Days end, p.17
Day’s End, page 17
When they were gone, he checked his phone. A followup text from Wendy: PS Zoe was expelled.
24
MID - AFTERNOON NOW and Hirsch was alone. He felt grimy: the Internals, and his bloodied uniform soaking in the laundry sink.
He washed down a sandwich with strong black tea, booked an appointment—for next Monday—with a policeservice-recommended psych in Gawler, climbed behind the wheel again.
First entering into his GPS the Muncowie address on the electricity bill found hidden in Brenda Maher’s curtains, he headed north, wondering if he’d find Alice, Jacob and Hillcock there. Or another branch of Brenda’s family. Or no one at all. It was a loose end, however, and it was nagging at him. Not that loose ends could always be tied off neatly, in his experience.
Muncowie was in his patrol district, and he called in once a week if he could, even though the place rarely mustered up the energy for bad behaviour. Bad thoughts, maybe. Too small, too forgotten, too purposeless for anything else. A shop, a pub and a handful of houses on a crosshatch of six streets; two running north–south and four running east–west. Crouching little fibro and weatherboard places defeated by time and the sun. Blinds drawn to hide the inhabitants from intruders, and vice versa.
And 6 Bundaleer Street fitted right in, a paintpeeling, buckled-veranda house behind a massive oleander. Every second property in the district seemed to boast an oleander—if not a cypress hedge or peppertrees. Toxic despite their beauty, oleanders, which he sometimes thought was fitting.
He pulled into the kerb and got out. The street was short, wide and apparently dead. Over on the highway, a road train rumbled past. Somewhere on the struggling grassland surrounding the town a tractor sputtered. And something—a quality of stillness—told Hirsch that 6 Bundaleer was vacant.
Recently vacated? As he stepped through a small bent gate in a collapsing, knee-high brick fence and glanced along the side wall, he spotted the corner of a battered blue dump bin in the backyard. Rather than knock on the front door, he walked to the rear of the property, into a yard like many he’d seen over the years: a Hills hoist, a rusty wheelbarrow, dead and dying plants, a garden tap on a lean beside a tumbledown garden shed. As for the bin, it hadn’t been there for long; grass was trapped around the base. He photographed the words Mid-North Bin Hire and contact phone number stencilled on the side, then, hunting around for something to stand on, upended a rusty mop-bucket and looked in.
Empty. He knocked on both doors to the house. They were locked and no one answered. Curtains drawn over every window.
He called Mid-North Bin Hire, identified himself as a police officer to the man who answered and learned that the bin had been hired for one week by a Martina Golos.
Golos. Another penny dropped. Jake Maher had bought the station wagon from her.
Then the bin-hire man was saying, ‘Can I ask why?’ A note of apprehension in his voice.
‘Nothing to do with your company,’ Hirsch said smoothly. ‘But I do need to talk to the householder. Unfortunately, the place looks to have been vacated. Would you have contact details for Ms Golos?’
‘You sure you’re police?’
‘If you call the Redruth police station and ask to speak to Sergeant Brandl…’
‘That’s all right,’ the man said, rattling off a mobile number. ‘She told us her nephew lived there. He died recently and she’s cleaning up—to sell it, I suppose. She lives in Adelaide somewhere.’
Hirsch tried the number: no reply. He tried a handful of motels and hotels in his contacts list. No Martina Golos in residence. He googled Golos, finding LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, but he had no way of knowing if they referred to the woman who had hired the bin.
Next, he set out to knock on every door in the street. Two people were at home and three houses were vacant. A young woman jiggling a baby on her hip said, ‘Druggies live there,’ but couldn’t tell Hirsch anything more, or identify photographs of Brenda, Jacob, Alice or Hillcock.
A short, furry man with bushy white eyebrows at 3 Bundaleer said pre-emptively, ‘I mind my own business.’
Hirsch swiped through the photos again. ‘Could be,’ the old man said vaguely.
‘When’s the last time you saw someone there?’
‘Yesterday, just before the bin was delivered. A lady. Said she was cleaning up, her nephew died. First I knew of it.’
Hirsch showed Brenda’s photo again. ‘Her?’
