Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout (10 page)

Hes dead because of you, the
brother repeated now.

Wyatt had no intention of speaking
again. Jardines brother had made up his mind. Wyatt waited. After a period of
cursing and carpet scraping, the man abruptly ceased moving, as though sharper
instincts were finally kicking in.

He was listening, just as Wyatt was
listening, and he wasnt giving his position away.

Wyatt eased himself onto his back.
It was pointless looking for the .38. He felt with his right hand until he
found the old armchair that sat against the wall next to him. It wore a fussy
beaded fringe around its base and Wyatt slipped his hand in and found the knife
hed taped to the lower frame.

The man heard him. A spurt of flame
erupted from the shotgun and a wad of pellets tore through the armchair. Wyatt
placed him. He uncoiled from the floor and plunged blade-first across the room.

The blade missed. Their shoulders
collided but the blade slipped past, slicing the empty air.

They grappled. Jardines brother was
unused to close fighting. His instinct was to spring away from Wyatt and level
the shotgun at him; Wyatts was to hold him close, trapping the gun between
them. Then, punctuated by the mans sobbing exertion and panic, Wyatt began to
pull him onto the blade. He felt the initial resistance of cloth, skin, bone,
then the blade was slipping between the bones of the ribcage. Jardines brother
uttered a soft oh of surprise. He released the shotgun. Wyatt felt him sway. A
moment later he was lowering him to the carpet. There was a weakening pulse
when he felt for it.

Wyatt found the fuse box and turned
on the lights. He worked it out. The family knew about the mail drop. The
brother had simply come to Hobart and staked it out, then followed Wyatt home.
Now Wyatt had a body in his flat, pooling blood on his carpet and neighbours
who might have heard the shotgun. It had all been unnecessary, but he supposed
that he couldnt blame the Jardines. In Wyatts game, there was always a simple
accounting for peoples actions. What mattered now was, he had to find himself
another bolthole.

* * * *

Thirteen

For
Raymond it was a form of hell, sharing quarters with other people, getting up
when they got up, sitting around a kitchen table with them, eating toast and
eggs and drinking coffee, then waiting around through the long hours, waiting
for them to do something, enduring their small talk. But he wasnt working solo
now. He was working with other people and they had to be kept happy. It was
necessary for the job, but he looked forward to that time after the job, when
caring about the happiness of other people no longer meant anything and they
could be jettisoned.

Or not quite. Maybe Vallance could
be jettisoned. Allie was a different matter.

He watched them eat breakfast and it
was hell. Allie and Vallance moved in a comfortable stale fog, jaws grinding,
their faces puffy with sleep. Allie wore loose satin pyjamas that somehow,
where they clung to her breasts and buttocks, suggested hot pliant skin. She
was stunning. Vallance wasnt. He wore a towelling robe and looked creased and
shambling and inert. Raymond tried to imagine die nature of their passion. He
couldnt.

They had given Raymond the couch to
sleep on. The sloping pitch of the base had threatened to stuff up his back for
days, so at midnight hed moved the cushions to the floor. He still slept
badly. At 4.20 hed awoken and seen, in the light of a digital clock, that
Allie was crouched nearby, gravely watching him. He didnt think shed been
there long, for somewhere along the corridor the toilet stopped flushing.
Raymond had breathed in audibly, ready to speak, but Allie had silenced him,
kissing her fingers and laying them on his lips. He now wondered if hed dreamt
the whole thing. It had been erotic, sure, but somehow also tender, and hed
not had much of that in his life.

An hour later, fully showered and
dressed, Vallance showed him a red vinyl Thomas Cook bag. Told you I had a
whole heap of coins, he said.

Raymond unzippered the bag, whistled
at the sight of so many gold, silver and bronze coins, plus small ingots, some
of it melded together by a hard sediment. Nice, he said.

That it is, Vallance said. Right,
shall we go?

