by Garry Disher
One of the panel-beaters stood beside the HiLux, dangling the keys. Hirsch expected taunts and contempt but what he got was, “Few things you should know.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Bree’s good people, doesn’t deserve the hassle.”
“I’m not going to hassle her.”
The man nodded. He was narrow-faced, saturnine, slow and deliberate. “But Nicholson’s another matter.”
Hirsch waited. He placed a hand on the hot metal for support. He removed his hand again.
“Him and Andrewartha,” the man said.
“I understand they work here in their spare time.”
“The odd job, yes.”
He was glancing around now as if he had eyes on his back, so Hirsch reached for the keys as if they were not having this discussion. He murmured, “Kropp’s part of it, too?”
“Strictly behind the scenes. I will deny all this.”
“Uh-huh. How much do I owe you?”
“Taken care of. We handle all the police repairs and servicing.”
Hirsch put away his wallet. “Okay.”
He knew enough now. Judd, getting all of the department’s business in the area, probably overcharged and shared the excess with Kropp and his boys. The after-hours work would be cash in hand. And there were always crash scenes in the area, vehicles needing a tow, the police well-placed to advise distressed motorists about Redruth Automotive.
Hirsch nodded his thanks and climbed behind the wheel. The interior was baking hot. “Melia Donovan.”
“What about her?”
“I’ve heard talk of a car crash, an older boyfriend.”
“Can’t help you.”
OR WON’T. BY MID-AFTERNOON Hirsch was back in Tiverton, wielding a hose in the narrow driveway beside the station house. Squirted and swiped, trying to rid the metal of road dust and panel-beaters’ grime. Presently he heard voices, high and sweet, cars and car doors slamming: school was letting out across the road.
He straightened his back to watch. Today, in the midst of spring sunshine and honest physical labor, and surrounded as he’d recently been by sudden death, he wanted reminders of innocence or blamelessness. Some kids were climbing into cars, others were kicking a football around, watched by a teacher who kept glancing at her watch. Then a figure separated from the others. Katie Street. She was coming to see him, he realized. She stopped, looked left and right along the empty highway, and ran across, halting abruptly on the footpath.
“Hello there,” he said, glancing around for her mother.
“Hello.”
“Waiting for your mum?”
Katie looked briefly stricken and confused. Grief, Hirsch realized. Until recently the person who’d dropped her off and picked her up from school most days had been Alison Latimer. Not only that, she’d been a regular visitor at the house across the road. Inevitably a closeness had developed. “Come and wait with me in the yard,” he said.
She entered reluctantly, Hirsch making no big deal of it but turning off the hose and dropping the chamois in the murky bucket beside a back tire. “Would you like a drink? A snack?”
She did what kids do, shrugged elaborately, wanting the treats but not prepared to say so outright.
“I’ve got Coke and Tim Tams.” Left behind by the previous tenant. He hadn’t checked the use-by dates.
“Okay.”
“Stay there.”
He came back with two cans and the packet, both safe to consume. They sat companionably on the front step, where the sun warmed them as the world went by, what there was of it now that most of the parents had come and gone across the road. Hirsch eyed Katie surreptitiously. She chewed, brushed at crumbs, jumped when he crackled his empty can. Not to be outdone, she crackled hers.
Jack Latimer is off school for a while, he thought. Meanwhile, I offer security until her mother arrives to collect her. Or she has something to say.
It came finally, the voice almost a whisper: “I didn’t shoot Alison.”
“Good grief, of course not, no one thinks you did.”
He didn’t have the language or the know-how to explain a suicide to a child. Then again, why shouldn’t she be told? And maybe she had been told. That led him to secondary thoughts: What if Alison Latimer had been shot in her car, then carried to the hut? Or shot in her house, ditto. Or shot at her parents’ house, ditto.
Then Katie was up and running, out onto the footpath. “Mum! Mum!”
