Hell to Pay (2 page)

Like the police.

He holstered his handgun and, hunching his shoulders a little, 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.

T
HEY 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, and 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. Trees and cypresses hedged them in, shrubberies and garden beds and lawns, the usual landscaping out here in the wheat and wool country, but 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, while the red roof was small, faded, boasting only an attached carport and one small garden shed. 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. Or maybe those feudal relationships no longer existed.

Hirsch shaded his eyes. The sun passed in and out of the scrappy clouds, a crow sideslipped above the road, sparrow-hawks hunted above the creek, sheep trotted, nose to tail, along a dirt pad on a nearby hillside.

Otherwise only the children moved, and Hirsch was betting they belonged to one or both of the houses. No school for two weeks, and, with the blessing or ignorance of their parents, they’d taken a .22 rifle 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, yet you could pretend you were in a shootout with the bad guys, and when the rifle grew too heavy for your little arms 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 potshot
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 offenses and penalties. But kids … He’d have to involve the parents; he’d maybe have to
charge
the parents. Hell to pay.

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 frightened 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 mattered, and Hirsch, forgetting his discomfort, was intrigued to see divergent reactions. The boy dropped his eyes like a beaten dog, already surrendering, but the girl grew tense, her eyes darting to the empty hill, the boy alongside her and possible escapes routes. She didn’t run, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. The gaze she fixed on him was working it all out.

Hirsch held his palm up, not quite a warning, not quite a greeting. “Don’t,” he said mildly.

A faint relaxation of her limbs. She was about twelve years old, skinny, contained, unblinkingly solemn, with scratched bare legs and arms under shorts and a T-shirt, her hair dark and cropped at the shoulders and forehead. Scruffy, but she had the looks to light dark places.

Disconcerted, he eyed the boy. Thin, similarly dressed, he could have been her brother, but his hair was straw-colored, full of tufts and tangles, his pale skin was flushed and mottled, and where the girl seemed to look for the angles, he seemed ready to take orders or give up. But it was he who held the rifle, and he was practiced 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. One logical path was: “How about we start with your names?”

Her voice piping above the whoosh of the turbines, the girl said, “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 kilometer 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 knew you were trespassing?”

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

Right
, thought Hirsch. He continued to pick his way. “Look, the thing is, one of your shots went wild. It nearly hit me.”

He gestured in the direction of the road. “I’d just got out of my car to move a fallen tree when I heard it go right past my head.” 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 a 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.

They had all the answers. 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 returns.”

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, and 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 at a fast clip but the boy trudged with his spine and spindly arms and legs in a curious counterpoint, a kind of pulling back on the reins, and Hirsch saw that his left shoe was chunkier than the right, the sole and heel built up.

Catching Hirsch, the girl said, “You’ve got a hole in your pants.”

T
HE 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, yet Hirsch knew exactly which one she meant: the Pullar and Hanson Chrysler. Rather than say the killers had last been seen heading for Longreach, in the middle of Queensland, over two thousand kilometers 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, tiny gold hoops 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. 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 backseat.

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 and the entrance, car park and classrooms reached via a side street. The speed limit was 50 km/h 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 was what. A car in the news, driven by a pair of killers.

Not a common car—but not rare either, and Hirsch argued that now. “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? Perhaps putting something in the letter box?”

They stared at him blankly and he was thinking the question beyond their ken when the girl said, “There was a lady.”

“A lady.”

“But I didn’t see her putting anything in the letter box.”

“Was she waiting to see me, do you think?”

“She looked in your car.”

Hirsch went very still and braked the HiLux and said lightly, “When was this?”

“Morning recess.”

Hirsch went out on patrol every morning, and someone would have known that. “What day?”

Katie conferred with Jack and said, “Our last day.”

“Last day of term. Friday.”

“Yes.”

Hirsch nodded slowly and removed his foot from the brake pedal, steering slowly past the fallen branch. Seeing Katie Street peer at it, he had a sense of her mind working, putting the narrative together—his stopping the HiLux, getting out and hearing a stray bullet fly past his head. As if to check that he wasn’t sporting a bullet hole, she glanced across at him uneasily. He smiled. She scowled, looked away.

Then she said tensely, “We’re not lying.”

“You saw a woman near my car.”

Now she was flustered. “No. I mean yes. I mean we saw the black car.”

“I believe you.”

She’d heard that before, a doubting adult. “It’s true!”

“What direction?”

She got her bearings, pointed her finger. “That way.”

North. Which made little sense if Pullar and Hanson had been in the car she saw—not that Hirsch could see that pair of killers leaving their comfort zone to drive all the way down here to Daggy Sheep, South Australia.

Still sensing Hirsch’s doubt, Katie grew viperish: “It was black, it was a station wagon and it had yellow and black New South Wales number plates, just like in the news.”

Hirsch had to look away. “Okay.”

“And it was a Chrysler,” said Jack.

Feeling lame, Hirsch said, “Well, it’s long gone now.”

Or not, if it had been the Pullar and Hanson car. The men liked to target farms on dirt roads off the beaten track. Suddenly Hirsch understood what the children had been doing: they’d been shooting Pullar and Hanson.

He steered gamely down through the washaway and up around the next bend, to where Bitter Wash Road ran straight and flat for a short distance, the children mute and tense. But as he neared the red roof and the green, Katie came alive, snapping, “Jack’s place.”

A pair of stone pillars, the name
VIMY RIDGE
on one, 1919 on the other, the oiled wooden gates ajar. Imposing, but Hirsch supposed that a lot had occurred since 1919, for everything was weatherworn now, as if the money had evaporated or been spent on more pressing needs. A curving gravel driveway took him past rose-bordered lawns, oleander bushes and a palm tree, all of the road dust washed off by last night’s rain, ending at a lovely stone farmhouse: local stonework in shades of honey, a steep green roof and deep verandas, in that mid-north regional
style not quite duplicated elsewhere in the country, and sitting there as though it belonged. Hirsch eyed it appreciatively. He’d grown up in a poky terrace on the baked streets of Brompton—not that the miserable little suburb was miserable any longer, now the yuppies had remade it.

He pocketed his phone, got out, stretched his bones and gazed at the house. It was less lovely, closer to, careworn, the paintwork faded and peeling, a fringe of salt damp showing on the walls, a fringe of rust along the edges of the corrugated iron roof. Weeds grew in the veranda cracks. He didn’t think it was neglect, exactly. It was as if the inhabitants were distracted, no longer saw the faults, or blinked and muttered, “I must take care of that next week.”