Hell to Pay

by Garry Disher

  “What?”

  “Katie saw that car again, that black car.”

  “Well, you can put her mind at ease: Pullar and Hanson stole a Holden the other day.”

  Then it dawned on him. “You think Katie sneaked the rifle out again and fired it?”

  Wendy Street twisted in knots. “Could she have?”

  And then her consternation disappeared, logic taking over. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”

  “Exactly,” Hirsch said. “All indications are, Mrs. Latimer shot herself. The gun was still in her hands when I found her.”

  Wendy rubbed her face. “This is just awful.”

  She was glancing across at the Latimers’ as if she should head there but knew she might not be welcome. To divert her, Hirsch said, “Was Mrs. Latimer more than usually down lately?”

  “You mean suicidal? No. She’d made up her mind to leave Ray. Get a divorce. She seemed freer if anything.” She gasped. “Her parents!”

  “I’m off to see them now.”

  Wendy was this way and that. “I should come with you, but I need to be here for Katie.”

  The youngest boy might need you, too, Hirsch thought. He nodded goodbye, seated his cap upon his head and reached for the driver’s door.

  “I Googled you.”

  Fantastic. Hirsch turned his blank face to her. “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “OUR DAUGHTER HAS KILLED herself, and you know how he informs us? By phone.”

  Heather Rofe was ragged, bleary, angry. Hirsch gently steered her back into the house, to the kitchen, where Keith sat dazedly, a solid man diminished, his decency more threadbare now. Man and wife, they’d been to church probably, best clothes on their backs. They’d made and poured tea but that was as far as they’d been able to take it.

  “Is there anyone I can contact for you?”

  Keith Rofe lifted his head. “Our other daughter’s coming over.”

  Hirsch stood there, spinning his damn cap in his hands. He felt, and probably looked, like a storm trooper.

  “How’s he breaking the news to the boys?” Heather Rofe said. “Text message?”

  All kinds of statements were issued via text message these days. Your services are no longer required; by the way, your husband’s having an affair; I want a divorce; here’s a close-up of my pussy. Hirsch said gently, “Alison spent the night with you?”

  Keith Rofe didn’t have the wherewithal to answer. He glanced helplessly at his wife, who said, “She was in bed when we left this morning.”

  “Church?”

  “A christening,” Heather said. “My niece’s daughter, down in Gawler.”

  Two hours’ distance. “What time did you leave?”

  “Seven.”

  “So you were away half the day?”

  Heather Rofe’s tears welled and rolled down her cheeks. “We just got back.”

  “Did she tell you what she intended to do today?”

  Rofe shrugged. “Sleep in. Rest. She offered to re-pot my geraniums.”

  “Didn’t say anything about going out?”

  “No.”

  “She’s not a churchgoer?”

  Heather struggled. She said, “Not lately.”

  “Can you think why she’d go to the tin hut?”

  “No, she didn’t like it there—and you’re grilling me. I’d like you to stop.”

  Hirsch backpedaled. “Sorry, terribly sorry, that’s not my intention.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I know you do have a job to do.”

  Hirsch rotated his shoulders in uneasy agreement. “One last question: was the house locked when you got back from church?”

  “We don’t bother, usually,” Heather said. “Nothing worth taking, and we know everyone in …” Her voice trailed away.

  “What?”

  “It was locked. I had to fetch the spare key. Remember, Keith?”

  “What?”

  Hirsch tuned them out, letting his gaze roam around the kitchen and into the hallway and mentally retrace his route as he’d entered the house a few minutes earlier. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest forced entry or a struggle, and how would he raise that question with them? “May I see her room?”

  Heather Rofe fixed him with a level stare, still raw with grief but not about to lose herself in it. “Why?”

  Hirsch did his uncomfortable shoulder rotation again. “I was wondering if she might have left some kind of goodbye.”

  “Like a suicide note. Well, she didn’t. Last night over dinner she was quite chirpy. Not a hundred percent enamored with the idea of Jack spending the weekend with his grandfather, but a weight had been lifted from her shoulders over the past few days.”

