by Garry Disher
Tina returned from the kitchen and there was some dabbing and mopping that turned into other things, and sometime later—languid, but ready to face the world—Khandi rolled a joint.
Tina gave a little cough, opened a window and fanned out the smoke. ‘I’m having a shower.’
‘You do that,’ Khandi said. She flipped open her mobile phone and called Mindi at Blue Poles. ‘Anyone looking for me?’
‘Where have you been? The boss is going mental.’
‘Fuck him. I want to know if anyone’s after me.’
‘Like who?’
‘I don’t know,’ yelled Khandi, swinging her long legs off the bed and planting her feet on a thick, ethnic-looking rug that somehow fanned her irritation.
‘Well...’
‘Well, what?’
‘Don’t yell at me. No cops, but there was this one guy.’
Mindi described a thin, calm guy. Pitiless, she said, uncharacteristically. Khandi churned. It sounded like Wyatt, the guy she’d shot in the park. How was she to know he’d been wearing a bullet-proof vest? Eddie’s fault for not warning her, the treacherous, cuntfaced moron. A chink of something that might have been doubt surfaced in her mind. She’d failed to put Wyatt down and now he was hunting her.
Maybe. On the other hand, Eddie had told her where he lived.
But could she be bothered? She thought about it as she pulled her clothes on. Why not lay some rubber down and head for Sydney, where she was unknown. Find corners in which she could truly express herself. Tina wandered in, pink, rubbery and self-conscious, crossing Khandi’s field of vision and turning on the TV set. ‘Five o’clock news,’ she said. ‘The world at peace.’
It was said wryly and Khandi wanted to smack her. She bit her tongue and watched the screen. First up was a local story, a prisoner shot dead inside the Outer Eastern magistrates’ court that morning. They showed his face, an old arrest photo.
Khandi tried to swallow. She couldn’t name the heartache and desolation that swamped her. Her dear sweet man gunned down in chains, unable to protect himself. She’d never known a love but one—and he’d been taken from her. She wept, gulped and felt entirely alone in the world.
‘Honey?’ said Tina.
She was towelling her hair. In other circumstances it might have been appealing, even arousing. ‘Nothing,’ Khandi said.
Tina followed the direction of Khandi’s gaze, craned her neck to see the screen. ‘Another gangland shooting.’
‘Looks like it,’ Khandi whispered, knowing her voice might not hold.
They were showing footage taken at various times last night and throughout the morning. First the footbridge in the park, floodlit by a helicopter, cop cars strobing blue and red, shadowy figures and a body on the bridge. Crime-scene tape around Henri Furneaux’s sports car. Then the courthouse this morning, more tape flapping in the breeze, armed response cops in helmets and flak jackets milling around, the newsreader connecting Eddie to the shooting of two men in Jacaranda Park the previous evening. ‘Police carried out a thorough sweep of the area,’ the on-scene reporter said, and the screen showed divisional vans arriving at the cop shop next to the courthouse and unloading a fair cross-section of humanity. Mostly men, mostly young, mostly black, Asian or otherwise foreign looking.
Khandi gave Tina a glitter of eyes and teeth. ‘Spot the Aussie, eh?’
Tina stiffened and her face shut down. ‘I don’t fuck racists.’
Khandi sprang off the bed and slapped her hard enough to rattle her teeth. ‘I don’t fuck dykes.’
Without a further thought, Khandi left Tina’s poky room, straddled and fired up her bike—twisting the throttle until the motor red-lined and the birds fled from the sky—and shot down the road and across the valley. She was filled with emotions, some of them unfamiliar and all of them exalted. Eddie was dead, bless his tight bum, and Wyatt was responsible.
Now he’s coming for me, she thought. Am I scared? Am I, fuck.
Wyatt wouldn’t expect her to go on the offensive.
She stopped short of the cabin and checked it in the waning light of late afternoon. Satisfied that the cops didn’t know about the place—otherwise they’d have searched it by now—she stowed the money inside the woodheap and shot back down the highway in search of the man who wanted to kill her.
First things first. She detoured into the Chadstone shopping centre, which was going great guns at that hour of a Friday evening, and splashed some money around. Leaving her fishnets on the floor of a changing room, together with her crotch-length micro skirt, high-heeled boots and tit-flashing T-shirt, she headed off again dressed in sensible bone-coloured pants and a pale blue cotton shirt, with the Beretta automatic inside the most boring shoulder bag ever made, $8.95 from Target. Then she checked into a fleapit on Spencer Street where she cropped her hair and dyed it mousy brown. Checking the effect in the fly-spotted mirror, she almost, gagged. These were the sacrifices she would make to avenge her man.
* * * *
38
Before entering the Westlake Towers complex, Wyatt stepped into the laundromat on the other side of the street. It was empty but machines churned; jeans and underwear flapped inside a lonely dryer. He sat as if waiting for his load to finish and watched his building. It dozed in the evening light but he wasn’t ready to walk across the road and enter it.
