An hour later the gelignite was sitting on the rusted-out floor of the ute and Napper was grinding the starter motor. He glanced up the street. It was a street like Tina’s, a block of flats, a lot of tarted-up cottages, a few double-storey terrace houses. It was full of yuppies who’d stacked the local council and forced it to put in a one-way system and speed-traps every fifty metres. He switched on the headlights and peeled away from the kerb. He had half an inch of vodka left and he toasted all the quiche eaters and civil libertarians and their dinky houses and their tin-can cars. He lived a cloaked and dangerous life, and they wouldn’t know if their arses were on fire.
Forty-one
Wyatt reached around and turned off the lamp. He tracked the footsteps: their crush-grind along the gravel drive, then a fainter snap as they passed under the carport at the side of the house. Then silence. The winking red numerals on Rossiter’s VCR read 2.04 in the morning. Four hours before dawn on day twelve of the Mesic job and he was no closer to the money.
He slipped through to the dingy rear of the house. The iron-hard cement floor seemed to drain all warmth from him, and as he crossed to the porch door, a bulky shape came through it.
Wyatt stepped to the side, into the icy laundry, and let the figure pass him. He moved out again, coming in from behind. The things that didn’t seem right about the intruder-smell, shape, susceptibility-were confirmed for him when the kitchen light blazed on.
‘Eileen,’ he said.
She turned sharply. Her hand flew to her chest. ‘I knew it.’
‘Are you alone?’
She backed away from him, reaching around blindly for a kitchen chair with the movements of someone brought down by resignation and fatigue. ‘Of course I’m alone.’
‘You’ve been splitting the money with your cop friend?’
Her head was bowed and she shook it. ‘Was it Napper? I knew it, as soon as Ross said your mate had been shot.’ She looked up. ‘I thought all he’d want was an arrest.’
‘That makes it better? Either way I get it in the neck, Eileen.’
An hour ago Wyatt had been prepared to kill the Rossiters. It was what he did to the people who sold him out. But now all he could see was their wretchedness and struggle. They were driven by the code of the family, and that was something Wyatt didn’t understand. He knew only that it was powerful and it had never applied to him. The Rossiters were stupid and dangerous, but it was mostly aimed inward. They would always shoot themselves in the foot. A final thing stopped him. He had to work in this town. If he killed Rossiter, Eileen and their son, he would look like a mad dog to the world. He would become one and be treated like one.
‘Why did you come back?’
She sat slumped in defeat. ‘Car broke down.’
That seemed to define the Rossiters. Wyatt dropped his gun arm. The movement caught her eye. ‘You might as well get it over and done with.’
Instead Wyatt said, ‘Where did you have your meetings with this cop?’
She looked away and he saw shame there. ‘His flat.’
‘Show me.’
Eileen scrabbled in her purse. ‘I’ll write it down for you.’
‘He’s not going to open the door to me, Eileen. You’re my ticket in.’
From the other room Rossiter yelled, ‘That you, Eileen?’
They ignored him. Wyatt motioned with his.38. ‘Get up.’
‘No.’
‘Eileen, is that you?’
‘Yes, so shut up!’ She dropped her voice again. ‘Why should I? I’m out of it now.’
Patiently Wyatt said, ‘Eileen, you’re a liability to him. He’ll realise that sooner or later.’
‘So shoot me and it won’t matter. What do I care?’
‘You care about Niall. Napper won’t feel safe until he’s got all of you. At the moment we’re ahead. Let’s keep it that way, let’s get to him first.’
Silently she stood, passed by him, and he followed her to the back door. Rossiter shouted after them. They heard the little man’s voice again as they passed down the side of the house. On the footpath outside, Eileen stopped, mute and dazed, and let Wyatt guide her to Ounsted’s Peugeot. They strapped themselves in. She leaned abstractedly against her door.
‘Which way?’
She pointed. ‘Bridge Road.’
At Church Street they turned right and the Peugeot laboured up Richmond Hill. Then she took him into the side streets, to a broad avenue that had been a handy through-road the last time Wyatt had used it. Now it was a one-way street stoppered at either end by bluestone paving and slowed by speed-traps. He braked, changed back into third, eased the creaking springs and chassis over the first speed trap. A hundred metres farther on, Eileen pointed sullenly at a block of flats. ‘Number six, first floor.’
Then life came into her and she sat forward on her seat. ‘There’s Napper now.’
Ahead of them a battered Holden utility was pulling away from the kerb. Smoking badly, listing to one side, it swerved along the centre of the road as it gained speed. Everything about the driving suggested rage and hate, and Wyatt saw the brake lights flare as the driver noticed a speed-trap too late. The front tyres slammed into the up-slope. Wyatt expected to see the utility bounce cruelly over it but what he saw was a rip of vivid orange flame in the cabin and the old vehicle seemed to rear up and tear open, then fall broken-backed on the road, burning fiercely. The explosion blew out the windows of a nearby house and one wheel rolled down the footpath.
Wyatt braked gently and pulled into a gap between streetlights. This could be the end. He’d got the Outfit off his back, but what if his money was shredded and ablaze there in the utility, along with the twisting, ruptured policeman? Still, he got out, opened the door for Eileen, followed her into the block of flats. Napper’s lock gave him no problems. He went in.
Instead of pulling the flat apart, he stood there for a while, thinking his way into Napper’s skin. He thought, and one of the places it gave him was the bedside cabinet, the gap between the carpet and the underside of the bottom drawer. Two hundred and nine thousand dollars will crowd a space that size. He tugged hard on the drawer. Something was making it stick. In the end he simply tipped the cabinet over and got back his money that way.