by Garry Disher
Not that Wyatt had robbed a bank in a while, and it wasn’t just the high-tech security. Good associates—men and women with the right skills, not given to screaming and pistol whipping—were impossible to find. Idiots robbed banks and payroll vans now. Stupid, drug-crazed, desperate men. Men who didn’t understand psychology.
So Wyatt paid attention to what Leah Quarrell really wanted. She wanted acknowledgment. She wanted to be at centre stage.
He nodded at the empty TV carton. ‘I would never have thought of that. It’s ideal.’
She accepted the compliment grudgingly. ‘Look, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot, but I don’t think you quite appreciate your position in all this. We hired you. You work for us, me and my uncle. You’re acting as if we’re irrelevant.’
‘What is it you want, Leah?’
‘To be better informed.’
‘About what?’
‘About what? Timing. It needs to be smooth: the burglary, moving the painting, handing it over. Other people are involved, you know. I mean—I find you with a gun, as if you’re intending to go in now, before Ormerod flies down to Melbourne. I thought we agreed on the weekend.’
Wyatt didn’t want to have this conversation, but he threw her a bone, barely grinding the words out: ‘Yes, I’ve decided to follow your advice and break into Ormerod’s house on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, you need to know that I always carry a gun.’
She sat back. ‘Thank you. Was that so hard?’
The question was neither here nor there to Wyatt. He said nothing.
He should have offered some further confirmation of her centrality. Quarrell flared again. ‘Is that it? What about preparation?’
‘Everything’s in hand.’
She reached out and wrapped his wrist in her slim fingers. ‘Tools, equipment…’
‘All in order.’
She withdrew her hand. ‘So what am I? A wallflower?’
Wyatt didn’t understand petulance and sulkiness. They were pointless: outcomes invariably negative. ‘You’ve been a great help so far,’ he said, trying to guess what she wanted to hear, ‘and I don’t want to burden you any further.’
‘I know I’ve been a great help. But how are you getting to the house? How are you carrying the box away? Exactly when do you consider going in? Beginning of the game? Middle? End?’
‘Still to be decided.’
She sat back, hissed her words like a snake: ‘I hate this.’
Wyatt considered calling Minto, asking him to rein her in, but that would take time, effort and a degree of finesse. It could also cause undercurrents of resentment. Better to throw her a couple more bones. ‘When would you go in?’
She gave it some thought. ‘There’ll be a lot of movement in the middle of the day, say around one o’clock, people arriving at each other’s houses with barbecue sausages and beer. You could go in under the cover of that.’
‘Good thinking.’ He nodded. ‘Is Ormerod likely to hire security people to watch his house while he’s away?’
Quarrell grinned. ‘We’ll know if he does.’
Meaning she had contacts in the local security firms. ‘Okay.’
‘Have you thought how you’ll get there? Where you’ll store the painting when you leave there? How you’ll get it to the client?’
‘Still working on that,’ Wyatt said, a touch of whiplash in his voice.
As soon as she’d gone, Wyatt dressed more formally, left his apartment building and walked along the crescent to the main road, turning left and making his way towards downtown Noosa. Scents rose in the mild evening. Toxins, paint, flowering plants.
Reaching Hastings Street, he turned right, walking as far as the French Quarter resort at the base of a steep hill. He faked entering the complex and stood in a corridor for twenty minutes. Then he stepped out again, hyper-alert. Felt nothing, saw no one who didn’t belong. He walked back in the opposite direction, to the five-star Pacific Grand, where the rooms faced Noosa Sound and the river in one direction, the main beach and Laguna Bay in the other.
A top-floor suite was available, last-minute cancellation. No gunman or master thief had ever stayed in it, nor would the police think to look for one there if things went sour on Saturday afternoon.
‘Do you need help with your bags, Mr Sandford?’
‘The airline sent them to Brisbane by mistake,’ Wyatt said. ‘They’ll be delivered tomorrow.’
‘Oh, that’s terrible. If you need anything in the meantime…’
Wyatt smiled and shook his head.
