by Garry Disher
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the guy said, getting to his feet.
Leah poked Trask. ‘Shoot him.’
‘Like you’ve got a gun,’ the guy said.
Trask reached under his shirt and pulled out his licensed .38.
‘Let me rephrase that,’ the guy said.
Trask stared at him, Leah stared at him. Then Leah, a touch of humour in her voice, said, ‘Did you do any homework for this job, or did you just wander in off the street?’
Silence. The guy seemed to come to a decision. Finally he shrugged and said, ‘I always do my homework.’
‘Yeah? Prove it.’
‘I know you’re the agent selling this place.’
‘You’ve been watching me?’
‘Yep.’
‘What else do you know about me?’
‘I know who your uncle is.’
That surprised them. Trask nearly shot the guy then. ‘Does he know who you are?’
‘Doubt it.’
Leah brooded on that. ‘When you’re watching someone,’ Leah said, ‘how do you do it?’
‘I use my car.’
‘Moron,’ said Trask. ‘One day someone’s going to think, strange car, guy sitting in it, better call the cops or write down the plate number.’
‘Hasn’t happened yet.’
Leah looked the man up and down. ‘Are you good at what you do? I don’t mean the preparation, which clearly you’re crap at. Picking locks, getting through windows and up drainpipes?’
‘Best north of Brisbane.’
Trask eyed him, too, noting the slight build, the upper-body strength. He said, ‘You need better intel.’
And so they put Gavin Wurlitzer to work. Leah fed him the information, Trask monitored the police radio, and so far they’d made a hundred grand between them. Trask paid off his Kawasaki and his steroid debt, took Leah to expensive restaurants and had saved almost twenty grand.
And now it was time to pull the plug on the guy.
Trask drank his coffee and waited and thought. Leah liked to say Trask shouldn’t think, thinking was bad for him. But sometimes he was pretty sure it was good for him, and right now he put some thought into Leah, her uncle, the painting and the New York lawyer. He’d liked Rafi Halperin, but then the client had flown to Australia and sent Rafi back to New York.
Finally it was midnight. Letting himself into the garage, Trask gloved up, removed a blue tarpaulin from the Jeep and left the house. He watched and listened briefly, then crossed the dewy grass to a dark corner beside the back fence, where the light was a tricky play of moon shadow, nearby street lamp and shapeless forms: the shed, a jacaranda tree, the fence itself.
At one o’clock he sensed rather than heard Wurlitzer arrive. Then he spotted the guy, a crouched shape darting down the side path from the driveway. Trask waited. He heard tearing sounds, Wurlitzer removing strips of sticky tape from a roll and pasting them over the glass above the back door handle. Before Wurlitzer could break the glass, Trask stepped from the shadows and shot him in the side of the head.
A faint pop and hiss and Wurlitzer dropped without a sound.
Trask went to work. He rolled Wurlitzer onto the tarp, hosed the blood from the door and the grass, knowing both areas would dry swiftly, loaded the body into the Jeep and drove to a tangled, untrodden corner of a wooded area near Eumundi. He buried Wurlitzer, drove back and put the tarp and his clothes through a laundromat in Tewantin.
Almost called in on Leah, tell her it all went okay, but she’d bite his head off, so he went home. On the way he dumped the tarp, the gloves and his clothing at several separate charity bins. Wurlitzer wouldn’t be found any time soon.
When he was, the narrative would go something like this: a man like Wurlitzer, with convictions for burglary and sexual assault, had enemies who’d finally caught up with him.
9
Wyatt used his Sandford ID to stay in a Gold Coast motel, used it again to hire a Budget Mazda on Saturday morning, saying he’d need the car for two weeks. Dressed in a lightweight suit, shirt and tie, he headed north to Noosa, where he drove around to familiarise himself briefly before parking along a side street in Noosaville. He headed down to the river and then along Gympie Terrace until he spotted RiverRun Realty, in a block of shops opposite a stretch of lawn set with palm trees and outdoor exercise machines. Mad people toiling by in Lycra. The street on one side, mangroves, boat hire shacks and the river on the other.
He used a convenience store payphone to call Leah Quarrell. She named a cafe, but he said no, figuring that a man who walks into a real estate office draws less attention than a man who meets a woman in a cafe. People wondering about their relationship, whether one or both had something to hide. People wondering about him. He didn’t want anyone thinking about him at all.