  Heather gave in to the grief again. Hirsch moved to her. He placed a hand on each shoulder and, after the briefest hesitation, she let herself be consoled.

  Hirsch waited, glancing over her shoulder at the husband, who was again staring sightlessly at the top of the table. Presently Heather stepped back and mustered herself and said, “Her old bedroom, down the passage.”

  A spare room now, all vestiges of the child and teenager removed. Hirsch surveyed it first and then began a search. The drawers yawned emptily, and all he found in the wardrobe was one wire hanger, a white bowls uniform in a drycleaner’s bag whispering in the eddying air.

  He popped his head into the adjacent room. An untidy bed, a child’s pair of trainers on the floor, warm cotton pajamas poking from under a pillow, a laptop on top of the pillow, pasted with footballer stickers.

  In the kitchen again, Hirsch said gently, “It seems Alison packed all her things but left Jack’s here.”

  He saw the rapid assimilation in Heather Rofe’s face. Instead of giving him her conclusions she said, “All right, how do you read it?”

  Hirsch said, “Did she give any indication she wanted to thrash things out with Ray?”

  “No.”

  “Leaving Jack here, where he wouldn’t witness any nastiness?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  They took it no further than that but Hirsch could see one scenario: Alison Latimer packed her bag, returned to the farm and had second thoughts.

  THE BLACK EXPLORER WAS waiting for him outside the station.

  Hirsch parked in the driveway, liking this visit even less than Kropp’s visit the day Melia Donovan was found. Choosing to ignore it, he stepped onto the little porch, his key at the ready. Well, that triggered movement. A door slammed and footsteps stalked him. He turned: Superintendent Spurling, in full uniform, a man of fifty with the bearing of an army officer and clean, slender hands and a narrow, ascetic face.

  “Sir,” Hirsch said.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Area commander, sir.”

  “I need a word.”

  Hirsch led the way into his office. Thank Christ Spurling was content to leave it at that.

  “I’ll get right to it. This afternoon I received a phone call.”

  Hirsch gave him a good, intrigued look. “Sir?”

  “Anonymous caller, female, very brief: ‘The husband did it.’ ”

  Oh, hell, Wendy. “Well, sir, the thing is, he was in the Redruth lockup at the time.”

  Spurling grunted. “There will be an inquest.”

  Hirsch nodded his agreement.

  “I need you to prepare a brief for the coroner.”

  The last thing Hirsch was expecting. “Sir, I’m new here.”

  “All the better.”

  The men stared at each other. Spurling broke first, saying, “And on the subject of phone calls, I’ve also been contacted about a different matter. Phone calls and letters.”

  “Sir?”

  “Most were from good old Anonymous, but a handful were not. In particular, a nurse, a couple of high school teachers, a priest and the local ALP candidate. All from Redruth, all raising the same issue.”

  Hirsch waited.

  “In a nutshell, the overzealous policing methods employed by Serge
ant Kropp and Constables Nicholson and Andrewartha. Physical and verbal abuse, harassment, unwarranted speed and drunk-driving traps, etcetera, etcetera.”

  There the area commander stopped and stared.

  Hirsch knew where this was going. All he wanted was to be free of worry and moral complications. “Sir?”

  “Don’t be dim. Is there anything to these claims?”

  “Like I said, sir, I’m new here.”

  “Yeah, be like that. I’ve been hearing whispers for months now, and this afternoon I hear that Sergeant Kropp is best mates with a man who might have killed his wife.”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to see any patterns or—”

  Spurling snarled, “What, you’re selective in which coppers you snitch on?”

  “Is that why you called in to see me, sir? You think I’m a snitch?”

  Has he been talking to DeLisle? Hirsch wondered. Meanwhile Spurling propped himself against the edge of Hirsch’s desk and folded his arms. “Don’t get smart. The alternative is a behavioral management audit. Is that what you want?”

