by Garry Disher
‘This jacket’s ruined,’ she said on the other side, holding the torn, moss-stained fabric away from her hip.
‘Shut up.’
‘You shut up.’
He slapped her hard. ‘You were feeding Eddie information.’
‘Ow.’
‘Come on.’ He wanted her moving.
‘I didn’t mean to. It was over ages ago.’
Wyatt hustled her over the slick cobbles to the alley mouth but kept her close to the backyard fences and tendrils of jasmine. ‘Whether or not you actively helped Eddie, you’re a suspect.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
Wyatt felt close to the edge on this. He said savagely, ‘Someone will have followed you, the police or Le Page. Surprise, surprise, you don’t go home but straight here, to the house of a man with a criminal record.’
She was silent. Wyatt flattened against the end wall with her while he stuck his head out. Then he glanced back along the alley, which remained clear. He didn’t understand the shouting in the street or the silence that had followed it. When a taxi drew into the kerb on the cross street, he ran to it in a crouch, Danielle’s slender wrist still in the steel clamp of his fingers.
‘Ow.’
‘Shut up.’
They piled into the back seat and Wyatt said, ‘Southern Cross.’
The central railway station. From there he could choose a train in any direction. The taxi merged with the flow of afternoon traffic and passed the entrance to Eddie Oberin’s street. Three young men were chest-shoving Le Page and that was all Wyatt saw. He settled back in his seat and, almost like a lover, pulled Danielle against his upper body and murmured in her ear, ‘Le Page. I saw him back there.’
She went rigid. Still like a lover he said, ‘It’s dangerous for you now. He’ll hurt you. Don’t go home.’
She nodded and tears splashed onto her shirt front.
Wyatt went on pitilessly, ‘Eddie appeared one day, friendly, charming, you started going out.’
‘I swear I didn’t know he was pumping me for information.’
‘Did you give the police his name? Le Page?’
‘No! I swear, I didn’t twig till later, and...’
Wyatt let her talk. It probably did her good. When she asked him how he was connected to Eddie or the robbery, he said nothing but crammed a few dollars into her hand and got out at the next set of lights.
* * * *
21
Leaving Khandi to sleep after her hectic morning, Eddie headed back down to Yarra Junction and asked around for the library. Eddie hadn’t knowingly been near a library since he’d left school, and just stepping inside this one, a small branch library behind the village shops, brought back memories of dreariness. He averted his eyes from the stacks of scuffed hardcovers and went straight to the main desk.
‘I’d like to use the Internet.’
He glanced across at the small cluster of computers. Every unit was taken—retirees, by the look of the grey heads. Old geezers and chooks tapping away with one finger, searching the net to see if they had convicts in the family tree.
The librarian ran her finger down a booking sheet. ‘I’m afraid we won’t have a computer ready until two o’clock.’
Giving him an hour for lunch. ‘That’s fine,’ Eddie said.
He walked to the pub, where he ate a mixed grill and nursed a beer. He wanted a clear head when he returned to the library. There was a TV set bolted to the wall above the bar, tuned to a talk show. When a news update came on, Eddie strained to listen. He’d heard the midday news back at the cabin, but details of the robbery and the Audi fire were sketchy. Eddie wanted visuals. He peered at the screen.
Good: film of the park and the Audi’s blackened shell, cops, bystanders milling around, fire engine some distance away—but no body bags, no ambulances, no mention of a man and a woman with gunshot wounds.
He couldn’t let himself think that Lydia was alive, that she’d talk to the cops. Or Wyatt. Would she remember the cabin after all this time? He struggled to finish his beer. All flavour had disappeared from it and his tastebuds, mouth and throat wouldn’t work. He ordered a scotch.
At 2 p.m. he was seated between an old guy looking at images of World War II battleships and a girl of fifteen Googling song lyrics. She had rolls of visible midriff, electric blue hair, rings in the cartilage of both ears. Edging his chair away from her, Eddie clicked on Internet Explorer.
For the next hour, he searched permutations of ‘bearer bonds’, ‘treasury bonds’, ‘Bank of England’ and ‘theft’. Pretty soon he was reading about a recent snatch, big-time, a courier knifed on a London street in broad daylight. He tingled inside, admiring the nerve. £260 million worth. Who had the rest? He read on and learned that Interpol, acting on a tip-off, had arrested four couriers and recovered bonds worth £60 million in the suitcase of an Irish woman travelling from Toronto to Rio, £40 million in a New Delhi locker, £55 million during a routine search of baggage aboard a Los Angeles flight bound for Peru, £13 million in a Cape Town hotel room. But that left bonds worth £92 million unaccounted for. Given that the couriers had travelled to multiple locations before being arrested, it was the opinion of Scotland Yard and Interpol that the missing bonds had been distributed widely. Some would expire soon, but not before unscrupulous people exchanged them for loans, cash, real estate, paintings...
Eddie made a note to himself: check expiry dates.