‘Your office,’ he said.
She gave him directions and he strolled up and down the river for ten minutes, looking for unusual activity at RiverRun Realty, then walked in. A small waiting area, set with chairs, coffee table and magazines, a receptionist at a desk in the corner. Potted ferns and a young woman standing at the entrance to a short corridor at the rear.
She was mid- to late-twenties, small, slim, dressed in a sleeveless cotton top, a knee-length skirt and sandals with heels: an expensive look, which Wyatt put down to the work she did. Saturday would be one of her busiest days, showing clients around, attending auctions. Her blonde hair was pulled tightly back, her face was narrow, her teeth angled, reinforcing an impression of sharpness, tension and angularity, as if she lived on her nerves. Or she’d been stripped of flesh by exercise and dieting.
Then she was flowing smoothly across the room, offering her hand. Wyatt shook, the contact of her fingers brief, cool, firm. For the benefit of the receptionist she offered a huge smile and said, ‘Mr Warner, how nice to put a face to the name.’
Immediately releasing her grasp, she turned sharply on her heel. ‘Let’s talk in my office.’
The receptionist ignored the familiar routine but eyed Wyatt covertly. Wyatt could feel it, an assessment, and although he wore the suit, and had mustered a genially neutral look, just another businessman and easily forgotten, it didn’t work. She caught his eye, saw the hardness there, swallowed and returned feverishly to her keyboard. Her phone rang. ‘RiverRun Realty, how may I help you?’ she said into her mouthpiece. ‘Mr Reece is on another line. Would you care to hold?’
Mr Reece? Wyatt walked past her, a little on guard now. Leah Quarrell had reached the end of the corridor and stood waiting for him at an open office door opposite a closed one. The light was dim. He tested the air, but nothing tingled in him. He turned for a last look through the plate glass that fronted the street. All he saw was a couple of cars easing over the Gympie Terrace speed bumps. The grass, trees and exercise machines beyond.
All of this took a couple of seconds, a reassurance. Then he was in Quarrell’s office, closing the door, and she was standing right there in front of him, saying, ‘So you’re Wyatt,’ a faint challenge in her voice. ‘Uncle David’s been telling me about you for years.’
Wyatt had nothing to say to that. All he thought was: too many people associated with this job know my real name. ‘Who is Reece?’
‘My boss.’
‘I thought your uncle owned the business.’
‘Silent partner,’ Quarrell said. ‘Mr Reece is the respectable face of the business, okay? He doesn’t know about my uncle or how we’re related or what I do for him. He’s just a nice old geezer with a heart condition and emphysema.’
She pointed Wyatt to a chrome and leather chair and stepped behind her desk, which was set in the corner, looking out into the room, partly framed by the window. Taking charge like that altered her. Her size put her at a slight disadvantage in the foyer, but here, in her own domain, she was boss. She didn’t have time for questions or time-wasting.
She swivelled in her chair, her eyes intent. There was a folder on her desk. She slid it across to him. ‘F
loor plan and some more photographs, including the security keypad. I had hoped to brief you with my uncle yesterday, but…’ A shrug.
Wyatt heard resentment in the tone. She wants to be front and centre, he thought, not just her uncle’s helper. Using a pen to open the top flap of the folder, he saw interior shots of a house.
‘How did you get these?’
‘Charity function at his house recently,’ she said airily. She frowned, drummed her fingers on the desk, a busy woman. ‘Now. Tactics.’
She had a lot to learn. One, her office might be bugged. Two, he was not her employee. Wyatt stared at her. David Minto had made it his business to know taxi drivers, waiters and office clerks; accountants, doctors and real estate agents; lawyers, judges and police inspectors. And burglars, gun dealers and hold-up men. They all provided a service for him, sold him information, influenced outcomes. Just as a stablehand might know which horse had been doped in the 3.30 at Randwick, or a traffic officer how to fix a parking fine, someone like Leah Quarrell would have inside information on the inner world of real estate. But she was also his niece, and possibly thought that gave her certain rights.
‘Later,’ Wyatt said. ‘You have a phone for me?’
