Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout (9 page)

Inverloch and the Victorian coast
slipped by beneath him. King Island was ahead, and a separate flight to Hobart.
The water looked choppy.

Wyatt allowed himself to think of
Liz Redding again, and of their voyage from Vanuatu in the stolen yacht. For
six days they had managed to forget who they were, but when the coastline of
Australia appeared, Wyatt had found himself planning the next stage, escaping
with the jewels. He hadnt known how to include Liz in his plans, so convinced
himself that she wasnt a factor.

Liz had been more forthright.
Running with him was out, she didnt want to lose him, which left an impossible
alternative.

Wyatt, shed said, let me bring
you in.

Wyatt had shaken his head. Killings
and millions of plundered dollars marked the years of his existence and the
police of every state wanted a word with him.

Out of the question, he said.

There was distress in her voice. What
about us?

Wyatt had been unable to say
anything. Hed stared at the sea, the rising chop on the surface of the water,
the seabirds sideslipping above the white caps. The clouds had been scudding.
There was plenty to be on guard against: the waves, iron shipping containers
floating just beneath the surface, waiting to rip a hole in the hull.

And his feelings. Liz Redding was
combative, bright, generous. She made him feel wanted, even loved. The word
quivered there in his head, once hed admitted it. Wyatt thought of her
squirming naked energy, her wit and affection. But all that had become a
complication. Old habits of preservation had kicked in.

Wyatt? Are you deaf? shed
demanded. Have you thought about us at all?

Into the silence that followed,
Wyatt had muttered, All the time.

He realised now, far above Bass
Strait, that he was unused to conversation, unused to the slipperiness of a
conversation like the one hed had with Liz Redding. His disposition was built
upon layers of secrecy and preservation, a lifetimes habit of believing that
no-one was dependable but himself. People found him resourceful and cautious, a
man with a dark, rapid mind, who took nothing on trust and who could be trusted
to place his safety before anything, but they always wanted more, a man with
ordinary doubts and scruples and impulses. What they got was a man who shut
himself down. They looked for the doors and windows in him but few ever found
them. Liz Redding had come close, in those seven days. He liked that, but it
scared him. Hed seen that a life with her might be possible. She was his way
out, if hed wanted that.

But hed decided that he didnt want
it. As the storm rose in intensity, hed charted a course for Westernport Bay, a
place he knew better than his own face in the mirror. It wasnt imperative that
they dock in Westernport, but Wyatt hadnt told Liz Redding that. Old habits
were kicking in and he was going to betray her.

Hed gone below, first to the packet
of Mogadon in the medicine cabinet, then to the wall oven in the galley. It was
set into the bulkhead and worked perfectly well as an oven, but it also slid
out to reveal a small waterproof safe. Wyatt pocketed a roll of $100 notes, his
.38 revolver and a distinctive necklace, and closed everything again, just as
Liz Redding had called down to him, Wyatt? Is everything all right?

Coming now.

Hed laced her coffee, then added a
dash of Scotch, and carried it to her in the wheelhouse.

She let him take the wheel. She
sipped her coffee. Ah, hot, foul and bracing.

Wyatt said nothing. He watched the
heaving sea. It was not a companionable silence. All of the topics between them
had been pushed as far as he was able to take them, and he was waiting, with
sadness, for his final act of betrayal to take effect. In a mood of
disconnection and apathy, they had sailed through the night.

Someone had once accused him of working
from an emotionless base. He mused on that now, as the plane banked above the
Bass Strait islands. He mused on it for half a minute, all it was worth, trying
to picture the face he presented to the world. He knew it could be assertive,
prohibitive, sometimes chilling, giving nothing away. Most peoples faces were
a barometer of their feelings. They bulged in all directions, chased by doubts,
scruples and conflicts. But it was not true that Wyatt was emotionless. He had
room only for the essential ones, thats all, and he kept those to himself. Up
until now, that hadnt been a problem.

