Bitter Wash Road (6 page)

Muir’s hand was a hard slab thickened by years of manual labour, fingers like stubby cigars, but dry, warm and gentle. A square head with heavy lids over intelligent eyes. ‘Live next door,’ he said.

Hirsch nodded. They found themselves standing side by side, staring out at the miserable front yard and the HiLux at the kerb.

‘The doc said someone run over Melia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poor bloody kid.’

Hirsch could hear muted sobbing inside, another voice murmuring, and said, ‘Maybe you could fill me in on the family?’

Muir went very still. Protective. Then he shrugged. ‘Do my best.’

He jerked his head, indicating that Hirsch should follow him a few paces into the front yard. The better light revealed a man with a few years on him, forties probably. A tough hide, barrelly torso and small backside, dressed in comfortable faded jeans and a khaki shirt. Greying hair cropped short around the fringes of his big, genial skull.

Before Hirsch could ask his first question, Muir said, ‘She was hitching?’

‘Possibly.’

Muir slid his gaze at Hirsch. ‘Possibly?’

‘Questions remain.’

‘Is that right.’

‘It’s possible she was hitching and a vehicle hit her. All I can say is she was found lying in a hollow near the side of the road and not noticed until today.’

Muir took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘Poor little cow.’ He turned to stare across the quiet rooftops of the town, a flat skyline interrupted by the grain silos at the railway station. ‘Okay, ask your questions.’

‘What do you know about her movements over the weekend?’

‘Nothing.’

‘All right, what can you tell me about her?’

‘Known her all her life.’

Hirsch brought out his phone, pretending to check the screen. Waited for the patient man beside him to go on.

‘A bit wild.’

‘So I understand,’ said Hirsch.

‘Nothing mean or nasty. Sweet kid, in fact. Just a bit unmanageable.’

‘What about her friends?’

An unhurried individual, Muir drew patiently on his cigarette. ‘You mean boyfriends.’

‘Any friends.’ Hirsch paused. ‘Older friends.’

‘Older friends. There was a whisper she was seeing someone older, but they broke up. Me and the wife, there were times we wanted to step in, but you can’t, can you.’

‘Any names come to mind? Friends, ex-boyfriends, anyone at all?’

Muir stared at him and finally said, ‘Good friends with Gemma Pitcher.’ He checked his watch. ‘Works in the shop, you might just catch her.’

Hirsch bought his groceries there, since there was nowhere else, and recalled a solid pudding of a girl stacking shelves or sitting at the cash register. If asked to bet on it he’d say she was a lot older than Melia Donovan. ‘They’re at school together?’

Muir shook his head. ‘Gemma left school two or three years ago.’ Acknowledging Hirsch’s point he added, ‘There are only six or seven teenagers in the whole town, mostly boys. It’s not as if Melia and Gemma were spoiled for choice.’

Hirsch nodded. No jobs, no night life. Net migration would be out of the district, not in. ‘Were they close?’

‘Thick as thieves, always off somewhere.’

‘How did they get around?’

‘Gemma drives.’

‘Parties? The pub?’

Muir gave him a long look. ‘Wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘Any other names you can think of?’

‘I stay out of it, mate.’ Muir paused. ‘Come to think of it she did turn up one day last month with a black eye, said she’d been in a bit of a crash, said it was nothing.’

Check accident reports, insurance claims, local panelbeaters.

‘What else? There’s a brother, isn’t there?’

Like a massive ship turning on the ocean, Muir stepped around to face Hirsch. ‘Mate, what’s your angle here?’

He stood close, crowding Hirsch, more animated suddenly. Hirsch could smell shaving cream, talcum powder, cigarette smoke and the heat of a day’s work. Not unpleasant: honest smells, given off by a decent man who was hot under the collar right now.

‘If you’re a mate of Kropp’s…’

The vehemence was barely there but it registered. Hirsch put some edge in his voice: ‘Mr Muir, what are you trying to tell me?’

But Muir had subsided, hands in his pockets, face turned away, muttering.

‘Sorry, what?’

