Bitter Wash Road (33 page)

‘Of course it’ll help, I’m not an idiot. I’ve got two mouths to feed and no one to help me.’

‘What were your thoughts when you heard about the inheritance?’

Latimer looked dumb. ‘Nothing much.’

‘Well, did you think it would save the farm from ruin? Did you fear it would give your wife a measure of independence, give her the nerve to leave you? That wouldn’t look too good, would it? Make you look a bit of a fool?’

‘I don’t have to listen to this. Why don’t you just shove off and leave us alone.’

‘What time did you and Mrs Armstrong go to Redruth the weekend your wife died?’

‘In time for the footy. And I was with her until I got arrested. And I was in the lockup when Allie died, okay?’

Then Latimer’s face altered, a look almost of glee. ‘Where are you going with this? You looking at Finola?’

‘She’s in the clear. But why are you pointing me at her? As far as you’re concerned, your wife committed suicide.’

‘That’s what I think, yeah. If you’d had to live here with her, it’s what
you’d
think, too. But for some reason you’ve got it in for my father and me, probably talking to that bitch across the road.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m indulging you, it amuses me.’

‘Did you break your wife’s hand one day, Mr Latimer? Bend her fingers back? Slam it in the car door?’

‘Fucking get out.’

Hirsch thought about it. He could have gone home to talk to the furniture again. Instead, he said, ‘Mr Latimer, where’s the second twenty-two rifle?’

He pointed to the gun cabinet on the wall.

‘What?’

‘You have two rifles like that: the one that killed your wife and one other.’

‘What, you checking on my licences?’

‘A Ruger and a Brno. Where’s the other one? In the ute? The shed?’

‘Fucked if I know. Why?’

‘Because your son is unravelling and might decide to shoot himself. Or you.’

That got Latimer going.

They didn’t find the rifle in the ute, the sheds, the car, cupboards, wardrobes, under beds. That left one room still unsearched.

Craig Latimer was curled up on his bed, a damp, blotchy, unlovely lump of a boy, his meaty spine turned to them. Latimer sat, placed a big hand on an unresponsive shoulder. ‘Son? Where’s the twenty-two we keep in the ute?’

Craig rolled onto his back. ‘I dunno.’

‘You haven’t been taking pot-shots at tin cans?’

‘Not me! Jack.’

Latimer gaped. ‘Jack?’

‘Him and Katie Street.’

Hirsch stepped in. ‘Craig, where is your brother?’

‘Staying with Allies parents,’ Ray Latimer answered.

‘Would he have taken the rifle with him?’

Craig scoffed. ‘Nanna wouldn’t let it in the house.’

‘Perhaps your mum hid it.’

‘Why would the bitch hide it?’ Craig said.

After a moment, Hirsch said, ‘Did your father teach you to talk about her like that? Perhaps she hid it because it wasn’t being kept in a secure place.’

He left, stewing. The thing was, none of the Latimers could have killed Alison. They hated her enough, though. Given an opportunity to sweeten the memory, they hadn’t taken it.

~ * ~

29

ON A SUNDAY afternoon in late November when Hirsch was washing the HiLux again, maintaining standards, feeling stiff from yesterday’s tennis, a new white Camry with Victorian plates entered town from the south. It slowed outside Tennant’s store, braking next to the petrol bowser. A young man got out, rattled the nozzle. Hirsch knew Tennant locked it overnight and on Sundays and public holidays. Then the driver peered through the shop window, into the shadowy, closed, unlit interior. A young woman joined him. They pantomimed dejection, but that didn’t last: now they were looking around for a way out of their dilemma. And there was Hirsch a short distance away, a hose in his hand, the police sign above his door. They climbed back into the Camry.

A moment later they were parked at the kerb and stepping onto his lawn. Hirsch released the spray-gun trigger, dropped the hose, wiped his palms on his jeans and thought
backpackers.
The clue was in the backpacks propped up like a pair of passengers on the back seat. Northern European? Tall, blonde, lithe, sun-browned, clear-eyed, quizzical, fearless—on just about every count they were not locals.

