Pay Dirt (17 page)

Wyatt also wanted to get his hands
on a radio. The ABC and the commercial stations would be running hot with this
story. He might learn things about the police operation that would help him
escape the net, and he might hear if there had been any arrestshear if Leah or
Tobin had been nabbed, or anyone else from the other team. Information was like
blood to Wyatt.

He was not sure of the next stage.
He walked until he came to the town, stopping just short of it and skirting the
edge until he came to a quarry carved like an ugly bite in a hill half a
kilometre behind the town. From there he had a clear view of the main street
and the grid of smaller streets on both sides of it. It looked to be bigger
than Belcowie. It had two of everything. He thought if he waited long enough hed
see a lapse in someones security.

The answer was a school bus. Soon
after he settled down to wait, he heard three blasts of a siren. The sound
carried clearly to him and he pinned down the school as the source. A few
minutes later kids poured out of all the classrooms. Some boarded the three
yellow buses parked with staff cars at the side of the administration block;
the others walked or rode bicycles to houses in different parts of the town. As
Wyatt watched, three men with briefcases left the administration block, boarded
the buses and drove out of the town. Teachers, Wyatt thought, earning extra
money driving a school bus.

He guessed that the buses did a run
of the outlying farms and towns. Ninety minutes later, the first of the buses
came back. This one parked outside the pub and Wyatt saw the driver go into the
bar. The second bus parked outside a house on the other side of the town. But
the third bus was delivered back to the schoolyard and the teacher driving it
walked to his house from there.

Wyatt didnt wait. Within fifteen
minutes hed hot wired the bus outside the school and was heading away from the
town.

There were no roadblockshed come
too far south for thatbut he was worried about his face. There would be an
identikit of him by now. Cops would be at all the main stations, bus terminals
and airports. He needed a bolthole, somewhere where he could rest and do
something about his face. And get a radio.

But the country towns he was passing
through were too small to provide that sort of cover. Theyd be jumpy places
too, he thought. So would the farms surrounding them. He needed to find a large
place.

He entered Aberfeldie just as the
street lights were coming on. The first indications were favourable, but he
drove through slowly, to make sure. He was reminded of Goyder. Aberfeldie had
the same range of motels, small businesses and flashing neon along the main
street, the same sprawl of ugly new houses and flats at either end. There was
even a mall. The town hall was as big as any hed seen in Melbourne.

He had to get rid of the bus before
he did anything. He didnt dump it in the streetit would be like a signpost to
the police if he did that. He always left stolen vehicles where they couldnt
be found until the trail was cold. Despite its size, the bus was easy to hide.
He simply hid it in the open. He drove until he found the high school, then
parked the bus outside the workshop of a service station on the other side of
the road. The mechanics would scratch their heads over it in the morning, and
eventually someone would ring the school and ask what they wanted done with it,
but by then hed be long gone.

It was seven oclock before Wyatt
found somewhere to spend the night. He wasnt interested in a housea house has
neighbours who want to know what is going on. There are also neighbours in
blocks of flats but they tend to come and go and expect others to come and go,
so he wasnt expecting anyone to ask him his business there.

There were six units in the first
block he examined. Most had their lights on and all had empty letterboxes. He
moved on to the next block. Flats 2 and 6 had not claimed their letters yet. He
rejected flat 2 when he heard someone answer the telephone. He climbed to flat
6, listened for half a minute knocked on the door and listened again. Silence.
He picked the lock and entered. There was no one home but the place felt lived
in. Then he saw a movement in the corner. It was a cat stretching awake in a
basket on the floor.

Wyatt let himself out quickly and
walked down the stairs and along to a single-storey block in the next street.
These he rejected immediately. According to a sign by the driveway entrance,
the flats were let to elderly parishioners of the Uniting Church. They would
all be at home.

His luck improved at the third block
of flats. The letterbox for flat 4 was crammed with junk mail. He climbed up to
the second landing and tried the door. When no one answered his knock, he
picked the lock and went in. This time there were no pets or signs that people
had been there recently. The place felt as if it had been empty for several
days. The rooms were tidy. The refrigerator had been switched off and the door
left open. The garbage bin was empty and clean. He examined the bedroom and the
bathroom. The clothing, jewellery and cosmetics indicated that a youngish man
and woman lived there.

But how secure was he? He checked
the calendar pinned to a cabinet door above the sink. Notes had been scribbled
in the blank spaces under some of the dates.
Leave for Qld
had been
written under a date at the beginning of the month and a bold blank line
cancelled the next two weeks. At the end were the words
Arrive home.
Wyatt
understood that he had the place for a week if he wanted it. He hoped the key
hadnt been given to friends or relatives. He hoped the weather was fine in
Queensland.

Before doing anything he turned on
the transistor radio next to the toaster on the kitchen bench. According to the
news, no arrests had been made yet. The money and the van were still missing.
There was, however, evidence that several people had spent several days in an
abandoned farmhouse not far from the area where the bodies were found. Police
were broadening their search.

Wyatt switched off the radio and
went into the bathroom. He stripped and washed at the sink, not in the shower,
knowing how thin the walls were in these places, how noisy the plumbing. Then
he went to work on his appearance. In the cabinet above the sink he found hair
gel, an old razor, scissors, a comb and two boxes containing blonde
hair-colouring cream and rubber gloves. He shaved first, removing not only the
days stubble but also his sideburns. Then he shortened his hair at the top,
front and sides. Finally he applied the cream to his hair, leaving it on for
almost an hour before rinsing it off. He looked curiously at himself in the
mirror. He was fair-haired now, his features thin and drawn. He finished by
wiping away water drops and stains with toilet paper and stuffing the paper
into a plastic shopping bag.

