Bitter Wash Road (23 page)

She gave a tearing sob and went slack, backing away from him and grabbing a veranda post. Using it as a prop, she lowered herself, sat on the edge, her hands rubbing her thighs back and forth, back and forth, as if to bring herself back under control. Hirsch waited.

She looked up. ‘Who found her?’

‘I did.’

Grim, intense, she said, ‘And where was Ray during all this?’

‘Mrs Street, he was in the Redruth lockup all last night and until lunchtime today. In fact, I gave him a lift home.’

‘Don’t call me Mrs Street. Has anyone told the boys?’

‘That’s all taken care of,’ Hirsch said, not knowing one way or the other. Surely Raymond Latimer would have called his father?

Wendy shook her head. ‘I can just imagine the delicate way Raymond or his father might break it:
Oh by the way, kids, your mum’s shot herself.’

‘We have to give them the benefit of the doubt.’

‘You do, I don’t.’ She bit her lip. ‘How do I tell Katie?’

Hirsch glanced towards the house, wondering where the girl was. ‘You’ll know what to say.’

‘You think so?’ Her eyes were full of tears, her arms folded to ward him off. ‘It’s just terrible. I know he did it.’

‘Did you happen to hear a rifle shot this morning?’

‘Not to notice, but there’s always someone shooting something. Anyway, I was mowing.’

A little Cox ride-on, parked beside the house, wearing a fresh chlorophyll skirt, damp cuttings in the tyre treads. Hirsch glanced back at Wendy Street and saw that she was biting her bottom lip, something on her mind.

‘What?’

‘Katie saw that car again, that black car.’

‘Well, you can put her mind at ease: Pullar and Hanson stole a Holden the other day.’

Then it dawned on him. ‘You think Katie sneaked the rifle out again and fired it?’

Wendy Street twisted in knots. ‘Could she have?’ And then her consternation disappeared, logic taking over. ‘No, she wouldn’t do that.’

‘Exactly,’ Hirsch said. ‘All indications are, Mrs Latimer shot herself. The gun was still in her hands when I found her.’

Wendy rubbed her face. ‘This is just awful.’

She was glancing across at the Latimers’ as if she should head there but knew she might not be welcome. To divert her, Hirsch said, ‘Was Mrs Latimer more than usually down lately?’

‘You mean suicidal? No. She’d made up her mind to leave Ray. Get a divorce. She seemed freer if anything.’ She gasped. ‘Her parents!’

‘I’m off to see them now.’

‘I should come with you,’ Wendy said. She was this way and that. ‘I need to be here for Katie.’

The younger Latimer boy might need you, too, Hirsch thought. Jack. He nodded goodbye, settled his cap on his head and reached for the driver’s door.

He stopped in the act and turned around. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, hating the expression but unable to think of a better one. ‘I know you were friends.’

Her eyes filled again and she hugged herself. ‘Thank you.’

‘If you need anything...’

A damp smile. ‘I’m okay. You need to see Allies parents.’

Hirsch climbed in and drove away.

~ * ~

‘Our daughter has killed
herself, and he tells us over the
phone?’

Heather Rofe was ragged, bleary, angry. Hirsch gently steered her back into the house, to the kitchen, where Keith sat, dazed, a solid man diminished, his decency more threadbare now. Man and wife, they’d been to church probably, best clothes on their backs. They’d made and poured tea but that was as far as they’d been able to take it.

‘Is there anyone I can contact for you?’

Keith Rofe lifted his head. ‘Our other daughter’s coming over.’

Hirsch stood there, spinning his damn cap in his hands. He felt like a stormtrooper.

‘How’s he breaking the news to the boys?’ Heather Rofe said. ‘Text message?’

All kinds of statements were issued via text message these days. Your services are no longer required; by the way, your husband’s having an affair; I want a divorce; here’s a close-up of my pussy. Hirsch said gently, ‘Alison spent the night with you?’

Keith Rofe didn’t have the wherewithal to answer. He glanced helplessly at his wife, who said, ‘She was in bed when we left this morning.’

