by Garry Disher
Muecke suddenly didn’t know what he was doing there. He spotted Cindy in her wheelchair, crossed the room, knelt beside her.
‘Sorry for your loss, Cindy.’
She looked grandmotherly from a distance, round, greying and bespectacled. Closer to, with light glinting on her glasses, there was a clipped hardness about her. ‘A useless, overused expression.’ She paused. ‘But thank you.’
She continued to watch him. ‘Sam had respect for you.’
She watched him try to deal with that. At one point, when he almost overbalanced on his haunches and grabbed the wheelchair to steady himself, she placed a hand on his forearm. Her gaze, penetrating, left him sharply etched; exposed. She said, ‘He’s dead, Sergeant Muecke, put it to rest.’
‘I can’t, Cindy. The ripples are still there.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ she went on. ‘The fellow you’re after won’t show up, if that’s what you’re hoping.’
And there it was, out in the open. ‘He might. What’s his name, by the way?’
‘Now, now,’ Cindy said, with a little shake of her finger.
Muecke started to rise, but she wasn’t finished. Giving him a look of entreaty and doubt, she leaned in and murmured, ‘Josh has bought a gun.’
Muecke jerked back. ‘You want me to…?’
‘Yes. Please—before he hurts someone. Or you lot shoot him.’
Muecke left then, feeling a sense of restrained energy in the deepening twilight, feeling that every visitor to the street was an innocent blunderer and only he, Phoebe and Cindy maintained some kind of sustaining secret life. And the nameless man.
Joshua Kramer, Nick Lazar, Brad Salter, he thought. Where did the lines of influence lie?
35
IT WAS FIVE DAYS of movement and marking time. Wyatt switched to a different Airbnb for two nights, then rented a campervan. He checked both his safe deposit boxes: his money was intact, so was Sam Kramer’s twenty per cent. Finally, he acquired two weapons on the street: a grooved stabbing knife with an angled tip, which he wore in a soft scabbard taped to the top of his spine, the hilt just behind the back of his shirt collar, and a little .22 Colt Cobra. The rest was an intermittent watch on the Kramer house.
Email drops from Phoebe Kramer kept him updated. Her father’s autopsy had been completed. The homicide investigation was ongoing but the body would probably be released for burial by the weekend. As per her mother’s wishes the casket, closed, would be available for viewing by friends and family at the house on the day before and the morning of the funeral, but Phoebe wasn’t so sure about it.
Wyatt found these disclosures oddly intimate, a glimpse into an everyday life. He supposed, now he thought about it, that he expected to die alone and unregarded, and for a moment he was filled with regret.
But mostly he was scouting around the Kramers’ suburb, street and house, watching over the family with one eye and keeping the other open for the law. He was also waiting for an opportunity to make actual, not electronic, contact. Phoebe Kramer’s emails were firm on that subject. Don’t come to pay respects. Don’t come to the funeral. Don’t come to the wake.
Too risky.
Wyatt knew that, but he felt, unusually, circumscribed; adrift. What did Phoebe Kramer mean to him—and why was he even asking the question? Did she mean something because her father had meant something? What had Sam meant? Nothing, really; or not much. A sliver of mutual respect; the rest was all business. Wyatt couldn’t map the faultline between his thoughts and his feelings but he knew it must have been there all this time, lurking in the years of silence and denial. He badly needed action: clear, unambiguous. His hands in synch with his brain.
Friday was an evening of scrappy cloud cover, the moon showing through a frayed gap; chilly shadows contending with streetlights and the window-glow in every house. A hearse arrived at seven o’clock and Wyatt watched through the back window of a rented Ford SUV as the driver and his offsider wheeled the casket into the house. They did not emerge. The hearse sat in the driveway, nose pointed at the street.
A short time later, Phoebe stepped out. She powered down the street wearing a dress and a short-waisted jacket, her arms wrapped around herself for warmth. Her body, head down and visibly trembling, spoke of fury.
Wyatt stepped out and said softly, ‘Phoebe.’
She jerked, stopped, whirled around. Stepped warily towards him. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Something wrong?’
