Bitter Wash Road (18 page)

Emily lifted her head and said clearly, eyes bright and clear, ‘Sex scene.’

‘Yes,’ Rosie said.

‘The men wore masks, we wore nothing.’ She’d told this story before.

Hirsch thought he should chip in. ‘Where was this?’

Emily shrugged. ‘Here and there. People’s houses. I mean, I was totally wasted, you know? Out of it.’

‘She means Adelaide,’ Croome said. ‘Inner suburbs, outer suburbs.’

‘Sometimes the country,’ Hobba said, anxious to put her right. ‘We’d get picked up in this big car and stay away a couple of days. Free drinks and whatever, party, party, party. I’d be that sore.’

The country. Hirsch said, ‘Where in the country, Emily?’

‘How would I know?’

Hirsch frowned at DeLisle and Croome. Croome said, ‘Tell Paul what you saw in the newspaper.’

Hobba brightened. ‘Oh yeah. Okay. Well, that girl that got run over, I reckernised her.’

‘Melia Donovan.’

‘Yeah, I knew her.’

Hirsch had a vivid memory then of Wendy Street, standing in her back yard while sheets flapped on the line, telling him that Melia Donovan seemed to be someone who’d had too much experience, too soon. ‘She was at one of the parties in the country?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Who else was there?’

Hobba was working her phone again. ‘What? Oh, right, there was this one other chick.’

‘Was her name Gemma?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

Croome chimed in. ‘Emily nearly died of an overdose after one of these weekend parties. Someone dumped her outside a hospital in the Barossa Valley. It threw a little scare into you, didn’t it, Em? She told a counsellor and the counsellor contacted us.’

Hirsch looked to the girl for confirmation. She shrugged and gave him the whisper of a bat of the eyelashes.

‘What was Gemma’s role?’

A shrug. ‘Anal? Golden showers? She did what we did.’

‘I mean, was there any sense that she recruited Melia?’

‘Nup.’

‘How many times did you attend the same party as Melia Donovan?’

‘I dunno, it’s a bit of a blur, maybe only once.’

‘When was this?’

‘Don’t you believe me? He doesn’t believe me.’

‘Em, it’s all right, he’s come into this new, he needs to fill in the gaps.’

‘Well he can shut up with the questions.’

Croome said, ‘Emily, I know it’s a long shot, a lot’s happened, but if you saw photographs of the men who might have been involved, would you recognise body shape, body language? Even if you didn’t see their faces?’

Emily gave a teenage shrug. ‘I was like, totally out of it. I just have this feeling of like, black masks over their eyes and this one guy wearing a uniform.’

‘Uniform.’

With a bit of a grin she said,
‘Police
uniform.’

Croome and DeLisle stared at Hirsch as if to say,
Now can you see why we want your help?

Hirsch said, ‘He arrived in a uniform? You caught only a glimpse of it?’

Emily snorted. ‘He wore it like, the whole time, like rubbing our faces in it. I need the toilet.’

She leapt from the sofa and disappeared into a room off the hallway. Hirsch watched her go. ‘How did Emily get involved? Did someone recruit her?’

‘A girl called Lily Humphreys, they were in a youth training program together,’ Croome said. ‘Humphreys got out first, took Emily under her wing when she was released. What that boiled down to was, “Would you like to party with these cool guys I know?” Emily said yes. They did this a few times over several months, city and rural locations. Sex, booze, cocaine, probably GHB. Then one day Emily wakes up in a hospital in the Barossa Valley, sore and torn and bruised. She mends slowly, but starts to have flashbacks. They scare her. She puts them together with the state of her body and talks to a counsellor who then gets in touch with us.’

‘Flashbacks.’

‘Men wearing masks, someone getting rough with her and another telling him to go easy, things like that.’

‘So speak to Lily Humphreys.’

‘Disappeared.’

‘Disappeared as in she’s probably lying dead somewhere, or disappeared as in address unknown?’

‘The latter. Packed all her things and hopped on a plane to the Gold Coast, according to Emily.’

‘When?’

‘While Em was in hospital.’

‘Spooked.’

‘Yes.’

‘Be worth checking to see if Gemma Pitcher was in youth training with either of them.’