‘Church?’

‘A christening,’ Heather said. ‘My niece’s daughter, down in Gawler.’

Two hours distant. ‘What time did you leave?’

‘Seven.’

‘So you were away half the day?’

Heather Rofe’s tears welled and rolled down her cheeks. ‘We just got back.’

‘Did she tell you what she intended to do today?’

Rofe shrugged. ‘Sleep in. Rest. She offered to re-pot my geraniums.’

‘Didn’t say anything about going out?’

‘No.’

‘She’s not a churchgoer?’

Heather struggled. She said, ‘Not lately.’

‘Can you think why she’d go to the Tin Hut?’

‘No, she didn’t like it there...Please, you’re grilling me. I’d like you to stop.’

Hirsch back-pedalled. ‘Sorry, terribly sorry, that’s not my intention.’

‘No, I’m sorry, I know you do have a job to do.’

Hirsch moved his shoulders in uneasy agreement. ‘One last question: was the house locked when you got back from church?’

‘We don’t bother, usually,’ Heather said. ‘Nothing worth taking, and we know everyone in...’ Her voice trailed away.

‘What?’

‘It
was
locked. I had to fetch the spare key. Remember, Keith?’

‘What?’

Hirsch tuned them out, letting his gaze roam around the kitchen and into the hallway and mentally retrace his route as he’d entered the house a few minutes earlier. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest forced entry or a struggle, and how would he raise that question with them? ‘May I see her room?’

Heather Rofe fixed him with a level stare, raw with grief but not about to lose herself in it. ‘Why?’

Hirsch did his uncomfortable shoulder rotation again. ‘I was wondering if she might have left some kind of goodbye.’

‘Like a suicide note. Well, she didn’t. Last night over dinner she was quite chirpy. Not a hundred per cent enamoured with the idea of Jack spending the weekend with his grandfather, but...a weight had been lifted from her shoulders over the past few days.’

Heather gave in to the grief again. Hirsch moved across and placed a hand on each shoulder. After the briefest hesitation, she let herself be consoled.

Hirsch waited, glancing over her shoulder at the husband, who was again staring sightlessly at the top of the table. Presently Heather stepped back and gathered herself and said, ‘Her old bedroom, down the passage.’

A spare room now, all vestiges of the child and teenager removed. Hirsch surveyed it first and then began a search. The drawers yawned emptily, and all he found in the wardrobe was one wire hanger, a white bowls uniform in a drycleaner’s bag whispering in the eddying air.

He popped his head into the adjacent room. An untidy bed, a child’s trainers on the floor, warm cotton pyjamas poking from under a pillow, a laptop on top of the pillow, pasted with footballer stickers.

In the kitchen again, Hirsch said gently, ‘It seems Alison packed all her things but left Jack’s here.’

He saw the rapid assimilation in Heather Rofe’s face. Instead of giving him her conclusions she said, ‘All right, how do
you
read it?’

Hirsch said, ‘Did she give any indication she wanted to thrash things out with Ray?’

‘No.’

‘Leaving Jack here, where he wouldn’t witness any nastiness?’

‘Nothing like that.’

They took it no further than that but Hirsch could see a couple of scenarios, each ending in suicide: Alison Latimer had returned to the farm for a trial reconciliation, only to fall into a deep depression, or she’d wanted to rub Raymond’s face in it.

~ * ~

The black Explorer was
waiting for him outside the station.

Hirsch parked in the driveway, liking this visit even less than Kropp’s visit the day Melia Donovan was found. Choosing to ignore it, he stepped onto the little porch, his key at the ready. Well, that triggered movement. A door slammed and footsteps stalked him. He turned: Superintendent Spurling in full uniform, a man of fifty with the bearing of an army officer. Clean, slender hands; a narrow, ascetic face.

‘Sir,’ Hirsch said.

‘You know who I am?’

‘Area commander, sir.’

‘I need a word.’

