Hell to Pay

by Garry Disher

  “That’s your concern, bud. I’ve known people to do all kinds of things when they shoot themselves. Me, I run tests. Science. Motives, impulsive behavior, they don’t concern me.”

  Hirsch heard a young voice and pictured the guy: about thirty, breezy, loved his job, loved the science and the technology—but maybe he was crap at relationships. “Okay, but scientists speculate, right?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “You’ve seen the photos?”

  “I have.”

  “The victim’s thumb is still inside the trigger guard, hooked around the trigger.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “How often would you expect to see that?”

  “As against what?”

  “As against the body going into spasms, jerking, arms flinging out.”

  “I see what you mean. But, a first time for everything. No two shootings are alike.”

  Hirsch moved on, rocking back in his chair and glancing out across the front desk to the community notices. “You found tiny amounts of gunshot residue on her hand and sleeve.”

  “Correct.”

  “Tiny amounts.”

  “What about it?”

  “And none in her lap or on her thighs?”

  “No.”

  “Wouldn’t you expect to, if she sat on the ground with the gun between her legs?”

  “Mate, I’ve seen everything.”

  “And that’s your scientific conclusion,” Hirsch said.

  “I wouldn’t want to get vague on you,” the tech said.

  Next, Hirsch phoned the forensic pathologist. She was slicing and dicing; she’d call back, the morgue assistant said. Hirsch waited. He should step outside and wash the HiLux before the area commander saw it again, but he waited.

  She called an hour later. Thanking her, Hirsch said, “I understand you’ve released the body for burial.”

  “Correct.”

  The voice of a busy, short-shrift woman. Hirsch wasted no time: “Under cause of death you put gunshot wound to the head.”

  “Yes.”

  “You go on to say that foul play, accident and suicide are, quote, ‘unascertainable.’ ”

  “Correct.”

  “May I ask what you mean by that?”

  “It means exactly what it says. I do not know if another party was present, I do not know the state of the victim’s mind at the time of death, I do not know the choreography, for want of a better word, of her last few moments of life. She might have been enjoying the sunshine, idly playing with the rifle until a bunny rabbit came hopping into range and, in manoeuvring the rifle, accidentally shot herself. Or she committed suicide. Or someone staged it. Did she leave a note?”

  “No.”

  “Like I said, ‘unascertainable.’ ”

  “But suggestive?”

  “You know I won’t speculate.”

  Please speculate, Hirsch thought.

  Instead, the pathologist said, “I can’t rule anything absolutely in or absolutely out. ‘Unascertainable’ does not mean the death wasn’t suspicious or wasn’t accidental. A gunshot to the head was the cause of death but an autopsy cannot ascertain the circumstances surrounding it.”

  “You’ve informed the Port Pirie CIB?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “I have no idea what they’ll do with it. I merely passed on my report.”

  “Okay, what about the marks on the body?”

  “I found a subcutaneous bruise just above the collarbone when I peeled back the skin on the right side of her neck, and—”

  “Suggestive of someone trying to throttle her?”

  “You’re jumping the gun. I can’t ascertain what happened. And if you will let me continue, I also found a couple of tiny abrasions on her abdomen, a small bruise on one breast, a cut on the back of her left wrist, all trivial.”

  “Suggestive of …?”

  “A word you seem to like, Constable Hirschhausen. Suggestive of ordinary wear and tear from housework or gardening, for all I know, and so, again, ‘unascertainable.’ ”

  I hope that someone, somewhere, is ascertaining something, Hirsch thought. Before he could speak, the pathologist added, “On the other hand, when people die violently—when they shoot themselves, for example—or are in a heightened mental state, they mark or injure themselves. I’ve seen it in cases of anxiety and panic attacks, a need to wrench at upper body clothing, for example.”

  “But you’ve also seen women who have been forcibly manhandled.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t ascertain that that happened in this case?”

  “No.”

  “Anything under her nails?”

  “No.”

  “Recent sexual activity?”

  “No.”

  “What about old injuries?”

  “She’d fractured her wrist at some point in the past.”

  “How? Could someone have bent it back, twisted it?”

