by Garry Disher
Joe Furneaux, window down and bopping to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, saw the bike howl past. A Ducati, nice set of wheels, he thought. He swung his head back to watch the GPS monitor. Blank.
He looked across at Henri. Another bike had materialised on the bridge, bike and rider all in black.
* * * *
Eddie Oberin shoved his pistol into the jeweller’s soft stomach and said, ‘Give us the bag.’
The guy actually resisted, holding the gym bag tight against his chest and twisting away. ‘We had a deal.’
‘Yeah, well, things change.’
‘You bozos can’t possibly know how to move these bonds.’
Eddie couldn’t believe it. Who did the guy think he was?
There in the crisp air and the tricky shadows, feeling unassailable with a gun in his hand, feeling that he was on the cusp of some kind of indefinable but palpable greatness, Eddie Oberin recalled that Khandi had—more than once—called him a wimp. His orders were clear: grab the bonds and piss off out of there, but he so badly wanted to put a bullet in the guy.
He got a grip on himself. Lowered the pistol. ‘Just give me the bag; Furneaux said, ‘Which one are you? Wyatt? Oberin? We know—’
Jesus Christ. Eddie raised the pistol and shot Henri Furneaux in the throat. He had to wrestle for the bag as Furneaux’s fingers clenched. The jeweller slid to the boards. Eddie fired again, forehead this time.
Then, in a fine elation and rage, he accelerated off the bridge and braked at the open window of the Mercedes.
‘No,’ Joe said.
‘Yes,’ said Eddie.
One shot to the temple. It felt great.
* * * *
29
Lynette Rigby tailed Henri Furneaux from his home in South Yarra to Joe Furneaux’s poky house in Richmond, and then all the way out here, to this godforsaken little park in Ringwood. The CIU night-shift guys wanted to know when she was bringing the car back. Since she outranked them, she said, ‘When I’m good and ready.’
No overtime, this was her dollar. But she didn’t have anywhere to be—why not put in the time? She might get some glory at the end of it all.
Rigby parked on a slip road beside the park, settled back to wait. She saw Henri and Joseph wander across a clearing, over a footbridge and past a playground before returning to their car. Thirty minutes passed. The world ticked over. Then, a few minutes before seven o’clock, Henri got out again. If this was a handover, the logical spot was a park bench away from the swings and the barbecues, but Henri strolled onto the little footbridge, carrying a briefcase. Rigby cursed. Her view was obscured by a toilet block.
She reached for the ignition, changing her mind when juddery lights appeared, two motorbikes entering from the far side of the park. Bikes and riders were identical, but heading towards her. No chance of getting the plate numbers. If she started the car, she’d risk spooking everyone. Maybe if she got out and strolled across the park? But Furneaux would recognise her and she needed to know what, exactly, was going down.
Rigby climbed into the back seat for a better view. Not perfect. Then, as she watched, one bike headed at low speed across the park. The other made a wide loop around the perimeter and returned to its original position. She crouched on the floor as it passed her, throttling back. Nothing happened for a while after that. The players were in position but not moving. Rigby waited. She thought about calling for backup but didn’t know how she’d explain it if nothing happened.
Moments later, the first rider squirted onto the bridge. Rigby cursed. She disabled the car’s interior light so it wouldn’t show when she opened the door, got out, turned her back to the footbridge and pressed the door closed with a soft click.
By the time she’d run at a crouch to the toilet block, the bike had fired up again and sped to the other side of the bridge, shooting-out of the park and howling east along the highway. She ran back towards the car, thinking she should follow the bike. She’d establish where it was headed, call Traffic to make a stop and arrest, use the rider to get at the Furneaux brothers.
She skidded to a stop halfway to the car. Follow the bike? Call for backup? Detain, search and question Henri Furneaux? She could not decide and felt, suddenly, alone. She retraced her steps to the toilet block. It loomed in the darkness beyond trees and their twisty shadows. She tripped on the humped spine of a root in the dirt, recovered, and heard muffled reports on the other sideof the toilet block. The hint of muzzle flashes.
She ran, flattened herself against a wall and peered around the corner. The second rider was speeding across the grass that fringed the little lake. He paused at the Mercedes. This time there was no mistaking the gunshot or the flash in the waning light.
The witnesses Rigby questioned always said, ‘It all happened so quickly.’ They were right. Her jaw dropped open, a habit of hers, ‘catching flies’ her colleagues called it. The families around the barbecues were gaping too, one man shouting into a mobile phone.
Rigby shut her mouth and ran back to her unmarked Falcon. She yanked it into gear and headed after the shooter, cursing the tangle of roadways around the park. Scrambling to unhook the radio handset, she called it in, shots fired, officer in pursuit, and named the highway and nearest cross streets.
The bike hadn’t escaped the park yet. Rigby saw brake lights flare on the walking path adjacent to the highway, a pair of joggers jumping away in fright and gesturing. Then the gunman righted his bike and gave it full throttle. He shot across to the outbound lanes of Whitehorse Road and streaked away, about one minute behind the first rider.