‘Then have a nice day,’ the receptionist said, ‘and thank you for choosing the Pacific Grand.’
Wyatt took the lift to his new room and stood on the balcony. The view to the Ormerod house on Iluka Islet was uninterrupted. He watched, utterly still, for some time, unable to shake an impression of a future time. Flashing lights and cars and uniforms and dogs over there, the peace shattered.
17
Meanwhile Leah Quarrell was delivering the .32 pistol to Rafi Halperin. She strode into the Flamingo Gate apartments, singing, ‘Hello, Troy!’ Smiling, full wattage, as she sailed across the foyer towards the lift.
The doorman blinked and swallowed, tried to find his voice: ‘Hi, Leah.’
It had to be a bore, sitting there for twelve hours, rotating with the guy on the 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift. No one to talk to, happy families walking by on the other side of the smoky glass all day long. What did he do with his time? Watch porn? Daydream? He was a drama student: probably writing a screenplay. Using that, Leah had hinted the man in the top floor suite was a movie producer who needed seclusion, no one to go up, okay?
A minute later she was stepping out of the lift and directly into Rafi’s arms. Tanned arms, slender, corded with strength.
‘Are you pleased to see me,’ she said, with a bump and a grind against him, ‘or pleased I’m bringing you a gun?’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Let me think about that.’
‘Very funny.’ She unbuttoned his shirt, working from his throat to his waist. ‘I’ve just had the most frustrating half-hour of my life. I thought I’d explode.’
She told him about Wyatt, his curtness and obduracy.
Rafi stopped her hands at his belt. ‘Did you suggest doing the job on Saturday afternoon?’
‘He’s thinking along those lines.’
His hands on her upper arms, Rafi took a step back to read her face. ‘You sure you don’t have the hots for this guy?’
‘What? No. Are you insane? I needed information and he humoured me like I was a child.’ She wrapped herself around him again and tilted up her chin. ‘Is there a hint of the green-eyed monster?’
Halperin laughed. They barely made it to the bed.
Afterwards, sheets to their chins as the air cooled, Leah said, ‘I can’t get past the idea that he’ll be expecting trouble as he leaves with the painting. And he’ll be in a hurry. I’m assuming he’ll have a car parked somewhere nearby, but what if he drives straight down to the Gold Coast? I mean, where and when do we get the jump on him?’
‘Talk it over with Trask. He’s the one pulling the trigger.’
‘He annoys me. I’ll be glad when I’m rid of him.’
Halperin stiffened. Leah snuggled close. ‘It’s not what you think, Raf.’
She watched him think about that, and finally decide to believe her. He began to stroke the dimple at the base of her spine. ‘From memory, there are trees and bushes in and around Ormerod’s house. Trask could wait behind a bush.’
‘Don’t want to risk it. What if he’s seen? And people will hear the gun.’
‘Knife.’
‘Gun’s cleaner. More final.’
‘Okay, hit Wyatt as he’s putting the painting in his car, or driving his car.’
‘In broad daylight? On the street? No.’
‘Use your real estate skills to get a key to his apartment. Wait for him there.’
Leah went very still. She liked that idea.
But what if Wyatt didn’t return to the apartment?
Her mind racing, she considered an excellent variation: get the jump on Wyatt as he’s lifting the painting off the wall.
That’s if Trask could find a way to enter the house and wait there.
Rafi, reading her mind, said, ‘How about this: you break into Ormerod’s house and hit Wyatt as soon as he’s inside. It’s private, no witnesses, the walls will deaden the sound.’
‘That’s why you get paid the big bucks,’ Leah said, her hand busy.
She thought about Rafi’s idea from all angles after that. She thought about it during sex, she thought about it as they showered together—with distractions: there was nothing more erotic than the play of warm water streaming down bare skin.
Finally she had to tell Rafi to stop what he’d been doing with the soap. She put her hand to his chest, pushed back gently. ‘We not only have to find a way of breaking in—what if it goes pear-shaped and Wyatt kills Trask? In which case no painting: it would all be for nothing.’
Rafi began to pat her dry. ‘So steal it before Wyatt can steal it, and forget about him.’
