by Garry Disher
William DeLacey lived in Tighes Hill.
But instead of pulling into his street, the car stopped at a small playground and Lynx Tremayne got out. She made for a bus shelter and sat. Wyatt saw no reason for her to do that. And she simply sat; didn’t crane for an oncoming bus or check the timetable. Yet she was impatient.
Wyatt continued to follow the Honda, which soon turned into DeLacey’s street and into the driveway of his house, nose up to the rear of the Lexus. Wyatt had only seen the house once, and at night; in daylight it looked appealing: a renovated weatherboard with pastel grey walls, a white picket fence and a silvery gumtree in the backyard. Nothing ostentatious. But it would be costly to buy and renovate here. A house for a family who couldn’t yet afford The Hill.
Wyatt found a parking spot at the end of the street and watched in the mirror. DeLacey was bundling luggage into the Honda, kissing his wife and daughter goodbye. Wyatt thought it through: DeLacey had kindly offered to fill the Honda with petrol while his wife finished packing and getting their daughter ready for the trip. A trip where? To see her parents? A holiday? To get them out of the way, anyhow, so he could move his lover in for a while.
When the Honda was gone DeLacey made a call. Shortly after that, Lynx Tremayne came in at a fast walk and brushed past DeLacey, who’d looked set to give her a kiss. Then both of them were inside the grey house. Wyatt watched for an hour, until he heard an alert on his tracking mobile. Jack Tremayne’s BMW was on the move.
IT HAD AMUSED TREMAYNE, taking the agents in the white Caprice for a long, slow ride with the occasional zigzagging sprint. Down to the Strzelecki Lookout and back up through the park, trees lapping on both sides of the track; down Ordnance Street, then rapidly up Watts—where he gave the police station the finger—and west along the foreshore. He’d had to slow here—people in high-vis jackets preparing for some public event. He stopped and walked the bike for a while. Learned there was a fun run starting after lunch.
He bought croissants and rode slowly home via the Bogey Hole. Put the croissants in the oven to warm; showered, shaved and rubbed some product through his hair. Wondered who he was trying to impress. Lynx? They were barely talking these days.
He brewed a strong coffee, yelled, ‘Lynx, coffee’s up,’ and perched on a kitchen stool. Coffee, croissants with honey, a bunch of pissed-off Probity Commission or fraud squad or federal police agents out there in the street…Life was okay if you ignored the bullshit.
The house was too quiet. He crossed to a front window: Lynx’s car was there. She hadn’t been in the bedroom before or after his shower; she hadn’t been laying out her stupid fucking tarot cards when he walked through the sitting room just now…
He checked every room and the front, side and rear yards; the garage. Her usual bag was on the chair beside the bed. Her purse and phone were on the dressing table. He shrugged.
I go for a bike ride, he thought, and she goes for a walk.
Insistent now, coming from the deepest chamber of his instincts, a single word: Run.
DeLacey’s caginess, Lynx’s disappearances, Impey’s jumpiness. But he wasn’t a man who ever backed down, and to run would be to back down. He was smarter than anyone life had ever thrown at him. For weeks, months, now he’d tied everyone up in knots. Bought time. If he was patient he could outwait the Probity Commission. They were notoriously timid and he’d probably get no more than a rap over the knuckles. He couldn’t blame them. The Federal Government strips thirty-eight million dollars out of their budget and expects them to shake a big stick at corporate malfeasance?
Run, the voice said.
He sat on the sofa to think, and fell asleep. Late morning his phone woke him. He stared groggily at the screen. Blinked. Looked again. Maybe he hadn’t woken—maybe he was still asleep, caught in a strangling dream of all the things he feared most.
A series of photographs had pinged in: Lynx bound to a chair with grey duct tape, a strip of tape across her mouth, her eyes full of fear. She was in a room in a house but there were no markers, only a plain, pale yellow wall with a brighter patch where a photo, a painting or a poster had once hung.
Then a photograph of an A4 sheet of paper carrying a list of demands and warnings in twenty-point type. A further photo, the note now a pile of ashes.
Tremayne found that he’d grasped the neck of his shirt with one hand as panic clawed at his throat.