The pilots voice broke in upon his
melancholy. They were descending.

Ten minutes later, Wyatt discovered
that he would have to spend the night on the island.

The next morning, he was on the
first flight out. When the plane touched down at Hobart Airport, Wyatt climbed
into a taxi. There was always the risk that a cab driver would remember his
face one day, but Wyatt had no intention of taking the airport bus to the city.
Wyatt knew all about that bus. Hed been caught before. A good ten years older
than airport buses anywhere else in the world, it would hum along the freeway
and over the bridge and into the tight, one-way streets of Hobart, encouraging
a sense of mission accomplished in its passengers. But then, unaccountably, it
would begin to stop at the hotels, the motels, the casino way to hell and gone
down Sandy Bay Road, dropping off passengers, before finally winding its way
back to the downtown bus station, scarcely emptier than when it had set out,
the majority obliged to wait for the chosen few. There was nothing democratic
about that bus.

He paid off the taxi at the wharf
opposite Salamanca Place, leaving him with a ten-minute walk to his apartment
building. Hed never taken a cab all the way to the door in his life. He always
concealed his final destination and covered his tracks. That was second nature
to Wyatt. It was part of an automatic checklist that had kept him alive and out
of gaol and mostly ahead since the day he was born.

The Mawson base supply ship was in
dock. He idled for a while, watching crated food and equipment being winched
aboard. The bow looked scraped, freshly wounded, as though the ship had
ploughed through ice recently, leaving paint smears in its wake.

Wyatt turned to go. He stood for
some time on the footpath, waiting for the traffic to clear, and came close to
witnessing a death. A boy had ambled onto the road from the opposite footpath.
He was about ten, undernourished, cheaply dressed, hair cropped short as though
for fashions sake but probably to control head lice. He was cramming a
hamburger into his mouth, and the car that braked to avoid him, snout dipping
with the raw, smoking bite of its tyres, skewed violently and finally stopped,
its front bumper gently knocking the boys knees.

The world held its breath. One
second. Two seconds. There was something wrong about the boys reaction time.
Then suddenly he spasmed with fright. One hand jerked involuntarily, scattering
the hamburger. A kind of sulky defiance and embarrassment showed on his face.
He sniggered. Wyatt knew exactly what it meant. The boy was saying,
Missed
me
but I wouldnt have minded if youd run me down. Death
or food
and a warm bed in hospital
would be better than the life Ive got.
Wyatt
felt that he knew the boy. His home was a place where you got smacked about the
head and thrown across the room. Where a belt buckle drew your blood for no
reason at all. It was a pathology Wyatt recognised.

Grief settled in him, dull and dark.
Wyatt and his brother had had uncles when they were kids. One after the
other. Those men hadnt stayed for long. They didnt want a couple of kids
hanging around. They were bitter and afraid and their only solace was to witness
fear in the two boys. Wyatt had made sure that they never saw it in him. His
brother hadnt been so lucky. Wyatts brother had absorbed all of that
bitterness and it had erupted when he had a son of his own, Raymond.

Wyatt glanced at his watch. Almost
lunchtime. He decided to call in at his mail drop, a dingy barbershop on the
other side of the downtown area of the little city. When he got there, the
barber said, almost relishing it, Nothing. Wyatt shrugged. He hadnt really
been expecting mail or messages. He crossed back to the waterfront, climbed the
Kelly Steps into Battery Point.

Wyatt lived on the ground floor of a
squat, tan brick and white stucco block of flats overlooking the Derwent. Hed
been there for a year, in this city where no-one knew him, where no-one cared
that he came and went once a month or so, where no-one connected his movements
with a rifled office safe in Toorak, a hallway stripped of Streetons in
Vaucluse, an empty jewellery box on the Gold Coast.

A man called Frank Jardine had put
these jobs together for him, but Jardine was dead now, and Wyatt would have to
go back to putting his own jobs together.

