by Garry Disher
Another shrug.
“But a bit wild, right?”
“I tried to look out for her.”
“Like a brother.”
“She’s just a kid. She was just a kid.”
“Old enough, Sam. So you looked out for her. What about Nathan and his mother? Shouldn’t they have been looking out for her?”
“What can they do? I got more … I got more contacts and that. I go all over. The car and that. I hear things.”
“Was it hard keeping your relationship with Melia a secret from her brother and her mother?”
Hempel’s jaw dropped. “What? What relationship?”
“She infuriated you sometimes? Wouldn’t do what you wanted? There was a bruise on her face dating from before she was killed.”
“Fuck you. I never hit her, never touched her. I can tell ya who did.”
“Maybe she hit her head when she was in your car? Was that it?”
Sam got out of the chair, no longer an unlovely ten-year-old boy in disguise. “I never done nothing to Melia.”
“Sit down,” Hirsch said in his whiplash voice.
Sam collapsed.
“Sam, were you the older boyfriend I’ve been hearing about?”
“What? No way.”
“All right, try this. You kept an eye out. You know who she spent time with. Boyfriends, girlfriends.”
“That’s right.”
“You saw her with an older man.”
“Yep.”
“Well, who, Sam?”
“That magistrate bloke, Coulter.”
“Really? You know who he is?”
“Sure.”
“How did Melia get involved with him?”
“She got done for shoplifting.”
“He was the sitting magistrate?”
“Yeah.”
“She caught his eye?”
“S’pose.”
“They went out together?”
“You could say that.”
“What would you say?”
“He took her to parties and that.”
“Anywhere else? A film, a restaurant, the pub …”
“She was fifteen. How’s he gunna do that?”
Hirsch nodded. “I had this girlfriend once, told me I wasn’t good enough for her, wasn’t making enough money, and who’d want to go out with a cop anyway?”
Hempel chewed on that. “You saying she said that to me?”
“Did she? Told you about her rich boyfriend, rubbed your face in it?”
“No.”
“It can get under your skin, that kind of knowledge. No wonder you followed her around.”
“I was lookin’ out for her. Nothin’ filthy like you’re suggesting.”
“You saw her with Coulter a few times, or only once?”
“Few times.”
“He must be what, thirty years older than her?”
Sam shrugged.
“But loaded, right? Big house, flash car.”
“I’m gunna get an apprenticeship,” Sam said, as if announcing a path to riches.
“So you were hurt that she chose a rich man over you?”
“No, I’m just sayin’, he’s no better than me. Least I never killed no one.”
Hirsch would come back to that. “Did she ever reveal to you, or anyone else, that she was involved with David Coulter?”
“Dunno. Prob’ly Gemma.”
“Did she ever tease you about the affair?”
Hempel twisted about in his chair. “Tease me? Nah. Why? When I told her she was makin’ a big mistake she told me to mind me own business, but that’s all.”
“What kind of big mistake?”
“I go, the guy’s a creep, Mel, he’s using you, he’ll hurt you, you’re not careful.” A shake of the head. “Sure enough …”
“Did Nathan ever go with you when you followed Melia?”
“Like I said, he’s a magnet to the Redruth cops.”
Hirsch checked the recorder again. “Was Melia by herself when she saw Coulter, or did Gemma Pitcher accompany her sometimes?”
“Gemma was there a coupla times. Why?”
“How did it work? Gemma recruited Melia? Melia recruited Gemma? Or maybe Coulter recruited Gemma, who recruited Melia, or vice versa?”
“What are you on about?”
“The sex parties.”
Hempel floundered, opened and closed his mouth. “Sex parties?”
“I have reason to believe that Gemma and Melia took part in sex parties with several men.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that. Explains a lot, though.”
“Explains what?”
“Melia come running out of this house with nothing on, all upset, and—”
Hirsch held up a hand. “I need details for the tape. Date, location, times …”
Hempel swallowed and started again. “It was the night she was killed.”
