HE RACED HOME, showered, shaved, stuffed himself into his uniform and hung his towel on the backyard clothesline. The Santa suit was dry. Note to self: return to Martin Gwynne asap.
Settling his broad-brimmed uniform hat at a stern angle on his head, he left the police station. A huddle of townspeople across at the shop; one of them beckoned to Hirsch. He waved cheerily and set off in the opposite direction. They know about Nan’s ponies, he thought. They want the official version. And reassurance.
Two minutes later he knocked on Marie Cobb’s door. Waited. Walked around to the rear. Laura was there in shortie pyjamas, plugged into an iPod, watering the tomatoes. And Hirsch thought: Shit, what will the news do to her? Unless she mutilated the ponies? Hirsch rejected the notion as soon as it popped into his head. Me in cop mode, he thought: trust no one, suspect everyone.
Laura caught him in the corner of her eye and started reflexively, placing her hand over her chest. Then, her expression resentful—masking apprehension, Hirsch thought—she released the hand-spray trigger, hooked the nozzle over the trellis and removed the headphones. The garden, still in shade, smelt coolly and cleanly of tomatoes and damp mulch.
‘Morning, Laura.’
‘Can’t you leave us alone?’
This was a kid who got up early and filled her days, thought Hirsch. Shopping, cooking, gardening, schoolwork, housework, work-work. Watching over her mother and brother. The little household’s youngest member, she shouldered most of the responsibility; had no other choice. But how was she going to cope by the time Year 12 came around? She might get some leeway if she broke a leg or caught glandular fever, but if her brother was in jail? If—when—her mother acted out? Shy, shamefaced, Laura had told Hirsch some of it: Marie staying in bed for weeks at a time; talking non-stop for days at a time; calling her kids out of class to say her sore throat was cancer; bundling them into the car at 2 a.m. because the secret police were coming.
Hirsch removed his hat and found that his mouth was dry. He swallowed, feeling clumsy. ‘Laura, there’s…I have to tell you something awful has happened to some of Mrs Washburn’s ponies.’
Her hand bunched the neck of her pyjama top. Fear. ‘What?’
He told her, and she was silent but tears ran down her cheeks. Then she gathered herself. ‘I need to go around there,’ she said. Paused minutely and added: ‘It wasn’t Daryl, he wouldn’t do that.’
‘But you understand that I need to speak to him?’
She shrugged, clopping in faded pink Crocs towards the back door. Opened it, looked at him: she expected him to follow.
Into the hot airless cave that was their little brick house.
‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘You know where.’
She left him there in the kitchen. A door slammed. Presently, he heard squeaky taps and shower water drumming against a plastic curtain. Taking a breath, Hirsch walked through to Daryl Cobb’s battered door and knocked and waited. Knocked again, a hard, knuckling rap. Tough guy, he thought self-consciously, and decided simply to walk in.
The boy was asleep, wearing only boxer shorts, a big, soft, downy creature beached on a grimy sheet, his feet tangled in the top sheet. The room stank: sweat, dope, the rancid smell of unwashed flesh and clothing.
Hirsh regarded him glumly. Meanwhile Laura finished showering: he heard the water stop, the curtain rings clack. A quick towel rub later, her bare feet padded to her bedroom and a door slammed. Hirsch sighed again. Back to Daryl.
His footwear first: runners, black pointy-toed going-out shoes, thongs. No blood. The clothing on the floor, the chair, in drawers and the wardrobe. No blood.
Hirsch re-entered the hallway just as Laura emerged from her bedroom, her hair dampening the neck and shoulders of a yellow T-shirt, her legs thin and vulnerable in a baggy pair of shorts. ‘Quickest shower in history,’ he said.
She ignored him. Banged out of the back door and, a moment later, he heard her bicycle wheels.
The laundry next. The washing machine was bone dry. White knickers, a black bra and a Redruth High School summer uniform in the dirty-clothes basket.
But the absence of bloody clothing and footwear wasn’t proof of Daryl’s innocence. Hirsch took out his iPhone and replayed the video. He finally spotted Daryl near the end—with his sister, and his mother, cheering as Nan reached up to Santa for her Best Christmas Lights certificate and plum pudding. He was wearing blue boardshorts and a Kings of Leon T-shirt.
