Mischance Creek by Garry Disher

Author:Garry Disher [Garry Disher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2025-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

27

HIRSCH PHOTOGRAPHED the body from several angles—in case of a cataclysmic flash flood or earthquake in the next thirty seconds—then clambered out to rejoin Annika on the bank.

Again she said, ‘Is it her?’

A reasonable question in the circumstances, even as she must have known that he couldn’t confirm or deny. ‘Time will tell.’

She was still agitated. ‘I know, I know—teeth and DNA.’

He showed a photo of a skeletal hand. ‘Do you recognise the rings?’

Annika seemed to grimace and roll her shoulders. Eventually said, ‘I think so. I wish I could remember; I wish I could be sure.’

‘Not to worry, we’ll know soon enough,’ Hirsch said. He paused. ‘I have to tell you, a lot’s going to happen now—if slowly at first.’

He glanced upslope at the police HiLux baking in the sun. It should stay there: no point in driving it in and disturbing the scene further. Then he glanced along the fissure to what had probably been the murder scene: the little oasis of wattles and boulders, three hundred metres away and barely visible. Annika’s Mazda ute should stay where it was, too. The fact that six years of weather extremes had passed was irrelevant: the crime scene officers would be looking for a projectile and a cartridge case at the very least, and it was bad enough that the area had been disturbed by Annika’s tyres and hiking boots, let alone Bella’s paws and his own clodhopper shoes. The Mazda would be allowed to move once the greater area had been searched, but that could be hours, days, from now.

‘Can you tell what happened?’

Hirsch couldn’t see the point of hiding anything from her. ‘There’s a head wound. There may be others, but I couldn’t tell without moving the remains, and I need to leave that to the forensic team.’ He paused. ‘Sorry.’

She opened and closed her mouth in little gulps. ‘All this time I’ve been thinking she got lost, or hurt herself, anything like that, but seeing where she’s been all this time—and now you say there’s a head wound—I’m seeing someone putting her there.’

Hirsch nodded. The hole in her head didn’t necessarily mean she’d been murdered—she might’ve accidentally impaled herself on a metal spike of some kind—but she had been moved and hidden by someone.

Like her husband.

But he didn’t say any of this.

‘I have to get on the radio now,’ he said. ‘My boss, Port Pirie CIB and probably the Homicide Squad. It’s going to take a while.’

‘I’ll wait by my ute.’

‘Sorry, you can’t,’ Hirsch said, going on to explain why.

Nordrum looked around wildly at the heat-struck distant hills and the dirt under her feet. The sun burning overhead. ‘But it’s so hot.’

Hirsch clasped her shoulders briefly, calmingly. It worked. The tension eased and then she was shaking her head, tears forming. ‘I half thought I’d find her stretched out under a tree or at the base of some cliff—you know, tragic but somehow dignified. Now I can’t help thinking she was scared at the end; someone was hurting her.

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