Rigby followed. It took precious time for her to reach the outbound lanes of Whitehorse Road. The radio traffic was urgent, patrol cars ordered to the park, the duty sergeant wanting her to report in. She left the handset on the passenger seat and planted her foot. The kilometres unwound beneath her. She was far behind the riders and she knew it.
But then she got lucky. She was coming over a rise, way out in Lilydale, when she saw an intersection in the distance, the lights red, and there was one of the bikes. She accelerated. The light turned green. She accelerated some more, just as the bike began to streak away. The guy gave it a standing start, full throttle, the front wheel lifting off the ground. Moron.
Everything seemed to stop. Even from some distance away, Rigby heard an almighty howl and saw bike and rider stall.
The drive-chain had broken.
The rider dismounted, grabbed a gym bag from the pannier and ran, dodging cars as he headed for the neon wash of a Hungry Jack’s. Then he was behind the building and Rigby shot across the intersection and bounced over the kerb and into the car park at the rear. She shouted into the radio—location, suspect on foot, armed and dangerous—and ran into a mess of shadows.
She found him seconds later, crouched in the stench of nearby dump bins. ‘Stand,’ she shouted, grinding her service .38 into his ear. ‘Hands on your head and facing away from me.’
He was a tall, morose-looking guy, shocked at the speed of his downfall. She ordered him to put his arms behind his back, and ratcheted the handcuffs onto his wrists as she recited the familiar arrest announcement.
‘Suspicion of murder?’ he said. ‘No way.’
‘Shut up,’ Rigby said, patting him down. No pistol. No cash or drugs or jewellery, either.
‘What did you do with the gun?’
‘What gun?’
‘Don’t give me that. I saw you. It’s on the radio, two gunshot victims in Jacaranda Park.’
‘Wasn’t me.’
‘Okay, genius, I’ll just have to order a GSR test of your sleeves and hands.’
He struggled and she smacked her palm against his ear. ‘Settle down.’
Rigby prodded him into the spill of lights at the front of the burger joint. She was tense. The second rider was unaccounted for, and still no sign of backup. ‘What’s your name?’
‘No comment.’
She cursed him and kept alert for the accomplice as a handful of
teenagers emerged from Hungry Jack’s and gathered in a half circle. They wanted a show. ‘Shoot him,’ one of them urged.
‘Go and do your homework,’ Rigby snarled.
They laughed and wandered away. She turned to the shooter. ‘Where’s your mate? Done a runner? Left you to face the music?’
‘No comment.’
Rigby heard sirens in the distance. The traffic slowed, parted, and blue and red lights were weaving through to save her. Her heart ceased hammering: two patrol cars from Outer Eastern.
Then the handover and the explanations before one car took the gunman away and the other returned to duties. Rigby stayed. She returned to the foetid bins behind the Hungry Jack’s, determined to find the gun.
What she found was the gym bag. Her mouth went dry, her heart stopped, to see treasury bonds inside it, the heavy paper embossed and engraved, lots of zeros after the pound sterling symbols.
Rigby felt very alive then. She thought about her credit card debt, mortgage and missed opportunities, the male culture of her workplace, her crap car. She needed a root canal, too. She stowed the gym bag under her seat and stared down the road for a moment, but there was no sign of the first bike, it wasn’t coming back, so she made a squealing U-turn and headed in.
* * * *
30
When Khandi shot out of the park, her Ducati churning up the grass, she was well ahead of Eddie, but as soon as she was on the highway she slowed until he appeared in her rear view mirror. As agreed, they maintained a two-hundred-metre gap as they streaked east along Whitehorse, Khandi leading, her headlight lighting the darkness ahead.
But Eddie was such a fucking show-off. She saw the way he opened out the throttle each time he left a set of lights, rearing up on the back wheel then snapping down again and rocketing away. She began to feel pissed off. She guessed he was getting some kind of sexual glow from snatching back the bonds, the dickhead, but it would get him noticed by the cops.
Then, in Lilydale, it all came unstuck. Her mirrors showed him pull his little stunt, then unaccountably lose speed and wobble towards the kerb. She braked, still watching, and saw him prop the bike on its stand and dart through traffic to a fast food barn.
Cursing him for a fuckwit, Khandi wheeled the Ducati around to go back. And stopped. A white Falcon had appeared out of nowhere, your typical unmarked cop car. It cut across the intersection and a woman got out, running after Eddie and waving a handgun.
They were watching us the whole time, Khandi thought. She glanced around for police backup. The Furneaux brothers told the cops. There was no point in trying to rescue her idiot lover, so she turned again and raced eastwards, headlight punching through the night, feeling shaken by grief, receding adrenaline and the succession of forearm shocks from the road surface. At least she had the money.
The first thing she did when she reached the cabin was light a couple of candles, and the second was light a joint and down a slug of tequila as she paced the main room, pausing only to check the money. More money than she’d ever had. But she didn’t have Eddie. That was starting to matter.