Hirsch returned to the bedroom. The T-shirt and the shorts lay where Daryl had stripped them off. Hirsch toed them open again: no blood.
It didn’t mean anything. The kid could have changed his clothes, killed and slashed a few horses in the darker hours, buried his bloodied clothing in the backyard.
‘All of them?’ asked Daryl Cobb dazedly.
‘Four dead,’ Hirsch said. ‘Couple more with stab wounds.’
He’d dragged two of the sticky kitchen chairs out into the sweeter air of the backyard, and now he watched Daryl stare at Laura’s tomato plants as if answers lay among them. The boy’s befuddlement might owe something to being hauled out of bed and plonked on a chair in the great outdoors hours before he usually awoke, Hirsch thought, but it owed a lot more to the enormity of the crime. The kid was staring vacantly, slack-jawed, unable to take it in.
He hadn’t yet twigged that a policeman might view him as a suspect, and that counted for plenty in Hirsch’s book. Not guilty, he decided. Daryl wasn’t capable of concealing guilt. He hadn’t butchered and mutilated any ponies, hadn’t witnessed anyone else do it, hadn’t heard talk of it.
Still, Hirsch had to be sure.
‘Did you have a good time at last night’s street party?’
‘It was all right.’
Hirsch mentally reviewed Daryl’s face in Katie Street’s iPhone video clip: the uncomplicated enjoyment of a child. Uncool to admit that.
‘What did you do afterwards?’
Daryl shrugged, struggling to make sense of where he was, who he was with, what it was about. ‘Nothing much.’
‘Mucked around with Adam?’
A ship at sea might change course faster than Daryl Cobb. He blinked, frowned. ‘He wasn’t…he didn’t…I think he went home after. Or maybe down the hospital.’
‘What did you do?’ Hirsch repeated.
‘Nothing much.’
Hirsch had the sense that Daryl barely recalled his evening. ‘Watch TV?’
A cloud lifted. ‘Yeah. Game of Thrones.’
‘On DVD?’
The sun and the air defeated Daryl again. He frowned at the dirt. And said, slowly, ‘Laura’s.’
‘It was her DVD?’
‘Got it for her birthday.’
‘You binge it? Late night?’
Daryl struggled again. ‘Think so.’
‘Did you go out afterwards? To look at the Christmas lights, that kind of thing? Meet up with friends?’
A dull intelligence stirred behind Daryl’s blankness. He looked astonished, as if Hirsch was suggesting he’d piloted a private jet to Tahiti. ‘Just went to bed.’
‘Who was here last night?’
Another strange question. Overnight guests? Here? ‘Me and Mum and Laura.’
‘You all stayed in?’
Daryl woke a little more. ‘I would never…We would never…’
‘Never what?’
‘Hurt Nan’s horses.’
‘What about Adam? Did he stay in town?’
Daryl shrank. He looked hunted. ‘Dunno. Never saw where he went after.’
‘He didn’t pop in for a meal, watch TV for a while?’
Daryl folded his arms. It wasn’t defensive, it was decisive. ‘Nup.’
‘I want to thank you again for apologising to Mrs Washburn, Daryl. It can’t have been easy. Perhaps you boys felt we’d put you on the spot?’
Daryl blinked at the shift. And Hirsch realised that the boy had no sense of agency. It didn’t occur to him to resent, or permit himself to resent, the burdens and expectations placed upon him by others. ‘It was all right,’ he muttered.
Another mantra of the bush: things were never terrible or fantastic, merely okay. ‘You didn’t feel aggrieved at all?’
The boy didn’t know the word. ‘You didn’t think Mrs Washburn and I were being unfair?’
Daryl’s eyes swivelled wildly, as if he thought Hirsch were saying the apology was inadequate, more was expected of him. ‘Better than going to court,’ he said.
‘What about Adam? Was he upset?’
Now Daryl could see where this was going. He shifted in his chair, his soft, pale thighs adhering to the vinyl. The rising sun had meanwhile begun to paint the yard, illuminating his bony feet.
‘Daryl? Did Adam complain about yesterday?’