‘No.’
This mysterious Golos, Hirsch thought. ‘I checked the bin: it’s still empty.’
‘She’s coming back tomorrow morning.’
‘You had quite a chat.’
‘I don’t know about that. But she said she’s coming back to pack everything up and good riddance, I say. The smell sometimes.’
Cooking meth? ‘Was it a chemical smell?’
‘Just, you know, a bad smell,’ the man said, uttering a phlegmy cough as confirmation.
‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘Depends.’
Hirsch didn’t ask on what; just handed him a card. ‘When the lady arrives tomorrow, please call me.’
The man held the card as if it would incriminate him. ‘I mind my own business.’
‘It’s just that she and I keep missing each other,’ Hirsch said offhandedly.
The old man actually touched the side of his nose and winked. ‘Got you.’
Hirsch called Sergeant Brandl before setting out for the drive back to Tiverton. ‘I thought it’d be worth coming up here to see if Alice and the others were hiding out.’
‘Jesus, Paul. I could have sent one of the children with you.’ She sighed. ‘Do we know of other family?’
‘Maybe this Martina Golos is related to them,’ Hirsch said. ‘Brenda’s sister or cousin,’ he added, ‘or Alice’s mother? Hillcock’s ex-wife or sister or cousin?’
‘Something to be said for the traditional nuclear family structure,’ Brandl muttered. ‘The nephew who died—have you got a name?’
‘Not yet. Anything from Brenda?’
‘Still sedated. Maybe tomorrow.’
They finished the call and Hirsch headed south. He was drawing into the outskirts of Tiverton when his phone pinged with a text from Janne Van Sant:
You were economical with the truth. I investigated further and found the motel manager who advised the police that my son and his girlfriend did not pay for their room. This man served in Afghanistan with Sam Dryden. A coincidence? I think not. A man who would assist a fellow soldier in a cover-up is a more likely story. Such a man would fake a postcard, too. I shall return at once.
Hirsch texted back: Stop in and see me first.
She didn’t reply.
Hirsch, Kate and Wendy rarely saw each other during the week—homework, writing lesson plans, marking, Hirsch always on call. But after the day he’d had, Wendy said, he should come for dinner. Curries from the bain maries at the Caltex in Redruth this time, bought when Wendy left school at 4.30, reheated at 6.30. The three of them liked a bit of spiciness, but that’s not what you got from the Sikh family who ran the servo: they had the palates of the midnorth pegged.
‘Tasty, though,’ Hirsch said.
Kate, mopping up with naan bread, agreed. ‘Not to mention that we’ve been saved from your spaghetti bolognese.’
He stared at her. She stared back.
‘Cut it out, you two,’ Wendy said.
They ignored her and kept it up until Hirsch cracked, and Kate mimed her triumph.
Good sign, he thought. A bit of shared stupidity as an antidote to her sadness—and his own, for that matter. The images were creeping up on him.
As if reading his mind, Wendy reached a hand to his across the table. ‘Did you see Alice today?’
‘Just Brenda, the others were out. Alice came home and saw what had happened, and she called me.’
‘A shock for her…’
‘Of course,’ said Hirsch carefully.
‘As I said, I didn’t teach her, I taught Zoe, her sister.’
Hirsch happened to glance at Kate. The keen intelligence in her eyes. She knows we’re tiptoeing around something crucial, he thought, just as she said, ‘Zoe was expelled.’
‘Yes,’ Wendy said.
‘Because of you.’
‘Indirectly.’
Hirsch broke in. ‘Tell me about that.’
‘I caught her stealing from my bag one day. As soon as I confronted her, she turned on me. Kicking, screaming, she went right off. So I called it in—it takes a lot for me to report a kid—and she attacked the principal. Scratched her face, threw a laptop across the room…’
Kate was bursting in her chair. ‘That explains all the online stuff. She’s been getting back at you. Us.’ She smiled without much warmth in it. ‘Yep, all down to you, Mum.’
‘Thanks for that, sweetheart,’ Wendy said. ‘But Zoe didn’t strike me as much of a strategist.’