He read on. A couple of mysterious deaths.
Sitting back, staring at the ceiling battens of the library, Eddie wondered what he and Khandi had let themselves in for. Maybe the Furneaux brothers were big-time after all. If so, they wouldn’t respond well to a ransom demand. On the other hand, there was no one he knew or trusted to buy the bonds or broker a deal for him; definitely no way he or Khandi could hope to fool a bank manager. So her plan was probably best: ransom the bonds back to the Furneaux brothers.
Before he left the library, Eddie checked the websites of the ABC, Channel 9 and the Herald Sun. Scarcely anything on the torched four-wheel-drive, still nothing about gunshot victims. Either the cops hadn’t found any bodies, or they had and were keeping it quiet.
He wiped his palms on his jeans, found the number for Furneaux Brothers on line, quit and headed for the post office, where he bought a pre-paid mobile phone. He dumped the phone Wyatt had supplied into a bin.
Back at the cabin, Khandi was climbing the walls, an amphetamine buzz on, the streak in her hair looking more disordered than dangerous.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’
‘I’m here now,’ Eddie said.
She flung herself against him, hot, squirming and desperate. ‘I thought you’d left me. I thought you didn’t love me anymore.’
‘Baby,’ said Eddie, inadequate to the task of returning so much passion, hoping it didn’t show, ‘I wouldn’t run off—you had the bonds.’
Whack. He staggered and the world yawed a little. ‘The money means more to you than I do?’ shrieked Khandi.
‘Of course not.’ he said, blinking to clear the numerous Khandis floating before his eyes. She was mad, lethal, focused when she needed to be and unpredictable, but two things were constant: she loved him and she always turned paranoid when she was on the gear. Eddie put his loving arms around her and took her to the sofa. Dust rose as he held her and nuzzled her neck for a while.
She shoved him away. ‘What did you find out? Were you looking at porn?’
Eddie went on high alert. The slightest thing could make her wildly jealous. He couldn’t even let his eyes pass a billboard of a chick in her knickers—and how do you avoid that these days? ‘I don’t think you can look up porn in a library—not that I’d want to,’ he said hastily. He told her about the London robbery.
‘Two hundred and sixty million? Where’s the rest of it?’
‘Cape Town, Peru...you name it. Some of it came to Henri Furneaux, and he was going to off-load his allocation here,’ guessed Eddie.
> Khandi fetched him a can of beer and the tequila for herself and they sat outside in the sun for a while. Eddie fiddled with the pistol, surprised himself by clearing the jam. Then Khandi placed a lissom foot in his lap and he had trouble concentrating.
He took a swig of beer. ‘There was nothing on the news about Lydia or Wyatt.’
‘That bitch,’ hissed Khandi.
‘Sweetness, it means trouble for us.’
‘Like how? I offed wifey, and Wyatt can’t find us.’
Eddie crushed his empty can and hurled it at a blue wren. ‘You’d think there’d be something in the news.’
‘It’s some cop thing,’ Khandi said. ‘They’re keeping it quiet.’
Eddie brooded. ‘What I think happened is, the vest saved Wyatt and he made his way back to the car. Found Lydia, shoved her into the passenger seat and took off before the cops arrived.’
‘Will you just quit it?’
‘You’re not listening to me. If Wyatt finds us, we’re history.’
Khandi cuddled him violently. ‘I’ve got a bullet for the prick and I know where he lives, so chill out, okay?’
He’d shown her the Southbank apartment one day when Wyatt was scouting around looking at parks. But would the guy be stupid enough to go back there?
They drank some more and watched cloud shadows pass across the valley folds. Mellowing as the day dwindled, Eddie said, ‘I think we should contact Furneaux right now and get our money before Wyatt finds us.’
‘Wyatt, always Wyatt,’ Khandi screamed in her fine, insane way, then calmed abruptly. ‘Good thinking, I guess.’ He showed her the pre-paid mobile, and she dialled the jeweller’s number with her dexterous, tiger-striped thumbs.
* * * *
22
Picking up his office phone to hear a woman announce she was calling about his bearer bonds, Furneaux nearly lost it. ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ he snarled.
The voice screeched in his ear. ‘Whoa, whoa, Henri, let’s establish who has the upper hand here.’
Furneaux checked the display. An unfamiliar mobile phone number. ‘Danielle?’
‘Who the fuck’s Danielle?’
Furneaux shook his head. ‘Who is this?’
‘I’m your guardian angel. I’ve got your stuff, it’s safe and sound, and you can have it back for a million bucks.’
‘You must be joking.’
‘Call you back in an hour.’
The phone went dead. He checked his watch: 3.45. A moment later, more shit piled on his head. His mobile rang and Joe said, ‘Can’t find her anywhere.’
‘Who?’ said Henri, rattled.
There was the kind of silence that said Joe was sifting through the recent past to find where he’d got Henri’s orders wrong. He said, in a low voice, ‘Danielle?’
