by Garry Disher
Raymond blinked, shaking off the trance, putting himself firmly in the here and now again, on the deck of a trawler, sailing in mild sunlight. Bass Strait was calm. Raymond was glad: his guts would have acted up on him otherwise. Five hours later, the islands appeared. Quincy steered toward a narrow boiling passage between reefs, heading for sheltered water beyond.
Raymond and Allie stood on the port side, Vallance on the starboard, reef-spotting while Quincy throttled back and picked a way through the gap. The boat pitched and jawed a little in the rougher water. It felt dangerous to Raymond, a gut-lurching sensation, but Vallance and Allie rode the twisting deck comfortably so he told himself it was nothing. The air felt cool and damp on his face, briny in his nostrils, and seabirds slipped in the air currents above him.
Then they were through, gliding across still water. Grey cliffs, a tiny pebbly beach set with large rounded boulders, a muttonbird rookery, a glimpse of treeless vivid grassland above the cliffs. Raymond tipped back his head and breathed the air. He felt alive, and then Allie was standing next to him. Her arms circled his waist briefly and her chin pressed him between the shoulderblades.
She released him. Isnt this great?
Her eyes were bright, keen, full of curiosity and simple happiness. It was infectious. Raymond felt an absurd need to reach out and dab at some poorly applied zinc cream on her nose. He allowed a brief glint of teeth. Great.
Vallance dropped anchor and joined them. He was grinning, his thin face and wiry frame revelling in the moment. Piece of cake.
Lucky with the weather, Raymond said.
Vallance sobered. I agree. I also have to say that time is a factor here. The wrecks in about twenty metres of water on the other side of the reef. In a few weeks time what were doing today wont be possible. Gale-force winds, heavy seas, you name it.
In other words, if Im going to put up the money for this itll have to be soon.
Vallance coughed, looked embarrassed. Well, yeah. Thats why thisll be a quick visit. Take you out to the site, let you run the metal detector over the area, maybe dig up a few more coins, then head back to Westernport. Mate, we want you to see that this is a goer.
Raymond still had plenty of questions. He looked away from the island to the other islands in the group, small, barren humps in the sea. Couple of boats anchored out there, he said.
Fishermen.
You havent encountered other treasure seekers?
No.
What about official visitors? Im thinking of inspectors from that crowd you used to work for, the Maritime Heritage Unit.
Nope.
Raymond stared at Vallance for a while. Gulls wheeled above the yacht. The air was fresh and sharp, bracing to breathe. Raymond couldnt let the air distract him, lead him away from his natural state, which was suspicion and scepticism. Are there other wrecks here?
A score of them. Theyve all been charted.
Excavated?
Those that matter. A big convict vessel went down in 1813, for example. That had the historians interested. Most of the other ships were small intercolonial traders. Livestock, timber, stuff like that.
So no-one knows the Eliza Dean is here?
Not yet. But they will. Someone will stumble on her by accident sooner or later. Thats why its imperative we go in now.
Why hasnt she been found?
Vallance said impatiently, You dive with me, youll see why. When she hit the reef, the hull wouldve gone straight to the bottom, weighed down by ballast, crates of coins, other heavy stuff. Itll be under a few metres of sand by now. The rigging, masts, upper decking, anchors, general superstructure, well that would have been strewn over a wide area by tides and storms. Were talking about a hundred and seventy years, you know. From what I know about the tides here, the smaller stuff, including the few coins that worked loose or were grabbed by the crew, will have been scattered in a particular way.
He squatted on the deck, wet a finger, sketched two reefs and then a cone shape abutting one of them. Tapping the widest arc of the cone, he said, Where I found the coins, plus a tin plate and a couple of buttons and spoons, approximates to here. What we have to do is crisscross back in this direction. He indicated the pointed end of the cone. Thats where the wreck itself will be.
The mother lode.
Exactly.
You werent so specific the first time you told me this.
You werent so interested.
Raymond looked out to sea, then back at the rapidly drying diagram. Youre saying its between those two reefs?
Yes. The outer one is deeper. The Eliza Dean passed right over it, then struck the inner one. Thats why no-ones found her before.
What if we do have an unexpected visitor, either now or when and if we mount an expedition? Theyll know something is going on.
Im confident we wont have visitors, not this late in the season. But I can always dive at night or anchor some distance away and swim to the wreck from there. Youre thinking telltale bubbles in the water? Simple. Ill use a rebreather.
Youre the expert, Raymond said.
That he is, Allie agreed, embracing Vallance, resting her temple on his shoulder.
A kind of hatred flooded through Raymond. One last question.
Fire away. Youre the man with the money.
Thats just it, Raymond said. The world is full of fools with money to throw away. Why me? Why me and only three others? Why not a big consortium?
From anyone else, these would have been first questions, but Raymond wanted Vallance with his hopes running high before he asked it. He wanted to see if Vallance would stumble or blanch or spin him a story.
