by Garry Disher
Sherry stared again at the photograph, as if she was looking at the face of a suicide bomber. She turned to her screen, tapped some keys.
‘Here it is: Adam Palmer. He’s from Brisbane.’
I bet, thought Muecke. He noted all the details from her screen. ‘The payment went through?’
‘Says here he paid in cash.’
‘So you didn’t process the card.’
‘No.’
‘Is that usual? Accepting cash?’
The other woman had hung up the phone. She wandered over, looked at the screen, then the photo. ‘I remember him.’
Muecke waited. Most of his life was spent waiting. Finally, he prompted: ‘And?’
‘He said he’d bought his wife a bracelet for her birthday and reached his daily limit and could he pay by cash. If there were extras, then we’d charge the card.’
‘He returned the car?’
‘To our city branch.’
Got back here how? wondered Muecke. He could check taxis or Ubers, or airport bus CCTV. But what would that tell him?
‘Undamaged? Tank full?’
She looked at the screen. ‘Yes.’
‘So you had no reason to test the validity of the card.’
‘Like I said, he paid for everything in cash, fair and square.’
MUECKE WAS IN DOWNTOWN Newcastle by 2 p.m. He gave a lot of thought to his next stage and decided against approaching Tremayne or Tremayne’s wife or Tremayne’s lawyer—at least not without permission from the feds and the locals, who would not give him that permission.
It would be a long shot talking to them anyway. Would they have seen the guy he was after? Would they admit it if they had?
According to his research, one of the Tremayne-Roden companies was still trading. The office, on Ravenshaw Street, was blank-faced, as if in hiding. He stepped in off the footpath and found a small reception area in darkness, the desk unattended, a screensaver roiling away on a computer—maybe the receptionist walked off for good and switched off the lights behind her, thought Muecke.
There was a hallway entrance in the back wall, a hint of light spilling from an office somewhere along it; a male voice sounding heated. Tremayne?
Muecke knocked and called out. The voice stopped. Said, ‘I have to go,’ and a handset was clattered onto its base.
The man who appeared was plump, clean, worried-looking. Muecke knew the face from his research: Mark Impey, a friend of Tremayne and his wife.
‘Sorry,’ Impey was saying with a shallow, uncertain laugh, ‘we’re a bit short-staffed at the moment. In fact’—he mopped his face—‘we’re going out of business and I had some tidying up to do.’
Another laugh. A man who laughs too often, at nothing, Muecke thought. He showed his ID.
‘Police?’ A plump hand went to his collar. ‘Actually, I should apologise if I gave you the impression I work here. I’m not an employee. I was helping out earlier in the week and I just came back to…to…’
‘Perhaps you can help me with something,’ Muecke said.
The man looked hunted. ‘If I can.’
Muecke didn’t know what the lines of inf luence and communication were in what was probably a small, tightly knit business community. He didn’t want to scare Tremayne into running too soon. But Impey was on the periphery…
He took out the surveillance photograph. ‘Have you seen this man around at all?’
Impey looked confused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘Don’t you people talk to each other?’
‘You know how it is,’ Muecke said. Something was about to fall out.
‘He works for the Probity Commission,’ Impey said.
‘Ah. You met him?’
‘He came to my house. Quite rude, I thought. Quite unnecessary. Not very professional.’
‘Did he ask questions? Tell you anything?’
Impey agonised. ‘To be frank, he put the wind up me.’
‘Did he give you a name?’
Impey winced. ‘I forget.’
‘Okay.’
Then Impey said primly, ‘Actually things have gone a bit too far for my liking.’
‘Right…’
‘It’s about Jack Tremayne. I’ve done all I can for him, I’m washing my hands of it.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘I only hope he does the right thing.’
This was a man you had to coax information out of. Muecke said, ‘You think he might do the wrong thing?’
FOUR P.M., A BRIEFING room at the police station on Watt Street, Muecke tapping the Sydney surveillance photo and saying, ‘This man passed himself off to Mark Impey as a Probity Commission agent. He gave Impey to understand that Jack Tremayne has a hidden stash and intends to do a runner.’
