by Garry Disher
It was empty.
He stood for a moment, unable to think. Then the answers came to him, along with a more intense flood of rage. He stomped on the pipe, cracking it, kicked the panel in, started splintering the fussy little storage compartments.
He roared up onto the deck. Stood, breathed in and out. A thread of stars was apparent through a dense cloud cover, giving no light of any comfort or intensity. There was an unnerving stillness here where he’d dropped anchor, and no hope of any kind. Only a darkness distilled from the sodden shoreline rocks and the leafless trees and his spent fury. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
TREMAYNE ROWED THE INFLATABLE canoe to a nearby beach, tied up and clambered to the top of a slope, where a track skirted the shoreline.
He walked two kilometres in the tricky light until he came to a house set well back from the road rather than proudly commanding a view over the bay. Not a holiday house, a battler’s house, with an old F100 pickup in the carport and nets, poles and floats piled in the tray.
Tremayne rapped on the front door. A man of late middle age appeared, sun-cooked and knocked about by life, but not so that he was cautious of strangers. He gave Tremayne a smile, crooked and missing teeth showing through the whiskers. ‘Help you?’
‘I need your car.’
The fisherman was bewildered. ‘Sorry?’
‘Give me the keys. Now.’
‘Hang on, bud. I—’
Tremayne drove his fist into the man’s stomach, doubling him over, then kicked his legs out from under him and stomped for a while. ‘It wasn’t a discussion, okay?’
The old man was still. Unconscious, dead, one or the other. Tremayne found the Ford’s keys in a bowl on the hall table. And glimpsed, at the end of the hallway, a sitting room and a grey curly head of hair aimed at a flickering TV.
Maybe I’m on the news, Tremayne thought, heading into the house.
He stepped around the knees of the old woman seated there. She looked up at him dazedly. ‘Is it time for tea, dear?’
Senile.
Tremayne turned and left. Behind him she was saying, ‘Have you done your homework?’
Tremayne grunted: homework. Yes I’ve done my fucking homework.
HE TOOK THE ROAD down through Anna Bay, then via Williamtown to Industrial Drive. The road was relatively quiet—Sunday night, families tucked up together, work day tomorrow. The Ford was old, eighty per cent rust and no power steering: Tremayne couldn’t conceive of lives lived like that.
His mind rested briefly on the old fisherman. He’d killed twice before, a long time ago; hadn’t really needed to since then. He’d tried briefly to examine his motives, thinking that was the sane thing to do, before deciding he had neither the time nor the inclination for self-analysis. He’d been pleased to note, however, that he’d been calm and professional about the killings, with none of the nervy messiness of a criminal.
He’d been interested in a girl at the time and had watched her for a while on campus—he was studying economics, she architecture—and spotted her crying one day. He asked around: an aggravated burglary had left her mother with permanent brain damage.
He followed the story in the news. The burglar, a junkie, was caught, tried and acquitted: the prosecution case was weak. But Tremayne, watching the jury, noticed several jurors glaring at another. Standing at a urinal later, he heard the guy had spent the whole trial doing Sudoku and ignoring proceedings.
He shot the juror first, using a rabbit shooter’s .22 rifle he’d stolen from a Land Rover. Six months later, he shot the burglar with a .32 pistol he’d bought on the street. By then he’d lost interest in the girl—had never even spoken to her. The killings had been enjoyable, but not intensely so. He’d restored some kind of order in the world. He hadn’t shot anyone with the little Sig Sauer yet.
AS EXPECTED, THERE WERE lights on in Mark Impey’s house and cop cars in the driveway. Tremayne could wait. If you waited, things happened.
Sure enough, by late evening Impey was alone. Tremayne slipped through the shadows to the side of the house and around to the back door, which was unlocked. Impey was sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch.
‘Mark,’ Tremayne said gravely.
Impey jerked violently, his glass scooting across the table and onto the floor. Every surface was spotless; Tremayne wondered if the guy ever cooked, ever had people over, ever left dishes in the sink.
‘Christ, Jack, the police are looking for you.’
Tremayne screwed up his face, conjuring real tears through sheer will. ‘It’s Lynx,’ he gasped.