“Where.”
“This house outside Redruth.”
“Coulter’s?”
“Don’t think so. He lives over in Clare.”
“You followed her and—”
“Coulter took Mel and Gemma to this house. I was watching, and then Melia come runnin’ out, no clothes on, in a real mess.”
“In what way a mess?”
“Cryin’ and that.”
“Where were you?”
“Behind this hedge thing.”
“Not in your car?”
“Mel would reckernize it so I parked in the next street.”
“Not peering through windows?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“So you were watching and she came running out in distress. What did you do?”
“Happened so quick, I was gunna go and help her but Coulter come out. He was ropeable. He sees her runnin’ down the street and he gets in his car and runs her down.”
The silence ticked. Hirsch said, “Was it deliberate, do you think?”
“He was pretty pissed off.”
“What happened then? Did anyone come out to see? Did you show yourself?”
“Me? No way. Bloody Coulter puts Melia in the boot and drives off.”
“It was definitely Coulter.”
“I reckernized him. I reckernized his car.”
Hirsch looked at Hempel intently. “Were there other cars parked at the house?”
“Sure.”
“Whose, do you know?”
“Sure.”
“Perhaps you could tell me, Sam,” Hirsch said, exquisitely patient.
“There was like Dr. McAskill’s Mercedes. There was this white Lexus, Ian Logan’s, and a silver one, that real estate guy. The Latimers in their Range Rover. Plus two BMWs—I didn’t know who they were—and this Chrysler.”
“Go back a bit: The Latimers? Both of them?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam said. He chortled. “And was Ray Latimer in big trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, his wife was there, wasn’t she?”
“At the party?”
Sam gave Hirsch a pitying look. “No, watchin’ the place, like me.”
“Behind another hedge?”
Hempel shook his head. “Parked up the road a bit.”
Motive, Hirsch thought. “Tell me about the Chrysler.”
“Dunno who drove it. From New South, but.”
“It was a New South Wales car?”
“Yeah. Big black thing.”
“Let’s go back to Melia Donovan. Coulter drove off with her in the boot of his car.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do?”
“I wasn’t gunna stick around.”
“What time was this?”
“I dunno, late, midnight, maybe.”
“Sam, when we found Melia, she was fully dressed.”
He shrugged. “Come runnin’ out starkers but had all her gear with her.”
Hirsch pictured it, the empty road in the moonlight, clumsy hands dressing a limp body befor
e throwing it into a ditch. “Can you think of a reason why David Coulter would drive all the way up to Muncowie to dump the body?”
“Easy. I live there. Me mum does, I mean.”
Hirsch closed his eyes. For want of a few key questions, he thought. And when he’d asked Leanne Donovan if she knew of anyone in her daughter’s life from Muncowie, why hadn’t she mentioned Sam Hempel?
Because her mind works literally, he decided. Sam was her son’s friend, not her daughter’s. “But what’s the connection? What’s it got to do with Coulter that you live there, or you did?”
“To frame me, what else?”
Makes sense, of a kind, Hirsch thought. If you were sick and devious. Melia told Coulter about Sam. Probably shared a laugh with him over the sad boy who had a crush on her.
“Saddle up: we’re going for a drive.”
THEY TOOK SAM’S CAR. The wrong people might know Hirsch’s own car, and certainly the HiLux Hirsch drove. The Commodore was difficult to start and it stalled a few times and took a while to reach 90 km/h, at which speed it shook to pieces, so Hirsch backed off to 85. His seat sagged; dope, cigarette and beer odors clung to the fabrics, leaching out with body heat. A sun-faded dog nodded its head on the dashboard, the steering wheel belonged on a racing car and the fuel gauge didn’t work. Take your hands off the wheel and the car drifted to the right. Correction: leapt to the right.
“Nice wheels.”
“Piece a crap,” Sam said.
