Kick Back w-1

by Garry Disher

  It took Wyatt fifteen minutes to cross the city. The traffic was heavy and bad-tempered, and cars on the prowl choked the nightclub end of King Street.

  On Queens Road he stopped outside a public telephone. He dialled, and when Anna answered, relief flooded him, surprising him with its intensity. He said, ‘I want you to be neutral when you reply to what I say now. Do you understand?’

  A wary ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is Pedersen still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has he been taking anything? Is he hyped-up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He might try something. If he does, shoot him.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Meanwhile I want to speak to him.’

  The phone clattered onto a hard surface and he heard Anna say, ‘Wyatt wants to talk to you.’

  Pedersen came on a moment later. ‘Is Hobba okay?’

  Wyatt wasn’t surprised to hear Pedersen lead with this question. He said, ‘He’s dead.’

  Pedersen seemed to explode. ‘What about Sugarfoot? Haven’t you got the bastard yet?’

  ‘It’s all taken care of.’

  The relief was palpable. ‘Thank Christ for that. So it’s over.’

  ‘We can all go home,’ Wyatt agreed. ‘Except Anna. Tell her to wait there for me. There’s a body in her house.’

  He cut the connection, drove to a shadowy area between street lights a hundred metres from the safe house, and waited for Pedersen to come out.

  ****

  Forty-Two

  All the doors and windows of Finn’s law offices in Quiller Place were locked but light showed faintly in an office at the side of the old house. Wyatt decided to wait. If he forced his way in now, he’d lose the advantage. And alert the old people of the street, blinking in the darkness as they waited through the long night for sleep or death to claim them.

  The black Volkswagen was angled carelessly in the driveway. The driver’s door hadn’t been locked. Wyatt climbed into the space behind the front seat to wait. He moved stiffly. His clothes were a sodden wad at his waist.

  It didn’t take long. He heard the expensive lock click home on the front door of the building, heard approaching footsteps, saw a shape materialise next to the car. The door opened and a bag was flung onto the passenger seat. Then the car shifted gently on its springs as Anna Reid got in and Wyatt sat up behind her and pressed his Browning to her ear.

  She stiffened. A moment later she said his name. She didn’t turn around.

  ‘Both hands on the wheel,’ Wyatt said. ‘Where’s the gun I gave you?’

  ‘In my coat.’

  ‘Right pocket?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Reach across with your left hand. Take it out by the barrel and drop it in the bag.’

  He watched her closely. For the few seconds her hand was out of sight he ground the Browning against the hinge of her jaw.

  She dropped the gun. ‘How did you know?’

  Wyatt was silent. Then he said, ‘Let’s start with the safe. You removed the drugs when Finn went out for coffee on Friday afternoon?’

  She laughed harshly. ‘Is this a grilling?’ She took one hand from the wheel and gestured with it. ‘Come with me, Wyatt. The stuff in that bag is worth a fortune.’

  Wyatt beat the gun barrel against her cheek. ‘Both hands on the wheel. Answer the question.’

  She sighed elaborately. ‘When he went for coffee, yes. Just before you hit the place.’

  ‘You knew the combination of his safe?’

  ‘I’ve always known it. When I first came here, before he started dealing, I found it written down on the side of his desk drawer one day’

  It was plausible. Pedersen himself liked to say that most ‘unexplained’ safecracking could be traced to people leaving the combination lying around.

  She turned her head slightly. ‘It wasn’t play-acting, you know, me with you.’

  ‘Forget that,’ Wyatt said. ‘You left the cash in the safe and hid,’ pointing his gun at the bag on the seat beside her, ‘that crap in your office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Can’t we do this somewhere more comfortable?’

  ‘Answer.’

  ‘I bet you were anal retentive. Under the tiles in the fireplace. What does it matter where?’

  ‘You had to leave it there in case the police searched your place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know when to do the job?’

  She breathed in and out heavily. ‘Is this all necessary? Let’s get it over and done with, whatever it is.’

  Wyatt ground the barrel against her jaw again. ‘Just answer.’

