by Garry Disher
Tina swallowed and her body thrummed. ‘Soon.’ She looked around quickly. ‘I live in a little apartment out the back of the pub,’ she whispered, passing a key across the bar.
* * * *
31
‘You’d have to say she was very lucky,’ Lowe said, looking indulgently at his patient, who was asleep.
He also meant that he admired his own work. Wyatt said nothing. He didn’t see life in terms of luck. There were circumstances, that’s all. If you were good at your work, you didn’t need to draw attention to how well you did it.
‘She’ll need a little cosmetic surgery,’ Lowe went on, ‘but there’s no infection. And she was strong and healthy to begin with.’
Wyatt let the man talk. He knew that talking was a comfort to people. It filled the silences in their lives, helped them make sense of the world, assured them they were alive.
Late evening and the doctor was ostensibly on his way home. He’d spent a full day in surgery and then made his hospital rounds, but still looked neat and buttoned down. He seemed inclined to linger. Wyatt didn’t know why.
He moved to leave the bedroom. After a moment, the doctor followed. They gravitated to the bank of windows and looked out at the city. The glass distorted everything. The colours swam in the darkness. Lowe said, ‘You have anything to do with those dead jewellers?’
Wyatt didn’t flinch. ‘What dead jewellers?’
‘I heard it on the news just now. Two brothers. They were robbed yesterday, and this evening they were shot dead.’
Wyatt processed the information. He didn’t know what it meant.
‘I wondered if that was you,’ the doctor said.
Wyatt said, ‘Don’t wonder.’
The doctor swallowed. ‘Fair enough.’
When the man was gone, Wyatt checked radio and TV broadcasts, monitored the police band and made a couple of terse, cryptic phone calls from one of his unused mobile phones.
Then he poked his head around the bedroom door. ‘Khandi Cane: mean anything to you?’
Lydia blinked. ‘I prefer the other guy’s bedside manner.’
Wyatt didn’t have time for this. ‘Do you know the name?’
Lydia pulled at her clothes and propped a pillow between her spine and the wall. ‘Never heard of her.’
‘Eddie’s girlfriend. A stripper.’
‘Figures.’
Wyatt came closer, perched on the side of the bed, and told her about the shootings in Jacaranda Park.
She was bewildered. ‘What’s it mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Eddie and his woman?’
‘Could be.’
‘But why?’
‘I intend to find out.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you still doubt me?’
‘Not really.’
She touched her head as if to ease a pain spasm. ‘A ringing endorsement. What if you and I are next on Eddie’s list?’
‘Lowe and I intend to move you soon. Meanwhile, never answer the landline phone or the door.’
‘You’re creeping me out.’
Wyatt didn’t have time for explanations or reassurances. Handing her an unused prepaid phone, he said, ‘This is how we stay in touch. Lowe and I will call you whenever we enter the building. If we call the landline number, you’ll know something’s wrong. Don’t answer, just run.’
She stared at the phone. ‘Run where?’
‘Somewhere safe,’ Wyatt said, returning to the sitting room.
He surfed the TV channels again, alighting on The Footy Show, which was celebrating the induction of another cokehead and woman basher into the Football Hall of Fame. ‘We break for this news update,’ the anchor said, and the screen dissolved to the site of the shooting in Jacaranda Park, and then to an old arrest photo of Eddie Oberin, the reporter saying: ‘Outer Eastern Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning.’
Wyatt powered off the TV set and tried to put it together. Had the Furneaux brothers tracked Eddie down? What were they all doing in the park? Had Eddie and the woman fallen out?
And Wyatt thought: Eddie will finger me.
It was like getting his sight back after a period of blindness. He felt light, potent and elastic, and knew at once that he had to clean out his first-floor apartment and destroy everything that pointed to his identity and presence, including his prints. There was always a chance that Eddie would keep his trap shut, but that wasn’t a chance Wyatt could take. And someday the doctor might talk. The police wouldn’t get much further than an unoccupied apartment and an untraceable owner, but eventually they’d think to cast an eye over the building’s other residents, if only to seek information. In the meantime, the apartment on the eighth floor was safe for a couple more days. There was nothing tying it to the first-floor apartment: they’d been purchased separately, at different times and using different accounts and names. Even so, Wyatt knew the time had come to sell. Together, the apartments were worth close to a million dollars. He’d use two different agencies, and have the proceeds paid into two different account names. Contact strictly by telephone and e-mail. That’s how he’d bought each place and that’s how he’d sell them.
Wyatt took the stairs. The lift was available, but lifts were a trap. He went straight to the first-floor apartment’s concealed safe and removed the contents: spare cash, two sets of false ID and the deeds to both properties. Finally he grabbed the dark suit hanging in his wardrobe. There was nothing else that he wanted to take with him when he left the place forever, no photos, diaries, letters or other keepsakes, for the simple reason that he had no past that he wanted to think about.
