by Garry Disher
Wyatt circled the island a second time. The houses—inner and outer circle alike—were close together. Some were divided by fences, most were not. Some had high, concealing, street-side fences and lockable entryways, others no fence or gate at all. Plenty of trees. Palms, Norfolk Island pines, jacarandas, pointy-leaf tropical. But everything was new here, even the trees. Most wouldn’t bear a man’s weight, and you’d need skill and callused feet to shimmy up a palm tree.
All the while, he was checking out the upper-floor windows. It was a reflex, for a thief. Clerestory windows, wind-out windows, louvres, shutters, dormers. You could make short work of a louvred window with a pair of pliers. Jimmy a shutter, glasscutter a hole in a sash window. Bolt cutters for a wind-out. Others, like Ormerod’s dormer—which he could not see from the road—he’d simply shove open.
He glanced at the house next to Ormerod’s. Viewed from the road instead of the water, the scaffolding was more evident, the builders apparently working on a first-floor extension. Linked iron pipes, boards, ladders, blue tarpaulin flapping in the breeze from the river. He heard an angry clatter as he passed, and ducked, heart hammering, thinking he’d been shot at. But it was only the builders tipping rubble into a dumpbin. Dust rose from the little explosion, drifted, settled.
Wyatt left the island, lingering a while on the bridge, needing a closer look at the water frontage. Most of the houses were built close to the shoreline, limiting them to a strip of pale sand and a narrow lawn with a retaining wall. Some had crammed a swimming pool in there, too. He could see what he’d only heard before, kids splashing.
Every house had a dock: fixed wooden docks reached by wooden walkways, or metal floating docks that rose and fell with the movement of the water, secured by concrete pylon inserts, each with a white pointed top. A pelican would be hard pressed to roost there.
So: would you go in by water or by road?
He spent the afternoon on his balcony, thinking. Below and to his right was the tennis court, two women hitting balls back and forth, and directly below him was the pool, small children splashing, calmer teens sunbaking, absorbed with the flaws and perfections of their own gleaming limbs. And as he sat there, a strange unease settled in him.
Wyatt was not given to self-reflection. One simple impulse governed him: locate an item of value and steal it. Apart from a stint in the army—where he’d stolen a base payroll and sold black-market army supplies—he’d never done anything else. He’d stolen from shops when he was young, stolen cars when he was older, robbed banks and armoured cars in the years since the army. He wasn’t driven by need, or the delight of having things. He was absorbed in the getting. Every job demanded planning, nerve and timing; some demanded skills he didn’t have, obliging him to work with others. A handful had been like this job, Wyatt the thief for hire.
He didn’t like that. In general, he was confident of his ability to determine the best timing, the best ways in and out of a building, while remaining alert for what the main players might be up to behind his back, but he didn’t have a personal connection to this job. He hadn’t located and coveted the painting, it hadn’t entered his dreams. And although he tried to be scrupulous in his dealings with Minto and Quarrell, who knew what grievances drove them?
On the other hand, he needed the job. His other options were diminishing. His brand of thieving was getting more difficult. Only the most complacent banks and security firms relied on older technology, and home alarm systems were becoming more sophisticated. Perhaps he should give thanks that he had a patron like Minto before everything was rendered into dust.
Wyatt stared at the tennis players without seeing them. This glum feeling was a new sensation for him. His life, when it wasn’t fast and furious, was given to planning. Brooding on the next job, concentrating on the how and the when—the what, where and why usually accounted for. He wasn’t used to thinking about what his life might become, a year or ten down the track.
He blinked: one of the women had spotted him and waved. A tennis ball had bounced by her, she’d trotted after it and gracefully bent to scoop it up, and had caught his gaze. There was nothing in the wave, only friendliness, an acknowledgment that they’d both chosen this place to holiday in, but Wyatt, unused to the rhythms of ordinary life, took a moment to return the wave. He knew that was what one did, that not to return the wave would look cold, odd. Still, it wasn’t immediate, his return wave.
