Cross Kill w-4

by Garry Disher

  ****

  Thirteen

  An hour later, Wyatt was waiting to catch the Sydney train. There was a risk that the Outfit would have staked out the Melbourne terminal, so he was waiting at an outer suburban station where the day train stopped. He would get off at Wodonga and transfer to a road coach for the remainder of his journey, finishing at Strathfield, not the central Sydney terminal. He waited near the end of the platform. If something didn’t look right, if something spooked him, he could lose himself among the sheds, wagons and stacks of rotting equipment in the shunting yards.

  The Sydney train drew in and he found his seat. He dozed through the long morning, his collar turned up, his face turned to the endless flooded plains and farmland outside the window. His ticket was punched. He didn’t look at the conductor but sat, forbidding and still. No one spoke to him. No one wanted to speak to him.

  The coach from Wodonga drew in to Strathfield at 9.15 pm. Several people alighted with him. He waited for his bag and then joined the knots of people milling on the footpath. He wasn’t stopped or accosted. No whistles or shouts or hands reaching out to spin him around.

  He walked slowly away from the building, waiting for the cars and passengers to clear. Something about the air buoyed him up. It was risky, careless, an enlivening Sydney smell. When he thought the way was clear, he walked back. A lone taxi was waiting at the rank.

  ‘Thought I’d missed out,’ the driver said as Wyatt got in.

  ‘Must be your lucky night,’ Wyatt said. Luck seemed to be in the air. He could smell it, even if he told himself that he didn’t believe in it. ‘Newtown,’ he said.

  ‘Newtown,’ the driver said, clearly baffled as to why Wyatt hadn’t taken the coach to the central terminal.

  They passed through leafy red-tile suburbs. The camphor laurels were flowering. A couple of skateboarders, swift shapes in the moonlight, plunged down the sloping streets and brassy foreign cars darted through the traffic. Streets twisted, heaping the suburbs over small, distinct hills, and Wyatt felt invigorated after Melbourne’s flat reaches. He breathed in and out and sank into his seat. ‘Anywhere along here,’ he said when they got to Newtown. He paid the driver and got out.

  He walked through to Broadway. The footpaths on either side were crowded with people leaving restaurants, pubs and takeaway joints. A couple of greengrocers and video libraries were open and he edged past a drunken group bargaining good-naturedly with a doorstep jewellery vendor, fingering the trinkets laid out on black velvet. The address Rossiter had given him was a hotel called the Dorset and he could see it a block away.

  When he reached the all-night cafe opposite the Dorset he realised how hungry he was. He went inside and claimed a stool at the window bench. ‘Foccacia and coffee,’ he said, and sat down to eat and watch. The watching was habit. He wasn’t expecting trouble in the Dorset.

  Thirty minutes later, convinced the place was clean, he paid his bill and crossed the street. The Dorset’s massive front door opened onto a room the size of a tennis court. At one end a set of padded armchairs faced an empty fireplace and an ancient television set. The picture was rolling and the sound was off. At the other end was a highly polished reception desk next to a broad staircase. There were key tags dangling from half of the dozen or so pigeonholes behind the desk. The woman on duty was smoking and flicking through a magazine, like Basil Fawlty’s wife. Under the odour of her cigarette Wyatt could smell furniture polish. The place was worn and old, he noticed, but solid and cared for. The ceiling was low and there were bulky pillars at intervals through the vast room. Thick paint had been splashed on the walls. The floor gleamed darkly.

  Keeping back so mat he wouldn’t be noticed by the woman at the desk, Wyatt edged around to the public telephones in the far corner. There were three of them, in roomy, old-fashioned booths with pneumatic-operated wood and glass doors. He stepped into the first cubicle, checked the Dorset’s number and dialled it.

  He saw the woman pick up the phone and then he heard her voice. ‘Dorset Hotel. Can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve got a message for Frank Jardine,’ Wyatt said. ‘Could you tell him the car will be waiting out the front in about five minutes?’

  ‘I’ll check if he’s in,’ the woman said. Wyatt saw her turn around and check the pigeon holes.

  ‘Yes, he’s in. Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘He’s expecting me,’ Wyatt said, and hung up.

