The Heat (10 page)

12

At 10 a.m. on Monday, Wyatt walked with Leah Quarrell to a little dock a hundred metres downriver from her office. ‘Is that smoke?'

A smudge in the sky above the opposite bank. Quarrell glanced. ‘They're burning sugarcane.'
She sounded put out, as if neither squiring him around nor answering dumb questions was part of her job description. She wore a sleeveless top, a close-fitting skirt and open-toed shoes, and scowled as she fitted a key to a lock halfway along the dock.

Wyatt followed her through the gate to where four small boats were moored. He wore his lightweight suit again. There was barely a man along the entire sun-loving coast wearing a suit that day: people would notice the suit, not his face, and it would spell job tedium to most of them. Here was a man who shuffled and signed paperwork. An accountant; perhaps a lawyer. A man from the city acting for another, wealthier man. No need to give him a second thought.

Quarrell stopped at a small aluminium runabout with a white canvas hood and four red vinyl seats.
RiverRun Realty
was spelled out in huge italics along both flanks and on the canvas. The same words were embossed on the small blue slipcase under Quarrell's arm.

They stepped in, the little craft rocking. ‘Don't get seasick, do you?' Quarrell said, sharkish humour in her voice.

Wyatt ignored her. A different man might trade wisecracks or good-natured insults with her, but he didn't know how. Besides, it counted as small talk, and he was sensing pettiness in her, as if she wanted to see him discomposed. He sat in one of the vinyl seats and spread his arms out, playing the client. ‘Let's go.'

Quarrell narrowed her eyes, but started the engine.

Wyatt looked out at the river. They had a job to do. They were not friends or lovers;
they would not see each other again after this job. They didn't need to engage in other than professional ways.

The boat pulled away from the dock and headed out onto the river, keeping between the markers as they headed upstream, towards Noosa Sound. After a while, Quarrell's tiny frame relaxed, as though the air and the water and the daylight were doing her good. She opened her slipcase, pulled out a small chart, beckoned to Wyatt.

He joined her at the wheel, examined the chart, one hand to keep it flat against the breeze. A clear delineation of the river and its sandbar shadows, bridges and streets. Meanwhile Quarrell steered with one hand, her gaze flicking from the chart to the river markers and the heedless proximity of nearby hire boats and kayaks. Heading into less cluttered water, she jabbed a finger at the chart. ‘We'll enter here, take a run up and down here, and out through here.'

In at Munna Point—a coastguard station, Wyatt noticed—then past Iluka Islet and down into the network of coves and finally north again, to emerge past Witta Circle and the Lions Park bridge.

‘We're selling five properties in the general area,' she went on, ‘so we have a good reason for being here.'

‘One of them is two doors down from Ormerod's house.'

‘Yes.'

Quarrell throttled back suddenly, fingers tightening on the wheel. A small rental boat was on a collision course with them. A man and his kids on board, oblivious then suddenly gaping, beginning to panic. Leah flicked the wheel, throttled, flicked again and they were past the rental, tucking in behind it, the man offering a greenish smile.

‘Idiot,' Quarrell said, sharp as a knife.

It wouldn't do to underestimate her.

They passed under the main bridge, into sheltered water. Here life seemed very still. Wyatt saw the glint of distant windscreens and a light plane passed across the eastern horizon, but most of the pleasure boats were gone. One or two kids poling on boards in the shallows, another flying a kite on a patch of grass, that's all.

For the next hour, Quarrell took him in and out of the inlets and canals, heading south until the water looked unpromising, shallow and tangled with water plants, then turning around and heading north again as far as Lions Park, pausing for several minutes offshore from each of the five RiverRun properties, including the one near Thomas Ormerod's house. Wyatt would stand and she would wait at the wheel, motor burbling. He'd shade his eyes and take it all in, the suited businessman from down south.

All but one or two of the older houses were two storey, crammed close to each other, elbowing for the right to claim a narrow strip of lawn, water and floating dock. One or two architectural nightmares; plenty of columns. Now and then Wyatt was struck by a pleasing configuration of glass, wooden shutters, greenery. Every house had outdoor living areas, shaded decks. Chairs and glass-topped tables viewed through a screen of bamboo, shrubbery and palms. Big terracotta pots held succulents, pandanus and mondo grass, so that overall there were many shades of green and the leaves were like an armoury of blades and shields: sharp, blunt, broad, narrow, straight, curved.