In a bedroom drawer he found a
tracksuit that was short in the leg but otherwise fitted him. Dresses, slacks,
blouses and skirts took up most of the wardrobe space, but there were also some
trousers and shirts and a couple of suits and sportscoats. The chest and waist
sizes looked to be about right; he was too tired to check just now.

Finally he went into the kitchen to
get something to eat. He didnt want to heat anything and release cooking
smells, so he opened a tin of goulash and ate it cold from the tin. It had the
consistency of glue. He washed and dried the spoon and put the empty tin in the
plastic bag with the toilet paper.

Then he slept. He didnt need an
alarm. His instincts would tell him when to wake.

He woke at dawn. He washed and
shaved again, then combed gel through his hair and parted it in the middle. He
dressed in a white shirt, plain tie and a dark grey suit. The trousers were
short in the leg, but he reflected that that wasnt unusual in country towns.
There were four pairs of shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe. All were too big
for him. He put on two more pairs of socks and tried the grey suede shoes; they
were soft and had a rubber sole and he figured that made more sense than stiff
leather shoes. With the extra socks they fitted well.

He listened to the six oclock news.
The murders and the robbery were still the main items, but the situation was
unchanged. Then he wiped the flat for prints, cleared any mess hed made, and
bundled his dirty clothes into the shopping bag. The occupants of the flat
would be puzzled by the missing clothes, but if nothing else was missing and
the place untouched, they probably wouldnt report it. It wouldnt matter if
they did; the trail would be cold by then.

Wyatt opened the door to the
corridor and listened. No-one else seemed to be up. He let himself out quietly
and walked down the street. The station was ten minutes walk away. He dumped
the shopping bag in a rubbish bin along the way.

The air was cool. Not many cars were
about. He got to the station a few minutes before seven oclock. There were
four cars in the car park. The platform was deserted and there were no cops in
the waiting room or the ticket office. The only people he saw were the station
master making coffee in a room next to the ticket office and a bleary-eyed man
in the waiting room.

Wyatt looked at the timetable. There
was an Adelaide train at 7.35 am. The return train got in at 6.30 that evening.

Twenty minutes later, there were
eight more people waiting for the train. Most were women who appeared to be
going to Adelaide for a days shopping, but there were also two men in suits.
All were yawning. One of the men coughed repeatedly. Another smoked, ignoring
the sign.

When the train came in they all
stood up and walked onto the platform. Wyatt went into the mens. When the
train was gone, he went out to the car park. There were now twelve cars parked
along the fence. He chose a white Kingswood, knowing it was the easiest to
break into and start. It wouldnt be missed until 6.30. By then hed be holding
a gun to Leahs head, asking what her story was.

* * * *

THIRTY-THREE

Hed
been in the implement shed. She had just shut the bike away, and was turning to
cross the yard, when hed pressed the gun into the base of her spine and said, Turn
around slowly.

She smelt cop. He wasnt dressed
like one, and he wasnt acting like one, but she smelt cop all the same. It was
the suspicion, worn like a layer of skin, the contempt, the swagger of the
heavy limbs. He had clever eyes in the whitest skin shed ever seen on anyone
and the sort of cop expression she knew wellpermanent bleakness and cynicism.
The eyes seemed to sum her up and toss her out.

When hed spoken again it was to ask
where Wyatt was.

Who?

Dumb. Hed flashed the gun across her
cheek, cutting the skin open. He didnt ask it again, just looked at her. Youre
expecting him, he said flatly. Well wait in the house. Move.

She turned and they walked across
the yard. She felt the gun brush her spine.

When they reached the house he
prodded her. In the kitchen.

So he knew the layout. She heard his
footsteps on the verandah behind her and then he was crowding her as they went
through the door.

At the centre of the room she turned
to face him. Do you work for Jorge? Steelgard? Did you warn the van?

His expression changed for the first
time, showing puzzlement. What are you talking about?

She stared at him. You hijacked our
job, right?

I dont know what youre talking
about. Is Wyatt coming or not?

They had stared at each other then.
She remembered noticing odd details, things that had nothing to do with who he
was or what he was doing there. The shoes, first. They were brand new desert
boots, looking soft and brushed, with pale crepe rubber soles. Then the
clothes. He was wearing the sort of things a farmer would wear, except they
lacked the patina of age and use. They looked creased and new. In fact, there
was still a pin in the shirt collar.

He spoke again. Something went
wrong?

There didnt seem to be any harm in
answering. The van didnt show.

Snyder, Wyatt, the other manwhere
are they?

She stiffened at that. How did he
know so much? She felt the bad feelings swamping her again: the job going
wrong, Wyatt shooting Snyder, the sense that this was real and nothing else in
her life, no matter how rotten, had been real.

Tobin went home, she said. Snyders
dead.

He looked disgusted. How did that
happen?

Wyatt shot him.

The man nodded gloomily. Keeping the
gun trained on her, he backed up to the window and looked out.

Ill ask againyoure waiting for
Wyatt?

She risked a lie. No. The job went
wrong and we split up and got out of there. Wyatts gone.

Bullshit, the man said flatly. He
knocked her head back with the butt of his gun. Her jaws closed with a click,
her front teeth nipping her tongue. She tasted blood. The pain made her head
swim.

Then he pushed her to the floor and
she sat with her back to the wall. She didnt look up at the man after that.
There was a cruel irony in all this. The badness shed felt washing around her
after Wyatt shot Snyder had evaporated a minute after shed ridden off on the
bike. It didnt make the shooting any better but shed begun to feel guilty
about abandoning Wyatt. Shed turned the bike around and ridden to the farm to
help him. She should have kept running.