Cross Kill w-4

by Garry Disher

  He was ready for the killer dog. It came at him across the yard, thick and low-slung, as meaty and hairless as a pig. Wyatt wrapped his belt around his left forearm, feinted with it, flicked open the switchblade in his other hand, sliced open the straining throat. The heart and lungs worked briefly, inhaling blood, discharging a scarlet-flecked froth, then life went out of the dog and it dropped like a stone, the canines tearing the skin of Wyatt’s wrist.

  He stepped back from the animal, his heart hammering. This death only a metre from Niall’s window was harsh and liquid, and Wyatt instinctively backed into darkness as Niall appeared in the doorway, backlit by a bare light bulb in the room behind him.

  Wyatt stepped out again. He let Niall see the.38 in his hand. ‘I’ve come for my money.’

  Niall had been smoking and drinking. His eyes were slitted against the smoke drifting from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and he held a beer can near his thigh. He recognised Wyatt and dropped the cigarette. Then, when the dying dog made a last tremor, shooting out its legs, expiring on its side, Niall dropped the beer can.

  Wyatt expected Niall to go to the dog. He was prepared to let that happen. Instead, Niall jerked back into the flat and slammed the door.

  Wyatt knocked, tried the handle, slammed his shoulder against it a couple of times. ‘Niall,’ he said, ‘just give me the money.’

  The crossbow bolt came through the window at him. Weakened and deflected by the glass, it plucked at his thigh and fell uselessly to the ground. He dropped into a crouch and edged away from the light.

  Then he heard glass again, only it wasn’t the window facing him but the one on the alley. There was a sound of cotton tearing and then footsteps stumbled away from the house.

  Wyatt stepped onto the kennel roof and vaulted over the fence into the alley. He crouched for a moment until he saw Rossiter’s son show clearly in silhouette in the streetlights at the end of the alley. He set out after him, loping easily, the.38 where it couldn’t be seen.

  Niall turned toward the river. At one point he passed between a streetlight and the flank of the brewery, his headlong shadow soaring then shrinking across the blank brick wall. He had a day-pack strapped to his back. Wyatt stayed two hundred metres behind him, keeping pace, waiting for the kid to weaken or break stride.

  But Niall was twenty years younger than Wyatt and driven by panic. In a series of left and right turns Niall closed in on the river, the old convent on the western bank, and Wyatt lost him in the Children’s Farm behind it.

  It was a good place and it was bad. Niall belonged on the street; that’s where he should have run to, hailed a taxi perhaps, shoved the crossbow under someone’s nose at a traffic light. The bushes, pens and grassy paddocks on the river bank would be incomprehensible to someone like Niall. Then again, so long as he had nerve and patience, he could hide all night there and not be found. The traffic noise on Studley Park Bridge, the darkness and the unfamiliar terrain, would provide all the cover he’d need. They’d cover Wyatt, too, but otherwise they were a liability.

  Wyatt could flush Niall out in the morning light, but he wasn’t prepared to wait. Starting at a point near the entrance to the Children’s Farm, he began to quarter the area, sweeping left and right across each segment. He concentrated on the centre, knowing that if he spent too long on the margins he might lose Niall. Now and then he stopped to listen. Cars accelerated over the bridge and up into Kew. He heard wind in the trees, and something else, low but constant in the background, that he supposed was the river between its many bends. There was a cough, almost human, as he passed among some sheep in the grass.

  Then a squeal of terror. This also was not human but it was terror. By the time Wyatt reached the pig pen the cry had been taken up by other piglets and the heavy old sow, a crossbow bolt in her flank, was ranging back and forth, simultaneously protecting them and menacing Niall Rossiter, who was on his backside in the mire, struggling to rearm the crossbow. Wyatt saw all this in the moonlight and said, ‘It’s over, Niall. Just drop the weapon and climb the fence.’

  Niall swung around, loosed a bolt at him. Wyatt heard the phutt of it close to his head. He fired the.38, three well-placed shots that straddled the rail behind Niall’s back and slapped into the mud near his crotch. ‘You get the next one in the stomach. Drop the crossbow, climb out of the pen.’

