Hell to Pay (17 page)

“Sure.”

Hirsch nodded his thanks. “What about Emily’s parents? Siblings?”

“Paul, we’re talking ex foster kids who shared a flat, no one looking out for them.”

Hirsch nodded gloomily. “When did you learn about her?”

“Three months ago. We didn’t know where or how to start the investigation, and then a couple of days ago she texted me to say she’d recognized Melia Donovan’s picture in the paper as one of the girls at the party.”

Hirsch fetched out his phone. “I have a snap of Gemma Pitcher. I could show it to Emily.”

“Good idea,” Rosie said. Then she gave Croome a look. “She’s been in the loo a while …”

Croome blinked. “Oh, fuck.”

She raced away, and when they heard thumps and drama, Hirsch and DeLisle ran to investigate. They found the sex crimes inspector on the bathroom floor, slapping the teenager’s face, shouting, “What did you take? Emily! Wake up! What did you take?”

Brushing her away feebly, Emily Hobba said, “Gerroff me.”

HIRSCH HEADED BACK TO the bush that evening, wondering how he could appear to pass on information about his colleagues without passing on information about them. His head ached.

Ached again on Friday, all that paperwork, so that a run out into the dry country east of Tiverton was a relief. Then Kropp called him. “A little bird tells me you came out of the Quine hearing smelling of roses. No flies on you. But given that you haven’t been sacked or jailed, may I remind you that your presence is needed here tomorrow?”

“Crowd control, I remember. Football hooligans.”

“Just get your arse down here for an eleven o’clock briefing.”

S
ATURDAY
. H
IRSCH SHOWERED, PULLED
on his uniform and strapped his baby Beretta to an ankle holster. He drove to Redruth. Kropp said, “Nice of you to join us, Constable Hirschhausen.”

Hirsch checked his watch. 11
A.M.
“Am I late, Sarge?”

“In this job, on my watch, you arrive
early
.”

“I’ll remember that, Sarge,” said Hirsch, giving Nicholson a
winning grin. Andrewartha was there, and Dee, but Kropp had also brought in two constables from Clare: Revell and Molnar. Big men, stony, full of dim menace.

“Gents,” said Hirsch with a wink.

“Stop arsing around and take a seat,” Kropp said.

He’d pinned seven photographs to the board, head-and-shoulders shots of five white and two Aboriginal men. Four of the seven were young, three in early middle age. Sullen faces mostly, full of hard-won experience, men whose work, education, relationship and financial histories were paltry or nonexistent. Kropp’s view of them was simple: slapping their faces with the flat of his pointer he said, “Behold the enemy.”

Maybe so
, thought Hirsch,
but how far removed are they from guys like Nicholson and Andrewartha?
Kropp’s constables were just as young, poorly educated and lacking in work and life experiences. Equally clannish and suspicious of diversity. Attracted to police work because it’s inward-looking, secretive and protective. And it licenses the art and craft of thumping other human beings.

“As I was saying, Constable Hirschhausen.”

Hirsch blinked. “Loud and clear, Sarge.”

“As I was saying, these magnificent specimens of Australian manhood are a nuisance when sober and an absolute nightmare when they get on the grog. Stir in a football premiership …”

And you get blood and broken glass
.

“We have some long hours ahead of us, but I’ve secured overtime. Best-case scenario, the night proves to be a fizzer, but last year we had a glassing that resulted in permanent blindness in one eye, a full-on brawl in the Woolman, resulting in hospitalization, and a fatality when some kids had a drag race just out past the motel.”

Here Kropp’s voice cracked a little. Hirsch was curious. The guy seemed genuine, rising on his toes as he spoke, lifted by his emotions, as if the town were his and he its civilizing force.

Yeah, well, the Redruth sergeant was also a template for the
hard men who ran fiefdoms around the state, men who’d turn evasive, verbose and arrogant if you tried to pin them down. But clever men, a witness-box headache to every judge, magistrate and defense and prosecution barrister in the land. How long had Kropp been here? Twelve years?

Kropp slapped the pointer down and folded his arms. “Questions? No, well get to it then.”

