Hell to Pay (28 page)

“Ian Logan.”

Hirsch had seen the man’s ads in the
Weekly
. Wills, Trusts, Deeds, Conveyancing, Family Law. He said, “I don’t know what your clients have told you but—”

“We’ll thrash that out before the magistrate, shall we?” Logan said. He nodded at Hirsch’s phone. “What have you got there, pictures of the crime?”

He chortled. He was fully alert, never still, taking in the passing vehicles and pedestrians, knowing the secret business of the town. Then he muttered, “Oh, fuck,” and ushered the Venns ahead of him into the building. Curious, Hirsch glanced across the street. A young woman with a rope of blonde hair was parting the curtain beads at the entrance to the café fifty meters down the road. She stepped through, the beads briefly disturbed in her wake.

Then the court stenographer and general dogsbody stuck her head out and called Hirsch. He went in.

“W
E MEET AGAIN
, C
ONSTABLE
Hirschhausen,” the magistrate said.

What can you say to that? Hirsch nodded, said “Mr. Coulter,” and glanced around the courtroom. No other cases were listed, but Kropp was there. No one else.

In the end, Hirsch had filed two charges, driving under the influence and giving a false statement to police. The damaged guardrail was a matter for the roads department; he’d sent them the details. Now, as Coulter announced the charges, he glanced at Kropp uneasily. Kropp had seemed pissed off with Coulter and Logan the last time Hirsch had been in this courtroom, and seemed so now.

Coulter was speaking. “Mr. Logan, your client has elected to contest these charges in court rather than pay the relevant fines and lose demerit points?”

“That’s so, your honor.”

“Very well. Constable Hirschhausen?”

Hirsch, with another glance at Kropp, gave his account of the arrest. He turned to Logan, expecting questions, but Coulter called Venn to the stand.

Venn, duly sworn, winked at his wife and grinned at his lawyer and explained that Hirsch was mistaken, it had been his wife at the wheel.

“I’d had a couple of drinks, your honor, and thought it best not to drive and risk endangering other lives.”

“Drinks?” said Coulter. “This was the middle of the day.”

His tone sounded wrong to Hirsch. It wasn’t judicial indignation. It was as if he’d practiced his lines.

Venn said, “We had successfully negotiated a sale, your honor. Mrs. Elizabeth Jennings, who you might recall was widowed tragically two years ago and in the depressed real estate climate had been unable to sell her property. Until now.”

“Of course. Fine woman,” Coulter said. “Mr. Logan?”

“If I may, your honor, I should like to present a sworn statement made by Mrs. Jessica Venn, wife of the accused, in which she states that she, not her husband, was driving the car in question on the day and at the time and on the road in question.”

The magistrate flicked his comfortable fingers. Handed the statement, he read rapidly, then stared at Hirsch, hunched and pugnacious. “Constable? Is this statement a true account of events?”

“I have yet to read it, your honor.”

Coulter glanced at Logan, who fished another copy from his briefcase and handed it to Hirsch.

First: date, time, location and background circumstances. Then:

Witnessed by a notary public in Clare.

“Your response, Constable Hirschhausen?”

Hirsch stood. “Your honor, at the conclusion of this session it is my intention to arrest Mrs. Venn for perjury, and may I state that further charges against Mrs. Venn, and her husband, may be lodged at a later date.”

He sat.

“Your honor, really,” Logan said, getting wearily to his feet. “If it pleases the court, Constable Hirschhausen made threats to this effect on the steps of the courthouse a few minutes prior to the commencement of today’s session. The threats were directed at my clients in my presence and there was no mistaking Constable Hirschhausen’s intent. In fact, my clients and I felt most intimidated by the constable’s words and manner.”

Coulter swung his head, doing pretty convincing outrage. “Is this true, Constable Hirschhausen? Did you threaten Mr. Logan and his clients?”

“Your honor, Mr. and Mrs. Venn are making a mockery of this court. They—”

“You attempted to influence a witness so that she might alter her evidence before the court?”