Raymond drove the short distance back
to the marina. Quincy was waiting for them, a grizzled character with an
alcoholics broken blood vessels in his face. He seemed incurious about
Raymond, incurious about the purpose of the voyage. Raymond guessed he was paid
to keep his trap shut.

Their passage out of Westernport
Bay, toward the Cornwall Group of islands, induced in Raymond a sense of
anticipation. He fingered the silver dollar in his pocket. It wasnt eagerness,
hunger or greed. Hed be hard pushed to define any extreme of feelings. But he
couldnt deny that all of his senses were alert, that the blood ticked in him
inexorably, that he felt the prickling awareness of the hunter closing in.
Hidden treasure. Buried treasure. His skin tingled. His mother had once said, Youre
my treasure. Queer that hed think of that now. He wasnt a man who had much
time for looking back. The world was full of people crippled by regret for past
actions and inactions. It got them nowhere. They didnt know how to forgive or
accept themselves. Then again, the world was full of monsters who remained
monsters exactly because they had no trouble forgiving themselves at all.

Raymond blinked, shaking off the
trance, putting himself firmly in the here and now again, on the deck of a
trawler, sailing in mild sunlight. Bass Strait was calm. Raymond was glad: his
guts would have acted up on him otherwise. Five hours later, the islands
appeared. Quincy steered toward a narrow boiling passage between reefs, heading
for sheltered water beyond.

Raymond and Allie stood on the port
side, Vallance on the starboard, reef-spotting while Quincy throttled back and
picked a way through the gap. The boat pitched and jawed a little in the
rougher water. It felt dangerous to Raymond, a gut-lurching sensation, but
Vallance and Allie rode the twisting deck comfortably so he told himself it was
nothing. The air felt cool and damp on his face, briny in his nostrils, and
seabirds slipped in the air currents above him.

Then they were through, gliding
across still water. Grey cliffs, a tiny pebbly beach set with large rounded
boulders, a muttonbird rookery, a glimpse of treeless vivid grassland above the
cliffs. Raymond tipped back his head and breathed the air. He felt alive, and
then Allie was standing next to him. Her arms circled his waist briefly and her
chin pressed him between the shoulderblades.

She released him. Isnt this great?

Her eyes were bright, keen, full of
curiosity and simple happiness. It was infectious. Raymond felt an absurd need
to reach out and dab at some poorly applied zinc cream on her nose. He allowed
a brief glint of teeth. Great.

Vallance dropped anchor and joined
them. He was grinning, his thin face and wiry frame revelling in the moment. Piece
of cake.

Lucky with the weather, Raymond
said.

Vallance sobered. I agree. I also
have to say that time is a factor here. The wrecks in about twenty metres of
water on the other side of the reef. In a few weeks time what were doing
today wont be possible. Gale-force winds, heavy seas, you name it.

In other words, if Im going to put
up the money for this itll have to be soon.

Vallance coughed, looked
embarrassed. Well, yeah. Thats why thisll be a quick visit. Take you out to
the site, let you run the metal detector over the area, maybe dig up a few more
coins, then head back to Westernport. Mate, we want you to see that this is a
goer.

Raymond still had plenty of
questions. He looked away from the island to the other islands in the group,
small, barren humps in the sea. Couple of boats anchored out there, he said.

Fishermen.

You havent encountered other
treasure seekers?

No.

What about official visitors? Im
thinking of inspectors from that crowd you used to work for, the Maritime
Heritage Unit.

Nope.

Raymond stared at Vallance for a
while. Gulls wheeled above the yacht. The air was fresh and sharp, bracing to
breathe. Raymond couldnt let the air distract him, lead him away from his
natural state, which was suspicion and scepticism. Are there other wrecks
here?

A score of them. Theyve all been
charted.

Excavated?

Those that matter. A big convict
vessel went down in 1813, for example. That had the historians interested. Most
of the other ships were small intercolonial traders. Livestock, timber, stuff
like that.

So no-one knows the
Eliza Dean
is
here?

Not yet. But they will. Someone
will stumble on her by accident sooner or later. Thats why its imperative we
go in now.