But would she remember him five minutes from now? Would she file him away in her mind? She certainly would if he left the balcony right now, so he stayed, feeling uncomfortable, feeling loss. He shifted as if to find the remaining rays of the sun, just a guy on a balcony.
What was that woman’s story?
A marriage, possibly, or marriage and a divorce. Perhaps she was single and the other woman was a close friend. Or she was a lover, or both women were married and their menfolk were out for the day, fishing, surfing. None of that mattered. It was the movement of life. But Wyatt was sitting on a balcony of a holiday flat that he had not found for himself, he wasn’t on holiday and he had neither a regular job nor a house to return to. Unlike the other men and women here.
He contemplated the idea of a counter-world, where he lived in the suburbs and took the train to work every day. Had a family, friends and neighbours. He didn’t get past envisaging a house. He’d had homes. One he mourned had been inland of the coastal town of Shoreham, south-east of Melbourne. He’d lived there for many years until a man came gunning for him and he’d lost everything. Had left it all behind with a short head start, seventy-five thousand dollars and far to run. Back then his life entailed calmly pulling two or three big robberies a year, working for four to eight weeks and living on the proceeds until they ran out or the itch got him again. He’d been free to pick and choose. Work had been a challenge, but he’d known how to cut through the fog of detail that surrounded every job.
That old feeling had gone. He certainly didn’t have it for this job. He wondered if he’d ever feel settled again. He needed a big score. With a big score under his belt he could buy a house where no one would find him and always pull his jobs far from there. He’d be a fly-in, fly-out thief—and a shame it was that no one was with him right now to appreciate the quip. Anyway, that’s what he’d like. It would cure the unease he was feeling, here, far from home. Wherever that was.
Wyatt needed to anchor himself to the job. He got out the touchscreen phone and turned on wi-fi. Two networks: the apartment block itself and the Wyuna Cove holiday flats on the other side of the crescent.
Rather than show his face more than necessary to the staff of the Noosa Sound apartments, Wyatt crossed the road to the Wyuna Cove office and asked for the password. He returned to his apartment and logged on.
Half an hour later, he knew that Thomas Ormerod’s painting was probably by David Teniers the Younger, 1610–90. His auction results ranged from eighteen thousand US to almost a million pounds sterling, with the majority between a third of a million and half a million. This particular painting wasn’t listed. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t authentic, or worth stealing—or dying for.
15
On Wednesday morning, Wyatt walked along the river again, thinking. Joggers passed him, running grimly. Cyclists bullied past, undeviating. He tensed each time, waiting to see what they had in store for him, but they powered on mindlessly as if he didn’t exist.
Then the balmy air and glistening water worked on his nerves and he stopped to look at the beauty and ordinariness of life along a waterway. Pelicans and oystercatchers; barbecue shelters and wooden bench seats overlooking the river; a pirates’ playground; a vast, clawing Moreton Bay fig.
There was a sudden snap at his scalp. He ducked, thinking again that he’d been shot at. Saw a miner bird banking for another swoop at him. Probably had a nest nearby. He waved his arms about and made himself scarce, hating the sensation, remembering it from years ago, a hold-up he’d pulled in Brisbane.
Wyatt retreated to one o
f the shelters to think about Minto, Quarrell, the job itself. He needed to know about security patrols on Iluka Islet. Had Ormerod hired a gardener or cleaner to come in while he was away next weekend? And the house itself: did Ormerod have a misplaced faith in his location, on a tiny knob of land, a road behind him, the water lapping at his front lawn, houses on either side? He probably felt safe there, and that kind of thinking might lead a man to downplay security. Sensor lights on the outside walls, security company stickers, alarm box under the eaves, but what else? Maybe it didn’t matter. A quick in-and-out before the police or security guards arrived.
Wyatt knew he could go in at any time between late Friday afternoon and Monday morning, but what if Ormerod changed his plans, came back early for some reason? He thought about that upstairs window: even if Ormerod shut and locked it before he flew south, it might not be wired into the alarm system. Home owners secured their downstairs doors and windows and forgot that burglars climbed trees—and scaffolding. And security installers often cut corners. They considered under-the-house crawl spaces, upper-level toilet windows and attic roof vents low-risk. Too inaccessible, dirty or time-consuming to wire up.