  “That I can’t ascertain,” the pathologist said.

  “Toxicology?”

  “Negative.”

  “Underlying medical conditions?”

  “None.”

  “You’ve been a great help,” lied Hirsch.

  NEXT HE CALLED PORT Pirie, the lead detective reciting him the highlights of his report: “ ‘… death consistent with a self-administered gunshot wound with further investigations pending’—meaning that’s as far as we’ll take it. Meaning you’re preparing the brief, so it’s your job to tell the coroner she was nuts. Sorry, balance of her mind was disturbed.”

  “But,” said Hirsch, outlining his buts, concluding with the pathologist’s claim of unascertainable.

  “Exactly. It means foul play can be ruled out.”

  “No,” said Hirsch, “it means that foul play can’t be ruled out. In other words, foul play might be ruled in, if other evidence is found.”

  “Semantics,” the voice from Port Pirie said, “and there is no other evidence.”

  THREE HOURS LATER, SPURLING was standing at the front counter.

  “You rocking the boat, Sunshine?”

  You came all the way down here to ask me that? “Sir?”

  “My detectives can’t see that any further action is needed on Latimer.”

  “So they told me, sir, but I need to be thorough.”

  “Oh, is that it? Do you have evidence of foul play?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “When you do, if you do, I want to hear about it.”

  “Sir.”

  “Meanwhile, do you know a Wendy Street?”

  “I have met her,” Hirsch said carefully.

  “And?”

  “Schoolteacher, nice woman, widow, I think.”

  “Not the troublemaking sort?”

  “I wouldn’t say so, but I don’t really know. Why?”

  “She’s called for a public protest meeting, police bullying in Redruth.”

  “Oh.”

  “Keep your eyes and ears open, all right?”

  “Sir.”

  “And get that bloody windscreen fixed.”

  CHAPTER 22

  FRIDAY MORNING, HIRSCH PARKED outside Redruth Automotive.

  It was a sprawling place a couple of blocks from the motel, and “Automotive” was a catch-all term: you could buy a used car from the dozen tired vehicles in the side yard, fill your tank from one of three bowsers, diesel, unleaded and premium unleaded, get your oil changed or motor tinkered with in the workshop and, in a vast, silvery shed out the back, have your scratches, dents and crumples smoothed over.

  That’s where Hirsch found the boss. “Sergeant Kropp said you’re the man to see about a cracked windscreen,” he said, blinking as he stepped from drenching sunlight into shadows, air laced with chemicals and the stutter and clang of machinery.

  Bernie Judd grunted, muscling past Hirsch to stare at the HiLux. Then he shook his head as if confirming worst fears. “She’s stuffed, mate. Can’t
be repaired. I can replace it for you.”

  He was shorter than Hirsch, older, full of twitches and fury like a man who has sworn off cigarettes and alcohol. He glanced again at the windscreen, critically along each flank of the vehicle, then at his watch, Hirsch’s uniform and finally somewhere past Hirsch’s right ear. Stubby ginger hair on a bumpy scalp, fine gingery hair on his forearms and wrists, gingery freckles, grimy nails. A lopsided face, as though he held contradictory positions at once, condoner and judge.

  “Take long to get one in?” Hirsch asked.

  Judd jerked his head. “Got a good one out the back. Off a wreck, but not a scratch on it.”

  “Done,” Hirsch said. “When?”

  “Got things to do in town? Be ready in a couple of hours.”

  Hirsch handed over the keys. “We’ve been investigating that hit-and-run up at Muncowie. I guess the others have already asked if any vehicle has come in with—”

  “Like I told Nicholson, nothing’s come in.”

  Hirsch nodded philosophically. “Has he been working here for long?”

  “Wouldn’t call it working here. Him and his mate give me a hand now and then.” He glared at Hirsch. “There a law against it?”

  Hirsch shook his head. Plenty of police regulations, though. He peered into the dimness again, at the hoists, paint bays, drums, workbenches and two young and three slightly older men in overalls. The only vehicles in there were a farm ute patched with pink primer, a station wagon with a crumpled tailgate and a Honda he recognized as belonging to Finola Armstrong. “You do small jobs? My own car has a couple of dents.”

