by Garry Disher
Liz had been more forthright. Running with him was out, she didnt want to lose him, which left an impossible alternative.
Wyatt, shed said, let me bring you in.
Wyatt had shaken his head. Killings and millions of plundered dollars marked the years of his existence and the police of every state wanted a word with him.
Out of the question, he said.
There was distress in her voice. What about us?
Wyatt had been unable to say anything. Hed stared at the sea, the rising chop on the surface of the water, the seabirds sideslipping above the white caps. The clouds had been scudding. There was plenty to be on guard against: the waves, iron shipping containers floating just beneath the surface, waiting to rip a hole in the hull.
And his feelings. Liz Redding was combative, bright, generous. She made him feel wanted, even loved. The word quivered there in his head, once hed admitted it. Wyatt thought of her squirming naked energy, her wit and affection. But all that had become a complication. Old habits of preservation had kicked in.
Wyatt? Are you deaf? shed demanded. Have you thought about us at all?
Into the silence that followed, Wyatt had muttered, All the time.
He realised now, far above Bass Strait, that he was unused to conversation, unused to the slipperiness of a conversation like the one hed had with Liz Redding. His disposition was built upon layers of secrecy and preservation, a lifetimes habit of believing that no-one was dependable but himself. People found him resourceful and cautious, a man with a dark, rapid mind, who took nothing on trust and who could be trusted to place his safety before anything, but they always wanted more, a man with ordinary doubts and scruples and impulses. What they got was a man who shut himself down. They looked for the doors and windows in him but few ever found them. Liz Redding had come close, in those seven days. He liked that, but it scared him. Hed seen that a life with her might be possible. She was his way out, if hed wanted that.
But hed decided that he didnt want it. As the storm rose in intensity, hed charted a course for Westernport Bay, a place he knew better than his own face in the mirror. It wasnt imperative that they dock in Westernport, but Wyatt hadnt told Liz Redding that. Old habits were kicking in and he was going to betray her.
Hed gone below, first to the packet of Mogadon in the medicine cabinet, then to the wall oven in the galley. It was set into the bulkhead and worked perfectly well as an oven, but it also slid out to reveal a small waterproof safe. Wyatt pocketed a roll of $100 notes, his .38 revolver and a distinctive necklace, and closed everything again, just as Liz Redding had called down to him, Wyatt? Is everything all right?
Coming now.
Hed laced her coffee, then added a dash of Scotch, and carried it to her in the wheelhouse.
She let him take the wheel. She sipped her coffee. Ah, hot, foul and bracing.
Wyatt said nothing. He watched the heaving sea. It was not a companionable silence. All of the topics between them had been pushed as far as he was able to take them, and he was waiting, with sadness, for his final act of betrayal to take effect. In a mood of disconnection and apathy, they had sailed through the night.
Someone had once accused him of working from an emotionless base. He mused on that now, as the plane banked above the Bass Strait islands. He mused on it for half a minute, all it was worth, trying to picture the face he presented to the world. He knew it could be assertive, prohibitive, sometimes chilling, giving nothing away. Most peoples faces were a barometer of their feelings. They bulged in all directions, chased by doubts, scruples and conflicts. But it was not true that Wyatt was emotionless. He had room only for the essential ones, thats all, and he kept those to himself. Up until now, that hadnt been a problem.
The pilots voice broke in upon his melancholy. They were descending.
Ten minutes later, Wyatt discovered that he would have to spend the night on the island.
The next morning, he was on the first flight out. When the plane touched down at Hobart Airport, Wyatt climbed into a taxi. There was always the risk that a cab driver would remember his face one day, but Wyatt had no intention of taking the airport bus to the city. Wyatt knew all about that bus. Hed been caught before. A good ten years older than airport buses anywhere else in the world, it would hum along the freeway and over the bridge and into the tight, one-way streets of Hobart, encouraging a sense of mission accomplished in its passengers. But then, unaccountably, it would begin to stop at the hotels, the motels, the casino way to hell and gone down Sandy Bay Road, dropping off passengers, before finally winding its way back to the downtown bus station, scarcely emptier than when it had set out, the majority obliged to wait for the chosen few. There was nothing democratic about that bus.
He paid off the taxi at the wharf opposite Salamanca Place, leaving him with a ten-minute walk to his apartment building. Hed never taken a cab all the way to the door in his life. He always concealed his final destination and covered his tracks. That was second nature to Wyatt. It was part of an automatic checklist that had kept him alive and out of gaol and mostly ahead since the day he was born.
The Mawson base supply ship was in dock. He idled for a while, watching crated food and equipment being winched aboard. The bow looked scraped, freshly wounded, as though the ship had ploughed through ice recently, leaving paint smears in its wake.
Wyatt turned to go. He stood for some time on the footpath, waiting for the traffic to clear, and came close to witnessing a death. A boy had ambled onto the road from the opposite footpath. He was about ten, undernourished, cheaply dressed, hair cropped short as though for fashions sake but probably to control head lice. He was cramming a hamburger into his mouth, and the car that braked to avoid him, snout dipping with the raw, smoking bite of its tyres, skewed violently and finally stopped, its front bumper gently knocking the boys knees.
