Bitter Wash Road (39 page)

‘He was always like, sniffing around and that.’

‘He told me he was looking out for her.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘The day I first asked you questions, why didn’t you mention any of this?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because your best friend had just died a terrible death?’

‘Dr McAskill said don’t say nothin’ or I’d get in trouble. Look what they done to Melia to shut her up.’

‘So you ran.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Well I’m not.’

‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘Foster mother.’

‘You were in foster care?’

‘When I was like, nine.’

Hirsch’s checks had uncovered a juvenile record but not the foster placement. ‘She was nice to you?’

‘Better than Mum,’ Gemma said, drawing on reserves of hostility.

‘But you came back here.’

‘It’s safe now though, right? Plus Mum needs her car back.’

No point in pursuing the logic. ‘All right. Tell me about Emily Hobba.’

‘Emily.’ The big shoulders lifted to the fleshy ears. ‘Met her in juvie.’

‘She had an older friend who got you involved in this party scene?’

‘Yeah. Look, are you nearly done?’

‘Before Melia was involved, you would sometimes travel all the way down to the city for these parties?’

‘So?’

‘Were you paid?’

She shrugged. ‘Got, you know, presents and that.’

‘Were you ever paid cash, Gemma?’

The girl looked offended. ‘I’m not a
prostitute
or nothin’.’

‘Why did the operation move to Redruth?’

‘What?’

‘The parties. Why did they stop happening in the city and start happening in the country?’

‘Dunno, do I? Wasn’t up to me.’ She paused. ‘Emily said things were a bit tense.’

‘People were suspicious?’

‘Suppose.’

Hirsch named all of the locals and said, ‘Were they there from the beginning, or new on the scene?’

‘Couple of them were new. Never saw Sergeant Kropp, but it wasn’t like every weekend or anything. I only went to like, six or seven parties, tops.’

Hirsch thought about it. Even posted in the bush, a senior officer like Spurling would have heard rumbles coming from sex crimes and other specialist squads, and so he’d warned the others and they’d moved the operation to Redruth. ‘We’ll be in touch. In the meantime, if any of the men try to contact you, call me straight away.’

Gemma stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Phone calls, approaches, just let me know.’

The girl looked frightened. ‘I thought it was over.’

‘They’re out on bail,’ said Hirsch gently.

He stood, said goodbye, and crossed the room. But at the door he felt the urge to glance back at Gemma Pitcher. The girl looked young, helpless. Hirsch stood there a moment, then returned to the sofa and perched beside her.

‘I want you to pack a bag. Count on being away for a while.’

‘Huh? How come? Where am I going?’

‘I’m taking you to your foster mother.’

~ * ~

36

ON A THURSDAY evening in December, Hirsch drove Wendy Street to the Redruth town hall.

She was a sour presence in the passenger seat of his listing Nissan. ‘I did all the work, and now they’re saying I’m compromised, can’t even chair my own meeting.’

Hirsch understood: she’d spent weeks organising, gathering signatures. But he also understood the police point of view: Spurling was a public relations nightmare, and Wendy was a close friend of the man’s main victim. He explained this, adding, ‘And they probably know about you and me.’

Some of the tension went out of her. She placed a hand on his leg. Presently she leaned closer, peered evilly into his face, edged her hand up his thigh. ‘Hope I’m not distracting you.’

‘You are a bit.’

She slid her hand higher. ‘Is that better?’

Hirsch coughed; his voice didn’t come out right. ‘Much.’

He drove on down the valley, trying to ignore the warm pressure. ‘What about the no-confidence motion?’

‘I asked Bernie Love to present it.’

Love was the publican of the Woolman Hotel. He’d offered to hold the protest meeting in his function room—so he could keep the bar open, according to the local wags, but Hirsch suspected he wanted to stick it to the Redruth police, whom he blamed for keeping patrons away from his door. Either way, he’d been refused in favour of the town hall.

‘I guess I shouldn’t sit with you,’ Hirsch said.