  Niall disintegrated then, letting out a peevish sob and throwing the crossbow at the sow. When he lifted free of the sucking mud he looked helplessly at the filth that clung to his hands and pasted his jeans to his legs. He turned, climbed over the rail. His feet slipped, he fell, and Wyatt was there on the other side.

  ‘Give me the bag.’

  Niall shrugged free of the day-pack, moving exhaustedly, rocking on his feet. ‘There’s nothing in it, only my stuff.’

  Wyatt took the bag, stepped back, and opened it, keeping the.38 trained. The things that tumbled onto the grass did not add up to his two hundred thousand dollars. It was an escape kit: a change of underclothes, a wallet, a sheathknife, spare bolts for the crossbow. In the wallet there were sixty-five dollars and four stolen credit cards.

  Wyatt threw the pack away. ‘Let’s see what your old man has to say.’

  Niall spat. ‘He don’t know nothing.’

  ‘Your mother then.’

  ‘She’s gone. Shot through a couple of hours ago.’

  That’s all Wyatt could get out of Rossiter’s son. They went back the way they’d come, Niall walking slump-shouldered before him. When they got to the house there was a light on above the front door. The Valiant was in the carport but the VW was missing. ‘Around the side,’ Wyatt said, prodding Niall with the gun.

  The back door was ajar, the screen door unlatched. Wyatt pushed Niall inside. ‘No warnings,’ he said softly, guiding Niall’s spine with the barrel of his gun. They went that way past the laundry, the leaking lavatory, through the empty kitchen, to the sitting room, where Rossiter was sitting in darkness, punishing a bottle of supermarket Scotch. He heard them, reached for a switch, and lamplight threw the shapes from bad dreams over the walls and ceiling. His eyes were red-rimmed and cigarette ash dusted the Collingwood football jersey he was wearing in place of a pyjama top. He nodded morosely. ‘Thought you’d show up.’

  Wyatt gestured both men to the couch and handcuffed them together. They were heavy and unresisting, Rossiter saying uselessly, ‘You don’t have to do this.’ Then he changed expression, looking up at Wyatt for understanding. ‘Mate, she let me down, I’m sorry.’

  But Wyatt gave him nothing, only a stare that did not shift or stray but stayed locked on him. Rossiter had to turn his head away from the force of it.

  ‘Did she take the money with her?’

  Rossiter laughed. ‘She took the VW and my last fifty bucks.’

  The anger building in Wyatt stripped his face of flesh and colour. He slammed the old man’s head with his fist. ‘She traded me for Niall. That’s why he’s out of jail.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You spilled the whole job to her, where we were staying, everything.’

  Rossiter’s eyes flickered briefly at Wyatt. ‘Mate, she’s the wife.’

  ‘As if that explains it,’ Wyatt said. ‘Who did she spill to? A lawyer? A magistrate? A cop?’

  ‘A cop,’ Rossiter muttered.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Napper. From the local nick.’

  ‘She’s with him now,’ Wyatt said, ‘splitting the money with him.’

  Rossiter thought about that. His face said it was a cruel possibility. Then he said, ‘No, doesn’t sound right. She did it for the boy, not the money.’

  Wyatt watched him neutrally. After a while he said, ‘The Outfit sent someone to knock me at Ounsted’s tonight.’

  Rossiter flushed and looked away. ‘Well, yeah, she did that. She was expecting to hear Napper had arrested or maybe shot you tonight, so when you rang here she panicked, knowing you’d come after her sooner or later.’

  ‘
So she tipped off the Outfit they could find me at Ounsted’s?’

  There was no spirit left in Rossiter. He looked down, nodded his head.

  ‘Have you always been on friendly terms with them?’

  ‘Mate, that price on your head, forty thousand, everyone knew who to call.’

  ‘The pair of you should have cleared off with her.’

  ‘I wanted to put it right with you,’ Rossiter said.

  Wyatt stared at him. It might have been true. He gestured at Niall. ‘What about him?’

  Rossiter looked at his son and there was no pride in it. ‘Stupid fucker reckoned he’d be able to take you if you came here.’