  He settled back to watch what the woman would do. If she made any phone calls or otherwise indicated that Jardine was marked in some way, he’d be out of there. The woman wrote the message on a small pad then lifted her head and shouted something. An elderly man came through a swing door on the other side of the staircase. Wyatt watched him take the note and labour upstairs with it. Two minutes later he came down again, spoke to the woman and disappeared through the swing doors. Nothing else happened. Wyatt imagined Jardine scratching his head over the note, perhaps warily checking his gun, but he’d get over it. Meanwhile Wyatt wanted to make sure the place was safe before he spoke to him.

  After five minutes he stepped out of the telephone booth. Keeping the columns between himself and the woman at the desk, he began to edge around to the staircase.

  The gun barrel tickled his spine before he was halfway there. He froze. ‘You haven’t lost your touch,’ he said.

  ‘No, but you have. Jesus, chum, don’t you know there’s a contract out on you?’

  Wyatt turned slowly and faced a man who years ago had been his friend. ‘That’s partly why I’m here,’ he said.

  ****

  Fourteen

  ‘There’s a back way out,’ Jardine explained. ‘I cut through the alley to Broadway, watched the front for a while, then came in looking.’

  ‘Haven’t lost your touch,’ Wyatt said again.

  Jardine leaned back. ‘A bloke might start to wonder why you’re so interested in my touch.’

  They were upstairs. Jardine had two rooms, a lounge with a tiny balcony attached and an adjoining bedroom. Wyatt bet that Jardine used the bathroom at the end of the hall, washed his clothes in the basement laundry and ate all his meals in the cafe across the street. That had been Jardine’s style twelve years earlier, when he’d lived in a hotel just like this one in North Melbourne. In those days Jardine and Wyatt had worked together a few times-a gold bullion hijack, three suburban banks, and a plum job where they’d stripped all the exhibits at a jewellery convention and negotiated a reward from the insurance company. Wyatt’s own private life had been limited and so he’d not been interested in Jardine’s. When Jardine had left Melbourne suddenly, saying he needed a change, Wyatt had shrugged it off. Later he discovered that Jardine had had a fiancйe in Melbourne, and the fiancйe had been killed by a kid driving a stolen car.

  Now Wyatt accepted a glass of Scotch and avoided Jardine’s question. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  Jardine nodded and both men took small sips. Wyatt was not a heavy drinker and he hoped that Jardine had not become one. It didn’t seem likely. The grey eyes were cautious and lonely, but not desperate, and some thought had gone into making the suite of rooms a place to live in. A bookcase stretched to the ceiling along one wall of the main room. Apparently Jardine liked to read biographies, modern history, explorers’ tales. There were no novels.

  Another set of shelves held a stereo system, VCR and small television set. A few compact discs were scattered nearby: some classical, some folk, some jazz. A thick Persian rug covered the worn carpet. The armchairs were cloth-covered and the one Wyatt was sitting in was firm and comfortable. An Ansel Adams photograph hung on one wall and early Sydney lithographs on another. A stiff chair was angled against a small roll-top desk that stood open in the corner. The interior was cluttered with envelopes, sheets of paper and pens stuffed in a jam jar. There was a framed head-and-shoulders shot of a hesitantly smiling young woman next to the desk lamp.

  But the focal point of the room was a small Apple computer on a card table. Wy
att turned back to Jardine. ‘Writing your memoirs?’

  The sad-looking face had been staring at him attentively, as if charting his thoughts and understanding them. It relaxed into a grin that was natural and unforced and had never failed to charm people. ‘I follow the ponies. That box of tricks helps me shorten the odds.’

  Wyatt didn’t try to feign interest. He said, ‘Is Kepler still running the Outfit?’

  The smile left Jardine’s face. ‘Alive and well.’

  ‘I need to talk to him.’

  Jardine had a seamed, fleshless face like a weathered knot of wood. It didn’t change expression. ‘I don’t think a talk is what he’s got in mind for you, pal.’

  Wyatt’s mouth twisted briefly without humour. ‘It will be.’

