SATURDAY, 5.30 A.M.
Insomuch as the Natives are slippery to a degree almost inhuman, it behoves the police to be proportionally canny, lest they be outwitted.
Hirsch closed Mrs Keir’s handwritten history and drained the first coffee of the day, feeling unready for the dawn. After playing Santa—what, a mere ten hours ago?—he was bone-sore, bone-weary, completely addled.
He activated his phone and replayed Katie’s video. The ghostly dimness of evening in Kitchener Street, which ran from the side wall of Ed Tennant’s shop to Nan Washburn’s little horse stud. The darkness deepening as the last shreds of sunlight winked out along the western hills, then unnatural light creeping in: mobile phone screens, sparklers, one or two cigarettes flaring, and the fairy lights on a Christmas tree in a builder’s bucket in the middle of the street. Bright voices on the soundtrack, the town and farm kids gathered with their parents and grandparents.
Finally, glee. Hirsch appearing, barely upright, on Radish the Clydesdale with a bulky sack of wrapped presents across his lap: one for every child in the district and a handful marked B and G just in case. Now he could be heard booming, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ and trying to read Joyce Gwynne’s handwriting. Tilting dangerously in the saddle as he dispensed his gifts, stretching muscles he didn’t know he had. Radish letting go thunderous turds and the kids cracking up.
Sight and sound, but what Katie’s video failed to record was Hirsch’s tortured tailbone and spine, the stink of sweat and horse, Santa’s whiskers feathery in his mouth.
Santa. It was ‘Father Christmas’ when Hirsch was a kid. He replayed the clip, began to smile, his muscle strains temporarily forgotten. The kids had been beside themselves with excitement. And they’d appreciated the joke, Santa on horseback. But distributing the presents had taken forever, so Katie had begun to use the pause button, filming freely again when it was time to award the prize for the best Christmas lights. Hirsch watched himself slip dangerously, grab Radish by the mane, haul himself upright, clearly trembling, before gingerly handing Nan Washburn her award, a framed certificate and a plum pudding wrapped in cellophane.
Thus ended Hirsch’s fifteen minutes of glory.
Walking would ease his stiffness.
But there on his bedroom chair was the Santa suit. He couldn’t return it unwashed—what would Martin say? Reflecting on the legions of people who went through life anticipating what Martin would say, Hirsch hand-washed and rinsed the pants, jacket, cap and beard and pegged them out on his backyard clothesline.
Then he stuffed a large garbage bag into his pocket and set out. First to the oval—football in winter, cricket in summer—circling the low rail fence twice. Tall, smooth, silvery gum trees around the edge of the park, galahs screeching among the branches, constantly rising and settling. He walked the town’s perimeter roads and occasionally up and back down one of the side streets. A distant kookaburra joined the bird chorus. Otherwise Hirsch heard only the scrape of his rubber soles and small creatures rustling, clinging to the last vestiges of night.
He passed a fence strung with Christmas lights, the colours washed out now, with the sun above the horizon. Hirsch was sick of looking at Christmas lights, sick of Christmas.
Six-thirty. The sun was above the droughty hills and slanting through the trees now, promising another cloudless, windless, stifling day. Time for his shower and shave, his second breakfast. But first he passed by the shop, quickly confirming that it had been a good idea to bring the garbage bag. Bending, pushing against his aches and pains, he scooped up plastic bottles, scraps of wrapping paper, dead sparklers, paper hats, cigarette butts. He moved further up Kitchener Street, hunting and pecking, and came upon a significant pool of blood.
Hirsch froze for a moment, then knelt. Touched his forefinger to it. Still sticky; spilt recently, then.
He gazed along the street. Kitchener was a short street, six homes on either side. He ran a mental checklist: who was capable of violence? Who was likely to be on the receiving end?
None of these people.
Movement alerted him, a shape behind a garden hedge, a disturbance of the sparse leaves. The house belonged to an elderly widower named Cromer. Calling, ‘Mr Cromer?’ Hirsch approached the driveway entrance.
A cry, just as he stepped onto the footpath. A queer, soft, alien cry, not of warning but of distress. And more blood. Spooked now, Hirsch entered the front yard. Blood new and glistening on the couch-grass lawn. A panicked sound, high-pitched, and Hirsch jumped in fright as one of Nan Washburn’s miniature ponies retreated, trembling, into the corner between the hedge and the side fence.
He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Not a person in distress. A little horse—covered in blood.
He took a breath and slowly approached, one hand reaching, his voice gentle. Who was he kidding? The pony lunged past, knocking him to the ground, smearing his baggy old morning-walk shorts. It was gone quickly, but one thing Hirsch was certain of: stab wounds. He knew what stab wounds looked like. And the poor creature had been stabbed several times.
He followed. The pony, weak and listing badly, headed back the way it had come, to the end of Kitchener Street and through Nan Washburn’s front gate.
Where it stopped to sniff at and nudge one of its mates, a bloodied shape on the ground. Sensing Hirsch again, it stumbled along the side wall of the house, then, tottering, a great shudder in its hide, settled onto its knees, its hindquarters, and toppled over.
Hirsch felt sick. Pausing to check the animal at Washburn’s front gate—lifeless eyes, intestines oozing across the dirt—he approached the fallen pony. It was still alive, snorting, eyes wild. Nothing he could do at this point, so he continued around to the pens, the small paddock and the stable block at the rear. Gates were open. More blood, gouts of it here and there. A further three bodies. Survivors, too: five traumatised miniatures and Radish at the far end of the paddock, the latter tossing his massive head; backing away as if doubting Hirsch had come in peace.