Wendy Street had been about to turn into the school when she caught sight of her daughter. She braked, swung the Volvo around and parked at the curb. Gazing hard at Hirsch, she got out, passed around the front of her car and clamped Katie against her thigh. “Hello, darling girl,” she said, eyes busy, taking in the school, the dripping HiLux, the Coke cans and Hirsch, establishing a narrative from the evidence. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Unexpected staff meeting.”
She was inviting an explanation, and Katie sensed that. “I just came over to say hello.”
“Did you.”
“We had a treat. Coca Cola and Tim Tams.”
Wendy shuddered. “Nectar of the gods. Well, I’d better get you home.”
She was watching Hirsch intently, Katie glued to her side. “I understand you’ll be briefing the coroner.”
Hirsch acknowledged that he was, adding, “It would help if I could have a word with you sometime.”
“Come for dinner,” Katie said.
Her mother, nonplussed, recovered and said, “There you have it. Dinner. Six thirty—country hours.”
CHAPTER 23
COUNTRY FOOD: LAMB CHOPS and vegetables.
Then at eight thirty, Katie in bed, they talked, Hirsch in an armchair, Wendy on the sofa, separated by a heavy rug on polished floorboards. Bookshelves to waist height lined three walls, with photographs, prints and one watercolor arranged in the spaces above. No television—that sat in a sunroom at the back of the house. Hirsch checked the book titles: biographies, photography, art, travel and a mix of good and crap fiction. No cookbooks, and none that he’d seen in the kitchen, thank the lord above. Vases, a couple of small brass gods from some trip to Southeast Asia.
Street was watching. An ironic flicker in her face and voice she said, “Pass muster?”
Hirsch gave her a faint grin. “Nice room.”
“For an interrogation.”
“A chat.”
“A chat,” Wendy said, and stretched her limbs and arranged herself along the length of the sofa. Hirsch was pretty sure she was having fun with him. Her gaze was sleepy with a hint of humor.
“Fire away.”
Hirsch took a breath. “The popular consensus is that Mrs. Latimer committed suicide.”
Wendy Street dropped her mild smartarse act. She swung upright, tears filling her eyes, a faint glistening in the dim light of the floor lamp beside her. “Can’t we call her Alison?”
“Sure.”
“And as far as I’m concerned, she didn’t kill herself.”
Hirsch shifted in his chair. “You were close?”
“Katie and I moved here four years ago and I met her pretty much straight away. We became friends. Walking distance from each other, and I think she was lonely.”
“What can you tell me about her? Her health. Moods.”
“I know what you’re getting at. Look, now and then she complained of stiffness in her hand, maybe arthritis, and she said the wind turbines got to her, especially at night when an easterly wind was blowing. She’d wake up in shock with her heart pounding, she said, and suffered from sleep deprivation.”
Hirsch thought of his own reaction to the turbines. “I had a strange feeling when I stood by one of the turbines the other day. Like I was seasick.”
“Yet other people aren’t affected. Katie and I sleep like babes. Which is not to deny what you and Allie felt. There’s anecdotal evidence of a syndrome due to the noise and low-frequency soundwaves.”
“Her husband and sons weren’t affected?”
“No. But her mother-in-law was. These wind farms have split families and split communities. Ray and his father were dead set on getting turbines on the property and were angry when the company decided on Finola Armstrong’s place instead.”
“This syndrome: Could it have affected Alison so much that she’d take her own life?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“I can’t overlook the fact that she made a previous suicide attempt.”
“Look, when I first met her, Allie was timid and hesitant, but she opened up gradually and admitted things weren’t great in her marriage and that she felt depressed. She’d have panic attacks and heart arrhythmia, get very down sometimes. I suggested she should speak to her doctor about going on anti-depressants, but she shied away from that. I think she was scared her husband would find out. Then about a year ago she was found with a gun as if she intended to shoot herself.”
“Did she ever talk of suicide to you?”
“She told me once she wished she could end it all. At the time I thought she meant she wanted to get out of the marriage. I still think that. I don’t think she was saying she wanted to kill herself.”
