19

DESMOND LIDDINGTON HAD developed a passion for red wines in his many years serving in the Barossa Valley, first as a detective constable and now, dizzyingly, on the eve of his retirement, detective senior constable, in the Kapunda, Nuriootpa and Angaston police stations. Weekends, when he wasn’t on duty investigating a stolen mower or a shoplifting, he liked to take Josie on a little wine-tasting tour. Or rather, she took him—not a good look for a police member to fail a breath test. And she didn’t mind. She liked driving around the countryside in their old red Saab, liked a drop of whatever they’d bought when they got home, and, apparently, still liked him. With the nature of his job, she said, out or away all hours, when else were they going to spend quality time together?

In the early years they’d visited all of the big cellar-door joints—Yalumba, Wolf Blass, Jacob’s Creek and so on—but now Liddington preferred to hunt down what he liked to call ‘overlooked, underappreciated and deceptive reds’ in tasting rooms off the beaten track. Plenty of these in the Barossa. Hidden gems, lovely new releases, uncommon grapes and interesting blends. Expensive, yeah, but he could afford to buy one good bottle a week: it wasn’t as if he was outlaying tens of thousands on mid-life-crisis Harleys or boats. On the other hand, with retirement coming up next month, he might need to stick to the good-value end of the scale, especially if he and Josie followed their dream of touring the European wine regions—Bordeaux, Mosel, Chianti, places like that. Maybe tour every couple of years, if their savings lasted the distance. Unless a new Covid strain hit, and the world shut down again, and airfares went up again.

Meanwhile there were always the wine regions closer to home. Margaret River, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra, the Hunter Valley.

Thus Des Liddington’s daydreams one afternoon as he and Detective Constable Gabi Richter headed out in one of Angaston’s unmarked Kia Sorentos. The Kia wasn’t going to break any speed records. It wasn’t going to break any records for style, either, especially with him at the wheel. Liddington knew he probably came across as an old grandpa to the young woman beside him: his hands correctly positioned, speed a constant 5 km/h below the limit, every turn signalled well in advance.

Grandpa. He was unlikely to achieve that status any time soon. He and Josie had one son, Andy, thirty-three, divorced and living with them again. Not a no-hoper; a young man whose hopes, dreams, marriage and career were cut short when he’d got long Covid on top of his existing autoimmune conditions. It broke Liddington’s heart to see him so frail and tired. Good company otherwise, though. Never complained. Always tried to help around the house when he felt up to it.

At that moment, Gabi, checking Google Maps, said, ‘Next turn left.’

Liddington blinked awake, slowed, signalled and eased the wallowing Kia onto a dirt road before slowly accelerating into undulating country, lush vines on either side. Had he been up this road before? Unlikely, he thought a moment later, spotting a sign that read Dog-Leg Fence Vineyard and Cellar Door. You saw it more often these days, wineries with folksy names like Dog-Leg Fence, Shut the Gate, Ten Minutes by Tractor. Was it a way of saying wine shouldn’t be elitist? Anyway, he made a mental note to visit soon. Maybe he’d find the quintessential overlooked, underappreciated and deceptive red.

As he’d once complained to Josie, those very terms could well be applied to him. They’d been in the Saab at the time, and she’d patted his comfortable thigh with her free hand as she steered up yet another winery driveway. She didn’t say anything, but he took the pat to mean that she agreed with him, that she had his back. Forty-two years in the job and his colleagues and bosses barely knew he existed. There was going to be a little retirement ceremony next Saturday, at which Liddington and a couple of others would get up in their dress uniforms and the local superintendent would hand them a medal and a fountain pen. Nothing else to mark their careers.

He glanced at Gabi Richter, intent on her phone. Mid-twenties; arts-law degree; sublimely capable and also ambitious. Policing’s new face, he supposed. Four years into the job and she’d already made more arrests than he had in his whole career. No overlooking or underappreciating Detective Constable G. Richter, that was for sure. Nothing deceptive about her, either: you could read her astuteness and drive. Liddington shrugged. Surely not everyone had to be a high-flyer? There was room for steady, decent, reliable, get-the-job-done coppers who played by the book.

