by Garry Disher
Well, that was spot on. Rigby settled her shoulders, jaw and chin against the Ethical Standards officers and said, ‘With respect, this is glass-ceiling bullshit. You guys hate serving alongside female officers, especially those who show initiative and get results.’
‘Nice try, sergeant. According to the paperwork, Henri Furneaux met with a courier from Europe several times a year.’
She kept her face empty. ‘Yes.’
‘Is he presently in this country?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Was it this man who shot Oberin this morning?’
‘I have no idea. Look, it’s late, I need sleep. Can I go?’
‘I don’t think so, do you?’ More sheets of paper were turned and scrutinised. ‘According to the computer logs, you accessed various data bases today.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Oberin told me his partner’s name: Wyatt. I thought I’d see what we had on him.’
‘And?’
‘Whispers. Nothing concrete.’
It went on like that. An hour later she was letting the Ethical officers and a couple of uniforms into her house, insisting, ‘There’s nothing here, I’m telling you that now.’
The inspector cocked his head at her. ‘Are you sure, Lyn? You sound a bit tense to me.’
She checked her agitation. ‘I just think it’s bullshit.’
The inspector relented. ‘Look, you know the drill: if there’s a complaint or an accusation, we’re obliged to follow it up. Otherwise this could come back and bite us on the bum.’
‘You won’t find anything.’
‘In that case, you’re in the clear.’
‘Who’s to say you won’t plant something on me?’
The inspector leaned his bulk over her. ‘Fair warning, sergeant—the more you mouth off, the more inclined I’ll be to dig my heels in.’
‘Sir.’
‘You can wait in the kitchen.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’
She followed them from room to room, edgy, on the verge of cracking. To cover it, she sniped at their hamfistedness and amped up the victim routine. ‘It’s obvious Oberin wanted to get at me,’ she said, to whoever would listen.
Four men searching her house. She couldn’t cover them all. And then the inspector got to the kitchen ahead of her and said, ‘Well, well, well, what have we here?’
For a moment, she could scarcely move or breathe. She found him standing by the table.
‘Sergeant Rigby?’ he said.
Thank God. It was the Furneaux paperwork he’d found. Don’t fold now, she told herself. Keep up the stance. ‘So what?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve been working the case in my own time. My other work doesn’t suffer.’
‘Lyn, Lyn, Lyn...’
‘What, what, what? Everyone takes files home.’
‘Not everyone.’
‘So sue me. Anyway, it’s a year’s work down the gurgler and I still don’t know what they were up to.’
The Ethical officer put the files to one side and began to sift through her e-mail and Internet printouts. ‘You have been busy.’
‘So?’
He waved a newspaper story at her. ‘You think the bonds came from a street robbery in London?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You think the courier brought them in?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re full of maybes. Okay, back to the station,’ the inspector said.
Rigby folded her arms. ‘Not me. Tomorrow’s a work day and I’m going to bed.’ She paused. ‘Soon as I clean up after you lot.’
‘Knock it off, Lyn. We had to investigate, you know that.’
‘Yeah, but this kind of thing sticks to you. Always there on your record.’
She was fishing. The inspector sighed. ‘Yeah, all right, Lyn, we’ll mark it “cleared, no further action”.’
* * * *
40
Saturday morning. Wyatt woke to find Lydia lying beside him, asleep. There was a little dried blood on the pillow, but her colour was good. He watched her and he touched her upper arm. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t snapped awake the moment she’d crept into his bed. How long had she been there?
Why was she there? Desire? Insecurity? Maybe it was a simple longing for closeness, one of those feelings he wanted to act on but rarely did because he didn’t understand its meaning. It was unnerving. He found himself leaning over her. She was breathing steadily and all of the strain was gone from her face. He stroked back a comma of hair caught in her mouth, revealing the down on her cheek and shapely lips, the corners tipped up as if in a smile. Thinking the tiny, chocolate-brown spot beside her earlobe was an imperfection that perfected her, he put his lips to it, and, after that, didn’t know what to do.
Flustered, he eased out of the bed and left the room. Using the kitchen phone he said, ‘Doc, she needs to be moved today.’
‘The private hospital we talked about?’
‘And her bandage needs changing,’ Wyatt said.
‘I’ll be there at lunchtime.’
‘You know the drill.’
‘I know the drill,’ said the doctor testily. ‘I call her mobile if the coast is clear, the apartment phone if it’s not.’ He paused. ‘You owe me now, Wyatt.’
Wyatt terminated the call before Lowe could ask him to steal the John Brack that was hanging on his wife’s bedroom wall.
Lydia entered the kitchen with a sweet, sleepyhead look hinting at embarrassment. She touched his wrist as she passed on her way to the sink, where she filled a glass from the tap. ‘Sleep well? I slept like a log—no painkiller, either.’