He heard a metallic squeak. The manager hip-bumping through the swing door in the back wall, carrying a plastic basket piled with sheets. He nodded. ‘Long day?’
The manager grunted. She was rake-thin, bitter, hostile, wreathed in cigarette smoke.
‘Me too,’ Wyatt said.
She didn’t give a damn about that.
After a while Wyatt said, ‘I hear there was some excitement today, over at the flats. Cop cars, the whole works.’
The voice came sourly from her stove-in face. ‘You’re dreaming. I was here all damn day and nothing happened.’
She dumped the washing and went back through the swing door. Wyatt slipped across the road and up the stairs to his bolthole. Lydia’s bedroom door was closed. He walked past it to the bathroom, stripped off, adjusted the water temperature and drew the shower curtain. He’d never noticed before but the curtain was patterned, a dolphin leaping across it in a subtle mix of shiny and matt plastic. He began to wash away the alley and lockup grime.
Lydia’s voice sounded on the other side of the curtain, ‘Where were you today?’
He poked his head out, hair water-pasted to his skull. She stood wreathed in steam, looking better. Some natural colour in her cheeks, some natural fire in her eyes.
But aggrieved. ‘I woke early, but you were already gone, and there’s a note on the kitchen table telling me to keep an eye out for the cops because Eddie’s been arrested. How do you think that made me feel?’
‘Give me five minutes.’
‘Fuck that,’ she said, wincing in pain. ‘I spent all day not knowing what was going on. Eddie’s arrest was all over the news, and suddenly he’s all over the news again because someone murdered him inside the courthouse.’
Wyatt met her gaze, saying nothing. Watching the race of thoughts behind her eyes until at last he saw that she understood. She nodded once and left the room, the steam eddying with the motions of her body and the door.
Wyatt closed the curtain and rinsed off. He shaved, dressed in his room, and found Lydia in the kitchen. A glass of water sat at her elbow, together with a bottle of Lowe’s painkillers. She didn’t look at him as he entered. ‘I’m supposed to take one every few hours, but they make me drowsy. I took one last night and it knocked me out. When I woke this morning, you were gone.’ Her tone was flat, as if she had no control over anything. ‘All day I was tense. In pain.’ She paused, glanced at him. ‘You’re a pain.’
It was a weak joke but he smiled and then so did she. Wyatt said, ‘Take it if you need it.’
‘No. I need a clear head.’
Her tone was a warning, and he gazed at her and w
aited.
‘Eddie and his woman tried to kill us.’
‘Yes.’
‘They killed Henri and Joe.’
‘Yes.’
She gazed at him now. ‘For you, everything changed when they tried to kill us.’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘Nothing changed.’
He was going to elaborate, but saw the frown and the puzzlement clear from her face. ‘Betrayal’s always on the cards,’ she said. ‘You expect it, right? If it happens, you act on it.’
‘Yes.’
She hugged herself and stared at the floor. ‘Poor Eddie.’
Wyatt saw that it wasn’t grief. She was letting go of Oberin, and accepting a buried aspect of herself. In this game, there was no shrugging your shoulders and walking away. Her eyes, when she lifted her head, were clear. She understood what Wyatt had done and who he was, because the ground she walked on overlapped with his.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘We could go out. I’ll wear a scarf and sit in a corner. You do know how to go out on a date, don’t you?’
‘We have scrambled eggs or scrambled eggs,’ Wyatt said, taking out eggs and milk.
Lydia slumped in her chair as if the strain had leaked away and watched Wyatt melt a dab of butter in a frypan. ‘You do know about cholesterol?’
Wyatt shrugged. There were unimaginable reaches in the habits and beliefs of people. ‘All I know,’ he said, ‘is there never was any jewellery, we’ve got people after us, and tomorrow we get out of here.’
Lydia stared at him in frustration. ‘That’s tomorrow. Take a break. Tell me about yourself. Chill out.’
‘More chills than chilling out in my life,’ Wyatt muttered. He hated being questioned. There was no point to it. He never looked inwards, and there was nothing he wanted to impart to anyone.
‘Fine ,’ she said, putting a hand to her face, eyes tight with pain. ‘So what were Henri and Joe carrying?’
Wyatt told her what he’d overheard in the courthouse.
‘Treasury bonds? That’s not Eddie’s style.’
‘His girlfriend’s style?’
Lydia looked doubtful. ‘Maybe.’ She paused. ‘You think it was Eddie bullshit, accusing the cop of ripping him off?’
‘He sounded genuine.’
‘He would.’
They brooded on it. ‘The thing is, Eddie and his stripper stuck around afterwards. Why would they do that? Why not disappear? Something else was going on.’
Wyatt watched her think it through.
She gave him a twisted smile as it hit her. ‘They were expecting jewellery, same as us, got bonds instead. Didn’t know what to do with them, decided to ransom them back to Henri Furneaux.’
