by Garry Disher
The owner’s late husband had evidently had a taste for found objects. Halperin took down one of his ‘artworks’, a piece of particle board painted pale blue and stuck with seashells and a dusty scrap of fishnet, and hung Hannah Sten’s painting in its place. He stationed a stiff-backed chair under the painting, stood the newspaper against the back of the chair, so that the headline and date were clear, and took several photographs with his phone.
He composed a terse ransom demand and texted it to Minto, signing the name ‘Wyatt’. If nothing else, it would muddy the waters. Best-case scenario, he walked off with a hundred grand in his pocket.
30
Wyatt waited his hour in the Noosa Junction cinema, then hobbled out to find another payphone.
And Minto was spitting chips. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Wyatt waited. Minto would get to it.
‘You cunt, you’re ransoming the painting now?’
‘I don’t have the painting.’
‘That last call was to cover yourself before you text me a ransom demand?’
Wyatt said, ‘I told you, I don’t have the painting.’
‘Well, the police certainly haven’t but what do you know? I get a text from you, demanding money in return for the painting.’
‘You’re not listening to me,’ Wyatt said.
‘You signed it, you sent a photo of it. Meanwhile, both Leah and Trask are in police custody, and I’m betting you’re behind that, too.’
Wyatt didn’t bother arguing that he’d be all kinds of fool to do the things Minto was accusing him of. The broker wasn’t thinking clearly. He was panicking. Wyatt wasn’t. He was cold as ice as he worked it out.
‘Arrested together or separately?’
‘Fucked if I know. All I know is, Trask is spilling his guts and my darling niece has asked for witness protection.’
The police will come for you next, thought Wyatt. He cut the call and returned to the hotel. He sensed elation on the streets. Apparently the Lions had won the grand final.
At 7 p.m. he tuned in to the ABC news. First up was the football. Then more football, then Wyatt learned that he was still at large, believed armed and dangerous. Minto’s murder came late in the news. Police arriving to serve an arrest warrant had found the prominent Gold Coast businessman dead of gunshot wounds. Prominent businessman with underworld connections, hinted the newsreader, without spelling it out.
Wondering if he was next on someone’s hit list, Wyatt limped downstairs to the dining room. He was ushered to his table; he was tended to. But nobody saw the man, only the leg and the crutches. It was better this way, a room-service delivery would mean contact in close quarters, a conversation, eyes darting around his room, wondering about a woman or a man in his life.
As he dined, his mind worked restlessly. Arrest warrants were never issued on a whim. It was possible Minto had already been under investigation—maybe under surveillance, so Wyatt thanked his forethought in going to see the man disguised. It was also possible his niece had cut a deal, giving the police sufficient information on which to issue a warrant on short notice. In that case, he thought, she’s also fingered me.
But how smart was she? If she had any sense, she’d spin it out over days, even weeks of questioning, until she knew what the police knew or suspected, knew what she could hide, knew what lies to tell. She’d play with her interrogators, tease them, offer titbits one at a time until she had the protection of a good lawyer, a worthwhile deal, and news that her enemies, real and imagined, had been neutralised.
Her play for witness protection. She’s claiming her life’s in danger from me and from her uncle, he thought. Where would they put her? Probably not protective custody in a cell somewhere. Probably a safe house or apartment. Relative comfort.
Who had shot Minto?
The broker had plenty of enemies, but the timing was instructive: within hours of the Ormerod fiasco. And if not Trask or Quarrell, who else? Hannah Sten? She was staying nearby. But that supposed she was willing and able to act quickly, or hire someone.
Something else was going on.
He returned to his room and thought some more.
Start with the painting. Leaving aside who owned it or wanted it, he’d been hired to steal it. And it existed, he’d seen it with his own eyes, a few days ago, in the house where Minto had said it would be. And today he’d entered the house successfully. All of that was clear. What he’d found then was an empty hook.
He could withdraw now, keep the down payment for his trouble. But then he’d never know what happened or exactly how he’d been crossed. That was a wrong that couldn’t be redressed. He needed to see it through. He’d been hired to steal and deliver a painting, and that’s what he’d do.