  Jardine continued to watch him. Jardine was clear, solid and grave, useful qualities in a man who cracked safes and held up banks. When he spoke, the words emerged softly from his chest. ‘I’m pretty much a backroom operator these days.’ He meant that he blueprinted heists for people who knew how to pull them but not how to plan them. ‘That could be useful,’ Wyatt said.

  ‘You’re going to hit him a few times first?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meanwhile you’re pleased to know I haven’t lost my touch.’

  ‘Right again,’ Wyatt said.

  Jardine sipped his Scotch once more, put the half-full glass down and pushed it away. ‘I have to live in this town.’

  ‘Maybe just information will be enough.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Jardine went on, ‘sometimes I miss the old days.’

  There was something approaching a gleam in his eye. Wyatt remembered it from twelve years ago, a look that said Jardine knew a sweet job when he saw one. He didn’t follow it up-he’d let Jardine declare if and how he’d be involved. ‘Tell me more about the Outfit.’

  ‘This is Sydney, mate. Things are organised here, not like down south. The cops are paid and you don’t have bunches of amateurs muscling in on each other’s territory or expertise. One arm of the Outfit controls bent cars in the western suburbs, another sells coke to street dealers. They’ve also got something going with diamonds.’

  ‘Tell me about Kepler.’

  ‘He’s a north shore darling,’ Jardine said. He started counting on his fingers. ‘He’s got his own law firm, a big house right on the water, a society wife. He belongs to the night clubs, knows the right people-including the attorney-general, the police commissioner and a few headkickers on the ALP Right-and he generally behaves like old money. He’s charming, he’s clever, he knows what knife and fork to use, and over on the north shore they go all weak-kneed about this refined gangster in their midst.’

  ‘I’m not interested in all that. I want to know what’s underneath.’

  ‘Underneath, he’s a thug. He bumps people off if they get in the way or maybe just because he’s got a sinus headache that day. He knocks his wife around so it doesn’t show on the surface and spends most of his time running the Outfit from the penthouse suite of a Darling Harbour apartment building.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  Jardine thought about it. ‘Sixty odd. He’ll be around for a while yet. He’s ambitious, he’s trying to move his people into Victoria.’

  ‘I’ve met some of them.’

  Both men lapsed into silence. Wyatt began to build a mental picture of Kepler and the Outfit, looking for holes in the armour. Jardine, he noticed, looked anticipatory. Wyatt needed him. Jardine knew the local scene, knew the Outfit, but he also knew Melbourne. On top of that he was good at what he did and he could be trusted-as much as Wyatt trusted anyone. Then Jardine said something that told Wyatt they were on the same track. ‘In some ways, the Outfit is easier to knock over than the local Seven-Eleven.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They never expect trouble from freelancers,’ Jardine explained. ‘Blokes like you rob the banks, the organised boys run the rackets, it’s all nicely balanced. The enemy as far as the Outfit’s concerned is the law, and they’ve taken care of that. A few thousand here and there in a few pockets and they feel safe.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wyatt said.

  Jardine picked up his Scotch, looked at it, pushed it away. ‘Two things. One, my name stays out of it. Two, when you finally tackle Kepler himself, you’re on your own.’

  Wyatt also pushed his glass away. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘As to the rest,’ Jardine said, ‘I know two or three Outfit operations we can start with.’

  ‘I don’t have much time,’ Wyatt said. ‘I also don’t have the money to bankroll anything major.’

  ‘Mate,’ Jardine said, ‘I’ve had these particular hits on the drawing board for years.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘You know, out of academic interest, to keep my hand in. The point is, they’re simple, cheap, nothing to set up-’

  ‘When?’

  ‘We start tomorrow morning.’

  ****

  Fifteen

  On Wednesday evening a woman from Corrective Services came around and told Eileen and Ross that their son had been remanded for trial in the Bolte Remand Centre. She snapped open the gold catches on a new tan briefcase. ‘For about six weeks,’ she said.

  The briefcase didn’t go with the rest of the get-up. Eileen took in the woman’s skirt. It was made from some crumpled-look summery fabric that had been washed and worn too often. There was a white T-shirt with a rainforest message on it, and a faded denim jacket over that. No jewellery. Espadrilles showed horny, hooked toes. Forty thousand a year, probably, dealing with the public every day, it wouldn’t have hurt the woman to have made a bit of an effort. Eileen folded her arms on her vast and comfortable chest. ‘Bolte?’

