Bitter Wash Road (2 page)

Hirsch began to feel a strange, jittery discordance. He might have put it down to fear, but he knew what fear felt like. Was it some emanation from the wind farm? He was very close to one of the turbines. It sat on the stony hill where the shooter was hiding, the first of a ragged line stretching along this side of the valley, the blades cutting the air in a steady, rhythmic whooshing that reached deep in his guts. To Hirsch, it was all of a piece with ending his days where the world was unlovely, at the base of a scruffy slope of grass tussocks, rabbit holes and lichened stone reefs.

He glanced both ways along the road. He didn’t know where the next farmhouses were or how much traffic to expect, or...

Christ, traffic. Hirsch cocked an ear, listening for vehicles he’d have to warn off, or protect, or mop the collateral blood from. Or run like hell from.

Which raised the question: why would the bastards ambush him here, within cooee of town? Why not somewhere more remote? ‘Out east,’ as the locals called it. According to the calendar hanging above Hirsch’s desk, out east was a region of undernourished mallee scrub, red dirt, nude stone chimneys, mine shafts and September wildflowers. One jagged hill named the Razorback.

September school holidays, wildflowers blooming...Hirsch listened again, imagining he could hear a busload of tourists trundling along Bitter Wash Road.

He risked a quick glance over the passenger door windowsill. The radio handset jutted from a cradle on the dashboard. His phone sat in a drinks holder between the front seats. He wasn’t obliged to call the Redruth station. He could call Peterborough, Clare, even Adelaide...

He heard another shot.

He froze, fingers on the door handle.

Then he relaxed minutely. What was it he’d actually heard? Not a high-powered crack but something flat, puny. Small calibre, dampened further by the huge sky and the whoosh of the wind turbine. Hardly a sniper’s rifle. There had been a weak howl, too, as the bullet hit something—a stone?—and whanged away across the creek.

Nowhere near him.

A second ricochet came. He stiffened again, relaxed again. Not a ricochet at all. A kid’s voice saying
peeowww.

Hirsch did what he should have done from the start and checked out the fallen branch. No drag marks in the gravel, no saw or axe cuts, no foliage removed. He eyed the tree itself, found the break halfway up the trunk. He recalled camping trips from his childhood, teachers warning the kids not to pitch their tents under gumtrees. All that sinewy health on the outside and quiet decay within.

A bit like the police, really.

He holstered his handgun. Hunching his shoulders a little, he stepped into the middle of the road and dragged the branch into the ditch. Then he parked the HiLux on a narrow verge, leaving room for passing vehicles, and climbed the scabby hill to see who might have put him in his grave if his luck hadn’t been running.

~ * ~

They didn’t hear his
approach, the boy and the girl: the wind, the rhythmic rush of the turbine above their heads, their absolute absorption as one kid aimed a .22 at a jam tin on a rock and the other stood by to watch.

Hirsch knew he should pounce on them before they sent another ricochet over the road, but he paused. The view from the base of the turbine was panoramic, exhilarating. Bitter Wash Road was clear in both directions, so he took a moment to get his bearings. The broad valley, the vigorous crops, the road running up and down the folds in the earth. And that khaki smudge back there was Tiverton with its pale grain silos poking into the haze.

There was a farmhouse above the Tin Hut, the green roof clearly visible now, and on the other side of the road was a red-roofed house. Both hedged in by cypresses, the shrubberies, garden beds and lawns quarantined: the usual landscaping out here in the wheat and wool country. The green-roofed property was extensive, with a number of sheds, a set of stockyards and farm vehicles parked on a dirt clearing beside a haystack. The place with the red roof was smaller, faded, only an attached carport and one small garden shed to brag about. Hirsch wondered at the relationship between the two properties. Maybe a farm manager lived in the smaller house. Or a couple, a man to do the gardening, his wife to cook and clean—the shit work. If those feudal relationships still existed.

Hirsch shaded his eyes. The sun passed in and out of the scrappy clouds as a few sheep trotted nose to tail across a nearby hillside.