Wyatt nodded, his mind racing. There were proprieties he didn’t understand, and had never been taught, but his instincts kicked in. It seemed unfair to say nothing; besides, he liked finding her next to him. He should be so brave.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t wake up when you came in. In other circumstances...’
She went red. ‘It’s okay.’
Wyatt shifted on his feet. ‘The doctor’s coming later this morning. He’ll take you to a private hospital.’
‘Where are you going?’
He stared at her for a beat of time. ‘To see the cop.’
‘Take me with you.’
‘No.’
There was a pause in which Lydia stared at Wyatt as if realising he couldn’t offer her any satisfactory resolutions. ‘I want to.. .When I’m better, maybe we could hook up together.’
Wyatt knew they’d recognised each other’s aptitudes. Complementary ones, especially for the kinds of heists that needed a woman’s face and touch. But she was ill. He needed to find another base, and this current job hadn’t yet run its course.
Only seconds elapsed but they were seconds too long. Lydia looked past him at the window and the city glistening beyond the cold glass. She was looking into the future, Wyatt guessed, and back at all that had been lost. It unmoored her. He wondered what he could do about that. He saw the inescapable truth in the old saying that you’re bound forever to those you save. She came close, reached up and kissed him quickly, soft lips on his mouth. Then she walked to her room and shut the door with a click so quiet and final it was like a slam.
Wyatt swallowed. He gathered the .32 and his remaining cash, sets of false ID and the deeds to both of his apartments. He pocketed the pistol and the cash, but addressed the ID to himself care of poste restante at the GPO in Sydney, and wrote brief letters of instruction to the firms that would broker the sale of the apartments. Then he drove away in his old car and posted the letters at a box on a side street before heading away from the river.
He parked near the Outer Eastern police station and used the payphone of a nearby 7-Eleven, asking for Sergeant Rigby, not knowing her first name. He watched the front and side doors of the police station as the officer on the other end of the phone shouted to someon
e, who shouted to someone else, and the receiver was apparently bashed and knocked flying. Then the voice said, ‘Putting you on hold.’
Wyatt waited, hoping that Rigby worked on Saturday mornings, and was in the station. He thought about the detective, not surprised that she was a thief. As he saw it, incompetence and corruption were the main forces that drove humankind. All that interested him was what Rigby might do in the next little while. If she still had the bonds, she had four choices: hold onto them, sell them, destroy them or enter them into evidence.
The voice came back to Wyatt: ‘Transferring you now.’
Rigby had the voice of a woman habitually suspicious and offended. ‘Who is this?’
‘Jeff Grofield, Herald Sun,’ Wyatt said. ‘I wondered if I could ask a few questions regarding Thursday night’s shooting.’
‘How did you get my name?’
‘Your neighbours said you’d be difficult.’
‘My neighbours? Fuck—’ and the line went dead.
Wyatt was in his car with the motor running when the detective came running from the building. He stayed a few car lengths behind her silver Golf, but she was intent on what was ahead of her, not behind. Struggling to keep up, he tailed Rigby to a street in Glen Iris. Running from Burke Road, it was no more than one hundred metres from end to end. This part of the suburb consisted of small, older-style brick houses along narrow streets, backed by alleyways. The uniform colours were green and terracotta—the gardens, the tiled roofs—but among the old cottages were boxy new cement and glass houses showing a rolladoor garage to the world like a blinded eye. A world of glum professionals jealous of their modest wealth, thought Wyatt, slowing at the entrance to the street, noting where the Golf came to rest. There would be security systems on every door and window.
He U-turned and parked on the other side of Burke Road. If he had to make a run for the freeway, this would save him a few seconds. He got out and crossed the road, hovering at a bus stop to watch Rigby’s movements. The detective’s house was the shabbiest. Rigby stood in the weedy driveway, glaring at her own front door, then both ways along the street, hands on her hips. Finally she tried raising the neighbours, but no one was at home. She accosted a couple of builders; they shook their heads.
Wyatt watched, and when she climbed back into the Golf and drove away, he walked to the bottom end of her little street. There was a whiff of renovation in the air, the dump bins crammed with builders’ rubble. No dogs threw themselves at him as he passed by. The only sounds were the distant freeway, a tram on Burke Road and the blaring radios of the carpenters and bricklayers. At the end he saw, past a couple of iron bollards, the intersection of two alleyways. A short distance along one of them was the entrance to another street. Here was an alternative way out, should he be cut off from his car.
Then he prowled along the alley that ran behind the woman’s house. Cat piss. Garbage. Stopping at Rigby’s back fence he peered through a gap between planks and saw patio doors, curtains drawn across the glass. Checking that he couldn’t be seen, Wyatt climbed over the fence and dropped onto rock-hard dirt. She’d been trying to grow a creeper. The creeper was dead; the soil was dead. That was her life right there, Wyatt thought dispassionately: long hours, overtime, fatigue and miserable expectations. No wonder she’d been quick to pocket the bonds.