He turned left at the top of Kelly
Street, crossed over and began to wind his way through the little streets, over
the hump of Battery Point, toward the down slope on the other side. Wyatt was a
good burglar, but only if he had a shopping list, and was acting on information
supplied by someone like Jardine. His chief talent lay in hitting banks and
payroll vans, hitting hard and fast with a team of experts. A wasted talent
now, for all of the experts were gone. He still got sweet invitations from
time to time, but knew that it was better to stay put than to make a mistake;
better to reject the sweet money than risk his life or his freedom.

So, how sweet was Raymonds art
heist?

Wyatt unpacked his bag and rested.
That evening he made his way back to a bistro in Salamanca Place. He ordered
wine and pasta, then coffee. In the old days there had been experts he could
work with, men who could drive, bypass a security system, crack a safe, all
without a shot being fired. Now there were only youngsters with jumpy eyes and
muscle twitches, in need of a fix, their brains fried, as likely to shoot dead
a cop or a nun as Wyatt himself if they felt mean enough, or paranoid enough,
or heard enough voices telling them to do it. Or they talked too much before
the job, boasting in the pub to their mates or their girlfriends, who then
whispered it to the law.

He finished eating and walked back,
misty rain blurring the street lights. As a potential partner, Raymond looked
pretty good to Wyatt. It was in this frame of mind, assessing, reflective, that
Wyatt let himself into his flat and into trouble.

* * * *

Twelve

He
should have taken a moment to clear his head before going in. He should have
looked, waited, thought, had a back-up plan ready, a way out.

For when he let the door close
behind him, flicking on the light as he did so, all he got was the sound of the
switch. The darkness was absolute.

Then an arm went around his neck and
the twin barrels of a shotgun, apparently cut short with a hacksaw, tore the
skin at the hinge of his jaw.

Not a sound. Not a fucking
move,
mate.

Wyatt remained still, loose and
relaxed on his feet. His flat smelt ripe, lived in, an odour compounded of
grievances and shot nerves and perspiration breaking through cheap talc; the
odour of a man with the jitters.

Bastard. Where you been?

It was a rhetorical question. Wyatt
said nothing.

Im going to search you.

Okay.

At the moment the arm relaxed its
hold on his neck and felt for and found the .38 in his waistband, Wyatt drove
the heel of his shoe down the mans shinbone, then dropped like a rock from the
mans grasp. The .38 fell to the carpet.

Wyatt patted the carpet uselessly
for a few seconds, then scooted away in the darkness. He sensed opposing
inclinations in the manthe tearing pain, Wyatt at large and dangerous to him. Im
gonna fucking kill you, the man said.

Wyatt heard a chair fall. He didnt
search for another light switch, guessing that the power was off at the fuse
boxthe gunmans mistake, for now they were both blind. The man should simply
have removed the bulb.

Wyatt listened, backed into a
corner, straining his eyes to pick up stray light from the curtained windows.
Unfortunately they faced the water; there were no street lights out there. But
no-one could get behind him, no-one could see him, and he had a measure of
control over the doors and windows if the man had friends with him.

Bastard. Ill have you.

Wyatt was silent.

Franks dead because of you.

Hes talking about Frank Jardine,
Wyatt thought. He must be the younger brother. He risked a reply:

Frank knew the score.

Frank Jardine had worked with Wyatt
in the old days, hitting banks and security vans, before retiring to become a
blueprinter, planning high-level burglaries for Wyatt from information supplied
by croupiers, insurance clerks, taxi drivers, builders, tradesmen who installed
alarms and safes, shop assistants. Then, while coming out of retirement to pull
one more job with Wyatt, hed been head-shot and suffered a series of strokes,
and now was dead. Wyatt had given money to the Jardines for his convalescence,
but clearly that wasnt enough for the family.

Sometimes, late at night, it wasnt
enough for Wyatt.