THEY’D INTENDED TO dine at the Tiverton pub, where in winter the cook was apt to stand in the dining-room doorway and yell, ‘Hands up who wants soup,’ but Hirsch had scotched that idea.
‘I’d spend half the evening fielding questions about Brenda, and the other half being stared at and talked about.’
Wendy Street had patted his arm. ‘Poor darling.’
Now, small-boned, quick and watchful like her daughter, she was watching him prepare his famous taste-free spaghetti bolognese. The TV murmured in the corner, Katie watching Home and Away.
‘Did Bob tell you I reported a fire?’
‘He did,’ Hirsch said, draining the pasta, telling her about the stolen copper.
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a lot of work for not much reward. It also sounds like local knowledge.’
Hirsch considered that. She was right.
Bowls filled, more wine poured, they abandoned the cheerless police station dining nook and ate in the backyard, once a concrete square, now transformed by Hirsch with a shade cloth, Ikea outdoor furniture and a few geraniums in terracotta pots. Twilight drew in. He lit tea candles; the evening wrapped them in balmy shadows. Wendy Street’s half-smile as she toasted him was sleepy, heavy-lidded—desire that she cloaked with her daughter present.
‘So,’ she said later, when darkness had fully settled. ‘One last review?’
Hirsch groaned, creaked upright, and pulled the two of them out of their chairs.
They strolled the town arm-in arm, past others checking out the Christmas lights on foot; the occasional prowling car. About a third of the town’s dwellings were decorated. Hirsch kept his voice low as he defended his judgments. Some displays were too busy, others dreary and clichéd. The Hannafords’ swagman Santa was clever, ironic; the Bolgers’ kangaroo Santa was just kitsch. Santa with one foot in a chimney was cheesy. A single, beautifully lit tree counted for more than a garden-wide mishmash of motifs. Martin Gwynne, by outlining his boxy carport with lights this year, had fatally skewed the elegance of his main display with its strings of lights draped around his shrubs and garden trees, its wire tableau of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the manger.
That left Nan Washburn’s effort; imaginative; not too cluttered. A story unfurled if read from left to right.
‘Behold,’ Hirsch said. ‘This year’s Best Christmas Lights.’
Wendy clamped herself hard against him. ‘Agreed.’
Their arms around each other, they walked back in the oddly lit evening air. The low point was saying goodnight, see you tomorrow evening.
Friday, 5.30 a.m., Hirsch stabbing blindly at his iPhone to cancel the alarm.
He collapsed back onto the pillow. He rarely remembered his dreams. They meant nothing and he wasn’t interested. But fugitive dream traces were in his head this morning, coils writhing and poised to strike. Snakes, only they were copper pipes and wires.
He liked to walk every morning, the dawn a time to cherish with only the birds busy, the air quite still and everything sharply etched. He generally made the most of it—by 9 a.m. the mid-north would be lying limp and stunned beneath a molten sun and the overnight reports of villainy, idiocy and shitty luck would have landed on his desk. But this morning he cut it short, got a quick breakfast inside him and shot down the highway to the abandoned farmhouse.
The barn was bare.
All Hirsch had were shreds of crime-scene tape, tyre tracks, indentations where the rubbish skip had compressed the dirt. The tracks meant little: Bob Muir’s ute had come and gone; fire trucks, his own SA Police Toyota.
He checked the time, six-thirty, and called his boss.
Hilary Brandl’s voice was strained and gasping. ‘This had better be good, Constable Hirschhausen.’
‘Morning jog, sarge?’
The new region sergeant was a fitness fanatic. She ran the little hills of Redruth every morning, to the bemusement of the locals, who, if they weren’t actually overweight, were generally unhurried.
‘A morning jog that I fear has been interrupted,’ Brandl said with good humour. ‘What’s up?’
As Hirsch explained, he visualised her lean face and the intensity of her concentration. When he’d finished she said, ‘They were game. You’d think they’d stay well away after causing a fire big enough to get the fire crews out. Locals, do you think? Watching and waiting?’
‘Hard to say, sarge. Five minutes of pub gossip would have been enough to keep them informed. It’s possible they came back because the haul was worth a bit of money—they might have stolen the copper to order, been paid in advance, who knows. Prints and DNA might be on record; they wouldn’t have wanted to leave it too long.’
Hirsch’s sergeant snorted. ‘I have to say, Paul, it’s been an adjustment, being posted to this place. If this was the city I would’ve had CIB on the scene within the hour and you or one of the children guarding the copper until we could get it off for forensic testing.’
