Bitter Wash Road (38 page)

‘It’s Mr Latimer’s?’

She toed the dirt. ‘Yes.’

‘Just as well you pinched it.’

She was indignant. ‘No one would listen to me about that car. Lots of times I saw it. Today I saw it go in Mr Latimer’s place.’ She pointed towards the Vimy Ridge gates.

‘You’ve been hiding the gun all this while?’

‘In my tree house.’

‘Listen, girlie,’ Spurling said, ‘this is a very bad man. Go and tell your mother to call the police.’

Katie looked up at Spurling, a scrappy kid with a tough little core of selfhood. ‘He
is
the police,’ she said, full of scorn.

~ * ~

34

TWO DAYS LATER, Hirsch debriefed with Wendy Street over a glass of wine. Wendy held her glass to the light a little crookedly. Her consonants had become slightly smudged. ‘I have to say my daughter seems quite phlegmatic about shooting a man. “Mr Latimer was going to kill Paul so I shot him.’”

‘Just as well she did,’ Hirsch said. ‘Just as well she’s not agonising over it.’

They were in Wendy’s kitchen, late afternoon, Bob Dylan drifting from the speakers. The sun, seeking a way in past the blind above the sink, lit Wendy’s hair, the finer, flyaway strands so burning in the light that Hirsch wanted to reach out and tame them.

‘A counsellor’s been offered, as they say...I don’t know that she needs one. What do you think?’

Hirsch glanced at Katie, who was belly down, chin up before the TV set in the adjoining sunroom. ‘She’s clearly suffering.’

A twist of a smile. ‘Joking aside, though. What if the enormity of it hits her one day?’

Hirsch took a chance and reached his hand out. Her hand, a warm claw under his, turned upwards in welcome. ‘All you can do,’ he said, when his pulse had settled, ‘is listen and watch. Not make a big deal about it if she raises the issue.’

‘Not make a big deal about it as in, it’s okay to shoot people or as in, don’t make her anxious and guilty?’

Hirsch was pretty sure she was smiling. ‘Oh, the former.’

Now she grew serious. ‘Thank God she didn’t kill him. But what happens officially now?’

‘She’ll have to answer questions: where the gun came from, why she had it, why she shot it, that kind of thing. You’ll be allowed to sit with her. Bring in a lawyer if you think things might stray into dangerous territory. But given her age and the fact the gun hadn’t been secured by the owner and the fact she saved my life, then I don’t think any action will be taken.’ He paused. ‘Ray, on the other hand, may face some kind of firearms charge. On top of everything else.’

Katie wandered in. She stood close to Hirsch’s chair, bumping her shoulder against his in absent-minded affection. Wendy discreetly removed her hand from Hirsch’s and smiled at her. ‘Okay, sweetie?’

‘Yeah, I’m good.’ She wandered back to the TV.

Hirsch, feeling the absence of Wendy’s hand, took it back, enveloped it. ‘You going ahead with the public meeting?’

Wendy looked at their hands resting there on the table. She blinked awake. ‘Sure. Superintendent Spurling won’t be there for obvious reasons.’

‘They’ll send someone in his place.’

‘The point is I want them to send someone in Sergeant Kropp’s place
—and
Constable Nicholson’s
and
Constable Andrewartha’s. You’ve got your man but the situation in Redruth hasn’t altered.’

Hirsch nodded. Kropp had been strangely quiet. A few weeks ago—a few days ago—the sergeant would have been ranting on the phone for Hirsch to tell his girlfriend to back off. ‘Can I ask you something?’

Wendy Street tensed and slipped her hand away as if to say, ‘Uh oh.’ Hirsch, feeling wrongfooted, realised she was readying herself to hear something she didn’t want to hear. ‘I met you on a Monday,’ he said awkwardly, ‘the second week of the September school holidays.’

She still looked tense. ‘That sounds about right.’

‘Alison was with you.’