The other lazy or fallible person in the equation was the homeowner. Maybe Ormerod would forget to turn on his system.
Back from his walk, feet propped on the balcony rail, Wyatt sipped coffee and thought. The world was still: the tennis court, the pool, the caravan park beyond.
He tensed. A police car crept into the caravan park. Two young constables got out, crossed a patch of grass and called to the occupants of a tent. A theft? A complaint?
Wyatt relaxed. They were not interested in a man on a balcony a hundred metres away. The police were his natural enemy and his upbringing, such as it was, had been steeped in hostility towards them. But he did not hate or fear them. He’d rarely tangled with them. They had a job to do, and one day they might get him but he rarely thought about that. It would be self-defeating. If you showed your antipathy you drew attention to yourself. Wyatt liked to be invisible.
He drained his coffee, read the rest of the newspaper, checked the mobile for messages. One from Minto: All okay? He didn’t reply.
At 9 a.m. he was in the Hertz office in Noosa Junction, using his Sandford ID to rent a Hyundai. He still had the Mazda, but if anyone went looking for him afterwards, he wanted to lay more than one trail.
Three hours later he was in a Brisbane shopping centre, flipping through clothing in a tradesmen’s outfitters. Thinking of the house next door to Thomas Ormerod’s, the scaffolding, ladders and flapping tarpaulin, he walked out with a hard hat, a pair of overalls, rubber-soled shoes and a nylon zip-up jacket stencilled front and back with the word security.
A gun was next on his shopping list. Couldn’t buy one, Minto couldn’t supply one. Back in Noosa he fished out a copy of the Yellow Pages and found the listing for gun clubs.
Late afternoon now, Wyatt parked where the sun threw shadows under a couple of silvery gums outside the Nambour Small Arms Club, on a secluded valley property surrounded by trees and a security fence twenty kilometres inland of the Sunshine Coast airport. Gunshots—a faint crackle—reached him in the scented air. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
The firing continued until 6 p.m. then stopped. Just after that the first vehicle appeared, a bulky Land Rover, followed by two other four-wheel drives. When the dust had settled, Wyatt followed. All three vehicles headed north to Yandina, then east to Coolum Beach, where vast resorts, set amid lawns and palms, faced the breakers of the Pacific. The shooters had no interest in that view, however. They probably saw it all the time. They turned into the parking lot of a golf course and went into the clubhouse to drink.
Wyatt parked where the CCTV cameras wouldn’t find him and waited as darkness drew in, a strange brief period that deceived a man’s eyes. When the timing and the light were optimal, he went hunting. The shooters might have left their guns locked at the clubhouse, but Wyatt was betting he’d find one in a lockbox inside one of the vehicles.
Nothing in the first vehicle, not under the seats, inside the glove box or behind the door panels. But there was a gun safe under a spare tyre in the second vehicle. The lock was a keypad. He viewed it at an angle, looking for tell-tale wear or griminess that might identify the four keys that, in one of twenty-four possible combinations, made up the passcode, but his luck wasn’t running. A fine mist of talcum powder blown over the keys would have picked out the ones in constant use, but he had none with him.
He moved on to the Land Rover, the roughest, the oldest of the three. Inside was a toolbox with a false bottom concealing a fully-loaded .22 semi-automatic Ruger. It would have come from a visiting US sailor or a Tasmanian bikie on a run up to the mainland, probably. They were the two main sources of these Rugers that Wyatt knew of. He pocketed the pistol and strolled the long way around to his car, walking deeper into the resort and out again, watching and listening for the shout that said he’d been spotted, that he shouldn’t have been there. He resisted the urge to run: he was playing the guest, out on his evening stroll.