Then, as if a switch had been flicked, he was standing apart from all that. Curious that he’d reacted so strongly—reacted at all, in fact. Had he panicked for himself, for Lynx, or for the pair of them? At the same time, in another part of his mind, he was planning his next steps.
He was methodical, once he started moving. He filled a bumbag with all the cash he could find, together with a mobile phone, a key, a crumplable cap and tightly rolled surf pants. Then he stripped to his underwear and pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes. Locked the house, gave a little twiddle of the fingers to the man and the woman in the Caprice—they waved back—got behind the wheel of his BMW and headed down to the carpark at the rear of Will DeLacey’s law firm.
He locked the car—he’d be sorry to abandon it—and crossed the road. Walked west along the foreshore promenade. Other people were streaming in; hundreds there already, under a large banner reading Cancer Council 10 km Fun Run. He found a booth and registered. Looked about him. Some of the runners were bouncing on their toes already, itching to get going. He checked the time: noon. The run started at 1 p.m. He tried to say hello to a couple of people he knew. One, a hard-nosed stoic, looked right past him. The other, her face registering cold dismay, thin black eyebrows arching in consternation and surprise, gave him a choked ‘Hi.’
A sullen-looking cloud cover. It pretty much summed things up.
YESTERDAY AGOSTINO HAD GIVEN Muecke an office the size of a broom cupboard. ‘Go your hardest.’
At least it had a landline phone, a computer and a desk, so Muecke went his hardest and didn’t get to his hotel until 9 p.m. He was back at the rickety desk by 8 a.m., ready for another shot at the files and surveillance tapes. He’d organised the material into ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ piles, and by lunchtime Sunday had whittled everything down to a few bank records, call histories and photographs that seemed suggestive of…something.
Then at twelve-thirty he walked down to the canteen for a stale ham, cheese and tomato sandwich and heard some minor commotion in the corridor on his way back.
Agostino and a couple of other guys, heading somewhere in a hurry. ‘What’s up?’
The Newcastle detective skidded to a halt. He had the look of a man called in to work on his day off: comb tracks in his hair and last week’s suit. ‘Probably nothing, but Jack Tremayne just did something odd.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Put on running gear and signed up for a fun run along the foreshore.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the Tremayne we know and love.’
‘Christ no; but there are hundreds of people there. Literally hundreds.’
‘Ah. All hands on deck.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘I’ll grab my jacket,’ Muecke said.
Agostino was itching to get going. ‘Meet you there, mate. There’ll be a few of us.’
A few of you running alongside Tremayne and several hundred others in your Sunday best? Muecke allowed himself a tired smile as he went upstairs, shouldered his way into his jacket and made his way down to the esplanade.
The first runners were powering away from the start as he arrived at Throsby Wharf. He wanted to say, ‘It’s a fun run,’ but was pretty certain it wouldn’t go down well. He stood on the sidelines, trying to spot one of the local coppers. No sign of anyone he knew, and no sign of Tremayne. Did they seriously expect Tremayne to be running with the mob?
He waited. Thought about his wife and kids. They were the sort to take part in this run. Joiners. They had a public sense, a community sense—something he’d lost along the way. They embraced
life; he’d seen too much of it. And he knew if he ran with this mob of grinning nutcases he’d look a fool, with his pale legs. Sound a fool, with his ex-smoker’s lungs struggling for air. He wasn’t envious, exactly—it was barely fourteen degrees Celsius here, with a nasty chop on the harbour. But he had surely lost something, he thought, some old sense of living a useful, busy life. Some kind of shared feeling with Meg and the kids.
He spotted Agostino. ‘Any sign?’
‘Nada.’ Agostino was showing the strain, with the wind thrashing his hair about and his face working anxiously. ‘Zip. Zilch.’
‘You don’t honestly think he’s jogging, do you?’
‘Well, yeah. He was seen registering, seen heading away from the starting line. My main worry is, someone’s going to pick him up or he has a car stashed somewhere.’
Or he’s swimming across the harbour, Muecke thought. Or sailing off into the sunset.
That last thought tugged at him. ‘A sometimes-praiseworthy lateral thinker,’ according to another of his performance reviews. His mind took him to Jack Tremayne’s sale of assets during the last couple of months. Including a cabin cruiser, bought by a business associate.