‘Just a bit of tension with Mum. Where to display the coffin. And the hearse guys are being sleazy. Dad did business with them over the years and that’s made them…presumptuous.’ That was as far as she took it. Unblinking, severe, she said, ‘I’m going back inside. You should leave. I want to see you, but only when it’s safe.’ She touched his wrist and strode swiftly back to the house.
Wyatt watched her go, and felt the bullet catch him above the hipbone, spin him around and put him on the ground.
Sniper? he wondered. Suppressed? Then the pain caught up. He flopped onto his back in a wave of nausea. Tried to rise. He was some distance from his SUV. No good cover to crawl to; he didn’t know where the shooter was anyway. He got to his knees, then to his feet, clasping the wound, feeling blood well between his fingers. And then a van swept in from the top of the street and the driver got out and rolled back the sliding door to the rear compartment and came barrelling at Wyatt. Disable me, then grab me, thought Wyatt. Simple, quick. The realisation seemed to wake him. Combined with the pain and shock to kickstart his old familiar singlemindedness.
Survive. Fight.
‘Let me help you, buddy,’ the van guy was saying. Getting a kick out of it. He was tall, a bag of bones, with a wiry competence, erect carriage and dead eyes. Wyatt knew the type: ex-military. Working with the sniper on the hill. Why would ex-army guys want him? A pointless thought just then, and Wyatt dismissed it. He groaned and sank, one hand on the ground to take his weight, the other up to ward off trouble. A move simply choreographed, one the attacker expected and understood. He found it amusing. He reached for Wyatt, and Wyatt continued the swing of his warding-off hand to the back of his neck.
He drove the blade into the other man’s stomach, flexed his wrist and split him open. A certain satisfaction uncurled within him. Not to have killed but to have acted.
But he was losing blood. All of his energy draining suddenly away.
Then Phoebe Kramer was there, swift and deft, a play of emotions on her face, saying, ‘Quick,’ as she hauled him to his feet.
Wyatt heard two more shots, somewhere up on a nearby slope. He didn’t know what it meant. Before he could put his mind to it he’d blacked out.
NICK LAZAR’S SNIPING RIFLE was a Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, .30 calibre, with a Redfield variable power scope for low light conditions. Ammunition to stop a man, not kill or shred him. He’d go for the fleshy part of the waist, he decided.
He’d fitted the barrel with a sound suppressor. You wanted a silenced shot, here in suburbia. Given that he was capable of grouping his shots inside a ten-centimetre circle at five hundred metres with a suppressor fitted, he was confident about this hundred-metre shot.
He wore a camouflage jacket and trousers, a khaki balaclava and lightweight boots. Not a surface on him could reflect a glint of light—not the toes of his boots, any part of his clothing, his face and hands. He’d hung the rifle and scope with camouflage strips. It was all overkill, but it gave him a nostalgic kick; took him back to the stony slopes of Afghanistan.
For months now he’d felt simultaneously rootless and pinned down. Drifting from one small, unlikely-to-be-renewed job contract to the next, all the while hamstrung by rules, regulations and bureaucratic bullshit. People suing him. Cops sniffing around.
But this—the gear, the rifle, his little sniper’s nest on a hill slope overlooking a target area—brought back the sense of competence he’d had in his army days. Having a job to do and knowing he was the man to do it.
Marty Wels
h felt the same, although he wouldn’t be shooting anyone. His job was to grab Wyatt, bundle him into the back of a stolen van and make a fast run out to Lazar’s storage locker in the western suburbs. Thirty seconds—shouldn’t take longer than that to pick the guy up. No limit to how long they could take getting him to talk.
Soon after settling in on the hill, Lazar saw a Ford SUV pull up against the kerb on the other side of the road from the Kramer house and half a block down. Police? Only one occupant, a man. He sat there for a while then climbed into the rear, looking out.
Lazar adjusted the scope. Wyatt was a shadow in the back window. Great head shot. But a head shot was a kill shot. Wait to see if he got out.
Lazar murmured into his radio: ‘The white SUV.’
‘Copy,’ Welsh said.
‘Be ready in case he gets out.’
‘Got it.’