‘Pardon?’
Tremayne seized Impey’s well-fed forearm. ‘Someone’s grabbed her.’
‘What?’
‘Someone’s grabbed her, and I need to get her back.’
Impey was alarmed. ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Look,’ shrieked Tremayne, fumbling with his mobile phone, scrolling, shoving it at Impey. ‘See? I don’t want her to die.’
Impey gaped wonderingly: the events of the afternoon, the madman in his kitchen. ‘Who? I mean, why?’
‘Someone who lost money—must be. That’s something I regret deeply, I’ll regret it to my dying day, but please, Mark, I don’t want her to die, I need to pay these people.’
Tremayne saw it then, the flash of guilt. You stole my stuff, you prick. He pressed on. ‘I had backup money all saved up for legal costs and now I’ve got nothing. Nothing!’
‘I thought—’
‘Please, Mark, I’m begging you—I’m not angry, I don’t blame you, but please tell me you didn’t hand everything over to the police.’
Impey shook his head as if to say, or course not, he wouldn’t do a thing like that to his friend. ‘It’s somewhere safe.’
‘Please, is it here? You need to fetch it before they kill her.’
Impey was torn, beset by doubts and the desire to be loved, thanked and recognised. ‘It’s just that I—’
‘I’m sorry if you thought I was pulling the wool over your eyes, but I knew if those bureaucrats got their hands on my money, I wouldn’t be able to mount a decent defence. And there’d be nothing for Lynx if I had to go to jail,’ Tremayne said, breaking again, hyperventilating and sobbing.
‘Jack, all you had to do was trust me. I would’ve—’
‘Mark! Mate, please, pay attention, there’s no time for this. Midnight, I think they said.’ He snatched back his phone and scrolled through with clumsy fingers. ‘I’m pretty sure they said midnight.’
Impey still wasn’t there. ‘Jack, there was a gun with—’
‘Protection! You saw that hate mail.’
Impey was chewing the inside of his mouth now. ‘Was that you on Friday night? On the boat?’
‘What?’
‘Friday night. Someone snooping.’
Tremayne wondered if he’d sidestepped into a parallel universe. ‘On the boat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t me. Please, Mark, no more of this, I need to pay these people.’
‘Perhaps you should go to the police.’
‘No police, or they’ll kill her. Her phone goes to voicemail and no one’s answering the landline. We need to get the bag straight away. You said it was somewhere safe?’
‘U-Store. It’s about half an hour away. So that wasn’t you, Friday?’
Lynx, thought Tremayne. Or that sweaty turd DeLacey. This was taking too long, so he took a carving knife from a wooden block on one of the benches, bent down and stabbed Impey in the meaty part of his calf. No bone damage—he could still walk, even drive.
It also got him to focus. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Mark, I need you to pay attention.’
U-STORE WAS IN A DESOLATE stretch of warehouses and industrial estates south of the city.
‘You didn’t have to stab me,’ Impey kept saying, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, speed well under the limit, as if he was afraid the Range Rover might suddenly dart away from him. He zone
d out once or twice, stopping too long at roundabouts and staring vacantly ahead, so that Tremayne would have to dig him in the ribs to get him going again.
‘It’s okay, everything’s okay, soon it will all be over and I’ll be out of your hair.’
‘But Lynx…’
‘Just drive, okay?’
‘Is she really kidnapped?’
‘Good question.’
Silence, nervy driving. Then Impey said, ‘My sock’s wet. My shoe’s full of blood.’
‘Soon be there,’ soothed Tremayne.
‘I was your friend, Jack.’
‘Yes, Mark. You were.’ Said with a flat finality that shut the other man up.
They reached a steel gate and Impey waved a card at the sensor. The gate slid open, he drove in. ‘I feel faint. It’s really starting to hurt. I’m losing too much blood.’
‘Soon, Mark, very soon.’
Impey drove to a unit in the far corner.
‘Out of curiosity, did you rent this place specially, or have you always had it?’
‘Had it for years,’ Impey said, slurring a little. Drops of perspiration stood out on his face. He entered a passcode and a roller door rattled upwards. Tremayne wasn’t interested in the code. There was no reason to come back here.