  Well, no. Audits were worse than ethical standards complaints. The latter obliged you to be interviewed, your house searched, even if the complaint were malicious, but an audit would prove to be more far-reaching. An audit of Redruth would mean an audit of the officers, the police station and all of its records, and it would mean an audit of Hirsch, and he was through with being poked and prodded by the Internals. He tried to understand Spurling, saw a man whose job required him to be political, clandestine, subtle. “The usual rumors, sir. Like I said, I’m new here and have yet to see—”

  Spurling’s disgust grew. He straightened abruptly. “All I’m asking, man to man, off the record, no comeback, is there any truth to the allegations that the Redruth officers are in any way overstepping the mark?”

  Hirsch tensed himself. “It’s not as if this is the inner city,” he said. “We’re not dealing with bikie gangs or ethnic clans.”

  Spurling headed for the little foyer. “Well that took you long enough. If you hear or see anything, I want to know about it, pronto.”

  He stopped at the front door. “Your fleet vehicle: get a new screen fitted.”

  “Sir.”

  “And it’s filthy. Get it washed.”

  INSTEAD, HIRSCH GOT IT filthier, heading out along Bitter Wash Road again.

  The Latimer house and yard were still choked with cars, but the Port Pirie detectives had been and gone, and in the meantime the Latimer children had returned with their grandfather. Hirsch found them in the main room, standing with Ray Latimer at the center of a constantly moving press of people. Without being sure of his intentions, he began to edge through to them, pausing to grab a sausage roll from a table crammed with sandwiches, sponge cakes, beer and juice bottles, wine flagons. The Latimer men spotted him and stiffened, acutely aware of his progress through the crowd. Why was that? They locked eyes with him, as if only they and Hirsch existed on earth and were a danger to each other. They betrayed nothing but stillness and vigilance, two powerfully made, big-jawed, proprietorial men.

  Then Kropp was back in Hirsch’s face, red, beery and emotional. “I thought I told you to piss off.”

  “Just seeing if you wanted a hand, Sarge.”

  “Is that a fact. I can read you, pal.” He poked Hirsch in the chest. “You lay off, understand? That’s an order.”

  Hirsch, glancing past Kropp, saw Raymond Latimer and his father watching the exchange. They didn’t smile to see Hirsch get his comeuppance, didn’t look relieved, merely affectless, leading him to wonder what vaunting disappointments and ambitions drove them.

  “Well?”

  “Sarge, if you must know, a few things bother me.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  “Mrs. Latimer had some odd bruises on her, Sarge. No mud on her shoes. What if this house is a crime scene? Or, if she was snatched from her parents’ house, then that is a crime scene. The hut, the rifle, her car … We need prints, blood samples, tire impressions.”

  Kropp couldn’t believe his ears, couldn’t believe the cheek. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Hirsch was distracted by an abrupt movement at the corner of his vision. He turned. Raymond Latimer had collapsed onto the sofa with his sons, Jack burrowing into his chest as if wanting to slip inside him, Craig shoulder-to-shoulder and looking stunned. All three looked reduced: damp, blotchy, all animation gone.

  “Look at them,” Kropp said. “Look at them.”

  “All I’m saying is—”

  “The Port Pirie boys took all the samples and photos they need. Meanwhile you keep out of it. This is a peaceful community. You, son, are passing through.”

  CHAPTER 20

  MONDAY BEGAN WITH KROPP on the line, in a mild froth. “Just been talking to the super.”

  Hirsch said nothing. He could hear yelling across the road, doors slamming: the school holidays were over.

  “I’m warning you: the Latimers are decent people visited by tragedy, and Spurling or no Spurling, I’ll have your guts for garters if you step out of line.”

  “Yes, Sarge.”

  “Why the hell he put you on it, I don’t know.”

  “Sarge, I’m as surprised as you are.”

  “Arselicker.”

  Hirsch heard impotence in the sergeant’s voice. “I’ll tread lightly, Sarge.”

  HIRSCH PROPPED HIS FEET on the desk, notebook in his lap, not writing but thinking.

  In his view there were three essential truths to police work: most crimes go unpunished; most crimes are solved not by forensics but chance, an admission or a word in your ear; and detection matters less than the piecing together of rumors, sightings, theories and random scraps of information.

