Bitter Wash Road (29 page)

DeLisle, Croome, Kropp, Spurling, all wanting updates or action. He wished Wendy Street would call, wanting an update.

‘I need to speak to Ray Latimer, Sarge,’ he told Kropp.

‘Lay off a while longer. Let the family grieve.’

‘He’s your mate. Ask him to phone me.’

‘Lay off, I said.’

~ * ~

Then one day Wendy Street
did call. She was friendly, but brisk, as if snatching a moment in her busy day, and related a bit of remembered conversation with Alison Latimer before signing off with a bright, ‘See ya!’

Feeling unmoored, Hirsch replaced the handset. He stared at the dusty calendar, replaying the call. Had he heard a tentative quality threaded through the breezy voice, Wendy drawing on a measure of courage to phone him? More courage than I’ve got, he thought gloomily. Then immediately berated himself for projecting his pathetic hopes and fears onto her. It was entirely possible that she
didn’t
feel the same flicker of attraction and therefore had no trouble making the call, and if there’d been anything in her voice it was a kind of resignation: she had information to impart, but clearly not to Kropp, and that left Hirsch.

When it came to tying yourself in knots, Hirsch could tie for Australia. He grabbed a pen and his notebook and pressed down hard on the page:

October 29, 3.30 p.m., telephone call from Wendy Street, recalling two statements made by Alison Latimer early this year: ‘Ray thinks Jack got his bad foot from my side of the family’ and ‘Ray keeps saying a good stud manager culls animals that weaken the strain’.

Nasty, but it didn’t prove a crime had been committed.

~ * ~

And Spurling dropped in
again, insisting on coffee and a biscuit this time.

‘Like what you’ve done to the place,’ he said, gazing around Hirsch’s sitting room.

Painted the walls, got a carpet cleaner in, replaced the curtains and light shades, hung a couple of Tiverton Primary School Community Art Fair watercolours. Wildflowers somewhere out east. The Razorback under boiling black clouds, shot by a bolt of sunlight.

‘Putting down roots, sir,’ said Hirsch from the kitchen.

‘Good on you.’

Hirsch came in with a tray. Spurling settled himself on one of the armchairs, tatty under a patchwork quilt cover from the same art fair. He patted the fabric. ‘Very pretty, Constable.’

‘Made by one of the mothers at the school across the road,’ Hirsch said, pouring the coffee.

Spurling nodded. ‘My wife’s into this kind of thing: needlework, tapestry, patchwork...’ His slender fingers stroked a tiny square of blue with white polka dots, then he glanced up at Hirsch. ‘Sit down, Paul, for god’s sake. I’m not going to bite you.’

Hirsch dropped into the other armchair. ‘Sir.’

Spurling blew on the surface of his coffee. ‘But you will recall that I asked to be kept updated on your Redruth colleagues.’

‘Sir.’

A little steel in the voice now: ‘Nothing to report, it seems. Why is that, Constable?’

Hirsch shifted in his chair. ‘Things have been a bit hectic, and I haven’t had anything to do with them lately.’

‘Uh huh,’ Spurling said, his disbelief evident. He crossed his legs, spread his arms on the quilt cover. ‘The Street woman’s going ahead with her public meeting. No date set, but goodness, what a lovely experience that’s going to be.’ He waited.

Had Hirsch jolted at hearing the name? He held his tongue. He didn’t want to fuck things up when the superintendent was emerging as his only potential ally in the whole mess.

Spurling broke the impasse with a curt laugh. ‘Mr Inscrutable. Where are we with the suicide? The coroner can’t proceed until the police hand him a brief.’

‘The thing is, sir, I don’t think it was a suicide.’

‘Ah. All right, spit it out.’

Hirsch expressed his doubts and frustrations: the car, the rifle, the trampled-upon scene. The diamond ring. Alison Latimer’s hand. Her clean shoes. The ballistics report, the pathologist’s findings.

‘You’re light-on for evidence,’ Spurling observed. ‘Where’s the car?’

‘Sitting in the impound lot.’

‘Might not be too late to have it printed and tested for fibres and fluids.’

