Bitter Wash Road Read Online Free Page A

warm and lustrous. ‘The kids beat you up?’
     
    ‘Entirely my doing,’ Hirsch said.
     
    ‘Uh huh. So, you want to discuss something?’
     
    Downplaying it, electing, for some reason, not to mention Kropp’s call, Hirsch explained that he’d heard shots in passing and found the children playing with a rifle.
     
    Alison Latimer’s face dropped. ‘Oh, Jack.’
     
    Jack stared at the ground. Katie stood with folded arms and stared out across the garden. But Wendy Street said, ‘You just happened to be passing, in your four-wheel-drive, and heard shots.’
     
    So Hirsch put a little harshness into it: ‘A tree was across the road. When I got out to shift it, a bullet flew past my head.’
     
    Okay?
     
    It worked. The women were dismayed. They turned to the children, then back to Hirsch, issuing a tide of apologies and recriminations.
     
    ‘Look,’ he said, ‘no harm done. But I think the rifle should be locked away from now on.’ He retrieved it from the HiLux and handed it to Jack’s mother. ‘It is licensed?’
     
    Alison nodded. She held the rifle a little awkwardly, as though her right hand lacked strength, and used her left to flip open the bolt. As she moved, a beautiful old-style diamond ring flashed a red spark. Then she gestured with the rifle, showing him the empty chamber. She was a lovely woman full of strain and privation; she held herself stiffly, as though her joints had locked up. In a low mutter she said, ‘I can show you the paperwork if you like.’
     
    ‘That’s okay,’ Hirsch said, knowing he should check. He wasn’t among criminals here, though. ‘Look, you run a farm, it doesn’t hurt to have a couple of rifles on hand, but keep them locked up so the kids can’t get at them. No unsupervised shooting.’
     
    All through this, Wendy Street was casting tense looks at her neighbour. Alison, feeling the force of it, broke into tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Wen, I didn’t...’
     
    ‘Allie, you know how much I hate guns.’
     
    Then Street relented and touched the back of the other woman’s hand. ‘Please, please, please keep them locked up.’
     
    ‘I will.’
     
    And to the children: ‘As for you two, no more shooting. Okay?’
     
    ‘Okay,’ Jack said.
     
    Katie didn’t agree, she didn’t disagree.
     
    Wendy wasn’t finished. She clamped her fingers around Hirsch’s forearm. ‘Quiet word?’
     
    Surprised, he said, ‘Sure.’
     
    She led him to her car and he waited, watching the house, the other mother, the children. ‘What’s up?’
     
    ‘I don’t know you, I don’t know if l can trust you.’
     
    There was nothing to say to that.
     
    ‘I teach at the high school in Redruth.’
     
    ‘Okay.’
     
    ‘I’ve seen how Sergeant Kropp and his men treat people.’
     
    Hirsch stroked his jaw. ‘I don’t know anything about that, I’m new here. What’s it got to do with Jack and Katie?’
     
    ‘All right,’ Wendy took a breath, ‘giving you the benefit of the doubt...I want you to know that Allies husband is a bully. He won’t handle this well when he hears about it. And he’s going to hear about it because he’s mates with Sergeant Kropp.’
     
    Meaning, Hirsch thought, she’d appreciate it if I kept my trap shut.
     
    ‘I assume you have procedures to follow,’ Wendy said bitterly.
     
    ‘Well, there are procedures and procedures,’ Hirsch said.
     
    She assessed him briefly, head cocked, then gave a whisper of a nod. And bit her bottom lip, as if thinking she’d gone too far.
     
    Hirsch said, ‘If Mr Latimer is violent to his family I can refer them to a support agency. Sergeant Kropp needn’t know.’
     
    The tension in Wendy Street shifted, but did not ease. ‘What matters right now is the shooting business. If you have to report it, you have to report it—but I’d rather you didn’t.’
     
    Hirsch gave his own version of the abbreviated nod. ‘How about we leave it as a friendly caution. It would have been different