Leah shook her head. ‘No. We need a fall guy. We need it to seem like he ran off with the painting. If he breaks in and realises the painting’s not there, he might suspect I had something to do with it. I don’t want him after me, never mind my uncle or Hannah Sten. They have to think it was Wyatt.’
The towel was lingering over her breasts and thighs and she said hoarsely, ‘Raf? You listening?’
He lifted his head and grinned. ‘Secure the painting first. Move it somewhere safe. Then Trask waits for Wyatt, whacks him, hides the body.’
Now Leah had both hands propped against the wall, feet apart, as if being frisked. She whimpered and could not control the involuntary swaying of her hips. But Rafi was cruel, he gave her spine and shoulders a businesslike dab with the towel and smacked her pink bare backside. ‘Okay, gorgeous, time to get your ass in gear.’
‘Damn,’ Leah said, half-relieved. She did need to get hold of Trask. Lot of planning to do.
‘Move the painting somewhere safe?’ she said. ‘Like where?’
Rafi held his arms wide. ‘Here.’
‘I’d like to limit the number of times the doormen see me here.’
‘You don’t enter the building. You call me and I come down and take delivery.’
‘That could work. Delivery of what, though?’ muttered Leah, thinking she’d have to buy another TV.
‘Is it anyone’s business? Wrap it in brown paper.’
She grabbed Raf by the balls, gentle, but meaning business. ‘I can’t be seen with you for the next little while. You can’t be seen outside these walls.’
He was wincing. ‘Ow. That hurts.’
Thinking of the .32 pistol she’d just give him, she said, ‘Don’t cross me, Raf, okay?’
‘Don’t you cross me,’ he snarled, and he wasn’t some soft lawyer at that moment. There was a darkness in him.
Maybe that’s what their relationship would be like, ‘going forward’, as politicians liked to say. Maybe the glue that held them together would be mistrust.
18
Trask spent Thursday morning on his Kawasaki, tailing a woman on behalf of a client. He photographed her leaving home with a sports bag and squash racquet. She headed for a squash court, where she played a game with a female friend, then went home again. It had been like that every day, the client slow to get the message that his wife wasn’t sleeping around on him.
Then he headed for Leah’s office. Was about to walk on by the front desk when the receptionist said, ‘Excuse me. Do you have an appointment?’
‘What? Liz, it’s me.’
Liz dropped her voice, looked around at eavesdropping chairs and aspidistras. ‘I got on the wrong side of her the other morning.’
‘How?’
‘I let a policeman through. I thought, a policeman, what’s wrong with that?’
A lot wrong, thought Trask, but he gave old Liz a huge smile and said, ‘Safety first, then. Better call to say I’m here.’
A minute later he was in Leah’s office, trying for a hug and grope as she darted behind her desk.
She was livid. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Fine.’
Voice lowered, she said, ‘There’s something we need to talk over.’
‘Like the cop, you mean?’
Her eyes flared, narrowed. ‘How…Never mind. Yes, a detective named Batten called on me Monday morning. Know him?’
‘No.’
Leah smiled. ‘Just as well we got on top of Gavin Wurlitzer. Apparently there’s been a spike in burglaries involving properties listed for sale or auction. Apparently one of my clients was raped in the commission of a burglary last week.’
Trask breathed in and out. ‘Did he mention Wurlitzer by name?’
‘Would he do that? The thing is, here is a cop smart enough to wonder if there’s a link between people listing their houses for sale and getting burgled soon after.’
‘Not to mention raped.’
‘Yeah. But Gavin can’t hurt us now, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So if this cop can’t find him he’ll look at other perverts,’ Leah said, washing her hands of it. ‘Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about where we hit Wyatt.’
‘Where I hit Wyatt,’ Trask said.
She granted him that with a nod and smile. ‘Inside Ormerod’s house.’
Trask thought about it, saw it, and his mind jumped to the cat flap in the door at the side of the house. ‘I know how we can get in,’ he said.
She listened intently as he described it. ‘Are you sure I’d fit?’
