Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout (2 page)

He returned to the jetty. Wyatt had
at first rejected the motley station wagons and utes parked there, fishermens
cars, rustbuckets all of them, with mismatched panels and doors and half a
dozen registration stickers up and down the windscreens. He imagined their
interiors, their snagging springs and crammed ashtrays and rolling UDL cans and
faulty electrics. The Hastings police might turn a blind eye, allowing a local
fisherman to drive between home and jetty and nowhere else, but Wyatt doubted
that bald tyres, rust and cracked windscreens would pass in Melbourne.

But what choice did he have?

He could cut down on the risk,
though, by driving to a place like Springvale, still well short of the city but
a place where he wouldnt be looked at twice. Take a taxi from there.

Maybe three or four taxi
journeysangling north and south as he closed in on the city, so that anyone
mapping his route would make little sense of itand board a city tram at some
big interchange like Kew Junction.

Wyatt checked his watch. 4.35. He
hoped it was still too early for the first of the fishing boats to come in. He
hoped its crew would have plenty to do when it did dock, leaving more time
before one of them realised that his bomb was missing from the car park.

Wyatt went along the row of
vehicles, testing drivers doors and checking for keys left in the ignition.
Most were unlockedthere was nothing worth stealing, after allbut no keys.

Then he checked behind bumper bars
and inside wheel arches. He found plenty of rust, plenty of gritty mud. He also
found a small metal container the size of a matchbox, held inside the wheel
arch of a Valiant utility by a magnet.

There was nothing tight about the
motor. It whirred freely and when it finally fired, Wyatt could hear piston
slap and rattling tappets and smell the oily exhaust of poor combustion. The
seat sagged, threatening backache and stiff neck and shoulders. Wyatt kept
himself fit but he was in his forties now and on the lookout for things like
the size and shape of the seats he sat in and the beds he lay in.

But the headlights worked, the left
angled higher than the right, and he found reverse without tearing a cog in the
gearbox. The fuel gauge showed empty. Either that or its stuffed, he thought.
He couldnt risk filling it locally. Hed put some distance behind him first.

Wyatt cut across country toward
Frankston. In the cool dawn light, fog appeared, hanging in the roadside
depressions and above the creeks and dams, and hovering in thin streaks across
the road, making him blink, as though to clear a film over his eyes. He
remembered the fogs of the Peninsula from his recent past. There was a time
when hed strike fog on his way back from some smoking bank or payroll van.
That was before hed been forced to go on the run. That was a long time ago.

The engine coughed, surged, coughed
again. The fuel gauge was working after all. Wyatt limped through the confusing
roundabout in Somerville and into the Shell station on the Frankston road. The
fisherman deserved a good turn: Wyatt filled the tank and poured a litre of oil
down the throat of the clapped-out motor.

He abandoned the ute in a side
street next to the level crossing in Springvale. He took a taxi to Westfield
shopping centre, a second to the taxi rank outside Myer in Chadstone, a third
up to Northlands in Doncaster. He felt safer with each journey, as though he
were shaking off the dogs and trackers of the past. The tram from Doncaster to
the city was warm and quiet and full of early workers. If anyone looked at him
it was incuriously.

There was a 24-hour cafe in Swanston
Walk. Wyatt was bone-tired and hungry. They offered bottomless coffee and he
downed three cups of it. He wanted something solid in his stomach and ordered
muesli, scrambled eggs and wholemeal toast. He looked at his watch. Liz Redding
should still be deeply asleep on her bunk aboard the yacht.

Revived, bouncy on his feet, he
headed on foot along Little Lonsdale Street. At 8.30 he stepped into a call box
at the Elizabeth Street corner and rang Heneker at Pacific Mutual Insurance.

In Wyatts experience, all
switchboard operators spoke with an upward inflection, as if framing every
statement as a question, Im sorry? Mr Heneker wont be in until nine?