Lazar watched Wyatt briefly before casting the scope over the other cars in the street, the houses, trees and garden shrubbery. Careful not to eye any one aspect for too long or the image would fix on his retina and destroy his sense of field and perspective. He kept his breathing slow and shallow. When he was finally ready to pull the trigger he’d breathe out; relax. A breath in would make him tight: spoil the shot.
If he was forced to take a second shot, he’d slip sideways to another location.
A hearse arrived and two men manhandled a coffin inside the Kramer home. The hearse remained. Some kind of protocol, Lazar guessed.
Then a woman left the house, stomping along angrily, and, hallelujah, Wyatt climbed out of the SUV.
Lazar played the scope over Wyatt, then the woman. A looker, but not in any conventional way. A crooked smile and then a stern frown and she looked vibrant and intense, there in closeup. Saying something to Wyatt.
Lazar waited, indecisive for the first time. He had a clear shot at Wyatt, but the woman was a complication. Then she turned around and headed back to the house and when she reached her front door, he took the shot.
He watched it unfold. Wyatt clutched his side and fell. Welsh tore down the street in the van and piled out. Advanced on Wyatt, who tried to ward him off. The woman came running back. Welsh fell to his knees, cradling his stomach. The woman tugged Wyatt back up the street towards her house, and now Lazar had no clear shot and he was fazed, suddenly.
Moving from a panicked base, all of his old caution flying out the window. He began to pack away the rifle. Had got as far as stowing the telescopic sight when a man came heaving up the slope, panting for breath, saying something, and all Lazar registered was ‘…under arrest…hands…’ and the pistol pointed at him.
Fuck that for a joke.
Lazar spun away neatly and merged with the dying light as he swung the Steyr around from this new location and the cop, expecting it, was swinging his firearm too.
AFTER HIS VISIT TO the Kramer house earlier in the week, Muecke had returned to the station, fired up his computer and made a number of phone calls. He’d already mined Facebook: Josh’s singer-songwriter ambitions, his pizza ‘empire’, his band and all the gigs they’d played. Photos of Josh with his workers, waitresses, bartenders, pole dancers, bouncers and security staff. NightWatch Security, of course. Nick Lazar’s outfit.
How involved was this kid? Muecke continued to dig around in the files on Tuesday, and made the arrest on Wednesday. Josh Kramer in his car, heading out of Mosman along a quiet side street. The charge: possession of an unregistered Czech-made pistol, tucked under the driver’s seat.
‘Why the gun, Mr Kramer?’
The kid shrank. ‘No comment.’
‘This thing looks like it’d blow up in your face.’
‘No comment,’ Kramer said, eyeing his little Mazda sportscar nervously as uniformed officers searched it none too respectfully while kids rode by on their way to school. Then he shrank further when one of the uniforms backed out waving a couple of freezer bags. ‘Ice, boss. Some pills.’
‘Personal use,’ Kramer said.
‘I bet,’ said Muecke.
He’d tried to question the kid on the way to the police station. ‘Do you think you’ll be next, after your dad?’
‘No comment.’
‘Not frightened of Nick Lazar?’
‘No comment.’
‘I imagine we can make an arrangement for you to attend your father’s funeral,’ Muecke said, ‘but right now I’m pretty sure you’ll be remanded.’
‘No comment.’
‘Assuming you want to attend your old man’s funeral. No love lost, as I understand it. He reckoned you were a loser.’
‘No comment.’ But a catch in the kid’s voice.
That afternoon Muecke asked for three surveillance teams on the Kramer house, rotating every eight hours. Denied. ‘Perhaps you haven’t noticed, sergeant,’ his inspector said, ‘but Sam Kramer’s dead. Soon to be buried. There’s nothing to be gained by watching his house.’
And so Muecke had begun to keep watch himself. Barely saw his wife, forgot what his house looked like. Began to feel deranged from the lack of sleep. He learned nothing, saw nothing.
To break the monotony, he paid a call on Phoebe and Cindy, ostensibly to reassure them that Josh was all right.
‘Can you just keep him there for a few days?’ Phoebe said.
‘Will do. When’s the funeral?’
Sam’s casket was being delivered to the house Friday evening, she told him. Friends and family would visit then and on Saturday morning; interment Saturday afternoon. ‘I expect your lot’ll turn out in force,’ Phoebe said, tired and sour.
‘I expect so.’