‘When I was a cop, we had kids do it all the time,’ he said, thinking of one burglary ring he’d busted, a guy running a gang of ten-year-olds.
‘But the alarm could go off.’
‘Not if we use a code reader. Soon as you’re in, you run it over the keypad and disarm the system.’
‘Can you get hold of one?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got a van lined up?’
‘Yes,’ Trask said, wondering how much Cherub would charge for all this. Might as well get an infra-red system while he was at it. Attach it to the outside of Ormerod’s house so that it registered Wyatt’s arrival, giving him time to mount the ambush.
He said, ‘Leah, I’ll need more money.’
‘I hope you’re keeping a record,’ she hissed, swivelling around to open her safe.
Trask went straight to the gym, parked his bike, bounded upstairs to the mezzanine office and bumped fists with Cherub. ‘My man.’
‘What do you want?’
‘The code reader I mentioned the other day, and an infra-red warning system. I’ll be inside a house and I need to know if anyone approaches.’
Cherub hooded his eyes and stared at Trask. ‘You sure there’s nothing in this for me?’
‘Cold hard cash and goodwill.’
Cherub grunted. ‘I could maybe set up something that activates your mobile phone.’
‘Perfect.’
‘It’ll cost you.’
Trask patted his pocket and Leah’s cold hard cash. ‘Not a problem.’
Same deal as before. Trask stepped outside while Cherub opened secret hiding places and called him back in for the handover.
Then downstairs for a work-out. Weights, punching bag, treadmill, and finally the shower. When he stepped out of the steam, the same weedy guy was there, sitting on a bench, rubbing liniment into his legs, birthmark glowing. He glanced up at Trask, smiled, returned to self-loving his scrawny legs.
‘You new here?’ Trask demanded.
‘Mate, I’m not new to anything,’ the guy said.
Had to be a poofter. Trask strolled out, the code reader and infra-red system in his Adidas bag, and howled back across town on the Kawasaki.
19
That same morning, Wyatt awoke to the smell of dust.
He
rolled swiftly off his bed in the Pacific Grand and crossed to the penthouse window. Dawn, not yet six o’clock. Enough light above the river to show a general murkiness along the coast. He showered, breakfasted and listened to the 7 a.m. news. High winds in the droughty inland regions of New South Wales and Queensland had raised the gritty topsoil, which had blown in miasmic clouds east, south and north. An advisory warning had been issued for people with respiratory complaints. Wyatt coughed—in sympathy? He didn’t know. He waited through the morning, looking out. The sky deepened to a solid orange mist, leaving a patina of grit over everything he touched. It was in his lungs, irritating his eyes.
By lunchtime the sky had cleared. Wyatt shopped along Hastings Street for a small weekender bag. Toiletries and a change of high-end holiday clothing to establish that he inhabited the hotel room. Then, dressed as a tourist in shorts, a T-shirt, sunglasses and a floppy tennis hat, he walked down along the river to Noosaville and Sand Dollar Boat Hire. Five minutes later he was in a small aluminium runabout, making the run upriver and under the bridge to Iluka Islet.
He puttered around for a while, a man gazing and cloud-gathering, then let the boat drift to the jetty of RiverRun Realty’s property two doors down from Ormerod’s white pile. He tied up, got out, glanced at the FOR SALE sign, his hands on his hips. No one would mistake him for a serious buyer: dressed like that, he was a man who liked to dream. All he could afford was two weeks in a crummy holiday apartment. Almost certainly no one was watching Wyatt or wondering about him, but he liked to be invisible, even when standing in plain sight.
Meanwhile, behind the dark glasses, he was examining Ormerod’s house. Power and phone lines, sensor lights, the open window again. But there was no way to gauge what he’d find inside. According to Leah Quarrell’s photographs, the main doors and windows were alarmed, but what of the secondary layer of security? Was there one? Maybe Ormerod had installed a passive infra-red system intended to register body heat. Even if Wyatt cranked up the central heating—if there was any, given the climate, and if he could find the controls without passing across the sensor field—he’d have to move painfully slowly to fool such a system.