They stepped inside and there was a quite beautiful old sportscar in British racing green.
‘E-Type,’ whistled Tremayne.
Impey looked bashful through the pain and sense of grievance. ‘Spent years restoring it.’
Tremayne had already lost interest. ‘Where’s the bag?’
‘Over here.’
Impey edged along the flank of the car to a couple of filing cabinets next to an ugly dresser. Tremayne kept close, ready to stab again, anticipating the various tactics Impey might have in mind. He tensed to see the man pull open the top drawer of the filing cabinet and haul out the nylon bag.
‘Give it here,’ Tremayne said.
He backed out with the bag and tipped everything onto the bonnet of the Jaguar. Impey flinched. ‘You’ll scratch it.’
‘Yeah?’ said Tremayne. Okay: everything was there.
He refilled the bag, keeping back the little Sig Sauer, and shot Impey in the centre of his whiny wet forehead. Impey dropped in a nerveless heap and Tremayne locked the roller door on him.
He climbed behind the wheel of the Range Rover and crept out of the storage facility, thinking of the Joi de Vivre in one direction and Lynx and DeLacey in the other. The hours it would take him to attend to both matters.
But it wasn’t really a tough call. You thought you’d rip me off? he’d say. You thought you could sleep around and I wouldn’t know?
32
VOICE UNINFLECTED, QUESTIONS concise and clear, Wyatt ascertained that the Calais’ owner was named Drew and that he was alone for the evening because his wife, Elly, was working a late afternoon shift at the hospital.
Drew was short and skinny, a small man who’d surrounded himself with big things: the car in the driveway, the TV screen—even his wife. Elly was a tall, plump, smiling presence beside him in the many wedding photographs crammed onto the sitting room wall. ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ he said.
‘I have no interest in hurting you,’ Wyatt said. ‘I want your car.’
Drew was confused, hearing no menace or malice in the words, but seeing a terrifying, unreadable flatness in Wyatt’s face. An expression that might flip at any moment. ‘Whatever you want.’
‘Where do you keep tape and string? Thin rope?’
‘Bottom kitchen drawer,’ gasped Drew.
‘Thank you, Drew. Come with me, please.’
Wyatt selected a roll of broad grey duct tape and they returned to the sitting room. Drew settled himself on one of the chairs unprotestingly, then screwed up his face in an awful realisation. ‘Please don’t hurt my wife.’
Wyatt needed Drew’s cooperation, not his panic or bravado. ‘Drew, I’ll be long gone by the time she gets home.’ He was careful to keep using the guy’s name.
He started strapping Drew in: torso to the back of the chair, arms to his torso and upper thighs, feet to the legs of the chair, talking all the while, a reassuring patter to keep Drew calm and tight, giving him a sense of his place in an unfolding plan…
‘I’ll simply drive away, and you won’t see me again…’
‘I’ll do my best not to cause any damage…’
‘If Elly gets home at eight, you won’t be tied up for very long at all…’
‘You’ll have a real story to tell…’
Drew nodded, beginning to relax. He was a man who fed on small talk. Wyatt, meanwhile, was running out of things to say. He had no practice with chatter: he could rarely think of things to say or reasons to say them.
‘Elly’s first shift since she broke her arm,’ Drew was saying as Wyatt taped his mouth shut.
Wyatt wasn’t interested in Elly’s broken arm, but he did know that people had an inbuilt need to unload, to explain. A way to put the universe in order, perhaps. He stepped away from Drew and said, ‘I also need some of your clothing. Then I’ll be gone.’
Drew’s shirts and trousers wouldn’t fit, but Wyatt was able to squirm into a grey hooded top and a pale blue waterproof jacket belonging to Elly. He also spotted a yellow hard hat on a hook beside the laundry door.
A LONG DRIVE THROUGH the night. He’d expected roadblocks but all he saw was a lone police car and two officers set up for random breath testing. They formed a kind of actual and psychological border post: I’ll be safe on the other side, he thought.