Croome smiled. ‘One step ahead of you. Humphreys and Pitcher were there at the same time, but before Emily’s time.’

Hirsch glanced at Rosie DeLisle. ‘Gemma’s disappeared. I’ve done all I can to find her, you’ve got better resources than I have.’

‘Sure.’

Hirsch nodded his thanks. ‘What about Emily’s parents? Siblings?’

‘Paul, we’re talking ex-foster kids straight out of detention. No one is looking out for them.’

Hirsch nodded gloomily. ‘When did you learn about her?’

‘Three months ago. We didn’t know where to start the investigation, and then a couple of days ago she texted me to say she’d recognised Melia Donovan’s picture in the paper.’

Hirsch fetched out his phone. ‘I have a snap of Gemma Pitcher. I could show it to Emily.’

‘Good idea,’ Rosie said. Then she gave Croome a look. ‘She’s been in the loo a while...’

Croome blinked. ‘Oh, fuck.’

She raced away, and when they heard thumps and drama, Hirsch and DeLisle ran after her. They found Croome on the bathroom floor, slapping the teenager’s face.

‘What did you take? Emily, come on Emily, wake up! What did you take?’

Hirsch left as Emily was coming round, groaning, and telling everyone to just push off and leave her alone.

~ * ~

17

HIRSCH HEADED BACK to the bush that evening. Spent Friday making his rounds and at nightfall received a call from Kropp.

‘A little bird tells me you came out of the Quine hearing smelling of roses. No flies on you. But given that you haven’t been sacked or jailed, may I remind you that your presence is needed here tomorrow?’

‘Crowd control, I remember. Football hooligans. With any luck they’re going to punch my lights out.’

‘Just get your arse down here for an eleven o’clock briefing.’

~ * ~

Saturday. Hirsch showered, pulled
on his uniform and strapped his baby Beretta to an ankle holster. He drove to Redruth. Kropp said, ‘Nice of you to join us, Constable Hirschhausen.’

Hirsch checked his watch. Eleven a.m. ‘Am I late, Sarge?’

‘On my watch you arrive
early.’

‘I’ll remember that, Sarge,’ said Hirsch, giving Nicholson a winning grin. Andrewartha was there, and Dee, but Kropp had also brought in two constables from Clare: Revell and Molnar. Big men, stony, full of dull menace.

‘Gents,’ said Hirsch with a wink.

‘Stop arsing around and take a seat,’ Kropp said.

He’d pinned seven photographs to the board, head-and-shoulders shots of five white and two Aboriginal men. Four of the seven were young, three in early middle age. Sullen faces mostly, full of hard-won experience, men whose work, education, relationship and financial histories were slight to non-existent. Kropp’s view of them was simple. He slapped the flat of his pointer across the display. ‘If there’s any trouble today or tonight, it’ll be down to these characters.’

‘Or anyone with a Centrelink face, Sarge,’ Nicholson said, looking around with a grin.

A couple of sniggers, irritating Kropp. Meanwhile Hirsch stared at the faces. They were not that different from guys like Nicholson and Andrewartha, really. Kropp’s constables were poorly educated and short of work and life experience too. Just as clannish and suspicious of anyone different. Attracted to police work because it gave them standing. And it licensed the art and craft of hurting other human beings.

‘As I was saying, Constable Hirschhausen.’

Hirsch blinked. ‘Loud and clear, Sarge.’

‘As I was saying, these magnificent specimens of Australian manhood are a nuisance when sober and an absolute nightmare when they get on the grog. Stir in a football premiership...’

You get blood and broken glass, mostly.

‘We have some long hours ahead of us, but I have managed to get you overtime. Best-case scenario, the night turns out to be a fizzer. But if you remember, last year we had a glassing that resulted in the loss of an eye, a full-on brawl in the Woolman, resulting in hospitalisation, and a fatality from kids drag-racing just out past the motel.’

Here Kropp’s voice cracked a little. Hirsch was curious. The guy-seemed genuine. He rose on the balls of his feet as he spoke, lifted by his emotions, as if the town were his and he its civilising force.

