His fingers were white on the steering wheel, his jaw tight.

He rolled through Tarlee and what took his mind from the turmoil a minute later was passing the old stone farmhouse where his father’s grandparents had lived. His father remembered a gruff, remote, upright man haunted by his experiences of trench warfare on the Western Front. In the twenties he’d settled in Tarlee to manage the property for the cattle king Sidney Kidman, growing wheat and tending mobs of wild outback brumbies brought down by train and destined for the Indian Army. Hirsch told himself: My concerns are not that important. He felt the aggravations fall away.

By noon he was parking in his parents’ driveway. Hugs, home cooking, uncomplicated evening company, his parents eyeing him with concern but always exquisitely tactful. His old room, his old bed…

23

23

AT EIGHT-THIRTY ON Monday morning Hirsch was seated with two Internal Investigations officers at a bland table in a small, featureless room. He’d dealt with both officers and considered Rosie DeLisle a friend; Inspector Gaddis was a foe. Both had targeted him during the corruption inquiry; Rosie eventually believed that he was more or less clean, Gaddis was convinced Hirsch should have been charged.

It was Gaddis who began. ‘Do you know why we’ve asked you here today, Constable Hirschhausen?’

The sun was behind the inspector, lighting up his thin hair in a wispy nimbus. Not holy, just distracting. ‘No, sir.’

Gaddis was always colour-coordinated. For this warm summer day he wore a lightweight tan suit and sandcoloured shirt, the collar too big for his scrawny neck, with a beige tie. Gold-rimmed glasses; twig-like fingers adept at shepherding disordered paper into shape and stabbing the next bullet point.

He lifted a letter. ‘I have here a communication from a Damien Ablett of the district council of Redruth. Do you know this person?’

‘I know of him,’ Hirsch said, ‘but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him.’

Prick though he no doubt was.

‘Mr Ablett advises that rate-payer funded asphalt was used to fill potholes in the driveway of the Tiverton police station recently. What do you have to say in regard to this matter?’

Unnoticed by Gaddis, Rosie DeLisle rolled her eyes heavenwards then back at Hirsch. Apart from that, her face was flat, and Hirsch had to look away or he’d have started grinning.

He chose his words carefully. ‘It was a donation, sir, from the crew of the council’s patching truck. Apparently, they often have asphalt spoils left over at the end of the day, and rather than let it go to waste, they—’

Gaddis sharpened. ‘Your driveway was patched first thing in the morning, Constable. Not the end of the day.’

Hirsch said nothing. If he waited, the blame might flow onto the Bagshaw brothers.