by Garry Disher
But a look of panic twisted the big mans face. He fumbled, started the engine, backed out. Wyatt reached the car, beat uselessly on the side panel, fell back as Phelps accelerated away from him.
All he could do now was get an answer to a question. He knelt. The man on the ground was dead, blood seeping from a wound in the temple. Footsteps sounded behind Wyatt. Using his body as a shield, he peeled off the mans stocking and pocketed it.
What happened?
Wyatt stood, pushing his hair back from his forehead and hooking the black-rimmed glasses on his face again. He turned. Four or five students. Loading distress into his voice he said, It was terrible. Hit and run. This man was knocked down and I was run off the road. They just took off like animals.
Animals, someone said.
Anyone get the number?
We should get an ambulance.
He looks bad. Anyone here know first aid?
Youre not supposed to move them.
Anyone a med student?
They were dealing with it. Wyatt stepped back. Hed recognised the dead man. It was a face from three weeks ago, on the Victorian/South Australian border. Mostyn, who worked for Stolle. Meaning Stolle had the money now. Stolle and Anna Reid.
Thirty-six
Wyatt crossed the road to the joggers path next to the river and turned left, toward the city. There would be police soon, security men. His only way out was the Dutton Park ferry.
At this time of the morning there were no students waiting on the university side of the river. The traffic was all one-way, from Dutton Park to the university. Wyatt waited on the ramp that extended over the water. On the opposite bank cars were pulling into the carpark and students were gathering to cross. The ferry was in midstream. It swung around in a wide arc, drew in, and Wyatt stood back as the passengers filed off. There were one or two older people among them, academics or campus workers, but most were students wearing the puffed faces of recent sleep and anxiety and morning lecture panic. Some wheeled bikes. One or two looked curiously at Wyatt. You didnt get many suits on this ferry.
Wyatt paid his dollar and sat down. The ferryman waited a couple of minutes. When no-one else appeared, he cast off.
Ten-thirty. Wyatt found that he was trembling. Mostyns blood had streaked his fingers. He stood up, shoving them into his pockets, and remembered the loose cash from the vault. Standing where the ferryman couldnt see him, he counted it: fifteen thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds.
His heart stopped thudding and slowly the fright ebbed and a cold anger took its place. She had set this up with Stolle. They had brought him in to do the hard work, the kind of planning and execution work that he did better than anyone, then Stolle had stepped in at the point where Wyatt was most vulnerable, the final switch of vehicles. He thought bitterly about the code he worked by and how this time hed betrayed it. One: people who cross you once will do it againnever give them a break. Two: never let feelings affect your judgment. Three: never tell the people you work for more than they need to know. Hed told Anna Reid exactly how they would do the job and where the getaway vehicles would be waiting.
He heard the ferryman throw the motor into reverse. Water churned and the ferry edged with a bump against the rubber tyres on the Dutton Park landing. Wyatt stepped out, threaded through the students waiting on the ramp, and climbed the hill behind it.
He walked. He had fifteen thousand dollars that he could be spending on transport but it was enough that the ferryman had seen him without taxi or bus drivers pinpointing his movements any further.
Wyatt walked through Highgate Hill to South Brisbane and in thirty minutes he was at the rear of the State Library. He went in, found a mens room outside the Childrens Library, and cleaned the dirt from his clothes and shoes, the blood from his hands. Then he worked water into his hair and used his fingers like a comb, creating a new part and a lock over his forehead. He removed the tie and put the suitcoat over his arm, the. 38 in a pocket where he could reach it quickly. He walked over the Victoria Bridge into the city like any white collar worker in the sun.
Eleven oclock. Hed told Anna Reid not to do anything that would draw attention to herself on the day of the robbery, so shed be at work now. Her firm was in a building on Allenby Street. It had a flat, innocuous, concrete slab exterior that offered no pleasures for the eye. Wyatt went in through the main doors and straight to the lifts as though he had business there.
He waited. A lift arrived and he stepped in, pushing the button to close the doors, then pushing buttons for the seventh and ninth floors. He put on his suitcoat and tie again and moved the. 38 from his coat pocket to the waistband at the small of his back.