  “We do everything. Give you a good price,” Judd said, staring at the silver watch face nestled in the ginger furze surrounding his wrist. “Would this be an insurance job?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly,” Judd said. “Well, bring her in and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Fair enough.” Hirsch turned to go. “Getting back to that hit-and-run: they reckon Melia Donovan was in an accident two or three weeks prior, older boyfriend. Know anything about that?”

  “Not me. See you in a couple of hours.”

  “Wasn’t Nicholson, was it? We were having a laugh the other day how his girlfriend crashed his car only she didn’t have a license so he had to do some quick thinking.”

  A kind of stillness settled in Judd. As if Hirsch hadn’t changed the subject he said, “Give me your mobile number. As soon as we’ve fitted the glass, I’ll give you a bell.”

  HIRSCH WALKED.

  First to a café, where the coffee was tepid and weak, the vanilla slice gluey and the conversations limited to the weather. It was going to be a long, hot summer. Not that anyone asked for Hirsch’s opinion. Customers and staff averted their faces from him. His uniform worked to shut him off, and so, as he sipped and chewed, he tried to imagine how Wendy Street’s public protest meeting might play out. He saw a big room, perhaps in the town hall, with Superintendent Spurling, a public relations inspector, a deputy commissioner and maybe Kropp himself seated at a large table at the head of the room, trying for smiles and patience and genial common sense. But the crowd would not have logic or patience on its side, only heat and hurt. One by one they would stand, awkward men and women who’d felt fine and flashing moments before but now, in the spotlight, tripped over their words and lost the threads of their accusations. A disordered atmosphere, the crowd blurting accusations that trailed into nothing or were overheated or roamed off the point, while Spurling and the others tried to smile and reassure and give everyone a fair go and water it all down with platitudes fed them by the public relations guy.

  Where would Nicholson and Andrewartha be? Seated in the front row, solid and aggrieved, their uniforms too tight on them, their upper bodies so beefy they couldn’t fold their arms with comfort—but wanting to, to show contempt or indifference. Their wives would sit with them, mirror images of their husbands, large, dimly intelligent, stubborn, sulky. Kropp’s wife? She’d be out of sight somewhere.

  Hirsch pushed his plate away. He left the café, strolled around the little square, bought the Advertiser, read it in the rotunda. Barely forty minutes had elapsed. He strolled into an op shop and immediately out again. Why did all op shops have an out of tune radio playing in the background? His fingers had itched to adjust the dial.

  The little hillsides above the square beckoned and he found himself climbing narrow streets between stone walls dating from the 1850s. Jasmine scented the air, dense on back fences, and fake diamonds glinted where the sun struck the adzed stone.

  Then down to Redruth Creek. According to a pamphlet in a plastic stand beside a plaque, huts had appeared along the creek in 1843, when Colonel Frome was surveying the northern reaches of the colony, but there was no town until 1850, when a shepherd, Alfred Tiver, spotted traces of copper oxide in the local stone. South Australia might have foundered if not for the mine. Twenty years later, the shafts were depthless blue pools of water that defeated the pumps, and the Cornish Jacks had migrated to other towns and mines, but not before the hillsides and flatlands had been denuded of trees, the timber consumed by the boilers or staked against the pressing earth deep under the ground.

  “Huh,” said Hirsch.

  He crossed an iron bridge, guided by a map on the back fold of the pamphlet. Here near the bank of Redruth Creek was a square of miners’ cottages with a common area in the middle, tiny tenement houses with undersized doors and windows set in thick blank walls. They didn’t look the least Australian to Hirsch’s eye but straight out of old Cornwall. Tourist accommodation now, according to the pamphlet.

  Finally he followed the map to the museum halfway uphill from the town. It was a converted boiler shed, probably freezing in winter and stifling in summer but not so bad this morning. Upslope from it were great excavations in the hillsides, nude stone remnant walls and chimneys and deeply rusted iron frames and gantries. Hirsch stopped before entering. Below him the town threaded peacefully through the valley folds, a series of peaceful red roofs and oleander bushes. The hillsides looked bare. There was no wind. A hawk floated. There were no people about, no tourists or tourist buses in the car park or hikers approaching along the Heritage Track, which wound through to the mine from the ruins of the colonial-era jail near the creek.