Muecke wandered over to the marina and badged a security guard, an elderly man with a veined nose and cap flaps pulled sensibly down over his ears. ‘A man named Tremayne sold a boat a few weeks ago,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Do you know who bought it?’
‘Funny you should say that.’
Muecke looked at him. ‘Is that a fact.’
‘He sold it to Mr Impey, and someone sneaked on board a couple of nights ago.’
Muecke felt that old tingle again, even as he cursed himself for not knowing who the buyer had been. ‘The boat’s here? You can show me?’
‘Sure.’
‘Let’s go,’ Muecke said, harder now, to get the old guy moving.
Stopped and went back when he saw resistance in the man. ‘Please, I’d be very grateful.’
‘I was attacked.’
‘When you investigated?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was anything taken?’
‘Didn’t look to be. Mr Impey said it was all intact.’
‘Let’s have a look. Do you mind?’
The guard was slow to move off, reinforcing the fact that he was near retirement age, generally overlooked, and not impressed by a pushy bloke with a badge.
‘This way,’ he said.
Muecke strained to keep his voice mild, his steps unhurried. ‘Tell me about Mr Tremayne.’
‘Had a lot of money, lost a lot of money.’
‘And as a person?’
‘Total prick. Completely up himself.’
‘Mr Impey?’
‘He’s all right, better than most. Knows fuck all about boats, though.’
They reached an area sealed off by a metal gate, except the gate had been left open, and the guard was saying, ‘There goes Mr Impey’s boat now. First time it’s been out in weeks.’
A sleek white vessel backing out, a gliding dart unruffled by the chop in the water. ‘It might be his boat, but it’s not him,’ Muecke said, fumbling for his phone.
‘Fuck me, you’re right,’ the guard said. ‘That’s Mr Tremayne.’
WYATT TRACKED TREMAYNE’S BMW to the carpark behind DeLacey’s law firm and let the Corolla idle as he watched him cross the road. Some kind of running event. Nothing felt right about that.
He steered off the street and into the law firm’s driveway and parked next to the BMW. Then he stepped over a low hedge, around the rear of the adjacent building and out onto the road again. He darted across, joining the people thronging to run or cheer the runners, and watched Tremayne approach a registration table inside a flapping tent. People jostled Wyatt, the disturbing randomness of a crowd. He wished he’d brought a gun along. He breathed in, out, until he felt loose again, his face calm, unremarkable, his senses sharp.
By the time he slipped through the throng to a patch of grassland closer to the water’s edge, he was ready to play a waiting game. Tremayne would emerge from the crowd eventually. And from where Wyatt was standing, he could see the section of the marina where Impey’s boat was moored. The running event was Tremayne’s diversion. Wyatt understood diversions, he’d used them before—most recently burning oil drums in a Shell depot on one side of a country town while he held up a payroll van on the other. And so he waited, and he thought. Almost like breathing.
There was an electric energy in the air suddenly. A siren blast, raised voices, a sense of rippling zeal as the first clump of runners sprinted away. Quite soon after that, Tremayne emerged, walking rapidly, heading for the marina. He’d pulled on pants and a cap and no longer looked like a runner. Wyatt held back: the elderly security guard he’d encountered on Friday was standing between him and the first line of moored yachts, watching the runners as if they were a wondrously strange phenomenon.
Beyond him, Tremayne was unlocking a metal gate. Wyatt was about twenty metres from Windward Passage and he didn’t think he could go through the security guard. Too many people about, spectators urging on family and friends, tourists gawking, press photographers, a mounted policeman.
And now a man with the tired eyes and permanently mistrustful cast of a cop was talking to the guard. Wyatt took a step back, and another, and turned his back, and a hundred metres in the other direction was a small, fast-looking runabout bobbing in the water beside a set of stone steps. A kid with the clear, open grin of someone who’d never been told no stepped out of the cockpit and lifted an esky to waiting arms on the shore. Wyatt set out to ruin his day.
29
‘I’M TELLING YOU, IT was Tremayne,’ Muecke snarled. ‘Why don’t you listen?’
He pointed. ‘That boat is about to reach the open seas and Jack Tremayne is steering it.’