“Why didn’t she just leave? Ask for a divorce?”
“The boys, I suppose. And she was afraid, had no skills to speak of, no money, and there are no jobs for an unskilled woman her age around here.”
“But she did walk out a couple of times, went to stay with her parents?”
Wendy struggled with her throat, trying to swallow. “Once late last year, and again last week.”
“What did her husband do or say? Her father-in-law, for that matter?”
“I don’t know. But Ray did say to her, all the time, ‘The only way you’ll leave here is in a box.’ ”
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
The statement sat there between them. “Did he hit her? Did you see evidence of it or did she ever mention it?”
“No, but she’d hold herself stiffly sometimes. Did the autopsy find any unexplained bruises on her body?”
Hirsch knew he didn’t have to answer that. “No.”
“I’m surprised. But let’s say he had hit her in the past. What was she going to do about it? She couldn’t report him to the police: he’s mates with them. Footie club mates, what’s more.”
Hirsch said carefully, “And you don’t have a high opinion of the Redruth police even if Mr. Latimer didn’t have ties to them.”
She shrugged. “They’re bullies.” Then her face altered, sharpened. “It can’t hurt to tell you: I intend to call a public meeting about them—a protest meeting.”
Hirsch said slowly, “Okay.”
“I’ve been in touch with your superintendent.”
Hirsch said, “Good.”
She squinted at him, not satisfied, as if she suspected he already knew, so to deflect her he said, “How was Alison this past week? She left home again, like before, but did she seem downhearted about it?”
“The opposite. I can’t describe it, upbeat, even elated, as if her eyes had been opened. She was going to ask for a divorce.”
She hadn’t been upbeat the day Hirsch met her but like a doll, stiff, cold, alien, powerless. He’d been in uniform, however, so she probably distrusted him, saw him as siding with Kropp, her husband, anyone who might want to put a halter on her.
“Did she tell you she’d come into an inheritance?”
“Of course. She knew it wasn’t enough to buy a house in the city, but was enough to buy time somewhere, get settled, look for a job. Breathing space money. Running away money.”
“Did her husband know about it?”
“Motive, right?”
“You tell me.”
“He knew.”
A child’s troubled cough floated down the hallway. Wendy stiffened, head cocked, ready to take to her feet. There was no follow-up cough. She relaxed again, gave Hirsch a crooked smile, and said, “The Latimers are rich, right?”
Hirsch nodded cautiously. “They appear to be.”
“Exactly,” Wendy said. “Appear to be. But it’s all tied up in land and equipment. The Latimers are big spenders. The biggest and best tractor, the biggest and best shearing shed, the biggest and best stud ram.”
“Alison told you this?”
“It’s common knowledge.”
“What did Alison say about it?”
“She told me there was never enough household spending money. Always plenty for a new truck or another parcel of land, but she was never allowed to spend anything on the house. The fridge was on its last legs, the carpet needed replacing, the curtains had been there since the year dot. It did her no good to complain or beg. She said her father-in-law was a real control freak. He’d go through her supermarket receipts and ask why hadn’t she bought no-brand tissues, why such expensive shampoo …”
“Ray put up with it?”
“Everyone did. Of course, Ray’s been learning at his father’s knee. He’s like his dad, bad-tempered, a heavy drinker, a tyrant at home. Rarely has, had, a kind word for Allie. He used to snap his fingers to get her attention.”
“I know the type.”
Wendy shuffled forward on the sofa. “Look, everyone sees Ray as the life and soul of the party, community-spirited, an all-round good bloke. But in private it’s a different story. Allie said he could be quite cold and indifferent to her side of the family, and he’d barely talk to her or the kids except to lay down the law.”
Hirsch pictured Raymond Latimer standing over his sons and his small-boned wife, weaving threats around their ears, his voice low and insinuating when it wasn’t raised, his big fingers twisting and flicking. The image came on strongly and felt real. “The other day Jack seemed frightened that I’d tell his father he’d been shooting the rifle.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Do you think Ray hits his sons?”