“I attempted to help her avoid facing a serious—”

“I’ve heard enough,” the magistrate said with a little smack of his gavel. “I find that Mr. Venn does not have a case to answer and is free to go. As for your conduct, Constable Hirschhausen, further action may be sought.”

T
HERE WAS A BIT
of gleeful backslapping on the steps outside the courthouse. Hirsch looked on gloomily, the sun warm but unrestorative. Then the steps cleared; cars whisked the Venns and Logan away. His day shot, Hirsch headed down the steps to street level, only to be stopped by Kropp growling in his ear: “Tell me they’re wrong, Constable. You did not threaten to arrest the Venn woman for perjury.”

Hirsch paused where he was, but decided he’d feel safer on the footpath than mount the steps again. “Not wrong, Sarge.”

Kropp joined him and side by side they surveyed the town, which was doing nothing just then. The silence stretched; the bollocking didn’t come. All was peace and silence and the sun beat down. Presently Kropp said, “Jenny Dee.”

“Sarge?”

“She tried to do the dirty on you?”

“Apparently.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Thought never crossed my mind.”

They didn’t mention the hundred-dollar note on the floor of the file room. A farm truck trundled through the town, hauling hay. Presently, Hirsch sneezed, and then the woman with the swinging ponytail emerged from the café and approached the two men. She lifted a hand to Kropp. “Sergeant.”

“Linda.”

They regarded each other. Kropp said, “You wouldn’t be stalking your husband by any chance.”

She gave him the ghastly, fixated grin of a stalker. “Heaven forbid.”

“That’s what I thought.”

This was interesting. Hirsch looked on.

“Linda, meet Constable Hirschhausen. Constable, meet the ex-Mrs. Ian Logan.”

A quick flash, a brief bit of fire. “I do have an independent identity, Sergeant Kropp.”

“Of course. Forgive me.”

“I’ll forgive you when you take Ian’s guns away.”

“The court lifted the order, Linda, we had no choice.”

She snorted. “You mean
Coulter
lifted the order.”

Kropp said nothing, Hirsch taking it as assent.

She said with a sunny smile, “Like everyone, you were Coultered.”

“Thanks, Linda.”

“You’re welcome. Well, I’ll be off. Nice seeing you, Sergeant.”

“A hundred meters, Linda.”

The ex-Mrs. Logan waved negligently at the café. “I was no closer than a hundred and twenty.”

“Excellent.”

When she was gone, Hirsch put his head on one side. “What was that all about?”

“Old history. Logan put a restraining order on her.”

“Why?”

Kropp in his brutal solid way turned slowly to face Hirsch. “You do know that I think you’re a dog, right?”

“Sarge.”

“But you’re also a police member and you were just shafted by Coulter and Logan, so here’s the story.”

Hirsch watched Kropp gather himself, there on the footpath, under the early afternoon sun. “Ian Logan liked to thump his wife from time to time. Liked to forge her signature, too—banking matters, real estate contracts. Linda reported it, and when we heard he had this violent streak, we confiscated his guns. Shotgun, couple of hunting rifles. Anyway, she got screwed on the divorce and no action was taken on the issue of questionable documents and so he thought it okay to ask for his guns back. Filled out the forms, asked to be deemed, quote, ‘a non-prohibited person in relation to a firearms application’—and Coulter approved it. Linda went mental and started hassling everybody.”

“They’re friends, Coulter and Logan?”

“I’ll tell you what else about Coulter,” Kropp said, as if Hirsch hadn’t spoken. “Last year we went into bat for a wife and kids who were being bashed pretty regularly by the husband. She turns up to court on time, we turn up on time, Coulter doesn’t. Apparently he turned up in Riverton. Redruth, Riverton, yeah, easy to confuse the two—if you were drunk or didn’t give a damn. So Coulter races back here all pissed off, blaming everyone but himself, and refuses to grant an intervention order or let the woman read her victim impact statement. A week later, her husband hospitalizes her.”

Kropp turned his bristly eyebrows to Hirsch. “And so on.”

“The Bar Council?” Hirsch said.

“It’s like the police force,” Kropp said, plenty of nastiness in it. “The first rule is, look after your mates.”