Agostino was at the briefing, looking put out that Muecke had been acting alone on his turf. ‘You think your guy’s after the stash?’
‘I do.’
‘How sure are you Tremayne’s got a hidden stash?’
‘Kyle Roden confirms it.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Yes, in Watervale.’
‘Could be sour grapes.’
‘Could be. Or it could be that Tremayne has a trick up his sleeve.’
‘Why would your guy pretend to work for the Probes? Why alert Impey, who could be in on it?’
‘I think to see what might shake loose. It’s probable that no one knows where the money is except Tremayne. You got nothing when you raided his place, right? So maybe a friend’s helping him. So—scare the friends and see what happens.’
‘Be interesting to know who else he’s taken a run at.’
A City of Newcastle inspector said, ‘You don’t think Impey’s the friend? About to cave?’
‘He’s not someone you’d trust with a secret,’ Muecke said.
A Probity Commission investigator was comparing the Sydney and Newcastle surveillance photos. ‘Certainly looks like the same man.’
Muecke ignored him and so did the others. ‘Tremayne could be getting ready to run, right now, today.’
‘He isn’t,’ Agostino said.
‘I guess you’re watching him,’ Muecke said, ‘but he’s slippery from all accounts.’
Agostino shrugged, as if to say his team was slipperier. A nice enough guy, thought Muecke, but young and ambitious. The arrogance was an immutable trait.
‘You want this man?’ the Newcastle inspector said, indicating the surveillance photographs. ‘Not Tremayne?’
‘Correct.’
‘Because we don’t have the resources to look for him.’
This could take all year, thought Muecke. He was supposed to fly back to Sydney by Monday. ‘Perhaps if I could have access to your footage? Photos? Wiretaps?’
‘Not wiretaps. And it all goes back weeks.’
‘I’m game, just give me a desk and a monitor,’ Muecke said, pivoting out of his chair. ‘Maybe I can find where Tremayne’s stashed his loot and wrap it all up for you.’
They had their doubts. They’d have preferred it if he just went home.
27
NICK LAZAR WAS CATCHING up on paperwork. He’d been hired to do a party starting at midnight, so he had time to spare. He’d just emailed the last invoice when a shadow appeared on the other side of his frosted-glass office door, a rippling shape beyond the discreet gold lettering. A tentative rap of knuckles, the door rattling, a little loose in the jamb.
Lazar called, ‘Come,’ expecting some fresh bullshit. There’d been a lot of that lately; summonses, debt collectors.
Joshua Kramer slipped in, flushed, probably high. Thin face sharp, smiling nervously.
‘Nick.’
‘Josh. You’ve got another gig?’
The kid was wearing jeans and a hoodie. He edged onto the visitor’s chair as if seeing Lazar, being in Lazar’s company, had caused a shift in gravity. ‘I’ve put the band on the backburner for now,’ he said.
Damn good thing, thought Lazar. He waited.
Kramer shifted on his buttocks and dug in his jeans. ‘Got you that hundred I owed you.’
Which would pay for about ten seconds of Lazar’s lawyer’s time. ‘Thanks, Josh.’
The kid jiggled his knee.
Lazar said, ‘Did you get around to asking your old man for help?’
Kramer shook his head wildly. ‘No. Nope. Not him. Nope.’
‘That would be a no, then,’ Lazar said with a smile. Sometime in the next few years the kid might reveal what was on his mind. Lazar tapped the keys on his calculator, made a note on a pad. Busy, busy.
And the kid said, ‘You thought any more about, you know…’
Lazar was nervous suddenly. Walls have ears. He checked his watch: almost five-thirty. ‘How about we go around the corner for a brew, Josh? I’m just about finished here.’
Out where the early-evening sky was a desolate mix of blackish greys, coldness seeping from sooty walls and a drizzling rain. It was a short walk to the pub, but pubs have ears, too. Lazar stopped beneath a shop awning, a dismal light within, a lone barber reading a newspaper in one of his chairs.
‘Have I thought any more about what, Josh?’ He seized the kid’s forearm for emphasis. ‘Quickly now.’
‘About Wyatt,’ Kramer said, accusatory neediness in his eyes. ‘About the money.’