Agostino seemed doubtful. ‘He was jogging, the last we saw.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, he sold his boat.’
‘And that’s the boat he sold,’ Muecke said. ‘Why can’t I get through to you? He would have kept a key. And obviously he knows how to sail the damn thing.’
Agostino turned to the security guard. ‘What do you think?’
The man shrank, feeling attacked. ‘It wasn’t Mr Impey, I know that much.’
Muecke snapped out the words, driving his meaning home: ‘And who is Impey? A close friend of Jack Tremayne’s. The boat’s new owner.’
Agostino said stiffly, ‘I know who Impey is.’
He turned to the guard. ‘Only one man aboard?’
‘Far as I could tell.’
‘Okay.’ Agostino rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll give the water police a call.’
But the only available patrol boat was at the site of a jet ski accident some distance up the Hunter River. It would take time to return, and meanwhile Tremayne was a receding dot between the Nobbys and Stockton Beach heading for the broad Pacific. Tremayne could sail north, south, straight across to Norfolk Island, French Polynesia…Anywhere at all.
‘The air wing?’ Muecke said.
‘Mate…’ said Agostino, as if he’d suggested a direct call to the prime minister. ‘Step at a time.’
Ten minutes later, the water police patrol boat came in fast, nose up in a bow wave. It throttled back, nose dipping as it swung around, and came in a deft, unfussy broadside to the dock. The boat was familiar to Muecke from cases he’d worked on Sydney Harbour: white, sixteen metres long, a crew of four but the capacity for more, with a high superstructure comprising the cabin, wheelhouse and masts. Speed, twenty-nine knots. Tremayne was in an equally fast boat with a long head start.
For a moment, Muecke thought they were going to tie up and stand around yacking, but a young water police constable beckoned them to step aboard. He took Muecke by the elbow.
‘I can manage.’
‘Just a precaution, sir.’
Then Agostino was aboard, too, and the patrol boat peeled away, curving around with a sharp tilt, heading for the gap between Stock
ton and the Nobbys. A fast streak across the harbour, and then they all became aware of a third boat.
‘What the fuck’s he doing?’ Agostino said.
The young water cop sucked his teeth in approval. ‘Nice boat. Cobalt Bowrider.’
‘I don’t care what kind it is,’ snarled Agostino, ‘I care what it’s doing.’
So did Muecke, watching the other craft low and fast in the water, cutting across the bow of the patrol boat. He looked up at the water police skipper, who throttled back grimly and jerked the wheel as the intruder shot across. For a moment it was out of sight; then it howled back and closed in. When the two craft were far too close to each other, Muecke had just one thought: he wants to stop us getting to Tremayne before he does.
WYATT SAW THEIR ALARM, their immobilisation; saw them start to shout and gesture at him, gripping the rails as the deck pitched under their feet. Except, curiously, for the one who’d been talking to marina security. Plainclothes, older than the others, worn-looking. No fear in the thin, pale face; only the hard intensity of a hunter.
He knows me. Not my name or where I live. But he knows exactly why I’m here and what I’ve been doing.
He’s hunting me.
Wyatt wrenched the wheel as he shot past again and came around hard. Steered head on towards the patrol boat, which turned slightly in anticipation, but slowly, too slowly, to avoid the collision. A long, glancing, fibreglass-ripping blow that shocked them all and left the patrol boat wallowing.
Wyatt peeled away, swung around and aimed at the rear section of the patrol boat. A mad scramble on board as the others watched helplessly and the skipper yanked on the wheel. Wyatt hit hard, the nose crumpling and rearing briefly and then both boats were dead in the water.
Wyatt’s motor had stopped. He was holed, drifting. On the patrol boat they were getting to their feet and the detective in the sharp suit was yelling, pulling out his sidearm as the skipper was coaxing revs from his motor. A rough, coughing idle. Not fully disabled, but in no shape for an ocean pursuit. Wyatt’s boat drifted further away, closer to the shore, listing now, and taking on more water all the time. He slipped over the side, watched by the older man. Wyatt imagined he saw a spark of something like humour or respect. Then it was gone, and the eyes were flat again and Wyatt was underwater.