‘We are not having benzene,’ the boy said, his teeth white and straight. Board shorts, faded T-shirt, craft-market sandals.

‘Petrol,’ Hirsch said.

The girl said, ‘This is so. Pet-rol.’

She was as tall as her boyfriend, vital, athletic, with cropped hair, tight shorts and a singlet top. Hirsch fell in love on the spot. Looks plus vitality plus accent.

‘The shop’s closed, I’m afraid.’

‘We must be in Port Augusta for the famous Ghan and Pichi Richi trains,’ the girl said, mangling the words charmingly.

Hirsch had a mental stab at their movements. A few weeks or months travelling around and across the continent, hitchhiking, taking buses and trains, maybe some fruit picking, bartending and waitressing along the way. Hiring a car occasionally, like this Hertz Camry. The Ghan ran from Adelaide, with a stop at Port Augusta, three thousand kilometres to the Timor Sea. But first, it seemed, they wanted to ride the old Pichi Richi train, a rickety little rattler that travelled a short distance near Port Augusta. He supposed there was a Hertz agency there where they could return the car.

‘Please can you help us? The next town is too far for us and the last town is too far also. We are not having the petrol for these journeys.’

Hirsch thought this was something they didn’t prepare you for when they posted you to a one-man police station in the bush. He made a mental note to stock some emergency fuel. A jerrycan of unleaded, one of diesel. Man of the people. Who...? he thought.

Bob Muir.

‘I can take you to someone who might have some petrol.’

‘
Dank
.’

Dutch? He squeezed in with the backpacks and directed them to the street where the Muirs and the Donovans lived.

Yvonne Muir answered. Eyeing the Camry and its occupants, quivering to know, she said, ‘Bob’s next door, setting up Leanne’s new TV.’

Hirsch paused at the Camry to explain, and walked across the grass to the Donovans’. Leanne opened the door, looking red-eyed, uncombed, a little askew in battered Crocs, tracksuit pants and T-shirt. She blinked at Hirsch, said, ‘Sorry, haven’t had a shower yet,’ and led Hirsch through to her sitting room, where she collapsed into an armchair. A mug of tea steamed on stool beside it, a cigarette burned in a saucer.

‘Bob,’ Hirsch said, nodding at Muir, who was kneeling on the floor beside a wall opposite Leanne’s armchair, a screwdriver sticking out of the rear pocket of his overalls.

Muir nodded, said ‘G’day,’ and returned to his task. He’d run coaxial cable along the skirting board to a large flat-screen television, which had replaced the boxy set Hirsch recalled from his first visit. The old TV sat with its face to the wall with a coil of old ribbon cable, disgraced and ready for recycling. Ready for the rubbish tip, anyway.

The air was dense: both Muir and Leanne had cigarettes going. Hirsch wanted to cough, wave the smoke away, open a window. ‘Need to ask a favour.’

Muir, still on his knees, produced a Swiss Army knife, took up the cable end. He peeled back a couple of centimetres of black outer casing, revealing the inner sheath, core and copper wire. ‘Shoot,’ he said.

Hirsch told him about the backpackers.

Muir grunted. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. The last bloke always had a couple of drums on hand, one unleaded, one diesel.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Hirsch said.

‘Go down the side of my place to the shed and you’ll find a ten-litre jerrycan. There’s a drum of unleaded against the back wall. How about I let them have twenty litres? Fifty bucks oughta cover it.’

‘Thanks, Bob.’

Hirsch stepped over to the TV. ‘You won’t know yourself with this, Leanne.’

She smiled, tired, sad, thankful for small mercies. ‘Present from Sam.’

‘Nathan’s mate?’ said Hirsch, running his hand over the smooth plastic. ‘Generous of him.’

‘He won it at the pub. Doesn’t need it.’

‘Wish someone would give me a new TV,’ Hirsch said, peering into the gap between the rear panel and the wall. ‘All I’ve got is a little portable, lucky to get one channel, depending on the weather.’

There was nothing to say to that. Muir was fastening a connector to the cable end, ready for the antenna socket. Leanne continued to watch him. Hirsch left them to it.