Otherwise only the children moved, and Hirsch was betting they belonged to one of the houses. No school for two weeks and, with or without the blessing of their parents, they’d taken the .22 out for some target shooting. The location was perfect: nothing here but grass and stones, sloping down to the creek, nothing with blood in its veins. You could pretend you were in a shootout with the bad guys, and when the rifle got too heavy you could prop the barrel on a rock.

Except that bullets strike objects and howl off in unexpected directions. Or you might forget where you are and take a pot-shot at a crow or a rabbit just when a policeman is stepping out of his HiLux to shift a fallen tree.

Yeah, well, wasn’t this just great? A couple of adults he could deal with: clear regulations, clear offences and penalties. But kids... He’d have to involve the parents; he’d maybe have to charge the parents. Jesus.

The children didn’t hear him, not at first. Not until, sidestepping down the slope, he skidded and fell. Now they heard him, his curses and the tock and rattle of stones tumbling over one another, Hirsch cursing because he’d startled himself, torn his trousers and barked the skin on palm and elbow.

The children whirled around in shared alarm, mouths open, eyes shocked. They were caught in the act and they knew it, but it was how they managed it that was interesting. Hirsch forgot his discomfort and watched. The boy dropped his eyes like a beaten dog, already surrendering, but the girl grew tense. Her eyes darted to the empty hill, the boy alongside her, possible escape routes. She didn’t run, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. The gaze she fixed on Hirsch was working it all out.

He held up his palm, not quite a warning, not quite a greeting. ‘Don’t,’ he said mildly.

A faint relaxing. She was about twelve years old, skinny, contained, unblinkingly solemn, with scratched bare legs and arms under shorts and a T-shirt, her dark hair hanging to the shoulders and cropped at her forehead. Scruffy, but someday soon she’d have the looks to light dark places.

Disconcerted, Hirsch eyed the boy. Thin, similarly dressed, he could have been her brother, but his hair was straw-coloured, full of tufts and tangles, and his pale skin was flushed and mottled. Where the girl seemed to be looking for the angles, he was ready to be told what to do. But he was the one holding the rifle, and he was practised at it, keeping the barrel down, the stock in the crook of his arm, the bolt open. Hirsch counted five .22 shell casings glinting dully in the grass.

‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Constable Hirschhausen. I’m stationed at Tiverton.’

The girl remained expressionless but Hirsch sensed hostility, and he scratched around in his head for the best way to go on.

‘How about we start with your names?’

The girl’s voice piped up above the whoosh of the turbines. ‘I’m Katie and he’s Jack.’

Katie Street and Jackson Latimer, and Katie lived with her mother in the smaller, red-roofed house that Hirsch had seen, and Jackson with his parents and older brother in the larger green-roofed house. In fact, Grampa Latimer lived on the property, too, in a house half a kilometre in from the road. ‘You can’t see it from here.’

Even Hirsch had heard of the Latimers. ‘This is your land?’ he asked, indicating the hill they were standing on, the turbine above them, the ragged line of turbines stretching away along the ridge.

Jack shook his head. ‘Mrs Armstrong’s.’

‘Where does she live?’

He pointed to where Bitter Wash Road disappeared around a distant bend.

‘Won’t she be cross if she knows you’re trespassing?’

They were puzzled, as if the concept hadn’t much currency out here. ‘It’s the best spot,’ Katie reasoned.

Right, thought Hirsch. ‘Look, the thing is, one of your shots went wild. It nearly hit me.’

He gestured in the direction of the road. Putting some hardness into it he added, ‘It’s dangerous to shoot a gun so close to a road. You could hurt someone.’

He didn’t say kill someone. He didn’t know if the severity would work. He didn’t know if he should be gentle, stern, pissed off, touchy-feely or full-on tyrant. He took the easy way: ‘Do your parents know you’re up here shooting a gun?’

