by Garry Disher
63
Vyner had got there around 4 p.m., the appointed hour, a little curious, a little wary, but with a buzz on, too, looking forward to this next job, and getting his $ 15,000. Curious because Lottie was normally super cautious, avoiding face-to-face contact, and wary because she was mad and dangerous, and he didnt want to get on the wrong side of her.
A huge house with trees, deep hedges and a gravelled driveway, the tyres of his stolen Magna crunching down it with a sound that spelt status, seclusion and success. The Brisbane house, where shed been living when he was pruning her roses, on day release from her husbands jailrehabilitation through gardeningshad been a lot humbler. She was ambitious, old Lottie. Charlie Mead might never have been promoted from deputy manager of the prison if the manager hadnt encountered an armed burglar one night. Vyner had got five grand from Lottie for that one. Then no word from her for three years, and suddenly shed needed him again.
He parked the Magna and knocked on the heavy front door, a door weighted with significance, like the fresh, clean, crisp gravel of the driveway. Lottie answered, he offered her an old-times-sake grin, but she wasnt having it. Youre late.
Its a long way down here. Plus the traffic
She peered past him at the Magna, opened her mouth, thought better of it and ushered him inside. It cant be traced to me, he assured her.
Trevor, its bright yellow.
He followed her through to a sitting room, where vast leather sofas faced off across a busy Turkish rug on polished boards. A fire crackled, faintly smoky. There were African masks, shields, spears and art on all of the walls. Vyner had lived most of his life confined, personal gear at a minimum, and hated the room at first sight. Whos the target this time? he asked.
My husband.
He was shocked. Charlie?
Uh oh, hed set her off. Her face transformed itself in an eyeblink, from timid mouse to feral cat, and she began to pace and snarl, little fists tight. After all Ive done for him.
I know, said Vyner commiseratively, but without a clue.
She whirled on him. Hed be nothing without me, and how does he repay me? Says hes going to dump me for someone else.
Things made sense now. Janine McQuarrie? Vyner asked, double-checking.
Who do you think? said Lottie. And she wasnt even a good therapist.
Charlie needed therapy? Vyner asked. The idea amazed him.
Dont be stupid. I was checking her out.
Ah. So how did Charlie
He met her at the detention centre a couple of months ago. She was relieving for another therapist who had the flu.
Vyner nodded. Why a bunch of ragheads and sand niggers should need therapy, he didnt know.
Ive been with him twenty years, and he wants to leave me for someone hes known only a few weeks! Lottie said. She paused. Five minutes with her and I knew she was incompetent, but love is blind, right, Trevor?
Right, said Vyner stoutly. He looked around, locating all of the potential weapons in the room: poker, spears, vases, lamp, a wooden chair at a writing desk.
He actually grieved for her, as if he didnt care Id be hurt by that.
Charlie had betrayed Lottie, Vyner understood that. Didnt he suspect you?
Never.
And right in front of his eyes, she reverted again to the little brown wispy mouse. Right, he said. Then, treading carefully, he went on, You could have divorced him, left him, got a good lawyer and screwed him for everything hes got.
But he would have her, and I couldnt allow that. I had to act fast.
Right. He watched her while she paced again. How do you want to play this? he asked eventually. Accident? Home invasion? What?
She turned on him lashingly. Accident? Like you did with Tessa Kane?
She subsided, muttering.
Vyner had to know. Kane asked me all these questions, he began cautiously. Like, Was it something I published? and Who are you working for?
Nosy bitch.
Vyner waited. He felt restless. A drink would be nice.
She was getting too close, Lottie said, coming right up to him and shouting in his face, spraying him.
Right.
I get a phone call from Johannesburg, yelled Lottie. Middle of the night.
She turned inwards darkly, her face mottled and fists tight. Uh-huh, said Vyner encouragingly.
Lottie blinked. Someone I used to work with. Hes a private investigator now.
Vyner nodded to keep her going.
He wanted to warn me. Tessa Kane had hired him to dig around in my past, mine and Charlies. I couldnt allow that.
And a lot of dark stuff in your past, too, Vyner thought, gazing at Lottie. Getting back to Charlie: how about half of the fifteen grand you owe me up front?
I dont think so, said Lottie, and somehow she had a little automatic pistol in her hand, no bigger than a .25, pretty quiet, unlikely to be heard next door, given the thickness of the walls and the intervening blanket of trees outside, and she shot him in the face with it.