Wyatt hung up. He felt knots in his
torso from his cooped-up days at sea. Thirty minutes to kill. He decided to
walk, and as he stalked through the streets without seeing the shops, the cars,
his fellow humans, he replayed his voyage across the Pacific with Liz Redding.
But it all came down to one thing: hed drugged her coffee and slipped away. Hed
betrayed trust and desire. The fallout from something like that is often very
simple: all bets are off.

At 9.05 he returned to the phone box
and called the insurance company again. Heneker had the surging enthusiasm of
his trade. Heneker here, Mr

He waited for a name. Wyatt didnt
give him one. Instead, he said, Ive got the Asahi jewels.

He pictured the man, the white shirt
and sombre suit and darting calculations. Heneker recovered quickly. Shall we
discuss where and when and how?

And how much, Wyatt said.

How could I forget, Heneker said.

* * * *

Two

It
wasnt strictly true that Wyatt had the Asahi jewels. He had one piece with
him, a white gold necklace set with a dozen chunky emeralds, but the remaining
piecesrings, necklaces, brooches, pendants, tiaraswere still locked away in a
concealed safe on board the yacht. Taken together, they were too bulky to cart
around and too valuable to dump if he found himself in trouble. At the same
time, he was not interested in fencing the jewels piecemeal or removing the
stones and melting down the settings. To do that involved time and too many middlemen.
Wyatt wanted to offload the Asahi Collection quickly, for a lump sum, the
reward offered by the insurance company. The emerald necklace was simply his
hook. It was the most eye-catching piece, promising more, yet also an easy
thing to dump if the deal went sour.

Wyatt headed down Elizabeth Street,
musing upon the twists and turns of his life. The Asahi Collection, touring
Australia and New Zealand, had been stolen from a Japanese superstore in
Melbourne. Wyatt wasnt the culpritthe actual raiders were policemen using
security information supplied by Springettbut Liz Redding had suspected Wyatt.
Theyd both wound up in Port Vila, where Wyatt had discovered the hiding place
of the Collection. Hed not revealed its location, not even when, on the voyage
back, he and Liz had moved from being thief and thief-taker to being lovers.

Wyatt had almost been able to
imagine a life with her. In the end, though, she was a cop, and Wyatt was a
hold-up man with a long history that would not withstand close scrutiny, and so
he was on the run again.

The meeting place was an undercover
car park on Lonsdale Street. He went in, climbing to the third level, where he
prowled among the shadows. The ceiling felt very low, the air sluggish, fumy
and full of hard-to-place noises. The simplest sound was flat, hollow, booming.

He waited behind a concrete pillar.
Heneker had described himself as tall, a bit on the thin side, wearing a blue
suit, carrying a
Time
magazine. When the insurance man finally
appeared, Wyatt observed him for a couple of minutes. Heneker looked uneasy,
the magazine held against his chest as though to ward off arrows. Wyatt
supposed that hed be nervous if he were in Henekers shoes, and he stepped out
into the weak light. Mr Heneker.

Heneker turned to him with relief. Thought
you werent coming. He coughed. What have you got for me?

Wordlessly, Wyatt handed him the
necklace. Heneker took it, wiped his sleeve across his face, and said, A fake.

Wyatt faltered, just for a second. Maybe
the lights not bright enough for you.

Heneker looked around nervously,
then said, his voice low and complicitous: You dont understand. Its a copy.
Theyre all copies, the entire collection.

Wyatt said nothing. He went onto his
toes, ready to slip into the darkness.

Good copies, mind you, Heneker
said, getting back some of his nerve. Youd need to be an expert. I mean, the
settings are real enough, the white gold itself is worth a few bob, but the
stones are all high-class fakes. He shrugged in the gloom. The Asahi
management got cold feet. Didnt want to pay the insurance premium for the real
stones so we worked out a special deal for display copies. The collection
toured right through New Zealand and Australia with no-one the wiser.

So why didnt you tell me to piss
off on the phone?

Heneker waved the necklace in the
air. These arent cheap copies. Cost twenty grand to have them made up. We
still want them back.

How much?

Heneker thought about it, swinging
the necklace on his forefinger. Im authorised to offer five.