Hirsch glanced at his watch: almost noon. The game wouldn’t start until early afternoon, allowing time for a quick lunch. He glanced at Dee and mimed eating. She nodded.

“Aww,” said Nicholson, catching it, “the first blush of young love.”

Dee ignored him but went pink, looked down as she gathered her things.

Andrewartha got in on the act. Working a concerned frown onto his face he said, “I hope you’re sexually responsible, Constable Hirschhausen. For your convenience, a protective sheath dispenser has been installed in the men’s room.”

“Nah,” Nicholson said, “our boy likes to
feel
it.”

“Then he’s in for a disappointment,” Andrewartha said. “Word is, he’ll find a lack of tactile integrity, if you get my meaning.”

“Totally do,” Nicholson said. “She overused it at the academy.”

“Yep.”

“Look at Hirschhausen, cracking the shits.”

“You’re so funny,” Dee said.

“We think so.”

These clowns
, Hirsch thought,
deserve to be informed on
.

A
N HOUR LATER HE
was patrolling the Redruth oval listlessly, watching for hotheads, just as he’d done years ago, a raw cadet.

Except he hadn’t come full circle, exactly. For a start, here in the world of small towns and farms, the spectators were few and did their drinking and fuming in private, cocooned in cars parked snout up to a white perimeter fence. Once in a while a
door would open and the occupant woud raise the tailgate or boot to rummage for another can of beer, but other than that they might have been at a church picnic. He recognized some of the Tiverton locals, including the Muirs, Tennant and Ray Latimer, who was there with his sons and a solid-looking older man. The boys’ grandfather? Horns tooted desultorily, a woman knitted a baby’s jacket, a man sipped Thermos tea, a dog pissed on a car tire.

When the wind came up, whipping a scarf from a car aerial, Hirsch retrieved it and handed it to the kid seated at the wheel.

“Thanks.”

He peered in at the boys in the back. “Nathan?”

Melia Donovan’s brother looked hunted, his dark eyes liquid in his dark face. The boy beside him was on Kropp’s watch list. Sam Hempel sat beside the driver.

Hirsch straightened his back, saluted. “Enjoy the game.”

“Yeah.”

Hirsch turned to go and saw Andrewartha watching him.

“That figures—mates with the boongs.”

Hirsch winked. “I’ll put your name down for sensitivity training, shall I?”

“Fuck off.”

Time dragged. Hirsch’s feet hurt. The game didn’t interest him even though the score was close, each side kicking too few goals, too many points. With halftime due, he headed for a van parked inside the main gate and bought four spring rolls. The woman who served him was Thai; he watched her fry the rolls in a spitting pan. Then the siren sounded and people poured from their cars, forming a line at the van window, a pulsing pressure point. Hirsch watched tensely, but nothing happened, the queue was orderly. The Latimers appeared, Jack giving Hirsch a tiny wave, Raymond a glare. The older boy was plump and hangdog, trying to appear unattached.

Then Kropp arrived in a police car, pulling up behind the Thai food van. He got out, bent his solid back into the rear
compartment, emerged with uncooked spring rolls and packaged paper cups and plates. Hirsch watched him hand the bags to the woman in the van, plant a kiss on her cheek and wave goodbye. But he took his time leaving, striding like a general down the queue of spectators, winking, geddaying, giving the evil eye, shaking hands with Ray Latimer, ruffling Jack’s hair.

Dee materialized at Hirsch’s elbow, small and perky in her uniform. “What would you call that? Crowd management? Improving public relations?”

“Constable, please, a little respect. But who’s the woman, that’s the real issue.”

“Wife? Girlfriend?”

“Nice little sideline,” Hirsch said.

“The woman or the spring rolls?”

A
T THE FINAL BELL
, Redruth was four points ahead and Hirsch broke up a shoving match. Dee’s shins were sprayed by spurting gravel as she dodged an irate station wagon. Andrewartha got into the face of a screeching woman. Nicholson and the other constables whisked a man to the lockup.