Down the long, shallow valley between hills and crops to Redruth. The road shimmered. Hirsch had never seen so many mirages before this bush posting. A farmer stood in a corner of his wheat, rubbing a grain head between his palms speculatively, and then they were past and trundling along, waiting for the next little bit of rural business. “Soon be harvest time,” Hirsch said, as if he knew.
Sam’s bottom jaw peeled away from the top. It was entirely possible that he’d lived here all his life and had no sense of its patterns. A Pioneer bus passed, another farmer, this one kicking at a clod of dirt, crows along a wire, some dust out there in the blue-smudge hills.
Then they were passing through Redruth, Hempel directing Hirsch out past the motel and up a side street that became a dirt road leading up into one of the town’s many hills. Over a rise, Hempel saying, “That one.”
A little collection of newer houses far apart, semi-farmland, small garden sheds, clumps of ornamental and native trees and a couple of reedy ponds, mostly mud now. The house Sam indicated had a sign on a lean in unmown grass, FOR SALE: VENN REALTY.
That made sense.
The house itself was sizable, a pale brick structure about twenty years old, a little outmoded but solid, roomy, semi-secluded.
Hedges and shrubs.
Hirsch stopped the car. “Where were you hiding?”
Sam pointed. The hedge was a bulky stripe of dark green along the eastern flank of the house.
“And Mrs. Latimer?”
A gateway fifty meters west.
“You recognized her car, or did you actually see her?”
“Both.”
“Did she see you?”
“Dunno. Don’t think so.”
“She didn’t go inside, remonstrate with her husband?”
“What?”
“Sam, did she get out of the car and go into the house?”
“Not while I was there.”
Spied on her husband, and a day or two later had gone to live with her parents. And a few days after that had died. Been killed. Had she had it out with Ray? I saw you. I know what you’re up to.
“Where was the Chrysler?”
Sam pointed to the driveway, a grand sweep of gravel. “They were all parked along there.”
“A big black Chrysler with New South Wales plates.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, rattling off the number.
CHAPTER 31
WITH SAM HEMPEL IN Adelaide, safe in the hands of Croome and DeLisle, Hirsch turned the car around and headed back to Tiverton. A five-hour round-trip. The afternoon shadows striped the crops, the highway, the hillsides. More birds on more wires. An air of waiting, of things drying, turning to dust.
It was late afternoon before he could begin tracking the black Chrysler. Called the New South Wales vehicle registry first, and was informed that the car belonged to one Daryl Metcalfe, a Broken Hill address. One fine for speeding, but not in the Chrysler.
Next Hirsch contacted the main Broken Hill police station, jumping through various hoops before anyone would talk to him.
“That car was reported stolen.”
The logical question was, “By Pullar and Hanson?”
“What? No. Same kind of car, sure, but Pullar and Hanson haven’t set foot in Broken Hill to the best of my knowledge. Plus their Chrysler was found burnt out near Townsville, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, so …”
“So the car you’re asking about was reported stolen here last week.”
Last week? Hirsch tried to digest that. “Who reported it?”
Hirsch heard the clicking of keys. “Woman called Sandra Chatterton.”
“According to the DMV it’s owned by a Daryl Metcalfe.”
“You have done your homework,” the Broken Hill cop said. “Chatterton is Metcalfe’s daughter. She was looking after house and car while her father was overseas for six months.”
That ruled Metcalfe out. But what other men did Chatterton have in her life?
Or maybe no one borrowed the car—Chatterton was another Gemma Pitcher and Melia Donovan.
“If it’s the same car,” Hirsch said, “someone was driving it in my neck of the woods back in September.”
“And that’s significant how?”
“A suspicious death.” Hirsch thought about it and said, “Two suspicious deaths.”
“Want us to look into it?”
“Have to clear it with my boss who will talk to your boss,” Hirsch said.
AT SIX THE NEXT morning, Hirsch was in his Nissan, heading north along the Barrier Highway. No doubt he was breaching regulations, wearing his uniform and doing police work across the border, but he was pretty much fed up these days. Plus it might be days, weeks before requests moved through official channels, and the uniform would lend him some clout when he questioned Metcalfe and his daughter.
