Harbutt nodded again. And thats all I know about it, I swear. I dont know if theres one gun out there or a dozen.
Not a dozen, Wyatt thought. The Outfit was Sydney based, weak in Melbourne, so they wouldnt have organised that many guns. They would have sent a local, maybe two. He slid along the floor and eased open the door to the corridor.
They were waiting for him. A shot rang out and the frosted glass splintered above his head. He rolled, putting distance between himself and the door.
The position was bad, as though hed treed himself. The only way out was down the stairs, where hed make an easy target. His only cover was the waist-high safety barrier that ran around the edge of the mezzanine level corridor. He crouched behind it, conscious that it was plasterboard and wouldnt save him from a lucky or a careful shot.
He chanced a look over the rail and ducked again, twisting to his right. There was another shot and plaster shards sprinkled his face. Then a series of shots had him flat to the floor and moving back through the open door again into the office. Now he knew where the gunman wason the mezzanine floor, facing him from the corridor on the opposite side of the building. And it was an automatic rifle. His Colt could not match it for range, velocity or accuracy.
Wyatt rested a moment, thinking it through. He was alone in this. Harbutt was still on the floor, head buried in his arms, rocking his upper body. If there were two guns outside, the second one covering the stairs from the bottom, there was no way out. If the gun opposite was the only one, there was a chance. The rail around the mezzanine was an equaliser. Wyatt couldnt be seen, but nor could the man opposite him. With time, the other man might get off a lucky shot. Or hed remember what hed come here for and move around to this part of the mezzanine and force a confrontation.
Wyatt could wait, it was what he was good at, but he decided to push matters. The office photocopier sat on an open-shelved cabinet crammed with paper, pens and toner cartridges. There was also a bottle of methylated spirits. He broke open four packs of A4 paper and poured the methylated spirits over them, fanning the edges with his thumb to allow penetration. He soaked several cleaning rags with the fluid, and his dustcoat. Finally he searched the desk. He found a Bic lighter in the drawer. He tested it, turning the flame to high.
Still keeping low, he carried everything out into the corridor and weighed up the next stage. He needed to cut down on the amount of light that framed him and he needed to distract the gunman.
Leaning back, he sighted the Colt and squeezed off a shot. The corridor light went out, glass flakes falling to the floor. He sighted again and shot out the light at the head of the stairs. He chanced a third shot, smashing the closest of the three main lights in the hall. It didnt give him darkness but he was harder to see now, here above the remaining lights suspended over the shop floor below.
Without pausing he rested the Colt on the rail and snapped off four shots at the man opposite him. He heard them pass through the plaster and heard the soft thump of someone rolling for cover.
Wyatt judged that he had about five seconds before the gunman felt secure enough to return the volley. He lit the rags and the dustcoat, and flung them over the rail. Then he lit the paper bundles, watched the flames take hold, and scattered them onto the furniture below.
The rifle opened up again, so he scooted back along the corridor toward the stairs. Four shots, then silence.
Nothing happened for a while. Wyatt slid the spare clip into the Colt and waited. There were foam rubber sofas and vinyl armchairs directly beneath him. He knew they would burn readily, producing plenty of smoke, but it would take some time for them to catch.
Thats if hed got lucky with his aim.
Wyatt noticed the smell first, acrid and poisonous. He heard crackling then as the flames caught, and the smoke, when it reached him, was thick and black.
Then the alarms went off and sprinklers came on.
Water drenched everythingthe offices, corridors, the big display floor below.
Wyatt moved. He ran half-crouched down the corridor. As he rounded the corner and crossed the space toward the head of the stairs, a shape confronted him in the gloom, elastic and dark. He ducked, got off a shot. The shot went high. There was no answering shot. Instead, he saw the black figure hurl the rifle at him, butt first. It spun end over end and then he was tangled in it. He fell. The Outfit gun disappeared down the stairs and in those seconds, in the obscuring blackness, Wyatt formed one impression: the Outfit gun was a woman and she was hard and quick-looking, like a coiled black spring.
He got to his feet. He didnt go after her. She would be out the door and away before he got there. The fact that she hadnt stayed to finish the job indicated that she was alone, her clip was empty and she wanted to disappear before cops and firemen arrived.
So did Wyatt. But he allowed himself a moment for what he had to do next. Harbutt was coughing. The fire had roused him from his blues and he came out of the office, a handkerchief over his nose. His eyes were streaming. He stopped when he saw Wyatt. You got him?
Wyatt shook his head. Cleared off.
Im glad youre okay, Harbutt said. Then he saw the big Colt. A kind of sadness settled in him. You know youve got nothing to worry about from me.
Wyatt raised the muzzle. Thats right, he said.
Fourteen
Wyatt spent the next five days aboard a rotting barge, existing on tinned beans and peaches. The world had become a place full of holes, corners and darkness. There was no-one he could turn to and he mistrusted the daylight. The money in his pocket had been meanly acquired and it would not see him beyond the next week. His pistol, tied to an inglorious killing, lay rusting on the bottom of the Barwon River. If they came to get him now, he had only his fists to face them with. And alone, in hiding, he began to feel eyes at his back.
On the fifth night he moved. Any earlier and hed have been trapped inside the police search radius or stopped on an exit road. After five days and no sightings, the search would have been called off. Slipped through the cordon.
Thankful of the darkness and the water, he went by boat this time, casting free in a motor cruiser and heading it out into the bay. The sea was calm and nothing showed on the radar. He sipped scotch and ate from a tin of sardines hed found stored in the galley. It was an expensive boat, well fitted out, but by morning it would be a chain around his neck.
He had to leave the state. Hed been offered a way, and had turned it down. Brisbane. Mostyn had said the client was a woman in Brisbane. Stolle himself had said it. The whole deal sounded too odd to be a trap. The general style of the people who didnt like Wyatt was to come at him with a gun, not try an elaborate ruse. Nothing about Stolle said that he was a hired gun. He hadnt been armed; his ID said he was a private investigator. Stolle had also mentioned flying. That meant airports and people, hardly the conditions for an ambush. Finally, there was that five thousand dollars. Wyatt took in everything the boat had to offer and saw only one thing that could help him now.
He had to call twice on the cellular phone before relays picked up his signal. It was one oclock in the morning and Stolles voice was thick with sleep and irritation. What? he said flatly.
You said five thousand.
Stolle came awake then. Thats right.
Is this line secure?
I ran a check only yesterday.
What about the room?
Its clean.
Wyatt was silent, wondering how to play this.
Say whats on your mind, Stolle said.
Im interested in your offer.