‘Might of.’
‘Was he just a bit pissed off? Or was he angry?’
A shrug.
‘Any plans to see him today?’
Daryl went very still. He didn’t know the correct answer.
‘How’s your mum been?’
Daryl struggled to find the words. ‘She’s, like, it’s the start of a down time, you can tell the signs.’
‘Things she says and does?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did she enjoy last night?’
‘She went to bed right after.’
‘How long do the down times last?’
Daryl laughed, fully awake now. ‘Weeks, months.’
‘Laura’s helping Mrs Washburn today.’
Daryl shrugged as if barely aware he shared a house with his sister. Hirsch went on: ‘Perhaps you could stay in and keep an eye on your mother.’
Daryl stared at nothing; at the layout of his life.
Hirsch walked back to the police station. It was probably his imagination, but already the town seemed stunned and cowed. The smell of slaughter hung in the air, which he knew must be a memory trace. He was several hundred metres from Nan Washburn’s house now.
For distraction, he took the Santa suit down from his backyard clothesline, folded it as if Martin Gwynne were watching his every move, and tried to slip it back into the David Jones shopping bag. Gave up. The suit as folded by him proved unequal to the bag, full of fabric, clips, buttons and air, and Hirsch thought that pretty much summed up his day and his situation in this fucking town.
Five minutes later, he was parked outside the Gwynnes’ house and knocking on their door. Joyce answered, and, as always, seemed to fall back as if he was carrying news of a death in the family. ‘Paul,’ she murmured, an acutely shy woman with short, wispy grey hair and thick-lensed glasses.
She rallied. ‘I heard about Nan’s ponies…’
Hirsch would have to deal with days of this. He was the law, he’d be able to fill in all the gaps. He gave her a non-committal nod.
‘Nasty business,’ Joyce Gwynne said harshly, as if he’d said it wasn’t.
Hirsch nodded and proffered the Santa suit. ‘I’m just returning this. Tell Martin it was very kind of—’
‘Paul!’
The intrusion and eclipse were seamlessly choreographed; Martin Gwynne appeared in the hallway behind his wife and tucked her out of sight in the same movement. She seemed to evaporate, leaving a hint of floral perfume and muffled footsteps back in the dark reaches of the house.
Hirsch tried again. Thrusting the suit at Martin, he gabbled, ‘Just returning this, many thanks, it’s been washed.’
Gwynne took the costume automatically, his mind sharply on other matters. ‘I hope you’re looking at those two boys.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Mark my words, there are times when a rap over the knuckles is worse than useless. An apology? Really, Paul. That was always going to rub them up the wrong way.’
‘Early days, Martin…Look, I’ve got to dash. Thanks again for the suit.’
Martin looked down at it for the first time, bundled over both forearms. ‘There was a shopping bag, I believe?’
‘Oh? I’ll look for it. Better go,’ Hirsch said, gabbling again.
‘It’s a blight, you know that, don’t you?’
Afraid that Gwynne was getting biblical on him, Hirsch waved and nodded madly as he made his way down the path and out to his police 4WD.
Sergeant Brandl called to tell him she’d arrived at the scene with the ‘children’. ‘Where are you?’
‘Still in town, about to drive out to—’
‘That can wait. I need you to show the forensics fellow where you found the stolen copper. He’s got another job on but he can give us five minutes.’
Hirsch said, ‘Okay,’ but she’d already shut him down.
He found the forensic van waiting for him at the corner of the Barrier Highway and Kitchener Street, one lazy arm waving him on when he appeared, and the two vehicles headed out of town. A few minutes later they’d parked at the farmhouse and Hirsch was standing at the edge of the hard pan of dirt in front of the barn.
He strove for an apologetic tone. ‘I put up crime-scene tape and called it in, but when I checked the next day, the skip was gone.’ If you’d got off your lazy arses…
The forensic technician picked up the implication. ‘Mate, we’ve had a spate of thefts—Christmas presents, mostly.’ He stared at the ground inside the barn. ‘Not much to go on.’
Hirsch shrugged. The tech switched his attention to the tattered strands of tape. ‘Might get prints off that, I suppose.’
My prints at least, thought Hirsch.