Hell to Pay (3 page)

The children joined him, Jack a little agitated, as though unsure of the proprieties. Hirsch contemplated phoning one or other of the mothers but mobile reception was dicey, the women were returning anyway, and a call from a policeman might panic them. So, how to fill in the time … He didn’t think he should enter the house uninvited and didn’t want to take advantage of Jack by suggesting it. And he didn’t want to wander around the yard and sheds uninvited. Meanwhile, he needed to keep an eye on the kids.

Taking charge, he stepped onto the veranda and toward a huddle of directors’ chairs. “Let’s wait over here.”

When they were seated he asked, “Who owns the twenty-two?”

“My dad,” whispered the boy.

“What does he use it for?”

“Rabbits and things.”

“Does he own any other guns?”

“Another twenty-two, a three-oh-three and a twelve-gauge.”

“Where are they kept?”

“In his study.”

Hirsch was asking the questions as if they were unimportant, keeping his voice low and pleasant, but he was scanning the dusty yard, taking note of the sheds, a scatter of fuel drums, an
unoccupied kennel, stockyards, a field bin in a side paddock. A ute and a truck, but no car. A plow and harrows tangled in grass next to a tractor shed. A working farm but no one working it today, or not around the house.

“So anyone could take the guns out and shoot them?”

“He locks them in a cupboard.”

Hirsch threw Jack a complicit wink. “And I bet you know where the key is, right?”

Jack shook his head violently. “No, honest.”

“He’s not lying,” Katie said. “We used the gun that’s kept in the ute. It’s just a little gun, for shooting rabbits.”

Little and overlooked and forgotten
, thought Hirsch. Not even a proper gun, in the eyes of some people.

He was guessing the kids had done it a few times now, waited until the adults were out before grabbing the Ruger and heading down the creek for some target practice. Bullets? No problem. Small, overlooked and forgotten, they’d be found rolling loose in a glove box or a coat pocket or a cupboard drawer.

To ease the atmosphere, Hirsch said, “So, school holidays for the next two weeks.”

“Yes.”

A silence threatened. Hirsch said, “May I see the gun case?”

Jack took him indoors to a study furnished with a heavy wooden desk and chair, an armchair draped with a pair of overalls, a filing cabinet, computer and printer, bookshelves. It smelt of furniture polish and gun oil. The gun cabinet was glass-faced, bolted to the wall, locked. A gleaming Brno .22, a .303 fitted with a sight, a shotgun, a couple of cartridge packets, and an envelope marked “licenses.”

Hirsch thanked the boy and they returned to the veranda in time to hear a crunch of gravel. A boxy white Volvo came creeping up to the house. It hesitated to see a strange vehicle,
POLICE
scrolled across the door and hood. Katie’s mother at the wheel, reasoned Hirsch, and Jack’s mother in the passenger seat, and
he didn’t know what the hell he should tell them. He removed the Motorola from his pocket. The shutter sound already muted, he was ready to photograph them—habit, after everything that had happened to him.

VIEWED LATER, THE PHOTOGRAPHS captured on Hirsch’s phone revealed women of his age, mid-thirties, and as unlike each other as their children. Katie’s mother came into view first, slamming the driver’s door and advancing on the house. She wore jeans, a T-shirt, scuffed trainers and plenty of attitude, throwing a glare at Hirsch as she neared the veranda. She was small-boned like her daughter, dark, unimpressed.

Jack’s mother came trailing behind, leaving the Volvo in stages, closing the door gently, pressing against it until it clicked, and finally rounding the front of the car as if visiting strangers and reluctant to be a burden or disturb the air in any way. Hirsch wondered if she’d hurt her right hand. She held it beneath her breasts, fingers curled.

Meanwhile Katie’s mother had stopped short of the veranda steps. She threw a glance at her daughter. “All right, hon?”

“Peachy.”

“Excellent, excellent.”

Hirsch experienced the full wattage of her gaze. He dealt with it by thinking,
Fuck this for a joke
, and sticking out his hand.
“Hi. Paul Hirschhausen, stationed at Tiverton.” With a grin he added, “Call me Hirsch.”

The woman stared at him, at his hand, at his face again; then, quite suddenly, her fierceness evaporated. He wasn’t out of the woods, but did deserve a handshake. “Wendy Street,” she said, “and this is Alison Latimer.”