The people here want privacy, Wyatt thought. They also want to be noticed. They shun contact with those who cannot afford a house on the water, yet they do want to be seen by them.

Or by the family next door or in the next inlet or on the opposite bank, he thought. Maybe they just don't see me, or Leah Quarrell, or those teenagers in their pedal boat, or that father with his kids, snatching a week's holiday in an apartment far from the water.

According to Minto, Ormerod's house would be empty next weekend. Ormerod would be two thousand kilometres south, attending the football grand final. But did he have a family, housekeeper, gardener? A neighbour to water the pot plants?

‘Ormerod lives alone?'

‘Correct.'

‘No sign of a housekeeper? Girlfriend?'

‘No.'

‘The sons never visit him?'

‘Hate his guts.'

Wyatt stared at the water, the sky and houses. Would the mood of the town change on Saturday? Become distracted by the big game? Could be useful cover.

As if reading his mind, Leah Quarrell said, ‘If I were you I'd do it Saturday afternoon.'

Not quite a direct order. ‘Why?'

‘Obvious. The place'll shut down to watch the grand final. The streets'll be deserted, and all you'll hear is TVs and radios blaring. Even up here it's a big deal, but especially this year. A bomb could go off and no one would notice.'

Wyatt absorbed that. ‘Or I go in at night, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Under cover of darkness. Or on Sunday morning while the town sleeps it off.'

Quarrell gestured in irritation and yanked on the wheel, opened the throttle, heading back for Iluka Islet and Wyatt's second, closer look at Ormerod's house. On the first run he'd glimpsed a big white cube. Couple of small dormer windows, columns, palm trees, a dock and a gardener trimming a hedge. Now, as Quarrell throttled back and maintained station fifty metres out in the channel, directly opposite the house two doors down from Ormerod's—a
FOR SALE
sign hammered into the lawn—he took a closer look. Binoculars this time, careful not to seem too interested in Ormerod's house.

There was a security box mounted under the eaves, discreet security warning stickers on the windows. Then he saw a cat asleep on a mat beside a deck chair. If there was a cat flap, it would be on a side door. Who cared for the cat when Ormerod was away? Neighbour? Kid from down the street? A cattery? If the cat stayed, then presumably any motion detectors would be turned off.

Wyatt looked up at the roof line and the pair of dormer windows. One was partly open. If it was open at other times during the week, that might indicate a forgotten, overlooked window.

A sudden movement at the house between Ormerod's and the house listed for sale by Leah Quarrell's firm. Wyatt swung the glasses, focused. A man carrying a plank, five metres from the ground. On scaffolding? It was difficult to tell through the tangle of bamboo and palms.

That might be a way in. Up the scaffolding, across to Ormerod's roof, in through the dormer window.

If it wasn't locked or alarmed.

He said nothing about that to Quarrell. Instead, he told her he'd seen enough.

‘Well, when are you going to do it?'

‘I'll let you know.'

Wrong answer, if the tension in her tiny limbs and the fury in her wrists as she yanked on the wheel were anything to go by. ‘Who's running this show?'

Wyatt said mildly, ‘Leah, I've only just got here.'

‘I could be a real help to you. A lookout, for example.'

She feels underappreciated, Wyatt thought. Perhaps her uncle just throws her crumbs. Did he want an amateur looking out for him?

To make her feel useful he said, ‘It would help if I knew the dimensions of the painting…'

‘Oh…' she said, thinking it through. ‘I could do that from the photographs.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Why?'

‘I might need to wrap it in something before I carry it out of the house.'

‘Huh,' she said, her mind working.

13

Feeling irritable, Leah Quarrell returned to her office and caught up on the weekend auction results.

She was about to walk down the street for lunch at the sushi place when her office door opened and a man stood there. ‘Got a minute, Miss Quarrell?'

Cop. She knew it instantly. He knows about the Ormerod job? She covered her thoughts with a bit of bluster. ‘Look, I'm very sorry, but we ask clients to remain in the waiting room until—'

‘Detective Sergeant Batten, Miss Quarrell. Queensland Police.'