‘Yes. Where are you going with this?’

‘On the
Saturday
—in other words, two days before that—she’d followed her husband to a house just on the other side of Redruth where several men, including her husband and father-in-law, were having sex with Melia Donovan and Gemma Pitcher and possibly others we don’t know about.’

‘Yes...?’

‘Our theory is, she confronted Ray. He probably told his father, who told the others, and it was agreed she had to go.’

‘Didn’t have anything to do with the inheritance after all,’ Wendy said.

‘Icing on the cake, though,’ Hirsch said. ‘The thing is, I have a witness who saw Melia Donovan running from the house in distress, naked, carrying her clothes and shoes.’

The tension hadn’t ebbed. ‘And...?’

‘This witness said that David Coulter chased Melia in his car and knocked her down.’

Wendy tightened against the air between them. ‘You think Allie should have said something?’

Hirsch said, ‘It’s just that I’m surprised she didn’t. Was she that browbeaten, or that single-minded about leaving her husband, that she’d fail to mention something like that?’

‘How do you know she saw it? It was night time, she might not have had a clear view...maybe she’d already left.’

‘True.’

‘All I know is, she was upbeat about leaving Ray and getting a divorce.’

‘She didn’t mention that she’d followed Ray, had her suspicions confirmed, nothing like that?’

‘No.’

‘She looked tense the day I met her. Scared.’

‘Wouldn’t you be? She assumed you were a mate of Kropp’s. We all did.’

Hirsch grimaced.

‘What’s Coulter saying? Did he admit to running over Melia?’

‘Dunno, it’s out of my hands.’

‘Gemma will know.’

‘If I can find her,’ Hirsch said. He thought about those mine shafts out east behind the Razorback. Then he decided not to think about that. He leaned towards Wendy, Wendy watching him, and kissed her. For the briefest moment she was unresponsive; and after that she wasn’t.

~ * ~

35

WHEN GEMMA PITCHER did turn up again in Tiverton it was without fanfare. Bob Muir, on his way to fix an air conditioner one Sunday afternoon, spotted her on a swing in the playground beside the tennis courts, and called Hirsch. ‘Just sitting there, mate.’

Sunday, Hirsch’s day off. Still wearing his board shorts and a T-shirt, still bleary after spending the night with Wendy, he drove to the tennis courts, saw no one, and continued around to the crumbling house where the Pitchers lived.

Eileen answered his knock, her sullen face indicating that life in its entirety was a disappointment, up to and including her daughter’s return.

Or maybe it’s me, Hirsch thought. ‘Is Gemma in?’

‘Are you taking her out?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

The woman looked him up and down. ‘She’s too upset to go out.’

Hirsch realised he should have worn his uniform. Eileen was used to men, including policemen, knocking on this door from time to time, asking for Gemma. Why should I be any different? ‘It’s a work matter, Mrs Pitcher.’

‘I need her to help with dinner,’ grumbled the woman.

But she took Hirsch through to the sitting room, where Gemma was watching one of the Twilight movies, DVD discs and covers strewn around the TV set and across the carpet. There was no sign of the boys.

‘Hello, Gemma,’ he said. ‘Movie marathon?’

Gemma was staring dazedly at the screen, as if she’d been doing it half her life. Possibly she has, Hirsch thought. Her mouth hung open, and she lolled rather than sat, dressed in a short top and tights, the fabric stretched to within a millimetre of tolerance and revealing her soft white belly.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Hirsch said, watching the mother, who flashed him a look of bitterness and defiance before backing out of the room. Presently she could be heard in the kitchen, smacking dishes about. Hirsch said, ‘Gemma, I need to ask you some questions.’

‘What for?’

Hirsch stared at her. ‘I have a better question: how come you’re surprised I want to ask you some questions?’

Gemma looked at him blankly, as if astonished. ‘But it’s all over, it was on the news.’