Hirsch shook his head. ‘I tried that. No joy. The windows were open, condensation had formed, too much time had elapsed.’

‘You took photos?’

‘Printed them out,’ Hirsch said, handing Spurling a folder.

The superintendent flipped through them, stopping occasionally, glum and unimpressed. ‘It had been raining, from memory?’

‘A couple of days earlier.’

‘Stray tyre impressions? Shoe prints?’

‘Tyres, no. As for foot traffic, half of Christendom traipsed over the area.’

A pause, Spurling assessing Hirsch. ‘You think it’s suspicious that her shoes are clean.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And what we’ll hear in court, Constable, is that people don’t abandon their instincts. Here’s a neat, tidy woman who, even though intending to shoot herself, didn’t want to get dirty. She skirted around the mud, kept to the grass.’

Hirsch made a noise of grudging agreement. ‘Maybe.’

‘The same applies to the diamond ring. She didn’t want it to get damaged or lost or lifted by light fingers. You say she knew about firearms?’

Hirsch shrugged. ‘Farmer’s wife. Country woman.’

‘Still,’ mused Spurling, ‘not the most common way for a woman to kill herself.’

‘Exactly, sir,’ Hirsch tapped his forefinger on one of the photographs. ‘And see the way her thumb’s still hooked inside the trigger guard?’

‘That’s hardly compelling.’

‘But she had a problem with that hand, a weakness, couldn’t straighten her fingers or thumb very well. Meanwhile her prints are on the stock and butt—but not the barrel.’

Spurling shook his head. ‘She did have some movement in that hand, yes? And it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she held the rifle around the trigger area with her right hand and manoeuvred the barrel tip into her mouth with the left hand holding the stock rather than the barrel.’

Hirsch grinned, rueful. ‘You’d be a good defence barrister, sir.’

Spurling leaned in with a tiny smile that mirrored Hirsch’s. ‘Constable, I’m anticipating the questions that might get asked at the inquest—or at trial, if it gets that far, and it seems to me you don’t have anyone in the frame for a crime.’

‘Sir.’ Hirsch hated to admit it. At the back of his mind was the thought that he’d paid too much attention to Wendy Street’s viewpoint. Sympathetic because he was attracted to her.

‘And remember that brain injuries cause peculiar behaviour. So does the intent to commit suicide.’ Spurling paused. ‘Was she checked for GSR?’

‘A few flecks.’

‘There you go.’

‘It doesn’t feel right, sir.’

Spurling sat back, mildly exasperated. ‘Okay, was there anything else about the scene, the body?’

‘She had some bruises and abrasions, sir.’

‘Suggestive of...?’

Hirsch gave a little grimace, thinking of the terse pathologist. ‘Of being manhandled.’

‘Or of falling over, falling against the hut,’ Spurling said. ‘Get a second opinion.’

‘She’s been cremated.’

‘Ah. Well, I suppose you can always get someone else to look at the pathologist’s findings.’ He gave an apologetic shrug and got to his feet. On the way out he said, ‘For god’s sake, Paul, get that flaming vehicle washed.’

~ * ~

The days passed, Hirsch
patrolled. On a couple of occasions he was in town at lunch or going-home time, and found himself watching out for Katie Street and Jackson Latimer in the schoolyard across the highway. Forty kids, ranging from five to twelve, full of din and discord as they flowed out of the buildings and across the playing field or into waiting cars. Sometimes they were the town’s only source of sound. He’d pick out Katie Street by her animation, a quick flash of movement and intelligence. He’d pick out Jack Latimer, stunned and lost.

He watched for Wendy Street, too, determined to say hello, but somehow, when his back was turned, the children were whisked away and he didn’t see her.

Get that flaming vehicle washed
...Not wanting to get caught out again, Hirsch ran a hose over the HiLux at the end of every shift and washed it once a week, and one Friday in late October, as he sloshed and sluiced with sudsy water, the dust a stubborn film that reappeared in streaks and deltas whenever his back was turned, he heard Katie say, ‘Put your back into it.’

