Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout (11 page)

He looked about for Vallance and
Allie. He couldnt see them. For several minutes he was suspended in murky
water, then suddenly Allie was beside him, winking, pointing downwards. Seeing
her gave him back his nerve.

He gazed around after that, enjoying
himself, and when he saw Vallance again the older man was standing on the bed
of the sea, scooping his arms for balance, his flippers stirring the sand, and
Raymond saw an old coin of the realm appear, then another, stamped with the
kings name and a latin script and a date more than 170 years before he was
born.

* * * *

Fourteen

The
coinstheir tragic history, their weight and substance, their
goldness
lodged
in Raymonds head. He could feel want and fascination stirring inside him. In
his minds eye he saw the spill of gold on the seabed, and traced it back to
the rotting hull and the laden chests. His share would make him a wealthy man. He
hungeredfor the hunt, the discovery, the division of the spoils, the addictive
element of risk. He met these needs whenever he robbed a bank, but this time
the take was buried treasure. Treasure. It was enough to make him dream.

But all he had in the world was a
lifestyle and a promise. The lifestyle boiled down to clothes, a car, an
apartment but no money; and the promise boiled down to lingering fingertips, a
brilliant smile, auburn hair like flamesbut no warm flank pressed against him
in his bed at night.

Occupied with these thoughts the
next day, Raymond used false papers to buy himself a Kawasaki. It was one he
could use on a job sooner or later, but right now he needed it as a scout
vehicle.

The Western District of Victoria,
home to small towns, prime ministers and old and new money living in National
Trust homesteads, lay wide open to the bush bandit. Raymond intended to scout
around for a few days, note the banks and the building societies, then strike
quickly. He might get lucky. He might earn Vallances fifty thousand from the
first place he hit.

In Geelong he bought maps, then
drove south-west, intending to follow the coast to Warrnambool before heading
north, then east at Mortlakea large circle, with plenty of diversions off the
beaten track. Hed map the best targets, routes in and out, roadworks, the
location of the police stations, areas of traffic congestion, hairpin bends,
narrow bridges, school buses. It was painstaking, it was probably obsessive,
but Raymond liked to know more than he needed to know before any job.

If hed not met Vallance, would he
have been able to function for much longer as the bush bandit? He knew of only
four ways of getting at a banks holdingsembezzlement, going in with a gang to
intercept a large cash transfer, breaking in during a weekend and drilling
through to the vault or the safety deposit boxes, or going in alone and armed
when the bank was open. Only this last option was open to Raymond. But the
banks were getting canny. One day hed find himself in a trap.

By the fourth day, Raymond was ready
to strike.

Biniguy was a small town, no more
than a stretch of nondescript public buildings and old, verandahed shops on a
country highway that narrowed to form the main street for an eyeblink on the way
from Victoria to south-eastern South Australia. A small shopping centrewith a
boutique, a Coles, a bank, a Mitre-10 and a furniture barn built around two
sides of a car parksat behind the main street. From the banks security point
of view, it was a bad location. Raymond listed what was good about it from his
point of view: several exits; a public car park right outside; plenty of
distracted shoppers around; half a minute from the highway.

He parked the Kawasaki next to an
exit at the corner of the supermarket and dismounted. He set off in the
opposite direction from the bank, the shotgun stuffed inside the pack on his
back. He was interested in the buildings that overlooked the shopping centre,
in particular a side-street block of flats and the rear of a hall and a public
library on the main street. He was looking for a stake-out. There was a good
chance of one, after all the outrage hed precipitated in the past few weeks.

He crossed the street at an angle
and entered the flats. All the sounds of the town were cut off inside the
foyer. Only his muted breathing sounded in the still, stale air of the
stairwell. He listened. He was listening for a cough, the staticky scratch of a
hand radio, the rattle of a Venetian blind.

Raymond waited for ten minutes, then
left the flats and cut across to the external wooden steps behind the hall and
adjoining library. He climbed, went in. The windows were opaque, ancient white
paint over them. He poked his head around a few doors and along a few dim
corridors.

Nothing.

As he descended the stairs he cast
about over the car park, looking for other likely police stake-out posts. There
was one, an electricians van near the front door of the bank. But the rear
windows were clear, and all he could see in there, a minute later, were tool
boxes, switches and coils of insulated wire. The electrician himself was on a
ladder propped against the facia of the boutique, fixing a new neon sign into
place. He looked genuine. No radio apparent; no mike or earpiece on a wire. Finally
Raymond wandered idly past the shops a couple of times. Still nothing. That
left the rooftops, but he couldnt check everything.

Raymond went in. There was one
customer, a woman with a sleeping new baby swaddled to the chin in a pale
blanket. He knew that she didnt have to be a woman with a baby but a cop with
a doll, but the baby snuffled and bleated so he relaxed by half a degree and
marked time with a pen and a withdrawal form.

Three staff: a teller, a young woman
standing at a keyboard at the rear, the manager inside a glass booth, tapping
the keys of a desk calculator as he flipped through a stack of receipts.

When the woman was gone, Raymond
approached the teller. All she could see of his face were his teeth, bared in a
distorting grimace, dark glasses and bike helmet. She was about to point to a
sign that told motorcyclists to remove their helmets when her eyes were drawn
to the yawning mouth of the shotgun and she whimpered a little.

Raymond said nothing, merely pushed
an airlines bag across the counter to her. She began to fill it, from her own
till, then used a key to open the neighbouring tills. Raymond wondered briefly
if she had been held up before. The others hadnt noticed him yet. The keyboard
rattled; the manager continued to count his money. Raymond collected the bag
from the teller, held his finger to his lips, and saw her eyes look past him
and widen in surprise.