What Vallance did under the wheeling sky, the wind in his sparse hair, was say, I wont lie to you. Its a protected area. No diving allowed.
Uh huh.
That convict ship? Its pretty close to where I found the coins. Its fragile, excavation is going to take years. The government doesnt want looters, they dont want amateurs, they dont want anyone doing anything to disturb the wreck.
So well be inviting arrest, Raymond said flatly.
Vallance nodded.
Thats why everything about this will have to be kept secret, Allie put in.
With any luck, Vallance said, the actual search will be quick. I did a preliminary survey the time I found the coins. Another survey today and tomorrow should help narrow the search area. Then when we come here with all the gear we simply vacuum up the sand, gather the coins, get away quick.
He paused. Like I said, we need two hundred grand to get the show on the road. The return from your fifty grand will be in the millions. Im not asking for fifty right away. If you can get twenty to me by the end of the week, that will secure your fifty grand stake in the syndicate.
After a while, Raymond nodded. Okay.
Vallance clapped his hands together. Time to get togged up, ladies and gentlemen.
Raymond went below, changed, reappeared on deck again. He found Allie and Vallance, in colourful wetsuits, checking the air tanks and regulators. They were both slight in build and in their vivid costumes reminded Raymond of glossy tropical frogs. Vallance handed him lead weights on a belt and a sheathed, chrome-plated knife. Strap these on.
And then they slipped over the side and into the water. Vallance led the way, over the inner reef to deeper water. As they angled toward the bottom, a strange fear gripped Raymond, a sense of a fist closing over his lungs. He knew that his lungs were contracting. The water grew colder. He found himself sipping at the air. It seemed to be thick, weighty air, as though a liquid were pouring down into his lungs. He found that he was losing red from the colour spectrum. A brand name stamped on the wristband of his wetsuit was being leached of redness. His heart pounded.
He looked about for Vallance and Allie. He couldnt see them. For several minutes he was suspended in murky water, then suddenly Allie was beside him, winking, pointing downwards. Seeing her gave him back his nerve.
He gazed around after that, enjoying himself, and wh
en he saw Vallance again the older man was standing on the bed of the sea, scooping his arms for balance, his flippers stirring the sand, and Raymond saw an old coin of the realm appear, then another, stamped with the kings name and a latin script and a date more than 170 years before he was born.
* * * *
Fourteen
The coinstheir tragic history, their weight and substance, their goldnesslodged in Raymonds head. He could feel want and fascination stirring inside him. In his minds eye he saw the spill of gold on the seabed, and traced it back to the rotting hull and the laden chests. His share would make him a wealthy man. He hungeredfor the hunt, the discovery, the division of the spoils, the addictive element of risk. He met these needs whenever he robbed a bank, but this time the take was buried treasure. Treasure. It was enough to make him dream.
But all he had in the world was a lifestyle and a promise. The lifestyle boiled down to clothes, a car, an apartment but no money; and the promise boiled down to lingering fingertips, a brilliant smile, auburn hair like flamesbut no warm flank pressed against him in his bed at night.
Occupied with these thoughts the next day, Raymond used false papers to buy himself a Kawasaki. It was one he could use on a job sooner or later, but right now he needed it as a scout vehicle.
The Western District of Victoria, home to small towns, prime ministers and old and new money living in National Trust homesteads, lay wide open to the bush bandit. Raymond intended to scout around for a few days, note the banks and the building societies, then strike quickly. He might get lucky. He might earn Vallances fifty thousand from the first place he hit.
In Geelong he bought maps, then drove south-west, intending to follow the coast to Warrnambool before heading north, then east at Mortlakea large circle, with plenty of diversions off the beaten track. Hed map the best targets, routes in and out, roadworks, the location of the police stations, areas of traffic congestion, hairpin bends, narrow bridges, school buses. It was painstaking, it was probably obsessive, but Raymond liked to know more than he needed to know before any job.
If hed not met Vallance, would he have been able to function for much longer as the bush bandit? He knew of only four ways of getting at a banks holdingsembezzlement, going in with a gang to intercept a large cash transfer, breaking in during a weekend and drilling through to the vault or the safety deposit boxes, or going in alone and armed when the bank was open. Only this last option was open to Raymond. But the banks were getting canny. One day hed find himself in a trap.
By the fourth day, Raymond was ready to strike.
Biniguy was a small town, no more than a stretch of nondescript public buildings and old, verandahed shops on a country highway that narrowed to form the main street for an eyeblink on the way from Victoria to south-eastern South Australia. A small shopping centrewith a boutique, a Coles, a bank, a Mitre-10 and a furniture barn built around two sides of a car parksat behind the main street. From the banks security point of view, it was a bad location. Raymond listed what was good about it from his point of view: several exits; a public car park right outside; plenty of distracted shoppers around; half a minute from the highway.