He eased himself onto the decking. The boards were rotting but didn’t shift or creak. The only furniture was a deck chair, the torn, sun-faded canvas patterned with palm trees, cocktails and sunglasses. If Rigby had dreams, they were weathering to nothing on this forlorn patio.
Brick walls, tiled roof, overgrown bushes and the drooping branches of demoralised suburban eucalypts. Wyatt skirted the place once, keeping close to the walls and the whispery touch of a few ferns, examining the doors and windows. The burglar alarms were basic but effective, arming entrance and exit points rather than the rooms within. Siren box high on the side wall. He crept around to the back yard, where he was screened by the high fence and oleander bushes, and glanced up at the roof. Fixed to the wall just under the peak was a dark shape: an air vent into the attic. He doubted it would be alarmed; he doubted there’d be sensors in the attic.
Time to go in.
* * * *
41
Tyler Gadd, a nice little buzz on, was also contemplating a break-in.
He rejected the roof of Wyatt’s apartment building, not having a helicopter to hand; also the various balconies and windows, not having a ladder, a rope, or drain-pipe skills. As far as Tyler could see, entry was only via the underground car park, for which he didn’t have an electronic gizmo, or the front door, for which he’d need the keypad code.
Maybe he could walk in behind one of the residents. He sat in the courtyard common to the four apartment blocks and waited. Ten a.m. Eleven. No one went in or out. Then a woman returned from walking her dog. Instead of keying in her access code, she stood there foursquare with the dog, watching him.
‘Do you live here?’ she demanded.
‘Yeah. I—’ said Tyler.
‘No, you don’t,’ the woman said. ‘Piss off.’
She knelt and undipped the dog, which had short hair, a ropy spine, and teeth.
‘Bitch,’ muttered Tyler, moving off toward the street.
He returned ten minutes later. A young chick with a daypack came along, Chinese, some kind of slanteye anyway, wearing glasses with black frames, fine black hair that reached down to her tiny butt, discreet gold here and there on her fingers, ears and neck. Where did these Asian kids get the money? Tyler wanted to know. This chick with her swanky apartment, designer jeans, leather pack and iPod. It made him mad. He wondered, as he strolled over, whether it was true, the slit on your oriental female ran east-west, not north-south.
He was behind her as she reached the keypad and then there was an explosive jabber behind him, some guy, boyfriend, brother, waving his arms around. Tyler veered right, heading down the side of the building as if he’d been going in that direction all along.
At the rear of the apartment block he found a small fenced area for garbage and recycling bins. The gate was locked. Tyler moped about for a while, then scouted around for a way in. He tried standing on a water meter at the intersection of the fence and the wall, but it wasn’t high enough. Fed up, he went out into the street to walk around and think it through.
Someone had abandoned a supermarket trolley in the alley beside the laundromat. He wheeled it to the rear of Wyatt’s building, hopped on and hauled himself over the fence.
So far, so good. And there was a rear door—but heavy steel, mounted flush to the wall, and dead-locked.
Tyler thought again. Hoping that he was unobserved, he opened the nearest garbage bin and took out a stinking bundle of rubbish crammed into a black bin liner and fastened with a bright yellow tie. He set it on the ground, untwisted the tie and scattered fists of sodden tissues and a couple of egg shells across the concrete paving, then rested on his heels to wait.
Late morning the door opened and a young guy emerged, cell phone clamped to his ear, two empty milk cartons hooked on the ends of his fingers. He scarcely noticed Tyler, moving in a smooth dance through the door, dumping his milk cartons into his recycle bin, returning to the door, all the while yapping away on his phone in the argot of the middle-class cokehead surfer dude.
‘The bag split,’ interrupted Tyler, indicating the mess at his feet, holding both hands away from his body as if they might be soiled. ‘Need to grab a broom. Hold the door for us?’
The guy complied, straight-arming the door and continuing to speak on his phone. Tyler ducked past, into the building. ‘Thanks, pal.’
‘Awesome,’ the guy said.
Tyler didn’t know what was awesome, his ruse to get inside the building, saying thanks or calling the guy a pal. He ran up an echoing stairwell to the fifth floor before the guy could take stock and wonder who Tyler was and where he lived. He lurked for a few minutes, waiting for silence to settle, then walk
ed down to the first floor and Wyatt’s apartment.
Tyler ran his gaze around the edges, lock, handle and hinges. A guy like Wyatt might spit-paste a hair or a thread on his door to warn of unwanted visitors. Nothing. He took out his picks and one minute later was inside the apartment.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but not this. Four walls full of paintings lit by spots. He squinted at the signatures: John Brack, Mike Brown, John Olsen, Lloyd Rees, Margaret Preston. Nobody he’d heard of. Only one of the paintings made sense, some fucking cups and saucers.
