Wyatt - 04 - Cross Kill (23 page)

But the man standing in the main
room was one of the men whod robbed her, and the look he directed at her was
full of hard and unnerving intelligence. Bax and two strangers were with him.
He pushed them toward her. Your new partners, Stella, he said. Meet Mr Towns
and Mr Drew.

* * * *

Thirty-nine

After
he left them, Wyatt drove back across the river. Everything led to the house in
Abbotsford. Rossiter knew about the Mesic job, there was that unexplained
release of Niall from prison, and only the Rossiters knew hed be at Ounsteds
surgery.

He left the Peugeot under a plane
tree on Gipps Street and entered the alley on foot. There was no easy way about
the next step other than to storm the place. He stopped when he reached the
granny flat. Its rear wall was incorporated into the alley fence. There was one
dusty curtained window, a light on and a radio playing inside. Wyatt went in
noiselessly over the fence.

He was ready for the killer dog. It
came at him across the yard, thick and low-slung, as meaty and hairless as a
pig. Wyatt wrapped his belt around his left forearm, feinted with it, flicked
open the switchblade in his other hand, sliced open the straining throat. The
heart and lungs worked briefly, inhaling blood, discharging a scarlet-flecked
froth, then life went out of the dog and it dropped like a stone, the canines
tearing the skin of Wyatts wrist.

He stepped back from the animal, his
heart hammering. This death only a metre from Nialls window was harsh and
liquid, and Wyatt instinctively backed into darkness as Niall appeared in the
doorway, backlit by a bare light bulb in the room behind him.

Wyatt stepped out again. He let
Niall see the .38 in his hand. Ive come for my money.

Niall had been smoking and drinking.
His eyes were slitted against the smoke drifting from the cigarette in the
corner of his mouth and he held a beer can near his thigh. He recognised Wyatt
and dropped the cigarette. Then, when the dying dog made a last tremor,
shooting out its legs, expiring on its side, Niall dropped the beer can.

Wyatt expected Niall to go to the
dog. He was prepared to let that happen. Instead, Niall jerked back into the
flat and slammed the door.

Wyatt knocked, tried the handle,
slammed his shoulder against it a couple of times. Niall, he said, just give
me the money.

The crossbow bolt came through the
window at him. Weakened and deflected by the glass, it plucked at his thigh and
fell uselessly to the ground. He dropped into a crouch and edged away from the
light.

Then he heard glass again, only it
wasnt the window facing him but the one on the alley. There was a sound of
cotton tearing and then footsteps stumbled away from the house.

Wyatt stepped onto the kennel roof
and vaulted over the fence into the alley. He crouched for a moment until he
saw Rossiters son show clearly in silhouette in the streetlights at the end of
the alley. He set out after him, loping easily, the .38 where it couldnt be
seen.

Niall turned toward the river. At
one point he passed between a streetlight and the flank of the brewery, his
headlong shadow soaring then shrinking across the blank brick wall. He had a
day-pack strapped to his back. Wyatt stayed two hundred metres behind him,
keeping pace, waiting for the kid to weaken or break stride.

But Niall was twenty years younger
than Wyatt and driven by panic. In a series of left and right turns Niall
closed in on the river, the old convent on the western bank, and Wyatt lost him
in the Childrens Farm behind it.

It was a good place and it was bad.
Niall belonged on
the street; thats where he should have run to, hailed
a taxi perhaps, shoved the crossbow under someones nose at a traffic light.
The bushes, pens and grassy paddocks on the river bank would be
incomprehensible to someone like Niall. Then again, so long as he had nerve and
patience, he could hide all night there and not be found. The traffic noise on
Studley Park Bridge, the darkness
and the unfamiliar terrain, would
provide all the cover hed need. Theyd cover Wyatt, too, but otherwise they
were a liability.