The lift climbed. In a panel above the door, green numerals formed and dissolved, formed and dissolved: 4… 5… 6… Then 7, where Anna Reid worked. Wyatt would not get out at 7 but he needed to know the layout, where the offices were in relation to the corridor, where the stairwell might be. He lounged at the back of the lift when it stopped, just a man on his way to an upper level.
The lift gave a shudder, the door seemed to hesitate, then the three panels slid back into the door recess and Anna Reid stood staring at him.
The blood drained from her face, as though she knew hed come to kill her.
Neither moved. Wyatt stared at her neutrally, then at the men standing with her, one at each elbow. One made to step into the lift, pulling Anna with him, but the other said, Its going up.
The first man nodded, resumed his position and his hold on Annas arm.
Not that she was going anywhere, handcuffed like that.
Wyatts expression was gawking now, the nine-to-five citizen finding a little vicarious drama in his day. He kept the look pasted there as the doors closed again, shutting off Anna, the plainclothes men, the uniformed cops in the corridor behind them.
Wyatt got out on 9, a long corridor with unmarked doors on either side. Somewhere he heard a racking cough but otherwise the place was deserted. According to a notice on the wall opposite, the toilets were to the left. Wyatt followed the arrow and came to the stairwell door. He opened it and went in. The air was musty. Somewhere far below him a door banged.
He took a first step down and then another. He couldnt stay in the building: she might say that shed seen him, use him to trade her way out of trouble. His head was pounding again. He wanted to run, but forced himself to go slowly all the way to the bottom. There could be a cop on the stairs, there could be someone snatching a smoke break. A running man in a stairwell would not look right.
At the ground floor he eased the door open. Through the main doors at the end of the foyer he could see the plainclothes men, an unmarked car, Anna being bundled into it. Thats it for her, he thought. Theyll give her ten years.
Wyatt closed the door and waited. He thought about his options. Hed pocketed fifteen thousand dollars of loose cash from the vault, which was better than nothingenough, anyway, to finance a hit somewhere that would support him until it was safe to return to Melbourne and get his money back from the Mesics. Stolle and Mostyn must have been operating alone, he realised. He began to picture Stolle, the mans place in Melbourne, the quarter million hidden away somewhere, and left TrustBank behind him forever.
Thirty-seven
Stolle whooped as he drove away from the city. He couldnt help it. He giggled and whooped and pounded the flat of his hand on his knee.
He owed it all to a combination of idle curiosity, hatred and lack of funds. Just over a week ago hed been blinking in the afternoon light outside Jupiters, wondering whether to run his last twenty dollars through the poker machines or buy a ham sandwich and take the first flight home, when hed seen Wyatt step down from a tourist coach.
Hed ducked into a boutique and watched Wyatt through the racks of string bikinis against the window. He waited to see if the woman was with him. A bunch of Japanese, a couple of pensioners and a handful of breezy backpackers but not the woman whod hired him to find the man.
Help you, sir? Some
thing for the wife, is it?
Stolle motioned the assistant to leave him alone. He didnt turn around. Perve, she muttered.
As Stolle watched, a kind of shiver had crawled across his skin. Something was going on and he owed it to himself to check it out. If Wyatt had been needed so urgently, why was he down here on the Coast a couple of days later with a load of tourists? If sex was the reason the woman in Brisbane wanted Wyattand Stolle had come to accept that that was the casethen how come shed let him free with a bunch of leggy sheilas half his age?
He saw them pour into a cafe near the bus. Wyatt did not go in with them. Wyatt walked off alone. A while later, Stolle followed. What did the guy want, if not to play at being a tourist?
Hanging well back, hed tailed Wyatt for thirty minutes. Wyatt walked slowly and he seemed to be acutely aware of his surroundings, a stranger in a strange land. He looked in clothing shops. He stood near sidewalk cafes, eyeing the patrons intently. Once or twice he went right around beachfront motels, checking windows and doors. Was he casing the place? The man did armed robbery; he wasnt a cat burglar.