‘And she’s been living with her grandmother for the past couple of months,’ Hirsch said.
Kate was rocking in her chair. ‘It was Alice who wanted to get back at us, then.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Of course it was. Is she smart?’
‘I’d say so,’ Hirsch said, thinking of the Sudoku puzzles, the books beside her bed. Her steady, indifferent gaze the day he’d called in about the dog. He could see her vengeful, creative fingers on a keyboard: the house for rent, the hard-rubbish scam, the toxic texts and messages.
‘Vicious little cow,’ Wendy muttered. She helped herself to mango chutney and added, ‘Got to remember she’s had a terrible shock, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Hirsch sighed. The messiness of life, nothing cut and dried. ‘But where she is now, no one knows. I doubt it’ll be me who has to deal with her.’
At nine o’clock on Wednesday morning, Hirsch received a call from Muncowie. ‘That lady’s here,’ the old man said. A hoarse whisper, as if he might be overheard.
Hirsch pinned his mobile number to the front door and headed north, overtaking the Broken Hill bus, tucking back into his lane again as an oncoming farm ute flashed its lights. The poor guy at the wheel looked embarrassed when he realised he’d hassled a cop. Hirsch tried an embarrassed smile and wave as the guy passed, thinking, shit, shit, shit.
Half an hour later he was pulling up outside 6 Bundaleer Street. A silver Camry was parked there, a Port Adelaide Power sticker on the rear window. With a wave to the old man on the other side of the street, he entered the yard. Didn’t knock: hearing a thump and the tinkle of glass breaking, he reckoned that rubbish was being tossed into the dump bin at the rear of the property.
He found a heavyset middle-aged woman there, reaching down to grab a bulky garbage bag. Threadbare jeans, a baggy black T-shirt and grubby tennis shoes. Her hair, in a messy ponytail, swung wildly as she lifted the garbage and swung it over the lip of the bin. She paused to wipe her hands on her shirt. Saw Hirsch.
She scowled, glanced uneasily at the bin, at the bags at her feet, at Hirsch again.
‘Ms Golos? My name’s Paul Hirschhausen, from the police station down in Tiverton. I tried calling you yesterday.’
She said defensively, ‘I had my phone off. The reception up here’s terrible.’
‘Sure is,’ he agreed.
He glanced at the remaining rubbish bags. Glimpsed a short section of glass tubing and the base of a beaker. Golos winced. Took a step to block his view and yawned, as if she wasn’t cleaning up her late nephew’s meth operation.
‘Wondered if I could ask a few questions.’
‘Help you if I can,’ Golos said shortly. ‘Maybe we could sit on the veranda?’
A futile distraction, but Hirsch smiled and said, ‘Sure, why not.’
When they were seated—on a deckchair and a plastic recliner—Hirsch said, ‘I understand that your nephew owned this house? He died?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did he live alone?’
She shifted uncomfortably. ‘Far as I know.’
‘Do you know someone called Brenda Maher?’
‘No.’
‘Her name is on an electricity bill for this address,’ Hirsch said.
He saw Golos try for different expressions and finally settle on resignation. ‘Look, okay, maybe he did have people living with him. He was always a bit, you know, pathetic. Surrounded by no-hopers leaching off him.’
‘How about these names: David Hillcock, Jacob Maher, Alice McNamara?’
‘Never heard of them. He was my late brother Keith’s boy and I been looking out for him a bit, the past year. Let him use an old car I had, things like that.’
Hirsch tingled. ‘An old Holden station wagon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your name and this address were on the registration papers.’
She frowned. How did he know? ‘It was so the renewal papers came here but it stayed in my name.’
‘So you were close to him.’
‘No, I wasn’t close to him. Just looked out for him a bit. He was the kind of person everyone takes advantage of, you know? That’s why my brother bought him this place, get him away from his druggie mates in the city. But I’m thinking they found him. Wanted the house and his money.’
‘What money?’
‘Damien inherited a bit of money when Keith died, not much, ten grand maybe? And here he is, in a house way out in the bush, perfect for making drugs. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’ Golos asked, gesturing at the bin. ‘I didn’t find much equipment, just some glass tubing under the sink. I suppose his mates cleaned everything out after they killed him.’