Wyatt could flush Niall out in the
morning light, but he wasnt prepared to wait. Starting at a point near the
entrance
to the Childrens Farm, he began to quarter the
area, sweeping left and
right across each segment. He concentrated on the centre, knowing that if he
spent too long on the margins he might lose Niall. Now and then he stopped to
listen. Cars accelerated over the bridge and up into Kew. He heard wind in the
trees, and something else, low but constant in the background, that he supposed
was the river between its many bends. There was a cough, almost human, as he
passed among some sheep in the grass.

Then a squeal of terror. This also
was not human but it was terror. By the time Wyatt reached the pig pen the cry
had been taken up by other piglets and the heavy old sow, a crossbow bolt in
her flank, was ranging back and forth, simultaneously protecting them and
menacing Niall Rossiter, who was on his backside in the mire, struggling to
rearm the crossbow. Wyatt saw all this in the moonlight and said, Its over,
Niall. Just drop the weapon and climb the fence.

Niall swung around, loosed a bolt at
him. Wyatt heard the
phutt
of it close to his head. He fired the .38,
three well-placed shots that straddled the rail behind Nialls back and slapped
into the mud near his crotch. You get the next one in the stomach. Drop the
crossbow, climb out of the pen.

Niall disintegrated then, letting
out a peevish sob and throwing the crossbow at the sow. When he lifted free of
the sucking mud he looked helplessly at the filth that clung to his hands and
pasted his jeans to his legs. He turned, climbed over the rail. His feet
slipped, he fell, and Wyatt was there on the other side.

Give me the bag.

Niall shrugged free of the day-pack,
moving exhaustedly, rocking on his feet. Theres nothing in it, only my stuff.

Wyatt took the bag, stepped back,
and opened it, keeping the .38 trained. The things that tumbled onto the grass
did not add up to his two hundred thousand dollars. It was an escape kit: a
change of underclothes, a wallet, a sheathknife, spare bolts for the crossbow.
In the wallet there were sixty-five dollars and four stolen credit cards.

Wyatt threw the pack away. Lets
see what your old man has to say.

Niall spat. He dont know nothing.

Your mother then.

Shes gone. Shot through a couple
of hours ago.

Thats all Wyatt could get out of
Rossiters son. They went back the way theyd come, Niall walking
slump-shouldered before him. When they got to the house there was a light on
above the front door. The Valiant was in the carport but the VW was missing. Around
the side, Wyatt said, prodding Niall with the gun.

The back door was ajar, the screen
door unlatched. Wyatt pushed Niall inside. No warnings, he said softly,
guiding Nialls spine with the barrel of his gun. They went that way past the
laundry, the leaking lavatory, through the empty kitchen, to the sitting room,
where Rossiter was sitting in darkness, punishing a bottle of supermarket
Scotch. He heard them, reached for a switch, and lamplight threw the shapes
from bad dreams over the walls and ceiling. His eyes were red-rimmed and
cigarette ash dusted the Collingwood football jersey he was wearing in place of
a pyjama top. He nodded morosely. Thought youd show up.

Wyatt gestured both men to the couch
and handcuffed them together. They were heavy and unresisting, Rossiter saying
uselessly, You dont have to do this. Then he changed expression, looking up
at Wyatt for understanding. Mate, she let me down, Im sorry.

But Wyatt gave him nothing, only a
stare that did not shift or stray but stayed locked on him. Rossiter had to
turn his head away from the force of it.

Did she take the money with her?

Rossiter laughed. She took the VW
and my last fifty bucks.

The anger building in Wyatt stripped
his face of flesh and colour. He slammed the old mans head with his fist. She
traded me for Niall. Thats why hes out of jail.

Yes.

You spilled the whole job to her,
where we were staying, everything.

Rossiters eyes flickered briefly at
Wyatt. Mate, shes the wife.

As if that explains it, Wyatt
said. Who did she spill to? A lawyer? A magistrate? A cop?

A cop, Rossiter muttered.

Name?

Napper. From the local nick.

Shes with him now, Wyatt said, splitting
the money with him.

Rossiter thought about that. His
face said it was a cruel possibility. Then he said, No, doesnt sound right.
She did it for the boy, not the money.