‘
Ms
Quarrell,' stressed Leah, her mind racing. Batten? Uncle David had never mentioned a Batten on his payroll. He didn't tell her everything, though. She watched the guy closely, hoping he'd give her a nod and a wink. Tell her it was all right, he was handling it. Whatever it was.

Except somehow she knew it wasn't all right, and now the guy was stepping further into the room, a weedy, balding guy, resembling a fussy bank clerk in his lightweight navy jacket, white shirt, grey pants. Tightly knotted blue tie, black shoes. A small gold cross in his lapel. Then he turned his head slightly, looking for a chair, and she saw a birthmark under his right ear, a comma five centimetres long.

‘Like to ask you a few questions, Ms Quarrell,' he said, plonking himself down across the desk from her.

She dragged her attention away from the birthmark, the only noticeable thing about him in all that Christian blandness. ‘I don't understand. Is this about one of our auctions? One of our tenants?'

‘Your firm is selling a property for a Miss Tanya Ericsson?'

‘Ms Ericsson,' Leah said. ‘That's correct. Is there a problem?'

‘Her house was burgled during the week.'

‘That's terrible,' Leah said, aware that this wasn't about the painting hanging on Thomas Ormerod's wall, it was about Gavin Wurlitzer.

‘Indeed,' Batten said, looking more like a toe-cutter than a churchgoer.

When he didn't continue, Leah said, ‘Was there any damage? Did she lose many valuables?'

‘Was there any damage,' repeated Batten, as if contemplating a philosophical question. ‘Depends what you mean by damage.'

‘Well, broken glass, stains on the carpet…'

‘Most burglaries are attended by damage,' Batten said, ‘but our burglar went a step further—and I'm telling you this in the strictest confidence, Ms Quarrell—and assaulted Ms Ericsson.'

Leah's jaw dropped. ‘That's awful. Poor Tanya.'

‘Of course, it's not the first time a burglar has assaulted a householder,' Batten said.

‘You'd think they'd avoid an occupied house,' said Leah, pissed off with Ericsson for returning home unexpectedly, pissed off with Wurlitzer for not backing out.

‘Or have better intelligence.'

What did he mean by that? ‘It's just awful,' Leah said.

‘A statistic that might interest you,' Batten said. ‘A rise in burglaries on unoccupied houses over this past year in the greater Noosa area.'

‘Really?'

‘Specifically houses that have been put up for sale or auction.'

Her mind racing, Leah said, ‘I do seem to recall at least two of my properties being burgled in the past year.'

‘Four, in fact,' Batten said. ‘Of course, yours is not the only company affected. That would look most suspicious. Other real estate firms have been hit, too.'

‘I hope you catch this guy,' Leah said.

‘You'd have a fair idea of the local scene, Ms Quarrell? You shoot the breeze with colleagues from rival firms, swap stories, put buyers and sellers in each other's way?'

‘Sure,' said Leah, not moving a muscle in her face. Then she put on a pretty frown. ‘But you're not suggesting one of my colleagues is feeding information to this…this person?'

Batten held his arms wide in appeal. ‘Could be.'

‘If I hear anything, I'll let you know…'

‘This guy,' snarled Batten, with the face of a hanging judge, ‘is going to kill someone if he's not stopped.'

When he was gone, Leah shrieked at the receptionist. ‘You let someone just wander on back here?'

The receptionist chewed her gum and thought about it. ‘He was police.'

‘I know he was police. That's not the point.'

‘Have you done something wrong?'

‘
You
have,' Leah said, ‘and if you don't lift your game, you're fired.'

Angry, frustrated, she called Rafi Halperin and said she was coming right over.

‘I thought we were supposed to keep a low profile.'

He was teasing her. She said, ‘Low is where I want you.'

She had Hannah Sten's lawyer stashed in the Flamingo Gate apartments on the hill overlooking the national park and the Noosa main beach. An exclusive place, panoramic views, with its own doorman, and Leah coming and going without question because RiverRun Realty was selling the top-floor apartment. The vendor, the widow of a Hobart accountant, simply wanted it off her hands.