  ‘You’re hurting me.’ When the pressure didn’t relax she went on. ‘When I realised Finn was distributing, I started watching until I’d worked out the pattern. The stuff would arrive late in the week and all the yuppie dealers in South Yarra would buy from him on the weekends. So I waited until there was a big planning kickback there at the same time.’

  A taxi entered Quiller Place and drove slowly down it, the driver shining a spotlight at house numbers. Wyatt pressed the gun warningly against Anna Reid’s temple and waited while the taxi stopped and bipped its horn and collected a home-care nurse from one of the houses.

  When it was gone, he said, ‘You didn’t want to risk stealing from him directly. Robbing the safe was a smokescreen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just run with the stuff that night?’

  ‘I never intended to run with it. I’ve got a long-term plan. I’m going to sell it all slowly, on the quiet.’

  Wyatt said nothing. The pieces kept falling into different patterns. ‘Tell me about Pedersen,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Was he going to do the selling?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s not involved. I just needed his talents.’

  Wyatt went cold. This had never been his job, his plan. It had always been hers. ‘You were taking a risk,’ he said. ‘You caused heat for all of us. The sort of people Finn distributes for don’t rest when something like this happens.’

  Neither spoke for some time. Then Anna said, ‘You told Max there was a dead man at my place.’

  ‘There is, but I said it to flush out Pedersen. I thought he was behind it.’

  ‘And I came out instead,’ Anna said, nodding her head, her glossy hair sliding apart on either side of the pistol barrel. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a professional called Bauer. A hit-man, somebody who worked for whoever runs Finn.’

  She shivered. ‘So your friend Sugarfoot is still out there?’

  ‘I doubt it. I think both Youngers are dead. They gave Bauer some names, Bauer tortured Hobba, got your name, and came looking.’

  She turned her head a fraction. ‘Tortured?’

  Wyatt said, ‘This isn’t Playschool.’

  He saw Anna stiffen. ‘Finn will know about me by now.’

  Wyatt said bleakly, ‘I wouldn’t worry your pretty head about it. Bauer killed him too. These people get rid of their liabilities.’

  She breathed in sharply. ‘I know you’re angry. All I can say is, I wasn’t faking it with you.’

  Wyatt pressed warningly with the gun. She changed tack immediately. ‘Oh dear, he’s in a sulk.’

  The mocking voice was a tactic. She would try to get a rise out of him, then, bit by bit, try to turn him. Wyatt ignored it.

  They were silent, then Anna said, ‘Why did he kill Finn?’

  ‘He would’ve learned from Hobba that there were no drugs in the safe, so he thought Finn was trying to pull something. Finn was already bad news for carrying on his kickback scam on the sly.’

  She shivered again. ‘He tortured Finn too?’

  Wyatt didn’t answer. He wasn’t interested in Finn.

  ‘I’m glad you got him, Wyatt,’ Anna said. She lifted a hand from the steering wheel. ‘Can I put my hands
down now? My arms are aching.’

  ‘No. Did you kill Pedersen?’

  ‘God, Wyatt. What do you take me for? He’s waiting there for you. I told him I was going out for a while.’

  ‘Last Monday night,’ Wyatt said, ‘you came on to me so I’d forget my suspicions, right?’

  ‘No! That part was genuine.’

  She took her hands off the steering wheel and turned in her seat and looked at him over the top of it. He leaned back, still keeping the gun on her. The wound in his side seemed to tear open and before he could control it, he breathed in sharply and groaned.

  ‘Oh, you’re hurt,’ she said. She reached a hand across the seat. He stared at it. She drew back again.

  Then her voice took on its low growl and her face moved expressively. He remembered how desire had animated it. ‘All those things you said about working together?’ she said. ‘We still can.’ She picked up the bag on the passenger seat. ‘This would set us up.’

  ‘You’ve been doing fine by yourself.’

  She put the bag down. ‘We can, Wyatt. It’ll be good. We’ll have a holiday first. No-one knows anything about us.’

  ‘There’s a dead man in your house,’ Wyatt said. ‘You’re the partner of a man who was tortured to death. The cops will find the connection. I’d say you’re fucked.’

