by Garry Disher
He went downstairs again. He locked the back door behind him, put the key under the bluestone block, and walked around to the front of the house.
A voice demanded, ‘Who are you?’
The woman had just come home. She had a sharp, unhappy face and stiff, chopped white hair. A badge on her overalls said, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ She glared at Wyatt. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m after Sugarfoot. I did knock,’ Wyatt said, ‘then I went to see if he was around the back.’
‘Are you a friend of his?’
Wyatt watched her. She was hostile, but not towards him, so he said, ‘Not exactly. He owes me some money.’
Her lip curled. ‘That would be right. You could try his brother’s place. He said he was going there to pick up a bookshelf. But that was this morning.’ She fished in her pocket for the front door key. ‘If you see him,’ she said, ‘tell him to bring back my Kombi now, or I’m reporting it stolen.’ She slammed the door.
Wyatt left. In Carlton, and again in Footscray, he encountered heavy football traffic. The victors’ cars seemed to ride high in the fast lane and flow with the green lights, streaming ribbons and scarves. The losers were miserably bunched in family sedans. They progressed in frustrating short surges. Glowering fathers slapped at legs in the back seat. Then it began to rain and a car clipped a bus and Wyatt was stalled in banked-up traffic. The city was moving uselessly, resentfully, into Saturday evening.
By six o’clock he was parked in the alley behind Bargain City. The rear door was locked. He walked around to the street entrance. Metal screens secured the door and windows. There were no lights on. All life seemed to be centred on the video shop and the takeaway cafй. Wyatt returned to his car, pursued by gusts of music, film images, vinegar sharp on fish and chips.
He was covering bases. He drove the two kilometres to Ivan Younger’s house. Ivan liked to say, ‘Footscray is where I was born, it’s where I operate from, it’s where I belong,’ as if he saw himself as a godfather living among his people. His sprawling 1950s brick and tile house was set on a large block of land in a street of workers’ cottages. A high bluestone wall, topped with broken glass, surrounded the house and grounds. Above the steel entrance gate was a security camera. Wyatt stayed clear of the gate, guessing that it would be locked. He stood where he could see through to the house. It appeared to be in darkness.
Just then a child appeared on the footpath. She wore a parka and was clumping home from the corner shop on rollerskates. Her movements were clumsy. She needed her arms for balance, but held them tight against her body, supporting milk cartons and a breadstick. Where the footpath dipped to allow car access to Younger’s gate, she began to lose her balance. She stumbled, clown-like, against the gate.
It swung inwards. The girl, clinging to the vertical bars, swung with it, her skates scooting out from under her, milk and bread tumbling out of her grasp. Wyatt watched her fall onto her stomach.
It was awkward, unexpected, painful. She began to cry. Wyatt saw her turn onto her back, sit up, and test her skates and brush at her knees and elbows. Then she got up, gathered the milk and the bread, and continued shakily along the footpath. He watched her go. There was no-one else in the street.
When she was out of sight he watched the security camera for several minutes. It was the sweep-movement kind, but wasn’t moving. He crossed the road, stepped through the gate, and made his way to the house, avoiding the gravel driveway.
He circled the house once, keeping to the shrubs and trees, and then circled it again, testing doors and windows. The window bars and fancy internal wooden shutters made it difficult for him to see in. All the doors were closed. He didn’t touch them. He assumed they were locked. It was frustrating. Ivan Younger lived alone and he might well be in there, shut away peacefully in an inner room.
Wyatt turned his attention to the garage. The door was open, revealing a shabby Kombi van gleaming dully in the light from the distant street. There was no other vehicle. Wyatt put his palm against the Kombi’s engine panel. It was cold. The doors were locked. He tried the door leading from the garage to the house. It, too, was locked.
He stood for a moment, moodily contemplating the fuse box. It was on the wall of the house, next to the garage door. He opened the grey metal cover, revealing the electricity meter. There was just enough light from the street for Wyatt to see that the power disc was not spinning. Ivan Younger was paranoid about security. He had a camera on the gate and there would be alarms and beams inside the house. These used tiny amounts of power, barely more than a trickle, but enough to register on the meter. The alarm system had been turned off.