Lazar released him. He checked both ways along the footpath: they were alone. ‘Not really my concern.’
‘I thought, you know, with your contacts and everything.’
‘Thought what, exactly?’
The kid shouted, ‘I thought you’d help me, man.’
‘I have helped you. Discount rates, and I’ve been carrying your hundred-dollar debt.’
Kramer’s stoned eyes were damp holes of darkness. ‘Not that kind of help.’
‘Then what? Be clear.’
Kramer took a breath. ‘Help ripping Wyatt off, okay? That clear enough for you?’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘You were interested, I could see it in your face,’ Kramer said, clutching his chest for warmth. He was shivering, underdressed for a cold, wet May evening.
Lazar tired of playing hard to get. ‘Think about it, Josh. We don’t know where the guy lives. We don’t know when or where or even if he’s going to be briefed by your father again.’
Josh Kramer stared miserably at his wet feet. A clump of people hurried by. A dog sidled up as if to share a secret and rested its flank against the kid’s calf. Kramer gave it an ineffectual kick and almost fell over; the dog skittered away with a look of betrayal.
Lazar gazed at Kramer with deep distaste, but the kid didn’t notice. Still looking down, he said, ‘I can’t think what else to do except draw him out somehow, like bump off my sister or something.’
The kid didn’t mean it, clearly—he wasn’t thinking. But Lazar was.
BRADLEY SALTER HAD BEEN back in his cell for two days with nothing but grudgingly doled-out paracetamol to take the edge off the pain. His bruises were coming up in technicolour but the swelling had receded, the noise in his ears was down to a dull roar, and his piss was no longer likely to attract vampires. He’d heard that Kramer’s day-release privileges had been revoked and his goons sent to a different prison but didn’t take much heart from the news. Kramer was already reaching out to some of the psychos in the joint and he still had some of the screws in his pocket.
And so Salter became like a freshie in fear for his life. He kept to the shadowy areas of corridors and rooms, close to the wall when he rounded corners and wide of open doorways. He was jostled and tripped. His food was spat in, his plate tipped to the floor. Two cell searches. Rec room chairs jerked away as he tried to sit. ‘Maggot’, ‘dog’ and ‘rat’ muttered in his ear. He stopped showering. When he got too rank he gave himself a whore’s wash at a laundry sink. He tried keeping to his cell or the library. Keeping close to the screws when he walked the yard.
As for Kramer, the prick ignored him. Face blank, as if Salter didn’t exist, whenever they encountered each other in a doorway or corridor. Which Salter read as the calm before the next storm. A pre-emptive strike was the only way to go, to which end he’d filched a toothbrush from the infirmary.
It weighed on him, the eternal vigilance. The fact that Kramer was likely to take a second run at him. What was the prick waiting for? Trying to wear him down? It seemed unlikely the guy had washed his hands of the matter. He’d want to know who, on the outside, was moving against him.
The waiting took another toll. Salter’s hair was like straw, his skin like paper. He wasn’t a men’s cosmetics kind of guy, but he asked his lawyer to bring him a moisturiser and a decent shampoo the next time he visited. Nothing too poncy; he didn’t want to smell like a bunch of flowers. Both were confiscated. Both were given back later, pretty much empty. What, they thought his lawyer was smuggling a gun in a bottle of Pantene?
All he could do was embrace his outcast status, along with his bruises and stitches. And ignore Nick Lazar; not bother to check the iPhone for messages. Lazar owed him.
Then he ran into Carl Ayliffe leaving the library just before dinner that Saturday. All alone, no Kramer or Kramer goons about. He slapped the kid’s cheeks, left, right, and got up in his face.
‘Rat me out, would you? Fucking little maggot.’
Ayliffe dropped to the floor, his face mucus-streaked and pitiable. ‘Please, he made me.’
‘Could’ve lied.’
‘He was going to break my fingers.’
Salter kicked him in the head and stomped on his ankle. ‘And you told the cops as well? You don’t do that, you fucking miserable waste of space. Didn’t anyone tell you that?’