  ‘If I go down, you’ll go too. Think about it. Come away with me, or help me get the body out of my house.’

  Wyatt watched her for a while. He felt trapped, and he hated it. ‘One condition,’ he said. ‘You give up the drugs. If we plant them at Finn’s, the cops and whoever Finn worked for won’t look any further.’

  She frowned at that. He waited. He heard the safety catch, very faint, as she apparently shifted position to get more comfortable.

  When her face emptied of expression, he fired through the seat. Anna jerked back in shock and there was a crack as the windscreen frosted near her head.

  ‘I won’t give you a second chance,’ Wyatt said.

  He reached over and dealt her wrist a numbing blow with the barrel of the Browning. Her.38 fell back in the bag again. All in all, he thought, he’d been a step ahead of her this time. It was like getting his sight back after a period of blindness. He watched her shake and moan. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You’ve still got your share of the money.’

  ****

  Forty-three

  ‘What now?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘We mop up,’ he said.

  He punched a hole in her shattered windscreen, gave her the keys to the Hertz Falcon, and told her to follow him back across the city.

  At her house they worked in wary, hostile silence. She kept tools, ladders, paint, rollers and drop-sheets in her garden shed. Wyatt wrapped Bauer’s body in a drop-sheet and she helped him carry it out to the Falcon. Then she righted her furniture and replaced her drawers and he mopped up blood, his own and Bauer’s. Then he mixed plaster from a packet and plugged bullet holes and gouges in the hallway. Finally he dragged in a tin of white paint and a stepladder. He felt dangerously light-headed, and bone tired.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘Not me,’ Wyatt said. ‘You. You’re going to paint the hall. Not tomorrow, now.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘You might have visitors in the morning. If they seem curious, tell them the hold-up upset you, you’ve been painting to relax.’

  Anna Reid’s face took on a shut-down, sullen expression. It was still there when Wyatt nodded goodbye and let himself out the front door.

  He drove the Hertz Falcon to Finn’s house in Hawthorn. It was a Federation-style house set behind a thick hedge. Finn was there, a swollen-tongued, leering, trussed-up shape on a king-size bed. Wyatt unwrapped Bauer and dumped him on the floor next to the bed. He also dumped the guns. Let the cops work it out. He distributed the coke and heroin packets behind heating vents, in shoeboxes, and among suitcases in a closet.

  Then he left the city, driving the Hertz Falcon one-handed, his other arm wrapped across his body, his fingers cupping the wound in his side. Once or twice when he dozed, panicky horns and headlights warned him back into his lane. Sometimes he found himself driving very slowly, and in Frankston an angry motorist rapped on his window at a traffic light. With relief he dumped the Falcon and collected his car and headed for the back roads.

  The sky was black. When moonlight struggled briefly through the heaped clouds he saw fog wisps like people in the road ahead. Fog hung over dams and creeks. Otherwise he felt that only he was abroad, only he awake.

  He opened his window and filled his lungs with cold air. He dare not stop or he would sleep and risk being wakened by a tap on the glass and voices wanting to know if he was all right, had he been drinking, had he been in a fight, your licence, please, sir.

  When Wyatt reached the coast road he followed it to Shoreham. He turned inland again, and on the hill slopes he felt that he was climbing to uninhabited reaches of the world. Then the headlights picked out his white gate, and narrow muddy drive and the image disappeared and he knew that in the morning there’d be cars going to church, and neighbours’ houses in the distance, and everything would be all right.

  He reversed into the barn and shut the heavy doors. It was almost midnight. He was forcing himself now.

  Inside the house he burned his bloodstained clothes and filled the bath with hot water. He washed the wound in the bath, then soaked for a while, letting the heat ease his knotted muscles. He got out, dried himself, dressed the wound. He felt mildly feverish. He dosed himself with brandy and aspirin and leftover antibiotic tablets.