He thought about the cops in the house, on the nearby streets. A coordinated operation, and presumably part of the double-cross, the result of a tip-off. He gave some thought to Ormerod. The man had no demonstrable taste in art: the Teniers painting was an aberration in his collection of art-show gumtrees and sheep-droving scenes. Perhaps Hannah Sten’s story was a lie or only part of the truth and other people were lurking, waiting to stake a claim to the painting.
Wyatt played with the idea that Ormerod had been tipped off in advance. Not by Minto, he thought. Minto would know I’d come after him. Maybe Quarrell or Trask had been after something from Ormerod. Money, some kind of favour. Maybe Quarrell or Trask were working an insurance scam with him. Ormerod retains the painting and claims the insurance, meanwhile sending a fake ransom demand to Minto to throw him off the scent.
But would they also tip off the police? Unlikely, Wyatt thought. They couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t turn around and name them, cut a deal for myself; they couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t escape and come after them.
Nothing Wyatt could do about Ormerod, not yet. Perhaps the Thailand flight was some kind of ruse? Meanwhile, the police would become curious about him, and his house would continue to be a crime scene.
Tomorrow, thought Wyatt, is another day.
At 10 p.m., the day’s grime showered away, he mocked up the bed—most of the pillows tucked under the covers to suggest his sleeping form—and stretched out on the carpet on the far side of the bed from the door, a final pillow under his head, gun in reach. Listened to the news, learned nothing, and switched off the radio. As he fell asleep he thought about who had come for Minto. Who might come for him.
31
On this, his first visit to the Gold Coast, Jack Pepper underwent one clear, compelling revelation: this was where he belonged.
Like: the place dripped with money, full of retirees from the southern states, some scrawny and vigorous, others obese and half-dead, all with a million or two in the bank, years of toiling in some office, all that superannuation accumulating. If Jack couldn’t figure out how to relieve some of them of some of it, there was something wrong.
And sex. Chicks everywhere, locals, backpackers, even women in their thirties and forties who looked like they were dying for it. And according to the taxi driver who’d dropped him off at the Travelodge, everything he’d heard about schoolies on the Gold Coast was true. As soon as their final exams were over they threw away their school uniforms and headed north for sunshine and heavy partying.
‘Mate, all you have to do is snap your fingers,’ the cab driver said.
Money, sex—and something else, which Pepper couldn’t quite define. A way of looking at life? All that in-your-face sunshine and flesh and money-making bred a kind of sated self-regard. Everyone on the make and on the take, they also expected it from you. Jack Pepper thought he wouldn’t mind settling down here. When he’d taken care of Wyatt.
It was late by the time he’d checked in. He hadn’t been able to risk an airline—a gun in his pocket, his face on watch lists—so he’d driven a stolen Commodore up into outback New South Wales, then hitched eastwards. Through Cobar, Nyugan and Dubbo to Newcastle, finally a series of local buses up the coast to Coolangatta. It took day
s. He arrived hungry, dirty, exhausted. He simply crawled into his Travelodge bed and crashed for twelve hours.
Woke, showered, went shopping for shorts, T-shirts, sunnies, trainers, throwing all his old gear into a bin. Now he was skint, but he looked like he belonged.
Late morning he sat under an umbrella with a smoothie and a tandoori wrap and checked out the action, of which there was plenty. His gaze flicked between the chicks walking by in bikinis and short shorts and the brunette serving him. She had the deepest tan he’d ever seen, nice rack, long taut muscles moving under calves and thighs. Silver and gold here and there: one nostril, both earlobes, around her fingers and neck. A kind of smoulder when she looked at him. Out of nowhere the word ‘feline’ came to mind, poetic and surprising, pleasing him. He thought he might try it on her.
‘You move,’ he said, ‘with feline grace.’
‘Monsieur?’
French. Cute accent. He ordered another wrap, and twenty minutes later another smoothie. Kept her returning to his table, her bare thighs right beside his shoulder as he gave his order and she wrote it down, repeating his words, that accent like music.
When he was stuffed with smoothies, wraps and salad, he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to France, see Versays and that.’