Sensing his gaze, she said warningly: ‘Des…’

Seeing that he was headed for the ditch, he gave a little cough, corrected and drove on sedately, eyes on the road ahead. He felt leaden there behind the wheel; felt the contrast with her youth and energy. I like my reds too much, he thought.

She said, ‘Next right.’

Another dirt road, narrower, but the verges were cropped and tidy—an indication, Liddington thought, of money and influence: boutique wineries ahead. He cut his speed, hating to raise a dust cloud in a place like this.

‘Not far now, hundred metres down on your right,’ Gabi said.

Liddington saw that her energy had ramped up: she was practically humming. And then it made sense when she said, ‘Can’t believe I get to meet Pete Patmore.’

Liddington kept on ambling down the road. ‘Uh huh.’

She couldn’t stand it. Her body urged him to get a move on. ‘He was like a hero in our house when I was growing up.’

These days you were a hero if you knew how to tie your shoelaces, but Liddington supposed Patmore was considered a hero because he’d won silver in weightlifting at the Beijing Olympics; gold, silver and bronze at various other games. Gabi would have been about ten. And if she was any kind of detective, she’d have known that some of the gloss had worn off Peter Patmore.

‘Oh?’

She explained: ‘My dad trained with him at one stage. Wasn’t quite good enough to get picked for the Olympics, though.’

So she probably won’t be interested to learn that I was bowled for a duck by Dennis Lillee in a 1995 charity match, Des thought. ‘Wow.’

She seemed to think his reaction was adequate and they continued along the road, Gabi apparently in a kind of reverie. Liddington had heard she was a runner, netballer. A bit of a gym rat.

But to see her so innocently expectant made her more appealing. He hadn’t the heart to tell her anything about Patmore—or the sons.

They came to a sign, Patmore & Sons Irrigation, and Gabi said, ‘Here,’ unnecessarily, and Liddington rumbled the Kia over a buckled stock ramp and up an eroded driveway choked on each side by agapanthus. He slowed for a broad, dusty yard fringed on three sides by a house and several sheds and vehicles.

Irrigation. Generally more money—and more reliable money—to be made from irrigating, hauling, pruning and spraying grapes than in growing or fermenting them. Plus, you didn’t have to tart up your place of business and build a fancy tasting room overlooking an ornamental lake. Pete Patmore and his wife—who, from the size of her, had also lifted weights in her time—lived in a sprawling 1970s triple-fronted brick veneer with low ceilings and aluminium-framed doors and windows. There was a parched lawn with stubby roses in the shade cast by a couple of massive green plastic water tanks.

Liddington pulled in several metres short of a small Isuzu truck, ignored by the two men working there, one hooking metal ramps to the rear of the tray, the other waiting at the wheel of a Bobcat fitted with a bucket. ‘That’s Pete on the machine,’ he said, ‘Scott helping.’

Gabi, peering through the glass, said, ‘Not Scott. I think it’s Drew.’ As if she had their photos pinned to her bedroom wall.

‘Drew,’ Liddington said. ‘You could be right. They do look alike.’

They watched Pete Patmore drive the Bobcat up onto the tray of the Isuzu and secure it, then flip like a gymnast to the ground—a slab of a man full of physical grace. Pity about his inner qualities. Now, with both Patmores finally deigning to notice their visitors, he and Gabi Richter got out and approached them across the dirt. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said.

The Patmore men watched. Waited. Then the older man said, ‘Might’ve known it’d be you, Desmond.’

‘Peter, Drew,’ Liddington said, ‘this is Detective Constable Richter.’

Gabi, glee splitting her face, stepped right up to father and son with her hand out. ‘Lovely to meet you, Mr Patmore. You knew my father, I think: Col, Colin Richter? 2010 Commonwealth Games?’

‘Col Richter. I remember,’ Patmore said. ‘I won’t shake your hand.’

