Bitter Wash Road Read Free Page B

away.
     
    Then she said tensely, ‘We’re not lying.’
     
    ‘You saw a woman near my car.’
     
    Now she was flustered. ‘No. I mean yes. I mean we saw the black car.’
     
    ‘I believe you.’
     
    She’d heard that before. ‘It’s true!’
     
    ‘What direction?’
     
    She got her bearings, pointed her finger. ‘That way.’
     
    North. Which made little sense if Pullar and Hanson had been in the car she saw—not that Hirsch could see that pair of psychopaths breaking cover to drive all the way down here to Sheepshit West, South Australia.
     
    Still sensing Hirsch’s doubt, Katie grew viperish: ‘It was black, it was a station wagon and it had yellow and black New South Wales numberplates, just like in the news.’
     
    Hirsch had to look away. ‘Okay.’
     
    ‘And it was a Chrysler,’ said Jack.
     
    Feeling lame, Hirsch said, ‘Well, it’s long gone now.’
     
    Or perhaps not, if it had been the Pullar and Hanson car. The men liked to target farms on dirt roads off the beaten track. Suddenly Hirsch understood what the children were doing with the Ruger: they were shooting Pullar and Hanson.
     
    He steered gamely down through the washaway and up around the next bend, to where Bitter Wash Road ran straight and flat for a short distance, the children mute and tense. But as he neared the red roof and the green, Katie came alive, snapping, ‘That’s Jack’s place.’
     
    A pair of stone pillars, the name Vimy Ridge on one, 1919 on the other, the oiled wooden gates ajar. Imposing. Hirsch supposed that a lot had occurred since 1919, though, for everything was weatherworn now, as if the money had dried up. A curving gravel driveway took him past rose-bordered lawns and a palm tree, all of the road dust dampened by last night’s rain, ending at a lovely stone farmhouse. Local stonework in shades of honey, a steep green roof sloping down to deep verandas, in that mid-north regional style not quite duplicated elsewhere in the country, and sitting there as though it belonged. Hirsch eyed it appreciatively. He’d spent his early years in a poky terrace on the baked streets of Brompton—not that the miserable little suburb was miserable any longer, now the young urbanites had gentrified it.
     
    He pocketed his phone, got out, stretched his bones and gazed at the house. It was less lovely closer up. Careworn, the paintwork faded and peeling, a fringe of salt damp showing on the walls, a fringe of rust along the edges of the corrugated iron roof. Weeds grew in the veranda cracks. He didn’t think it was neglect, exactly. It was as if the inhabitants were distracted; no longer saw the faults, or blinked and muttered, ‘I must take care of that next week.’
     
    The children joined him, Jack a little agitated, as though unsure of the proprieties. Hirsch contemplated phoning one or other of the mothers but mobile reception was dicey. Anyway, nobody reacted well to a call from a policeman, and the women would return soon. So, how to fill in the time...He didn’t think he should enter the house uninvited, and he didn’t want to wander around the yard and sheds uninvited either. Meanwhile, he needed to keep an eye on the kids.
     
    He stepped onto the veranda and indicated a huddle of directors’ chairs. ‘Let’s wait over here.’
     
    When they were seated he asked, ‘Who owns the .22?’
     
    ‘My dad,’ whispered the boy.
     
    ‘What does he use it for?’
     
    ‘Rabbits and things.’
     
    ‘Does he own any other guns?’
     
    ‘Another .22, a .303 and a twelve-gauge.’
     
    ‘Where are they kept?’
     
    ‘In his study.’
     
    Hirsch asked the questions casually, keeping his voice low and pleasant, but he was scanning the dusty yard, taking note of the sheds, a scatter of fuel drums, an unoccupied kennel, stockyards, a field bin in a side paddock. A ute and a truck, but no car. A plough and harrows tangled in grass next to a tractor shed. A working farm but no one working it today, or