Three and a half hours, 350 kilometers, across an ochre landscape, under a vast sky. Eagles, stone chimneys silhouetted, an inclination to stone and grit, not dirt. Stone reefs, and smudges that were bluebush, saltbush, mallee scrub and lone demented ewes. A hawk diving, a crow watching. Road trains, trucks, cars and also emptiness ahead and behind, other than the shimmering lakes that dematerialized as the highway slipped beneath him, as the car ate up the kilometers. Hirsch didn’t like any of it, exactly, but it felt less alien than it had when he first set foot out here. Not home, exactly, but a place vaguely familiar to him.
He’d never been to Broken Hill. It was both modern and old, bright and dull, smaller and richer and shabbier than he’d imagined. Plenty of dusty 4WDs and older sedans and station wagons on streets named for the mining industry: Gypsum, Garnet, Argent, Silica, Calcite … Not a lot of green in the garden beds but local colors: dusty reds and greys and olives. A baking noon sun.
METCALFE LIVED IN A low burnt-brick house with a blinding, unpainted, corrugated iron roof, mostly dead garden and empty carport. He was about fifty, a vigorous widower looking for some meaning in his life—or so Hirsch supposed, hearing him explain why he’d taken long service leave to spend six months working for a United Nations outfit in sub-Saharan Africa.
“My field’s water: conservation, drainage, irrigation, wellsinking …”
“Uh-huh,” said Hirsch. “And Sandra looked after the place while you were away?”
“She lives here,” Metcalfe said, glancing at his daughter with a level of sadness.
They were side by side on a huge green leather sofa, sinking into it, you’d struggle to get out. Chatterton was a pixie, a wisp
, very thin, her black hair cropped to a cap around her skull. Jeans, a scrap of T-shirt that showed her pale stomach. She looked no more than twenty, but Hirsch knew she was twenty-seven.
He smiled at her. “Someone pinched your dad’s car just before he got back last week?”
She nodded, and Hirsch wondered if she didn’t trust her voice.
Metcalfe patted her knee while watching Hirsch with suspicion. “Why are the South Australia police interested?”
Hirsch kept it vague. “A car matching the description was seen in the vicinity of an incident in the Redruth area.”
“Wasn’t me,” Chatterton whispered.
Hirsch wondered about the surname. She took her mother’s name? She was married? “I’m not suggesting it was you, I just need to eliminate the car.”
“Consider it eliminated,” Metcalfe said. “Sandy wouldn’t have taken it out.”
He had a sweet, benighted face, a large strong frame and sun-scorched skin. He’d probably never committed a crime in his life. The daughter was a different matter: Chatterton was full of methamphetamine twitches, sensations crawling under her skin. A malnourished wraith beside her big father, and not prepared to meet Hirsch’s gaze.
“Sandy, what day did you discover the car was missing?”
“Tuesday, when I got home from work.”
“She does odd jobs for the council,” Metcalfe said.
“And you came home Wednesday?” Hirsch asked him.
“That’s right.”
“You reported it to the police, Sandy?”
She jiggled, blinked and managed a nod. Metcalfe patted her knee fondly, but there was tightness in him. “She’s a good girl,” he said. “But she’s had a rough trot these past few years. Husband used to knock her around. Health issues.”
Like addiction. She was barely holding it together and Hirsch thought she might fracture if he pushed. He smiled a smile that said he understood and hadn’t come to judge. What he wanted to say was: “You sold your dad’s car to buy drugs, right?”
Instead he said, “Did the neighbors see anything?”
Sandra Chatterton shook her head violently.
“Not her fault,” Metcalfe said.
The stress was there in his voice, as if he feared the sky would fall in if he didn’t hold it up, and he’d been holding it up for years and years and one day it would fall in, despite his best efforts. He rested his solid hand on his daughter’s knee and, in his eyes, deeply recessed in their sockets, was pain.