  He stepped into the museum, greeted curtly by an elderly man who turned the pages of a newspaper. The main display was a diorama of the copper mine. Miner’s picks hung on the walls, together with shovels, brass telescopes, spears, boomerangs and woomeras. Old shop mannequins displayed mid-nineteenth-century trousers, jerkins, dresses, bonnets and shawls. Tables were laden with crockery and knotty green and blue glass bottles. Bentwood chairs. Lamps. An 1851 edition of the Adelaide Observer. And several pieces from more recent times: a pedal radio, an inky school desk, photographs of Army volunteers in 1917 and 1942 and of the cricketer Garfield Sobers visiting the primary school in the 1950s. Here and there were glass cabinets crammed with silver napkin rings and sugar bowls, christening gowns and porcelain shepherds. People would move house, or their old back-roads grandfather would die, and the museum would get anything that wasn’t wanted, didn’t work or couldn’t be sold to a secondhand dealer. It wasn’t quite junk and was even halfway interesting, but Hirsch’s interest didn’t stretch past fifteen minutes and he left, aware of the grouchy gaze of the curator, proof the town’s hatred of Kropp and his boys was rubbing off on him.

  HIRSCH WAS SAUNTERING BACK along the main street, draining a bottle of water, when his phone pinged: Yr cars ready.

  He found the HiLux parked on the forecourt of Redruth Automotive, looking dusty and hand-printed with grease but with a spotless new windscreen. He entered the dimness of the panel-beating shed, benign, unprepared for the meaty forefinger that stabbed him in the chest. “Butt out of my business, all right?”

  Nicholson. Hirsch went into a half-crouch.

  Nicholson laughed. “What, you’re going to try karate on me? You a martial a
rts expert now?”

  Hirsch straightened. They were all watching from the shadows, the overalled men and Judd and a young woman he didn’t recognize. Ignoring Nicholson, he said to Judd, “Keys in the ignition?”

  Clearly Judd had called Nicholson and was expecting something else to happen, not this. “Er, yep, good to go.”

  “Don’t fucking turn your back on me,” Nicholson said. “Arsehole, sticking your nose in.”

  Hirsch tried walking toward the sunlight, but Nicholson confronted him, his big paw around the woman’s forearm. “Meet Bree, arsehole. Bree, meet the cunt who dobs in his mates.”

  Hirsch said, “How old are you, Bree?”

  “You prick, you absolute fucking prick.”

  The punch was fast and stone hard, winding Hirsch. He staggered, bent over and, presently, hurled the spring water over the floor and his shoes. He was a good target like that and Nicholson booted his backside.

  “Nick,” wailed the girl, “stop it.”

  Nicholson ignored her, dancing around Hirsch, aiming kicks. “Dog. Maggot. Slime ball. Bree’s nineteen, arsehole. Old enough.”

  Hirsch found a spot of oily floor and sat, his back to the leg of a metal bench. Getting his wind back he said, “Bree, do you have a driver’s license?”

  “What the fuck is this?” screamed Nicholson. “Eh? You nuts? Butt out of my business.”

  The man’s spittle flecked Hirsch’s lapels and face. Hirsch swiped his forearm across his cheeks and mouth, the girl saying, “Nikko, don’t, let’s just go.”

  She does look nineteen, Hirsch thought, taking in the hacked about hair, skinny arms, a tattoo on one shoulder, rings here and there in her poor pink spongy flesh. She wasn’t unlovely, just a young woman cowed by a bully. And he’d seen her before, he realized, serving food at the Woolman on the night of the football final.

  Nicholson loomed over him. “Stay the fuck away from me and my girlfriend and my business, all right?”

  WHEN HIRSCH CLIMBED TO his feet he ached, felt impotent and knew his uniform was a wreck. Judd and his employees had melted away. The air in the shed was superheated and dense and silent and the noon sun, a fat block of it angling a short distance in at the doorway, was lighting up dust motes. Hirsch walked stiffly into that light, out into the fresh air.