Ayliffe rolled into a ball and wailed. A complicated feeling of disgust crept through Salter. A memory trace of worn lino and pitted chrome table legs. The underside of the table a mosaic, briefly distracting, of dead wads of chewed bubblegum…And then his father’s right leg swinging, the work boot snapping in.
Jesus, he’d become his father. He was a cliché.
He reached down, hauled Ayliffe to his feet and told him to piss off.
Alone then, a sense of foreboding like a thickness in the air. A dread of pitfalls out there in the rooms, cells and corridors.
He retrieved the iPhone from its nest in the library and, while it booted, walked to where he could see along the corridor yet avoid the cameras. He was still alone. The phone lit up and he saw that Nick had texted several times, called twice. Salter sent him a text: call.
While waiting, he reached out and absently turned a book spine the right way up. Then, realising the book had been mis-shelved, moved it to the correct position. Quite a few of the books were out of place. Someone who doesn’t know his alphabet, he thought. He checked the corridor again. Six forty-five. If he wanted dinner, he’d better get his skates on.
The phone buzzed thirty seconds later. He said, ‘Yo,’ and Lazar was screaming in his ear:
‘Where the fuck have you been?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘What do you mean, fuck me? You go off the radar, I have no idea what’s going on.’
So Salter told him what had been going on. Sam Kramer had been grounded, Sam Kramer had beaten the shit out of him. ‘Out of my hands now, Nick. You’ll have to track down the guy you’re after some other way. Meanwhile, you owe me. Big time.’
There was a long pause. ‘About that,’ Lazar said.
‘You bastard. I’m coming for you when I get out.’
‘No, no, not that—how would you like to make a bit more money?’
Salter was on his guard. ‘I’m listening.’
‘You must really hate Kramer.’
Where was this going? ‘Yeah, so?’
‘Could you take him?’
This was interesting. The chance to monetise an existing goal. Sweet.
‘How much?’
28
MARINA SECURITY WOULD BE tighter
now: Wyatt couldn’t risk another search of Impey’s boat. Early Sunday morning saw him sprawled on a damp park bench opposite Jack Tremayne’s house. He looked as if he might have spent the whole night huddled there in his torn op-shop parka and unravelling woollen jumper, a beanie over his brow and ears, drizzled in the water droplets from the last leaves on the deciduous trees all around him.
He could also see the surveillance team, and a distant glimpse of his own Toyota with the fake Hertz sticker parked along a side street. The watchers were in the white Caprice today. Surely Tremayne knew that car by now? Unless that was the whole point.
At 9 a.m. Tremayne emerged in bicycle shorts, a hoodie and a helmet, wheeling a mountain bike. He set off along the street, a slow, gliding roll past the Caprice, which eventually eased away from the kerb and trailed him.
Wyatt chewed on that. If Tremayne ran now, he’d be faster, more agile, than on foot or in a car. There’d be nothing Wyatt could do about it without drawing attention to himself. Perhaps nothing the authorities could do, either, but they stood more chance of grabbing Tremayne than he did. Manpower, communication—the ability to throw up a cordon. But Tremayne wasn’t dressed for an escape attempt, wasn’t carrying a change of clothes or a phone or a wallet. He was simply setting out for a bike ride.
Still, were bike rides a part of his routine? Wyatt hadn’t been watching the man long enough to know.
Thirty minutes later, Lynx Tremayne appeared. Jeans, trainers and a blue puffa jacket. Head down, walking briskly with no pause to check the weather or decide whether to go left, right or across the park. This wasn’t a simple morning walk: too purposeful. Instinct told Wyatt to tail her.
Waiting until she was a hundred metres away, heading towards Newcomen Street, he ran to his car, stripped off the parka and jumper to reveal a thin hiking merino, newly purchased, and set off after her. He drove slowly, keeping well back, the blue puffa jacket easy to spot. Down Newcomen to Christchurch Cathedral, where she climbed into a Honda Odyssey. Wyatt couldn’t see the driver; his impression was that it was a man. He tailed the Honda along Church Street, then into Tyrrell, and eventually to King Street and west from the downtown area. A stop for petrol, then to a street in Tighes Hill.