The world held its breath. One second. Two seconds. There was something wrong about the boys reaction time. Then suddenly he spasmed with fright. One hand jerked involuntarily, scattering the hamburger. A kind of sulky defiance and embarrassment showed on his face. He sniggered. Wyatt knew exactly what it meant. The boy was saying, Missed mebut I wouldnt have minded if youd run me down. Deathor food and a warm bed in hospitalwould be better than the life Ive got. Wyatt felt that he knew the boy. His home was a place where you got smacked about the head and thrown across the room. Where a belt buckle drew your blood for no reason at all. It was a pathology Wyatt recognised.
Grief settled in him, dull and dark. Wyatt and his brother had had uncles when they were kids. One after the other. Those men hadnt stayed for long. They didnt want a couple of kids hanging around. They were bitter and afraid and their only solace was to witness fear in the two boys. Wyatt had made sure that they never saw it in him. His brother hadnt been so lucky. Wyatts brother had absorbed all of that bitterness and it had erupted when he had a son of his own, Raymond.
Wyatt glanced at his watch. Almost lunchtime. He decided to call in at his mail drop, a dingy barbershop on the other side of the downtown area of the little city. When he got there, the barber said, almost relishing it, Nothing. Wyatt shrugged. He hadnt really been expecting mail or messages. He crossed back to the waterfront, climbed the Kelly Steps into Battery Point.
Wyatt lived on the ground floor of a squat, tan brick and white stucco block of flats overlooking the Derwent. Hed been there for a year, in this city where no-one knew him, where no-one cared that he came and went once a month or so, where no-one connected his movements with a rifled office safe in Toorak, a hallway stripped of Streetons in Vaucluse, an empty jewellery box on the Gold Coast.
A man called Frank Jardine had put these jobs together for him, but Jardine was dead now, and Wyatt would have to go back to putting his own jobs together.
He turned left at the top of Kelly Street, crossed over and began to wind his way through the little streets, over the hump of Battery Point, toward the down slope on the other side. Wyatt was a good burglar, but only if
he had a shopping list, and was acting on information supplied by someone like Jardine. His chief talent lay in hitting banks and payroll vans, hitting hard and fast with a team of experts. A wasted talent now, for all of the experts were gone. He still got sweet invitations from time to time, but knew that it was better to stay put than to make a mistake; better to reject the sweet money than risk his life or his freedom.
So, how sweet was Raymonds art heist?
Wyatt unpacked his bag and rested. That evening he made his way back to a bistro in Salamanca Place. He ordered wine and pasta, then coffee. In the old days there had been experts he could work with, men who could drive, bypass a security system, crack a safe, all without a shot being fired. Now there were only youngsters with jumpy eyes and muscle twitches, in need of a fix, their brains fried, as likely to shoot dead a cop or a nun as Wyatt himself if they felt mean enough, or paranoid enough, or heard enough voices telling them to do it. Or they talked too much before the job, boasting in the pub to their mates or their girlfriends, who then whispered it to the law.
He finished eating and walked back, misty rain blurring the street lights. As a potential partner, Raymond looked pretty good to Wyatt. It was in this frame of mind, assessing, reflective, that Wyatt let himself into his flat and into trouble.
* * * *
Twelve
He should have taken a moment to clear his head before going in. He should have looked, waited, thought, had a back-up plan ready, a way out.
For when he let the door close behind him, flicking on the light as he did so, all he got was the sound of the switch. The darkness was absolute.
Then an arm went around his neck and the twin barrels of a shotgun, apparently cut short with a hacksaw, tore the skin at the hinge of his jaw.
Not a sound. Not a fucking move, mate.
Wyatt remained still, loose and relaxed on his feet. His flat smelt ripe, lived in, an odour compounded of grievances and shot nerves and perspiration breaking through cheap talc; the odour of a man with the jitters.
Bastard. Where you been?
It was a rhetorical question. Wyatt said nothing.
Im going to search you.
Okay.
At the moment the arm relaxed its hold on his neck and felt for and found the .38 in his waistband, Wyatt drove the heel of his shoe down the mans shinbone, then dropped like a rock from the mans grasp. The .38 fell to the carpet.
Wyatt patted the carpet uselessly for a few seconds, then scooted away in the darkness. He sensed opposing inclinations in the manthe tearing pain, Wyatt at large and dangerous to him. Im gonna fucking kill you, the man said.
Wyatt heard a chair fall. He didnt search for another light switch, guessing that the power was off at the fuse boxthe gunmans mistake, for now they were both blind. The man should simply have removed the bulb.
Wyatt listened, backed into a corner, straining his eyes to pick up stray light from the curtained windows. Unfortunately they faced the water; there were no street lights out there. But no-one could get behind him, no-one could see him, and he had a measure of control over the doors and windows if the man had friends with him.
Bastard. Ill have you.
Wyatt was silent.
Franks dead because of you.
Hes talking about Frank Jardine, Wyatt thought. He must be the younger brother. He risked a reply:
Frank knew the score.