Irritated, she opened her top drawer, lifted out a paper sack, and nudged it across the desk. Wyatt found a Motorola with a four-inch screen. He turned it on, ignoring Quarrell’s irritable glance at her watch, and waited for the phone to cycle through its boot-up and finally show a signal.
‘Satisfied?’
Wyatt didn’t answer. Indicating the phone, he said, ‘How long have I got?’
‘It’s vacationing for three weeks.’
In other words, stolen in a burglary, the householder on holiday. And therefore probably a backup phone, stowed away in a drawer.
Wyatt said, ‘I’ll need a place to stay.’
‘I thought you might. Hotel? Apartment? Somewhere self-catering?’
The words rattled like pellets and Quarrell ran her gaze over Wyatt as if his lanky height and ranginess might fit him for one type of accommodation over another.
‘Backpacker hostel?’ she offered, a glint in her eye.
Now she was trying to appear human again, making a joke. ‘I think it best if you played the part of a man here on holiday with your family,’ she went on, more seriously, ‘even if no one claps eyes on the family.’
She swivelled her chair around, found a brochure in a filing cabinet and flicked it to him across the desk.
Wyatt saw the words Noosa Sound Apartments scrolled across the top, and on either side of the centrefold were coloured photographs: the main building set among palm trees behind a white wall, a two-bedroom apartment; a balcony; a tennis court, a swimming pool. Bright, shiny men, women and children sunning themselves by the pool, playing tennis, turning steaks on a public barbecue.
‘I know the property,’ Quarrell said. ‘The units are private, you can come and go without management seeing you, and the husbands and wives do their own thing. The husbands surf, the wives shop or walk along the river. No one will notice that you’re alone. I’ve already booked you a unit.’
‘Won’t I stand out?’
Quarrell shook her head. ‘You’ll attract less attention there than if you were a single man staying in a hotel or guesthouse. When you pick up the key, just pretend the family are waiting out in the car.’
‘Okay.’
‘You can cook for yourself, or there are plenty of cheap restaurants who’ll deliver.’
‘Okay.’
‘But ditch the suit before you check in. You’re on holiday.’
‘Yes,’ Wyatt said.
‘Don’t tell you your job, right?’ said Quarrell. ‘Later this afternoon I’ll show you the target from the water.’ She checked her watch. ‘I have a window at four-thirty.’
Wyatt shook his head. He needed time to eyeball the nearby houses and streets and trees and waterways before he eyeballed just one patch of wall inside just one house. Sunday was out, not a work day. ‘Monday.’
Looking sly and venomous, Quarrell said, ‘And if I’m not free?’
‘Then I’ll hire a boat and look at the place on my own.’
‘No you won’t. You’ll only attract attention to yourself. If you’re with me, bobbing about in a boat with RiverRun Realty painted all over it, no one will look twice at you.’
She was a woman in constant need of placation. As pleasantly as he was able, Wyatt said, ‘If you can find the time to help me on Monday, I’d be very grateful.’
‘My office, mid-morning,’ she said, mollified. ‘Wear the suit. You can be a lawyer representing overseas clients looking to buy high-end Sunshine Coast properties.’
‘Some lawyer,’ Wyatt said.
Wearing jeans and a T-shirt now, Wyatt found Noosa Sound Apartments halfway along a crescent that looped down towards the river. Two buildings, one with river views, the other facing lawns, a swimming pool, palm trees and the road. Next door was a playground for the children of the caravan park between the crescent and the river. The other buildings nearby were houses, a small spread of holiday units and a backpackers hostel.
Driving slowly past the apartments, Wyatt exited onto Noosa Parade and looped around again. Leah Quarrell had sent him to the world of holidaymakers on modest incomes. Even the river view apartments were unobtrusive—albeit worth up to a million each on the open market. Very little through traffic, and plenty of exits for a man on the run: the river itself, the inland waterways, Noosa Parade at either end of the crescent.
He idled outside the apartment block that faced the street, eyeing the pebbly white main wall set with an electronic gate. Through the metal bars of the gate he could see parking bays under the building, and glimpsed the concrete steps that took residents to the upper levels. He looked across the top of the wall, seeing palm tree fronds reaching to the little rear balconies of each apartment. If forced to escape, he could knot sheets and blankets into an escape rope, he supposed; the palms were too small, their tops too flimsy, to shimmy down.