He parked the Kawasaki next to an exit at the corner of the supermarket and dismounted. He set off in the opposite direction from the bank, the shotgun stuffed inside the pack on his back. He was interested in the buildings that overlooked the shopping centre, in particular a side-street block of flats and the rear of a hall and a public library on the main street. He was looking for a stake-out. There was a good chance of one, after all the outrage hed precipitated in the past few weeks.
He crossed the street at an angle and entered the flats. All the sounds of the town were cut off inside the foyer. Only his muted breathing sounded in the still, stale air of the stairwell. He listened. He was listening for a cough, the staticky scratch of a hand radio, the rattle of a Venetian blind.
Raymond waited for ten minutes, then left the flats and cut across to the external wooden steps behind the hall and adjoining library. He climbed, went in. The windows were opaque, ancient white paint over them. He poked his head around a few doors and along a few dim corridors.
Nothing.
As he descended the stairs he cast about over the car park, looking for other likely police stake-out posts. There was one, an electricians van near the front door of the bank. But the rear windows were clear, and all he could see in there, a minute later, were tool boxes, switches and coils of insulated wire. The electrician himself was on a ladder propped against the facia of the boutique, fixing a new neon sign into place. He looked genuine. No radio apparent; no mike or earpiece on a wire. Finally Raymond wandered idly past the shops a couple of times. Still nothing. That left the rooftops, but he couldnt check everything.
Raymond went in. There was one customer, a woman with a sleeping new baby swaddled to the chin in a pale blanket. He knew that she didnt have to be a woman with a baby but a cop with a doll, but the baby snuffled and bleated so he relaxed by half a degree and marked time with a pen and a withdrawal form.
Three staff: a teller, a young woman standing at a keyboard at the rear, the manager inside a glass booth, tapping the keys of a desk calculator as he flipped through a stack of receipts.
When the woman was gone, Raymond approached the teller. All she could see of his face were his teeth, bared in a distorting grimace, dark glasses and bike helmet. She was about to point to a sign that told motorcyclists to remove their helmets when her eyes were drawn to the yawning mouth of the shotgun and she whimpered a little.
Raymond said nothing, merely pushed an airlines bag across the counter to her. She began to fill it, from her own till, then used a key to open the neighbouring tills. Raymond wondered briefly if she had been held up before. The others hadnt noticed him yet. The keyboard rattled; the manager continued to count his money. Raymond collected the bag from the teller, held his finger to his lips, and saw her eyes look past him and widen in surprise.
He turned. It was a silent world beyond the plate glass, a world where a reversal could appear out of nowhere and you wouldnt know it. A security guard had stationed himself near the door. He was sipping coffee and had his head cranked up to yarn with the electrician.
Raymond said gruffly, Wasnt here yesterday.
We have him on rotation with our other branches in the region, the teller said.
Raymond moved quickly. He abandoned the money and the shotgun, stripped off his leather bike jacket and helmet, and walked whistling from the bank. He guessed that he had about thirty seconds before the bank staff gathered their wits. The guard glanced incuriously at him. Raymond left the shopping centre on foot and walked to the hospital. He stole an ambulance and drove as far as the next town before entering a system of side roads that would take him east. There were no road blocks and no pursuit cars. There would be soon, but hed be well out of the area by then.
Later he stole a community bus and drove it to Geelong. There he rented a car. On the drive north to Melbourne, his heart stopped hammering and he said goodbye to the bush bandit. It was done in a second, and in that same second he defined the aims and limitations of his new life. One, hed no longer hit small targets. No more country towns and their modest banks. Two, he needed one big score that would bankroll his share of the Eliza Dean syndicate. Three, he needed a good accomplice.
This time he met Chaffey on a park bench near the Exhibition Building. The glass wall extension gave crisp, out-of-true reflections of the main hall and the gardens, the strolling lovers seemed to yaw and bend like figures in funhouse mirrors.
Ill do both, Raymond said. Spring your bloke from remand and lift that collection of paintings.
The fat lawyer tossed a pebble at a pigeon. Pleased to hear that, son. Steer comes up for trial soon, so he has to be sprung some time in the next few days.
You said fifteen thousand? Not much for the risk involved.
Take it or leave it, son. This isnt a cheap operation. Your role is only part of it. Th
eres also his new ID, a safe passage out of the country, the dosh to tide him over till hes settled. Theres whatever gear you and his girlfriend decide is needed. Theres a new ID and a ticket out for her as well.
All right, all right, I get the picture, Ill do it for the fifteen. You said up front?
Up front, but only for this job.
It was a step down in Raymonds career and he felt obscurely ashamed. It wasnt the kind of job Wyatt would line up for.
These paintings, he said.
Times running out for that, too. Not this weekend but the weekend after. Two days when the collection will be off the walls and in storage and the alarm system turned off while they renovate. Chaffey turned his massive head to watch a girl walk by. Like I said, its a two-man job. You found someone?