Wendy rubbed his leg. ‘Best not.’

‘Look, the whole thing could be a fizzer.’

Wendy folded her arms. ‘Not if I can help it.’

~ * ~

The Adelaide press put
the attendance at 500. Significant, given that the population of Redruth was 1300 and the greater area 3500. Standing room only, and Hirsch found himself propping up a side wall, on his left a primary-school teacher, on his right the elderly neighbour of the woman who’d fallen through her back door on grand final night.

‘Hear you got yourself shot,’ the old man said.

People up and down the district were making that mistake. ‘Almost shot,’ Hirsch said. ‘How’s Crystal?’

‘She died.’

Hirsch felt crushed. He should have checked on her.

The old man touched his sleeve. ‘Not because of the fall. She was out of hospital in no time. Just old age.’

Hirsch surveyed the rows of cheap metal chairs, the heads neat and ragged, the summery shirts and worn, comfortable bodies. A few young people, but most were aged between thirty and sixty. A media presence at the back: TV cameras, and a range of metropolitan and national newspaper reporters. The hall itself was a carbon copy of Tiverton’s: wooden floors, pressed-tin ceiling, some fancy plaster work, a stage at the far end. In front of the stage and facing the audience were four unoccupied chairs set at a couple of trestle tables.

‘Do you need a seat?’ asked Hirsch.

‘Got my walking stick,’ the old man said.

Presently Kropp and his wife came threading through to the row of reserved chairs at the front of the room, the sergeant grinning and shaking hands left and right. No one greeted his wife, and Hirsch wondered how she felt. Invisible, maybe.

There were no grins and handshakes when Nicholson and Andrewartha appeared. ‘Who’s the woman with Nicholson?’

‘His wife.’

Hirsch grunted. Did she know about the girlfriend? ‘And with Andrewartha?’

‘Wife.’

Two burly men and their burly wives, they pushed through to the front with jutting chests and chins, and sat, solid and aggrieved, the men in uniforms so tight, their upper bodies so beefy, they couldn’t fold their arms properly. Hirsch glanced about for Wendy, finally spotting her on the far side, watching him from the end chair of a row a third of the way back. She rolled her eyes:
that took you long enough,
grinned and turned to the front again.

The room was rowdy but fell silent when four men emerged through a side door and sat at the trestle tables. Two were senior policemen in full uniform: Cremen, the new area commander, and Wright, an assistant commissioner from headquarters in Adelaide. A third man wore a suit but had the hard, guarded look of a policeman. IIB, guessed Hirsch.

The fourth man stood as soon as he’d sat. He was sun-creased, diffident, wearing a sports coat over an open-necked white shirt. His big hands mangled each other as he spoke. ‘I’m Des McEwan, CEO of the regional council. I’ve been asked to chair tonight’s meeting.’

And not taking much pleasure in it, thought Hirsch.

McEwan introduced Cremen and Wright but not the stony-faced man wearing the suit, then drew a breath. ‘To begin: almost six hundred people signed a petition which said, quote,
The law in Redruth is being administered in a harsh and uncompromising manner,
and so here we are.’

The audience stirred, muttered, squeaked about on the cheap seats.

McEwan added hastily, ‘We don’t want a witch-hunt or a show trial or an opportunity to get even with anyone. We don’t want rumour and innuendo. But six hundred signatures is significant, and tonight is your opportunity to air your concerns in a fair and reasonable manner.’

Told to push the fair and reasonable line, thought Hirsch. He waited, arms folded, for the floodgates to open. But the audience, although restive, kept their hands in their laps. Nervous? Self-conscious? Intimidated by the men at the trestle tables? Afraid that Kropp, Nicholson and Andrewartha had eyes in the backs of their heads?

Finally a hairdresser from the Redruth salon waved her arm.

‘Yes, Sylvia.’