“According to Allie, no. But he yells and browbeats them, especially Craig. You should hear him at football matches. The parent from hell.”
“Everything comes back to football.”
Hirsch said it lightly, but Wendy wasn’t amused. “Football, cricket, tennis, in that order. And because Tiverton’s too small to field its own teams, the locals gravitate to Redruth.” She shot Hirsch a mirthless grin. “And that’s how Ray Latimer became pals with your sergeant.”
Hirsch returned the grin.
“The thing is,” she said, “Ray was a district champion when he was young. A city team was going to sign him up. But he hurt his knee and the big dream came to nothing. Now he’s trying to relive it through Craig. He keeps pushing the poor kid, but Craig’s hopeless at sport, quite uncoordinated, and his heart’s not in it. I bet he wishes he were still at boarding school where Ray can’t bully him.”
Hirsch noted that. “Boarding school?”
Another grin devoid of humor. “The official line is, Craig was homesick, but they pulled him out to save on school fees.”
“We keep returning to money.”
“Don’t we. I think there was money, a generation or two ago, but Leonard and Ray have spent it all, there have been droughts, costs have risen, incomes have fallen …”
Echoing what Ray Latimer had told Hirsch. “Apparently they owe money here and there,” he said, thinking of the Tiverton shopkeeper.
“I’m not surprised.”
Hirsch tried to see all the angles, feel the atmosphere in the Latimer household. “So Craig was taken out of boarding school and now he’s at Redruth High.”
“Yes.”
“How does he feel about that?”
“I see him in the yard and the corridors, looking lost and miserable. I’ve tried to talk to him, but he avoids me. Ray’s influence, probably. I’m not kosher, a bad influence, a pinko, feminist rabblerouser who might put ideas in his head like I did Alison.”
Hirsch gave her a crooked grin. “How does Craig get to school?”
“Hah! Exactly. Here I am,
just across the road, willing and able, but he takes the bus.”
“And life for Jack?”
“His bad foot saves him from the worst of it. He was never going to be a football champion. But I imagine he’s just as browbeaten as Craig.”
They fell silent. Hirsch said, “Tell me more about Ray.”
“Well, he’s a Latimer.”
“Meaning?”
“The Latimer men have a certain reputation. The moment I moved in here Leonard dropped by to introduce himself, welcome me to the district. That’s nice, I thought, until he backed me up against the fridge and touched my boobs and wondered if I got lonely with no man in my life.”
“What did you do?”
“Shoved him away, told him I’d report him to the police, to which he replied, ‘Good luck with that,’ and I’ve had little to do with him since.”
Hirsch bit his lip. “If you don’t mind my asking, is Katie’s father …?”
“Died. Car crash.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged but she also blinked. “Anyway, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Before long, Ray made his move. Ray favors a more subtle approach. He likes the double entendre, the insinuation, the accidental shoulder or finger or groin contact. I’m expecting Craig to have a go next.” She waved one arm agitatedly. “Sorry, scrub that.”
Hirsch said, “Did, or does, Ray put the move on other women?”
“Is that a trick question? Everyone knows about Saturday night.”
Hirsch held his palm up. “Country grapevine. Put it this way: Has he been at it for a while? Did Alison know about Finola Armstrong or his other women, if any?”
“Ray would taunt her. He’d stay out all night, come home without showering, take or make phone calls and not bother to hide what it was about.”
“A sweetheart,” Hirsch said. He tried to find his way into his next question. “What’s your take on Finola Armstrong?”
“Well, it’s easy to condemn someone, isn’t it? I don’t like her much, but that has nothing to do with her sleeping with Ray Latimer. I just don’t warm to her. Too hard-edged and pragmatic. If it doesn’t involve the seasons or the harvest or stock prices, she’s got nothing to say for herself. But she is a widow, after all. She was left with a farm to run and has made a success of it.”