Muir said, very plainly, ‘Kropp and his boys like to take the Abo kids out into the bush, give them a good hiding and let them walk home.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Muir studied him, then finally nodded. ‘Maybe you don’t. There are two kids in the family. Melia, white father, and Nathan, black father. Both long gone.’

He flicked his cigarette away. ‘Filthy habit.’

Both men stared at the butt. Then Muir gestured at it, saying, ‘Maybe you should fine me for littering. And when you’ve done that, breathalyse me every time I leave the house. Then scream in my face for jaywalking.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘You wouldn’t need a
reason,
not if you’re one of Kropp’s boys.’

Hirsch didn’t want to get into it. ‘I’d better speak to this Gemma.’

Muir gazed at him levelly. ‘Like I said, she works in the shop.’

‘Thanks,’ Hirsch said. He stopped. ‘Is Nathan inside with his mother?’

‘Leave the poor bugger alone.’

‘I fully intend to,’ Hirsch said in his reasonable voice, ‘after I ask him about his sister’s movements on the weekend.’

Muir conceded that. ‘He’s not home yet, but he’s probably not far away. He and a mate of his work at the grain shed.’

Hirsch nodded. Tiverton Grains, a collection of sheds in a side street near the pub. ‘I’ll catch him tomorrow.’

Muir, indicating the phone in Hirsch’s fist, said, ‘You glued to that?’

And then he was crossing into the next yard, where a severely groomed couch-grass lawn was bordered by garden beds splashed here and there with red and white. A clean, older style Holden ute was parked in the driveway, Tiverton Electrics painted on the side. Hirsch glanced towards the rear of the property. He saw a large shed, door open, fuel drums, ladders, metal shelves and coiled wire inside. Neat house, shabby house. And that was a pattern repeated everywhere.

~ * ~

5

ALMOST SIX O’CLOCK. Hirsch parked the HiLux in the police station driveway, intending to walk the short distance to the shop. A mini bus pulled in next door,
Redruth District Council
stencilled along the side panels, half-a-dozen elderly people on board. The driver tooted, and here was Hirsch’s elderly neighbour limping down the path from her house. Hirsch shot a glare at the driver and took the old woman’s arm. He helped her up the bus steps. ‘An outing?’

‘A lecture at the old jail in Redruth,’ she said, ‘then dinner at the reform school.’

Ruins dating from the 1850s, now tourist attractions. Hirsch registered her fragility under his manacling hand and hoped he hadn’t bruised her. ‘Well, you belong in both places.’

She cackled and they all waved, and he was left in the exhaust gases.

~ * ~

He walked on to
the general store, an afternoon shadow tethered to his feet. Tennant’s Four Square was an off-white brick building, long, low, the shopfront glass deep inside a corrugated iron veranda, with a petrol bowser at one end, secured by a bulky brass padlock, and a chequerboard of private post boxes at the other. Nothing to entice shoppers except a dusty ice-cream advertisement on a sheet of tin and a board of daily specials. You couldn’t see in: the windows were painted a greyish white. As Hirsch approached, an elderly man in overalls emerged with a litre of milk. Nothing else moved in the entire town.

The interior was a dim cave. The ceiling, pressed tin, was stalactited with hooks from the days when the shopkeeper would hang it with buckets, watering cans, coils of rope and paired boots. Refrigerator cases lined a side wall, shallow crates of withered fruit and vegetables the back, and in the vast middle ground were aisles of rickety shelving, stacked with anything from tinned peaches to tampons. The sole cash register was adjacent to the entrance, next to ranks of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines and a little bookcase thumbtacked with a sign,
Library.
If you were a farmer in need of an axe or some sheep dip you headed for the far back corner. If you wanted to buy a stamp, you headed a couple of paces past the library.

No sign of Melia Donovan’s friend, but Hirsch was pretty sure he’d been served by the woman seated at the post office counter a couple of times. She glanced up at him and hastily away, one forefinger poised above the keypad of a calculator as if she’d lost her place. A thin, pinched woman, full of burdens. ‘Excuse me,’ Hirsch said, his footsteps snapping on the old floorboards as he approached, ‘are you the shopkeeper?’