Wyatt watched him neutrally. After a
while he said, The Outfit sent someone to knock me at Ounsteds tonight.

Rossiter flushed and looked away. Well,
yeah, she did that. She was expecting to hear Napper had arrested or maybe shot
you tonight, so when you rang here she panicked, knowing youd come after her
sooner or later.

So she tipped off the Outfit they
could find me at Ounsteds?

There was no spirit left in
Rossiter. He looked down, nodded his head.

Have you always been on friendly
terms with them?

Mate, that price on your head,
forty thousand, everyone knew who to call.

The pair of you should have cleared
off with her.

I wanted to put it right with you,
Rossiter said.

Wyatt stared at him. It might have
been true. He gestured at Niall. What about him?

Rossiter looked at his son and there
was no pride in it. Stupid fucker reckoned hed be able to take you if you
came here.

Niall jerked away from his father,
turning his shoulder to shut him out. The movement pulled Rossiters arm with
it, and Rossiters veiny mottled hand flopped onto Nialls thigh. Niall
shrugged it off, swearing bitterly. Wyatt saw what blood ties could do to
people and it looked small and vicious to him.

Then both Rossiters stiffened,
listening. The front gate creaked open. They seemed to wait for it to close.

* * * *

Forty

Napper
had got the idea from a rapist hed arrested after a stakeout one night several
years ago. The rapist would climb onto his victims roof, remove a few tiles,
crawl
into the space above the ceiling, then drop into the house through
the manhole. Except the rapist had been a weedy little squirt. Nappers broad
thighs felt scraped and bruised from squeezing through the manhole of the house
in Northcote where Wyatt and Jardine were staying and hed landed hard, hurting
his shins.

Added to which hed panicked when
the pistol jammed. Next time he pocketed a drug-raid gun, hed make sure it was
a double-action revolver, not a semiautomatic. If a pistol misfires and jams,
youre stuffed. If a revolver misfires, you dont have to stop and clear the
jam, you just pull the trigger again.

Still, he was home safe and two
hundred and nine thousand dollars better off. Napper clapped his arms around
himself on the edge of his bed, rocking a little, relieved and exultant. He
reached out and touched the twenties, fifties and hundreds. Hed unbundled and
scattered the notes to give an impression of bulk. Somehow, bundled together,
it hadnt looked like a lot of money. In fact, hed been disappointed until hed
actually counted it. Andprobably owing to all the vodka he was drinkingthe
more he looked at the money the less real it looked, like a spill of jam jar
labels, rectangles of coloured paper, swimming, swimming.

Napper jerked himself awake,
swallowed more vodka. It was past midnight and hed been sitting here like this
for over two hours. Hed rung Tina, but shed bitten his head off, said she was
sleeping, she had to get up at five, as he well knew, so why didnt he just
piss off, and had slammed down the phone.

The more Napper thought about it,
did he want her anyway? This was some serious money he had here. With that kind
of money you can pick and choose your birds. He gazed at the money again,
unfocused, looking inward at the years with Josie. It had seemed like the real
thing at first: as a social worker shed appreciated the problems the cops had,
Roxanne had come along, theyd bought a housethen suddenly everything had
turned around on him. Josie found feminismand lesbianism, for all he knewand
a mouthful of slogans she used on him twenty-four hours a day. Shed wanted to
return to study. She accused him of being brutalised by the job, said it would
taint Roxanne, said he never spent time with Roxanne. Napper stiffened as he
remembered it all, the glass of vodka halfway to his mouth. Wasnt that a
contradiction? He was tainting Roxanne yet he never spent time with her? Lousy
bitch. Hed have to make sure she never got wind of the money.

By degrees Napper came to see that
his two hundred and nine thousand dollars amounted to fuck-all. Lawyers fees,
maintenance, child support, replace the ute with something that didnt have a
hole in the floor between him and the exhaust pipe, find a better place to
live, pay off the few thousand he owed the SP bookiesJesus, it could all be
gone by the end of the year.