Suddenly the disc began to spin. Wyatt froze, and ducked into an area of darkness, expecting lights, alarms, shouting voices.
But nothing happened. He crouched, thinking about it, then realised: the lights and alarms had been turned off but the refrigerator would continue to cut in and out.
Certain now, Wyatt returned to the garage. He found masking tape on a shelf next to twine and tins of glue. Then he walked around to the back of the house. Bathroom windows were always the easiest. He taped over the glass, cracked it with a stone, and removed a broken section near the latch. He reached in, turned the latch, and tugged upwards on the bottom half of the window. Nothing. The window had been locked where the two sections met at the middle. All he could do now was remove the rest of the glass and climb through. He hated doing that. It wasted time, and meant a narrow aperture possibly lined with shards of glass.
Inside the bathroom, Wyatt stood and listened. An old-fashioned clock ticked loudly in the hall. From where he stood in the doorway, he heard nothing else and saw no telltale gleam of light in other parts of the house. It all felt wrong.
This was confirmed in the sitting room. He smelt cordite first, very faint, then saw a human shape in the darkness, in an old armchair facing the television set. Hearing nothing, knowing now that no-one was in the house, Wyatt flicked his torch on and off, long enough to see Ivan Younger’s head slumped on his chest.
He crossed the room and felt for a pulse. There was none. He used the torch again. There was no apparent wound either. He began to feel around the hairline, concentrating on the area where the skull is at its thinnest. That’s where he found it, a small patch of crusted blood. Small calibre, Wyatt thought. Someone who knew what he was doing.
****
Thirty-nine
It could’ve been anybody.
If someone had money to spend, skills to offer, Ivan did business with them. He would have made enemies over the years. But Ivan worked from the shop, not his house. Whenever Wyatt had bought goods and information from him in the past, it had always been negotiated at the shop. They’d planned the Frome insurance job at the shop.
The body slumped in the comfortable armchair, the unactivated alarm system, spoke of a visitor, someone known or expected.
Here was one twist following hard on the heels of another, and the link was Sugarfoot. Wyatt speculated, testing explanations. Sugarfoot is unnerved by his footbridge plan and asks Ivan to help him. But Ivan is angry with him, says the wrong thing, and Sugarfoot puts a bullet in him. Wyatt could sense Sugarfoot out there somewhere, too afraid to go to the footbridge, too afraid to go home, but still stewing with skewed logic on all the chances denied him, all the debts he was owed.
Wyatt slipped out of the house and drove to a public telephone and called the safe house. Pedersen answered on the first ring.
‘He didn’t show,’ Wyatt said.
Pedersen was silent. Then he said slowly, ‘Hobba didn’t show here. Anna did, but not Hobba.’
Wyatt tensed. ‘But you told him.’
Pedersen’s voice rose. ‘Couldn’t get hold of him. Been ringing all afternoon. Jesus Christ.’
‘You there?’ he said, when Wyatt didn’t respond.
‘I’ve just been to Ivan Younger’s,’ Wyatt replied.
‘Yeah?’
‘He’s dead. Been shot.’
There was a pause. Wyatt continued, ‘I’d say Sugar has finally flipped.’
‘He had a grudge against Hobba,’ Pedersen said.
‘I’ll get back to you,’ Wyatt said. ‘You and Anna stay put. Don’t let anyone in.’
He got back in the rental car. It was seven o’clock and the football fans, refreshed by hot showers, were now pouring into the city. Music called from car to car, as if a nation were mustering. Young teeth gleamed at Wyatt from the dim interiors of customised Holdens, and stereos throbbed like eager hearts. All he could do was hunt for gaps, brake, crawl along.
The traffic jerked onto Racecourse Road. At the entrance to the Housing Commission flats he turned in and parked the car, angling it for a clear run to the street.
He looked up at the looming towers. Human shapes dreamed in many of the windows, backlit by the blue light of television screens. Curtains were open. It was understandable: no-one to see in, and a perfect view across parkland to the fingering skyscrapers of the city.