  The woman slid a pamphlet across the kitchen table. ‘Private prison. Only been open three months.’

  Eileen looked to Ross for a clue. Her husband had one arm hooked over the back of the kitchen chair, the other outstretched to an ashtray on the table. He tapped off a centimetre of ash, raised the cigarette, drew on it, blew a ring to the ceiling. He wasn’t going to help her. He’d listen while the woman talked, but she was government, meaning that was all he’d do. Plus which, he’d been black and brooding since the arrest, ready to wash his hands of their son.

  ‘It’s privately owned and managed,’ the woman said. ‘Like the ones in Queensland.’

  Eileen skimmed the pamphlet. There were artist’s impressions of long, narrow buildings laid out in the form of a hexagon, the open ground in the middle crisscrossed with sheltered walkways. There were smudges that were trees and several lines of cheery text about the philosophy of the place. American and Australian money was behind it. ‘You learn something new every day,’ Eileen said. ‘What are the screws like in a place like this?’

  The woman put her little hands together in her lap and tightened her little mouth. ‘We don’t call them screws, we call them-’

  ‘A screw’s a screw,’ Rossiter said, then stopped, irritated with himself for getting involved. Eileen cut in: ‘When can we visit him?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, if you like.’

  Ross said no, so on Thursday morning Eileen drove herself in the VW. The Bolte Remand Centre was on a grassy plain west of the city, close to Melton, close to muddied tracts of land where unsold houses reproduced themselves among billboards, snakes of bitumen and ribbons of new kerbing. But there were also established estates with Hills Hoists in the backyards, cars in the carports, tricycles on the pockets of lawn, and Eileen guessed that those people had things to say, living right next door to a prison.

  She saw the razor wire first, coiled around the perimeter fence, viciously reflecting the sun. There were several inner fences, heavy gates, then the low buildings with their corrugated roofs and barred windows, everything new looking, all metal, no wood anywhere and no grass to speak of. What she really hated, what she could feel winding and slicing around her body, was the razor wire. It was slung across fences and at ground level around the buildings as if someone h
ad opened a lid on a box of evil objects.

  It took her forty-eight minutes to pass through to the visiting room. Inside the Bolte it was one door after another and all of them heavy, locked. There were screws for escorting, screws for buzzing the doors open, screws for poking around in your handbag, patting you down, running a metal detector over you. The screws seemed more dead than alive, but sullen and dangerous with it. They were overweight, and if they spoke the accents were Pommie. One man ran his metal detector idly over the brass end of a fire hose, and the squawl set Eileen’s nerves on end. He did it again, he did it ten times while Eileen waited to be buzzed through. There were plenty of people milling around, Eileen didn’t know who they were, and for some reason none of them minded that hellish sound.

  She waited at a plastic table, plastic so you couldn’t brain anyone with it. There were wives, sweethearts, a couple of whole families in the visiting room. Niall swaggered, curling his lip, as he came in from the cells, but when he saw her he dropped the act and she could see the anxiety under it. There were others like him in the Bolte, a brotherhood of skinheads, so she hoped there were people to protect him in the showers, but still, under it all he was only twenty-one. Like half the men in the place he wore shorts, blue stubbies, work boots and an institution-brown windcheater. She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Hello, son.’

  ‘Good on you, Mum. The old man wouldn’t stir himself?’

  ‘He’ll get over it.’

  ‘He must have a short memory. He’s done more time than I’ll ever do.’

  ‘You can see his point, though, son. What possessed you to wave that crossbow around?’

  ‘Fuckin’ wog had it coming.’

  Eileen let it go. ‘They should’ve given you bail.’

  Then Niall’s face crumpled. ‘I can’t stick it, Mum. Not again.’ He grabbed her forearm and dropped his voice. ‘Can’t we give them Wyatt? You know, don’t let on to the old man we’ve done it? Christ, Wyatt should be worth every bloke in here and half the blokes in Pentridge.’