At 9 p.m. her mobile rang. She peered at the screen: the caller was using a landline. Only Eddie knew her number, so her heart leapt. ‘Hello?’
A voice she didn’t know said, ‘Susan Roberts?’
That was her real name, but who else except Eddie and the tax office knew it? ‘Yes.’
‘The lawyer?’
Khandi went to the window and looked out at darkness broken only by a slice of the moon and a solitary light down in the valley. She didn’t know how much time she had. ‘That’s right.’
‘My name is Whelan, I’m a detective senior sergeant with CIU at the Outer Eastern police station. We have one of your clients here, refusing to answer questions until he has his lawyer present.’
Khandi’s voice had more control than she felt. ‘Name?’
‘You tell me. We’re running his prints.’
‘Charges?’ said Khandi in the clipped way of lawyers.
‘Armed robbery and two counts of murder. He wants to speak to you, and that is his right.’
‘I’ll be there before ten o’clock,’ said Khandi, cutting the connection. She switched off the phone and removed and smashed the SIM card.
She was wired—boy was she wired. Everything she’d done and said with Eddie spoke of their love burning across the sky and into the history books, and he pulls a stupid stunt like this. He must have shot the Furneaux brothers—unless he got into it with the cops. She turned on the radio, but the time was 9.07; no news until ten.
And all the time she was thinking: When he realises I’m not coming for him, he’ll talk. She would, in his shoes.
The moon slipped in and out of clouds. Khandi leaned over and vomited, a thin, bitter gruel. Maddened, she hurled a chair at the heavy iron stove and saw it splinter. She was exalted in her fury. She wanted to punch, kick and scratch someone.
But Eddie was locked up and all she had was the mildewed air of his aunt’s cabin. Restored a little, she examined her feelings. Reflection was new to her. Usually when thoughts and feelings arose, she acted on them. This time she took note of where her rage was coming from, and where it would lead her.
She saw that she had a right to be mad. For a start, she’d had big plans for those bonds, intending to ransom them to Furneaux a second time and then find a buyer. Maybe she should have discussed this with Eddie, but, by the same token, Eddie should have been more tuned in to her intentions. He’d fucked up what would have been a licence to print money, the dear, sweet, cunt-struck idiot.
And what was that about, two counts of murder? Macho bullshit, probably. To prove he was a stone killer, a hard man. What crap: Khandi could have showed him hard. Incensed to think of what she’d lost, she let out a shriek and threw a frying pan, which stuck handle-first into the plaster wall. Mentally replaying Eddie grandstanding on his bike, like some fifteen-year-old kid, Khandi pulled out the frying pan and demolished another chair.
A voice inside her said, very clearly, ‘Eddie’s going to spill his guts, save his own skin, because he’s weak and he doesn’t love you.’
Whirling into motion again, Khandi made a stab at wiping the cabin clean of prints, stowed the money into a backpack and headed down the dirt road to Yarra Junction. She’d drive straight through the night, get as far away as possible, make her way up the eastern seaboard to the beaches north of Cairns and lose herself among the beach bums.
At the main crossroads in town, she stopped on the throbbing bike, her boots planted on either side of the frame. Khandi a beach bum? Sandals, sarong, beads and a tan? I don’t think so. She belonged to the night hours, to neon-washed pavements and corner tables.
She accelerated a short distance, stopped again. She should lie low for a couple of days. Sort her options.
Catching sight of a corner pub, a chalkboard sign saying ‘Counter Meals’, she realised, Jesus, I’m starving. She swerved into the yard behind the Junction Arms, dismounted and clomped into the lounge.
Stowing her helmet on a little table in the corner, hoisting the backpack over one shoulder, she crossed the room, reading the chalked menu.
‘When’s the kitchen close?’
‘Five minutes,’ said the young woman behind the servery counter, absently counting till receipts.
‘Whiting and chips,’ growled Khandi, to make her pay attention.,
She paid attention, blinked once, her gaze eating Khandi up.
‘Tina’, according to her nametag. She was Khandi’s height and general shape, but there the resemblance ended. She was so straight-looking, God, rayon slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt with ‘Junction Arms’ scrolled across the pocket. Short, neat hair. A plain ring and a plain necklace and tiny studs in her earlobes. Looking her full in the face, Khandi said ‘Hi Tina,’ then let her gaze play across Tina’s breasts and groin. ‘Come here often?’
Tina looked right back. ‘Not often enough.’
Khandi gave
her a nod, a smile through parted lips. She sauntered back to her table, selecting a chair that gave her a clear view of the lounge. Tina moved like a woman who knew she was being watched. She took another last-minute order, cleared tables and racked trays. Finally she delivered Khandi’s food and purred, ‘Enjoy.’
‘I intend to,’ Khandi purred back. She was exhausted now that she was safe.
After a while the beer, cold and gassy, cut through her torpor as the calories kicked in. She polished off the meal, stretched out her leather-clad legs and absently picked her teeth with a split match. Then she worked a smoulder into her eyes and sauntered across to the servery. ‘So, Tina.’ Pause, ‘What time d’you get off?’