Frank Jardine had worked with Wyatt in the old days, hitting banks and security vans, before retiring to become a blueprinter, planning high-level burglaries for Wyatt from information supplied by croupiers, insurance clerks, taxi drivers, builders, tradesmen who installed alarms and safes, shop assistants. Then, while coming out of retirement to pull one more job with Wyatt, hed been head-shot and suffered a series of strokes, and now was dead. Wyatt had given money to the Jardines for his convalescence, but clearly that wasnt enough for the family.
Sometimes, late at night, it wasnt enough for Wyatt.
Hes dead because of you, the brother repeated now.
Wyatt had no intention of speaking again. Jardines brother had made up his mind. Wyatt waited. After a period of cursing and carpet scraping, the man abruptly ceased moving, as though sharper instincts were finally kicking in.
He was listening, just as Wyatt was listening, and he wasnt giving his position away.
Wyatt eased himself onto his back. It was pointless looking for the .38. He felt with his right hand until he found the old armchair that sat against the wall next to him. It wore a fussy beaded fringe around its base and Wyatt slipped his hand in and found the knife hed taped to the lower frame.
The man heard him. A spurt of flame erupted from the shotgun and a wad of pellets tore through the armchair. Wyatt placed him. He uncoiled from the floor and plunged blade-first across the room.
The blade missed. Their shoulders collided but the blade slipped past, slicing the empty air.
They grappled. Jardines brother was unused to close fighting. His instinct was to spring away from Wyatt and level the shotgun at him; Wyatts was to hold him close, trapping the gun between them. Then, punctuated by the mans sobbing exertion and panic, Wyatt began to pull him onto the blade. He felt the initial resistance of cloth, skin, bone, then the blade was slipping between the bones of the ribcage. Jardines brother uttered a soft oh of surprise. He released the shotgun. Wyatt felt him sway. A moment later he was lowering him to the carpet. There was a weakening pulse when he felt for it.
Wyatt found the fuse box and turned on the lights. He worked it out. The family knew about the mail drop. The brother had simply come to Hobart and staked it out, then followed Wyatt home. Now Wyatt had a body in his flat, pooling blood on his carpet and neighbours who might have heard the shotgun. It had all been unnecessary, but he supposed that he couldnt blame the Jardines. In Wyatts game, there was always a simple accounting for peoples actions. What mattered now was, he had to find himself another bolthole.
* * * *
Thirteen
For Raymond it was a form of hell, sharing quarters with other people, getting up when they got up, sitting around a kitchen table with them, eating toast and eggs and drinking coffee, then waiting around through the long hours, waiting for them to do something, enduring their small talk. But he wasnt working solo now. He was working with other people and they had to be kept happy. It was necessary for the job, but he looked forward to that time after the job, when caring about the happiness of other people no longer meant anything and they could be jettisoned.
Or not quite. Maybe Vallance could be jettisoned. Allie was a different matter.
He watched them eat breakfast and it was hell. Allie and Vallance moved in a comfortable stale fog, jaws grinding, their faces puffy with sleep. Allie wore loose satin pyjamas that somehow, where they clung to her breasts and buttocks, suggested hot pliant skin. She was stunning. Vallance wasnt. He wore a towelling robe and looked creased and shambling and inert. Raymond tried to imagine die nature of their passion. He couldnt.
They had given Raymond the couch to sleep on. The sloping pitch of the base had threatened to stuff up his back for days, so at midnight hed moved the cushions to the floor. He still slept badly. At 4.20 hed awoken and seen, in the light of a digital clock, that Allie was crouched nearby, gravely watching him. He didnt think shed been there long, for somewhere along the corridor the toilet stopped flushing. Raymond had breathed in audibly, ready to speak, but Allie had silenced him, kissing her fingers and laying them on his lips. He now wondered if hed dreamt the whole thing. It had been erotic, sure, but somehow also tender, and hed not had much of that in his life.
An hour later, fully showered and dressed, Vallance showed him a red vinyl Thomas Cook bag. Told you I had a whole heap of coins, he said.
Raymond unzippered the bag, whistled at the sight of so many gold, silver and bronze coins, plus small ingots, some of it melded together by a hard sediment. Nice, he said.
That it is, Vallance said. Right, shall we go?
>
Raymond drove the short distance back to the marina. Quincy was waiting for them, a grizzled character with an alcoholics broken blood vessels in his face. He seemed incurious about Raymond, incurious about the purpose of the voyage. Raymond guessed he was paid to keep his trap shut.
Their passage out of Westernport Bay, toward the Cornwall Group of islands, induced in Raymond a sense of anticipation. He fingered the silver dollar in his pocket. It wasnt eagerness, hunger or greed. Hed be hard pushed to define any extreme of feelings. But he couldnt deny that all of his senses were alert, that the blood ticked in him inexorably, that he felt the prickling awareness of the hunter closing in. Hidden treasure. Buried treasure. His skin tingled. His mother had once said, Youre my treasure. Queer that hed think of that now. He wasnt a man who had much time for looking back. The world was full of people crippled by regret for past actions and inactions. It got them nowhere. They didnt know how to forgive or accept themselves. Then again, the world was full of monsters who remained monsters exactly because they had no trouble forgiving themselves at all.