One of the hard men with their fiefdoms. All around the state, men who’d turn evasive and arrogant if you tried to pin them down. Clever men, though, a witness-box headache to every judge, magistrate and barrister in the land. How long had Kropp been here? Twelve years?

Kropp slapped the pointer down and folded his arms. ‘I do not want a repeat of last year. Superintendent Spurling doesn’t want a repeat of last year. Understood?’

A ragged, ‘Yes, Sarge,’ went around the room, Hirsch thinking, the area commander’s breathing down his neck.

‘Questions? No? Well, get to it then.’

Hirsch glanced at his watch: almost noon, the game started at two. He glanced at Dee and mimed eating. She nodded.

‘Aww,’ said Nicholson, ‘the first blush of young love.’

Dee ignored him but coloured, looked down as she gathered her things.

Andrewartha worked a concerned frown onto his face. ‘I hope you’re sexually responsible, Constable Hirschhausen. For your convenience, a protective sheath dispenser has been installed in the men’s room.’

‘Nah,’ Nicholson said, ‘I reckon he likes to
feel
it.’

‘Then he’s in for a disappointment,’ Andrewartha said. ‘Word is, he’ll find a lack of tactile integrity, if you get my meaning.’

‘Totally do,’ Nicholson said. ‘She overused it at the academy.’

‘Look at Hirschhausen, cracking the shits.’

‘You’re so funny,’ Dee said.

‘We think so.’

These clowns, Hirsch thought, deserve to be fucking informed on.

~ * ~

AN
HOUR LATER HE was patrolling the Redruth oval listlessly, watching for hotheads, just as he’d done years ago as a raw cadet.

He hadn’t come full circle, exactly. For a start, here in the world of small towns and farms, the spectators were few and did their drinking and fuming in private, cocooned in cars parked snout-up to a white perimeter fence. Once in a while a door would open and the occupant raised the tailgate to rummage for another can, but other than that they might have been at a church picnic. He recognised some of the Tiverton locals, including the Muirs, Ed Tennant, Ray Latimer, who was there with his sons and a solid-looking older man. The boys’ grandfather? Horns tooted desultorily, a woman knitted a baby’s jacket, a man sipped thermos tea, a dog pissed on a car tyre.

At quarter time knots of men appeared, standing outside their cars, yarning peacefully. Rather than face each other or make eye contact, as women did, they stood at oblique angles, as if to face off dangers. Or maybe, thought Hirsch, it was a kind of genital anxiety. God, he was bored.

When the wind came up, whipping a scarf from a car aerial, Hirsch retrieved it and handed it to the kid seated at the wheel.

‘Thanks.’

He peered in at the boys in the back. ‘Nathan?’

Melia Donovan’s brother looked hunted, his dark eyes liquid in his dark face. The boy beside him was on Kropp’s watch list, Tyson somebody. And in the front passenger seat was the boy who had dropped Nathan off that time. Sam Hempel.

Hirsch straightened his back, saluted. ‘Enjoy the game.’

‘Yeah.’

Hirsch turned to go and saw Andrewartha watching him.

‘Mates with the boongs, eh?’

Hirsch winked. ‘I’ll put your name down for sensitivity training, shall I?’

‘Fuck off.’

Time dragged. Hirsch’s feet hurt. The game didn’t interest him even though the score was close, each side kicking too few goals, too many points. With half-time due, he headed for a van parked inside the main gate and bought four spring rolls. The woman who served him was Vietnamese or maybe Thai; he watched her fry the rolls in a spitting pan. Then the siren sounded and people poured from their cars, forming a line at the van window, a pulsing pressure point. Hirsch watched tensely, but nothing happened, the queue was orderly. The Latimers appeared. Jack gave Hirsch a tiny wave, Raymond glared. The older boy was plump and hangdog, trying to appear unattached.

Then Kropp arrived in a police car, pulling up behind the food van. He got out, bent his solid back into the rear compartment, emerged with a plastic sack of spring rolls and packaged paper cups and plates. Hirsch watched him hand the bags to the woman in the van, plant a kiss on her cheek and wave goodbye. He took his time leaving, striding like a general down the queue of spectators, winking, geddaying, giving the evil eye. He shook hands with Ray Latimer, ruffled Jack’s hair.