Walking once around his rented Hyundai, checking the back seat and footwells, he got in and drove north to Noosa and his apartment. Curtains drawn as evening settled, he stripped and dry-fired the gun. It was well oiled, well cared for. But he was amused to see that the metal slide was a shade lighter in colour than the frame and the barrel, and carried no serial number. The gun had been rebirthed. Probably by a gunsmith Wyatt had once known who was in jail now. Wyatt recalled the guy had sent a dozen Ruger slides to the police, certifying they came from firearms that had been destroyed or stripped for parts, when in fact he’d merely made a dozen new slides and then sold the guns onto the black market.
Wyatt peered at the slide, shunting it back and forth. Nice job. The action was smooth, crisp, quiet. The Ruger would work. It would put a man or a woman down. If he or she came close enough. If it came to that.
He oiled the gun, then removed a couple of shells from the clip. He knew from experience how a full clip could depress the spring over time and affect the action of the gun, even lead to a jam.
He was thinking about where to stow the Ruger when the apartment phone rang.
‘Yes?’
Leah Quarrell, sounding cranky. She was out on his staircase with something to show him, so would he please open the fucking door and let her in?
16
‘I’ve been trying to reach you since Monday,’ she said, striding in. She was carrying a heavy-duty flat carton with SONY PLASMA TV in large black letters on the side.
Wyatt ignored her. Standing to one side of the entranceway, he darted a look into the stairwell, his fingers firm around the butt of the Ruger in an instinctive expectation of trouble, listening for the sounds that didn’t belong.
She was alone. No one charged from the shadows. And when she spotted the pistol in his hand, she curled her lip. ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
Wyatt ignored her, locked the door. For the sake of recording devices, he said, ‘We’ve been meaning to thank you for finding the apartment for us. It’s perfect.’
Quarrell shook her head, elaborately fed up. ‘I’m not wired.’
She dumped the carton on the living-room table, lifted her blouse to her neck, her skirt to her waist, brown and lithe and slight. ‘See?’
‘What’s the box for?’
‘You wanted a way to transport the painting? Perfect size. I needed a new TV anyway.’
Wyatt tucked the Ruger into his waistband and poked at the box. ‘Why did you come here?’
She reached a far point of endurance. ‘Hello? Some thanks are in order.’
‘We could have met tomorrow, somewhere neutral.’
‘Neutral? I thought you’d be after privacy.’
‘Does anyone know you’re here?’
‘I don’t believe this. Like who?’
‘Were you followed?’
‘You’re paranoid. Look, let’s have a drink,
relax a bit. Think you can do that?’
Quarrell seated herself on the sofa, her white skirt and gleaming legs vivid against the drab floral upholstery. The hem rode high on her slender thighs and she knew it.
Wyatt had rules: no alcohol in the lead-up to a job. Small meals. Plenty of sleep. ‘Tea or coffee,’ he told her.
‘You’re like a monk.’ She wriggled to get comfortable. As if realising he couldn’t be untethered by her skirt, she tugged at the hem. ‘And what’s with the gun? You’re stealing a painting, not shooting someone.’
Wyatt watched her.
‘Unbelievable. Okay, anything else you need? A vehicle? We’re a team, don’t forget.’
‘I’m fine,’ Wyatt said.
Then he realised that wasn’t going to reassure her. He was good at reading other people’s hopes and fears—had to be, in his profession. Most men and women were bundles of doubts and insecurities and therefore in constant need of affirmation. They sucked the oxygen from the air. Big dreamers barely capable of achieving small dreams. Mouths that flapped, saying nothing, filling silences.
But it didn’t pay to ignore them. You had to gauge their needs and anxieties. Take a bank job: no good shouting at people, shooting off guns, pistol-whipping the customers and tellers. Panicked people screaming and stumbling around were a distraction, a hindrance. They’d find silence just as frightening. So you spoke to them. You spoke softly, soothingly. You might ask for a first name. You might say, ‘Liz, I’m not going to hurt you, no one’s getting hurt, this will be over soon, so if you could just sit on the floor with the others and put your arm around that woman with the baby, we’ll be out of your hair in no time at all.’ And Liz would stop trembling. She’d even feel important. She would now be assisting you, in her small, unwitting way. If you screamed in her face, punched her, whatever, she could be your undoing.
