Free Bitter Wash Road by Garry Disher Page B

believes me, Hirsch thought—or, at the very least, she’s got doubts.
     
    Finally she’d expressed these doubts to Hirsch. ‘Will you give evidence against Quine?’
     
    ‘No.’
     
    She’d gnawed her lower lip, then confessed that she’d recommended no further action against him. ‘But my colleagues don’t agree with me, and it doesn’t necessarily let you off the hook.’
     
    No, not off the hook. A whiff clung to him. He was demoted and posted to the bush. And for all he knew, no one but Rosie and his parents thought he was an honest copper. Then, when Quine and the others were charged and punished—variously sacked and jailed; one senior constable suiciding—people asked why Paul Hirschhausen had got off so lightly. The answer was clear: he was a turncoat, a dog, a maggot. He stared at Rosie, misgivings shading her face as she drained her shiraz and slapped down her glass. ‘Sometime soon, maybe as early as next week, you’ll be invited to police headquarters to face another round of questions.’
     
    ‘Invited.’
     
    She shrugged.
     
    ‘Why?’
     
    ‘To answer fresh allegations.’
     
    ‘Against me?’
     
    ‘Yes. Quine’s not exactly been twiddling his thumbs.’
     
    Hirsch had heard it on the grapevine, Quine the master manipulator beating Rosie and her colleagues into exhaustion with a battery of freedom-of-information requests and demands for daybook entries, diary entries, files, notes, statements, records, reports, memos, e-mails, video and audio recordings, computer discs and memory sticks. And any and all correspondence, however vaguely connected to his twenty years in the employ of South Australia Police. A futile exercise if undertaken by anyone else, but Quine had got away with a lot for a long time and he might get away with this.
     
    ‘He’s saying the case against him is a soufflé,’ Rosie said.
     
    Hirsch snorted. ‘So what are these allegations?’
     
    Rosie began to chip at a fleck of cheese on her pizza crust. Nice hands, Hirsch thought. That was inconvenient. He dragged his eyes away. They’d had fun in bed, one night when it was all over, but that had no place here. He couldn’t look at the vines and vegetable beds and other diners forever, though, so he turned back to watch Rosie struggle with herself. She was vivid and round and lit within, normally, her fine black hair flashing, her scarlet nails and lips avid for experiences. She was probably an affront to the men she investigated and treated seriously by no one.
     
    ‘Anonymous tipoff,’ she said.
     
    ‘Saying...?’
     
    She looked fully at him, eaten up, you could see it in her face and upper body. ‘No one will tell me anything, but I’ve gathered they think you pilfered stolen goods from the evidence safe at Paradise Gardens. Apparently they have serial numbers.’
     
    ‘What kind of items?’
     
    ‘No idea. Drugs? Cash?’
     
    Her face twisted. She almost reached across the redgum and took his wrist. ‘Paul, they seem dead certain. Is it true? Will they find something?’
     
    ‘Sure,’ Hirsch said, and he fished out his phone, pressed the photo gallery icon and handed it over. ‘Scroll through.’
     
    He watched a pretty forefinger flick the screen. ‘The first-aid box in my car,’ he said. ‘The phone is an iPhone 5, and the cash amounts to two and a half grand in hundreds.’
     
    She continued to scroll. ‘Serial numbers.’
     
    ‘Yes. Phone and cash.’
     
    A twist of frustration. ‘It’s all going to match, isn’t it?’
     
    ‘Without a doubt.’
     
    ‘Paul, tell me straight, did you pinch this stuff?’
     
    ‘Fuck you, Rosie.’
     
    She slid the phone back across the table. ‘But who’s going to believe you just stumbled on this? They’ll think you took these photographs just in case, some weak attempt to say you were set up.’
     
    ‘Possibly,’ Hirsch said.
     
    A young woman came by with a tray and a smile, a little frown when Hirsch bent his upper