* * * *
32
The shootings hadn’t occurred on her patch, but Rigby assured Outer Eastern’s CIU head that they related to a case she was working.
‘Is that a fact?’ he said, unimpressed.
His name was Whelan, a senior sergeant with tar-stained fingers, a restless cough and features cobwebbed from screwing up his face.
‘So I wouldn’t mind sitting in,’ she said.
They were in his office. She’d been in many such offices over the years and there was nothing about this one to mark it out. Citations and certificates on the walls, police regulations spine-out on cheap wooden shelves. She was more interested in Whelan. Was he a rules-and-regulations kind of guy?
‘Give me the short version.’
Rigby told him about the torched four-wheel-drive and the Furneaux brothers’ form. ‘I know what questions to ask,’ she continued. ‘It’ll save time.’
‘Well, you did arrest the prick,’ Whelan conceded. Rigby tried and failed to give him a winning smile. ‘Thanks. Any forensics in yet?’
‘Gunshot residue on his right hand and one sleeve.’
‘I knew it. I looked for his weapon, but it was too dark.’
Whelan tilted his head to one side. ‘But you found a gym bag.’
‘Yep.’
‘Containing a couple of Bank of England bearer bonds.’
‘That’s right,’ said Rigby tightly.
‘And you don’t know his name.’
‘Correct.’
Another long stare. Then Whelan unfolded from his chair. ‘Let’s hope his lawyer can tell us.’
‘Lawyer.’
Whelan gave her the smile of a policeman who’s encountered too many lawyers. ‘Said she’d be here by ten o’clock.’
Rigby followed him along a corridor, glancing at her watch. Almost ten. It had taken time to transport and book the prisoner. Then he’d been printed, swabbed for DNA, stripped of his clothes, tested for gunshot residue. If he wasn’t charged or bailed in the next twelve hours, they’d have to let him go.
‘Here we are,’ Whelan said.
An interrogation room, the blue shape of a uniformed constable showing through on the other side of the frosted glass, guarding the man Rigby had arrested. This was her last chance. ‘Do you think we could start before the lawyer gets here? For all we know, his mate is ou
t there, waving a gun around.’
Whelan didn’t scotch the idea. ‘He won’t go for it.’
‘Can’t hurt to try,’ Rigby said, reaching for the door, then remembering her place. ‘It can be informal.’
Whelan shook his head. ‘We tape it,’ he said, and opened the door to the interrogation room.
They went in. Whelan jerked his head at the uniformed constable, who left, closing the door behind him. Rigby and Whelan introduced themselves, sat in plastic chairs at a plastic table across from the prisoner, and Whelan started the tapes rolling. The room was stuffy, imprinted with years of denials and confessions.
Whelan repeated the formal warning and got started. ‘Okay, Sunshine, what’s your story?’
The shooter swallowed, then cocked his head. ‘My lawyer?’
He’d looked snaky and dangerous in his bike leathers. In prison overalls, he was mild and forgettable, the washed-out shade of orange struggling to make it here in the glare of the fluorescent tubes. ‘How about you tell us who you are, first,’ Rigby said.
‘No comment.’
‘We’re running your prints. You’re in the system; I can smell it on you.’
‘I want my lawyer,’ the shooter said.
His gaze went around the room as if the smears on the walls might lead to doors and tunnels.
‘She won’t be getting you out any time soon,’ Whelan said.
‘You’ve got nothing on me. I want bail.’
Rigby laughed. ‘You’ve been arrested on suspicion of a double homicide.’
‘So charge me.’
‘Oh we will, Sunshine, we will,’ Whelan said. ‘You’ll go before a magistrate in the morning, bail will be denied, and you’ll be taken to the Remand Centre in Spencer Street.’
Rigby wasn’t interested in procedural ins and outs. ‘All we want to do is clear up a few basic matters before your lawyer arrives, save some time, clear up any misunderstandings.’
A shrug.
‘For the benefit of the tape, the prisoner has shrugged, indicating assent.’
‘And the tooth fairy really exists.’
‘Preliminary results of a GSR test indicate that you have fired a gun recently. Do you deny that?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you have a firearm permit? Do you own a gun?’
‘Did you find one on me? No. Where’s my lawyer?’
‘Two men were shot dead in Jacaranda Park at approximately seven o’clock this evening. You were seen leaving the park on a motorcycle shortly after that time. I put it to you that you were responsible for shooting those men.’
‘No comment.’
‘If it was self-defence,’ Whelan said, ‘it’s in your best interests to say so for the record now. The resulting charges and sentencing will reflect that.’
‘Like I said, I’ll wait for my lawyer.’
