Bitter Wash Road by Garry Disher Page A

around the next bend.
     
    Fuck it. Hirsch accelerated, approaching the bend in careful stages, and found the Lexus in the middle of the road, doors open, the dust settling around it.
     
    He braked, switched off, got out. So much drama, you’d expect an orchestra of panicky sounds, but the air was still and silent, only two hot engines ticking as they cooled. Then Hirsch’s dust rolled over him and the stink of it was in his nose with his own diesel fumes.
     
    When it cleared he saw a woman alight from the driver’s seat, swinging one leg out of the footwell, then the other, emerging with the kind of fluttery relief you’d expect of a driver who’d had a close call. Or an actor.
     
    ‘Oh, hello there. Whooh! My heart’s going pitter-patter.’
     
    She walked the ten metres towards Hirsch, a flirty blonde full of smiles. She was about thirty and, in a nod to spring, wore a darkish, short-sleeved cotton dress, knee-length over her tanned, tennis player legs.
     
    She toed the dirt cutely with a sandalled foot. Red toenails. ‘Talk about a lucky escape. These gravel roads are quite treacherous.’
     
    Hirsch smiled, nodded, tutted his commiseration.
     
    ‘Sorry about the guardrail. Of course I’ll pay to have it mended.’ She turned to eye the car. ‘My husband and I have insurance.’
     
    Now the husband was emerging, grinning like a madman, shaking his head at Hirsch, one bloke to another. ‘If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times...’
     
    ‘Oh, Mike,’ the wife said fondly. She rolled her eyes and turned on her smile for Hirsch, finger-hooking quotation marks in the air: ‘Drive according to the conditions of the road.’
     
    ‘Well, sweetheart, now you know first-hand what it means. Mike Venn,’ the husband said, sticking out his hand. ‘And this is Jess, my wife.’
     
    ‘All right, knock it off both of you,’ Hirsch said.
     
    Venn glanced at his wife, at Hirsch. ‘I beg your pardon?’
     
    ‘You, sir, were driving, and you swapped places with your wife.’
     
    ‘He did no such thing!’
     
    ‘You’ve no doubt seen the drink-driving ads on TV,’ Hirsch said. ‘Every police vehicle is a booze bus. You can be breathalysed on the spot.’
     
    The woman was astounded. ‘You think we’ve been drinking?’
     
    ‘I can smell it on you,’ Hirsch said.
     
    ‘A glass to celebrate a property sale, nothing more,’ Venn said.
     
    The wife could have left it at that. Her nose was exquisitely and maybe even naturally shaped, and it quivered now, a terrier after prey. ‘What are you, some jumped-up little Hitler?’
     
    ‘I’m sure if you run your mouth long enough I’ll come up with another charge,’ Hirsch said. He fetched a couple of breath-test kits from the HiLux, picturing the drama playing out behind his back. She glares at her husband, he glares at her, fury, a touch of panic, a pantomime of Make it go away and Who do we know?
     
    He returned stony faced and gleeful. ‘Blow into this, please, sir.’
     
    ‘But I wasn’t driving.’
     
    ‘Don’t worry, I’m testing both of you. I can’t have one drunk driver replaced by another, now can I?’
     
    Both Venns registered over .05. Hirsch announced this, and asked, ‘Is there someone you can call?’
     
    ‘Come on, were clearly not drunk, and the road’s not exactly crawling with vehicles.’
     
    ‘You hit a guardrail, sir, and you were driving under the influence of alcohol. It would be irresponsible of me to allow you behind the wheel again today. What if you killed someone?’
     
    ‘I was driving,’ the wife said.
     
    ‘Knock it the fuck off,’ Hirsch snarled.
     
    The clouds were high and fat and white, the sky vividly blue. Promising a change, but just now glorious. Hirsch sought relief in the heavens, thinking there was no dust up there. He mentally listed the charges available to him. Giving a false statement, driving under the influence, reckless driving...There were a few.
     
    He