Are you paying attention, Constable Hirschhausen?”
Hirsch blinked. “Sir.”
“You’d like us to believe that you were tainted because you were an innocent member of a corrupt squad? That you naively supported a corrupt senior officer, not knowing the full extent of his corruption?”
Hirsch was wary. It was coming now. “Yes.”
Gaddis was wearing a dark blue suit with a pale blue shirt and mid-blue tie today, the tie knot a fat structure at the base of his skinny throat. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and they glinted. He was a spotless man and at odds with the grey-faced man, who was yet to speak this morning and looked washed-out, badly shaven and creased. He sat unmoving, but Gaddis was full of motion, taking a box from the floor and crossing the room to where Hirsch was seated.
He spilled the iPhone and the bundle of cash onto the table. “These items were found concealed inside your private motor vehicle late last week. Perhaps you can account for them?”
Hirsch took out a pen and poked at the phone, then the cash. “Never seen these before.”
Gaddis was delighted. “Oh, really? You expect us to believe that?”
Hirsch shrugged. “Believe what you like: I have never seen these items before.”
“Have a closer look.”
So Hirsch stabbed the home button of the phone a few times and the screen lit up. “An iPhone 4,” he said. He was having fun but didn’t show it. “They had antenna issues, from memory.” He peered at it. “Seems to be stuck on the boot logo. Maybe I could sell it on eBay, get a few dollars for it.”
“Stop arsing about. For your information that’s an iPhone 5 that was last seen in the Paradise Gardens evidence safe, along with the cash.”
“Really? This is the latest iPhone?” Hirsch twisted around in his seat. “Anyone got a five? Anyone?”
Amused, Rosie DeLisle crossed the room, proffering her phone. Hirsch compared them. “See? The five is longer and thinner. This is a four. Easy mistake to make.”
He shot Rosie a look as he returned her phone: Hope he doesn’t take it out on you. She smiled, went back to her seat, and Hirsch turned his attention to Gaddis, seeing an alteration in the boss. He was shooting glances at a man standing at the back of the room. The man disappeared.
Hirsch smiled at Gaddis. “I mean, your investigators did check the IMEI number, right? Checked the IMEI of this phone against the one that was supposed to be in the evidence locker?”
Strangling his words, Gaddis said, “I would have thought the first aid box a strange place to keep a phone and two and a half thousand dollars.”
Hirsch shrugged. “Like I said, I have no idea what these items were doing in my car, if indeed they were there in the first place.”
Gaddis waved a folder at him. “My officers conducted a proper search, every stage photographed and witnessed, with no breaks in the chain of custody.”
“Oh,” Hirsch said. “Fair enough. So you’d have a record of all the serial number of each hundred-dollar note?”
Gaddis didn’t bite. He froze, then left the room, giving off a someone’s fucked up air. The grey man contemplated Hirsch. Fidgeting and murmurs. Then Gaddis came back. He said, “Are you pulling a swiftie on us, Constable? A dishonest man must expect dishonesty in others. You thought you’d embarrass the department by swapping the phone and the cash?”
“Well, you do investigate devious people, sir,” Hirsch said. He reached into the briefcase, took out his laptop. “Like the devious person on this bit of CCTV footage. It shows a woman opening my car and leaning in. Don’t know who she is. Your daughter, sir? Did you put her up to it? She’s got your thin nerviness.”
AFTERWARDS ROSIE DELISLE GRABBED him.
“You are such a smartarse. Gaddis is furious. He thinks you swapped the phone and the money, but knows he can’t prove it, yet also knows you were set up.” She gave him a twist of her mouth. “You come out ahead, don’t you? I assume the cash they found is yours? You’ll keep the original cash, change the hundreds each time you buy something? And you get the latest iPhone?”
“We’ll see,” Hirsch said.
Rosie shrugged. “You could be bent. You’ve got the gene. And the stink isn’t going away anytime soon.”
“Fuck them,” Hirsch said.
“Another day,” Rosie said. “Someone I want you to meet.”
She grabbed him by the forearm, dragged him to where the other woman hovered, glum and hostile. “Paul, this is Inspector Croome.”
Hirsch went very still. Here was some fresh hell, coming on top of being grilled by Gaddis for three days. “Of?” he said. All things would flow from knowing which department Croome represented.
Croome’s eyes were like pebbles but less humane. “Sex crimes.”
Hirsch flinched. He’d had his share of confused and confusing sexual encounters, but didn’t think he’d broken any laws.
Rosie took pity. Her pretty hand rested on his forearm. “We’d like you to stick around for another twenty-four hours.”
“Is that a request?”
“Not entirely,” Croome said.
“So, an order,” Hirsch said.
“Something like that,” Croome said, handing him a slip of paper. “Be at that address noon tomorrow. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, don’t let yourself be followed.”
CHAPTER 16
THROUGH WITH HUMORING HIMSELF, Hirsch relinquished the original iPhone and $2500 to Rosie, together with his photographs of them in situ, obtained a written receipt, and returned to his motel.
The next day he took a succession of short taxi trips to the parking area of a strip of shops in Tea Tree Gully. Through a door marked MAINTENANCE and up a flight of stairs. Knocked on the only door at the top.
Rosie DeLisle answered, leadin
g him into a sitting room decorated in 1970s motel. “Nice.”
“No it’s not.”
“Safe house?”
“Yes.”
Croome was standing by the window. “Sit, please, Constable.”
There were armchairs and a sofa free but Hirsch chose a stiff chair from the little corner dining table. With a glance at each other, the women joined him. “Inspector Croome has a request,” Rosie said.
“Why the cloak and dagger?”
“Things will move easier and quicker if you sit and listen and shut the fuck up,” Croome said.
She still thinks I’m bent, or a bit deviated, Hirsch thought. He said, “Language,” and folded his arms. “Fire away.”
“You’re stationed at Tiverton.”
Hirsch said nothing. She hadn’t asked a question, merely stated the bleeding obvious, since that was probably his personnel file in her lap. Croome shot a look at Rosie DeLisle as if wanting her to run interference.
“Paul,” DeLisle said, leaning her slender elbows on the table.
“Yes?”
“The inspector would like you to tell us about Sergeant Kropp and his crew.”
The anger came on quickly, as it often did these days, but Hirsch expressed it coldly, a withdrawal. He didn’t move or speak or act. When he trusted himself he said, “I’m not a spy. I’m not a whistle-blower.”
“No one’s saying you are.”
“Everyone’s saying it. And you’re about to ask me to blow the whistle.”
“Paul,” Croome said, not having earned the right to use his first name, “we have a situation and no means of monitoring it.”
“But sex crimes? Kropp and his boys?”
“I’ll explain in a minute,” Croome said. She was a little disordered, as if she’d expected plain sailing. “First, do you think you could paint us a picture, for want of a better term?” She glanced at Rosie. “Internal Investigations have received several complaints about the Redruth police but what we lack is context.”
Hirsch stared at her. “Before I say or do anything I need to know if either of you are acquainted in any way, shape or form with Kropp, Nicholson or Andrewartha, or the new woman, Jennifer Dee. No bullshit, okay?”