Hirsch led the way into his office, hoping Spurling wouldn’t insist on the sitting room. But did he offer Spurling the swivel chair behind the desk, or the stiff visitor’s chair?

Spurling made no move to sit anywhere. ‘I’ll get right to it. This afternoon I received a phone call.’

Hirsch gave him a long look. ‘Sir?’

‘Anonymous caller, female, very brief: “The husband did it.’”

Oh, hell, Wendy. ‘Well, sir, the thing is, he was in the Redruth lockup at the time.’

Spurling grunted. ‘There will be an inquest.’

Hirsch nodded his agreement.

‘I need you to prepare a brief for the coroner.’

What? ‘Sir, I’m new here.’

‘All the better,’ Spurling said, settling his lean rump against Hirsch’s desk and folding his arms. ‘And on the subject of phone calls, I’ve also been contacted about a different matter. Phone calls and letters.’

‘Sir?’

‘Most were from our old friend Anonymous, but a handful were not. In particular, a nurse, a couple of high-school teachers, a priest and the local ALP candidate. All from Redruth, all raising the same issue.’

Hirsch waited. He wanted to go behind his desk and sit, but that would disadvantage the superintendent, so he stood, almost at attention.

‘In a nutshell,’ Spurling said, ‘the over-zealous policing methods employed by Sergeant Kropp and Constables Nicholson and Andrewartha. Physical and verbal abuse, harassment, unwarranted speed and drink-driving traps, etcetera, etcetera.’

Hirsch knew where this was going. All he wanted was to be free of worry and moral complications. ‘Sir?’

‘Don’t be dim. Is there anything to these claims?’

‘Like I said, sir, I’m new here.’

‘Yeah, be like that. I’ve been hearing whispers for months now, and this afternoon I hear that Sergeant Kropp is best mates with a man who might have killed his wife.’

‘I haven’t been here long enough to see any patterns or—’

Spurling snarled, ‘What, you’re selective in which coppers you snitch on?’

‘Is that why you called in to see me, sir? Want some spying done?’

An icy glitter in Spurling, and Hirsch wondered if he’d gone too far. He tensed, watching as Spurling propped his hands on the edge of the desk as if to launch himself.

The tension hung, poised. Then Spurling leaned back and folded his arms again. ‘Look, I know who you are, I know your history. I’m not here to rake over the coals or...set you up, anything like that, okay?’

Hirsch said nothing.

‘Marcus Quine is a disgrace to the force. He deserves whatever’s coming to him.’

Still Hirsch said nothing. He felt the skin under his right eye give the faintest twitch.

‘But right now,’ Spurling went on, ‘I’m in a bind and I need your help. Otherwise we could be looking at a behavioural management audit, and that’s the last thing anyone needs.’

Hirsch blanched. Audits were ten times worse than ethical standards complaints. Worst-case scenario, a complaint might lead to an individual officer being rapped over the knuckles, house and locker searched, finances scrutinised, but audits were applied to entire squads or police stations. Every staff member, every scrap of paper, every corner. An audit of Redruth would mean an audit of Hirsch, and he was through with being poked and prodded by the Internals.

He looked at Spurling. He saw a man whose job required him to be political, clandestine, subtle. He gathered himself to help. ‘The usual rumours, sir.’

‘Go on.’

‘Like I said, I’m new here and there’s still a lot I don’t know.’

Spurling, exasperated, said, ‘Look, man to man, off the record, no comeback, is there any truth to the allegations that the Redruth officers are in any way overstepping the mark?’

Hirsch drew back his shoulders. ‘It’s not as if this is the inner city,’ he said. ‘We’re not dealing with bikie gangs or ethnic clans.’

Spurling nodded. ‘Good. And?’

‘I’ve heard the odd whisper, sir.’

Spurling smiled, unfolded from the edge of the desk, patted Hirsch on the shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

He left Hirsch there, stepping out of the office and into the little foyer. Then he paused, propping his slender hands on the counter. ‘Meanwhile, if you do hear or see anything specific, I want to know about it pronto.’