He stopped, lowered the window and blew into the tube as they eyed him incuriously, perhaps reassured by the hard hat on the seat beside him. Then they were waving him through with a gesture of torchlight. He accelerated unfussily away.
According to the GPS tracker he’d mounted on Impey’s boat, Tremayne had sailed into the Karuah River north of Anna Bay and dropped anchor upstream late that afternoon. No movement since.
He drove on. When he finally reached a track above the river he switched off his headlights and steered the last two hundred metres by weak starlight, keeping his engine revs down, letting the car roll him along without needing to touch the accelerator. Soon he was immediately above the boat, tugging on the handbrake so there’d be no brake-light flare. He switched off, disabled the interior light and quietly slipped out of the car. He pressed the door closed with the merest click behind him.
He peered down into the water and discerned, among the conflicting mess of shadows, the hull of Impey’s boat. His eyes adjusted. It had had a makeover.
He clambered down to a small crescent of sand and saw a small inflatable not far above the tide line. He waited, eyeing the boat. No lights, but too early for bedtime. Tremayne wasn’t aboard.
A FEW MINUTES LATER, Wyatt was eyeing the splintered wood, the cracked and empty drainage pipe. Tremayne’s been robbed, he thought, or there’s been a struggle and he’s fled. Some other means of transport, like a prearranged car. Wyatt could appreciate the kind of mind that planned a switch from a boat to a road vehicle, but how had it got here? Who would help Tremayne? Impey?
And why would Tremayne risk showing his face on land again? He’d gone to the bother of stocking up for a long voyage and disguising the boat. But why the apparent struggle in the storage bay of the boat? Or was it a tantrum?
All this week, Wyatt had had the sense of the wheels turning behind Tremayne’s intentions: a controlling intelligence. Now he was thinking that something had gone wrong, someone had got to the money first. Or he was misreading everything and this was the final unspooling of a plan he couldn’t work out.
He took the inflatable back to shore and returned to Newcastle by 8 p.m. Drew’s wife would be home soon, and the first thing they’d do was call the police to report the theft of their car.
Parking at the rear of a BP service station, Wyatt bought black electrical tape and scissored it into thin strips and altered the letters and numbers on th
e Calais’ registration plates. He drove to Merewether Beach, parked half a block away from Impey’s house and climbed into the back seat. Watched for half an hour. No traffic, no pedestrians. He got out, approached the house and rapped on the front door.
No answer. Garage door closed. There was a faint spill of light from the rear of the house so he walked around to the backyard and through the side door into the garage. Empty. He tried the back door, which turned out to be unlocked. Into the kitchen: a light burning and blood glistening on the floor, a smear and several drops. He checked the other rooms then. No more blood and the house was empty.
Wyatt returned to Drew’s car and checked his phone for activity on the various tracking devices. The boat hadn’t moved. Nor had Lynx Tremayne’s Audi. William DeLacey’s Lexus had returned to his Tighes Hill house during the afternoon.
But Mark Impey’s Range Rover was on the move.
Wyatt rolled out of there, one side street after another, passing a rusted-up Ford pickup at one point. It was an anachronism in a world of glossy money and cars.
WYATT FOLLOWED THE ROUTE laid out by the tracker on Impey’s car. First to a storage facility south of the city where there was no way of getting in without sounding alarms and creating a record of entry. Then to William DeLacey’s house in Tighes Hill. Wyatt saw no sense to any of the movements unless everyone was involved. When he reached DeLacey’s house he was twenty minutes behind whoever was driving Impey’s car, which was on the move again. There were lights on in the house, the Lexus in the driveway.
Wyatt stepped onto the front porch and found the door open a crack. He paused a moment, wishing he had a weapon. There was a scent in the air, faint but recognisable: a gun had been fired. With one knuckle, he pushed the door wider and looked down along the hallway, which ran from the front door to an open-plan kitchen at the rear. Lights on, a chair on its back.
Wyatt crouched and shuffled sideways, making himself as small a target as possible, then, partly concealed by the doorjamb, called, ‘Anyone home?’
Silence. No one belting up the hallway at him, risking a quick look or snapping off a shot. He unfolded to his full height and crept into the house.