Hirsch was tingling again. ‘Killed him. Was his last name Pierce?’
Martina Golos looked at Hirsch askance, as if he was a bit dim. ‘Yeah, Damien Pierce. You know, the body they found in the suitcase.’
25
‘AND SHE DIDN’T think to get in touch with us?’ Comyn said later.
To get a mobile signal, Hirsch was standing at wobbly attention on top of the dump bin. If not for that, he might have theorised at length about the world being full of dull, incurious people like Martina Golos. Either over-respectful of authority or chronically suspicious of it. But Comyn knew all that.
‘It just didn’t occur to her,’ Hirsch said. ‘She barely knew her nephew. She wasn’t even close to her brother. He dies, a few months later the nephew dies, leaving her to pick up the pieces.’
‘Incredible.’
‘So if you could inform Homicide?’
‘Sure.’
‘And a crime-scene unit.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ muttered Comyn. ‘You think he was killed in the house?’
‘Maybe. Plus there’s some lab glassware that should yield prints.’
‘Where’s the aunt now? We need to eliminate her prints.’
‘Staying at the motel in Peterborough. I took her statement.’
‘Or she’s involved. Done a runner.’
‘I didn’t get that feeling,’ Hirsch said.
‘Famous last words,’ Comyn said, ending the call.
Hirsch climbed down, strung crime-scene tape across the front of the property and sat in the Hilux to wait.
But waiting meant inactivity. An unwelcome opportunity to connect with his thoughts. He saw a tremor in his right hand, his gun hand. He was holding himself tensely. Images of the mauled baby came roaring up in him. The dog. The baby…
His breath came short and fast as he walked around and up and down the little street until the flashbacks eased and it was just a spring day again.
He waited. It wasn’t until late morning that Inspector Alwin arrived with Comyn and a crime-scene unit. ‘Homicide can’t spare anyone until tomorrow morning,’ Alwin said, on the footpath outside the house, ‘meaning we start canvassing the neighbours and hope forensics get their skates on to rule this in or out as the murder site.’
He cast a disparaging look at the house. ‘Did you go in, Senior Constable Hirschhausen?’
‘No, sir.’
Alwin watched a crime-scene officer kneel at the front door and dust the knob for prints. ‘I’m assuming the aunt did?’
‘Yes, sir.’
At that moment Hirsch’s elderly witness edged out of his front gate with three fold-up chairs, tottered across the street and plonked them on the footpath. ‘Gentlemen.’
‘Great minds, sir,’ Alwin said.
For a moment, Hirsch wondered if the neighbour was hoping for a quid pro quo, but the old man bobbed his head, said, ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ and limped back the way he’d come.
Alwin repositioned the chairs in the shade of next door’s front-yard gum tree. Dropping his mask briefly to rub the bridge of his nose, he said, ‘Let’s work out what we’ve got before we start knocking on doors. You first,’ he said, nodding at Hirsch. ‘What led you here, for a start.’
Hirsch told him about the dog attack, the search warrant and finding the electricity bill in Brenda Maher’s name.
‘It’s good you acted straight away,’ Alwin said. ‘Yes, this woman has suffered a terrible personal tragedy, and she’s in hospital, but the show must go on.’
‘Sir.’
‘You’re saying she pays the electricity for this place,’ Alwin said, indicating the house behind him, ‘yet it’s owned by our man in the suitcase? How does that work?’
‘Some of this is conjecture, sir,’ Hirsch said, going on to tell the story of Damien Pierce, a weak man, an addict with minor drug convictions running with a harder crowd in the city—to the despair of his father, who bought him a rundown house in a country town. ‘If he wanted to turn his life around, it didn’t work. The grifters found him and moved in. Well, not in. They couldn’t live here with him—too small, especially once they put the lab in as well. I’m assuming Pierce was the main cook. And they put Brenda Maher’s name on the paperwork because she was a cleanskin.’
‘Why did they kill him?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe he ripped them off, or got cold feet, or wanted a bigger slice.’
‘How many of them are there? Are they up to anything else?’