Muecke left them there in the cocoon of their grief and drove home to hug Meg. She wasn’t there; late seminar.
Now, Friday evening, Muecke was in Mosman again, watching from inside the wooden framework of a house extension three doors down from the Kramers’. The owner was away. No twitchy dogs, no neighbours peering at him from behind their curtains. He yawned through the hours and fell asleep and missed the first stage of the drama. All he knew was a door had slammed, and quick, crisp footsteps were sounding and a man said softly, ‘Phoebe.’
Muecke took out his service pistol: Phoebe Kramer was right there on the street, standing close to the man he’d been hunting. He hesitated. He was alone, no one knew he was here, what if the man was armed? And his weapon felt alien in his hand. He’d scarcely pulled a gun in all the years he’d been a policeman. He waited, and it was partly nerves and partly the fact that Phoebe was in the way. He didn’t know when to act, or how to act. Not just yet.
Then Phoebe was returning to her house and the man was alone and Muecke heard a soft whump from somewhere above the street. The man said, ‘Oh,’ and stumbled and fell, clutching at his waist where blood was oozing. He wasn’t fully down, it hadn’t been a kill shot. Which means the kill shot is still to come, Muecke thought. Save a life or catch a killer? He found himself stumbling across a yard strewn with planks, offcuts and tattered plastic sheeting, over a fence and uphill to where he’d heard the muffled shot, labouring as he reached the top, regretting the years behind a desk, behind the wheel, switching channels with a remote.
Chest heaving, he began a sweep of the summit with his Glock; saw a leafy mass move, taking form as a man with a rifle. They fired simultaneously, Muecke’s pistol snapping, the sniper’s rifle sounding harsh at this range, barely softened by the suppressor.
Then silence.
Muecke’s ears were ringing. But something else was happening to him. His body refusing to respond. Going loose. Flopping to the ground, his strings cut. Intense pain blooming in his left calf: trouser leg sodden with blood. The bullet went through, he thought—but nicked bone?
The sniper was also hit, bending over as if punched, one hand across his stomach. Muecke saw him move the hand, gape at the blood, clamp himself again. A look of resolve forming. He growled, lifted the rifle one-handed, the muzzle waving about as if lining up on an insect. He fired. The shot went high, strip
ping leaves. Meanwhile the pain was hitting Muecke, the uselessness of his brain and his legs, his return fire just as wild. He kept pulling the trigger, emptying the magazine, all of his shooting-range instructions gone from his brain.
When it was over he was deaf, and the sniper was down. Blades were whirring, stabbing, in his leg. He was about to slide into shock, he knew that much. He managed to call 000 before the world grew darker and then very dark.
IN THE DAYS OF surgery and reconstruction, Meg was there every day. A little remote and distracted, he thought. But also loving, as if her emotions were elastic, somehow. Able to accommodate anything from a cancelled lecture to a bullet-riddled husband. He was grateful to have her; she was grateful he hadn’t died. Both were grateful he hadn’t lost the use of his leg.
His inspector came by, wanting to know what he’d thought he was doing, acting alone, running his own investigation. And, given the seriousness of his wound, had he perhaps considered retiring? There’d be an internal inquiry, obviously. He might consider talking to the police association and possibly even a lawyer.
That was on the one hand. On the other, a Sydney Morning Herald photographer sneaked a shot of him propped up on hospital pillows, scribbling in his police notebook. Words like ‘heroic’ were bandied about.
He followed the news on an iPad. The hunt for Tremayne was ‘ongoing’ and police were ‘hopeful’. And one day an email arrived from SA Police: Sorry, we sent you a photo of Albert van Horen and his wife by mistake: the attached are Dirk and Missy.
‘Ha!’ muttered Muecke, taking in the happy couple saluting the camera from across a bistro table. ‘The artists now known as Bryce and Felicity Reschke.’
‘Talking to yourself again, Dad.’ Amy, the London daughter, tanned from a holiday in Spain.
HE WAS MORE SURPRISED by his final set of visitors.
Phoebe Kramer wheeled Cindy into his room, saying, ‘Don’t get up.’
Roses rested across Cindy’s lap. ‘And you spent money on me, too,’ Muecke said.