Wyatt nodded. ‘Something went wrong and Eddie got himself arrested.’
Lydia was looking into the distance. ‘Do you think he talked?’
‘He knew where I lived. The police would have swooped by now.’
Butter was spitting in the frypan. Wyatt beat, added and stirred the eggs. ‘But we do need to leave here.’
‘Do the police know about Le Page?’
‘Damn,’ muttered Wyatt. He hadn’t thought of everything. He unhooked the wall phone and dialled the Sofitel.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the desk clerk said, ‘we have no guest here of that name.’
A false name, Wyatt thought, or Le Page was gone.
* * * *
39
Across town, two suits from Ethical Standards were sitting across from Lyn Rigby in one of the station’s interview rooms. Last night everyone had said, ‘Good result, Lyn,’ but now the whispers were flying.
‘The shooter’s been described as tallish, thinnish, tanned or olive skin, wearing a suit. Ring any bells, sergeant?’
‘Why should it?’ Rigby demanded. She was tired; the air was stale and sweaty. ‘I wasn’t there. It’s Outer Eastern’s case.’
Friday, early evening, and all Rigby wanted to do was go home. She contemplated her job, her mortgage and the men who ran her life. When you happen upon treasure worth millions, you dream in the millions. It would be hard going back to the reality of her paycheck, only the passing of the years and a stingy pension ahead, and one measly bearer bond for £25,000 to pad it out. That’s if she managed to avoid the sack—or prison. No one was saying ‘good result’ any more.
‘You don’t know anyone like that?’
‘Everyone knows someone like that.’
‘You put away a hitman two years ago.’
‘Hitman? The guy was a drunk, hired by another drunk to shoot his wife. That’s the extent of my knowledge of hired killers.’
‘You’d want Edward Oberin dead, wouldn’t you, sergeant?’
Rigby supposed it was an angle she’d investigate if she were one of the dogs in Ethical Standards. She’d been the arresting officer, running her own operation, wanting to interrogate Oberin without a lawyer present. A lawyer who didn’t exist. They’d have listened to the interview tape, leaned on Whelan.
‘Why would I want to kill Outer Eastern’s prisoner?’
‘Oberin implicated you in the theft of treasury bonds worth millions of pounds sterling.’
Rigby knew that your body could betray you, but couldn’t recall what the indication of a lie was—something about glancing off to the left, or was it the right? She looked straight ahead.
‘Absolute bullshit,’ she said. ‘Sir.’
‘Why did you arrest him?’
‘I told you already: the Furneaux shootings.’
‘You believed he was the gunman?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t at that stage have GSR or ballistics results.’
‘Yeah, like heaps of people walk around carrying freshly-fired guns every day.’
‘Careful, sergeant.’
She gave them a blank face and tried not to swallow. ‘Plus he was in possession of stolen goods.’
‘Found after you arrested him.’
‘His prints were on the bag and the bonds inside it.’
‘What were you doing there in the first place?’
Rigby figured that outrage was her best tactic. ‘Didn’t you ever operate solo sometimes? Back when you were a proper cop?’
The suits didn’t flinch. ‘According to your statement, you saw Henri Furneaux clearing out various bank accounts—’
Rigby tensed over the desk top between them. ‘The day after his delivery vehicle’s stolen and torched. What does that tell you?’
‘We ask the questions. So, prompted by your suspicions, you followed the brothers out to Jacaranda Park and witnessed an exchange and a doublecross.’
‘Not exactly. I couldn’t see—’
‘You saw two suspects on motorbikes.’
‘One left the scene. Then I heard a couple of shots and was in time to see the second rider drive up to the Mercedes and shoot Joseph Furneaux. Only I didn’t know it was Joseph and I didn’t know Henri was dead on the bridge. All I wanted to do was go in pursuit of the second bike.’ She paused, gave the suits a snooty look. ‘Just as well I did, really.’
‘We’ve heard the radio logs. You weren’t very forthcoming to the dispatcher.’
‘I had a job to do, and I could see witnesses calling it in.’
‘When you arrested Oberin he had nothing in his possession—no gun, cash, drugs, jewellery. No gym bag.’
‘Before he legged it behind the burger place I saw him remove the bag from his bike.’
‘He dumped it in a bin.’
‘Correct.’
‘And when you recovered it from the bin it contained two Bank of England bearer bonds.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oberin claimed there were more than that, a lot more.’
‘Well, he would,’ Rigby said.
‘I put it to you, sergeant, that you accompanied the Furneaux brothers to the park to protect an investment and it went pear-shaped.’
Rigby was shocked. She hadn’t expected this tack. ‘No way. Abs
olutely not.’ She stabbed her chest. ‘I’m the only one who showed any gumption in this case. And you can tell my boss I said that.’
‘All right, how about this. You were running an investigation that no one sanctioned or believed in and when you found a gym bag crammed with bearer bonds worth millions of dollars you thought you’d reward yourself.’