He turned. It was a silent world
beyond the plate glass, a world where a reversal could appear out of nowhere and
you wouldnt know it. A security guard had stationed himself near the door. He
was sipping coffee and had his head cranked up to yarn with the electrician.

Raymond said gruffly, Wasnt here
yesterday.

We have him on rotation with our
other branches in the region, the teller said.

Raymond moved quickly. He abandoned
the money and the shotgun, stripped off his leather bike jacket and helmet, and
walked whistling from the bank. He guessed that he had about thirty seconds
before the bank staff gathered their wits. The guard glanced incuriously at
him. Raymond left the shopping centre on foot and walked to the hospital. He
stole an ambulance and drove as far as the next town before entering a system
of side roads that would take him east. There were no road blocks and no
pursuit cars. There would be soon, but hed be well out of the area by then.

Later he stole a community bus and
drove it to Geelong. There he rented a car. On the drive north to Melbourne,
his heart stopped hammering and he said goodbye to the bush bandit. It was done
in a second, and in that same second he defined the aims and limitations of his
new life. One, hed no longer hit small targets. No more country towns and
their modest banks. Two, he needed one big score that would bankroll his share
of the
Eliza Dean
syndicate. Three, he needed a good accomplice.

This time he met Chaffey on a park
bench near the Exhibition Building. The glass wall extension gave crisp,
out-of-true reflections of the main hall and the gardens, the strolling lovers
seemed to yaw and bend like figures in funhouse mirrors.

Ill do both, Raymond said. Spring
your bloke from remand and lift that collection of paintings.

The fat lawyer tossed a pebble at a
pigeon. Pleased to hear that, son. Steer comes up for trial soon, so he has to
be sprung some time in the next few days.

You said fifteen thousand? Not much
for the risk involved.

Take it or leave it, son. This isnt
a cheap operation. Your role is only part of it. Theres also his new ID, a
safe passage out of the country, the dosh to tide him over till hes settled.
Theres whatever gear you and his girlfriend decide is needed. Theres a new ID
and a ticket out for her as well.

All right, all right, I get the
picture, Ill do it for the fifteen. You said up front?

Up front, but only for this job.

It was a step down in Raymonds
career and he felt obscurely ashamed. It wasnt the kind of job Wyatt would
line up for.

These paintings, he said.

Times running out for that, too.
Not this weekend but the weekend after. Two days when the collection will be
off the walls and in storage and the alarm system turned off while they
renovate. Chaffey turned his massive head to watch a girl walk by. Like I
said, its a two-man job. You found someone?

My uncle comes to mind.

Chaffey went still. Then he tossed
another pebble. Heard something about him during the week that doesnt exactly
inspire confidence.

Like what?

He tried to flog some precious
stones back to an insurance company and almost got caught by the cops.

Raymond felt the pull of conflicting
emotions. He could picture his uncles nerve and style, but why hadnt Wyatt
told him about the botched handover, had a laugh about it with him, if nothing
else? They were family, after all.

And did Wyatt still have the stones?

But he didnt get caught.

True, true, Chaffey said.

Plus hes stolen paintings before,
Raymond said. Art, stuff like that, its not my thing.

He recreated his apartment in his
head. Half a dozen prints hed rented, along with the furniture.

See if you can arrange a meeting,
Chaffey said.

Have to find him first, Raymond
thought. He coughed and said, About the prison break.

Yes?

Keep it between you and me. My
uncle doesnt need to know about it.

Chaffey swung his huge head around.
Raymond felt the force of the mans hard gaze. Men like Chaffey saw corruption
every day. It corrupted them, gave a corrupt spin to their insights.

You mean he wouldnt approve,
Chaffey said finally, and Raymond would quite happily have strangled Chaffey
then.

* * * *

Fifteen

Chaffey
called in favours and made promises and when Steer was finally moved to the
remand centre in Sunshine he made the trip out there by taxi. The place was
privately run and tried to kid itself that plenty of bright fresh paint and
natural light, and its situation alongside other public buildings, placed it at
the cutting edge of modern incarceration practice, but Chaffey wasnt fooled.
There was no concealing the rifles and batons, the commerce in drugs,
phonecards and cigarettes, the stench of hopelessness and hate the moment you
got through the main door.

Still, hed rather have a
consultation with Steer in the remand centre than in Pentridge, where the
interview rooms were grim and spare, the walls always cold to the touch, the
high windows too smeared and deep-set to catch the light, the air always
ringing with the smack of metal against metal.

Steer, they said, was helping the
maintenance crew. Thered be a thirty-minute wait. Chaffey mentally added
another thirty to that and asked to see the paperwork on his client.

The clerk sighed elaborately. You
want it now?

Chaffey was used to grudging prison
staff. One, he was a lawyer, he had it easy. He didnt have to be shut up with the
dregs of society for hours at a time. Two, lawyers, like cops, kept things to
themselves. They looked at a blokes file and their little minds ticked over
and they went off and did important things. They were right up themselves.
Three, Chaffey looked rich and fat. Four, he didnt wear a uniform. Chaffey
read all of these things in the sour face of the clerk, not necessarily in that
order.

The man put him in a smoky side
room. A transistor radio vibrated on a window shelf, a poorly tuned talkback host
encouraging every vicious prejudice ever thought or uttered. Two guards came
in, made coffee, stared at Chaffey, yelled above the racketing radio, went out
again. Chaffey knew that he was being put in his place. He didnt care. It was
all in their heads, not his.

The officer came back with Steers
file. Apparently Steer was behaving himself. Well, he would be, given that he
intended to escape on the one hand and was looking at long gaol time if that
fell through on the other.