And then it was all over. The scarf knitter and the old tea drinker and the tired farming families were gone, leaving only wrappers tumbled like scrapping birds as the wind rose.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kropp said, reappearing in his police car. “Consider this the lull before the storm. By nine or ten o’clock the troublemakers will be spoiling for a fight. Meanwhile, grab yourselves a quick bite and then start making your presence felt.”

Free hamburgers from the town’s Greasy Joe, and at six o’clock they split into two units and began to prowl the streets, pubs and through roads of the town, Hirsch, Nicholson and Revell in one car, Andrewartha, Dee and Molnar in the other.

Hirsch was happy to sprawl in the backseat and let Nicholson drive. Up and down the streets, in and out of the town’s three pubs and car parks. The streetlights were barely adequate; few
cars were about. Hirsch wondered if life that evening was being lived on the side streets, behind drawn curtains, for the pubs were quiet. He felt he was encroaching whenever he entered a main bar or a lounge bar. Heads would turn away, registering not him but his uniform. It was an odd, alien feeling, standing on the sidelines while people enjoyed themselves.

At 8
P.M.
he wandered through the Wheatsheaf Hotel while Nicholson and Revell had words with some kids hanging around the bottle shop. Ray Latimer was seated in a booth with a woman not his wife. She was tiredly pretty, dressed in black. Guessing that Latimer had sent his sons home with his old man, Hirsch nodded and returned to the car.

At 8:30 his mobile chirped.

“Hello?”

“
Mr. Hirsch …
”—the voice stumbled—“… 
Hirsch … hawsen
.”

“Yes?”

“This is The Dugout, concerning your eight o’clock booking.”

“Sorry?”

“Table for twelve, eight o’clock.”

“I don’t understand,” said Hirsch, who did.

“
One of our busiest nights of the year. I’m afraid when you didn’t show we allocated that table to another party.”

“I’m afraid you’ve been duped.”

“We cannot issue a refund, I’m afraid.”

“Forgive me,” Hirsch said, “but I did not make a table booking. Someone is duping you.”

“You gave this mobile number. Party of twelve, eight o’clock, a twenty-dollar deposit.”

Hirsch shook off the caller and pocketed the phone. “Trouble?” Nicholson wanted to know.

“Twenty bucks?” said Hirsch. “You guys wasted twenty bucks on me?”

“What are you on about?”

Hirsch folded his arms, got comfortable there in the backseat. “Didn’t cost me anything, cost you twenty bucks.”

T
HE HOURS LENGTHENED. THE
radio crackled from car to car, car to base, base to car. Hirsch glimpsed the other patrol car sometimes, outside a pub, nosing down a street. Otherwise he dozed. He’d been awake since dawn, his stomach heavy with the spring rolls and the hamburger. He wriggled to get comfortable. He’d had enough of this, the blanketing night air, the dew and the tricky half-light. Something had queered it for him—not here in the patrol car, exactly, but just out of range, in among the shadows. He supposed he was waiting for violence.

Nicholson and Revell talked while he dozed:

“How long’s the sheila been with you?”

“Dee?” said Nicholson. “Couple of weeks.”

“Nice tits.”

“Get her pissed she might flash them for you.”

“Is it true, she did the whole academy?”

“Top to bottom.”

“Top
and
bottom.”

The tires grumbled beneath them in the night.

Revell fished out his wallet. “Ten bucks says I do her before you do.”

“Dork.”

“I mean it,” Revell said. “I saw the way she was looking at me.”

Nicholson shook his head. “Let’s make it interesting: who’ll give her the first anal, first facial, first golden shower.”

“You’re on.”

“Except are we sure she’s worth ten?”

“Point,” Revell said. He turned to Hirsch. “You in?”

“I don’t gamble.”

Revell stared at him a moment, turned away. “Scumbag.”

They fell silent. The radio crackled, suspicious noises reported at 5 Truro Street. The car climbed out of the main street and up onto one of the town’s little hills, where stone houses slumbered behind oleanders and ghost gums cracked the footpaths.
The old copper mine was a dark excavation on the adjacent hill, moonlight flaring on the depthless black water and pushing gantry and chimney shadows down the hill. The wind was higher here, a helpless whine in the pine trees. Revell got out, knocked, no answer.