As he watched, curtains stirred in the breeze. Bathing suits and towels flapped on portable drying racks. A woman shook out a bright beach towel and draped it over her railing. On another balcony, a pair of propped feet swayed slowly. Their owner was thinking, perhaps, or listening to music.
The feet reassured Wyatt. Leaving the Mazda parked at the kerb, he plonked a baseball cap on his head and climbed a patch of sloping lawn to the office at the base of the riverside apartments, where a woman was stacking brochures in a wire rack.
Looking diffident, he said, ‘An apartment’s been reserved for me in the name of Sandford.’
‘Oh, yes, Leah just rang to confirm.’
She found the reservation on her computer screen and began to type. While he waited, Wyatt eyed the room: a door to the manager’s apartment on the back wall, a computer with wi-fi for the guests to use, DVDs and tennis racquets for hire, racks of tourist brochures, a library of well-thumbed paperbacks, some in Dutch and German. A small TV tuned to the football, hopes pinned on the Brisbane Lions winning through to the grand final next weekend. He could hear kids hitting a ball around down on the tennis court. A car creeping by on the crescent. Watching it without appearing to, he saw it enter the driveway of a house on the other side of the road. Heard the office computer ping as an email came in.
They were normal sight and sounds. He relaxed minutely, even though he was never fully relaxed. Nothing bad ever happened here, he supposed. Apartment crockery got broken, a toilet might flood, kids forget to return their tennis racquets. The barbecue heroes might fail to clean the outdoor hotplates. That was about all.
The manager pulled a few brochures from the racks but Wyatt stopped her with a smile. ‘The wife and kids are baking in the car,’ he explained. ‘Better get them indoors and unpacked before I’ve got a riot on my hands.’
It disarmed the woman, told her he was a respectable father and husband. About thirty, she wore a plain shor
t-sleeved shirt that showed plenty of tanned skin, plenty of gold on her fingers, wrists and neck. He saw a woman comfortable with her body, in love with the sun and the air on her skin. A Queensland woman. ‘Of course, Mr Sandford,’ she said. ‘Flat 53.’
She handed him an apartment key, an external balcony door key and a remote for the gate. Wyatt returned to his hire car, pressed a button and drove in, joining six other vehicles: three hire cars, two private sedans, a Nissan Patrol with roof racks. He slid into the slot for 53, hemmed in by a concrete column and the Patrol, and climbed the steps to his apartment. He encountered no one. The kids on the tennis court and in the pool paid him no attention.
The outer door to 53 opened onto a balcony set with a glass-topped table, chairs and an air-conditioning unit. Palm tree fronds filtered the light, as if he were stepping into an airy cavern. Below him were the pool, courts and garden, a fence leading to the caravan park, and the river beyond it, barely glimpsed through the intervening trees.
The apartment’s sliding doors were open. He stepped in and felt private, shut away. He liked it. He didn’t want to converse or entertain. The kitchen benches, table and floor tiles gleamed dully. The cleaners had used eucalyptus-scented detergents, pleasant, not too strong.
Down a short corridor to a bathroom and two bedrooms. The main bedroom looked over the rear garden, the crescent and the apartments opposite. Queen-size bed. Two single beds in the second bedroom. The bathroom was small: a shower and a vanity unit.
He unpacked his few belongings: the lightweight summer suit, two pairs of chino pants, a pair of shorts, underwear, a jacket, a couple more T-shirts, the white cotton shirt he’d worn under the suit, a short-sleeved shirt, one tie, one pair of running shoes, one pair of business shoes, the makeup kit.
At four-thirty that afternoon, Wyatt hired a Hyundai from the Budget on Mary Street, saying he’d return it in the morning. Driving to Gympie Terrace, he waited, window down, for Leah Quarrell to emerge from RiverRun Realty. At five-forty there was distant cheering. Perhaps the Lions had won their preliminary final?
Twenty minutes later Quarrell locked up and drove off in a yellow VW. Wyatt followed her to a paint-peeling white bungalow on a side street in Tewantin, further along the river from Noosaville. He watched her park in the driveway, use a key to enter the house. She shut the door and didn’t emerge again. The lawn, bleached by the sun, needed cutting. Faded back issues of the weekly newspaper lay in the grass, on the path, against palings. Wyatt guessed she was scrupulous at work and a slob at home, and wondered what hungers drove her.