The ‘children’ were her two young Redruth constables, Jean Landy and Tim Medlin. ‘It’s an adjustment, all right,’ Hirsch said.
‘You’ve been here a year. You’re used to it.’
Not quite.
‘I’ll knock on a few doors,’ Hirsch said, ‘see if anyone saw or heard anything last night.’
Doubtful. The nearest occupied dwelling was three kilometres away on the other side of a hill. And last night was a full moon—a truck could have been and gone, no lights, in a couple of minutes.
The fruitless doorknock sucked up an hour, then it was time to oversee the Cobb–Flann apology.
Hirsch returned to the police station, changed into a crisp, clean uniform and grabbed a briefcase: a touch of authority. He pinned his mobile number below the supermarket Christmas wreath on his front door and cut diagonally across the highway to the Institute. The sun was hot on his back, the road tar was soft underfoot, and his mind was on the stolen copper.
The Institute, a fine stone building on a corner block where a side street met the highway, was separated from the primary school by a house that had once been the Methodist manse. A white stone soldier stood, head bowed, above a granite memorial. A World War II cannon on a patchy lawn protected against approaches from the side street. Lavender beds. Rose bushes. A slender column on either side of the main door.
Hirsch paused to tear down one of the Fullers’ Have you seen Kip? posters and entered the foyer. A shock of transition from heat, dust and diesel fumes into a hushed, echoing space. Polished wooden floors, wooden half-panels on pastel blue walls, high pressed-tin ceilings. A gleaming staircase on one side of the foyer, a corridor leading to meeting rooms on the other. Passing a series of 1920s and ’30s photographs—town councillors and prize-winning merino rams—he stopped at a door marked Conference 1.
He knocked. Went in.
The room was bare but for a massive mahogany table, several chairs, a sideboard under a curtained window and a photograph of the young Elizabeth II on the wall. Hirsch glanced at his watch: 9.35. That’s what you get for efficiency, he thought. Twiddled his thumbs. Paced the room; left it to pace the corridors, then explored the ballroom with its gleaming floorboards, a stage at one end. The whole building seemed deserted.
He returned to the meeting room and straightened the Queen in her dusty gilt frame and idly opened sideboard drawers and doors. ‘Huh,’ he said.
Stacked at the bottom, their labels faded and chewed by silverfish, were three old film canisters. A Night to Remember, 1958, starring Kenneth More. The Back of Beyond, 1954, made by the Shell Film Unit. The Shiralee, 1957, starring Peter Finch. Hirsch shook each canister. The reels were missing. Lost? Archived somewhere? Was there an old-timer in the district whose job it had been to thread dreams through a projector on Saturday nights?
On a shelf above were two ancient-looking bound journals, musty and friable. Hirsch lifted one out and rested it on the table. The powdery binding leather coated his fingers. The title, handwritten on a label, read: A History of Keirville Station in the Hundred of Whyte, the Colony of South Australia, by Mrs Elizabeth Keir, Volume the First, 1839–1869.
Hirsch tingled. There was a Keir Road south-east of the town but no locals named Keir, to the best of his knowledge. No farming property named Keirville. Sold off and renamed?
Mrs Keir had used a medium nib and her penmanship was precise, if crowded. Hirsch had no difficulty skimming through the story of her husband, a Scottish carpenter called Douglas Keir. Quoting liberally from his daily journal entries, she related how he’d arrived in South Australia on board the Palmyra in 1839, worked in the colony for some years then, in 1851, trekked overland to the Ballarat goldfields. By the time he returned two years later—nuggets to the weight of twenty pound strapt aroundmy waist, for there are persons hereabout that would take your life for an ounce of gold if you was not well upon your guard—Hirsch was hooked.
Douglas Keir, restless now and unable to settle, but married to Elizabeth and with a young family to support, moved north to Redruth when news broke of a copper oxide find in the local stone. This time he set up as a builder, not a miner, grew rich, and eventually moved with his wife and children to a vast lease north of Redruth. Here the Natives (as related by Mrs Keir) gave ‘a great deal of trouble’, stealing sheep and bags of flour and spearing one of the shepherds. Douglas and his station hands took action:
Where life has been taken, those who do not know its value should be made to feel and see how Sacred we hold it. As a consequence, the men did not retreat until they had left many Blacks stretched on the grass. As has been proven from the start of time, a little cold lead soon forges an understanding between the Races.