No response. Hirsch said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll need to talk to—’

The girl cut in. ‘Don’t tell Mr Latimer.’

Hirsch cocked his head.

‘Please,’ she insisted.

‘Why?’

‘My dad will kill me,’ the boy muttered. ‘Anyway he’s not home.’

‘Okay, I’ll speak to your mothers.’

‘They’re out, too.’

‘My mum took Jack’s mum shopping,’ Katie said.

Hirsch glanced at his watch: almost noon. ‘Where?’

‘Redruth,’ she said reluctantly.

Meaning they hadn’t gone down to Adelaide for the day and would probably be home to make lunch. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

‘Are you taking us to jail?’

Hirsch laughed, saw that the girl was serious, and grew serious himself. ‘Nothing like that. I’ll drive you home and we’ll wait until someone comes.’

Keeping it low-key, no sudden movements, he eased the rifle—a Ruger—from jack’s hands. He’d disarmed people before, but not like this. He wondered if police work ever got chancy, out here in the middle of nowhere. He walked the children back over the ridge and down to the HiLux. The girl moved with a quick, nervy energy; the boy trudged, his spine and spindly arms and legs moving in a curious counterpoint, a kind of pulling back on the reins. Hirsch saw that his left shoe was chunkier than the right, the sole and heel built up.

The girl caught Hirsch looking. Her eyes glittered. ‘You’ve got a hole in your pants.’

~ * ~

The kids strapped in,
Katie in the passenger seat, Jack in the rear, Hirsch said, ‘So, we wait at Jackson’s house?’

‘Whatever,’ Katie said. She added: ‘You could be looking for that black car instead of hassling us.’

The police were looking for hundreds, thousands, of cars at any given moment. But Hirsch knew exactly which one she meant: the Pullar and Hanson Chrysler, last seen heading for Longreach, over two thousand kilometres away. He said, ‘I doubt it’s in our neck of the woods.’

Katie shot him down with a look, swung her gaze away from him. ‘That’s what you think.’

Hirsch was fascinated by her. Dusty olive skin, a tiny gold hoop in each ear, a strand of hair pasted damply to her neck, and entirely self-contained. One of those kids who is determined, tireless, mostly right and often a pain in the arse. He tried to remember what he’d been like at that age. When it was clear that she didn’t intend to elaborate, he slotted the key in the ignition.

‘We saw it go past our school,’ said Jack in the back seat.

Slowly, Hirsch removed his hand from the key. Had some guy waved his cock at the kids? Tried to snatch one of them? ‘The primary school in town?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘A black Chrysler?’

‘Yes.’

‘But what were you doing at school on a Sunday?’

‘A working bee. Cleaning up and planting trees.’

‘Did this car stop?’

Katie shook her head. ‘It drove past.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Nearly lunchtime.’

Hirsch pictured it. The little primary school was opposite the police station, with a large playing field fronting Barrier Highway. The entrance, car park and classrooms were off a side street. The speed limit was fifty kilometres per hour through the town, giving an observant child time to mark details. But what details had marked this vehicle out from the others that passed the school every day, the farm utes, family cars, grain trucks, interstate buses?

It was a black Chrysler, that’s what. A car in the news, driven by a pair of killers.

Not a common car—but not rare either, and Hirsch said so. ‘I think those men are still in Queensland.’

‘Whatever. Can we just go?’

Hirsch glanced at the rearview mirror, seeking Jack’s face. The boy shrank away.

‘Suit yourselves,’ Hirsch said, checking the wing mirror and pulling onto the road.

Speaking of observant children...

‘Did you kids happen to see anyone hanging around outside the police station late last week? Maybe putting something in the letterbox?’

They stared at him blankly, and he was thinking he’d mystified them, when the girl said, ‘There was a lady.’

‘A lady.’

‘But I didn’t see her putting anything in the letterbox.’

‘Was she waiting to see me, do you think?’

‘She looked in your car.’

Hirsch went very still and braked the HiLux. He said lightly, ‘When was this?’