He held his palms out in explanation: both were stained a dirty orange, as if he’d sluiced them in rusty water. He loomed over her, wearing a big gut in a torn khaki work shirt, greasy boots and jeans holed at the knee. More blubber than muscle these days, but still shaped like a weightlifter, with massive thighs, shoulders and upper arms. A beard, earring, forearm tatts and cropped hair. A big old bandit with flinty little eyes in a fleshy face. His tone betrayed no interest in Gabi or recollections of her father.

He was interested in Liddington, though. ‘Thought you’d retired,’ he said sourly.

‘It’s my last couple of weeks,’ Liddington said.

Drew, the son, had been standing to one side. He stepped closer, chin out. ‘You here about the utes?’ he demanded, swinging his gaze from Richter to Liddington and back again.

He was smaller than his father. Neater, less piratical, with an eye for Gabi Richter’s looks. She smiled. ‘We are.’

Peter Patmore said, ‘We reported it by phone. All the information you needed. All we want is an incident number for the insurance.’

Surely he didn’t think it could all be done by phone? ‘A major theft, Pete, we can’t not investigate,’ Liddington said. ‘We’d like to see where the utes were kept, for a start.’

Patmore gestured at an open implement shed. Drums of fuel and stacks of PVC piping at one end, a small grey tractor in the middle, nothing at the other end. ‘There you go. General absence of Toyota utes.’

‘Locked?’

‘Always.’

‘The keys weren’t on a hook somewhere?’

‘Nope.’

‘So where were the keys?’

‘In the house, and they’re still there. We always lock up when we go to bed. No one broke or sneaked in and got the keys, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

Gabi Richter was nodding soberly. ‘Hotwired them.’

Patmore ignored her. Waited for Liddington, who said, ‘Spare keys?’

‘Lost long ago.’

Convenient, Liddington thought. ‘Who discovered the utes were missing?’

‘Me.’ Patmore gestured at a blue heeler in a kennel. ‘When I got up to feed the dog.’

‘Hear anything during the night?’

‘Nup.’

‘Your wife hear anything?’

‘She’s been in town the last few days. Our daughter’s expecting.’

‘Town?’

Patmore eyed Liddington as if he were slow. ‘Adelaide.’

‘You checked if anything else was missing?’

‘I did.’

Liddington gestured at the remaining sheds; their doors padlocked. ‘What do you keep over there?’

‘What do you think we keep there? Stolen utes?’ His tone said moron. ‘Valuable machinery, all right? Things like pumps that are easily portable. Maybe you’d like to check?’

Liddington was about to respond when he sensed the force of Gabi Richter’s disapproval: why was he being such a prick? She said hastily, ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Patmore.’

Liddington drove again, waves of displeasure rising from Gabi Richter in the passenger seat. He compounded that by turning left out of the driveway instead of heading back to the police station.

‘Where are we going? This isn’t the way.’

‘Something I need to check.’

They rode in silence until she said, ‘We actually had this lecture at the academy. To do with the kinds of cultures that can breed in the police, like old-style coppers who do things their own way. Cut corners, never share, never explain.’

‘I’ll share in a minute.’

‘Exactly. I’m not important enough for you to share with right now.’

Silence again and Liddington steered them through rolling vineyard country for twenty minutes, to one of the valley’s little back-road towns and out the other side to another dirt road, poorly maintained this time, and they were a hundred metres short of a driveway when a long, top-heavy truck lurched out, a tarpaulin flapping over its boxy load. Liddington braked sharply, dust roiling, small stones pinging against the Kia.

‘That was close. He didn’t even give way,’ Gabi said, a hand over her heart.

‘Yeah, well, he wouldn’t,’ Liddington said. He gestured at the dust cloud and his smile was tired and old and barely there. ‘That was Lance Heinrich, Pete’s brother-in-law. Pete must’ve warned him to move the utes.’

Gabi stared at the dust, and Liddington saw her begin a slow, sad readjustment.