She whispered, ‘No,’ and nodded towards the dim rear.

Hirsch set out between the racks of groceries and found a small back room furnished with a desk, a fat old computer, filing cabinets, a swivel chair and a middle-aged man, tensely thin and neat. When Hirsch knocked on the door frame, the man shot out of his chair. ‘Help you?’

‘Paul Hirschhausen, I’m new at the police station.’

The shopkeeper reached out a long, thin, defenceless hand. ‘Yes, Ed Tennant. Thought I’d run into you sooner or later.’

And without much joy in the anticipation, thought Hirsch, returning the shake. Tennant looked as sour as the post office woman.

‘I just met your wife.’

Tennant didn’t reply to that. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m afraid this is not exactly a courtesy call.’

‘Oh?’ said Tennant, a soup of apprehensions showing. Then he firmed up a little. ‘I thought it was all sorted.’

Hirsch decided to play along. ‘Depends.’

Tennant bared his teeth without humour, a stringy man fuelled by nerves and grievances. ‘There was no need for Sergeant Kropp to send you.’

‘Right.’

‘I will give the Latimers some leeway, but they can’t rely on shiny shoes and a smile to get them through forever. If they haven’t got the money they shouldn’t go shopping.’

Hirsch thought back to the green-roofed house he’d seen that morning, the signs of neglect. It didn’t surprise him that the Latimers were in strife, he supposed. He stored that away for now and held up a palm. ‘Actually, Mr Tennant, I badly need to speak to Gemma Pitcher. I understand she works for you?’

‘She’s not here. What’s going on? She got a phone call and burst into tears and left, said she’d be back tomorrow.’

‘If you could tell me where she lives?’

‘Next to the tennis courts. Look, what’s it about? Is she in trouble? You speak to me first, all right?’

Hirsch hardened his voice. ‘Mr Tennant, I’m not about to arrest or hassle anyone. But I do need to speak to Gemma.’

‘And I’d like to know what about,’ Tennant said, a man of precise habits and concerns.

Hirsch sighed. ‘Her friend Melia Donovan has been killed. Now, can I go about my business?’

‘Oh.’ Tennant subsided. ‘That explains the phone call.’

Hirsch was curious. ‘Did she say who called?’

‘Nope.’ As Hirsch moved off, the shopkeeper added, ‘How did it happen? Melia?’

Hirsch stopped. ‘She was hit by a car and found by the side of the road.’

He could see the man picturing it, partly avid, partly horrified. He left the shop and went in search of the dead girl’s friend.

~ * ~

HE
HAD TO GET past her mother first. ‘She’s that upset,’ said Eileen Pitcher at a peeling front door, the house peeling too, separated from the town’s tennis courts by a line of overgrown cypresses.

Hirsch was tired. ‘Won’t take a moment, Mrs Pitcher.’

Gemma Pitcher’s mother was tiny and aggrieved and didn’t want Hirsch on her doorstep. ‘Wipe your feet.’

She led Hirsch to a sitting-cum-dining room, semi-dark, a TV flickering and two boys crouched before it, thumbing X-Boxes. The dining table sat against the rear wall, and Gemma Pitcher was sprawled on a sofa, tissues in her fist, eyes damp. She was a plump eighteen, with a band of soft belly showing between the waistband of tight jeans and the scant hem of a T-shirt. Her navel looked sore to Hirsch, the flesh puckered around a thick silver ring. She wore her mousy hair long, a ragged fringe over her mascaraed eyes—the mascara currently leaking down her cheeks.

‘Hello,’ Hirsch said, telling her who he was.

Gemma was one of those teenagers who can barely speak to or look at an adult but respond to greetings with a kind of mincing grimace. Hirsch crouched so that his head was on a level with hers. ‘You might remember serving me in the shop a couple of times.’

She shrugged.

Girls like this are shruggers, Hirsch thought, and they fill the world. ‘Are you up to answering a few questions?’

‘No, she’s not,’ the mother said.