by Garry Disher
Plus books, CDs, shelves of them. Quality furniture, rugs and lights. Tyler felt weird, standing there in the quiet and calm. He felt obscurely uncool; wrong-footed by Wyatt’s apartment. He was moved to trash the place as he searched. There was little other satisfaction to be had, no footie poster on the wall, no beers in the fridge.
Nothing but an unlocked safe. No bills or other paperwork, no photos, birth certificate, letters or postcards. Wyatt was a man without a history, a disquieting image in the corner of Tyler’s eye.
He settled down to wait. Took out one of Ma’s pistols and snapped the safety off.
An hour passed. Two. Tyler fixed a snack, sank half a bottle of vodka, tried to be patient. Jerked off half-heartedly; snoozed for a while.
When he wasn’t doing those things he collated his grievances. One, Wyatt warning him off. Two, Ma warning him off. Three, Wyatt and his pals dropping out of sight. Four, the jeweller guys getting topped before he could squeeze a reward out of them.
Fuckwad losers, the lot of them. Whereas he, Tyler Gadd, was going to be the guy who got the guy who shot Eddie Oberin inside a courthouse.
There was a knock on the door. Tyler jumped. He crept down the hallway, put his eye to the peephole and saw the chick.
* * * *
42
On the side street in Glen Iris, Wyatt stood on the low-pitched veranda roof and prised off Rigby’s attic air vent. He ducked, expecting trouble, when the rusty screws screeched free of the rotting frame, but the street was tomblike. Saturday morning. The inhabitants were at Ikea and Mitre 10.
He slipped into the ceiling cavity. Stale, dusty, and the joists creaked. He crept with a small torch between his teeth to the trapdoor and opened it. This was an old, high-ceilinged house and he knew that once he’d lowered himself out of the attic there’d be no easy way back up again.
He landed with a thud that reverberated through the floor and walls, and froze. Nothing stirred. Rigby would have set the door and window alarms when she left the house, so he went searching for the terminal box, finding it beside the main junction box in the hallway. The alarm system was wired into the phone system, and there was also a battery backup in case of a power failure, so he couldn’t risk turning the power off to disarm it. But he could trick the unit by flattening the battery. He identified the battery circuit and then scouted around for something to wire into it. In the end he used a cordless razor from the bathroom. When the battery was flat, he closed the main circuit breaker then disconnected the phone wires. Now, if it came to it, he’d be able to walk out of the front or back doors without setting off the alarm.
Time to hunt. He checked drawers and cupboards first, then moved on to common hiding places. There were no hidden skirting-board compartments, nothing under the cistern lid or in the freezer, and the curtain rods were solid wood, not hollow. The house was exactly what it seemed to be, the home of a woman with no life beyond her work.
But she was a cop. She would know the concept of hiding in plain sight. Also, he realised he’d gone about his search as though looking for something bulky, like wads of cash or bunched jewellery. Paper was flat. He refined his search, lifting rugs and carpets, checking files, riffling through the reams of printer paper on her desk.
Then he told himself that bonds can be rolled into tubes—and there it was, inside the rubber-stoppered chrome leg of her retro kitchen table. A bond with a face value of £25,000. If she’d hidden others in the house, he couldn’t find them. He slipped it inside his sleeve and sat down to wait. She would still be thinking about that phone call from the Herald Sun. There was a good chance she’d be back.
Twenty minutes later he heard the front door and she was hurrying into the kitchen. He observed the usual little jerk of shock and waited while she said what everyone said: ‘Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?’
Her gaze went to the hallway, the keypad and the table. She looked tense and addled, her hair scraped back, her pants and jacket wrinkled. There was a file under her left arm, a briefcase in the other hand. Wyatt showed her the pistol. ‘I want you to sit. I want you to concentrate.’
She sat.
‘I came for the bonds,’ Wyatt said, to get that out of the way.
‘What bonds? Who are you?’
‘You know exactly who I am. Eddie would have told you.’
Her eyes slid a little. ‘Maybe.’
‘The bonds?’
Contradictory emotions played across Rigby’s face. ‘I don’t have any bonds. Everyone’s been saying I do but I don’t.’
Wyatt fished the bond from his sleeve. She closed her eyes.
‘Let’s start again.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Where are the other bonds?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Wyatt let it pass. ‘What happened on Thursday night?’
Rigby examined the worn linoleum floor. Wyatt racked the pistol and it sounded loud and final in the little room. Rigby jerked. She swallowed. ‘I was following Henri Furneaux and his brother.’
‘And?’
She sighed. ‘There were two bikes, two riders. One got away with the ransom money. Eddie killed the jewellers and would have got away with the bonds if he hadn’t fucked up.’
‘Was the other rider a woman?’
‘No idea.’
‘Have you heard the name Khandi Cane?’
Rigby snorted. ‘Some name. No.’
‘Alain Le Page?’
‘The courier? What about him?’