Why hasnt she been found?

Vallance said impatiently, You dive
with me, youll see why. When she hit the reef, the hull wouldve gone straight
to the bottom, weighed down by ballast, crates of coins, other heavy stuff. Itll
be under a few metres of sand by now. The rigging, masts, upper decking,
anchors, general superstructure, well that would have been strewn over a wide
area by tides and storms. Were talking about a hundred and seventy years, you
know. From what I know about the tides here, the smaller stuff, including the
few coins that worked loose or were grabbed by the crew, will have been
scattered in a particular way.

He squatted on the deck, wet a
finger, sketched two reefs and then a cone shape abutting one of them. Tapping
the widest arc of the cone, he said, Where I found the coins, plus a tin plate
and a couple of buttons and spoons, approximates to here. What we have to do is
crisscross back in this direction. He indicated the pointed end of the cone. Thats
where the wreck itself will be.

The mother lode.

Exactly.

You werent so specific the first time
you told me this.

You werent so interested.

Raymond looked out to sea, then back
at the rapidly drying diagram. Youre saying its between those two reefs?

Yes. The outer one is deeper. The
Eliza
Dean
passed right over it, then struck the inner one. Thats why no-ones
found her before.

What if we do have an unexpected
visitor, either now or when and if we mount an expedition? Theyll know
something is going on.

Im confident we wont have
visitors, not this late in the season. But I can always dive at night or anchor
some distance away and swim to the wreck from there. Youre thinking telltale
bubbles in the water? Simple. Ill use a rebreather.

Youre the expert, Raymond said.

That he is, Allie agreed,
embracing Vallance, resting her temple on his shoulder.

A kind of hatred flooded through
Raymond. One last question.

Fire away. Youre the man with the
money.

Thats just it, Raymond said. The
world is full of fools with money to throw away. Why me? Why me and only three
others? Why not a big consortium?

From anyone else, these would have
been first questions, but Raymond wanted Vallance with his hopes running high
before he asked it. He wanted to see if Vallance would stumble or blanch or
spin him a story.

What Vallance did under the wheeling
sky, the wind in his sparse hair, was say, I wont lie to you. Its a
protected area. No diving allowed.

Uh huh.

That convict ship? Its pretty
close to where I found the coins. Its fragile, excavation is going to take years.
The government doesnt want looters, they dont want amateurs, they dont want
anyone doing anything to disturb the wreck.

So well be inviting arrest,
Raymond said flatly.

Vallance nodded.

Thats why everything about this
will have to be kept secret, Allie put in.

With any luck, Vallance said, the
actual search will be quick. I did a preliminary survey the time I found the
coins. Another survey today and tomorrow should help narrow the search area.
Then when we come here with all the gear we simply vacuum up the sand, gather
the coins, get away quick.

He paused. Like I said, we need two
hundred grand to get the show on the road. The return from your fifty grand
will be in the millions. Im not asking for fifty right away. If you can get
twenty to me by the end of the week, that will secure your fifty grand stake in
the syndicate.

After a while, Raymond nodded. Okay.

Vallance clapped his hands together.
Time to get togged up, ladies and gentlemen.

Raymond went below, changed, reappeared
on deck again. He found Allie and Vallance, in colourful wetsuits, checking the
air tanks and regulators. They were both slight in build and in their vivid
costumes reminded Raymond of glossy tropical frogs. Vallance handed him lead
weights on a belt and a sheathed, chrome-plated knife. Strap these on.

And then they slipped over the side
and into the water. Vallance led the way, over the inner reef to deeper water.
As they angled toward the bottom, a strange fear gripped Raymond, a sense of a fist
closing over his lungs. He knew that his lungs were contracting. The water grew
colder. He found himself sipping at the air. It seemed to be thick, weighty
air, as though a liquid were pouring down into his lungs. He found that he was
losing red from the colour spectrum. A brand name stamped on the wristband of
his wetsuit was being leached of redness. His heart pounded.