Hirsch wondered how her mind worked. He sat beside her, sinking into the sofa cushions. Found himself pressed against over-soft, over-round teenage flesh and edged away hastily. ‘Gemma, obviously we have questions to ask you. You might have to give evidence in court. You might face charges yourself.’

Beside him the girl was suddenly no longer soft but a dense, tight shape. She swallowed convulsively.

‘Gemma?’

Full of tidal anxieties, her face sulky and damp, she said, ‘I done nothing.’

‘Gemma, I need to know who introduced Melia to this thing you had going with those men. Coulter and Venn and Logan and the others. Was it you?’

‘I didn’t want her there. Who do
you
reckon they all wanted?’

The fifteen-year-old beauty, not the plain, bovine eighteen-year-old. ‘Did you try to dissuade her?’

‘Huh?’

Hirsch sought inspiration from the stale air. ‘Did you try to convince her it was the wrong thing to do?’

‘Her? Yeah, right.’

‘Stubborn?’

Gemma snorted.

‘So who did get her involved?’

Her voice came, without conviction: ‘Mr Coulter.’

‘How?’

‘Me and her got done for shoplifting and he let us off and asked Mel out.’

‘Was she his girlfriend? Did they go out?’

‘Yeah, but, you know, they had to keep it secret.’

‘For how long?’

Gemma heaved her shoulders. ‘I dunno, a while. Few weeks.’

‘Just to be clear, they were having sex?’

Gemma’s eyebrows were scathing. ‘Like I said, they were
goin’ out
.’

‘How long after he started going out with her did he ask her to one of your parties?’

More shoulder-heaving. ‘It wasn’t like she went to lots of them.’

‘That first time, did you tell her what kind of party it would be?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t try to warn her?’

‘I would of got into trouble.’

‘With who? Melia?’

‘No—Mr Coulter. He said I had to hold her hand. He said he could still drop me in the shit because of the shoplifting and that.’

‘Was she shocked, upset, when she realised what was happening?’

Gemma snorted. ‘Not her.’

‘Did you give her a lift or did Mr Coulter collect her? Or collect both of you?’

‘Me.’

‘Getting back to that first party: she wasn’t scared, nervous?’

‘Mr Coulter was there.’

‘But so were a lot of other men and they were wearing masks, weren’t they?’

‘What? No.’

‘They weren’t masked?’

She gave a little giggle. ‘Nah.’

‘Never?’

‘No.’

Emily Hobba had talked about masks. Maybe a one-off thing, a fetish, Hirsch thought. Or Emily had lied so she wouldn’t be asked to identify anyone.

‘These parties: I know you had sex with the men, but was there also music, dancing?’

‘Sure.’

‘Alcohol? Drugs?’

Gemma slid her eyes to a corner of the miserable room. Hirsch said, ‘I’m not the drug squad. I just need to know more about the atmosphere.’

‘Like you said, dancing and drinking and that.’

‘And there was you, Melia...’

‘Sometimes these other girls.’

‘Apart from Emily Hobba, who were they?’

‘Dunno. They came with that cop.’

‘The party I’m mostly interested in is the last one. What happened?’

‘Well, you know.’

‘No, Gemma, I don’t know.’

‘I had sex and the others had sex.’ A bored singsong voice.

‘Melia too?’

‘Sure.’

‘With more than one man?’

Gemma wriggled around where she sat. ‘I’ll tell ya, all right? She was with Mr Coulter and then the others wanted to gang her, all of them at once, and she got upset, all right?’

‘She ran out?’

‘Said she was going to tell.’

‘Did David Coulter follow her outside?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘Did you?’

A shrug. ‘Couldn’t find her.’

‘She wasn’t outside on the road or on the lawn?’

‘Nup.’

‘Did you see Mrs Latimer there?’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. What about Sam Hempel?’

‘That loser?’

‘Was he there, Gemma?’

‘Didn’t see him.’

‘You don’t sound surprised that I’ve mentioned him.’