Hell to Pay (36 page)

He took the plain wooden chair. Hirsch, a little tense now, swung into the swivel chair behind his desk. He didn’t feel cowed, dutiful or deferential … What, exactly? Kropp had lost control of his men and was a dinosaur, a blind man, who’d forgotten who he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do, but he wasn’t bad in the way Spurling had been bad. Hirsch admitted that he felt a smidgen of regard for the man.

“You could have called me the other day,” Kropp said. “I’d have done the right thing.”

“Sarge,” Hirsch said, thinking that no, he couldn’t have called Kropp. The sergeant would have been compromised or at least Spurling and the Latimers would have tried to compromise him. If he’d revealed a flicker of doubt or hesitation, then Spurling or Raymond Latimer might have gone on the offensive.

And worse for me
, Hirsch thought,
if Nicholson and Andrewartha had come along for the ride
.

Kropp saw the story in Hirsch’s face and slumped and shook his head, all elasticity vanished. He drew one huge dry palm down over his face as if seeking comfort. Or erasure.

“It’s a mess,” he said.

Hirsch waited.

“Took my eye off the ball.”

As if policing were a game.
Perhaps we can put everything firmly at the feet of football
, Hirsch thought.

“My officers let me down.”

“You allowed it to happen.”

A flash of the old quick surging power, Kropp snarling, “
You
going to lecture me about my conduct?”

They faced off, saying no more.

Kropp subsided again. “Your girlfriend’s got her wish, there’s going to be a public meeting, put-the-boot-into-your-local-copper.”

Hirsch stared hotly at his sergeant. “Fuck you, Kropp. There were rumbles long before I arrived in the district. People complained to you personally and in writing long before they contacted police headquarters. And my girlfriend as you like to call her doesn’t need any help from me to get a public meeting up and running.”

“You’re the one who dobs in his colleagues.”

“Those officers stitched me up. They threatened my parents,” Hirsch said. “They
frightened my parents
, cowardly shits.”

“Like I said, you do not drop another police member in the shit.”

“No matter what he’s done?”

“No matter what he’s done.”

“If not me, then who? We let a rapist cop get away with it? A bully or a murderer or a thief?”

“What did I ever do to you?”

“You did it to yourself. People wanted me to spy on you but I didn’t.”

“Bullshit.”

“
You did it to yourself
. They have files full of complaints, going back years. Internal Investigations, even Spurling. But I’ll answer your question, what did you ever do to me … You didn’t allow me to do my job. You interfered. You were partisan.”

“You spied on me.”

“I was asked to. There is a difference. And I didn’t spy on you.”

“You spied on Quine easy enough.”

Hirsch said, “Quine was a criminal. He committed criminal acts. He corrupted junior officers and got them to commit criminal acts, and the Internals knew all about it, and now he’s in jail.”

“Hirschhausen, the holier than thou moralist.”

Yeah, well, maybe a touch, sometimes, when the wind’s in the right quarter
, Hirsch thought. Which didn’t make him wrong. “Quine set me up to take the blame. He threatened my life. He frightened my parents. This is news to you? You defend a man like that?”

“He’s a colleague,” Kropp said, jaw out.

“So anything’s allowed? He’s allowed to commit crimes? You’re allowed to be a fuck-up? Because you both wear the uniform and swore the oath, that makes it okay?”

“I didn’t fuck up.”

“What was it you said, you took your eye off the ball? You fucked up, Sarge. You turned a blind eye to Nicholson and Andrewartha’s bullying, their sexual assaults, their rapes. You turned a blind eye to their harassment of the female constable you were supposed to train and protect. You ran interference
for morally bankrupt locals just because they belonged to your footie club. And meanwhile you were running some catering business in police time using your mail-order bride.”

Kropp came out of his seat, red and frothing. “I
love
her. I treat her decent. And she was already living here, if you must know.”

Fucked if Hirsch was going to apologize. “What was it, you came into town an outsider and knew you’d never be part of the fabric but pathetically let yourself think you could be, if you ingratiated yourself enough to people like the Latimers? You’re a disgrace.”

Kropp had sat again but was dangerously still, tendons standing out in his neck. “You’re this close to a thrashing.”

“Fine. Bring it on.”

They faced off. Eventually Kropp said, “But if I did bash you up I might get a reprimand or something.”

He’s making a joke?
Hirsch still watched for the explosion out of the chair.

Instead Kropp said, “I want you and me to take a little drive together.”

“What, out east, some convenient mine shaft?”

“Mate, I’m not a killer—I’m a fuck-up and a disgrace, remember?”

N
ORTH ALONG THE BARRIER
, into a day of rusty winds and black, staring birds dotted along the swooping wires.

“I’ve seen the forensic report on David Coulter’s car,” Kropp said.

“And?”

“The rear bumper and boot lid had been replaced at some point.”

Hirsch nodded. “Melia Donovan backed into a tree. Few weeks ago.”

“But the rest of the car is spotless,” Kropp said. “No evidence it was used to run Melia Donovan over.”

Hirsch chewed on that. “One of the others did it? Or Coulter used a car belonging to one of the others?”

“No. I checked. And if you eliminate Coulter and the others, what possibility are you left with?”

The road north swam in mirages, stretching to the dry horizon, the pink and grey hills. Hirsch was half fond of the place now. “Sam Hempel.”

“Coulter sent him to jail a couple of years ago. Gave him six months.”

“But I’ve seen his car,” Hirsch said. “Even driven it. It’s a mess, but I don’t recall seeing any recent damage.”

Kropp said nothing and they reached the signage for Muncowie. Kropp turned off the highway and onto a single vehicle track, two stripes of gravelly dust stretching to the hills. One kilometer, two, and they were out where the battlers lived in corrugated iron shacks set in dead grass and rusted car bodies, where cats slunk away and the dogs were nothing but ribs and a prick.

Pulling into a weedy yard, Kropp switched off and the air was still and hot when they got out and slammed their doors. The exhausted dogs watched them and no curtains stirred. A plate, knife and fork sat on a stump, a smear of tomato sauce blackening in the sun. A hand mower sat at the end of a stripe of cropped grass and would have finished the job if there’d been time and a will. A David Jones bag had been snagged by untamed rose canes; someone had coughed blood into the tissue Hirsch spotted beside a cane chair black with sun and water damage. And sure enough, he heard a woman hacking her lungs up inside the house.

“Sam’s mother?”

“The father shot through long ago,” Kropp said.

He didn’t knock. He took Hirsch to the rotting sheds at the back, where nettles ruled and a rust-fretted Land Rover sat on weak tires. Slamming his meaty palm on the dented nose of the vehicle, he said, “If you’d done your job right, you’d have found
this fine example of English automobile engineering registered to one Mary Kathleen Hempel.”

Hirsch began to nod, recalling the unreliability of Sam’s Commodore, a bitch to drive, hard to start. So he’d taken his mother’s car. “Still got your copper’s instincts, Sarge.”

“Me, I’m going out in a blaze of glory,” Kropp said.