‘Then go,’ she said.
‘You from Paris?’
‘Lyon.’
Jack felt a little kick of pain, glory and mysterious spirituality to hear that word coming from those perfect lips. With a catch in his voice, he said, ‘Leon? My little brother’s name is Leon.’
She smirked. Or no, was it a smile? Seemed to start as a smirk but then it was a smile so wide and beautiful he forgot his first impression and said, ‘How about you and me check out the action tonight?’
She slid his bill over and said, ‘I do not think so.’ And that was the last contact he had with the bitch. She kept her distance, whispering something to her boss, a brawny guy in a tight white tee who gave him the eye and cracked his knuckles.
Fuck her, thought Jack. Plenty more where she came from. What was she doing here anyway, taking jobs from Australians?
It was too early in the day, the sun too mild, the air too briny for dirty work. He strolled up and down the main drag, onto the beach, the hotels and apartment blocks behind him, the Pacific ahead of him, bikinis everywhere else. The sun was high now, but when it sank he was betting the strip of sand would go black, one slab of shadow after another, all those high-rise buildings.
He recast the expression in his mind: ‘slab of shadow’. And ‘feline’ and maybe ‘sultry’. People said he had a way with words. He glanced at the nearest chick, a pale-skinned brunette on a towel. A bit flabby, but decent tits.
He crouched and said, ‘Those buildings must cast slabs of shadow when the sun sets in the west.’
She looked away, muttered that he was a creep, and gathered her things to leave.
So he stood and kicked sand over her and stumped back to the street and into the Travelodge. His way with words letting him down this time, telling him he’d simply got the shits, when he wanted to feel something fine and flashing.
Late afternoon and yep, the place was banded with shadows when Pepper left in a taxi for David Minto’s house. He found a high brick wall, locked gates, mansions gleaming unapproachably within. He prowled around the perimeter, trying to work it out.
Ask the guy on the gate to admit him? Wait for a vehicle to enter or exit?
In the end, on the farthest side, where the wall abutted a golf course, he found a maintenance shed. It was locked, not a tool or vehicle in sight, but someone had left an aluminium ladder in the grass behind it. Four metres, extendable to eight, a rung broken on the extra section, but he didn’t need it, four metres got him to the top of the wall and over into a land of money.
He crossed grass and roadways, skirting mansions and fiddly patches of green, little bridges over cute waterways, and reached Minto’s back lawn. And there was his deck, set with cane chairs, and the sliding glass door was open, lights on inside. Minto, on the phone.
‘She’ll talk, Clive,’ he was saying, full of emotion, spitting the words. ‘She’ll put me away, the bitch.’
Silence. Then, ‘So if they come for me, I need you to be ready for my call. I’ll keep my mouth shut until you’re there in the room with me.’ Pause. ‘Well, that’s why I pay you a retainer, Clive…’
More silence, Minto listening. ‘No, there’s nothing incriminating in the house. Or my office. You think I’m stupid? But I don’t know what paperwork Leah might have squirrelled away over the years.’
From a shadowy area beyond the spill of light, Jack Pepper had a clear view of Minto. The guy was wearing black brogues, suit pants, a shirt and tie. Like he’d dressed up for the police raid he was clearly expecting.
Now he was saying, ‘All I know is, one of my contacts informed me they’ve applied for a warrant. So, yes, I do think there’s something for me to worry about. Inconvenience, if nothing else.’
A pause, goodbyes all round, and Minto was walking up and down his sitting room looking agitated when Pepper stepped in and gave him a little more agitation. Just enough for a name, and a street up in Noosa.
32
Sunday, 6 a.m., Wyatt waking fully alert, listening, coiling to a crouch, then standing. The room was safe. He listened to the news, showered, wrapped the fake bandage around his calf and dressed. Hobbled downstairs to the dining room.
Back in his room he shoved the Ruger and a change of clothing into the book bag and heaved on his crutches along Hastings Street to hail a cab outside the tourist information centre. He directed it up the hill towards Noosa Junction and along the side street where the man named Alan Trask apparently lived. ‘Slow down,’ he said, as if looking for a house number, eyeing the apartment block carefully as the taxi rolled past.