She stood, middle-aged, awkward, shoulders hunched. ‘I work right on the square and every day I see what it’s like for anyone unlucky enough to cross paths with the police. I really feel for our old people, getting shouted at in such a rude, arrogant...Well, it’s demeaning. Sometimes it’s downright frightening.’

‘Too right,’ murmured the old man at Hirsch’s elbow.

Bernie Love made his way to the front of the room. The publican was a glossy, grinning man with a hard mercantile core. About sixty, he wore a black silk shirt and new-looking jeans.

‘You know me, I run the Woolman. Simply put, patronage is down thirty per cent because of these bozos.’ He gestured at Kropp, Nicholson and Andrewartha. ‘Intimidation’s what it is. Patrol car parked outside the main entrance so no one wants to come in. Or they come into the bar and just stand there, giving everyone the evil eye. It’s a bloody disgrace.’

He glared around to make his point, then returned to his chair. Raelene Skinner, owner of the motel, took his place. She was hunched over, squeaky with nerves, reading from a sheet of paper. ‘People think of Redruth as a wheat and wool town, but it’s also a
tourist
town. Except the tourists aren’t coming, or they’re not staying, because the police are always breath-testing people or setting speed traps outside the motel. I used to employ eight people; now I’m down to two.’

She scurried back to her chair. The supermarket manager bobbed up, said rapidly that no one shopped in Redruth anymore, and sat again. Then silence, then a couple of other people had their say, one tongue-tied, the other blustering but vague.

Hirsch watched the superintendent, the assistant commissioner. They were less remote now, full of little nods and headshakes, taking pains not to look at Kropp, Nicholson and Andrewartha. You could almost hear them tut-tutting, oh-dearing. It was meant to be reassuring, and Hirsch rated it as a solid professional performance.

Then he thought: they’re
relieved.
The townspeople—awkward, decent, well-mannered—were simply reporting a few instances of over-enthusiastic policing. Nothing serious. No criminal acts. A bit of tea and sympathy and we can all go home. And thank God for that, after the Spurling business.

He looked for Wendy. He couldn’t see her. Should
he
say something?

Des McEwan cocked his head at the crowd. ‘Anyone else? No? Perhaps—’

The assistant commissioner stood. ‘Perhaps Sergeant Kropp might be invited to respond?’

‘Yes, of course,’ babbled McEwan.

Kropp rose massively, turned to face the audience. His gaze raked the room, steady, reasonable, fair.

‘The police motto,’ he said, ‘is leading the way to a safer community, so we make no apology for reducing the road toll through random breath tests and speed detection.’

He was about to go on but a couple of
hear hears
went around the room and a man stepped away from a huddle of men on the opposite wall. He stared at the chairman, who said, ‘I invite Eric Dawe of the State Emergency Service to say a few words.’

‘I’m a hundred per cent behind Sergeant Kropp,’ Dawe announced. ‘Who gets called out when some tanked-up idiot runs head-on into a tree or worse still, another car? Me and my men. We’re sick of it. It’s heartbreaking.’

People muttered. A woman stood. ‘I know this makes me unpopular, but in the midst of his own troubles, Sergeant Kropp got my son off drugs and into football.’ She shut her mouth with a click and sat. Kropp, embarrassed, returned to his seat.

‘What troubles?’ murmured Hirsch as a hum of comment rose from the audience.

The teacher at his elbow said, ‘His kiddie was run over and killed a few years ago. Only three years old.’

Oh fuck, thought Hirsch. Meanwhile arguments ranged about the room, people craning around in their seats, saying, ‘Yeah, but...’ and ‘On the other hand...’ Perhaps sensing that he’d lost the advantage, Bernie Love strode onto the cleared area in front of the trestle tables and bellowed, ‘Oy!’

He waved a sheet of paper above his head. The noise abated.

‘Before we start passing out sainthoods,’ he shouted, ‘I’d like to move a motion.’

McEwan checked with the assistant commissioner, who shrugged guardedly. ‘Go on, Mr Love,’ McEwan said.