Hirsch nodded hello, Latimer responding with a smile that struggled to come in from the cold. She was tall, fair, subdued, pretty in a strained way, as if she had no expectations and understood disappointment.
But what do I know?
thought Hirsch. He could misread people as easily as read them, and bore the scars to prove it.

“Is something wrong?” she blurted, defeated expectancy in her face.

“Nothing too bad, but there is something we need to discuss.”

Before he could elaborate, Wendy Street said, “You’re new at Tiverton?”

“Yes.”

“And you come under Kropp in Redruth.”

“Yes.”

“Fan … tastic,” she said, dragging it out.

“Is there a problem?”

That might have been a shrug he saw. She grinned at his torn trousers, eyes briefly warm, brown and lustrous. “The kids beat you up?”

“Entirely my doing,” Hirsch said.

“Uh-huh. So, you want to discuss something?”

Hirsch explained that he’d been heading out east, heard rifle shots, and thought he’d better investigate. For some reason, he elected not to mention Kropp’s call.

“Oh, Jack,” wailed Alison Latimer.

Jack stared at the ground. Katie stood with folded arms and stared out across the garden. And Wendy Street said, “You just happened to be passing, in your four-wheel drive, and heard shots.”

Hirsch put a little harshness into it: “A tree was across the road. When I got out to shift it, a bullet flew past my head.”

Okay?

It worked. The women were dismayed. They turned to the children, back to Hirsch, and after that he endured tides of apologies and recriminations.

“Look,” he said, “no harm done. But I think the rifle should be locked away from now on.” He retrieved it from the HiLux and handed it to Jack’s mother. “I have to ask, is it licensed?”

Alison nodded. The rifle clasped a little awkwardly, as though her right hand lacked strength; she used her left to flip open the bolt. As she did so, a beautiful old-style diamond ring flashed a red spark as it caught the light. Then she gestured with the rifle, showing him the empty chamber. She was a lovely woman full of strain and privation, a woman who hated to be noticed and held herself stiffly, as though her joints had locked up. In a low mutter she said, “I can show you the paperwork if you like.”

“That’s okay,” Hirsch said, knowing he should check but telling himself that he wasn’t among criminals. “Look, you run a farm, it doesn’t hurt to have a couple of rifles on hand, but keep them locked up so the kids can’t get at them. No unsupervised shooting.”

All through this, Wendy Street was casting tense looks at her neighbor. Alison, feeling the force of it, broke into tears. “Wen, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Allie, I hate guns,” Street said. She relented and touched the back of the other woman’s hand. “Please, please,
please
keep them locked up.”

“I will.”

And to the children: “As for you two rascals, no more shooting, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said.

Katie didn’t agree, she didn’t disagree.

Wendy wasn’t finished. She clamped her fingers around Hirsch’s forearm. “Quiet word?”

Surprised, he said, “Sure.”

She led him to her car and he stood there uneasily, waiting, watching the house, the other mother, the children.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know you, I don’t know if I can trust you.”

There was nothing to say to that. Hirsch waited.

“I teach at the high school in Redruth.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve seen how Sergeant Kropp and his men treat the Koori kids.”

Hirsch stroked his jaw. “I don’t know anything about that. I’m new here. What’s it got to do with Jack and Katie?”

Wendy took a breath. “Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I want you to know that Allie’s husband is a bully. He won’t handle this well when he hears about it,
and he’s going to hear about it because he’s mates with Sergeant Kropp
.”

Meaning
, Hirsch thought,
she’ll appreciate it if I keep my trap shut
.

“I assume you have procedures to follow,” Wendy said bitterly.

“There are procedures and procedures,” Hirsch said.

She assessed him briefly, head cocked, then gave a whisper of a nod. And promptly bit her bottom lip, as if thinking she’d gone too far, so Hirsch said:

“If Mr. Latimer is violent to his family I can refer them to a support agency. Sergeant Kropp needn’t know.”

The tension in Wendy Street shifted rather than eased. “What matters right now is the shooting business. If you have to report it, you have to report it—but I’d rather you didn’t.”

Hirsch gave his own version of an abbreviated nod. “How about we leave it as a friendly caution. It would have been different if someone had been hurt or the bullet had gone through the roof of my car.” He paused. “Think of the paperwork.”

He got a smile from her but it was brief, her big upper teeth worrying her bottom lip again. She cast a troubled look at the
children, who stared back with trepidation, if not curiosity. They knew some kind of deal was being worked out.