‘Forget it. Come on back.’
Then a fist pounded on the front door. Lynette Rigby, the detective sergeant flashing her badge at him through the glass. He unlocked the door. ‘I might have known you’d show up eventually.’
‘Nice to be wanted, Henri. A few minutes of your time?’
‘It’s not really convenient right now.’
Rigby laughed, ducked past him and strode through the showroom to his office. Settled into the chair that faced his desk, waited for him to sit across from her. ‘We’ve already given statements to the uniform boys,’ he said, glancing at his watch.
‘Are you expected somewhere, Henri? Late for an appointment? Waiting on a phone call?’
Furneaux shot his cuffs, folded his arms and stared at her. ‘I’m not getting any younger.’
‘Or any richer, apparently.’
Was she talking about the bonds or the Audi? ‘Quit hassling me. Month after month.’
She opened her arms in astonishment. ‘But Henri, I’m investigating a crime. You were robbed this morning, remember?’
‘Look, there’s no need for CIU to get involved. Joe left the bloody gate open and some joyriding kids stole the Audi and torched it, that’s all.’
She gave him one of those big empty smiles the police are so good at. ‘Really? Stole that ugly great four-wheel-drive instead of your cute sports car?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe it was easier to break into.’
‘And they cut your car tyres so you wouldn’t follow? Kids? I don’t think so. Made some enemies, Henri? Up to your old tricks?’
‘I’m straight,’ Furneaux muttered. ‘Have been for years.’
‘Just let me check our records,’ Rigby said, flipping through some pages in a folder. ‘Oh yes, here we are.. .receiving stolen goods.’
‘That was years ago.’
‘Oh, and you have a brother who’s done time for burglary and assault. Leopards never change their spots, Henri.’
‘Don’t call me Henri, Lyn.’
‘Mr Furneaux.’
He couldn’t get a clear fix on her shape under the pants and jacket. Dryish shoulder-length hair, short, bitten fingernails, no wedding or engagement rings, murky, shallow eyes. But he knew she was ambitious, unimpressed and, in her way, tough. And a distraction right now. Furneaux wanted her out of his office so he could let Alain know about the ransom demand.
He glanced at his watch again. Almost four. ‘How much longer?’
He pictured the hard, bony stillness of his cousin. Alain would know what to do. If only Rigby would get a move on, finish her questions and piss off back to the cop shop.
‘A lot of things don’t add up,’ Rigby said. ‘You glimpsed the thieves driving away?’
‘Enough to see it was a pair of kids.’
‘Like I said, kids clever and ballsy enough to steal your flash four-wheel-drive and let down your tyres so you couldn’t follow.’
It was a statement, not a question. Furneaux shrugged. ‘Kids these days.’
‘Oh, you’re a wise old man now, Henri?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘How do you know they were kids if you didn’t get a close look at them?’ -
‘Their clothing, size, stuff like that, okay?’
His mouth felt dry. He could see the bearer bonds and treasury notes disappearing forever. It would have been so easy to wash them into legitimate cash and secure bank loans, but now some mad woman had them. Wanted a million dollars for them. Where the hell was he going to get that kind of money? And who the fuck was she? She’d sounded off her head.
‘I guess it’s reasonable to suppose that it was kids,’ Rigby was saying, musing.
‘I’ve told you all I know.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Henri.’
Furneaux gazed at her.
‘There’s the matter of your missing jewellery.’
‘What jewellery?’ said Henri, guessing their forensic people had been poking around in the ashes and hadn’t found any molten gold or silver, any stones, and were thinking jewel robbery.
‘Does this sound like an inside job to you, Henri? Someone who knows you deliver your goodies around the state in a luxury four-wheel-drive?’
What did she know about his delivery runs? ‘Couldn’t say.’
‘Try.’
Furneaux shrugged again. But his mind was racing. The thieves had expected a jewellery shipment, found themselves with paper instead, didn’t know how to offload it, and were ransoming it back to him.
They’re desperate, he thought, feeling calmer now. Desperate people make mistakes. Their big mistake was going to be Alain.
‘Look, the Audi was empty. Not making a delivery till next week. It was kids, I’m telling ya.’
‘Fair enough. Leaving aside the question of the source of the goods you transport, is it possible one of your clients decided to hit you before you left the city?’
That’s what Furneaux wanted to know. He said nothing but stared past Lynette Rigby’s shoulder at his bookshelf, books about art and design, jewellery making, histories of famous manufacturers and designers. ‘Like I said, no delivery planned, joyriding kids.’
‘Someone
heard shots,’ said Rigby.
Well, that creeped him out. ‘Not here. We didn’t shoot anyone, or anything.’
‘Do you own a gun, Henri? Did you in fact tail the thieves to the park and shoot it out with them?’
Furneaux didn’t want her asking him about guns. ‘Fuck it, no. Probably glass cracking, the fuel tank exploding, that kind of thing’