Wyatt smiled, like a shark, then
laughed, a harsh bark in the slice of poisoned air between the concrete floors.
Five? Is that hundred or thousand?

Thousand, Heneker said, pocketing
the necklace.

Jesus Christ.

Wyatt turned away and began to merge
with the shadows.

Youd turn your back on five
thousand bucks?

No response. Wyatt continued to walk
away. Heneker said, a little desperately now, playing for time: Ive got the
five grand, here in my pocket.

Wyatt paused, came back and said,
with deadly calm, The deal is this: you give me the five, I tell you where the
other pieces are.

Heneker shook his head. Pal, you
must be desperate. First you bring me the entire Asahi Collection, then you get
your five thousand.

The sounds when they came consisted
of tyre squeals on the up-ramp and the snap of shoe leather. At once Wyatt
dropped to one knee and kicked out, hard into Henekers groin and then into the
shins of the man who had run in screaming: Police! On the ground! Police! On
the ground!

Both men went down. Wyatt tackled
the next cop. He heard a bone snap, heard a prolonged scream. And then in the
noise and confusion, he ran.

* * * *

Three

Raymond
thought that if these people had any idea,
any idea,
that he was the
bush bandit, theyd piss in their pants, spill their drinks, lose their
hairpieces, tremble so hard theyd knock over their roulette chips. They
talked
hard and toughmergers, windfall profits, takeovers, injunctions, lawsuits,
union bashingbut it was all hot air, the men pink and soft, the women wasted
by sunlamps and starvation diets to the consistency of old bootleather.
Sometimes Raymond was tempted to pull a stunt with his sawn-off shotgun, risk
gaol for the pleasure of wiping the greed and satisfaction from their faces.

They werent all like that. Raymond
played at a big-stakes roulette table in the far left corner of one of the
upper-level salons. It was a table that attracted your vulgarians, sure, but it
also attracted the occasional cool, unblinking Asian gambler, whod make and
lose a fortune without feeling that he had to advertise it to the world, the
occasional professional from Europe or the States, and the occasional
middle-aged business type whod looked after his health and didnt make a fuss
about how big he was.

This particular roulette wheel
brought luck to Raymond. Or rather, he knew it would be unlucky to switch to
one of the other tables. On average, he was aheadwin twelve grand one night,
lose eight or nine the next. A week ago hed won twenty-five. Two nights later
he was down thirty. It all meant that he lived a good life but there wasnt
much hard cash in his pocket. Tonight he was behind, most of the cash from the
bank raid gone down the drain.

It was a relative term, losing.
Raymond never had a sense of falling behind, not when he could simply go out
and pull another job to top up his reserves. And there were the other
positives: the women, the covetous glances, the contacts like Chaffey, whom hed
met playing craps, and the intoxicating dreamland of tuxedos, crisp white
cotton, strapless dresses, his own lean jaw and sensitive hands in the muted
24-hours-a-day light.

A number of regulars played this
table. Others liked to watch. Raymond was on nodding terms with all of them but
in the past couple of weeks hed found himself drawn to the company of a man
called Brian Vallance and Vallances girlfriend, Allie Roden.

He watched them now as he stacked
his chips. Vallance was quick and compact looking, with olive skin and a
closely trimmed grey beard on his neat chin. He had a healthy outdoors look,
but Raymond wasnt sure that he liked Vallance. There was a sulkiness close to
the surface, the mouth was too mean, Vallances body language too
buttoned-down. Vallance was about fifty, and that put him about twenty-five
years older than the girlfriend.

Now there was a sight for sore eyes.
Allie Roden had thick auburn hair like flames around a finely boned face, a
kind of slow deep consuming fire in her green eyes, white skin, a beautiful
shape, a readiness to toss back her head and laugh aloud. When she did that,
Raymond wanted to bite her throat.

She came around the table while the
croupier was making ready for the next spin of the wheel. Raymond felt her hand
touch his wrist briefly, smelt hera hint of plain soap and talcas her lips
brushed his ear and she murmured, Lets have a drink when youre ready.