Her tone was indifferent but her fingers, resting on the file in front of her, went tense. Wyatt reached over and slid the file towards him across the table. He opened it and there was a photograph of Le Page’s bony features, together with an e-mail from Interpol and printouts from Web editions of The Times, the Evening Standard and the Herald Tribune. Wyatt checked the e-mail date: Rigby had received it that morning. He scanned it: Le Page’s address in France, and a note to say that he’d been seen in the company of members of the Russian mafia.
Pocketing the e-mail, Wyatt said, ‘Tell me about him.’
‘Are you going after him?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Tell me about Le Page.’
‘He shows up a few times a year, couriering legitimate precious stones and settings, but we think he also brings in stolen gear.’
Wyatt scanned the newspaper clippings, one hand on the pistol aimed at her chest. ‘You think Le Page knifed the courier?’
She shrugged.
‘Explain the bond hidden in your table leg.’
‘So I stole it. So what?’
Wyatt’s heart skipped and his mind raced. ‘Are you under investigation?’
‘No.’
Wondering how much time he had, he said, ‘Where are the other bonds?’
‘There were no others.’
The way she was slumped, one wing of her jacket was open. Wyatt fired, the pistol bullet plucking through the fabric and she shrieked and pushed back in the chair and fell to the floor, holding herself tightly. He tracked her with the gun, rising from his chair and leaning across the table. She was white and shocked. ‘I’ll ask again,’ he said. ‘Where are the other bonds?’
* * * *
43
It wasn’t until lunchtime that Khandi got to Wyatt’s apartment complex in Southbank, there on some back street that had once been warehouses and light industry. According to Eddie, Wyatt lived on the first floor of Building D, apartment 6, blue door. Three other buildings just like it faced a courtyard, and that’s where Khandi headed, feeling like shit, even if she was dressed like a fucking Sunday School teacher. A new look but old habits: last night she’d scored outside the King Street clubs and hadn’t got to bed until four in the morning.
Stationed on a courtyard bench with a fat paperback and Fanta in a plastic bottle, sandals off, bare legs in the warm air, toes wriggling on the cool grass, she saw Eddie in her mind’s eye, mouldering in the morgue. He’d thrown it all away, the swe
et, deceitful, knucklehead. But gunned down in cold blood? He didn’t deserve that. Khandi’s grief was boundless. The love she’d shared with Eddie had been a wondrous thing. And cocksucking, motherfucking, retro hood Wyatt had stolen it away from her.
The lunch hour passed. Khandi was all but invisible. People assumed, she lived in one of the buildings facing the courtyard, or worked in a nearby office. She was joined for a while by a young woman with a phone clamped to her ear. ‘Where are you? I’m outside. Can you see me? By one of the benches.’ Who fucking cares? thought Khandi, watching the woman wave and cross to one of the other buildings.
Later a young guy walked past with a dog, let it crap on the path near Khandi’s foot, and walked on. ‘Aren’t you going to clean that up?’ said Khandi, incandescent with rage.
‘Fuck off,’ the guy said.
Khandi fingered the Beretta and counted to fifty. Then a couple of students sat for a while on a nearby bench, clutching hands, full of angst. Apparently their situation was complicated: there was another person involved, and this person would feel hurt if she found out. Khandi shook her head. The solution was simple: either they got up a threesome or went at it guilt-free.
An old geezer came tapping along with a stick, weighed down by Safeway groceries. She watched him lift his gammy leg up the shallow steps to the front entrance of Wyatt’s apartment building and pause at the keypad. Both of his hands were occupied. Khandi read his thoughts: first he’d have to place his shopping on the ground in order to enter the access code, then pick up his shopping again, but that would mean bending down twice, and could his stiff and crumbling spine and hips stand the pain?
Khandi slipped her sunnies to the top of her head and materialised at his side, carrying her Fanta, keys jangling reassuringly in her fist. ‘May I help you?’
He turned to her and saw a young woman with a beautiful smile. Beautiful eyes, too. Was she the one from the fifth floor? They came and went, these young women. Someone would snap this one up sooner or later: she was delightful, rather like his daughter, his daughters-in-law, even his late wife in her early years. And then an extraordinary thing happened. A sultry light came on in her eyes, her breasts appeared to swell and her whole being seemed to lap at him.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, letting her take the shopping from his gnarled hands. Dazed, he entered the access code. She watched with a smile of encouragement and he was disconcerted to see that she was a pleasant young woman again. The siren call was gone. Had it ever been there?
‘Let me help you into the lift,’ she murmured.
‘Thank you.’
He pressed the button for the third floor, so Khandi pressed four. When he got out, she stayed on, smiling at him as the doors closed. She exited on the fourth floor and walked back down the stairs to the first floor.
She encountered no one in the corridor. Apartment 6, blue door. She examined the door, using all of her senses. No sounds, no smells, but the eye-level peephole was lit from within. Wouldn’t Wyatt switch off lights and draw curtains if he went out?