Vyner reeled for a bit, clutching his blasted jaw and frothing. At one point she shot him again, a punching sensation between his shoulder blades. He went down gratefully, curling up on the rug, which had been Scotchguarded recently, unless his senses were deceiving him. She fired another shot into the wall.
Time passed and he bled and his heart and lungs laboured. He was dimly aware of someonehad to be Lottiedigging around in his parka and finding his new gun, which had cost him $650 in an alley behind a pub in Collingwood.
Then later, as he bled out, there were voices. Vyner recognised Charlie Meads, in argument with Lottie, who sounded deranged. Who shot who, then? There was more than one shot. He dreamed. By the time hed regained consciousness again, and was on his hands and knees, his gun was in his right hand. How had that happened? He swung his poor head and saw Charlie Mead on his back, one finger caught in the trigger-guard of Lotties little pistol. There was no sign of her.
Vyner crawled out to his car, uttering frightful sounds from his ravaged mouth, thinking about gunshot residue.
* * * *
64
They were not the first on the scene. The first were two uniformed constables from Rosebud, requested as back-up by Challis. He arrived with Ellen to find both officers crouching behind their patrol car, guns drawn. Challis soon saw why: at the end of the Meads densely hedged driveway was a scene that seemed poised for grief: a yellow Magna stood on the gravelled turning circle, motor running, drivers door open, a figure sitting behind the wheel; the main door of the house was ajar; and bright security spots cast a harsh light over everything.
Go around to the rear, Challis told one of the officers, via the next-door garden. Check it out, report back by radio, but stay there. Arrest anyone who tries to run.
Sir.
They waited. A couple of minutes later, the radio crackled. The doors locked. No lights on. I cant see or hear anyone.
Challis thanked him. Just then the car outside the Meads front door shook and the engine coughed, ran raggedly and died. Badly tuned, or run out of fuel, said the Rosebud officer. The smell of poorly burnt exhaust drifted towards them.
Have you called in the plate number? Ellen asked.
Stolen in Southbank this afternoon.
Vyner, said Challis.
A minute passed. Sir, the guys just sitting there.
He could be hurt, said Challis, dead or waiting for us to show ourselves.
The figure seemed to move then, his shadowy form slipping, and suddenly the horn blasted and wouldnt stop.
Ellen, come with me. Constable, stay here. Dont let anyone in or out.
Sir.
They ran at a crouch to the waiting car. The man in the drivers seat had slumped over the steering wheel. There was blood on the ground, the door, the seat, the mans back and neck. Challis was reluctant to interfere with a body at a crime-scene, but the horn was insistent and unnerving. Besides, the man might still be alive. He grabbed the collar and pulled. The rac
ket blessedly ceased and a bloodied mobile phone fell to the floor pan of the car. There was a pistol on the passenger seat. He stared at the ruined face and guessed that he was looking at Vyner. Been shot twice. In the back and in the jaw.
Ellen reached past and touched Vyners neck. Theres a pulse.
Call it in.
Then they advanced on the house, keeping to either side of the open door, and entered together, making a swift, silent sweep of all the rooms, Challis feeling faintly ridiculous, as though he were watching himself in a training video. There was no one alive, only blood slicks in the hallway, leading all the way to the front door, a pool of blood on the sitting room rug, and a body, Charlie Mead, shot in the chest. But Mead had also got off a few shots: into Vyner, apparently, and into a wall of the sitting room. A small-calibre pistol lay beside his hand.
Their hearts hammering, Challis and Ellen stood for a while, willing stillness. They edged closer to each other. It was unconscious. Eventually Ellen murmured, Why would Vyner want to shoot the man whod hired him?
The knuckles of Challiss gun hand brushed her thigh. He holstered the gun, unwilling to step away from her. Revenge, fear of discovery, money, the usual, he said.
Outside, dying behind the wheel of the car hed stolen in Southbank that afternoon, Vyner wanted the woman with the gentle voice, the woman whod placed her cool fingers on his neck and found his pulse, to come back so that he could apologise for panicking that time on the boardwalk, for almost shooting her dead. He didnt feel like a rocky shoal, doom-maker, custodian of the codes or any other fine thing right now. He felt like a mere mortal, and a pretty dumb one at that.
But Lottie had always been several moves ahead of everyone else, he reminded himself, as he died.
Always several moves ahead.
He had a few moves of his own. Dying moves. Hed barely been able to operate the keys of his mobile phone, barely been able to spell it out for the cop with the gentle hands, given that his own hands were so slippery with the last of his blood.
But able enough.