Too much for Baker. He checked his watch. Almost noon. Time for a few quick belts.
The pub across the road had Castlemaine on tap. Baker had a schooner, a vodka chaser, a schooner, a vodka chaser. He patted his pockets. He’d had a Serepax prescription filled just the other day. He found the tablets in the same pocket as the car keys. He swallowed one, then threw back another vodka. Another beer would have been a big mistake: ‘Just nipping out for a leak, your worship.’ Baker sniggered, imagining the look on the beak’s face.
The guy behind the bar gave him a wink on the way out. ‘Good luck, mate. Keep your head.’
‘Thanks,’ Baker muttered.
Keep his head? What did the guy mean? Baker crossed the road. On the other side he put one foot after the other up the steps of the courthouse. In through the swinging doors and then a double-check of the computer printout on the notice board. There it was: Baker, Court 5, 2 p.m. He looked at his watch. Holy Christ, five past two.
‘Where have you been?’ Goldman hissed outside number five court. She reeled back. ‘Oh, Terry, you haven’t been drinking?’
‘Settles the nerves,’ he told her.
‘Well, come on. Victor De Lisle’s the beak today and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
It became apparent to Baker during the twenty minutes that followed that he might have made a miscalculation with his cocktail of beer, vodka and Serepax, especially on top of the downers he’d popped that morning. He was aware of the police prosecutor droning away: guy in a suit, solid build, a moustache like you see on nine out of ten coppers. Then Goldman had a go, and Baker heard her suggest to the beak that they settle his case now, save some strain on the court system. Baker yawned a lot. He beamed. He was required to stand through all of it and that was the hard part.
Then the fog cleared a little and Baker felt the eyes of the magistrate fix on him. Baker twitched at the man, halfway between an open smile and a respectful nod.
‘Ms Goldman?’
‘Your worship?’
‘Is Mr Baker inebriated? Have you been drinking, Mr Baker?’
‘If the court pleases, Mr Baker is an alcoholic, a disease he is currently doing his best to overcome.’
‘That’s not what I asked, Ms Goldman. I asked whether or not he has taken upon himself to appear in my court in a state of intoxication. Mr Baker, perhaps you would care to honour us with an explanation one way or the other?’
Baker frowned, picking his way through the heavy language. ‘Pardon?’
‘You’re a bit of a loafer, eh, Mr Baker?’
A cop at the back laughed out loud.
De Lisle went on: ‘When’s the last time you did an honest day’s work, Baker? Maybe you’re not a loaf, maybe you’re a sponge. Soak up the welfare system, do you, Baker? Got some poor woman at home supporting you?’
‘Your worship, I really must protest-’
‘I’m not interested, Ms Goldman.’ De Lisle’s face twisted. ‘I see his type over and over again. Useless. A drain on the community. Repeat offenders too stupid to learn from their mistakes.’
‘Your worship, really-’
‘Not now, Ms Goldman.’
Something was going on. Baker concentrated, hearing the sneer in De Lisle’s voice, registering the contempt. De Lisle? What kind of a wog name was that? He saw a short, pink, fattish kind of character, self-satisfaction written all over him. I’ll get you, pal, Baker thought. Calling me useless. Calling me stupid.
Meanwhile De Lisle was all professional again. He overrode Goldman and began gabbling a legal summation in a recitative voice, to the effect that Baker did have a case to answer and was bailed on his own recognizance to appear in the District Court on a date to be fixed.
Baker wasn’t interested in that. He barely listened. He was encouraging a picture in his head: De Lisle thrashing about in pain, begging, pleading with Baker to spare his worthless life.
Twenty
Wyatt slowed for a traffic bottleneck in Ringwood, the hills clarifying in the distance, and considered just how murky this deal with the Tiffany had become. If Liz Redding were simply a fence, he’d be wary out of habit, knowing that the only other factor to take into account was the ripoff factor: you can’t get rid of the goods yourself, fences can, so you’re forced to rely on them, knowing they’ll always rip you off a few per cent. But at least you also knew that neither you nor the fence wanted the law involved.
But that kind of certainty didn’t exist when it came to someone who walked the murky ground between the insurance companies and lawless professionals like Wyatt. The insurance companies were ostensibly on the side of the law. The only thing in Wyatt’s favour here was their well-known reluctance to fork out the full value on any claim. They would rather fork out a few thousand dollars to get the Tiffany back intact, no questions asked, than pay the full replacement value-which didn’t mean they wouldn’t also work with the law if it suited them to do so.
With that in mind, Wyatt did what he could to stack the odds in his favour. He hadn’t been carrying for months-too much metal, too many airport metal detectors, and Jardine’s burglaries hadn’t warranted a gun. But today he had Jardine’s unused, untraceable.32 automatic in the waistband at the small of his back. Not his preferred handgun, but it would do if the shooting were close and fast.
Next was the handover place itself. If there’d been more time and if he were dealing with a buyer or a fence, then he’d have insisted on meeting in the safety-deposit vault of a bank. He’d have a safety-deposit box, the buyer would have a box. He’d have the Tiffany, the buyer would have scales, pincers, jeweller’s eyeglass and purchase cash. They’d complete the trade in complete privacy and neither would be tempted to pull a cross, not with so many guards, cameras, witnesses and steel doors around.
But there wasn’t the time, and Liz Redding wasn’t a simple buyer or fence, so he’d suggested a Devonshire tea place near Emerald. It was taking him over an hour to get there, but the hills offered escape routes and boltholes. He could slip away on one of the back roads or hole up in a weekender cabin or even perch up a tree for a few hours. He’d be hard to track from the air and hard to follow in the dense ground cover.
He thought through the getaway alternatives. If this were a trap he was walking into, he’d run and keep running, assuming he had the initiative to begin with. If not, then he was left with holing up in Emerald until the heat was off, or holing up a few kilometres away until it was safe to leave. He thought he knew how the cops would work it. They’d block the roads out first. If he didn’t show, they’d move the search closer to Emerald. Clearly the answer was, if he got away in the initial confusion he’d hide where he could watch the roadblocks. When they came down for the cops to narrow the circle, that was the time to run and keep running.
Assuming the cafй itself wasn’t being staked out, the interior crowded with cops posing as customers, waiters, cashiers, cooks.
Finally, Wyatt had worked on himself, doing what he always did before a hit. He’d eaten a modest breakfast, enough to give him energy but not slow him down. He had a train timetable in his pocket, and reserves of cash to buy his way out of trouble. And he was wearing a useful, quick-change disguise if he needed one: the jacket was reversible, there was a beret folded into an inside pocket, he wore sunglasses. Change all three factors and he might change his appearance sufficiently to get away unnoticed.
The cafй offering Devonshire teas was on the northern edge of the town, separated from the first of the shops by a belt of gums, tree ferns and bracken. Wyatt parked the car in a bay outside a milkbar, went in, bought an icecream, came out again. He set off down the street, heading away from the cafй. He strolled for four blocks, not hurrying, taking tiny smears of the icecream into his mouth to make it last. Then he crossed the street and came back, pausing now and then at the window of a craft shop, a nursery, a display of New Age crystals and self-help books. The crystals and the books were incomprehensible to Wyatt.