There was a risk that Wyatt would tumble him if he kept this up. Stolle remembered Wyatts treachery in the pump house at the farm, the way hed treated Mostyn at the motel, the womans curtness at the bus station, and had allowed a kernel of hate to grow for both of them.
He dropped away a few minutes later and rang the coach company. He learnt that they ran a full-day bus tour each day, taking in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, finishing back in Brisbane just before 7 pm. Did sir want a ticket? There were spare seats today, pick-up outside Jupiters at six oclock.
Future reference, Stolle told the operator, and cut the connection.
Curiosity, hatred and lack of funds. Stolle looked at his last twenty dollars. Wyatt robbed banks and armoured cars for a living, so if it wasnt sex the woman wanted him for, maybe she had a job lined up for him.
Stolle had two options: wait around and see if he could grab a piece of the action, or fly home to Melbourne. Given that the tingling in his spine was working overtime, the second option was out. He trusted that feeling, every time.
So, he stayed in Queensland. He would follow the woman, follow Wyatt. See where they went, who they saw, what they were spending their money on.
But hed known he couldnt do it alone. He fed five of his remaining dollars into an STD phone inside a Burger King and called his office in Melbourne. How are you doing with those jobs I gave you?
Had an argument with the grocer, Mostyn said. Now hes got his nephew riding shotgun, stupid prick. The Plastico strike was called off. Thought Id start that other job tomorrow.
Leave it. Itll keep. I want you in Brisbane first thing tomorrow morning. Check a couple of guns and permits through on the same flight, and scrounge what cash you can. Plus a couple of infra-red binoculars and the Nikon with a range of lenses. I think Im onto something here.
Fifteen dollars left. Stolle had walked into Jupiters then. An hour later he walked out again with five hundred dollars in his pocket. He went to the Avis office, rented a Falcon and was waiting in it when the coach pulled up outside Jupiters at five-forty-five. He didnt know if Wyatt would be among the passengers or not. If the hit was somewhere on the Gold Coast, Wyatt might not go back to Brisbane. Tailing him locally would be tricky: the Coast was a small place and Wyatt would spot him eventually.
But Wyatt did board the coach. Stolle saw him hang back and let the others on first. The man was a pro, the way he guarded his back out of habit, even on a bus trip among a bunch of tourists; the way he stood where he could watch the pedestrian traffic, waiting until the last moment so he wouldnt be boxed in on the bus itself.
Stolle got to the freeway ahead of the coach. He let it pass him and draw away. When the city skyline appeared, he accelerated, catching the coach and passing it. He was waiting half a block away when it pulled into Adelaide Street to unload.
It was a useful evening for Stolle. He tailed Wyatt and found where the woman lived. He rooted around in a rubbish bin under her house and came up with a name: Anna Reid. At three oclock in the morning he discovered where Wyatt was staying.
The next morning, Sunday, he drove out to the airport. Mostyn had checked through two. 45 automatics and was carrying three thousand dollars in cash. They claimed the guns and Mostyns luggage and drove to Wyatts hotel. A little before eleven oclock Wyatt emerged and caught a bus.
They had tailed him to a new shopping centre halfway to the Gold Coast. It was puzzling. Was the guy meeting someone? Stolle went carefully. The streets were deserted and he knew Wyatt had only to spot the Falcon twice in two separate locations to know he was being followed. When the bus signalled for the stop, Stolle parked two blocks behind it, pulling in tight against a small car with a high roof and plenty of glass on all sides.
Train the camera on him. Telephoto.
While Mostyn fiddled with the Nikon, Stolle tried to figure what Wyatt was up to. First Wyatt went into a milk bar. He was in there a while and when he came out he was reading a newspaper as if he had all the time in the world. He ambled across the street, eyes on the paper. He went down a side street and they lost sight of him. A couple of minutes later, he was back again.
Hes scouting, Mostyn said. Has to be.
The bank, you reckon?
Has to be.
I guess well find out, Stolle said.