  Niall jerked away from his father, turning his shoulder to shut him out. The movement pulled Rossiter’s arm with it, and Rossiter’s veiny mottled hand flopped onto Niall’s thigh. Niall shrugged it off, swearing bitterly. Wyatt saw what blood ties could do to people and it looked small and vicious to him.

  Then both Rossiters stiffened, listening. The front gate creaked open. They seemed to wait for it to close.

  ****

  Forty

  Napper had got the idea from a rapist he’d arrested after a stakeout one night several years ago. The rapist would climb onto his victim’s roof, remove a few tiles, crawl into the space above the ceiling, then drop into the house through the manhole. Except the rapist had been a weedy little squirt. Napper’s broad thighs felt scraped and bruised from squeezing through the manhole of the house in Northcote where Wyatt and Jardine were staying and he’d landed hard, hurting his shins.

  Added to which he’d panicked when the pistol jammed. Next time he pocketed a drug-raid gun, he’d make sure it was a double-action revolver, not a semiautomatic. If a pistol misfires and jams, you’re stuffed. If a revolver misfires, you don’t have to stop and clear the jam, you just pull the trigger again.

  Still, he was home safe and two hundred and nine thousand dollars better off. Napper clapped his arms around himself on the edge of his bed, rocking a little, relieved and exultant. He reached out and touched the twenties, fifties and hundreds. He’d unbundled and scattered the notes to give an impression of bulk. Somehow, bundled together, it hadn’t looked like a lot of money. In fact, he’d been disappointed until he’d actually counted it. And-probably owing to all the vodka he was drinking-the more he looked at the money the less real it looked, like a spill of jam jar labels, rectangles of coloured paper, swimming, swimming.

  Napper jerked himself awake, swallowed more vodka. It was past midnight and he’d been sitting here like this for over two hours. He’d rung Tina, but she’d bitten his head off, said she was sleeping, she had to get up at five, as he well knew, so why didn’t he just piss off, and had slammed down the phone.

  The more Napper thought about it, did he want her anyway? This was some serious money he had here. With that kind of money you can pick and choose your birds. He gazed at the money again, unfocused, looking inward at the years with Josie. It had seemed like the real thing at first: as a social worker she’d appreciated the problems the cops had, Roxanne had come along, they’d bought a house-then suddenly everything had turned around on him. Josie found feminism-and lesbianism, for all he knew-and a mouthful of slogans she used on him twenty-four hours a day. She’d wanted to return to study. She accused him of being brutalised by the job, said it would taint Roxanne, said he never spent time with Roxanne. Napper stiffened as he remembered it all, the glass of vodka halfway to his mouth. Wasn’t that a contradiction? He was tainting Roxanne yet he never spent time with her? Lousy bitch. He’d have to make sure she never got wind of the money.

  By degrees Napper came to see that his two hundred and nine thousand dollars amounted to fuck-all. Lawyers’ fees, maintenance, child support, replace the ute with something that didn’t have a hole in the floor between him and the exhaust pipe, find a better place to live, pay off the few thousand he owed the SP bookies-Jesus, it could all be gone by the end of the year.

  He swallowed the vodka, poured himself another glass, reached over and scattered the money some more, making it cover a greater area of the bed. But then he caught himself, and laughed. It was still two hundred and nine thousand bucks; scattering it wasn’t going to make it bigger. Napper put down his vodka, stood up, leaned over and gathered in every twenty, fifty and hundred, and bundled them back into the vinyl bag. He zipped it closed and sat again with the bag in his lap. The bag felt solid and comfortable. Napper had removed his trousers to rub cream into his scraped thighs. He was wearing his towelling bathrobe and liked the feeling of nakedness it gave him, the idea of his cock in striking distance of all that dough.

  Napper looked around his bedroom. He couldn’t stash the bag under the bed, under dirty clothes in the bottom of the wardrobe, in his sock drawer. Or in the kitchen or bathroom cupboards, or behind his collection of Willie Nelson LPs. And that was the extent of his miserable flat. If he left the money in the flat, he’d spend all his time thinking of burglars when he wasn’t at home. If he took the money with him, he’d spend all his time looking out for muggers. Well, no one was going to break in tonight, not at this hour, not with him at home. Maybe he’d bank the money tomorrow, twenty accounts of nine thousand nine hundred dollars each to avoid the government legislation that required banks to report all deposits of ten thousand or more. Jesus Christ, were there that many banks and building societies? It would take him days. A creeping kind of dread grew in Napper. He had the money but where was he going to hide it, how was he going to hold onto it?

