24

AS HE RETURNED to the long-term carpark there was another text. Any chance of an update? Rex.

Rex Dunner. Owner, with his wife Eleanor, of a grazing property named Pandowie Downs, whose heritage-listed woolshed had twice been spray-painted with swastikas and ejaculating penises. Hirsch reacted as he always did when reminded that he’d neglected, avoided or evaded his police duties—screwed his face into a mad grimace and stifled a groan. His fault for making promises, then putting the matter on the backburner.

He checked the time. He’d reach the mid-north by mid-afternoon, too late to do anything more than make reassuring noises to Rex and his wife. Spend all day in a hot vehicle again, in other words. He climbed behind the wheel and took South Road to Port Wakefield Road and the Northern Expressway. Here the traffic was fast, sparse, giving him breathing space.

Martin Gwynne.

The man’s physical appearance dominated Hirsch’s thoughts before he could shake it off. Martin’s looks were hardly noteworthy—but maybe that was the most significant fact of all: Martin Gwynne was a monster disguised as a man you wouldn’t look at twice. His little pot belly, skinny legs, innocent round cheeks, neat scrape of greying sandy hair. Avid eyes behind prissy rimless glasses. An earnestness to make an ordinary person run for the hills. A small man at home in corners, scurrying away from searching eyes.

But look behind that and you’d find a man with an infantile need to be wanted, noticed and appreciated. Hirsch doubted the need was ever fully satisfied. Martin often alluded to people and circumstances that had let him down. Until coming to live in Tiverton, he’d been a senior manager in an insurance company. Then, aged fifty-five, he’d been retrenched—fallout from murky office politics, was how he’d put it. Or, Hirsch thought now, Martin had been an underperformer or a pain to work with. Anyhow, he’d not been able to find other work. Hirsch had commiserated at the time, only to see Martin’s morose face flip 180 degrees. ‘It was the best thing that could have happened, Paul. A new lease of life. Mother and I downsized and came north to enjoy honest country living.’

Not entirely true. The attraction for the Gwynnes was that their daughter Annette was living in Tiverton with her husband and son. Moving to be close to the little family gave Martin a heaven-sent opportunity to meddle in their lives. Martin babysitting, issuing gratuitous advice, dropping in at all hours of the night and day. Martin teaching his grandson to play tennis. Martin sitting on the primary school council, taking the lone teacher aside for a quiet word; directing traffic and ushering children across the road at school drop-off and pick-up. Wendy Street referred to fierce primary school mothers as mumzillas. Martin was a grandpazilla.