“I don’t know the
how
—I don’t know where the gun was or where they found the bullets or whose idea it was—but I think I know the
why
.”

A car passed by on Bitter Wash Road, tires crushing the short-lived paste of rainwater, dust and pebbles. Hirsch heard it clearly, and now he noticed the country odors: eucalyptus, pine, the roses, the grass and pollens, a hint of dung and lanolin. He realized his cut hand was stinging. All of his senses were firing, suddenly.

“Pullar and Hanson,” he said.

Her mouth opened. “They told you about the car they saw yesterday?”

“Yes.”

Wendy folded her arms. “It probably wasn’t Pullar and Hanson, I know that, but the point is, they
are
scared. Ever since it started, Katie’s been keeping a scrapbook. Jack has nightmares. The shooting is self-protection.”

A burst of staticky squawks and crackles issued from the HiLux. “Excuse me,” Hirsch said.

He reached in, picked up the handset, and it was Sergeant Kropp, demanding to know his current location.

“Poking around, Sarge,” Hirsch said, watching Wendy Street return to the veranda. “No sign of anyone shooting a gun.”

“Well, get your arse up to Muncowie. Make contact with a Mr. Ian Nancarrow, resident of Broken Hill, driving a white Pajero with New South Wales plates, somewhere on the highway there.”

Hirsch scribbled the information in his notebook. “The reason?”

“A body beside the road.”

HIRSCH’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS:
Pullar and Hanson, the kids were right
, and he felt a queer kind of dismay mingled with excitement. “Suspicious?”

“Possible hit-and-run.”

Hirsch made the mental adjustment: not Pullar and Hanson. “Nancarrow?”

“No. He claims he stopped by the road for a leak, saw a dead woman lying in the dirt.” Kropp paused and added, “Doctor McAskill’s on his way up there as we speak.”

“I’m on it, Sarge.”

Hirsch placed the handset in the cradle. The women and their children were watching him from the veranda. “Got to go,” he called, climbing behind the wheel. He got a nod for his pains, a couple of halfhearted waves.

Pausing at the front gate, Hirsch entered “Muncowie” into the GPS. It directed him not back to the highway, as he’d expected, but further out along Bitter Wash Road, which eventually made a gradual curve to the north, smaller roads branching from it—one of which looped west onto the Barrier Highway a short distance north of Muncowie.

Shorter, Hirsch could see that from the map, but unsealed for most of the distance.

After twenty minutes, he found himself skirting around the Razorback, driving through red dirt and mallee scrub country, the road surface chopped and powdery where it wasn’t reefed and ribbed with a stone underlay. Very little rain had fallen here last night; it was as if a switch had been flicked, marking the transition from arable land to semi-desert. Leasehold land, one-hundred-year leases defined by sagging wire fences, sand-silted tracks and creek beds filled with water-tumbled stones like so many misshapen cricket balls. You might find a fleck of gold in these creek beds if you were lucky, or turn your ankle if you were not. It was land you walked away from sooner or later: Hirsch saw a dozen stone chimneys and eyeless cottages back in the stunted mallee, little heartaches that had struggled on a patch of red dirt and were sinking back into it. Anthills, sandy washaways, foxtails hooked onto gates, a couple of rotting merino carcasses, a tray-less old Austin truck beneath a straggly gum tree, and weathered fence posts and the weary rust loops that tethered them one to the other. He saw an eagle, an emu, a couple of black snakes. It was a land of muted pinks, browns and greys, with the pale blue hills smudging the horizon, Muncowie on the other side. That was what he saw. What he didn’t see, but sensed, were abandoned gold diggings, mine shafts, ochre hands stenciled to rock faces. A besetting place. It spooked Hirsch. The sky pressed down and the scrub crouched. “It’s lovely out there,” one of the locals had assured him during the week, waiting while Hirsch witnessed a statutory declaration.

He passed in and out of creek beds and saw a tiny church perched atop a rise. What the fuck was it doing there, this shell of a church? Calling to other stone shells, he supposed, left by the men and women who’d settled here and failed and walked away from it all.

Muttering, “I’m just a boy from the suburbs,” Hirsch fought the steering wheel, the gear lever, the clutch. His foot ached.
Even the HiLux struggled, pitching and yawing inflexibly, taking him at a crawling pace through the backcountry. You had to hand it to technology, the GPS giving him the shortest route but blithely unaware of local conditions. It would take him forever to reach Muncowie at this rate, longer if he holed the sump or punctured a tire.