  Still, method mattered, too. Scrawling Interviews at the top of a blank page, he made a list: the Latimer clan; Alison’s parents and sister; her doctor; her neighbors; her friends. Not knowing all of their names yet, that’s how he listed them, by role and title.

  Wendy Street should be able to help: friend and neighbor.

  But he suspected he’d get mainly emotional, partial and impressionistic evidence from these people, proof of nothing, and it might very well lead him to one conclusion, that Alison Latimer took her life while the balance of her mind was disturbed, or however coroners liked it expressed these days.

  Flipped over the page and made another list: Formal Evidence, namely the autopsy findings and forensics. What would her body, clothing, car, parent’s house, own house, rifle and the tin hut reveal about her death?

  Finally, gut impressions. He stared at the ceiling, formulating them in his mind. The death didn’t seem right to him, or to her parents or Wendy Street. But were his guts listening to them or to his own rumblings? On the surface, there was little evidence to suggest homicide, plenty to suggest suicide. Alison Latimer knew how to handle a rifle, he’d seen it himself, and she’d made a prior suicide attempt. But no suicide note. But that didn’t mean anything: plenty of people took their lives without explaining themselves. Meanwhile, what of her spotless shoes, the bruises, her thumb in the trigger guard? Why the tin hut, if it freaked her out? But those who might want her dead—her husband, her father-in-law, maybe even the older boy—had unshakable alibis.

  Who else? A secret lover? Wendy Street might know.

  Hirsch jotted scenarios:

  She committed suicide.

  She was snatched from her parents’ house, subdued by force, taken to the tin hut and shot dead, the body and gun arranged to suggest suicide.

  Ditto, but she was accidentally killed during the struggle and so on.

  She was lured to the farm, or the tin hut, and killed by accident or design and the body and gun arranged to suggest suicide.

  Alison Latimer was a slight woman, tall, but not frail. Could a woman have killed her?

  And so Finola Armstrong’s name surfaced again. Hirsch found her address in the phone book, locked up and headed out to Bi
tter Wash Road.

  ARMSTRONG’S HOUSE WAS STONE with a wash of cement over it, painted white once upon a time but now mostly dust and mold. It sat among pine trees so high and cramped they robbed the sun, their needles starving the garden and choking the gutters. Hirsch had never seen such a miserable building, and wondered at the man or the woman, a couple of generations ago, who’d decided the pines and the cement were a good idea. The sheds on the other hand were in the open and expressed the busyness of a working farm.

  Because the sun failed to penetrate, the place felt damp, and there was a hollow wind, mournful where it wrapped around the chimney, eaves and veranda posts. He was about to knock on the front door when Finola Armstrong appeared from behind a rainwater tank, removing canvas gloves. Hirsch stepped down from the veranda and eyed her carefully: jeans, a checked shirt, a scowl and an odor of diesel and silage.

  She stopped a meter from his chest. “I guessed you’d be dropping by.”

  “Did you?” said Hirsch.

  “Don’t be coy.”

  “Fair enough. Perhaps you could tell me your movements after I saw you at the motel on Saturday night?”

  Armstrong tilted her head, revealing a smear of chaff dust along her jaw that he itched to wipe away. “You’d like me to say I went home in great turmoil, deciding that all my problems lay with Alison Latimer, and that I got up the next morning and did her in.”

  “Well, that would simplify matters. Is that what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think she was murdered?”

  “Not for me to say, but I doubt it.”

  “What did you do after I left you on Saturday night?”

  “Didn’t stay in that dreadful motel, that’s for sure.”

  “You went home?”

  “I was in turmoil, but going home wasn’t going to fix it. I went to my sister’s.”

  Hirsch patted his jacket pocket for pad and pen, fished them out, clicked the pen, found a blank page. He could feel her eyes on him.

  “Ready?” she asked, a glint in her eye. She gave him addresses, phone numbers and names: sister, brother-in-law, nieces.

  “They can all verify, etcetera, etcetera?”

  “They can.” She tilted her head again. “Are you treating it as suspicious, the death?”