Hirsch turned. ‘Care to show me how?’

‘I will if you pay me top dollar.’

She was full of life there in his driveway. Jack was with her, slow, dazed, hesitant, and it occurred to Hirsch that she’d dragged him with her in an effort to jolt some life into him.

As if I could help with that, he thought. ‘You only want me for my Tim Tams,’ he said, thinking Christ, why did I say that?

Katie toed a weed. ‘Can we wait here till Mrs Armstrong comes?’

‘Sure.’

Finola Armstrong? Was this a regular thing now? It explained why Hirsch hadn’t seen Wendy Street’s old Volvo outside the school. Armstrong lived near the children and there would be occasions— those staff meetings, for example—when Wendy Street might be delayed. But why couldn’t Ray or his father do the school run occasionally? Too busy? Women’s work?

‘You guys like a treat while you wait?’

Katie Street was game. She crossed the yard with a toss of her head.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Hirsch said, indicating the front step. He went in, came out with a tray of drinks and biscuits.

But Jack Latimer was hovering at the gate, staring down the road, seeming lost, as though unsure of the steps to take now.

‘Jack?’

The boy stepped from his good foot to his bad, good foot, bad. ‘What if she comes and can’t find us?’

‘Mrs Armstrong gets a bit cross,’ Katie explained.

Hirsch could picture it: the impatience, stiffness and social awkwardness of Finola Armstrong. Seeing the boy wither a little, he joined him at the gate, risked dropping a hand on his shoulder. ‘How about it, Jack? Coke and a Tim Tam?’

But the high school bus was pulling up outside Tennant’s. Two girls and three boys alighted, their shirts half out, socks at ankle height, shoes scuffed, hair this way and that, one girl tugging her hemline down from crotch to mid-thigh before her parents saw her. The five moved off, one girl down a side street, the other into the shop with two of the boys, the fifth to the end of the veranda, beside the mailboxes. Craig Latimer. He looked slumped, unhappy, wound tight, and Jack seemed to shrink further at the sight of him. Hirsch thought about the great gulfs in that family: the grandfather on the hill, the father at the bottom of the hill or out wildcatting with his women, the older boy giving off waves of anger, the younger boy waves of desolation.

Then Finola Armstrong’s Honda came hurtling into town. It stopped for Craig and was speeding the short distance to the side-street entrance of the primary school when Jack hobbled out of Hirsch’s gate, waving his arms.

Armstrong braked, U-turned, Jack stepping back to avoid it, onto Hirsch’s toes. ‘Sorry!’

He looked aghast at what he’d done. Hirsch clasped his shoulders gently, a brief, bolstering contact, and nodded to Armstrong through the side window of the car. Jack joined Craig in the back.

Then Katie was skipping past, crying ‘See ya!’ and getting into the front with Armstrong. Where the others were glum, she was a light in darkness, a ribbon of brightness.

Hirsch decided to say hello. Armstrong watched him, scowling, as he walked around to the driver’s window. She wound her window down reluctantly. Not hostile, not wary; without affect. There was a placid quality to her sun-damaged face.

‘Helping out?’ he said cheerily.

Her whole being altered, a look passing over her that expressed disdain for some lack of knowledge. ‘You could say that.’

Then Hirsch saw Alison Latimer’s diamond ring flash on one careworn, farm-chapped hand. He gave her roof a little slap and stepped away from the car. Katie waved, the boys didn’t. He returned to his yard and sluiced more mud onto the driveway, trying not to think too hard about what had just happened.

~ * ~

His
next visitor was
Jennifer Dee.

She banged through the main door of the police station at the end of the first week of November, startling Hirsch in the act of taking down fly-specked public notices. There were tiny spiders domiciled under a couple of them.

‘You bastard. I’ve lost my job because of you.’

Hirsch stepped down from his stool before she kicked it out from under him. He eyed the door to his office, the door to his apartment, the front door. She was a slight, teary woman but fired up, and he didn’t want to tussle with her in an enclosed space.

But Christ, whose fault was it anyway? ‘You were fired because you planted evidence on me.’