Fuck off. Far off down the street, Logan’s ex-wife was climbing into an ancient Toyota. The motor caught, toxins belched.

“Nice-looking woman,” he said.

“Married young,” Kropp said. “Logan likes them young, quote unquote.”

“Young as in …”

“Young,” Kropp said.

Encouraged by Kropp’s manner, Hirsch said, “I still need a word with Ray Latimer, Sarge.”

“Lay off.”

H
IRSCH EMAILED SNAPS OF
Venn, Logan and Coulter to Rosie DeLisle, using his phone on top of one of the town’s seven hills, then bought a ham and salad roll from the café and drove slowly north. Tiverton came into view, the grain silo a stub on the horizon. The sky was huge and empty but faintly smudged out near the Razorback and then his phone came into range again.

Rosie DeLisle, saying, “You think these characters are involved?”

“Call it a hunch. Call it webs of influence and the fact that Ian Logan likes young girls.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

The next caller was Finola Armstrong, telling him that Craig Latimer was setting fires in the long grass next to her house.

HIRSCH FOUND A FALLOW paddock inside the Latimer property line, consisting mostly of dying grass, red dirt and star thistles, except for a vivid smudge of sooty earth the size of a schoolyard hard against the fence. Dirty red hieroglyphics scored the blackness, the spoor of firefighters and their trucks. Only one truck and four men remained now, Tiverton volunteers mopping up, together with one hopeful neighbor with a drum of water, a Honda pump, a hose and a teenage son on the back. The Mt. Bryan truck had been and gone. Steam rose and hissed. Smoke wisped in the breeze.

“Could have been worse,” one of the volunteers said.

Hirsch eyed the fence. Four charred posts, drooping wires, and a meter of blackness creeping onto Finola Armstrong’s property. Another hundred meters and it would have reached her sheds, her house. He could see her car in the yard. Couldn’t see the Latimers’ house: it lay on the other side of a rise.

All those hectares and Craig Latimer comes to the boundary fence to light his fire? No sign of the boy or his father or grandfather. Carrying out some damage control somewhere? Presumably Jack was at school. What was Craig doing home from school?

Hirsch got behind the wheel again and headed back along Bitter Wash Road to the Vimy Ridge gates. Parked, and followed voices to the backyard, one voice bellowing, “I’ll give you something to cry about, snivelling little wretch.”

Latimer, panting, veins popping, swinging one huge paw in a backswing, the other clamped to his son’s neck. Before Hirsch could act, the farmer had whacked the back of the boy’s legs.

“Mr. Latimer!”

Latimer’s arm froze at the top of another arc. He let it flop, straightened his back. “Stay out of this.”

“If you strike your son again, I’ll arrest you.”

“You’re joking.”

“No joke.”

“Know what the little shit’s done?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“He was caught lighting matches and throwing them in the grass.”

“Let him go.”

Latimer shoved the boy from him, face wrenched in disgust. “You great sooky calf, get cleaned up and go to your room. I’m not finished with you.”

“You are if you intend to hit him,” Hirsch said.

Craig was mucousy, helpless. “Please, Dad, I didn’t mean it. I was just—”

Latimer aimed a kick at him. Hirsch grabbed his arm. “I mean it, Mr. Latimer. Touch him again and I’ll do you for assault.”

“It’s private.”

“No it’s not. It involves me, now. It involves Mrs. Armstrong. It involves the firemen. Is Jack at school?”

Latimer blinked. “What?”

“Is Jack at school?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t Craig go?”

“I thought he had. I thought Finola had taken him to the bus.”

“Where’s your father?”

“What’s with all the questions? He’s gone to the bank, if you must know.”

Hirsch supposed it was possible the boy had heard talk of hard times, falling income, and decided a fire would bring in insurance money, but the more likely explanation was a lot simpler: family circumstances, recent and historic, had messed with his head.

Latimer was still panting. His hair flopped from heat and exertion, one wing of his shirt had escaped his belt and ash streaked his trousers and boots. He looked half-mad, in fact, and Hirsch stiffened in readiness—but then saw acceptance and good sense and self-pity come creeping back through the big frame and craggy head.

“Are you arresting Craig?”