Some kind of animal awareness crept over Khandi. Checking both ways along the corridor, she drew the Beretta and clamped the barrel inside the empty Fanta bottle. Then she knocked, the makeshift silencer pressed beside the peephole, where it couldn’t be seen. Presently she heard the faint susurrations of someone walking to the door and pausing to see who’d knocked. The peephole went dark, a head, an eye, blocking the light. Khandi fired through the door. She heard Wyatt drop with a slack, bony thump.
She dismantled the silencer, shoved bottle and Beretta into her bag, and strolled out of the building. It was over now. Time to retrieve the money and start again. As she was thinking these things, she collided with an older guy in a suit. Carrying a black bag, he was one of those brisk, clipped and combed doctor/lawyer/ CEO types who paid to have sex with her. He was saying into his cell phone, ‘Lydia? Doctor Lowe. I’m here to change your dressing.’
Another pointless mobile phone call. Khandi was about to curse him for bad manners when he said, ‘And when Wyatt comes back we’ll move you.’
Khandi went still. She tried to join the dots: ‘Lydia’ and ‘dressing’. ‘Wyatt’. The bitch hadn’t died in her car; Wyatt had her stashed in his apartment. So who was lying behind the blue door? Maybe I only winged her just now, Khandi thought, the titless fucking dried-up ice-queen cunt. In which case she’d have warned the doctor guy, except he didn’t look worried.
Khandi shrugged. Wrong door, civilian casualty. Swift and fluid, she pushed in hard behind the doctor as he finished keying in the access code. ‘It’s a gun,’ she murmured.
He froze, halfway through the door.
‘Take me up to Lydia.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘And we’ll wait for Wyatt to come home.’
‘Who are you? What on earth are you talking about? You want money? Drugs? I have about fifty dollars in my wallet and a few painkillers in my bag.’
‘Tempting,’ said Khandi, ‘but no.’
She could feel his fear through the pistol barrel hard against his spine. ‘If you do what I say,’ she said, ‘you won’t get hurt. You always call before you enter the building?’
‘Why should I—’
A tiny resurgence of courage in his voice. To cancel it she ran the barrel down the crack of his arse and poked it in under the base of his balls. He gasped and began a jerky dance of fear. ‘This is why,’ she answered.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘Let’s start again. You call before entering the building. Then what?’
‘Er, I call again when I’m inside, to reassure them that no one followed me in.’
‘Okay, do it, but tricks or tough-guy bullshit will get you nowhere. I’ll shoot you in the spine and cripple you for life, then shoot my way into the apartment.’
The doctor was trembling again. His fingers shook as he worked the keys of his phone. ‘Lydia?’ he said. ‘All clear, coming up now.’
They entered the lift. ‘Push the button,’ Khandi said, teasing the guy’s hole with her pistol.
He pressed eight. Eight? Was he trying something on? Her mind raced. No, the little shit was way too scared. Wyatt must have two boltholes in the same building. The neatness and simplicity incensed her. She smacked the pistol against the doctor’s skull for a while. So who the fuck had she just shot?
Wyatt. Had to be. She felt a surge of emotion. She’d plug old Lydia, then check it out.
* * * *
44
Lydia had stuck to Wyatt’s plan, stashing the mobile phone beside the bed when she rested, in the pocket of his thick robe whenever she moved around the apartment in the mornings and evenings, and in the pocket of her Levi jacket during the day. She was weaning herself off the robe. It made her feel like an invalid and that would delay her recovery. Besides, it aroused troubling sensations, the friction of the thick cotton pleasing, as though Wyatt was wrapping himself around her. She wanted him. It was more than attraction: she was like him in fundamental ways. Which was why she didn’t want to be involved with him. A simple fear trumped everything: he’d get himself killed one day.
When the doctor called on the mobile, she uncoiled from the sofa and crossed to the window. She looked down. There he was, in the courtyard, short and misshapen in the angled perspective. A woman was standing near him, and, as Lydia watched, the woman swung around and stared at Lowe’s back.
That bothered Lydia. She watched the woman follow Lowe to the entrance. Eddie’s girlfriend? Lydia felt afraid and her eyes darted around the apartment. All of that fear was confirmed when the phone rang, the landline phone. The signal to run.
Lydia dithered, her heart hammering. She should warn Wyatt. She should get out.
Self first, Wyatt later. She couldn’t risk the corridor, the stairs or the lift. That left the balcony, and Lydia slipped through a gap in the sliding door. A quick glance told her she couldn’t climb down, and the adjacent balconies
were at least three metres away, well beyond jumping distance.
But there was no other way out. She looked again. The balcony on the left was cluttered with pot plants and someone was at home, she could see a net curtain wisping in and out of the doorway, stirred by a breeze. The balcony on the right was empty and the sliding glass door had the implacable look of locked doors everywhere.
Panicked, she ran inside, racing from room to room. She lifted each mattress, but the bed bases were bolted to the frames and would be difficult to manoeuvre.
She discounted the chairs, the tables, the desk. There was nothing else. Maybe a broom handle?
