Wyatt opened the door to the corridor and listened. No-one else seemed to be up. He let himself out quietly and walked down the street. The station was ten minutes walk away. He dumped the shopping bag in a rubbish bin along the way.
The air was cool. Not many cars were about. He got to the station a few minutes before seven o’clock. There were four cars in the car park. The platform was deserted and there were no cops in the waiting room or the ticket office. The only people he saw were the station master making coffee in a room next to the ticket office and a bleary-eyed man in the waiting room.
Wyatt looked at the timetable. There was an Adelaide train at 7.35 am. The return train got in at 6.30 that evening.
Twenty minutes later, there were eight more people waiting for the train. Most were women who appeared to be going to Adelaide for a day’s shopping, but there were also two men in suits. All were yawning. One of the men coughed repeatedly. Another smoked, ignoring the sign.
When the train came in they all stood up and walked onto the platform. Wyatt went into the men’s. When the train was gone, he went out to the car park. There were now twelve cars parked along the fence. He chose a white Kingswood, knowing it was the easiest to break into and start. It wouldn’t be missed until 6.30. By then he’d be holding a gun to Leah’s head, asking what her story was.
THIRTY-THREE
He’d been in the implement shed. She had just shut the bike away, and was turning to cross the yard, when he’d pressed the gun into the base of her spine and said, ‘Turn around slowly.’
She smelt cop. He wasn’t dressed like one, and he wasn’t acting like one, but she smelt cop all the same. It was the suspicion, worn like a layer of skin, the contempt, the swagger of the heavy limbs. He had clever eyes in the whitest skin she’d ever seen on anyone and the sort of cop expression she knew well-permanent bleakness and cynicism. The eyes seemed to sum her up and toss her out.
When he’d spoken again it was to ask where Wyatt was.
‘Who?’
Dumb. He’d flashed the gun across her cheek, cutting the skin open. He didn’t ask it again, just looked at her. ‘You’re expecting him,’ he said flatly. ‘We’ll wait in the house. Move.’
She turned and they walked across the yard. She felt the gun brush her spine.
When they reached the house he prodded her. ‘In the kitchen.’
So he knew the layout. She heard his footsteps on the verandah behind her and then he was crowding her as they went through the door.
At the centre of the room she turned to face him. ‘Do you work for Jorge? Steelgard? Did you warn the van?’
His expression changed for the first time, showing puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about?’
She stared at him. ‘You hijacked our job, right?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is Wyatt coming or not?’
They had stared at each other then. She remembered noticing odd details, things that had nothing to do with who he was or what he was doing there. The shoes, first. They were brand new desert boots, looking soft and brushed, with pale crepe rubber soles. Then the clothes. He was wearing the sort of things a farmer would wear, except they lacked the patina of age and use. They looked creased and new. In fact, there was still a pin in the shirt collar.
He spoke again. ‘Something went wrong?’
There didn’t seem to be any harm in answering. ‘The van didn’t show.’
‘Snyder, Wyatt, the other man-where are they?’
She stiffened at that. How did he know so much? She felt the bad feelings swamping her again: the job going wrong, Wyatt shooting Snyder, the sense that this was real and nothing else in her life, no matter how rotten, had been real.
‘Tobin went home,’ she said. ‘Snyder’s dead.’
He looked disgusted. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Wyatt shot him.’
The man nodded gloomily. Keeping the gun trained on her, he backed up to the window and looked out.
‘I’ll ask again-you’re waiting for Wyatt?’
She risked a lie. ‘No. The job went wrong and we split up and got out of there. Wyatt’s gone.’
‘Bullshit,’ the man said flatly. He knocked her head back with the butt of his gun. Her jaws closed with a click, her front teeth nipping her tongue. She tasted blood. The pain made her head swim.
Then he pushed her to the floor and she sat with her back to the wall. She didn’t look up at the man after that. There was a cruel irony in all this. The badness she’d felt washing around her after Wyatt shot Snyder had evaporated a minute after she’d ridden off on the bike. It didn’t make the shooting any better but she’d begun to feel guilty about abandoning Wyatt. She’d turned the bike around and ridden to the farm to help him. She should have kept running.
At that moment the man said viciously, ‘Jesus Christ. A helicopter.’
He was standing at the window. Leah stood up and joined him. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then the helicopter changed direction and she recognised the familiar shape. It was a small helicopter, still some distance away. It changed direction again. She was puzzled about that until she realised it was sweeping the valley in a grid pattern.
‘We’re getting out,’ the man said.
‘How?’
He jerked his head toward the back of the house. ‘I’ve got a car.’
‘You don’t need me.’
The man looked her full in the face and grinned. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you’re taking me home to wait for Wyatt.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Letterman directed her into arid country north-east of Burra. The map was spread over his lap, concealing the pistol trained at her thigh. Now and then he moved, dial-hunting on the car radio. He spoke only once in the first hour, asking her where she lived. She told him. There was no point in trying to deceive him. With all the police activity around, they both needed a bolthole.
A regional station picked up the hijack and killings story first. By four o’clock the ABC and all the Adelaide commercial stations had it. Police were sealing the area. They expected an early arrest. But Leah knew it was a big area to seal and Letterman-he’d finally told her his name-was steering them through a land of sand-drifts and mirages. It was clear to her that they were outside the search area. Here and there she saw roadside gates and a distant tin roof on a saltbush plain. When finally they came to a junction of dusty baked roads in a clearing in the mallee scrub, she knew what he had in mind. Morgan, the sign said. The River Murray. Letterman was intending to follow the river to Murray Bridge, then branch off for the Adelaide Hills.
Four o’clock. Five. Six. More information kept filtering through about the dead men and the missing van, but no names had been released and no arrests reported.
Letterman spoke. He looked up at her and said, ‘What do you think?’
She knew what he meant. ‘He got away.’
Letterman nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘What makes you think he’ll come to my place?’
‘Nothing makes me think it. It’s the only option I’ve got.’
She waited. When he didn’t follow this up she asked, ‘And if the cops gaol him first?’
The reply was flat and certain. ‘I can still get him there.’
‘What do you want with him? We didn’t get any money. Is it personal?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
Letterman shrugged. ‘It’s a job. He trod on some toes.’
They lapsed into silence again. Eventually they reached the river and turned south. The sun was low in the sky. Leah turned on the headlights.
‘What are they paying you?’
‘Fifty thousand.’
‘I can pay you that. I’ll pay you more if you like. Just drop the matter and leave us alone.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Letterman said.
She glanced at him. Letterman was staring ahead. The pistol hadn’t moved. She couldn’t see it under the map but she sensed its probing snout. She looked at the road again.
‘Watch your driving,’ Letterman said.
She wanted him to say what he intended to do if Wyatt didn’t show up. She knew the answer-he’d kill her whether Wyatt showed up or not-but she wanted to hear him say it.