One police car parked at the rear, an unmarked at the kerb. The taxi prowled on, and, at the end, Wyatt grunted and muttered as if to himself, ‘Not home.’ He lifted his voice to the driver: ‘Sorry, change of plans: Mossman Court.’
Mossman Court was a little knob of expensive houses across the water from Iluka Islet. Wyatt alighted, gave the driver fifty dollars and said, ‘Keep the change.’ Guessing he’d be more likely to remember a stingy passenger than a generous one. He let the guy see him limp in the direction of a cobbled driveway.
When the taxi had disappeared back across the little bridge, Wyatt stepped down across a patch of grass to a small arc of sand and stared across at Ormerod’s house. Too far away, too obscured, to know if Ormerod had returned. Why had he run? What was he hiding?
Perhaps Wyatt’s imaginary disability had blunted his senses. A snap beside his right ear surprised him. He ducked and waved his hand about, trying to spot the miner bird. There. Springing from a tree branch, coming in again at a shallow dive. Wyatt ducked again.
If not for that simple act, he would have died. The bird, inhabiting the space where Wyatt’s skull had been, caught the bullet with a puff of feathers and a spray of blood.
Wyatt threw away the crutch and fished out the Ruger as he rolled behind a hedge. He crept the length of the hedge, darting looks above it, trying to pinpoint the shooter. Another shot, wild this time, ricocheting off a fence post and into a window. Now people were calling to one another. Soon there would be alarms.
He ran.
Onto Noosa Parade, where he grabbed a mountain bike from under a guy decked out in full Tour de France lycra. Dressed like that, he deserved to have his day ruined. Wyatt shot down the street, the wind in his hair, heading for the river.
It didn’t last. He didn’t have the stamina to cycle out of trouble and mad pedalling would attract attention. He needed a vehicle. A minute later he dropped the bike, ducked along a couple of alleys and cut through the grounds of Laguna Cove Resort, inland of Gympie Terrace, looking for a car to steal.
He paused at the resort’s swimming pool. A dozen unoccupied sun lounges spread with towels; pe
ople messing about in the water. Snatching a yellow towelling hat and dark glasses, Wyatt strolled out to the car park. He knew the statistics: vehicles were stolen every day because the owners had left them unlocked or with the keys in the ignition. But there was nothing like that here. Nothing on the street, either.
He walked out onto Gympie Terrace and across the road, checking cars at the kerb, and continued east, coming to a large paved area near tennis courts. It was parking for a motley assortment of 4WDs, hitched to empty boat trailers. Wyatt checked these vehicles, too.
He turned his attention to the boat ramp that angled into the water. As he stood there a white Holden twin-cab appeared, towing a small powerboat. He watched it reverse down the ramp, the trailer dipping into the water. Male driver and male passenger got out, walked down to the boat, fiddled with the stays holding it onto the trailer.
Left the keys in the ignition, motor running.
Wyatt slid into the gap between trailer and rear bumper. He released the tow hitch. Trailer and boat splashed down-ramp into the water, panicking the men, whose instinct was to save the boat, not stop Wyatt. He leapt into the driver’s seat and gunned away from the river.
It wouldn’t be long before the police were called. They’d be nearby already, investigating the shooting and the bicycle theft. But in the land of small tradesmen, the Holden was legion. If the cops were stopping battered white twin-cabs they’d have to stop a fair few before they found him. The numberplate might sink him however, so he drove to a supermarket and engineered a plate swap with a New South Wales station wagon.
Then he climbed back in the Holden, changed into another set of clothes from the book bag and headed across to Tewantin. He didn’t know who’d shot at him, but he did know that everything hinged on what Leah Quarrell was up to and where she was now.
Quarrell had requested witness protection, according to Minto, and Wyatt was guessing they’d take her to a temporary safe house. It would be close by because they’d need regular access to her. Would she be guarded? Yes. If in real danger, she’d need protection, and she’d need watching in case she was simply buying time, hoping to run as soon as they turned their backs.