~ * ~

When the backpackers were
gone and Bob had his fifty dollars—’Do I get a commission?’ ‘How about a second channel on your TV?’ ‘Done.’—Hirsch opened up the office and hunted through the burglary reports, going back one year. Then he walked across to the Tiverton Hotel: like the Muncowie pub on the outside but more appealing within. Dining room, main bar, side lounge, dartboard, snooker table, widescreen TV and no old-timers nursing beer.

And no raffle, not recently. Last Christmas, maybe? Always a ham at Christmas.

So Hirsch phoned a few other pubs in the area. Muncowie, Redruth. No raffles offering a TV set.

It occurred to Hirsch that he didn’t know where Nathan’s mate Sam lived, and asking around would only alert the guy. But he did know where they both worked.

~ * ~

AT
EIGHT ON MONDAY MORNING he walked across town to Tiverton Grains, a collection of storage and processing sheds around a huge untidy yard, run out of a cottage on a side street. Racked with sneezes, he entered the main shed, a vast echo chamber, almost empty but for a few pallets, jute bags and nameless items of equipment. Thick air, thick with grain dust. Seeing no one, hearing a truck motor and voices in the back yard, he continued through to a metal door in the back wall, stepping from dimness and scratchy air to drenching sunlight. The yard was a depressed expanse of fuel drums, rusted machinery and dead weeds next to a broad patch of oily dirt that served as employee parking. Four cars this morning, including Sam Hempel’s lowered Commodore.

Hirsch headed across to an open tin structure against the back fence, a service bay. Inside it, nose out, was a grain truck, two overalls peering into the engine compartment. One of them saying, ‘Give her another go.’

The motor ground over, didn’t fire. With the bonnet up, Hirsch couldn’t see who was behind the steering wheel but he said, ‘Morning, gents,’ as he approached.

Sam Hempel and an older man straightened, turned. ‘Help you?’ the older man said.

Hirsch drew incautiously nearer. When he said, ‘I’d like a quick word with Sam,’ Hempel spun round, punched him in the stomach and legged it, waving his hand in the air and yelping, ‘Ow, fuck,’ as he ran.

‘Jesus, mate, sorry, don’t know what got into him,’ the older man said, touching Hirsch as if he might bite, not sure what to do.

Hirsch, sucker-punched twice in as many months, was bent double and gasping. He straightened and took off at a tormented shuffle, stomach muscles pulling. He followed the kid past the abandoned machinery and drums to the four employee cars. Hempel had vanished. Hirsch prowled between the vehicles, looking behind, under and into them, itching to look into the boot of the lowered Holden.

A whisper of cardboard or plywood against fabric, a soft booming sound, a sense of items shifting, compressing.

The rubbish skip.

Hirsch banged his fist against the metal flank. ‘Sam? Come on out of there.’

After a while, ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Not going to happen and you know it.’

Hirsch waited. The morning was warm and still, the sun edging above the gums that marked the boundary between the town and the first wheat paddock. A vapour trail disintegrated as he watched it. Adelaide to Perth? Adelaide to Alice Springs or Darwin? He thought of the Dutch backpackers aboard the Ghan. Meanwhile Tiverton was silent, only a murmur in the background and Hempel trying not to disturb the rubbish.

‘Sam? I won’t give you up to Sergeant Kropp and his boys, okay? But if I have to call them in, it’ll be taken out of my hands and I can’t protect you. Understand?’

He could hear the boy thinking.

‘I know you’re frightened. If you had your time over again, you wouldn’t punch me. Hell to pay for assaulting a police officer. But, you know, maybe we can work something out.’

‘You promise you’ll keep them Redruth jacks off me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nicholson?’

‘Yes.’

Still Sam weighed his options. Hirsch said, ‘Nice gesture of yours, giving Leanne Donovan a TV set. She hasn’t had a good trot, and it counts for a lot in my book that you did something kind for her.’

Silence.

‘Even if the set was stolen, it was still a kindness to a woman who needed it.’

‘She’s good to me. And I felt bad for her because of Melia and that.’

So bad that you went on a housebreaking spree on the day she put her daughter in the ground, Hirsch thought.