As he stood there looking up, two girls went by, watching him covertly, liking his hooked face and his air of controlled energy. One, more daring than the other, said, ‘It’s not for sale.’
He flashed a grin at her, but couldn’t afford to have them remember his face, so he turned and walked away. ‘I don’t bite,’ called the girl to his departing back. He raised his hand.
Once inside the lift, he pulled on latex gloves and put his hands in his pockets. He got off at the eighth floor. When the doors closed behind him, he waited and listened. The heavy air carried the chill of winter, laced with food odours-curry, fried onion, soggy vegetables-and it trembled with cop show sirens and shrill advertisements. He noticed the scratched wood and scuffed walls. Then a door creaked in a breeze and he saw by the number that it was Hobba’s. Light spilled out, onto the grimy corridor floor.
That was bad. He turned to get away from there. A voice said, ‘Excuse me, sir.’
A young policeman had appeared at the bend in the corridor. He stood well clear of Wyatt, his right hand at his revolver butt. He had wary eyes above a smudge of adolescent moustache.
‘Do you live here, sir?’
Wyatt nodded at Hobba’s door, keeping his gloved hands in his pockets. ‘Just calling on a friend,’ he said. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I think you’d better speak to Sergeant Hickey, sir,’ the policeman responded.
‘What happened? Is Rob all right?’
‘Knock on the door, please, sir.’
Wyatt tapped on Hobba’s half-open door, positioning his body to obscure the latex glove. The door swung further open. All Hobba’s lights seemed to be on. The air smelt stale. A print had been pulled off the wall, the telephone stand was overturned, and through the doorway at the end he saw heaped clothing, scraps of paper and empty, dumped drawers. Then a uniformed figure loomed in the hallway, blocking the light, and an irritable voice said, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Behind Wyatt the young policeman said, ‘I found him in the corridor, Sergeant. He says he’s acquainted with the occupant.’
‘Well I never. Acquainted with the occupant.’
Hickey looked searchingly at Wyatt. He was slight, quick-looking, with a face and manner inclined to sarcasm. ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘Just popped around, did you?’
Wyatt shrugged. ‘Well…’
‘What’s your name, sunshine?’
‘Lake,’ Wyatt said. ‘Look, sorry if I barged in on something. I’ll just-’
‘Lake. You got form, Lake?’
‘Me? No way’
‘Didn’t get acquainted with the old Hobba in Pentridge, by any chance?’
‘Not me,’ Wyatt said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You tell me,’ Hickey said. He stood back and motioned for Wyatt to enter the flat. ‘In the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch anything. I mean anything.’
Wyatt was prepared to see Hobba sprawled on the floor, but the kitchen was empty. Every surface had been dusted for fingerprints. Doors and drawers hung open and dirty plates were heaped in the sink. The contents of the refrigerator were scattered over the floor. Wyatt stopped just inside the door, consciously positioning himself so that both cops would have to stand beyond the table, but Hickey prodded his shoulder and said, ‘No, sunshine, other side.’
Wyatt walked around the table. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘I just came around to say hello.’ He was playing the indignant, seedy pal, but the situation threatened to turn bad so he stood loose and alert by the table, gauging distances and angles.
‘Was he expecting you?’ Hickey said.
Wyatt shrugged. ‘Talked to him during the week. Said I might come over tonight.’
‘You didn’t see him earlier today?’
‘No. You looking for him?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Were you around the place earlier, maybe giving it a spring-clean?’
‘No. I told you, I just dropped by now to have a few beers.’
‘Have you got the key to this flat?’
Wyatt looked from one man to the other. The young policeman was guarding the doorway. Hickey stood opposite Wyatt, his hands loose at his sides.
‘A key? No, why?’
‘Watch my lips,’ Hickey said. ‘I’m asking the questions.’
Wyatt made a cowed, sulky face, playing along with this. Hickey watched him for a moment. ‘You don’t look right to me, sunshine,’ he said suddenly. He turned. ‘Does he look right to you, Constable?’
The young policeman straightened. ‘No, Sergeant.’