  That fear gave rise to another, and this one gripped him hard. It wasn’t burglars he had to worry about, it wasn’t muggers, it was the business he should have finished tonight but hadn’t. He had failed to kill Wyatt and Jardine. He had shot one, clubbed the other, but it had been panicky and it hadn’t felt final. How would they see it? In Napper’s experience, crims were always ripping each other off. With any luck they’d look in that direction. But they weren’t stupid, they’d start wondering who knew about the job. Eileen wouldn’t stand much pressure, she’d soon shop him.

  Napper looked at his hands and they were shaking- the drink or fear or both.

  He tucked them into his armpits and rocked on the edge of the bed, trying to think it through. Should he do something, or try to find out what had happened? He couldn’t go back to the Northcote house. He could try ringing around the hospitals, try the Homicide Squad or the Northcote station boys, but there’d be questions, cops wanting to know who he was and why he was so interested in a man with a gunshot wound.

  That left the Rossiters. If he could shut them up, the trail would end right there, and Wyatt and Jardine would never find him. Only the Mesics knew he was involved, and they thought he was out of the picture. Napper sniggered. Thought they could get rid of him. Thought he’d be happy with their measly two and a half grand. Just as well he’d decided to stick around tonight, see what he could salvage. Only the fucking jackpot, that’s what.

  His anxieties came back. How do you wipe out three people one after the other without disturbing at least one of them? It happened all the time, crazed fathers walking through the house shotgunning the wife and seven kids in their beds, but Napper didn’t want to risk it. A knife? Napper had never used one, didn’t know if you stabbed the heart or sawed through the neck. All that blood, and the person in the act of dying rearing up in bed at you. Napper couldn’t do it.

  It had to be a bomb. Get all three Rossiters at once. Bombs he understood. He’d been to army bomb-disposal lectures, done a short course, and one of his informants, the man who’d given him the mercury switch idea, had been a car bomber in Belfast before he’d got tired of poverty and politics.

  Napper put on his pants and went outside. There were lockup garages at the rear of the flats. Napper didn’t use his as a garage. He drove the ute every day and it was a drag unlocking and locking the garage door all the time. He used his to store the gardening gear he’d had from when he’d owned a proper house: lawnmower, f
ertiliser tins, rakes and shovels. Most of the space was taken up with removalist’s cartons, stuff he should have flattened and recycled, except the word ‘recycled’ made him think of Josie and her lefty notions, and so the cartons stayed where they were.

  The gelignite he’d got from the car bomber, three sticks of it, plus detonators. Napper closed the garage door, turned on the light above the work bench, and gingerly took it out of the shoebox. It was sweating. ‘Past the use-by date,’ his snitch had said, ‘so go real careful with it.’

  Napper stared at the gelignite. He’d be better off using a plastic explosive, C4 or Semtex, something he could mould into shape and which wouldn’t blow up on him if he got careless. But he didn’t nave any, and where would he get some at this time of night?

  Still, gelignite would do the same job. He ran through some of the possibilities. First, your car bomb. Wire it into a headlight or the ignition circuit, or set a pressure switch under the driver’s seat, or wire the boot so that when the lid was opened it pulled a slip of cardboard free from between the jaws of a clothespeg, thus closing a circuit. Or a bomb inside the house. The good old alarm clock device. The wired desk drawer. The string-tied parcel. Or some sort of remote control, like a radio signal, except he didn’t have signalling or receiving devices. Maybe wire it to the telephone, ring the house and kaboom. Or the good old bomb through the window.

  The main problem was detonating the gelignite. Maybe he could use its instability somehow. Some sort of extreme and sudden shock or atmospheric change should set it off. He pictured the Rossiters’ house. They had gas-a wall furnace to heat the place and a gas stove in the kitchen. There would be a pilot light on the wall furnace. What he could do, plant the gelignite, turn on the gas in the kitchen, piss off, wait for the gas to accumulate, wait for the pilot flame to do its work.