Rigby ploughed on. ‘Were you hired to kill these men?’
‘No comment.’
‘Was it a hold-up that got out of hand?’
‘Like I said, no fucking comment.’
‘A second motorcyclist was seen leaving the park shortly before you did. Can you give me the name of this person?’
‘No comment.’
‘It was your partner, right?’ said Whelan. ‘He ran out on you.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Go to hell,’ said Whelan. ‘Good, our dialogue is progressing.’
Despite his tone, Rigby could tell that Whelan was bored and tired. He had no stake in the case. But she needed to get something concrete before the lawyer arrived. She leaned over the scratched and scored table top. ‘The victims, Henri and Joseph Furneaux, were robbed in unusual circumstances yesterday morning. What was your involvement in that?’
‘Like I said, kiss my arse.’
‘Two Bank of England treasury bonds—to the value of a million pounds sterling—were found in your possession. I put it to you that these were also stolen.’
For the first time, he showed some emotion. He stiffened, clenched his fists and snarled in her face, ‘You fucking cow.’
Whelan yawned. ‘Watch your language, pal.’
‘My language? Jesus Christ, the bitch is pulling a swiftie. I was carrying paper worth twenty-five million.’
Rigby felt the quizzical stare of the officer next to her. She shrugged, her features flattened and cynical as if to say, ‘So a crook accuses a cop of dishonesty—what’s new?’ But she didn’t want any kind of scrutiny. ‘Can you account for these bonds? Did you steal them from the victims?’
‘Fuck you,’ said the guy, still disgusted.
Whelan answered a knock on the door, murmured thanks to the civilian clerk who slipped him a scrap of paper. ‘Edward John Oberin,’ he said, returning to the grimy little table, ‘according to your prints.’
Oberin shrugged.
‘You’ve got form—admittedly not much—for receiving stolen goods.’
‘Really come up in the world, Edward,’ said Rigby. ‘Armed robbery, double homicide.’
‘Bite me,’ Oberin said.
Plenty of bravado but under it she could see a hunted look. Maybe Oberin was starting to realise he was looking at life in prison. She decided to work on that. ‘Your partner got away free and clear, Edward, leaving you to face the music. Share the burden,’ she said, leaning toward him. ‘Who was it? Don’t take it all on your own shoulders.’
His face screwed up in hate, and then it began to clear. ‘Wyatt,’ he said.
Whelan, slumped with his arms crossed, yawned again. ‘Wyatt who?’
‘Just Wyatt.’
‘He was the other rider?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was he the brains behind this?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Is he in the system?’
‘Never been arrested.’
Rigby leaned forward until she was in his face. ‘Where do we find him, Eddie?’
Oberin jerked back from her. ‘That’s not how it works.’
‘How does it work?’
‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’
He refused to say more. Whelan tried calling Oberin’s lawyer, without result, so they returned him to the cells, but for a short period between interview room, corridor, phone call and lockup, Rigby found herself alone with the man. She could feel his scrutiny and contempt and tried to bluff it out. Finally he murmured, ‘You’re crooked.’
Rigby didn’t respond.
‘Make the charges go away,’ he continued. ‘In return, I’ll tell you where Wyatt lives.’
She squirmed away from him. ‘Tell me now.’
‘No. I want something in writing.’
But what do I want? thought Rigby. Two hard men saying I ripped them off? Maybe she could shoot this Wyatt character in the line of duty and let Eddie Oberin rot in jail. When Oberin was taken to the cells, she started filling out paperwork for Whelan. It was not too late to make alterations—substitute ‘twenty-five million pounds sterling’ for ‘two million pounds sterling’—or offer Oberin a deal and send an arrest team for the man named Wyatt, but she didn’t, she packed up and drove back to her own cop shop, feeling light, as though her body didn’t belong to her.
* * * *
33
It had paid off for Le Page, hiding those extra transponders with the bearer bonds. The GPS receiver had come to life with a beep, the cursor winking, when he was staking out the park.
Not that it went smoothly after that. He’d factored in a double-cross during the handover—call it collateral damage—but the speed of it, the use of motorbikes, had surprised him. By the time he’d fishtailed the Subaru after the bikes, he was half a minute behind.
It was the traffic that foxed him, streaming along on the wrong side of the road. Then, as he crossed over onto the middle outbound lane, he’d been clipped by a taxi. Suddenly he was hemmed in, the highway choked and the commuters stopping to gawk. Tucking his knife beside his thigh, he watched the taxi driver get out. To
his relief, the man didn’t approach but began directing the traffic around the accident scene. A gap opened up, allowing access to the service lane at the side of the road. The taxi driver gestured, Le Page smiled his thanks, and followed the taxi. But he didn’t stop. He whipped along the service lane and back onto the highway.