Christ, a local massacre, thought Hirsch. He wondered if the story was passed down. There were no Aboriginal people in the Tiverton area. To his knowledge, only two families in Redruth. He had never thought to wonder about it.
He glanced at his watch again: 9.55. Bundling Mrs Keir’s journals into his briefcase, brushing dust from his hands, sleeves and trousers, he stood, straight-backed, and waited.
Right on time, Nan Washburn tapped on the door, stuck her head around it, finally walked in. ‘Paul.’
‘Nan.’
She rubbed her hands together, a dry rasp. ‘So far, so good. Daryl’s walking from his house and I just saw Adam’s brother drop him off.’
Hirsch pulled out a chair. ‘I think you should be at the head of the table, one boy on either side.’
He’d given some thought to the dynamics. Sitting at the head of the table would grant her some authority. And the boys, if separated, would be denied the opportunity for warning kicks or insolent nudges under the table.
Just as she got comfortable the door swung wide and Adam Flann sauntered in. ‘So—this where it’s all at?’
He turned, beckoned, and Daryl entered, shoulders hunched, eyes darting.
‘Good morning, Daryl,’ Nan said. ‘Good morning, Adam.’
Cobb, soft and gingery, bumfluff on his cheeks, shot her a look. ‘Hello, Mrs Washburn.’
He glanced at Hirsch. Was he supposed to do the apology now? Hirsch shook his head minutely.
Adam Flann was looking at Nan. Not hostile, just detached. He said nothing.
‘Sit,’ Hirsch ordered. ‘You there, you there.’
‘What, here?’ Adam said, slipping onto his chair in his graceful, effortless way, apparently enjoying himself. Nan exchanged a look with Hirsch, then turned to Daryl with a smile and a be-seated gesture of her hand.
Daryl flopped into the chair. He stared at the table. The window light revealed a faint layer of irresistible dust. Hirsch watched him lift a hand from his lap, reach out, swiftly finger-stripe the dust, snatch back his hand. Flann, looking on, shook his head.
Sensing the older boy’s impatience, and thinking the kid had a point, Hirsch began. ‘Daryl, Adam, I want to begin by thanking you both for coming, and we should all thank Mrs Washburn for her goodwill and generosity in this matter. As you know, we’re here for you to acknowledge that you stole from Mrs Washburn and to apologise. It’s not a court-ordered procedure, but it’s still to be treated seriously. Daryl? We’ll start with you.’
Cobb darted another desperate look at Washburn. ‘Sorry, Nan, Mrs Washburn. It was stupid. I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.’
‘Thank you, Daryl. What I would like now is for us to put it behind us and move on, what do you think?’ She paused. ‘How’s your mum?’
Daryl Cobb wouldn’t look at her, didn’t know where to look. At last he whispered, ‘She’s okay at the moment.’
Hirsch turned to Flann. ‘Adam?’
Flann said levelly, ‘I’m sorry.’
A lengthening silence. Hirsch was about to break it when Nan Washburn said, ‘Are you, Adam?’
Hirsch winced. He watched, waited.
Flann took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I broke into your shed and drove off in your ute, but I had to get home, me mum had an accident and I couldn’t get hold of Wayne, and you know how it is.’
Hirsch watched Nan. Judging by her expression, she was unmoved by the apology. She probably sensed what Hirsch did: that the boy took this lightly. Stealing her ute was no big deal, and anyway what sort of an idiot left their keys in the ignition? He’d go on loading his apology with extenuating circumstances until the cows came home.
She gave Hirsch a bleak look, turned back to the boys. ‘Thank you, Daryl, thank you Adam.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Cobb reflexively.
But Flann stood. ‘That’s it? We can go?’
No one wanted to prolong the session. ‘You may go,’ Hirsch said.
‘Come on, Daz,’ Flann said, jerking his chin at Cobb.
When they were gone, Washburn said, ‘Well, that went as well as could be expected.’
‘Can’t win them all,’ Hirsch said. ‘Thank you for making the time.’
They wandered along the corridor, across the foyer, out into the sun. A hundred metres away, a dozen people were gathered outside the shop.
Spotting Hirsch, Martin Gwynne broke away, trim and natty in chinos and a short-sleeved shirt, and approached at a run, carrying an iPhone.
Nan Washburn gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Hello there, Martin. Lovely morning. Is something wrong?’
She can’t stand him, Hirsch thought, amused.
Gwynne gave her a grimace intended to function as a smile and fixed sternly on Hirsch. ‘There’s a kiddy locked in a car.’ He gestured at the sun. ‘In this heat, Paul.’