He started the car and they drove back to Brisbane. Wyatt had still been at the bank but Stolle didnt want to push his luck by sticking to him any longer. They bought sandwiches in the mall and staked out Wyatts hotel again. At mid-afternoon, when Wyatt wandered around South Bank with Anna Reid, Stolle and Mostyn had watched and taken photographs from a spot on the opposite bank.
What do you think?
Mostyn lowered the Nikon. What do you mean?
What Ive been teaching you: signs, body language.
Oh. That. Well, the guys been screwing her.
What else?
This doesnt look like your average stroll in the sun. As if theyre working out something heavy-duty and hes laying down the ground rules.
Good boy.
They watched a while longer, then Stolle gave Mostyn the keys to the Falcon. Take it back, rent something smaller.
Mostyn had returned with a Mazda. That evening they followed Wyatt to a motel out on the Ipswich Road. They saw him stake out the place first, then go in. A while later a man came out, looking bewildered. Then the Reid woman came out. She seemed to apologise to him and pressed money into his hands. Then she went back inside and the man wandered away, scratching his head.
Acting on a hunch, Stolle started the car. Lets talk to him.
He pulled in several metres past the man. Mostyn got out. He crossed the footpath to a car showroom window and peered in. When the man came adjacent to the car, Stolle opened the back door and Mostyn, moving fast, had closed in with his pistol. Inside, he hissed.
Jesus Christ, the man said.
They had driven him to a dark corner of a hotel carpark. Five minutes and one hundred dollars later, Stolle and Mostyn had known for certain that Wyatt and the Reid woman had a job ready to go. After that it was a matter of watching and waiting.
They had watched and waited for a week. Little happened in the early days. The three men met twice for short periods. Anna Reid did not appear again but, curiously, Wyatt staked out her house a couple of times. Other than that he stayed low, moving hotels every couple of days. Then, on the Wednesday and again on the Friday, Wyatt had staked out a house in East Brisbane and followed the man who lived there to the bank. The manager, Stolle discovered later.
On Saturday, Stolle saw the three men go shopping. When they stole the cars on Sunday, he knew they were getting ready to strike.
It was time to stop leaving a paper trail. Using cash and fake papers, Stolle had rented a Range Rover mounted with a bullbar. Hed need something with muscle for what he had in mind.
This morning, early, Wyatt and the other
s had moved. When Stolle saw them go straight to the managers house, he knew at once how they planned to get into the bank. When they left in the silver Volvo, he followed, leaving Mostyn to deal with the hostage taker. Mostyn with his clever hands.
Now it was three hours later, and the money was all his.
On his way out of the city, hed paid for courier delivery of a package. It hadnt far to go. Police HQ. Call it insurance, call it payback.
Next stop, the International Room at the Flamingo. Where your big-money boys like to play.
Stolle was grave for a moment. A shame about Mostyn.
Then he whooped and giggled and slapped his knee again.
Thirty-eight
If it had been anything elsecomputer fraud, stealing from a trust accountshe might have got bail, but this was armed robbery and the police argued that there was an unacceptable degree of risk that she would abscond. So it was remand in a new, privately-owned womens prison complex in Inala, and Anna wondered if Wyatt would get to her eventually, revenge for the grief shed caused him in the past, the grief he was blaming her for now.
At least she knew now that he was alive. For a while, shed thought he was dead. Shed heard a couple of news flashes on the tiny radio shed taken to work, and tried to piece it together. There had been a gun battle at the bank: two men dead, a third escaped with a limited amount of money from the vault, and then news that a man was dead in a separate but related incident at the university.
She had felt her control slipping away. She was partnered to three men and there had been three bodies. No names, no indication of what had gone wrong. One of those men could have been Wyatt, and in the minutes before the lift door opened she had allowed herself a prayer or two, a tribute.
She had not believed in forever with him, not even in the afterglow of the kind of lovemaking that told her sex could be more than just a quick loss of joy. But she had believed in six months, a year. And, a long time ago, three months ago in Melbourne, he had said they could work together, that he had jobs lined up where a woman would be needed. Three months, in which there hadnt been a day when she didnt want to taste again his bitterness, watchfulness and buried humour.