  He slept for ten hours. In the morning it was apparent that he’d tossed and perspired during the night. His pillow was damp, his sheets damp and twisted. He felt scarcely rested, but his thoughts and perceptions no longer seemed so freakish and he had an appetite. Before doing anything, he phoned the Drug Squad. He said they’d find something interesting at the house of David Finn, in Hawthorn. No, he wouldn’t give his name, and he broke the connection before they could trace the call.

  Later he showered, dressed in slippers and an old tracksuit, and left by the kitchen door to fetch firewood from the pile at the back of the house. The sky was low, a succession of misty rainclouds sweeping across the hills. He went back inside and ate scrambled eggs, toast and coffee in front of an open fire.

  There was a trace of Anna Reid in the air, a faint, troubling perfume. He had an unfinished feeling about her. She knew about him, where he lived, his involvement in the hit on Finn. Even if she went straight and he never heard from her again, he’d feel a pinch at the edges of his memory. It would be more distracting than desire. Desire is something that doesn’t last. She was like him, but he wondered if she’d ride out the investigation, and he wondered if he should have killed her.

  He loaded more logs on the fire. By now the scent of heated sap and resin were spreading through the room and soon he couldn’t smell anything else.

  ****

  Forty-four

  The first shot came when he went outside to collect more firewood. The sound was hollow and deep, as if muted by the misty rain, but there was no mistaking the heavy calibre or the fury of the bullet smashing through the logs in his arms. The force of it spun him against the back wall of the house. The logs tumbled out of his arms. For a moment he felt helpless, pinned like an insect.

  A second shot smacked into the wall next to his neck. He thought automatically, He’s pulling high and to the left. He’s shooting uphill and failing to compensate.

  Wyatt threw himself onto the ground as a third shot slammed into the wall. There was the same powerful sound, the same double echo in the nearby hills.

  Rifle shots were not uncommon here but it was usually Craig or his father, taking random pot shots at rabbits and foxes with their small-bore rifles. Soon Craig’s father or one of the other neighbours was going to notice the sound of a heavy calibre weapon and wonder who was making war at ten-thirty on a Sunday morning.

>   Not the cops-they wouldn’t come in like that. Not Finn’s Sydney connections-even if they knew where to find him they wouldn’t come so soon, so rashly. Sugarfoot Younger? In his pain and tiredness Wyatt had thought that Sugarfoot was dead or gone. He’d forgotten the dumb instinct and obsession that drove the useless hoon.

  Dragging himself along by his elbows, Wyatt made for the side of the house. Multiple shots are easier to pinpoint than a solitary shot, so he knew where Sugarfoot was. Wyatt had one advantage: his house and sheds were on a slight rise. With no high ground to fire from, and wary of crossing open ground to the house and sheds, Sugarfoot would have positioned himself in the pine tree plantation.

  But he would take some finding. He had plenty of cover. Wyatt’s property was almost completely surrounded by trees: the pine plantation, an uncleared tangle of scrub and blackberry bushes, and the neighbour’s apple orchard. The drive-way at the front of the house ran down an avenue of golden cypresses to the small Shoreham road, hidden by hedges and earthen banks. If Sugarfoot circled the house while closing in on it, Wyatt would have trouble keeping track of him. If he circled at a distance, he’d effectively keep Wyatt boxed in.

  There was a flurry of wind and rain. Wyatt shivered. The tracksuit and slippers gave him no protection. The wound was bleeding again. He considered his options. If he made a run for it in the car, he risked a bullet. If he stayed in the house he’d have no flexibility. Better to go after the punk.

  But his.38 was under the bed, in a holster strapped to the springs of the bed base. There was a little.22 rifle, but it was in the barn. Not that he intended going after Sugarfoot through undergrowth with a rifle he’d not fired for two years and then only at pigeons with birdshot.

  He manoeuvred along the wall until he was behind a clump of bamboo. Beyond the bamboo was an old, unused dairy. If Sugarfoot had moved to the south-west edge of the pine plantation he would have a clear shot at the open ground between the house and the dairy, but Wyatt was guessing that Sugarfoot would station himself where he could get Wyatt if Wyatt tried to enter the house through the kitchen door.