Hickey swung back to Wyatt. ‘There you have it. Two votes against you. Got any ID, Mr Lake?’
Wyatt said, ‘Not on me, no.’
‘Not on you,’ Hickey said heavily. ‘No driver’s licence, no credit cards, no video library card?’
Wyatt frowned, concentrating, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, no.’
‘How do you get by?’ Hickey said, throwing up his hands. ‘This day and age you can’t go anywhere without ID.’
The young cop was grinning at the performance. It was a mistake: it made him too relaxed. His arms were folded and he was rocking back and forth. His reaction time would be slow. Wyatt concentrated on Hickey. Hickey was enjoying himself but Wyatt knew he would move in an instant if he had to.
Then Hickey changed tack. ‘What kind of car does your fat mate drive?’
Wyatt tensed. He said, trying to stay ahead of Hickey, ‘Last time I heard, he was between cars.’
Hickey scowled. ‘Did you know he’d hired one?’
‘No,’ Wyatt said. ‘I didn’t.’
From the doorway came the young constable’s voice: ‘A Corolla from one of them cheap places.’
Hickey turned, regarded the constable for a moment, then faced Wyatt again. ‘Hired yesterday, in fact.’
‘Fake ID,’ the young cop said. ‘The details don’t check out.’
Hickey said, ‘I’m really grateful to you for filling us in, Cuntstable. Now perhaps you’d like to continue your doorknocking?’
The constable blushed deeply and left the room. A few seconds later, Wyatt heard the front door squeak. He shifted position slightly. ‘Can I go? I can’t help you, don’t really know the bloke.’
‘Sit down,’ Hickey said. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’ He waited while Wyatt, his gloved hands in his pockets, hooked out a chair with his foot and sat in it.
‘What I wonder is, why hire a cheap car when you’ve got enough to buy three new ones.’
‘Wouldn’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t you? Would you know where old Rob got that kind of money?’
Wyatt said, ‘Like I told you, I didn’t know him that well. Just to have a quiet beer with now and then, type of thing.’
Hickey nodded. ‘So you wouldn’t know what he did for a crust?’
‘No.’
‘He’s been inside for armed robbery, did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘Don
’t know much, do you, sunshine? What were you inside for?’
Wyatt said truthfully, ‘Never been in. Got a clean record.’
Hickey took out his notebook. ‘Maybe you could just give me your full name and address and occupation and phone number.’ He curled his lip. ‘Unless, of course, you’re between jobs and places at the moment?’
‘Nothing like that,’ Wyatt said. He gave his name as Tom Lake and recited a false address and phone number. ‘Storeman,’ he said.
‘Storeman. Used to shifting things around, are you?’
Wyatt wished that Hickey would get to the point, about Hobba, or Finn’s safe, or both. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘Is Rob all right?’
‘Rob’s doing badly,’ Hickey said. ‘You could say he got too close to some nylon rope.’
‘What do you mean? Did he hang himself?’
‘Hang himself?’ Hickey said. He laced his fingers together and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I read somewhere once what the human body is worth. Any idea?’
Wyatt said nothing.
‘Bugger all, in fact,’ Hickey said. ‘We’re mostly water and a handful of cheap chemicals. In old Rob’s case, very cheap.’
Wyatt kept silent, watching Hickey.
‘This afternoon we got a report about your mate pulling a gun on some kids outside the lifts,’ Hickey said. ‘We found him with a rope around his neck and ankles like he was a Christmas turkey. If he struggles, he strangles himself.’ Hickey smiled. ‘He struggled.’
Wyatt looked at Hickey neutrally, thinking that Sugarfoot Younger had been learning some nasty habits and was cleverer than he thought. ‘Christ,’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Hickey said. ‘I think it was someone else.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘What interests me is, why go to that sort of trouble if not to extract information? You wouldn’t know anything, I suppose? Didn’t give his place the once-over?’
Wyatt said nothing. This was taking too long. Hickey was watching him sharply, registering his face. ‘I only know him to have a beer with,’ Wyatt said, shifting back in his chair.
